Note 301.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

It has been remarked that divination played an important, perhaps a dominant part in the Babylonian ritual of sacrifice, divination, that is, by inspection of the victim’s entrails, especially the liver; and that this method was adopted in Greece only in the later centuries.301.1 But there are other salient differences between the Babylonian and the more ancient mantic art of Hellas.301.2 Another method much in vogue in the former was a curious mode of divining by mixing oil and water and watching the movements and behaviour of the two liquids.301.3 The first and only indication of a similar practice in Hellas is a passage in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, of which the true meaning has hitherto escaped the interpreters.301.4 And here, as usual, an obvious example of Mesopotamian influence on Hellenic custom belongs only to a late epoch. It is also true that the ancient divination of the two peoples agreed in certain respects, namely, in that both used, like most communities at a certain stage of culture, the auguries of birds and the revelations of dreams. As regards the facts relating to the former, we know more about Greece than at present about Babylon. But in the matter of dream-oracles, it is manifest that the Hellenic phenomena are entirely independent of Mesopotamian fashion. The Assyrian and Babylonian documents reveal the fashion of dream-prophecy in its simplest and highest form: the high deity of his own pleasure sends a dream, and the divining priest or skilled interpreter interprets it. No hint has so far been detected of that artificial method of provoking prophetic dreams by “incubation” or ἐγκοίμησις, the fashion of laying oneself down in some sacred shrine and sleeping with one’s ear to the ground, that was much in vogue in ancient Hellas and still survives in parts of the modern Greek world and which may be regarded as an immemorial tradition. In this divination, the divine spokesman was the power of the underworld. And this was the most important difference between the Western and the Eastern society in respect of the divine agency. In an early period of Hellenic history that may be called pre-Apolline, the earth-mother was conspicuously oracular by the vehicle of dreams; and this power of hers was generally shared by the nether god and buried heroes. Nor could the religion of Apollo suppress this “chthonian” divination. But in Mesopotamia the earth-powers and the nether world have no part or lot in this matter. It is almost the prerogative of Shamash, the sun-god, though Adad is sometimes associated with him;302.1 both being designated as “Bēlē-Biri” or “Lords of Oracles.”303.1