Men and women in the service of the gods

For the late Paleo-Babylonian period, it is above all thanks to the witness lists in legal documents that we are able to reconstruct more or less completely the cult personnel of the most important sanctuaries. Those in charge of the temples bore the title of šangûm; those of the Ebabbar at Sippar-Yahrurum are particularly well known. One of the main responsibilities of the šangûmswas to oversee the liturgical calendar: cyclical feasts had to be celebrated at the right time.Special tasks were performed by different categories of incumbents, such as lamentators-kalûm: charged with preserving or re-establishing the order of the world by guaranteeing the benevolence of the deities towards humans, they chanted different types of compositions, accompanied by musical instruments. They were grouped under the authority of a chief (gala-mah = kalamahhûm). The excavation of a house at Sippar-Amnanum (tell ed-Dēr) in 1975 revealed the archives of a family of kalamahhûm dedicated to the goddess Annunitum, numbering no fewer than 2,000 texts, some 350 of which were published by the Ghent team. There are also numerous purifiers. One of the novelties of the late Palaeo-Babylonian period is the multiplication of the title of êrib bîtim: etymologically, the compound expression means "entering the temple", which poses the problem of access to the interior of sanctuaries. Strict regulations were in place in the^1st millennium, but there must also have been areas inaccessible to ordinary mortals. They were part of the "auxiliary staff", in charge of a whole series of functions which, in our eyes, have nothing specifically religious, but which were performed by people exclusively attached to temples and must therefore be taken into account: cooks and brewers who prepared the dishes and alcoholic beverages served to the deities, or people in charge of cleaning(kisalluhhum). Some religious activities were not confined to temple precincts: for example, lamenters-kalûm were in charge of burial rites.

Women who played a special role in worship may be referred to as "priestesses": numerous in the 3rd^millennium , they seem to have disappeared in the course of the 18th^century . In the following century, there were only consecrated women, who could be called "nuns": their role was above all to intercede for their families. The best known of these were thenadîtum devoted to the god Šamaš living in Sippar-Yahrurum; their houses were grouped together in a kind of beguinage (the gagûm), which still existed at this time despite what R. Harris had indicated. Thenuns-nadîtum of Marduk, studied by L. Barberon, had a different status, as they were allowed to marry; excavations in Babylon have uncovered numerous documents concerning them in the Merkes district, but we have also identified others who lived outside the capital. In Kiš, nadîtum were dedicated to the god Zababa, but the best documented women are the ugbabtum (NIN.DINGIR) and above all the kezertum (SUHUR.LÁ), grouped in organizations headed by men. The status of the kezertum has been the subject of much debate, with N. Ziegler having shown that they were above all musicians. They were compared by N. Yoffee to the Indian dēvadasī, as these consecrated women would also have engaged in sexual activities.

The diviner-bârûm asked the gods Šamaš and Addu the questions of his clients during a special ritual involving the sacrifice of an animal; in the animal's entrails, the diviner " read " the divine answer, favorable or not, which he transmitted to his client. This role of intermediary between gods and men made the diviner a priest in the sense that I understand the term. A hierarchy existed between them. At the bottom of the ladder were the " apprentices ", identified as such in the colophon of certain manuscripts they had copied; at the top stood the " chief diviner ", a title first attested in late Paleo-Babylonian times. But diviners did not belong to the temple staff : they were in the service of the individuals who paid them at the time of consultation. A study of the written reports made by divinersreveals the sociology of their clients: on the 24 reports dated to Ammi-ṣaduqa and Samsu-ditana, we find merchants, and even a chief merchant, as well as a šangûm, in charge of the temple of Gula in Sippar. Alongside haruspicine specialists, other categories of diviners existed, practicing less " noble " disciplines such as libanomancy (divination by examining smoke), lecanomancy (examining oil drops on a water surface) or aleuromancy (examining flour). Oniromancy was practiced by diviners-šâ'ilum ; while no women are known as diviners-bârûm, women-šā'iltum are known, who seem to have been consulted alongside diviners.