The ancient Mesopotamian world was full of signs sent by the gods. Cuneiform divination cannot be regarded as simple "folk practice": everything held a meaning related to a complex cosmic network. Everything that could be observed in the sky, on earth, on the human body, in the entrails of sacrificed animals was potentially meaningful, as well as the behaviour of the sacrificial sheep before its slaughter. It was essential, vital, to decipher those signs, especially to counteract bad omens.
This vision of the world was not entirely pessimistic or fatalistic, however: it was possible to satisfy the gods with an appropriate ritual, so to avert the bad consequences of an omen. For this very reason, the practice of divination was essential in ancient Mesopotamia, and consequently diviners were some of the most high-ranking members of the society. For the same reason, omens were recorded and compiled from at least the early second millennium onwards. Manuscripts have been found all over the Middle East, in Mesopotamia itself and also in Syria, Anatolia, and Elam.
Divination was rather seen as a kind of dialogue between humankind and the gods, initiated by one or the other. The first case comprises provoked omens: that is, when a question is directly asked to the god to evoke a yes/no answer. The second case consists of the observations of unprovoked omens that appear without human intervention. Finally there is also mediumistic divination, in which a human being directly conveys a message from the god while in an altered state of consciousness (for instance through a dream or ecstatic delirium).
While extispicy remained an important form of divination until the mid-first millennium (e.g., CTN 4, 60), most other genres of provoked divination disappear from the written record long before then. One remarkable exception is provided by STT 1, 73, unearthed in Huzirina. The text mentions the observation of birds and shooting stars, but which are interpreted into a yes/no answer to a question asked according to stipulated conventions. This is thus the converse of the fortuitous observation of a sign. This original document is also the only one in the CAMS/GKAB corpus that mentions divination through dreams.
By contrast, unprovoked omens continued to develop throughout the second and first millennia BC. As expected, the tablets from Huzirina and Kalhu on the one hand, and those from Uruk on the other, also show the predominance of these practices. From the mid-second millennium on, the recording of unsolicited omens began to be institutionalized. The omens were grouped into separate series that were (more or less) clearly distinguished by different topics.
The main series of observed omens are:
Finally, the extispicy omens were also gathered into a series called Bārûtu.
Each series was further divided into separate Tablets, corresponding to numbered chapters or sections. The omens listed within each Tablet were usually related to similar topics. The format of all divinatory series is thus essentially the same, as are the structure of the omens. Each is formulated as a conditional sentence: the first clause, the protasis, is always introduced by the Akkadian word šumma "if", at least implicitly, and describes an ominous occurrence; the second clause, the apodosis, gives its significance.
Together with the progressive organisation of the series into Tablets, the ordering of the omens within a Tablet often follows a kind of logic. Numbers are ordered sequentially, sometimes even as far as implausibility: a sow may give birth to 30 piglets, for instance. There also are sequences of colours or animals, and the creation of pairs of opposites (left/right, small/tall, etc.), with consistent consequences. For instance, a phenomenon happening on the left is usually favourable, while unfavourable when it happens on the right. Equally unexpectedly, the birth of boys is often a bad sign, whereas girls are a good sign. Likewise, the language of the omens becomes more and more systematised, with a technical vocabulary and spelling habits that were known only to specialists. For instance, some logograms (signs that stand for whole words) had highly specialised but consistent readings within a series.
All divinatory series are attested in the CAMS/GKAB corpus, where it is the second best attested genre, after the incantations and rituals.
Marie-Françoise Besnier
Marie-Françoise Besnier, 'Divinatory series', The Geography of Knowledge, The GKAB Project, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/cams/gkab/theworldoftheipu/divinatoryseries/]