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“If a Star Changes into Ashes…” A Sequence of Unusual Celestial Omens1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2014

Jeanette C. Fincke
Jeanette C. Fincke*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, U.K., [email protected]
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Abstract

A sequence of omens has puzzled Assyriologists since 1866, when Henry C. Rawlinson published the first copy of these peculiar divinatory texts. The omens have the structure DIŠ MUL ana … GUR, “If a star turns into …”, where the object into which the star changes can be an animal, metal, stone or some other item. Such a change has been held to belong to the field of dreams or, more generally, to terrestrial events rather than to astronomy. In fact, however, these omens refer to a specific celestial phenomenon, the transformation of a “star” into a meteorite that can be picked up from the ground, as can also be seen in the phrasing of the corresponding namburbi-ritual, which some scribes appended to their recension of this omen sequence.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 75 , 2013 , pp. 171 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2013

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank the Trustees of The British Museum for allowing me to study and publish cuneiform texts in the Museum's collection. In addition, I would like to thank the staff of the Middle East department, especially Dr. Jon Taylor, for providing the best possible conditions for my research in the study room. I am especially grateful for the Visiting Research Fellowship of the Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (NINO) that enabled me to complete the manuscript in the excellent library of this institute.

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