Personifications and Metaphors in Babylonian Celestial Omina

Author(s): Francesca Rochberg

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 116, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1996), pp. 475-
485
Published by: American Oriental Society
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PERSONIFICATIONS AND METAPHORS IN BABYLONIAN CELESTIAL OMINA
FRANCESCA ROCHBERG
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
Within the
protases
of the
Babylonian
celestial omen series Enuma Anu Enlil, a number of celestial
phenomena
are referred to
by
means of
anthropomorphic tropes
whose referents are the
gods
associated with the celestial
body
in
question.
For
example, a
lunar
eclipse
is referred to as "the moon
god
in
mourning." Metaphor
and its
implications
for abstract relational
thought
in the
language
of
Babylonian
divination can be established on the basis of the function of the attested
metaphorical expressions,
which
was to
represent
a
physical phenomenon
deemed ominous. This evidence sheds
light
on the
conception
of natural
phenomena
and
the relation between nature and the
gods
in ancient
Mesopotamia, underscoring
the
religious component
of
Mesopotamian
sci-
ence. A culture's
capacity
or
incapacity
for the use of
metaphor
has been used as a criterion for
differentiating
ancient/traditional
from modern/scientific
thought
in a substantial literature that includes studies in the
history
of Greek and Renaissance science
and
magic
as well as in
anthropology. Establishing
the existence and
identifying
the function of
metaphorical language
in Meso-
potamian
celestial divination introduces evidence which
tempers
such dichotomous schemes of culture and
thought.
Savage,
whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind,
His soul
proud
Science never
taught
to
stray
Far as the solar walk or
milky way;
Yet
simple
nature to his
hope
have
giv'n
Behind the
cloud-topped hill, an humbler Heav'n.
Pope, Essay
on Man, bk. I, 11. 90-95
IN THE PROTASES OF THE
Babylonian
celestial omens
of the series Enfma Anu
Enlil,
as well as in the
reports
from the
Neo-Assyrian
court
astrologers
in which these
omens are
regularly quoted, descriptions
of the
appear-
ances of celestial bodies are sometimes couched in
ap-
parently metaphorical
terms.
Specifically,
the
moon, sun,
and Venus are
personified
in
protases calling upon
an-
thropomorphic images,
and
referring
in each case to the
particular deity
of which the
particular heavenly body
is
considered to be a manifestation. This article'
explores
both the nature of the
tropes
found in the omen
protases
and its
implications
for our
understanding
the
Babylo-
1
The substance of this
paper
was
presented
at the 205th
meeting
of the American Oriental
Society
on March 27, 1995,
in Salt Lake
City,
Utah. Text references are abbreviated in
accordance with Erica
Reiner, ed., The
Assyrian Dictionary of
the Oriental Institute
of
the
University of Chicago,
vol. 17: ?,
part
II
(Chicago:
The Oriental
Institute, 1992),
ix-xxvi.
I wish to thank the Trustees of the British Museum for
permission
to cite the
unpublished
text BM 22696.
My
thanks
go
also to Alan C.
Bowen, Institute for Research in Classical
Philosophy
and
Science, for his
helpful
comments on a draft
of this
paper.
nian
conception
of the relation of the divine to the celes-
tial bodies and their
phenomena,
the
signs.2
The use of
metaphor
in the context of
Babylonian
ce-
lestial divination is of interest on a number of levels. On
the
surface,
identification of the references
conveyed by
the
metaphors helps
us come to terms with the
range
of
physical (celestial) phenomena regularly
observed and
viewed as ominous in
Babylonian
celestial divination.
2
For the
purposes
of this
paper,
I
accept
and assume meta-
phor
to be a feature of
language use, without
entering
into the
murky
waters of
establishing
a basis for a definition of "meta-
phorical language,"
or the
question
of whether or in what
way
metaphorical language may
be
distinguished
from literal lan-
guage.
And whereas I also
recognize
that there are
linguists
and
philosophers
of science who will
argue
that all
language,
liter-
ary
and
scientific, is
tropological,
and who will
say that, when
it comes to
constructing meaning
in
context, the distinction
between the
metaphorical
and the literal can be
challenged,
I maintain the distinction
throughout
this
paper.
For an im-
pressive array
of views and
approaches
to the
problems
of
language, perception,
and
thought
as raised
by metaphor,
see
Andrew
Ortony,
ed.,
Metaphor
and
Thought,
2nd ed.
(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1993).
475
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Journal
of
the American Oriental
Society
116.3
(1996)
The use of
metaphorical expressions
in omen
protases
makes it clear that the scholars
employed
a
variety
of
ways
to
convey physical descriptions
of
phenomena
deemed ominous,
not
only literal,
but
figurative descrip-
tions of what was observed,
or observable.
Metaphors, reflecting implicit comparisons
between
things conceptually
linked,
contain clues to the
way
things
are conceived. Because it is the nature of the
tropes
in the
Babylonian
omina to
personify
certain
celestial bodies and to connect them with deities, the
deeper implication
of our
recognition
of such use of
metaphor
lies in the often inaccessible area of
Babylo-
nian
thought concerning
the relation between nature and
the
gods.
It is in the instances of the
personifications
used in
metaphorical descriptions
of
phenomena
that we
have access to how the
heavenly
bodies,
and their be-
havior as
represented
in their
phenomena,
could be con-
ceptualized.
In view of the
conceptualization
of some of
the
heavenly
bodies as manifestations of
gods,
and the
importance
of the behavior of these divine manifesta-
tions for
predicting
the
political
and economic future of
the
kingdom,
the
"religious"
context of celestial obser-
vation,
hence of scientific
inquiry,
in ancient
Mesopota-
mia comes into
sharper
focus. The
political
context for
Babylonian
celestial divination, particularly
as evidenced
in the
Neo-Assyrian
letters and
reports
from scholars to
the
Sargonid kings,
has
long
been understood. The evi-
dence of the divine
metaphors
within celestial divina-
tion underscores the
integration
of the
religious
and the
political
in
Mesopotamian
scribal
learning
and science.
The
relationship
between the
study
of the heavens and
the
concept
of the divine,
and the relation of both to the
political
world of humankind
expressed by
celestial di-
vination, carry
wider
implications
for the
study
of the na-
ture of ancient
Mesopotamian
science. Within the
scope
of
Babylonian
interest in natural
phenomena, broadly
defined,
were those social and intellectual
phenomena
that would much later come to be
distinguished
as
magic
and
religion.
In this
early period,
however,
the scribes
differentiated these activities
only
in terms of a
variety
of
text
genres
with different aims, e.g., hymns
and
prayers,
as
distinguished
from
spells
and incantations. The activ-
ity
of science, i.e.,
of the
study
of nature and formation
of the
body
of
knowledge appropriate
to
it,
as
repre-
sented here
by
the
knowledge
of astronomical
phenom-
ena
incorporated
within celestial divination,
is seen to be
fully integrated
with these other bodies of
knowledge
and
systems
of ideas, viz.,
those of
Babylonian theology
and
magic.
Divination is
by
definition bound
up
with beliefs
about
gods
and their effect on humankind and the world.
Mesopotamian scholarly
divination focussed on
signs
collected in the lists of omina.
Many
of these
signs
were
seen in natural
phenomena,
not
generated
or
manipu-
lated
by
diviners,
but
just simply
observed.3 For a clear
statement of the belief that the
gods
were
directly
linked
to the
signs
observed
by
the diviners,
we must
rely
on
non-divinatory
texts,
for
example,
the
following pas-
sage
from a
prayer
to Sin and
Samas.
[ana tamar]tikunu irisks miattu The lands
rejoice
at
your
[urra
u
mui]sa ipaqqidd
BAR.MES-Si-in4
[ana supt]ur
ittdti sa same u
erseti attunuma tazzizd
anaku aradkunu ndsirkunu
sa umisamma anattalu
panikun
appearance.
Day
and
night they
entrust
(to you)
their
ability
to see.
You stand
by
to let loose
the omens of heaven and
earth.
I, your
servant,
who
keep
watch for
you,
who look
upon your
faces
each
day,
3
For a definition of the two
categories
of
Mespotamian
divi-
nation,
see A. L.
Oppenheim,
Ancient
Mesopotamia (Chicago:
Univ.
of,Chicago
Press, 1977), 207, where he
assigns
to them
the terms
"operational
and
magical."
The two
categories
refer
to methods of
obtaining
communications from the divine. The
forms in which divination is solicited
by
the diviner, as in oil
or smoke divination, require
the
manipulation
of the means of
divination
by
the diviner,
such as
dropping
oil into water or
releasing smoke from a censer,
hence
"operational"
divination.
The unsolicited kind,
in which the omens are observed without
the
manipulation
of
anything by
a diviner, e.g.,
celestial divi-
nation,
follows from the
premise
that nature is a field within
which the
activity
and influence of
gods may
be seen and
"read"
by
those
specially qualified by possession
of such
knowledge (called miidu,
"the one who knows").
A different
way
of
classifying Mesopotamian
divination is
given by
Jean
Bott6ro in his
Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning,
and the Gods,
tr. Z. Bahrani and M. Van De
Mieroop (Chicago:
Univ. of Chi-
cago
Press, 1992),
106. Bott6ro's
terminology
focuses on the
difference between
"prophecy"
or direct divine communication,
on the one hand,
and indirect,
or "deductive,"
divination such
as is found in the written
corpus
of omens of all kinds,
on the
other. Bott6ro's classification is derived from the
subjective-
versus-inductive
categories
of divination defined in A. Bouche-
Leclercq,
Histoire de la divination dans
l'antiquite,
4 vols.
(Paris: Leroux, 1879-82),
107-9.
4
The
reading
BAR
=
nitlu is
suggested
in E.
Ebeling,
"Be-
schworungen gegen
den Feind und den bosen Blick aus dem
Zweistromlande," ArOr 17 (1949; Symbolae Hrozny): 179,
with
a
question
mark. The sense of
plural MES
is unclear, although
the idea of
attributing
an
ability
to see to the luminaries of
day
and
night
is
certainly convincing.
476
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ROCHBERG:
Personifications
and
Metaphors
in
Babylonian
Celestial Omina
ana tamartikunu nastd
indja5
who am attentive to
your
appearance,
ittatija
lemneti ahitamma subi'a make
my
evil omens
pass
away
from me.
ittati
damqati
u
tasme^
ukna Set for me
propitious
and
ana
zumrija
favorable omens.6
In this
prayer,
the celestial deities Samas and Sin are
addressed as
though they
were the celestial bodies. The
speaker
seems to believe that to watch for the sun and
moon in the
sky
is to await the
appearance
of
Samas
and Sin. With reference to the
appearances
of the ce-
lestial bodies as
omens,
the
speaker
views the deities
as
having agency
in nature to
produce
or take
away
celestial omens for his benefit.
The scribal tradition
preserved
in a
catalogue
of texts
which
places
the
origin
of the series Enuma Anu Enlil
with the
god
Ea7 also
points
to the idea of the omens as
signs produced
and communicated from the
gods.
This is
consistent with evidence from incantations that describe
the
gods
as "the ones who determine the nature of
things,
who draw the cosmic
designs,
who
assign
the lots for
heaven and earth"
(musimmu
simtti mussiru usurdti mus-
siqu isqeti
sa same u
ersetim).8
But the relation between
the
gods,
the celestial
bodies,
and the
phenomena
that
constitute the omens in
any
more
precise
definition still
warrants clarification
beyond
the evidence of
prayers,
in-
cantations,
or scholia. In
attempting
to characterize how
the
Babylonians
conceived of this
relationship, however,
we enter the
speculative
realm of
cognitive-historical
analysis
where definitions of the cultural and historical
mode of
Babylonian thought
rest on
incomplete
and scat-
tered evidence.
Early attempts
to understand the ancient
5
The
copy appears
to read ba-sd-a GE?TUII-a-a (basa
uzndja)
"(I, whose)
mind is set (on
your appearance),"
but
Ebeling's
suggestion ("Beschworungen," 182)
of IGII and an emendation
na!-sd-a, literally
"cast the
eye,"
better suits the sense of the
context.
6
Lutz, PBS 1/2 106 r.
13-21;
edition
by
E.
Ebeling,
"Bes-
chwirungen,"
179-81. For other
translations, see A. Falken-
stein and W. von
Soden, Sumerische und akkadische
Hymnen
und Gebete
(Zurich:
Bibliothek der Alten
Welt, 1953),
342-
43, no.
68; M.-J.
Seux, Hymnes
et
prieres
aux dieux de
Baby-
lonie et
d'Assyrie (Paris:
Les editions du
Cerf, 1976), 490-91;
and
Benjamin
R. Foster, Before
the Muses: An
Anthology of
Akkadian Literature
(Bethesda,
Md.: CDL Press, 1993),
2:684
(where
the line numbers do not
correspond
to those of the
text).
7
W. G.
Lambert,
"A
Catalogue
of Texts and Authors," JCS
16
(1962): 64,
i
(K.2248):1-4.
8
Epithets
of
Ea, Samas,
and Marduk in the incantation
LKA 109 obv. 3-5.
Mesopotamian conception
of the
gods
and nature have not
held
up
under
scrutiny
of the sources.
There
are,
for
example,
no
longer many
adherents of
the
"mythopoeic thought" thesis, proposed
in the once in-
fluential
Before Philosophy:
The Intellectual Adventure
of
Ancient Man.9 In his
interpretation,
Frankfort
alleged
9
Henri Frankfort,
Mrs. H. A. Frankfort, John A.
Wilson,
and Thorkild Jacobsen, Before Philosophy:
The Intellectual
Adventure
of
Ancient Man
(Chicago:
Univ. of
Chicago Press,
1946; Pelican
reprint, 1961).
Outside the field of
Assyriology,
in the
history
of
science,
it is
surprising
to see how much this
work is still relied on. See,
for
example,
David C.
Lindberg,
The
Beginnings of
Western Science: The
European Scientific
Tradition in
Philosophical, Religious,
and Institutional Con-
text, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450
(Chicago:
Univ. of
Chicago Press,
1992), chapter
one "Science and its
Origins,"
where assertions
are made about traditions
concerning
nature characteristic of
"prehistoric cultures and
contemporary preliterate
societies"
(pp. 6-13). Lindberg
neither
acknowledges
the
problems
of
retrojecting
traditions about nature to
prehistoric(!)
times on
the basis of
myths preserved
in
writing
from
highly
literate
civilizations (his
examples coming
from
Babylonia [sic]-the
myth
referred to
[n. 9]
is Sumerian-and
Egypt)
nor does he
justify conflating Mesopotamian
and
Egyptian cosmographic
mythology
with
contemporary equatorial
African
(Kuba)
oral
tradition. The influence of Frankfort's
generalized category
"primitive
man,"
and his notion that "in the ancient Near East,
as in
present-day primitive society, thought
does not
operate
autonomously" (Before Philosophy, 13), pervades Lindberg's
discussion and is even
specifically
adduced
(p. 7)
to define the
kind of
causality allegedly
reflected in these cultures'
thinking,
i.e., one devoid of
generality
or abstraction from
particular
in-
stances.
Similarly,
John G.
Burke, senior editor of a work de-
signed
for
university
students of Western civilization, Science
and Culture in the Western Tradition: Sources and
Interpreta-
tions
(Scottsdale,
Ariz.: Gorsuch Scarisbrick
Publishers, 1987),
approaches
the
question,
"was there
really something new, dif-
ferent, and
important
about the
ways
in which the Greeks
approached questions
about the natural world?"
(p. 1),
as com-
pared
with
Mesopotamia
and
Egypt.
The material offered for
Mesopotamia, by
means of which this
complex question
is to
be
discussed,
is a
four-page passage
from
Frankfort, Before
Philosophy, prefaced
with the note that "we need to have some
feeling
for what the
prescientific
universe of
early
Mediterra-
nean cultures was like"
(p. 6). The "essence of
prescientific
cultures in the
personal
and
particular
character of human in-
teractions with the natural
world," as articulated
by
Frankfort
(Before Philosophy, 6),
is
accepted
there without
question
as
the foundation for the
analysis
of science in the ancient
Mediterranean cultural
sphere.
477
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Journal
of
the American Oriental
Society
116.3
(1996)
an
incapacity (or
an
unwillingness'?)
in the "ancient
mind" for
analogical
or
metaphorical thought.
His thesis
erased
any
distinction between
subjective perception
and
objective conception
in this ancient mode of
thought,
and, regarding signs
or omens,
Frankfort
argued
that the
ancient observer "can no more conceive them as
signi-
fying, yet separate
from,
the
gods
or
powers
than he
can consider a
relationship
established in his mind-
such as resemblance-as
connecting,
and
yet separate
from,
the
objects compared.
Hence there is coalescence
of the
symbol
and what it
signifies,
as there is coales-
cence of two
objects compared
so that one
may
stand
for the other.""
Before Philosophy
declared the inabil-
ity
to
separate
the realms of "the
symbol
and what it
signified" (de
Saussure's
signifier
and
signified)
to be
characteristic of a mode of
"mythical" thought opposed
to theoretical
logical thought.12
While the
"mythopoeic
thought"
thesis was criticized on
many
levels,
and much
work has been done to demonstrate the
capacity
of the
ancient
Mesopotamians
to think
abstractly
and theoreti-
cally,'3
the issue of relational
metaphorical thinking
as a
useful indication of how the
Babylonians thought
about
physical phenomena
in relation to the divine has not
been
specifically
examined, certainly
not in the context
of celestial omens where the relation between celestial
bodies,
their
phenomena,
and the
gods
can be studied.
The laconic, formal,
and
repetitive
nature of omen
texts
places
limitations on the use of the divination lit-
erature as evidence for how the
Babylonians perceived
the celestial bodies vis-a-vis the
gods,
i.e.,
how
they
understood the
gods
to relate to the celestial omens,
and
10
In
Before Philosophy,
Frankfort did not claim that ancient
Near Eastern
thought
was
illogical,
or even
pre-logical.
His
view on this is
expressed
rather in the statement:
"They
could
reason
logically;
but
they
did not often care to do it"
(p.
19).
11
Before Philosophy,
21.
12
Although published
somewhat later, see also E. Cassirer,
Language
and
Myth,
tr. Susanne K.
Langer (New
York: Dover,
1953)
for the
evolutionary
scheme of
thought
from the
mythi-
cal to the theoretical.
13 See M. T. Larsen,
"The
Mesopotamian
Lukewarm Mind:
Reflections on Science, Divination,
and
Literacy,"
in Lan-
guage
Literature and
History: Philological
and Historical
Studies Presented to Erica Reiner,
AOS 67,
ed. F.
Rochberg
(New Haven,
Conn.: American Oriental
Society, 1987),
203-
25, citing previous
literature. See also the remarks of S. J.
Tambiah, Culture, Thought,
and Social Action: An
Anthropo-
logical Perspective (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1985), 30-35, from a
paper originally published
as "The
Mag-
ical Power of Words," Man, n.s., 3
(1968):
175-208.
by extension,
to the
physical
world. Of course,
our
only
way
of
knowing
what
Babylonian perceptions might
have been is
by
means of their
descriptions
of
things.
In
the
following
discussion, therefore,
I focus not so much
on the kinds of
phenomena
observed in the celestial
omen texts,
as on the
way
in which some of these are
described.
The bulk of the omen
protases
in the series Enuma
Anu Enlil describes celestial
phenomena directly, e.g.,
"(if)
the moon's
appearance
is red"
(ACh
Sin
IX:1)
or
"(if)
on the eleventh
day
of
Arabsamna
Venus
disap-
peared
in the east"
(BPO 1:2)
or "Saturn is
bright"
(ACh
Istar
25:41).
Whereas most of these omens
betray
no
explicit conception
of the involvement of the deities
in the
phenomena,
we shall now focus on the
expres-
sions found in omen
protases
that refer to actions or
appearances appropriate,
not to inanimate
objects,
such
as we believe the
planets
and stars to be,
but to an-
thropomorphic beings
with
agency
and
feeling.
The
anthropomorphizing
of deities,
while not the exclusive
conception
of divine form in ancient
Mesopotamia,
is
a feature of
Mesopotamian religion
attested from the
earliest
periods,
and as will be clear in the
following
analysis,
the
anthropomorphic
references in the celes-
tial omens are to
gods.
If the
tropes
found in the celestial omen
protases
are
indeed
metaphors,
and not statements about
anthropo-
morphic
deities,
we should understand that the
metaphor
places
two
things
in relation: one,
the divine, serving
as
a vehicle for the
description
of the other,
the
phenome-
non. For
example,
instead of
simply stating
there was
a lunar
eclipse, normally expressed by
the term attalu
"eclipse,"
we sometimes find that the moon,
in anthro-
pomorphic guise,
"mourns" or "feels distress." Such
anthropomorphic expressions
are attested
already
in the
Old
Babylonian
lunar omens,
in which, moreover,
the
moon is referred to
explicitly
as "the
god."'4
The
prota-
sis reads: DINGIR-IUm ina lu-mu-un ?A it-ba-al "The
god
set
(lit. "disappeared")
in distress
(meaning
"in the state
of
being eclipsed")."15
The lunar
eclipse
is understood
in terms of the distress of the moon
god,
which thus
serves as a
metaphor
for the state of
being eclipsed.
The
metaphor implies
a
conception
of the
physical
moon as
a
representation
of the
god
Sin,
otherwise
descriptive
language
about the
god
Sin would have no
necessary
connection to the moon. What becomes
apparent
in the
14
Note that in other contexts, viz., lexical texts,
Nuzi docu-
ments,
and Old
Assyrian,
the moon can be referred to
simply
as ilu "the
god."
See the references in CAD,
s.v. ilu
mng.2
a.
15
BM 22696:22.
478
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ROCHBERG:
Personifications
and
Metaphors
in
Babylonian
Celestial Omina
celestial omens is that
empirical investigation
of
physi-
cal
phenomena
was not
incompatible
with a
conception
of the
objects
of
investigations being
manifestations
of
gods.
The
systematic inquiry
into the
physical phe-
nomena of nature
represented by Babylonian
celestial
divination and
astronomy
was not
pursued
in
spite of,
but because
of,
the belief that the celestial bodies mani-
fested deities.
The
anthropomorphic trope
of emotional distress for
the state of
being eclipsed
is
expressed by
the term
?A.yUL,
Akkadian lumun
libbi,
"distress of
heart,"
which
is said in the lexical literature to be
synonymous
with the
nouns adirtu
"mourning"
and marustu "distress."16 In as-
trological contexts,
lumun libbi often occurs with the
verb
adaru,
which
primarily
means "to be worried or
distressed."
By extension, adaru can mean "to become
darkened." While the noun libbu "heart" is constructed
in
compounds
to describe states of mind and
feeling,
the
derivation of the
synonyms
of lumun
libbi, viz.,
adirtu
from addru "to be darkened," and marustu from
(m)arsu
"dirty,"
also
suggests
darkness of color. Hence lumun
libbi, too,
has a
purely descriptive,
visual
sense, i.e.,
"darkened,"
when said of the moon in
eclipse.
The Old
Babylonian
omen was
explicit
in its refer-
ence to the moon as "the
god" experiencing distress,
and
similarly
in the
bilingual
account of the demons
causing
the lunar
eclipse,
the demons make the moon
god
Sin
disturbed,
with the S-stem of addru. dEN.zU.na
[an].sa.ta su.mu.ug.ga.ge.es:
dSin ina
[qereb]
same
usadiru
"they (the
evil
demons)
caused the disturbance
of the
god
Sin
(= eclipse
of the
moon)
in the
sky" (CT
16
22:238f.).
These
passages
make dual reference to
the moon
god
and the lunar
disk,
but
particularly
in the
context of the
omens,
where the
heavenly body
is the
object
of
discourse,
the referent should be the moon ob-
servable in the
sky.
Because the name of the moon is
indistinguishable
from the name of the moon
god, only
context can
disentangle
the two
possible interpretations
this
language presents
to
us;
the first
being
the moon
god
in an
emotionally
disturbed
state,
and the second
being
a
physical description, i.e.,
the lunar disk dark-
ened in
eclipse.
Celestial omens
require
that one corre-
late a
physical phenomenon (real
or
imaginary)
in the
protasis
to an event in the
apodosis.
While a "literal"
reference to a
grieving god
would not correlate in a
16
In an Old
Babylonian bilingual enumerating
attributes
of
Istar, see ka-la
ne-in-gi-ga sa-bu-ul-gi (=
kala
nig.gig.ga
sa.bul.gig):
edirtum marustu
lumun(!) libbim
"fear,
hardship,
distress" Sumer 13 73:5 and
7; see
CAD, s.v. lumun libbi lexi-
cal section.
meaningful way
with an
apodosis
in Enima Anu
Enlil,
a
metaphorical
reference to a
grieving god,
the
purpose
of which was to
convey
a
physical description
of a lu-
nar
eclipse,
does constitute a
meaningful
correlation.
Figurative language
seems to be
applied
more often
with
respect
to the moon than other celestial bodies. In
other lunar omens we can see the moon set "with un-
washed feet,"
(Thompson Rep.
272A = SAA 8
103:7),
"wear a crown" at first
visibility (Thompson Rep.
7 =
SAA 8
10:5,
also SAA 8
113:5;
Thompson Rep.
43
=
SAA 8
57:1),17
or "ride a chariot"
(Thompson Rep.
49
=
SAA 8
298:1; Thompson Rep.
104 = SAA 8
364:6).
The
anthropomorphic image
of Sin in the standard
seventh-century
omens is also manifest in the reference
to the moon
occasionally
as "the
god" (ilu),
in the man-
ner of the Old
Babylonian example.'8
This
designa-
tion is
fully interchangeable
with that of the name dSin
or
d30, and so does not
necessarily point any
more
strongly
in the direction of the
god
than it does the lunar
disk. Since the relation between the
god
and the heav-
enly body
called
by
the same name is never
given
to us
directly,
a reasonable
approach
to this
question
seems to
lie in further examination of the nature of the
figura-
tive
language
of the
omens, i.e.,
to
establish,
if
pos-
sible, whether its use is indeed
metaphorical,
or
merely
substitutive.
If the
heavenly
bodies were
thought
of as
gods-not
manifestations of
gods,
but identical and
synonymous
with
gods-we ought
not
regard
the
anthropomorphic
de-
scriptions
of their movements and
appearances
as meta-
phorical.
To
say,
in a
mythological
context that a
god
mourns,
or rides a
chariot,19
is not
metaphorical.
We
see,
for
example,
in texts like Enima Elis or in some
Assyrian
and
Babylonian royal inscriptions,
that
gods
such as
Marduk and Assur ride
chariots,
and we do not consider
these to be
figurative expressions.
But what of the omen
"the moon rides a chariot"? This
protasis
is attested
only
in the
astrologers' reports, i.e.,
not in Enuma Anu Enlil
itself. It
is, however,
included in a
report
in which all
the
protases
refer to lunar haloes. An
astrological report
17
See CAD, s.v.
agi
A
mng.2
a.
18 See F
Rochberg, Aspects of Babylonian
Celestial Divi-
nation: The Lunar
Eclipse
Tablets
of
Enuma Anu
Enlil, AfO
Beiheft, 22
(Horn, Austria:
Verlag
Ferdinand
Berger, 1988),
Enuma Anu
Enlil, 20 et
passim.
19 See
GIS.GIGIR imu la mahri
galittu
irkab "he mounted
the
chariot,
the storm which has no
equal,"
En.el. IV
50; ina
GIS.GIGIR sa rakbu
"(Agsur)
who rides in a
chariot," OIP 2
140:7
(Senn.);
or Nbn. VAB 4 260 ii
33, where Bunene is the
rakib narkabti "charioteer."
479
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Journal
of
the American Oriental
Society
116.3
(1996)
consists
typically
of an
observation,
followed
by
the
citation from Enuma Anu Enlil of a number of
omens, all
referring
to the same observed
phenomenon,
and
by
means of which a
prediction,
favorable or
unfavorable,
may
be determined for what has been observed. The
omens cited in a
report
will therefore be
thematically
related and the inclusion of the moon
(god) riding
the
chariot in the context of haloes
points
to an
interpreta-
tion of this
trope
as some sort of halo.20
In the omen
protases,
the ominous
phenomena
de-
scribed in the first
example
as a
god
in
mourning
and in
the second as a
god riding
a
chariot, refer,
not to
imag-
ined
mythological events,
but to observable lunar
phe-
nomena,
and
thus,
I would
argue,
the use of the
language
is
metaphorical.
These
tropes
functioned to describe
particular
visible effects-the
former,
a lunar
eclipse
represented by
the mournful darkened face of the
moon;
the
latter,
apparently
some
type
of
halo,
which was
rep-
resented as a chariot.
Even in the cases where the celestial bodies' names
duplicate
the names of
gods, i.e., moon, sun,
or
Venus,
the celestial bodies cannot themselves be one and the
same as the
gods
their namesakes. Were this the
case,
the
personifications
in the omen
protases
would be non-
sensical and the
figurative
references
merely
substitu-
tive.
Saying
the moon rides a chariot would be of no
help
in
describing
the
appearance
of the moon if indeed
no distinction were made between the lunar manifesta-
tion of the moon
god
and the
deity
itself. The fact that
other names besides those of the
gods
are used to des-
ignate
the
planets, e.g.,
d30 instead of Sin for the
moon,
or dSAG.ME.GAR instead of Marduk for
Jupiter,
under-
scores the
conceptual
nuance that allows the
deity
and
the
physical object
in the
sky
that
represented
or mani-
fested the
deity
to be
spoken
of in different
ways.
20
Another
possibility
is to
interpret
the chariot here as the
constellation MUL.GIGIR / narkabtu.
According
to BPO
2, pp.
11-12, s.v. GIS.GIGIR and EN.ME.?AR.RA, the constellation of the
chariot
represents
a number of stars in the constellations Per-
seus and Taurus
((,
o + Persei + northern stars of
Taurus).
But as
the determinative MUL before GIGIR seems
invariably
to be writ-
ten in the
places
where the star name is
intended,
and does not
appear
in the omen "the moon rides a chariot,"
the identification
as a star name here is not at all secure. Elsewhere in Enama Anu
Enlil, the verb rakabu means
"(celestial bodies) conjoin," i.e.,
one star
may
"ride" or "mount" another: BPO 2 XII 12-13
[DIg
MUL.MES-SuJ AN.TA r]it-ku-su KI.MIN
U5.ME?,
"If its
upper
stars
are
conjoined,
variant: ride one on the other." Without indication
that the GIGIR here is a star name, however, we are left with an
image
of the moon surrounded
by
a
halo, expressed figuratively
by
reference to the moon
god riding
a chariot.
It should further be clear that in the case of the moon's
chariot,
the
metaphor refers,
not to the
moon,
but to the
halo, just as,
in the
protasis
"if the moon is surrounded
by
a river"
(DIg
30 fD NIGIN
Thompson Rep.
91:5 = SAA
8
93),
a halo is described as
having
the
appearance
of a
river.
Similarly, extispicy
abounds with
metaphoric
lan-
guage
whose referents stem from the
appearance
of the
exta, e.g.,
the
"finger,"
the
"palace,"
or the
"weapon,"
which denote certain features of the liver.21 In the ex-
ample
of the
eclipse, however,
the celestial body
itself
is
anthropomorphized by
the
language
used to describe
its
appearance.
The use of
metaphor
in the omens seems in
every
case
to be an
attempt
to
convey
the
appearance
of
something
observed, likening
the
appearance
of one
thing
to an-
other that has visual associations. Some common under-
standing
of the
image
of the moon
god riding
a chariot
must underlie the use of that
image
to
convey
some fea-
ture of the moon's
appearance.
At least this is the limited
extent to which we can determine the
meaning
of these
metaphors. Any
semantic extension
beyond
the
merely
descriptive depends upon recognition
of
culturally
de-
pendent
elements to which we have little access
(such
as:
why
a chariot and not a
wagon?).
In another
example,
a
commentary
to a
protasis
where the
planet
Venus
"sports
a beard"
(ziqnu zaqnat)
explains
that su6
(ziqnu)
is also readable as nabdtu "to
become radiant." In this
case,
the scribes
sought
to ex-
plain
the
anthropomorphic image
of a bearded
goddess
as an
optical description,
i.e.,
as the
planet radiating
brightness
as
though
with a "beard" of
light.22 By
the
21
The
metaphorical language
in
extispicy
has its own
spe-
cial
usage, however,
in that the features of the liver
designated
by
reference to
objects
in the
physical
world
(e.g., palace,
weapon, path, foot)
seem to be so
designated
in order to cor-
relate these features with certain
predictions,
such as the suc-
cess of the
king
on
campaign (based
on the correlation
"path"
=
troops
on
campaign).
See M. T. Larsen, "The
Mesopotamian
Lukewarm Mind," 213-15,
with literature
given
in the notes.
22 The "beard" of
light
in the Samas Hymn
is
problematic.
Lambert BWL 126:18 reads mu-sah-mit
ziq-nat
ur-ri
as
"who
sets
aglow
the beard of
light,"
the
interpretation duly
recorded
in CAD,
s.v.
ziqnu. However, E. Reiner, Your Thwarts in
Pieces Your
Mooring Rope
Cut:
Poetry from Babylonia
and
Assyria (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of
Michigan Press, 1985),
70, translates "Hastener of dawn's
[.. .]," reading
mugahmit as
the
S-participle
of
bamitu
A "to hasten, be
quick" (although
according
to CAD, the S-stem ought
to be
interpreted
as "to
send
quickly,
to be or deliver in
good
time," not
impossible
in
the context),
not as Lambert from hamaitu B "to burn,
to set
aglow."
480
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ROCHBERG: Personifications and
Metaphors
in
Babylonian
Celestial Omina
scribes' own
testimony,
the
figurative language
of the
omen text is
interpreted descriptively.
The effective-
ness of these
tropes
in
descriptive usage depends upon
a common
understanding
or a common
conceptualiza-
tion of what is
being
described. The
tropes
therefore
function for us as indicators of an
underlying concep-
tion of what is
being
observed. In each case where there
is a
personification,
we can see that an
appeal
to the im-
age
of a
deity
can act as a means to
physical description
of a
heavenly body.
An attribute of a
god,
such as the
beard of
Istar,
can be said of the celestial
body
which
represents
the
god, namely
Venus. The beard of Venus
is therefore a
figurative description
for a radiance of the
planet. Similarly,
the
image
of the chariot of the moon
god
Sin is
applied figuratively
to the
description
of a
lunar halo. The
descriptive
statement makes no sense in
the context of celestial omens if it is
interpreted
liter-
ally,
for then it no
longer
makes dual reference to the
god
and the
phenomenon,
but refers
directly
and
singly
to an attribute or an
activity
of a
god.
To be
meaningful
as an omen
protasis,
such a statement must refer in some
way
to a
physical phenomenon.
One final
argument
for the
metaphorical
rather than
substitutive,
or
literal, interpretation
of the
examples
presented
is based on the late occurrence of the meta-
phor
of the moon
god
in
mourning
for a lunar
eclipse.
This
time,
the context is the Seleucid
eclipse reports,
which are
strictly
astronomical and have no overt con-
nection with omens. In the
eclipse reports alongside
the term attalu
(AN.GE6) "eclipse,"
the
darkening
of the
moon is not
infrequently expressed
with the verb baku
"to mourn" or "to
weep."
The
expression
for the du-
ration of an
eclipse
occurs sometimes in the form baku
u namaru
(fR
U
ZALAG-ru),
translatable as
"darkening
(lit. 'mourning')
and
clearing (lit. 'becoming light')."23
A
parallel
to this use of baku is found in the solar section
of Enuma Anu
Enlil,
where Samas is said to
"mourn,"
i.e.,
be in
eclipse,
at the end of the month.24 The relation
of baku to lumun libbi and the words associated with
psychological
or emotional
disturbance, e.g.,
addru and
dalahu,25 used in the
eclipse omens,
is unmistakable.
23
See LBAT 1426 i 7'; LBAT 1427 obv.
4'; LBAT 1417 obv.
iv
5; cf. LBAT 1421: 6'. See also, in the
expression
GAR fR U
ZALAG
"onset, totality (lit. "mourning"),
and
clearing,"
Sachs-
Hunger, Diaries, vol. 1, no. 304 obv. 7'.
24
ACh
Supp.
2 Samas 40:6 and ibid.
1, written IR.
25
Again
in the
bilingual
about the demons
causing
a lunar
eclipse,
see
[... ib.t]a.lh
sig.sig.ga.bi
ba.ti:
[..
.
nal]-mir'-tum
id-da-li-ih-ma
sd-qu-um-mes
i-me "his
(Sin's) bright light
be-
came disturbed and he became mute" CT 16
20:96f., cited in
CAD, s.v. dalahu
mng.5.
Whether the mental
image
of the
mourning
of the moon
god
and/or sun
god
attested in the
seventh-century
omens
persisted
as far as the Seleucid
period
in
Babylonian
astronomy,
or whether
"mourning"
had become a dead
metaphor,
one cannot
say.
The
image
of the moon
god
in
mourning
need not have survived for the
metaphori-
cal
language,
in this case the term baku
(iR),
to have
continued as an idiomatic
expression
for the
darkening
of the moon. Idioms have
traditionally
been
regarded
as
dead or frozen
metaphors,
and
perhaps
this is how we
should understand this isolated term in the
vocabulary
of Late
Babylonian astronomy,
which no
longer
osten-
sibly
had
anything
to do with
gods.26
If the
expression
for lunar or solar
eclipse using
terms linked with an-
thropomorphic feeling
had not been
metaphorical
in
the omen
texts, i.e., did not refer to the
phenomenon
"eclipse"
as a celestial manifestation of either Sin or
Samas, but, rather, literally
to the state of mind of those
gods,
I fail to see how such an
expression
would have
had a
meaningful
survival in astronomical technical
terminology.
The aim of this
paper
to this
point
has been to discuss
-some
aspects
of the use of
language
in the omens that I
see as
bearing
on the
question
of how the
Babylonians
perceived
the celestial bodies vis-'a-vis the
gods. My
intention was to show
through
the
analysis
of a number
of
anthropomorphic tropes occurring
in celestial omens
that these
figurative expressions, containing
references
to the actions or
appearances
of
gods,
functioned as
metaphors
to aid in the
description
of
physical phe-
nomena of celestial bodies.
I should
acknowledge
that I have made use here
only
of the so-called
"comparison theory"
of
metaphor,
the
theory
traceable to Aristotelian rhetoric and
poetics,
which some
language philosophers
think
inadequate
as
a
general theory
of
metaphor,
insofar as the conditions
for the
comparison theory
are
necessary
but not suffi-
cient and therefore do not
encompass
the entire
range
of
metaphor
kinds.27 The Aristotelian definition of meta-
phor implies principles
of
analogy
at work in the es-
tablishment of a
metaphorical
connection between two
26
See
Raymond
W.
Gibbs, Jr.,
"Making
Sense of
Tropes,"
in
Metaphor
and
Thought,
ed. A.
Ortony,
2nd ed.
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1993),
272.
27 See John R.
Searle, "Metaphor,"
in
Metaphor
and
Thought,
83-111. Discussion of what Searle
regards
as
problematic
about this
theory,
as an
adequate "theory
of
metaphor,"
is on
pp.
90-102. He sees the
comparison theory
as "muddled about
the referential character of
expressions
used
metaphorically"
(p. 91).
481
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Journal
of
the American Oriental
Society
116.3
(1996)
things. Metaphorical statements,
at least
according
to the
comparison theory,
"involve a
comparison
or
similarity
between two or more
objects"28 (emphasis
in the ori-
ginal), thereby presupposing
the
conceptual
distinction
between a
perceived phenomenon
and
any
other
imag-
ined or real
phenomenon
in terms of which it
might
be
compared, described,
and understood.
Analysis
on this basis indicates that the
expressions
found in the omen
protases
discussed above are not
statements about
gods
which substitute for statements
about celestial
phenomena,
based on some
putative
in-
terchangeable
nature of the
gods
and the
phenomena.
The
metaphorical expressions
are better
interpreted
as
referring
to the
phenomena
in terms of the
gods.
Im-
plied
also is the
necessary conceptual
distinction be-
tween the
phenomena
and the
gods,
without which there
can be no
possibility
of
analogical relationships
under-
lying
the attested
metaphorical references,
such as the
crown of Sin and the first
visibility
of the moon, Sin
riding
a chariot and the lunar halo,
or the beard of Istar
and the radiance of Venus.
The omens of Enuma Anu Enlil attest to the fact that
the domain of natural
phenomena
was the
subject
of
systematic empirical
consideration,
and
usually
without
overt reference to
gods.
The
descriptions
of
phenomena
in the celestial divination
corpus
that make
metaphori-
cal references to deities
suggest,
however,
that the
heavenly
bodies also had identities within the divine
realm.
Metaphors referring
to
Sin, Samas,
or Istar to
describe the
appearance
of the moon, sun,
and Venus,
respectively,
evidence a view of the
heavenly
bodies
as
physical
manifestations of
gods,
but evidence out-
side of the divination
corpus
attests to the fact that the
conception
of these
Babylonians gods
was not limited
to those astral manifestations alone.
Epithets referring,
for
example,
to Sin as an astral manifestation,
dkakkabu
rabu
"great
star,"
or asib same elluti "one who dwells
in the
pure
heavens,"
constitute but a small fraction of
the
range
of
epithets
attested for this
deity.29
The
appearance
of a celestial
body
could be described
by appealing
to an
anthropomorphic image
of the
god
28
Ibid., p. 90, citing Language, Thought,
and Culture,
ed.
P. Henle
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of
Michigan Press, 1965).
Aristotle, Rhetoric,
tr. W. R. Roberts,
and Poetics,
tr. I.
By-
water,
in The Works
of Aristotle,
vol. 11: Rhetorica; De
rhetorica ad Alexandrum; Poetica,
ed. W. D. Ross
(Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1952).
29
See K.
Tallqvist,
Akkadische
Gotterepitheta (Studia
Orien-
talia,
7
(Helsinki:
Societas Orientalis Fennica, 1938; reprinted
Hildesheim:
Georg
Olms
Verlag, 1974),
442-48.
with which it was associated without
implying
isomor-
phic identity
between celestial
body
and the
god
mani-
fested
by
it. In the fact that the
personifications
and
metaphors
show a distinction between celestial bodies
with their
appearances
as discrete
phenomena
on the
one
hand,
and
gods
on the other,
we find a
persuasive
argument
for a claim that has often been made in stud-
ies of
Mesopotamian
divination, viz.,
that natural
phe-
nomena in omen
protases
were not viewed as
agents
but
as indicators of the
change predicted by
the omen
apo-
doses.30 This claim
may
be
explained
in terms of the
attribution of
agency only
to the
gods,
who were there-
fore not viewed as
constituting
the
signs,
but as
produc-
ing
the
signs.
On the basis of the evidence of the use of
metaphors
in celestial omina to describe
physical phenomena,
the
possibility
was raised above of our
gaining
some in-
sight
into the nature of
Babylonian thought
about nature
and the
gods and, by
extension,
into the
conception
of
the world within which celestial divination
provided
the
principal
context for intellectual
inquiry
about nature,
i.e.,
what we term science. The consideration of what
the use of
metaphor may
mean for science and the his-
tory
of scientific
thought
is not new. Thus
Ortony
states
in his introduction to
Metaphor
and
Thought:
"A cen-
tral
presupposition
of our culture is that the
description
and
explanation
of
physical reality
is a
respectable
and
worthwhile
enterprise-an enterprise
that we call 'sci-
ence.' Science is
supposed
to be characterized
by pre-
cision and the absence of
ambiguity,
and the
language
of science is assumed to be
correspondingly precise
and
unambiguous-in
short, literal."3'
By
such a criterion of
language
use, Babylonian
celestial divination with its
metaphorical descriptions
of
phenomena
in terms of
gods
and the
conception
of nature
implied by
such use of
language
will not
qualify
as science.
But such a claim about science,
in
particular
that it
should have a
special language,
derives from the ex-
treme
position regarding language
and science held
by
logical positivists,
which even while it
rapidly passed
out of fashion continued to influence modern
philoso-
phy
of science.
Today,
however,
the
extremely
limited
30
This claim is
usually
made on the basis that if
apotropaic
rituals
(namburbi)
can undo the misfortune
predicted by omens,
the omens should not be
thought
of as bound
by causality
to
their
predicted
events,
but
merely
as indicators of the
predicted
events.
Implied
here too is that the
appeal
to
change
"fate" is
made
directly
to the
gods.
31
A.
Ortony, "Metaphor, Language,
and
Thought,"
in Meta-
phor
and
Thought,
1.
482
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ROCHBERG:
Personifications
and
Metaphors
in
Babylonian
Celestial Omina
notion that non-literal uses of
language
were
inappro-
priate
to science because
they
were not
clear, objective,
or
empirical,
and that, consequently, metaphor
had no
place
in
science,
is no
longer
maintained
by philoso-
phers
of
science;
but the discussion of the nature and
function of
metaphor
in the creation of scientific mod-
els and theories continues.32 This discussion bears on
the
history
of science in terms of the fact that if meta-
phor
functions in certain
ways
within
science,
then the
nature of its use can become a criterion in differentiat-
ing
science from other forms of intellectual
activity
in
a
variety
of historical contexts.
Because most discussion of the
history
of science
begins
with the
Greeks, the relation between
language
and
thought
as a means of
defining
where science di-
verges
from
magic
took
shape
with reference to Greek
sources.33 And
just
as the extreme
position
on the func-
tion of
metaphor
in
(modern)
scientific discourse was
modified over the course of the
history
of its discus-
sion within the
philosophy
of
science,
G. E. R.
Lloyd
commented on the
danger
of
exaggerated
distinctions
as absolute criteria
applied
in the
analysis
of historical
texts as
well,
especially
on the basis of modern
catego-
ries such as
magic, myth,
and
science,
as well as the
distinctions in the mentalities that
supposedly
corre-
spond
to them. He
points
out that
the Greek
concepts [science, magic, myth,
and the
oppo-
sition between the literal and the
metaphorical]
in
ques-
tion were
often, even
generally,
made to
play
a distinct
and
explicit polemical
role. Once that is taken into ac-
count we can
appreciate
that the contrasts drawn for the
purposes
of
polemic
were often over-drawn. This is true
32
See
Mary Hesse, Models and
Analogies
in Science
(Notre
Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame
Press, 1966);
D.
Gentner,
"Are Scientific
Analogies Metaphors?"
in
Metaphor:
Problems
and
Perspectives,
ed. D. Miall
(Brighton, England:
Harvester
Press, 1982), 106-32;
J. Martin and R.
Harre,
"Metaphor
in Sci-
ence," ibid., 89-105;
N.
Nersessian,
Faraday
to Einstein: Con-
structing Meaning
in
Scientific
Theories
(Dordrecht, Holland:
Kluwer, 1984);
and D. Gentner and M.
Jeziorski, "Historical
Shifts in the Use of
Analogy
in
Science," in The
Psychology of
Science and
Metascience,
ed. B.
Gholson,
A.
Houts,
R. A.
Niemeyer,
and W. R. Shadish
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1989).
33 G. E. R.
Lloyd, Magic,
Reason and Experience: Studies in
the
Origins
and
Development of
Greek Science
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1979); idem,
Demystifying
Mentalities
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1990), esp.
chs. 1, "Men-
talities,
Metaphors
and the Foundations of Science," and 2,
"Magic
and
Science, Ancient and Modern."
of the
opposition
between the literal and
metaphorical,
for instance, and
again
of the contrast between
myth
and
magic
on the one hand, and science and
philosophy
on
the other.
Certainly what, in
practice, emerging
Greek
science and
philosophy
continued to have in common
with the traditional forms of
knowledge
that
they
were
aiming
to
replace
is often
quite
as
striking
as the
points
where
they diverged
from
previous
modes of
thought,
even
though
in one
respect,
the
degree
of
explicitness
and self-consciousness of the
inquiries concerned, those
differences were considerable.34
The criterion of
metaphorical language
has been em-
ployed
in Brian Vickers'
study
of
analogy
in Renaissance
magic,
in which he claimed that in the "scientific," as
opposed
to the
"magical" tradition, "a clear distinction
is made between words and
things
and between literal
and
metaphorical language."35
In Vickers'
terms, "the
occult sciences' double
process
of reification and substi-
tution,
formulating
ideas as
essences, then
making
them
identical and
exchangeable, inevitably
broke down the
distinction between
metaphorical
and literal."36 Vickers
juxtaposes
a "modern"
ability
to
distinguish
"mental
activities" and "material
things"37
and a
consequent
ability
to relate the two, on the one
hand, with "tradi-
tional
thought,"
on the
other,
in which
"everything
in the
universe is
underpinned by spiritual forces, 'words and
things'
are both
part
of a
single reality,
neither material
nor immaterial,'"38 and within which no
analogies
but
only
concrete
(literal)
identities are
possible.
On this
basis, an
extrapolation
from forms of intellectual culture
to modes of
thought
was made such that
practitioners
of
magic
were seen as not
recognizing
the discrete en-
tities basic to relational
metaphorical thought,
but as
merging
the
ingredients
of
metaphors
into literal iden-
tities. He illustrates this claim with reference to Para-
celsus,
explaining:
"It is
generally recognized
that the
whole of Paracelsus'
system
is based on the distinction
between macrocosm and microcosm. Yet where
many
thinkers treated the
relationship analogically,
Paracelsus
34
G. E. R.
Lloyd, Demystifying Mentalities, 7-8.
35
Brian
Vickers, "Analogy
versus
Identity:
The
Rejection
of
Occult
Symbolism, 1580-1680,"
in Occult and
Scientific
Men-
talities in the
Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1984;
repr. 1986), 95.
36
Ibid., 127.
37 Ibid., 96.
38 Ibid., in which he is
quoting
from R.
Horton, "African
Traditional
Thought
and Modern
Science," Africa
37
(1967),
repr.
in B. R.
Wilson,
Rationality (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell,
1970), 157.
483
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal
of
the American Oriental
Society
116.3
(1996)
collapsed
the two
poles
into one. Man does not
merely
resemble the
macrocosm,
he is the macrocosm. The
move from
analogy
to
identity
is total."39
The dichotomous and often
evolutionary
scheme of
magical
versus scientific modes of
thought underlying
Vickers'
argument parallels
the
speculation
of Frankfort
in
Before Philosophy,
both of which turn on the
ques-
tion of whether or not there is evidence for relational
thought
in
myths
and
magic.
The
dichotomy
of "men-
talities,"
with its
long
intellectual
patrimony,
from J. G.
Frazer,
L.
Levy-Bruhl,
and B. Malinowski to E. Cas-
sirer,40
has been criticized from an
anthropological per-
spective precisely
on the
grounds
that it is a mistake to
view traditional
(magical) thought
as
incapable
of mak-
ing analogies
or of
expressing
relations
by
the use of
metaphors.
This criticism has been best articulated
by
Tambiah:
Insofar as Levi-Strauss has demonstrated the
logical
and relational character of
mythic thought,
Cassirer's
basic
dichotomy
of modes of
thought disappears.
And
if it can be demonstrated that
primitive magic
is based
on true relational
metaphorical thinking,
we shall ex-
plode
the classical
theory
which
postulates
that
magic
is
based on the belief in a real
identity
between word and
thing.
The basic
fallacy
of
linguists
and
philosophers
who search for the
origins
of the
magical
attitude to
words is their
prior assumption
and
acceptance
that the
primitive
has in fact such an attitude. This axiom
they
have derived
principally
from Frazer,
and indeed from
Malinowski,
who had affirmed the truth of this classical
assertion on the basis of his fieldwork. It would
perhaps
have been safer for the
linguists
to have held fast to
their
knowledge
of how
language
works and to have
questioned
whether
anthropologists
had
correctly
re-
ported primitive thought.41
I have
attempted
in this paper
to
argue
for the use of
metaphorical language,
and the
implications
of that use
39
Ibid., 126.
40
J. G. Frazer,
The Golden
Bough:
A
Study
in
Magic
and
Religion, part I, vol. 1: The
Magic
Art and the Evolution
of
Kings,
3rd ed.
(London: MacMillan, 1911);
L.
L6vy-Bruhl,
La
Mentalite
primitive (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press, 1922), tr.
Lilian Clare as Primitive
Mentality (Oxford:
The Clarendon
Press, 1923);
B. Malinowski, Magic,
Science and
Religion
and
Other
Essays (New
York:
Doubleday
Anchor Books, 1954);
E. Cassirer, Language
and
Myth (New
York: Dover, 1953).
41
S. J. Tambiah, Culture, Thought,
and Social Action: An
Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1985),
ch. 1,
"The
Magical
Power of Words," 34.
for abstract
analogical thinking,
in
Babylonian
celestial
omina. The
anthropomorphic
character of the
Baby-
lonian
metaphors
bears relation to elements of Greco-
Roman and later
astrology.
In
my view, however,
the
way
in which the
metaphors
are constituted in the
Baby-
lonian omina is not consistent with Vickers'
description
of
metaphors
in the Renaissance
material,
in
which,
ac-
cording
to his
reading,
their true
metaphorical
status is
diminished
by
literal identifications between the refer-
ents within the
metaphors.42
Were the
Babylonian
meta-
phors
consistent with this
interpretation,
the distinction
between the elements in the
metaphors referring,
for
example,
to lunar
phenomena
would be lost. Sin,
the
moon
god,
as the divine force associated with the
moon,
would be
regarded
as identical and
indistinguishable
from Sin the
moon,
that
is,
the visible lunar disk in the
sky. Interpreted
this
way,
the omen
protasis
in which
the first
visibility
of the moon is referred to as the moon
god
Sin
wearing
a crown
(Sin aga apir)
cannot be
speak-
ing (or thinking) metaphorically,
but
only literally,
and
consequently,
the
protasis
would no
longer
refer to the
phenomenon
of first
visibility
but
only
to the
anthropo-
morphic image
of the moon
god
with his crown. This is
precisely
the
position regarding metaphor
and relational
thought
held
by
Frankfort in
Before Philosophy,
which
is contravened
by
the
requirements
of celestial omina
to describe in the
protases
those
physical phenomena
considered ominous.
The construction of
metaphors relating
two discrete
entities
by
virtue of some connection between them at-
tests both to the
capacity
for relational,
abstract
thought,
and to the
particular
context within which such connec-
tions have
meaning.
The contexts in which the
Babylo-
42
In a more recent treatment, however, Vickers loosened
his
position
on
metaphor
in
magic,
at least in so far as he takes
as
given
for the occult sciences
(astrology, alchemy,
numerol-
ogy,
iatromathematics,
and natural
magic)
the "use of analo-
gies, correspondences,
and relations
among apparently
discrete
elements in man and the universe." Brian Vickers,
"On the
Function of
Analogy
in the Occult,"
in Hermeticism
qnd
the
Renaissance: Intellectual
History
and the Occult in
Early
Modern
Europe,
ed.
Ingrid
Merkel and Allen G. Debus
(Wash-
ington,
D.C.: The
Folger Shakespeare Library;
London: Asso-
ciated
University
Presses, 1988),
265-92 (the quotation
is
from
p. 265).
Here he focuses on the nature and function of
these
metaphors,
but his
analysis
reflects the
positivistic
ten-
dency, emerging
in
contemporary (the period
between 1580
and 1680)
critics of the
practitioners
of the occult,
to view the
language
of
magic
as
misguided
and confused and the form
of
thought
reflected in the
magical
tradition as irrational and
inferior to that of
empirical
science.
484
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ROCHBERG: Personifications and
Metaphors
in
Babylonian
Celestial Omina
nian
metaphors
were
meaningful
are both
small,
as for
example
that which would
explain
the
particular
accou-
trements of
gods,
such as the crown and the
chariot,
and
large,
as that which
represents
the
conception
of the uni-
verse in which associations between
anthropomorphic
images
of deities and certain celestial bodies is
possible.
The
present
state of our research into
Mesopotamian
divination, magic,
and
cosmology
affords us
only par-
tial and
fragmentary understanding
of either the smaller
or the
larger systems
of ideas reflected in the omen
texts. In basic
terms, however,
it seems sure that the
conception
of the world
forming
the context for the
metaphors
attested in Enima Anu Enlil is one of
gods
and their associated domains in nature
(Sin
with the
moon and lunar
phenomena,
Istar with
Venus,
and so
on). Any attempt
to correlate this
"magical" cosmology
to a
particular
mode of
thought
or
"mentality"
must take
into account the function of the attested
metaphors,
which was
principally
to describe observed realities in
the
physical
world.
485
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