Babylonian Oracle Questions

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The tamitu texts are a corpus of Babylonian oracle questions addressed to two gods as a duo: Shamash the sun god and Adad the storm god. Answers to the queries came not from abstract principles embodied somewhere in the universe but were decisions reached by this divine duo based on their understanding of the case brought to them, and a tamitu is the formal judgment brought by them. Though all of the known copies are from the first millennium B.C., some questions clearly date to the second millennium. The topics vary from matters of state (Should the king undertake such-and-such a campaign?) to purely personal matters (Is my wife telling me the truth?). As with many oracles, the only answer given was yes or no. In this volume, W. G. Lambert has collected, edited, and translated (with notes) the known corpus of tamitu texts. Included are hand copies of most of the texts, a total of more than 50 plates.