Note 303.2 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

Another remarkable distinction is the fact that the ecstatic or enthusiastic form of prophecy, that of the Shaman or Pythoness possessed and maddened by the inworking spirit of god, is not found in the Babylonian record, which only attests the cool and scientific method of interpreting by signs and dreams and the stars. Perhaps Mesopotamia from the third millennium onward was too civilised to admit the mad prophet and prophetess to its counsels. But such characters were attached to certain Anatolian cults, especially to those of Kybele,303.2 and also to the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis;303.3 we have evidence of them also in a record of the Cretan Phaistos in the service of the Great Mother.303.4 Some scholars have supposed that prophetic ecstasy was only a late phenomenon in Hellas, because Homer is silent about it. But there are reasons for suspecting that demoniac possession was occasionally found in the pre-Homeric divination of Hellas,303.5 an inheritance perhaps from the pre-Hellenic period.