Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Epigraph -- Préface -- Remerciements -- Figures -- Les Abréviations -- Introduction -- Aperçu diachronique -- La fabrique des signes -- Une science des signes -- La lecture des présages -- Entre la sémiologie et l’herméneutique : le cas et la norme -- La fabrique du sens -- Entre la sémiologie et l’herméneutique : vers une logique formelle -- L’axe syntagmatique -- L’axe paradigmatique : les premières figures de l’opposition -- L’axe paradigmatique : l’art des listes -- Le lien augural -- La fabrique de l’histoire -- L’écriture de l’histoire -- Le corpus des présages historiques -- La place des présages historiques dans les bibliothèques -- L’histoire événementielle -- L’institution royale -- La hantise de la catastrophe -- Conclusion -- Back Matter -- Indices.

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Le devin historien en Mesopotamie is a combined study of divination and historiography. More than mere custodians of historical memory, diviners approached omens as written signs and developed a sophisticated semiology to recognize and order them. Diviners perceived omens as potentially rich in various meanings and cultivated an elaborate hermeneutic for working these out using hypothetical and inductive reasoning. Even if omens were removed from the recorded facts, diviners endowed them with a wide range of possibilities. Divination sought to establish links among historical, cosmic, and natural events because it investigated at once the past, present, and future. The first study of its kind since 1946, when only about 60 historical omens were known, this work presents 385 in a comprehensive edition.