Babylonian-Assyrian Birth-Omens and Their Cultural Significance

by Morris Jastrow

XI

To sum up the results of our investigations in a series of propositions:

1. The Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens which can be traced back to at least 2000 B. C. rest on the impression made by the mystery of a new life emerging from another.

2. A leading factor in the interpretation of the omens was the recognized resemblance—often striking—between the features of an infant and that of some animal, or of an animal to some other.

3. As Babylonian-Assyrian hepatoscopy led to the study of the anatomy of the liver, and Babylonian-Assyrian astrology to the study of the phenomena in the heavens, so the resemblance between man and animals became the basis for the study of Human Physiognomy, which when it came to the Greeks and Romans was made a means of determining the character of the individual, just as Babylonian-Assyrian astrology when transferred to Greece and Rome was applied to the individual as a means of casting his horoscope, i. e., for determining the general course of his life.

4. This same factor of the resemblance between men and animals in conjunction with the ignorance as to the processes of nature led to the belief in all kinds of hybrid creatures, composed of human and animal organs or features.

5. This belief underlies the fabulous creatures of Greek and Roman mythology, and also helps to explain the representation of gods as partly animalic in Egypt, in India and in China.

6. The recognition of a resemblance between man and animals is universal, and besides leading in connection with birth-omens to the belief in the actual existence of beings composed of partly human and partly animal organs or parts of the body, developed quite independently of such associations also in three other directions, leading on the one hand to the belief in the descent of a clan or group from some animal, and on the other to the belief in a transformation of a human being into an animal and vice versa, and thirdly to the Beast Fables of India in which beasts that talk like human beings are introduced.

7. The theory set forth in Berosus of a time when mixed creatures of all kinds existed reflects the fanciful combinations found in the collections of the bârû-priests.

8. The Roman view of a monster as a ‘sign’ (monstrum), sent as an indication of some event of a disastrous character, is directly traceable to the Babylonian-Assyrian point of view of malformations of all kinds and deviations from the normal as birth-omens.