32 Rochberg
called Re ̄š sanctuary. Accordingly, on the upper edge of the astronomical
tablets from Babylon, an invocation “according to the command of Be ̄l
and Be ̄ltı ̄ja, may it go well” is frequently preserved. The Uruk tablets have
the same, only the gods of the Uruk temple, Anu and Antu, are invoked.
Why the exorcists or lamentation text scribes, who were also scribes of
Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil, became functionaries of the temple may be tied to their
authority in matters of ritual. While earlier, in the Neo- Assyrian period,
exorcists and lamentation text scribes served the king, the association of
these functionaries with the temple in this period is also attested. Some
Neo- Assyrian lamentation experts, and possibly also exorcists, were con-
secrated members of the temple. These Assyrian offi cials, however, did
not bear the title “priest” (LÚŠID = šangû).^55 According to a list of names
from Uruk in the Hellenistic period, exorcists were classifi ed as “enterers
of the temple (Eanna).”^56 Among the exorcists listed in this text, Ekur- za ̄kir
and Hunzu ̄ both appear in the colophons of astronomical and astrologi-
cal texts as ancestors of scribes. But Ekur- za ̄kir is also found with the title
scribe of Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil in a mathematical text. The relationship to the
cult of such exorcists who also engaged in astronomical activity is not at
all clear, as the class “enterers of the temple” was rather broad, encom-
passing any member of the temple personnel who had access to areas
of the temple that were closed to others. By itself, the term “enterer of
the temple” carried no special sacred status; the English word “priest,” as
Brinkman has pointed out, implies much more than does the designation
“enterer of the temple.”^57
Perhaps it is futile to attempt from this prosopographical evidence
to answer an epistemological question. Our interest is in the Mesopota-
mian scribes’ understanding of the nature of “natural knowledge.” We
have seen, at least, that the evidence sheds no special light on celestial
phenomena as a separate category, except that an astronomical corpus
was eventually produced of a quality that ensured its preservation and
infl uence well beyond antiquity into the European astronomical tradi-
tion. It seems clear that the idea of (natural) knowledge was inseparable
from ideas about the role of the gods in the physical environment, as well
as in the encyclopedic reference works devoted to the phenomena. There
seems, however, to be a wide gap between the practice of scholarly divi-
nation (and astronomy) and that of religion itself. If the temple became
the preserve of cuneiform scholarship, it does not imply that the work of
transcribing and preserving of texts had cultic applications; it may simply
mean that it belonged to the traditum as a whole. We do not know how
or if the celestial omen compendium Enu ̄ma Anu Enlil was still used, only