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MESOPOTAMIAN 'NAMBURBI' RITUALS (Mezpotamskie rytualy 'namburbi')

100%

Nowicki S.

Przegląd Orientalistyczny

2008

issue 1-2 (224-225)

23-35

The aim of this article is to present a special kind of ancient rituals called 'namburbi'. Therefore, they are shown in a wide context of ancient Near Eastern religion and magic, which explains the sense of their existence. They were performed after a god's decision to punish an individual or a society, which was carried by an evil omen. Among different kinds of rituals connected with divination, 'namburbi' rituals, and only them, were used to prevent imminent and unknown calamities. This characteristic of 'namburbi' rituals is based on many extant omen series, the authors of which recommend to perform 'namburbi' in the case of noticing an evil sign with an uncertain explanation. We can distinguish a few groups of 'namburbi' - these that are against calamities carried by specific terrestrial, celestial, animal or human omens and these that prevent any aftermath of evil sings at all. The last part of the article describes the structure of 'namburbi' rituals, which is hardly changeable. It includes rites of purification, different types of incantations and, in the main part, a suit against the evil sign in the form of a clay figure, which closely reflected a Mesopotamian lawsuit. Concluding, we can presume that 'namburbi' rituals had grown from folk magic and later they reached the highest strata of the ancient society, making up for a marked lack of rites in the official cult and magic. Another conclusion is that we can encounter specific elements of 'namburbi' rituals in the magic and the religion of Asia Minor's and Mediterranean cultures of later times.

To Learn and to Remember from Others: Persians Visiting the Dura-Europos Synagogue

88%

Daryaee Touraj D.

Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia

2010

vol. 8

29-37

The city of Dura-Europos1 in modern day Syria provides a microcosm of multi-ethnic and multi-religious life in the late ancient Near East. Although there are debates as to the exact date of the conquest of the city, the year 256 CE appears to be the most plausible date in which the King of Kings, Sapur I took Dura.2 In the third century, the city was abandoned and so the life of Dura came to an end after more than half a millennium of existence.3 Its apparent sudden abandonment has made it a wonderful archaeological playground for studying life in the third century CE on the border of the Irano-Hellenic world of antiquity. The city had changed hands several times since its creation in the fourth century BCE by the Seleucids to when Mithradates II (113 BCE) conquered it and brought it into the Arsacid imperial orbit, where it emained for three centuries. The Arsacid control of a trading town or as it was once called a caravan town, works well with the story that Mithradates II, several years before the takeover of Dura-Europos, had concluded an agreement with the Chinese Emperor Wudi for trade cooperation. In the larger scheme of things, these activities, no matter how accurate the dating is, suggest the idea that the Arsacids may have been thinking of the creation of a large trade network as part of what modern historians have called the 'Silk Road'. Dura was subsequently conquered in the second century CE by Emperor Trajan (115-117 CE) and later, in 165 CE, by Avidius Cassius, after which it stayed in Roman hands for almost a century.

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1 Przegląd Orientalistyczny

1 Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia

1 Daryaee Touraj D.

1 Nowicki S.

1 2010

1 2008

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MESOPOTAMIAN 'NAMBURBI' RITUALS (Mezpotamskie rytualy 'namburbi')

To Learn and to Remember from Others: Persians Visiting the Dura-Europos Synagogue