The Dream Book, iškar dZaqīqu (“core text of the god Zaqīqu”), is an eleven tablet compendium of oneiromancy written in Akkadian.
The iškar dZaqīqu is one of the few texts to have survived in fairly complete form from the library of Ashurbanipal, and is believed to have been copied from an old Babylonian original.
[1] The šā’ilu “questioner” or dream diviner could be a professional drawn from any of the disciplines of Mesopotamian scholarship, the ašipu, “exorcist,” the bārû, “diviner,” ṭupšarru, “astrologer,” muhhûm, “ecstatic,” or raggimu, “prophet,” or commonly a woman, ragintu “prophetess.”[2] Records of the library at Nineveh show inclusion of tablets from the collections of a diviner and also of an exorcist from Nippur.
The similarity with the traditions of Egyptian New Kingdom dream hermeneutic oracles suggest a shared origin.
[3] The omens take the form of – one sentence, highly formalized units – with a protasis in which the portentous event is described, and an apodosis in which the meaning or consequence is given.