Prorocy i ekstatycy w starożytnej Mezopotamii

Abstract

The article touches upon the matter of the activity of Mesopotamian prophets and ecstatics in the Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods. Both prophets and ecstatics conveyed divine messages to the people by the use of variety of means – ecstatic trance, visions and dreams. In the periods brought under discussion their range of activities, framework and the way they were perceived by their contemporaries differed to a large extent. For the citizens of the Old Babylonian kingdom of Mari a prophet would only convey the divine words, whereas the Assyrians of the Neo-Assyrian period considered a prophet a mouthpiece of god, a personification of a deity. This paper contains a description of the prophetic activity in the two aforementioned periods, as well as a brief analysis of two collections of the prophetic texts. Thanks to the cuneiform sources we are able to trace different stages of formation of prophecy as a cultural phenomenon and indicate certain changes it underwent over time.