Perceptual elements utilized in the practice of a divinatory technique included the astronomical (stars and meteorites), weather and the calendar, the configuration of the earth and waterways and inhabited areas, the outward appearance of inanimate objects and also vegetation, elements stemming from the behavior and the birth of animals, especially humans.
[3] A seal from Sumer, (of Mudgala, [4] Lord of Edin, Minister to Uruas [5]) shows the word Azu, which meant water-divinator (lit.
[4] Lord Mudgala was the son of Uruas the Khad,[6] who was the first dynasty of Sumeria (via Phoenicia) of the fourth millennium BCE.
[4] There is some suggestion people of this era knew of, and were experiencing, dreams as portents and sources for divination.
[8] Divination practice evolved through time from abductive positions to reckonings by virtue of an a priori, and a tendency to make generalizations about causes.
[23] Hepatoscopic predictions were made on the entrails of slaughtered animals (Oppenheim) by observing any kind of abnormality within the organ, such as atrophy, hypertrophy, displacement, or any type of unusual marking.
[24] Physiognomic divination omens, in the first extant recorded, date from a period 2000 - 1600 BCE [24] The Mesopotamian dream interpreter was known as ša'il(t)u.
[14] Šumma alammdimmǔ is a series of omens made by physiognomics dating to the close of the second millennium BCE.
[24] The study of divination [26] within Babylonian culture [27] belongs to the discipline of Assyriology and began in earnest sometime during the decade of the 1870s.