This is typical of the cup being too often consulted by some people. It is almost void of meaning, the only symbols indicating a short journey, although the flower near the rim denotes good luck, and the fact that the bottom is clear that nothing very important is about to happen to the consultant.
FIG. 10
Principal Symbols:—
Line of dots leading W.S.W to
Flower.
Two letters near rim
CHAPTER VI
OMENS
How have omens been regarded in the past? An appeal to anciency is usually a safeguard for a basis. It is found that most of the earliest records are now subsisting. See official guide to the British Museum. Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities, table case H. Nineveh Gallery, the following appears:
"By means of omen tablets the Babylonian and Assyrian priests from time immemorial predicted events which they believed would happen in the near or in the remote future. They deduced these omens from the appearance and actions of animals, birds, fish, and reptiles; from the appearance of the entrails of sacrificial victims; from the appearance and condition of human and animal offspring at birth; from the state and condition of various members of the human body."