lic interest. To a more limited
extent, private affairs are also touched upon.

To enter upon a further discussion of details is unnecessary at this
point, and would carry us too far from the main purpose of this chapter,
which is to point out the diverse ways in which the belief in omens is
illustrated by the religious literature of the Babylonians.

It is sufficient to have made clear that the oracles and dreams, the
lists of omens derived from eclipses, the works on the planets and stars
and the calendars, all have the same origin due to observation of
coincidences, to past experience, and to a variety of combinations, some
logical and some fanciful, of supposed relationships between cause and
effect; and not only the same origin, but the lists and calendars served
also the same main purpose of guides for the priests in replying to the
questions put to them by their royal masters and in forwarding
instructions to the ruler for the regulation of his own conduct so that
he and his people might enjoy the protection and good will of the gods.
But the observation of the phenomena of the heavens, while playing
perhaps the most prominent part in the derivation of omens, was not the
only resource at the command of the priests for prognosticating the
future. Almost daily, strange signs might be observed among men and
animals, and whatever was strange was of necessity fraught with some
meaning. It was the business of the priest to discover that meaning.

Omens From Terrestrial Phenomena.

Monstrosities, human and animal, and all species of malformations
aroused attention. The rarer their occurrence, the greater the
significance attached to them. In addition to this, the movements of
animals, the flight of birds, the appearance of snakes at certain
places, of locusts, lions, the actions of dogs, the direction of the
winds, the state of rivers, and all possible accidents and experiences
that men may encounter in their house, in the street, in crossing
streams, and in sleep were observed. Everything in any way unusual was
important, and even common occurrences were of some significance. The
extensive omen literature that was produced in Babylonia is an
indication of the extent to which men's lives were hedged in by the
belief in portents. Several thousand tablets in the portion of
Ashurbanabal's library that has been rescued from oblivion through
modern excavations, deal with omens of this general class. Several
distinct se