The Figure of the Seer as an Example of Contacts and Crossing the Boundaries Between Mesopotamian and Hellenic Civilizations

Abstrakt

The idea of contacts and boundaries between civilizations, cultures and people is as old as the notion of civilization. These physical (economical, personal) contacts accompanied the more subtle religious, spiritual and ideological borrowings, imitations, and exchanges of thought. Additionally, both these phenomena have taken place simultaneously but at a different pace. In this article, the author focuses on the figure of the seer who stood as an authority for people and institutions in antiquity. According to Cicero, divination played the decisive role in societies of the ancient Near East, Greece, Rome etc., as its role in many civilizations was extremely important in religious, political and civil spheres of life. This article focuses only on the religious-military activities of the seer. In spite of the great differences in terms of functioning of the Eastern, often called Oriental (Mesopotamian civilization) and Western (Hellenic civilization) worlds, which have been recorded in our understanding of history, the author presents a different picture, in which the influences of different civilizations and religious impulses flowed from East to West over the centuries.