Krzysztof Ulanowksi’s earlier work has been characterized by a strong interest in the influences of the Near East on Greek religious features. He has previously published on aspects of divination in the context of warfare, but in this book the several strands of his thoughts come together (for Ulanowski’s earlier work see, for example, ‘Shamash, Great Lord, whom Iam asking, answer me with Reliable “Yes!”: The Influence of Divination on the Result of War’ in J.C. Fincke (ed.), Divination as Science: AWorkshop Conducted during the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Warsaw, 2014 (Winona Lake 2016), 47–77; ‘A Comparison of the Role of Bārû and Mantis in Ancient Warfare’ in K. Ulanowksi (ed.), The Religious Aspects of War in the Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome (Leiden 2016), 65–98; ‘The Methods of Divination used in the Campaigns of the Assyrian Kings and Alexander the Great’ in K. Nawotka and A. Wojciechowska (eds), Alexander the Great and the East: History, Art, Tradition (Wiesbaden 2016), 59–88).
The aim of the book is to ‘point out the fact that the Greeks treated divination in the very similar way to the Mesopotamians’ (4) and to explore what this may mean in the larger framework of cultural influences in the ancient world. It does so by investigating divination and warfare, which includes ‘war, revolt and military operations’ (4): a broad definition embracing both external and internal armed conflicts. The study casts its net wide in terms of time and place but focuses on the first millennium BC (both in the East and in the West), using sources from other periods as supplementary evidence.
The first chapter sets the background: it discusses motives for ancient warfare, especially religious ones, in Mesopotamia and in Greece, and stresses the importance of starting a ‘just war’. The next chapter provides an overview of the importance of Mesopotamian divination in the business of warfare; and the third chapter does the same for Greek divination. Comparative elements are introduced, although not systematically, already laying part of the foundation for the fifth chapter, which deals in greater depth with cultural comparison.
Chapter 4 deals with the many ancient methods of divination, introduces the compendia and other sources from the Near East and discusses the more technical aspects of the interpretation of signs. Here, Ulanowski indicates that he sees several similarities between Near Eastern and Greek practices, working towards the conclusions of the fifth chapter. Chapter 4 should be seen as a source collection, introducing classicists and other non-Assyriologists to material otherwise difficult to access. It consists of (previously translated) texts from a variety of compendia related to extispicy, celestial divination, natural catastrophes and so on, all related to topics and questions about warfare. This is a worthwhile collection of sources for any student of Near Eastern warfare, but it perhaps would have been better placed in an appendix so as not to interrupt the flow of the argument.
In chapter 5 Ulanowski engages with the topic that interests him most and which is at the intellectual core of this monograph: the possible influences of Mesopotamian divination on Greek practices in the ‘Dark Ages’ and Archaic periods, with Hittite and Phrygian cultures as bridgeheads. He follows up on long-running debates, with which most classicists will be familiar from the work of Walter Burkert and Martin West (most recently W. Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge MA 2004); and M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry (Oxford 1997)). An interesting aspect is how Ulanowski highlights the importance of armies (both soldiers and army seers) as carriers of influence from East to West (in addition to traders, religious wanderers and so on, although the seers of an army to some extent overlap with the religious wanderers). Ulanowski particularly stresses the similarities between Near Eastern and Greek extispicy, although he claims that similarities may also be uncovered for oracles and prophecy as well, especially when in the shape of dreams. He also discusses many other methods of divination, found in both East and West, where the evidence is less plentiful; here, the results of comparison are necessarily inconclusive, as the author readily admits.
The author’s general premise is not in need of much defence. Most scholars now accept that the ancient world was a world of connectivity and interaction. Ulanowski does a good job at pointing out similarities, but what this all means for our understanding of such cultural diffusion or for the phenomenon of divination is less clear. The evidence under discussion does not add to our understanding of the direct or indirect nature of the diffusion, letalone its direction, intensity and pacing, or if and why divination took such an important place in these processes. The book would have gained much from problematizing such issues and from taking advantage of the wealth of recent literature on connectivity, globalization and acculturative processes.
Despite this fundamental criticism, the volume is of interest for the readers of this journal, not despite its primary interest in Mesopotamian divination but because of it. Comparison is always welcome, the collection of sources in the fourth chapter is a great tool for any classicist and the question of the genesis of Greek divination always benefits from contextualization.
