Divine signs and Scientific Relevance

Ronak Patel

Near Eastern Studies R1B

Response Paper; Rituals of War (Ch.3 and Ch.6)

Chapter 3 of Zainab Bahrani’s book, Rituals of War, dealt with the relationship between the body and divination, while chapter 6 of the book dealt with the different types of art forms and statues that were relevant to war. Something I found very interesting was the claim that there is a possibility that divinatory signs characterized by exticipacy were somehow scientifically relevant (Bahrani 85). I believe the scientific relevance of divinatory signs was an unintended consequence of the practice instead of being its purpose.

Bahrani mentions that “historical omens read conditions that had been previously observed” and considered significant (86). This means that any initial observations of the slaughtered animal made by oracles would be considered accurate without question. There is no reason to believe that these initial observations were based on any scientific inquiries, but instead could have been a mere coincidence.

Bahrani also goes on to say that “omen’s logic seems to derive from homonyms or synonyms” (87). This means odd relations made by individual oracles’ imaginations played a role in deciphering the meaning of different signs. There is no scientific premise on which these logical homonyms or synonyms are derived from so placing it in the context of scientific relevance would be a mistake.

At the same time the specificity of some of the earlier omens (Bahrani 86), make it seem very unlikely that the deciphering of the signs had a scientific basis. For example, “If the entire liver is anomalous: omen of the king of Akkad regarding catastrophe” (Bahrani 86). This situation is very specific to the king of Akkad, but there is no evidence of what this phenomenon would mean if it dealt with the king of another state. There is no reason to believe this much specificity could be scientifically based.

The basis of deciphering the omens is not known, but there is not very much evidence to prove that it is scientifically based. The entire system could have been based by spontaneous events that led to the need to justify the reasoning for the greater understanding of the population.