Shumma Alu ina Mele Shakin

Shumma Alu

Anonymous / tradition (compiled across the second and first millennia BC) · c. 11th-7th century BC (canonized text; the earliest omens in the series are Old Babylonian) · Babylon (Iraq) · science

The largest Mesopotamian omen series, over a hundred tablets long, argues that literally any observable event in ordinary life, a dog urinating on a wall, an unusual sound in a house, the behavior of city animals, carries a decodable message about a person's future.