Babylonian Oracle Questions (Mesopotamian Civilizations)

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Description

The Babylonian tamitu texts are a corpus of questions addressed to the sun-god Shamash and the storm-god Adad jointly. Professional diviners were employed to put the questions with the appropriate rites and to formulate the wording as it should be, since the only answer would be “yes” or “no.” Thus the questions had to include a detailed exposition of the matter, and they open up intimate glances of things not differently to be had. Kings ask whether they will have to undertake a certain campaign, laying out a detailed course of action. At the other end of the scale, a man wants to know whether his wife is telling him the truth. All tablets are of first millennium B.C. date, though one of the questions date from the second one millennium B.C. Scribes copied out questions to serve as models for later use.

In this volume W.G. Lambert has gathered together the entire known material, including 54 tablets and fragments not in the past published. All are given in cuneiform copy, transliteration, translation, with notes and an introduction. By far the greater a part of this material has not been edited before.

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