Natural Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia 17wide chronological as well as cultural gaps between these groups, as well
as a great unevenness in the material preserved (for example, only a few
letters in the Old Babylonian Mari archive relevant to the practice of ce-
lestial divination versus hundreds from the Sargonid archive of correspon-
dence between king and scholars, or a handful of copies of various Old
Babylonian celestial omen tablets versus several thousand extant copies
and fragments from exemplars of the corpus from Nineveh). Only from
the seventh century BCE is there enough evidence, beyond the copies of
Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil, to gain some insight into the practical application of
celestial divination. This evidence comes in the form of letters and reports
from diviners, magicians, lamentation priests, and other scholars to two
kings of the Sargonid dynasty, namely, Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) and
his son Assurbanipal (668–627 BCE).
The correspondence attests to the expertise of the diviners not only
in the celestial and other omen literature, but also in incantations, ritu-
als, and sacrifi ces necessitated by ominous signs. Since the affairs of state,
not the least of which was the fate of the king himself, were the concerns
of central importance in the omen apodoses, the institution of a regular
watch of the heavens followed by interpretation of observed phenomena
by reference to the apodoses of Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil was established in a num-
ber of Mesopotamian cities of the Assyrian Empire, such as Assur, Babylon,
Nippur, Uruk, Cutha, Dilbat, and Borsippa. Anxiety seems to have hung
over the king regarding eclipses in particular. To allay the king’s fears, one
scholar even quotes another, saying, “A certain Akkula ̄nu has written: The
sun made an eclipse of two fi ngers at the sunrise. There is no apotropaic
ritual against it, it is not like a lunar eclipse. If you say, I’ll write down the
relevant interpretation and send it to you.”^9
The reason for anxiety over the king’s safety stemmed from the asso-
ciation of lunar eclipses with the deaths of kings. Since the possibility of a
lunar eclipse was predictable by the seventh century BCE, the danger this
phenomenon indicated for the king could be addressed before the fact, as
is implied in the letter quoted above. A predicted eclipse put in motion the
ritual of the substitute king, whose purpose was to take upon himself the
evil portents in place of the king and, when the danger period was over,
to be put to death in order that the evil be carried with him to the Land-
of- No- Return. One letter concerning the substitute king says:
The substitute king, who on the 14th sat on the throne in [Ninev]eh and
spent the night of the 15th in the palace o[f the kin]g, and on account of
whom the eclipse took place, entered the city of Akkad safely on the night of
the 20th and sat upon the throne. I made him recite the omen litanies before