Dreams in Mesopotamia: Gudea, Gilgamesh and the Assyrian dream book
From the cylinders of Gudea of Lagash to the dreams of Gilgamesh and the tablets of Nineveh: how Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians read night messages.
Between the Tigris and the Euphrates the dream was regarded as one of the channels through which the gods communicated with humans, alongside the inspection of animal entrails and the observation of the stars. The Mesopotamian civilisations left us accounts of royal dreams, epic episodes and true repertories of interpretation, written in cuneiform on clay tablets. It is a vast body of evidence, covering almost three millennia and showing the development of a divinatory art held in high regard in palaces and temples.
The dream of Gudea
One of the oldest and most famous texts is inscribed on two large clay cylinders now kept in the Louvre. It tells how Gudea, ruler of the Sumerian city of Lagash in the twenty-second century BC, received in a dream the order to rebuild the temple of the god Ningirsu. In his sleep there appeared to him a gigantic figure, as tall as the sky, accompanied by birds and animals, together with other enigmatic characters.
Unable to interpret the vision, Gudea went to the goddess Nanshe, regarded as an expert in reading dreams, who explained the meaning of each element to him: the figure was Ningirsu, the woman holding a golden stylus was the goddess of writing, and so on. The story served to legitimise the king's building project, presented as the response to a precise divine command rather than a mere human initiative.
The dreams of the hero Gilgamesh
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the most famous Mesopotamian poem, also gives ample room to dreams. Before meeting Enkidu, the king of Uruk dreams of a star fallen from the sky and then of an axe, objects too heavy to lift yet to which he feels drawn. His mother, the goddess Ninsun, explains that they announce the arrival of a strong and faithful companion.
During the journey to the Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh has a series of disturbing dreams, which Enkidu interprets each time in a favourable sense. Later it is Enkidu who dreams of the assembly of the gods deciding his death. In the poem the dream is therefore both an announcement of fate and an occasion for dialogue between friends, and interpretation may reassure or frighten.
The Assyrian dream book
In the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, in the seventh century BC, the tablets of a great dream treatise were copied, known by the name of the dream god Zaqiqu. Like the Egyptian Chester Beatty papyrus, the text lists dreamt situations followed by a prediction: flying, eating certain foods, going to particular cities, meeting animals or the dead.
In 1956 the Assyriologist A. Leo Oppenheim published a fundamental study of these texts, which remains a reference. The sources also reveal specialised professional figures, such as the sha'ilu, the questioner of dreams, and rituals intended to avert the consequences of dreams considered evil, in which the dream was symbolically transferred onto a lump of clay that was then dissolved in water.
The Mesopotamian tradition deeply influenced neighbouring peoples. The biblical stories of Joseph and Daniel, set at the courts of Egypt and Babylon, show how familiar the figure of the dream interpreter was throughout the ancient Near East, and how much his prestige depended on his ability to explain to kings what their own wise men could not understand.