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SUMMARY:Analogy\, Metaphor\, and Meaning in Babylonian Divination
DTSTART:20261102T150000Z
DTEND:20261102T163000Z
DTSTAMP:20260728T174645Z
UID:metaphor-talk-02-11-2026-14106@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Guest lecture by Nicla De Zorzi (Austrian Academy of Sciences
 )\n\nIn Babylonian divinatory texts from the second and first millennium B
 CE\, omens typically take the form of lists of conditional clauses\, where
  various categories of signs (the omen’s protasis) are matched with outc
 omes related to human concerns (the omen’s apodosis). The connection bet
 ween protasis and apodosis is established through correspondences based on
  similarity\, reflecting a mode of analogical thinking rooted in a culture
 -specific analogistic ontology. Central to this "Babylonian analogism" is 
 the idea that similarities between words\, concepts\, and things reveal me
 aningful connections among them. For the modern reader\, however\, direct 
 one-to-one correspondences between protases and apodoses are often difficu
 lt to reconstruct\, since omen logic operates through overlapping and inte
 rwoven networks of associations. This paper examines the role of metaphor 
 in establishing these connections through a series of case studies drawn f
 rom different types of divinatory texts and from different historical peri
 ods\, intending to identify broader patterns in the construction of omen m
 eaning.
LOCATION:GB 5/150–152 „Ruhrpott“
URL:https://sfb1475.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/de/veranstaltung/metaphor-talk-02-1
 1-2026/
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