DIVINATION BY FISH, ARROWS, LIVERS 389 



a large and organised body of the priesthood under the direct 

 control and patronage of the King. 



All strange occurrences in heaven or earth were referred to 

 the seers. Almost every event of common hfe was believed by 

 the pious Babylonian to require prophetic decision whether 

 it boded well or ill. 



Among the reforms undertaken by Urukagina was that of 

 the college of the diviners, for he tells us that " he, who hitherto 

 received one shekel for his work, took money no more." 



In the letters of Hammurabi these diviners were recognised 

 as a regular Guild. Knowledge of the tablets of recorded 

 answers, which, suiting the individual circumstances of each 

 interrogator, had for generations been stored in the library, 

 enabled them to render an interpretation of practically all 

 events. Their forecasts had resort not only to astrology, but 

 to other means, such as the observations of the movements of 

 fish, of the flight of birds, and of the entrails and livers of sheep 

 and other sacrificial animals, all of which were the subject of 

 minute inspection. 



The Babylonians in seeking to determine the future watched 

 carefully the movements, etc., of fish. Although the greater 

 part of the known divination tablets regarding fish omens are 

 in a sad state of preservation, the following will serve as an 

 example : "If fish in a river keep in a school and steadily 

 face up stream, in that place will be peaceful habitation," a 

 deliverance hardly fraught with comfort at times of flood or 

 drought ! 



Then again the passage (in Ezekiel xxi. 21-22), " The King 

 of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the 

 two ways, to use divination : he shook the arrows to and fro, 

 he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver," etc., is of 

 great interest, as evidence that the Babylonians employed both 

 Belomancy or divination by arrows, and Hepatoscopy or 

 inspection of the liver. 



Belomancy was practised by other nations, ^ notably in 



* Apollo to the Greeks was at once archer-god and god of divination. 

 The word d7€(A.f, " he gave as his oracular response," means literally " he 

 picked up " (the arrows). Indeed the curious fact that \eyai in Greek denotes 

 " I say " and in Latin " I read " is best explained by O. Schrader, who points 



