Pharaoh Akhenaten, the Aten, and the History of Ideas (II)

[Mail sent to a specialist in ancient astronomy on February 15, 2019. It is a response to a mail of the 28th January, 2019.]

[...]

I was a bit coy about Akhenaten - there are still things turning up. And some things need more thought. However, the 400 sacrificial tables at Akhenaten’s new city foundation at Akhetaten (the ‘horizon of the Aten’) isn’t new information, but often it is a detail which isn’t mentioned in discussions.

Unlike most Egyptian temple complexes, the temple is open to the sky. As you are probably aware, Akhenaten, at least towards the end, was in conflict with various priesthoods, possibly because his new religious dispensation made himself and his family the sole conduit to the bounty of the gods. Hence the hacking out of references to Amun by his followers, and the hacking out of representations of Akhenaten and the Aten by those whose hegemony was being threatened.

I think Akhenaten or his officials did a calculation about the number of sacrifices performed daily throughout Egypt across all the major priesthoods, and set out to perform the same number of daily sacrifices at Akhetaten. It could not be said therefore, that insufficient sacrifices were being made. This of course is a hypothesis, and is not so far supported by any texts. But to have so many sacrificial tables in one temple means that they served a real rather than a purely symbolic function.

I agree with everything you said about Hamlet’s Mill. And you are correct that academics have ways of disguising what they don’t know, or aren’t sure about, and there is plenty of that in the book. Having an academic career can often be like walking a tightrope over a bed of burning coals, if you are trying to open up uncharted territory. Most academics deliberately avoid risking their reputations with speculative work, and do more boring stuff instead. We should be grateful to Santillana and von Dechend for staying the course and producing a pioneering work, even if the result is difficult and a sometimes frustrating read.

Sometimes of course they know something, but can’t say it, because the insight is something beyond what can be supported by academic evidence, or is beyond what colleagues can accept as credible explanation. This happens more often than you might think. My most important Assyriological contact wrote a whole paper (72 pages) on a body of ideas shared by the scholars in the royal court in the 1st and 2nd millennia BCE, without overt mention of the most important implication of his discussion [...]. I wrote and told him what that implication was. He agreed in his reply, but is still coy about discussing the matter with his peers. It is not always possible for an academic scholar to say what he thinks in public. Sometimes reading academic papers is a bit like reading code.

The H A Rey book is probably as important as you say, but I have not yet read it. I will let you know when I have. It can be hard to know the forms of the constellations in the distant (and not so distant) past. Re-interpreting the shapes according to the details found in the related myths is probably the only way.

When I mentioned the image of an Egyptian god discussed at a lecture in Cambridge (after which I was nearly run down by Stephen Hawking – I had no idea his wheelchair could make around 15 miles per hour), I wasn’t referring to the question of whether an image of a god is a representation of it, or the god itself. What was strange about the image was that the statue was a representation of a representation of the divine, since it was mounted on a sled. I have no idea what significance that image was meant to have, but its existence is a mark of the sophistication of the Egyptian mind,
which saw the physical world in terms of representations (and sometimes representations of representations).

I take your point about the images of the divine in the constellations being representations of things which have a different (and transcendental) kind of existence – without physical form as we understand it. You refer to this as ‘the invisible realm’, which is fine. I generally refer to this realm as ‘the plenum’. I think we both mean the same thing, but we can discuss that as we go.

Representation is a serious business as you point out, and even now, in various places. I used to have difficulty with the humanist tradition in western scholarship, which encouraged the idea that if you wanted to have some of the qualities of Cicero (for example), then you should read the entirety of his extant work, and regularly. And learn to write text in his style. I never liked this at all, since my attitude was that you should read, interpret and understand an author. But I now understand this approach as stemming from the idea that to represent something is to be that something – to some degree at least.

I’ve taken on board your pointers to blog posts, and how to search for some of them. I’m now reading your stuff on a regular basis. And thanks for the chart, and clarification of the role of Ophiuchus. I’m sure you are right. I was struck by the coincidence of the image turning up when it did, and being such a great example.

The article ‘The Horizon of the Aten’ is one I’m still brooding over, but my experience is that it is likely to be written over a couple of days when I least expect it. But you can ask questions in the meantime. It is a partner to the article ‘Polytheism, Monotheism, and the Cult of the Aten’. At: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/04/polytheism-monotheism-and-cult-of-aten.html


Best regards,

Thomas

At the very Edge: Marking Transition and Transformation in Antiquity

One of the principal themes of my work is the importance accorded to the idea and the function of limit in ancient thought. Discussion of the idea of limit (and the unlimited) can be found in early Greek philosophy, and limit is a key idea in both Mesopotamian and Roman civilization. However currently it is not a major focus of interest for scholars, and so its importance is scarcely understood. 

Here are pointers to seven texts which discuss the significance of the idea of limit in antiquity. 

***

'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria'. http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-threshold-in-ancient-assyria.html?spref=tw The chapter is based on pioneering research by the scholar Pauline Albenda.

[From The Origins of Transcendentalism in Ancient Religion (forthcoming)]

***

 'The Divine and the Limit' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-divine-and-limit.html?spref=tw …  explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things. The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

[From Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

***

Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/being-kabbalah-and-assyrian-sacred-tree.html  The Assyrian Sacred Tree appears to be associated with the ideas of divine being and also with the idea of limit. The explanation for such an association is that the Mesopotamians conceived divinity to be at the limit of that which is. The parallels between the Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree were uncovered by the Assyriologist Simo Parpola in the 1990s. This was achieved using the god numbers which the Mesopotamians used to reference their gods. 

[an extract from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Ocean and the Limit of Existence' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2017/03/ocean-and-limit-of-existence.html?spref=tw There are similar ideas associated with Ocean in Europe and in the Ancient Near East. These parallels, and the concepts which underpin them, are explored in this chapter. 

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Remarks on the Telos (and other lost ideas)' https://t.co/FBciqYgSWk  We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

[From the chapter: 'Aristotle’s Four Causes' in: Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

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'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-esoteric-conception-of-divinity-in.html  In my twenties, I was struck by the strong interest the ancients had in the idea of limit – in art, architecture, philosophy, and ritual. This interest did not much seem to engage modern scholarly attention, with a couple of notable exceptions. Initially I had no idea at all what the significance of the idea of limit might be, and no idea where pursuing it would take me. Or that it would lead to a book it would take me four years to write, and which would reframe my understanding of human intellectual history in the process.

[Some extracts from the essay: 'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World', in Man and the Divine (2018)] 

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'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria.' https://t.co/6CMNzMiGw2 We have good information about the installation and refurbishment of the gods in Assyrian temples from Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria before his son Ashurbanipal. Such operations were agreed (via diviners present in the workshop of the gods) with the relevant divinities beforehand (principally Shamash, the sun god), and the omens were cross-checked for accuracy. The full strangeness of what we now know renders a lot of previous anthropological interpretation horribly out of date.

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Installing the Gods in Heaven: the Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-babylonian-mis-pi-ritual.html?spref=tw … This extract contains analysis and commentary on one of the surviving descriptions of the ritual found in Ashurbanipal's library during excavations. Boundaries and limits serve an important function at key moments of the three day ritual. 

[An extract from the chapter 'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual', from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

TY, August 30, 2018

The Origins of Transcendentalism in Ancient Religion (forthcoming, 2020)

This is a short book about a very large subject – the transcendentalism which is present in ancient religions, located to the west of India. 

Normally it is assumed that there is very little in the way of transcendentalist thought associated with these ancient religions, and that the evidence we are looking at is mainly built out of concrete imagery, fanciful myth, poetry, irrational associations, all of which are in the service of religion and the state. In other words, religion serves a series of social and ideological functions, and it is to those functions that we should look for the explanation of the cultural remains, rather than the minds of the ancients themselves.

Is this actually so? Or are we the victims of an enlightenment agenda which sought to remake the history of religion and religious thought in terms of a mockery of reason?

That is one of the arguments of this book – that we have been sold short by enlightenment presumptions and certainties, and that what we think we know and understand about ancient religion is so far from its real basis that, for the most part, it is nearly impossible for modern scholars to make intelligible sense of it.

This book is short, not because the questions it addresses are simple, and have easy answers. It is short because I have written four other books before this one, and, to a significant extent, it references argument and discussion which can be found in those books. It was not possible to write a short and credible introduction to an understanding of the transcendentalism which can be found in ancient religions, without first covering an enormous amount of ground.

Scholars must decide for themselves if the argument of this book is soundly based.  The problem for scholars  is that they live and work within what Michel Foucault called an ‘episteme’. This is a model of reality dependent on many presumptions. Not only does the episteme shape discussion, it controls what can actually be discussed, or even be seen by those within it. Most scholars would have difficulty in recognising the epistemic limitations of their disciplines if the suggestion was put to them that such limitations exist. But if you can accept the broad thrust of the case this book is making, you are already halfway out of the scholarly episteme.

Preface
On Ancient Religion
Parallels and Discontinuity between Contemporary and Ancient Religions
The definition of Transcendentalism in Religion

The Origin of the Transcendentalist Perspective 

The Nature of Reality 

Contradiction and Paradox 

Transcendence and Immanence 

Detecting the Presence of Transcendentalist Thought 

The Future of our Understanding of the Past 

Notes

Thomas Yaeger, March 25, 2018.

The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria

A key chapter from The Sacred History of Being, published in November 2015. This chapter will be quite perplexing for readers who imagine that the important aspects of ancient religious practice, its preoccupations and purposes, are essentially the same as those which we are accustomed to in the later Abrahamic religions. Modern religion in fact bears very little relation to ancient religion, except in terms of some generalised concepts and vestigial remains. 

As far as the ancient Mesopotamian religious elite was concerned, it was within their power to both create divine images, and to set them up in Heaven. Strange? It is to us. But we don't make this conception unimportant by refusing to address what the evidence tells us. This chapter gives an indication of the extensiveness and detail in the evidence which has emerged from the ground over the past 150 years or so. 

The evidence for this strikingly different understanding of the nature of reality is largely ignored (currently), except by specialists in a relatively narrow field. It is hard to understand, and without an understanding of ancient philosophical ideas about the world, virtually impenetrable to modern scholarship. I've given some reasons in the chapter why this is so. 

This is just one of the puzzling areas of Mesopotamian civilization. There is elsewhere on this site a collection of divination texts, with the title 'Who will Appear Before the City?'. Equally strange, they concern conversation with Shamash the Sun god, about what will happen in the future. 

Thomas Yaeger, February 20, 2018. 

***

"Enki's beloved Eridug, E-engura whose inside is full of abundance! Abzu, life of the Land, beloved of Enki! Temple built on the edge, befitting the artful divine powers!" 

 'Enki's journey to Nibru.'  [i]

I have argued that the practice of philosophy in Greece is rooted in the context of religious ritual, and that philosophy as practised and discussed by Plato had as a principal purpose the exposing of a paradoxical quality in reality, in that reality has a two-fold nature (containing the limited, existing in time; and the unlimited, which participates in eternity), and that the world of experience is in effect an illusion within the ur-reality. As a consequence, the world as it presents itself is a series of images of Being, which point to its ineffable and invisible nature. Plato also spoke of the heavens as a moving image of eternity, patterned after the nature of Being, the 'most fair' image of divinity after which to pattern the world and everything contained within it. He also intimated that what applied to the reality of the Forms also applied to the 'revered and holy' images of the gods. This is possible because of the two-fold nature of reality. Things can be made holy, and holiness can be withdrawn.

So Plato was not talking entirely abstractly about Ideas and the Forms. They can have both concrete form on earth as well as a presence in Heaven. This suggests that in Ancient Greece, there was ritual practice associated with the making of divine statues, built on the precepts of the transcendent theology of the divine cults. Unfortunately, none of the rituals which might have existed have survived from the Greek cultural context.

The presence of a theory of Being in ancient Assyria has been demonstrated to be likely, on the basis of the clear similarity between the structures of the Jewish Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree. The following chapters seek in addition to establish relationships between what Plato had to say about the creation of the world and its patterning, and ritual practice concerning the making of gods in Assyria. We have good detail for the latter. If the Assyrians understood the concept of Being as the root of reality itself, then the relationship of the forms of things to a wholly abstract concept of Being in Assyria should show parallels with the discussion in Plato.

The reconstruction of the Mis Pî ritual and its associated incantations mainly comes from the Neo-Assyrian or Neo/Late Babylonian periods. So that is from the 8th to 5th century B.C.E, although there are some fragments from Uruk dating to the 2nd century.  [ii]  These tablets come from Nineveh, Assur, Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, Kalhu (Nimrud), and a small number of other, more widely spread locations. The majority come from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, and so date from the 7th century B.C.E. Their colophons confirm that they were the property of the library. Some of the texts from Nineveh are copies of texts originating elsewhere, but the tablets do not often give the sources. Full details of the existing texts are given in The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27 - 29.

The following text concerning the preparation for the renewal of divine images, dates from the latter days of the reign of Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.E.), and describes the process of the renewal of the cult images from the initial consultation of the oracles, to the final installation of the images.  [iii]

When in heaven and on earth signs favourable for the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred,  [iv]  then I, Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of the Land of Assur,  the apple of Assur’s eye, the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding,  which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me,  with the wisdom which Assur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,  with lifting of hands, prayers, and supplication, (I) prayed to the divinities Assur, king of the Gods, and to the great Lord Marduk.

The following passage concerning the right to make gods we have already encountered. I repeat it here, within its original context:

 “Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass? This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult! Is it the right of deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives? The making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right, it is in your hands; so I beseech you, create (the gods), and in your exalted holy of holies may what you yourselves have in your heart be brought about in accordance with your unalterable word”. 

Again, as is common in the translation of texts which seem to make little sense without minor emendation, this translation inserts words apparently required in English to render the meaning clear. Thus the line which says “…the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred” actually ought to be rendered “….the renewal of the gods occurred,” in order not merely to be strictly faithful to the original text, but in fact to enable us to understand what the text is actually saying. Likewise with the sentence “the making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right,” the rendering ought to be simply: ”the making of the gods and goddesses is your right.” We are dealing with a pattern of belief which employs images towards the worship of its divinities, and understands these images as actualisable representations of that which cannot be represented as an image, since that image transcends all of the categories of our understanding. The gods can have existence in this physical world precisely because of this transcendent nature.

Such existence defies common-sense, but it does not defy the logic of idolatry. Just as for some modern worshippers there is no necessary contradiction between a divinity who is transcendent in nature and yet immanent, in antiquity there was no necessary contradiction between a transcendent god and his incarnation in a cult image. The idea – by its elusive nature - was always subject to criticism, and latterly ridicule, both within and beyond the cultural grouping which supported such a notion, but it made sense within the implex of ideas around the role of the cult image.

The passage referring to Esarhaddon as: ‘the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding, which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me, with the wisdom which Aššur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,’ yokes together the idea of knowledge with kingship, and also with divinity, since the gods Aššur and Marduk made him aware of the need for the renewal of the great gods. He has the ‘great intelligence and vast understanding’ of ‘the great Nudimmud’, who  is in fact the god Ea, often identified with Enki the trickster god, but also the god of craftsmen. ‘Nu.dim.mud’ is one of Ea’s epithets, meaning ‘fashioner of images’.

We have already discussed the interesting equation between knowledge and ‘vast understanding’ and its contrast with the non-royal, non-divine ignorance which is the common lot of mankind within this model - the “deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives…”, and also Esarhaddon’s allusion to one of the theological questions of the day, by asking ‘Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass?” Clearly however this is Esarhaddon’s task, and no-one else’s. It is a royal task, communicated to Esarhaddon by divine command, and not easy to perform: “This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult!”

The text continues with details of the means by which the gods are to be renewed.  Esarhaddon says:

Endow the skilled craftsmen whom you ordered to complete this task with as high an understanding as Ea, their creator.  Teach them skills by your exalted word; make all their handiwork succeed through the craft of Ninshiku.

Ninshiku is yet another name for Ea, a late form from post-Kassite times, though based on the Sumerian Nin-ši-ku.  [v]  Esarhaddon is asking that the workmen be endowed with all the qualities of understanding and skill associated with Ea, the god of the craftsmen (i.e., the god also known as Nudimmud). This is tantamount to the request that the craftsmen have at least a temporary divinity for the duration of the renewal of the gods. The craftsmen have the excellence of the craftsman god only for a limited period, and for a precise purpose. They are therefore in a sense demiourgoi, like Plato’s craftsman in the Timaeus, able to fashion an image after the nature of the divine, while not being wholly or permanently divine themselves. Except that in this case, the gods themselves (aspects of the transcendent divinity) are being created.

Esarhaddon’s text continues with details of the means of oracular transmission of the gods wishes to the king:

I arranged diviners in groups in order to obtain a reliable oracular pronouncement about entering the bīt mummi. I performed divination (in order to determine whether the renewal should be done) in Aššur, Babylon (or) Nineveh. To determine the experts who should do the work and their initiation, I decided that each group should decide for itself separately; and still all the extispicies were in perfect agreement; they gave me a reliable, positive answer.

In other words, the oracular inquiries made by several groups of diviners produced answers which arrived together at the same time and agreed about the same issue.

Esarhaddon tells us that the oracular answers ordered him to enter the Bit Mummi in Aššur,

The capital, city, the dwelling of Aššur, Father of the gods; they indicated to me the names of the artisans (fit) for completing the work. By authority of a reassuring and favourable oracle, the diviners ordered me to do this work as follows:  “do it quickly, pay attention, and be careful; do not let up, do not direct your attention elsewhere”.  I trusted their positive and unchangeable oracle; I placed full reliance (on it).

It would seem from this text that there were at least two sets of oracular responses involved – those which ordered Esarhaddon to enter the Bit Mummi in connection with the renewal of the gods, and a second grouping of responses which were given within the precincts of the Bit Mummi, which named the artisans who were to undertake the work, and therefore those who were to be given a temporary divinity for the purpose of renewing the gods. Esarhaddon’s will is not to be focused on any other activity than this renewal.

In a favourable month, on a propitious day in the month of Shabatti, the favourite month of Enlil, I entered the bit mummi, the place where refurbishing was done, which the gods had chosen.

Among the epithets of Enlil (Sumerian ‘Ellil’) is ‘king of the foreign lands’, and the center of his cult was the temple E-kur, the ‘mountain house’, at Nippur. One of the images associated with Enlil is ‘merchant’ which suggests association with transactions.  [vi]  Arranging the work for the month of Shabatti, Enlil’s favourite month, would therefore be seen as propitious for work so definitively connected with the otherness of the gods in heaven.

I brought carpenters, goldsmiths, metalworkers, stone-cutters, “skilled artisans knowledgeable in the mysteries” into the temple which Shamash and Adad had indicated through divination. I installed the craftsmen there.

The work by the artisans is to be done in a place of both mystery and knowledge. We might infer from the choice of this place by the gods Shamash and Adad that the place in which the renewal is to happen is not fixed.  [vii]  The choice of the Bit Mummi is therefore likely to have a special significance for this occasion of renewal. The craft of making cult images, of the manufacture of the gods, is a religious mystery, knowledge of which is granted only to a limited group, who are installed in the chosen temple.

Red gold, mined in the mountains, which no one had as yet worked for artistic purposes, countless precious stones, not yet cut…., native to the mountains and upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour so that they might be fit for the lordly deities, I prepared in abundance for the shrines of the great gods, my lords, and for the bejewelling of their divinity, I gave (all these costly materials) into the pure hands (of the craftsmen).

Emphasis is laid on the fact that the materials which are to be used for the renewal of the gods have not yet been worked for such purposes – in other words they have not already served as materials for another form. They are as gifted by the gods – ‘upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour’, and therefore suitable for the work of the renewal. The Red gold, mined in the mountains (kur – a place of otherness), has not been worked, and ‘precious stones, not yet cut’, for the ornamentation of the divine images, Esarhaddon ‘gave…. Into the pure hands’.

‘Splendour’ here is indicated by ME.LAM/Melammu.  [viii]  Black and Green suggest that it connotes a ‘brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness and by gods’ symbols and emblems’.  They also suggest that ‘while it is in some ways a phenomenon of light, melam is at the same time terrifying and awe-inspiring’. Further:

Gods are sometimes said to ‘wear’ their melam like a garment or a crown, and like a garment or a crown, melam can be ‘taken off.’ If the god is killed, his melam disappears. While it is always a mark of the supernatural, melam carries no connotation of moral value: demons and terrifying giants can ‘wear’ it too.

[i] Black, Cunningham, Robson, Zόlyomi, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, 2004, p330


[ii] The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27.


[iii] The Esarhaddon text comes from Borger’s Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. AfO Beiheft. 9. Graz. It is reproduced in translation in C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001 p25-27.


[iv] Note 79 on page 25 indicates that the astronomical sign meant here was the heliacal rising of Jupiter. The omen is discussed in detail in Borger 1956: 17-18. Note 79 also suggests a comparison with an omen declaration given to Ashurbanipal CT 35 pl.13-15, line 23 , which runs: ‘I commissioned you with the renewal of these (images of the) gods and of their temples (as before the words supplied by the translator in brackets should be ignored). The astronomical omen also had to be confirmed by a liver omen.


[v] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p25, n84.


[vi] Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, ‘Enlil’ p76.


[vii] Shamash and Adad were invoked in Babylonian extispicy rituals see Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'Utu', p184 . It is possible that the instruction to use the Bit Mummi as the place for the renewal of the gods was received through divination by liver. Interestingly Plato’s account of the liver in the Timaeus describes the organ as reflecting the reason, which is a reflection of the reason of the heavens, exactly as it might have been regarded here (revealing the wishes of the gods Shamash and Adad). See also Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'melam' and 'ni', p 130-1.


[viii] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p26, n86. It can be understood in terms of a visible counterpart of the 'me' of the gods.