The Interpretation Of Dreams In The Ancient Near East, With A Translation Of An Assyrian Dream Book

by A. Leo Oppenheim

Transactions Of The American Philosophical Society, V46, Part 3, September, 1956.

Genres: History, Archaeology

198 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 2011

Reviews

[Dr. George H. Elder · Rating 5 out of 5]

As might be imagined from the tale of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamian civilizations took great stock in omens and dreams, and devoted considerable effort to determining their meanings. Subsequently, an 11-tablet Dream Book dubbed the iškar dZaqīqu (“core text of the god Zaqīqu”) was produced, with an excellent translation being done by A. Leo Oppenheim (1956). This is a compendium of oneiromancy for the most part, with the Greek root oneiroi being indicative of a process of dream interpretation that is dedicated to divining the future. The dreams are categorized by three types; these being messages from the gods, prophecies, and expressions of the dreamer’s psychological or physical status. In terms of specifics, the dream event subjects are described as protasis (i.e., “If you dream X…” clauses), with an appropriate interpretational association being denoted as an apodosis (i.e., “…it means Y will happen.”). This is usually done in the form of a pithy sentence that was often expressed in the form of clauses that end in word plays or puns. The use of these witticisms correlates well with the symbolic and metaphorical nature of dreams. The examples are many and fascinating, even to a modern reader. The research, however, is outstanding! Oppenheim is as good as it gets in terms of scholarship, and his nots would make a great book in themselves.

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not an academic, but rather an engineer. My rating is not a commentary on the accuracy of the material presented in the book; rather, this was a very difficult book to read. Perhaps if I were more familiar with Mesopotamian literature or cuneiform, the book would probably have been an easier read and more understandable. That said, I read the book after seeing it cited in a commentary on the Old Testament book of Daniel. If you are familiar with Daniel, you will remember that he and his friends Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael were taken to Babylon from Jerusalem and educated in Babylonian language, culture, wisdom, etc. Furthermore, Daniel interprets two dreams that King Nebuchadnezzar had as well as the handwriting on the wall for King Nabonidus’ son and co-regent Belshazzar. I thought that this book may help me to better understand what Daniel and his friends may have been taught in their three years of training as well as how the wise men of Babylon might have gone about attempting to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams.

Theologians debate Nebuchadnezzar’s motivation for demanding that his wise men tell him his dream in Daniel 2. Some argue that he forgot the dream, and others believe he was testing his wise men. As noted in this book, “the forgetting of dreams was a source of apprehension for the Mesopotamian because evil consequences of an untoward dream were considered effective whether the dreamer happened to remember the experiences or not.” Furthermore, there were various rituals and incantations to ward off the ill effects of a harmful dream. For example, a person might recite his dream to a lump of earth and toss it into the water so that the dream would dissolve away with the lump. None of this conclusively proves that Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten the dream and, worried that it might not bode well for him, desired to be able to ward it off, but it does add weight to that argument. I can’t help recognizing that in its presentation of two of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, the book of Daniel gives no hint that the events they foretold could be averted. While the Babylonians could dodge the effects of dreams sent by their gods, whatever events the God of Israel foretold via dreams in the book of Daniel were inevitable. God could not and would not be foiled.

While this book deals with how different ancient Near Eastern cultures such as Egypt, Hatti (the Hittites), etc., its primary focus is in Mesopotamia because it includes a translation of, commentary on and transliteration of an Assyrian dream book recovered in fragmentary form from cuneiform tablets. In general, dream interpretation formulas consist of a protasis paired with an apodosis, what we would call an if … then statement, and they range from the mundane to the absolutely bizarre.

Because the dream book was found in fragmentary form, significant effort was made to determine what clay tablet fragments went with each other and how much text was missing. The descriptions of these efforts and the underlying logic were often difficult to understand. That said, they were important to this book. Before Dr. Oppenheim could properly evaluate the contents of the text, he had to reasonably assure himself of its integrity.

This book is anything but light reading but has value to those wishing to better understand the milieu of Old Testament culture.

[محمد عطبوش · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب مرجعي مهم