Back in December, Dan Johnson and I started a weekly column in the Lethbridge Herald called “The Public Professor”. We twist arms on campus to get profs to write short bits on academic stuff of interest to the wider community. Its been a lot of fun but sometimes harder than one imagines: we cannot get technical and they have to be around 600 words. Perhaps it is karma for demanding my students not get overly wordy.
The column comes out on Saturdays and are posted online, but I thought I would reproduce mine here.
Here is my most recent contribution from June 27, with some pictures added.
~~~~~~~~
Most societies throughout history have had prophets of various sorts, select individuals said to communicate with gods, spirits or ancestors about hidden or future matters. One of the oldest collections of ancient prophecy comes from a city called Mari (in modern Syria). Among the thousands of clay tablet documents found, there were approximately 50 letters referring to prophets. Their recipient was King Zimri-Lim, who reigned from around 1775 BCE to 1761 BCE.
One of Zimri Lim’s documents from Mari. Wikipedia’s photo of the artifact in the Louvre.
These prophets would speak in the name of several deities, including Dagan, Marduk and the goddess Ishtar. They would advise the king about wars, diplomacy, building projects and religious matters. On occasion, the king would be criticized for shirking religious obligations. Prophets might receive their messages through “incubation,” or sleeping in temples to promote dreams. Trances or altered mental states could be induced in other ways, perhaps with the aid of alcohol or other intoxicants.
There were many categories of prophet including the apilum, “answerer,” the muhhum, “ecstatic,” and Ishtar’s ritual singers, “assinnum.” Most of these were men who worked in temples with close connections to the royal court. Different classes of prophets more open to women would serve the lower ranks of society.
One Mari text predicts Zimri-Lim’s victory over the “man of Eshnunna.” That man, King Ibalpiel II, was himself the recipient of a few prophecies. His goddess, Kititum (one of the many guises of Ishtar) tells him in one text that under his rule, Eshnunna could look forward to peace, security and wealth. She says, “I, Kititum, will strengthen the foundations of your throne; I have established a protective spirit for you.” Perhaps both sides were just being told what they wanted to hear!
Prophecies would be tested by various forms of divination, including the rather gory technique of extispicy. Diviners would sacrifice an animal and then inspect the creature’s liver for clues that the prophecy was trustworthy. Of course, extispicy, like tea cup reading or astrology, has its own credibility issues but people tend to remember success more readily than failures. More importantly, prophecy and divination create the feeling that the world is knowable, predictable and ordered, rather than completely arbitrary or nonsensical.
In one Mari text, a servant of Zimri-Lim reports how a muhhum of Dagan called for the return of missing religious artifacts. He demanded to be given a lamb belonging to the king to eat. The report continues:
“I gave him a lamb and he devoured it raw in front of the city gate. He assembled the elders in front of the gate of Saggaratum and said: ‘A devouring will take place! Give orders to the cities to return the taboo material.’“
The prophet’s meal does more than illustrate his point about an angry god. It seems based on the kind of symbolic relationships that were thought to give magic its power to change reality. In the eyes of the people of ancient Mari, divine punishment was likely imminent because of what the prophet did to the poor lamb.
Readers of the Bible may recognize some aspects of the Mari prophetic texts. Young Samuel sleeps in a shrine and receives messages from God. Saul falls in with ecstatic prophets while Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel perform bizarre symbolic acts. Many oracles declare salvation to the nation and many more predict doom. Yet, the Old Testament prophetic literature remains very different from that of Mari, written more than 1,000 years earlier. The biblical materials also went through a radically different process of writing, editing and collecting, a process that began around the same time as the Assyrians in northern Iraq began copying collections of prophetic oracles, too. But since the Assyrian and Israelite prophetic writings are already well over 2,000 years old, they can safely wait for another week’s column!
Quotes are adopted from Martti Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 38, 94.
Ishtar or Inanna, probably the former because we can compare it to this more recent photo of her:
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE TRADITIONAL GRATUITOUS SEXY BABE PIC:
Singer Ishtar of the group Alabina, perhaps the Jewish version of the virgin Mari “Madonna”
Visit her website for more reveal-ations
Actually, according to Wikipedia, Ishtar (Eti Zac) served as a helicopter technician in the Israeli Army and sings in Hebrew, English, French, Arabic and Spanish, although presumably not all at the same time. She has some solo albums, and some with the group Los Niños de Sara under the name Alabina. All sorts of musical influences. I know I’m influenced.
A statue of Ebish-II, attendant of Zimri Lim, found in Mari’s Ishtar temple (from Wikipedia).
I know why his eyes are like that. Ain’t nothin’ to do with old Zimri, though…
