Transferring Divinatory Practices: An Anatolian Intermediary Between Assyria and Greece
Transferring Divinatory Practices: An Anatolian Intermediary Between Assyria and Greece

Summary/Abstract: The art of Babylonian divination was adopted by the neighbouring cultures and absorbed. Definitive evidence for direct contact between Assyria and the Ionian is lacking in Homer. However, proceeding step by step, we have confirmed Assyrian-Hittite contacts and Hittite-Lydian contacts, and later Persian-Lydian and Lydian-Greek (Lydian-Ionian) relations. We could suppose that Mesopotamian influence reached the Greek world, and this flow continued for centuries but was subject to many regional modifications. The first independent diviners were probably the itinerant experts, many of whom were non-Greeks originating from the Near East. Interactions related to war are evident in many sources; Greek mercenaries served in the East. The presence of Greek mercenaries in the army of Nebuchadnezzar is known from a poem of Alcaeus. It appears that the Hittites borrowed the methodology from the Babylonians via of the Hurrians (and/or Luwians), as many of the names for the parts and features are Hurrian. From the Hattusa archive, we know of 25 cuneiform texts relating to Ahhiyawa, with as many as seven of them being oracles. Among the Hittites, Arzawa was known as a famous center of divination, especially for the prevention of plagues. In the Iliad, Apollo from Troy was a god of such a type, and his sanctuary must have specialized in this kind of divination. Nearly all the divinatory branches were in use in the Hittite empire. The question remains only about the method of transmission of this divinatory knowledge and its accuracy to the original(s).

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