Weather omens of Enūma Anu Enlil : thunderstorms, wind and rain (tablets 44-49) /
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The Assyro-Babylonian omen series Enūma Anu Enlil , written on seventy cuneiform tablets, bears witness to the early understanding of the mutual interactions of heaven and earth on both the physical and the religious levels. To facilitate accessibility, technical and linguistic commentaries as well as an excerpt series were compiled by the scholars of old. This ancient knowledge, which was still largely characterized by mythological concepts, was never completely abandoned, not even when the 'calculating' astronomy became prevalent in the first millennium B.C. The series deals in four parts with the moon, the sun, weather phenomena, and fixed stars and planets. This book offers an edition of the texts of the second half of the weather section with the accompanying material.
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1 online resource (x, 286 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004225992 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Divination and interpretation of signs in the ancient world /
: Proceedings from the fifth annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar, held March 6-7, 2009. : viii, 351 pages : Illustrations ; 26 cm. : Includes bibliographical references. : 9781885923684 : 1559-2944 ; : Nabil
La raison des signes : présages, rites, destin dans les sociétés de la méditerranée ancienne /
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Comment prévoir l'inconnu et contrôler l'inattendu ? Les Anciens ont tenté de répondre à ces questions en interprétant des signes dans lesquels il reconnaissaient des messages divins. Ce recueil permet de comparer la diversité de leurs questionnements dans les sociétés polythéistes ou monothéistes de la Méditerranée antique. Il interroge premièrement la construction rituelle des signes au sein des institutions divinatoires ; deuxièmement, des phénomènes naturels spontanés, qui, apparus hors de toute institution, ont néanmoins valeur de présages ou d'avertissements ; troisièmement, l'intentionnalité manifestée à travers l'intervention divine dans l'histoire des peuples ou les vies singulières ; quatrièmement, l'épistémologie des signes dans des élaborations philosophiques ou théologiques qui éclairent la tension entre données oraculaires et contrôle ritualisé des signes, entre données révélées et argumentations raisonnées visant à neutraliser les injonctions du destin. How to foresee the unknown and master the unexpected? Ancient people tried to answer those questions by interpreting signs considered as divine messages. In this volume, the writers compare and examine this manifold questioning in the polytheistic and monotheistic societies of the ancient Mediterranean Sea. In the first place, it is shown how signs were ritually constructed within instituted practice of divination ; second, how, although some spontaneous natural phenomena appeared out of any instituted context, may nevertheless constitute omens or monition ; third, how the gods' intervention may reveal a sort of intention in the course of national history or individual life ; finally, the essays study the epistemology of signs at work in some philosophical or theological elaborations, which may enlighten the tension between oracular evidence and ritual control of signs, and between revealed facts and reasoning arguments intending to neutralize the injunctions of the divine.
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Text in French; summaries in English. :
1 online resource (xviii, 626 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004210912 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Mesopotamian divination literature : its organizational framework and generative and paradigmatic characteristics /
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In Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics , Abraham Winitzer provides a detailed study of the Akkadian Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1600 BC) omen collections stemming from extispicy, the most significant Mesopotamian divination technique for most of that civilization's history. Paying close attention to these texts' organizational structure, Winitzer details the mechanics responsible for their origins and development, and highlights key characteristics of a conceptual framework that helped reconfigure Mesopotamian divination into a literature in line with significant, new forms of literary expression from the same time. This literature, Winitzer concludes, represents an early form of scientific reasoning that began to appreciate the centrality of texts and textual interpretation in this civilization's production, organization, and conception of knowledge.
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1 online resource (xxi, 489 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 460-477) and index. :
9789004347007 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
In the path of the moon : Babylonian celestial divination and its legacy /
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Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multi-faceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, Classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy. \'The collected essays in this volume, successive steps in an ordered path, constitute an invaluable contribution to a better understanding of Babylonian divination.\' Lorenzo Verderame, \'Sapienza\' Università di Roma \'The reader interested in the multifaceted presentation of the problems related to the explanation of Babylonian celestial divination and well equipped with the knowledge of Akkadian will certainly be rewarded by the study of Rochberg's latest publication.\' Henryk Drawnel, SDB
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004189614 :
1566-7952 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Bodies of knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia : the diviners of late Bronze Age Emar and their table collection /
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In Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia Matthew Rutz explores the relationship between ancient collections of texts, commonly deemed libraries and archives, and the modern interpretation of titles like 'diviner'. By looking at cuneiform tablets as artifacts with archaeological contexts, this work probes the modern analytical categories used to study ancient diviners and investigates the transmission of Babylonian/Assyrian scholarship in Syria. During the Late Bronze Age diviners acted as high-ranking scribes and cultic functionaries in Emar, a town on the Syrian Euphrates (ca. 1375-1175 BCE). This book's centerpiece is an extensive analytical catalogue of the excavated tablet collection of one family of diviners. Over seventy-five fragments are identified for the first time, along with many proposed joins between fragments.
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1 online resource (xxi, 682 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004245686 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.