Prophetic Dreams: Defining “Incubation Rites” in the Context of the Ancient Middle East, Essay Example

In Ancient Middle Eastern texts, incubation rites are portrayed as religious rituals performed before an individual goes to sleep in the hopes that a divine being will send them a prophetic message or sign. Indeed, Bulkeley (Bulkeley 9) says the following:

One of the most direct ties between dreams and religious practice appears in dream incubation rites – rites by which people actively try to evoke visits from the gods in their dreams.

According to Bulkeley, these rites included practices such as purification rituals and prayers, as well as a period of sleep in religious sanctuaries such as temples (Bulkeley 9). Sometimes these sanctuaries seemed to be in graveyard. There is some evidence for this sort of ritual in the Minoan text “Zunana to Zimri-Lim,” in which the author states, “Dagan, your lord, appeared to me in a dream, even though nobody had performed an incubation ritual on me.” (Nissinen and Machinist 61) This indicates that the Minoans performed incubation rituals in order to speak with Dagan or other divine beings in dreams. Dagan is often associated with the underworld, therefore, this passage hints that necromancy or at least rituals related to the underworld and incubation rites may be linked (Schmidt 263).

There is more evidence for a link between dreams and prophecy in the other Mari letters. For instance, in one letter from Addu-Duri to Zimri-Lim, the writer tells Zimri that a woman named Bila’u has dreamt a dream of once-dead, now living prophets who declare that if that if Zimri-Lim speaks to new born calves he will “make a harvest of well-being.” (Nissinen and Machinist 59)

One of the plainest examples of the practice of incubation rites in the Mari texts is that found in a letter from Itur-Adsu to Zimri-Lim (Nissinen and Machinist 63), where the writer says that he went into the city of Terqua and “prostrated himself before Dagan.” While he is lying down in Dagan’s temple, Dagan speaks to him and asks him why Zimri-Lim’s messengers do not come before him and report to him regularly. If, says Dagan, they had, he would have led them to victory. The author prophesies that if Zimri-Lim sends messengers to report to Dagan, Mari will be victorious in its next battles (Nissinen and Machinist 63).

The Hebrew Bible seems to condemn certain incubation rituals (Schmidt 261). For instance, in Isaiah 65, God, speaking to the prophet Isaiah, condemns the “rebellious people” who provoke him to anger continually. God, in Isaiah, is angry that his people “Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments.” This seems to be a condemnation of those who engaged in incubation rites designed to communicate with the dead.

On the other hand, The Hebrew Bible contains many passages that involve Hebrews engaging in activities that are very similar to incubation rites (Schmidt 261). For instance, after Jacob puts a stone under his head while he sleeps in the wilderness, God appears to him in a dream. Both King David and King Saul also indicate that they have received messages from God in dreams. Indeed, when Saul employs the services of a witch in order to bring Samuel back from the grave to talk to him. An angry Samuel implores, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” And Saul tells him, “am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams.” This gives evidence both for the practice of divination in ancient Hebrew culture and for the belief of the Hebrews in incubation rites, as Saul seems to indicate that God once spoke to him in dreams.

While this passage in 1 Samuel does not speak about any rituals or rites Saul performed in order to speak to God in dreams, other passages in The Hebrew Bible do seem to link sacrifices to God’s appearance to men while they sleep. This is the case in 1 Kings, where Solomon builds an altar to God in Gibeon where he sacrifices 1,000 burnt offerings. He is rewarded for these efforts in the night when God appears to him in a dream and asks “What shall I give thee?” Solomon asks for wisdom, which, while not quite the same as prophecy, is very much like it.

The Hebrew bible seems to condemn both divination and necromancy, but like those from Mari, the Israelites do seem to have engaged in incubation rites – using dreams to talk to the divine.

Works Cited

Bulkeley, Kelly. The wilderness of dreams: exploring the religious meanings of dreams in modern Western culture. Albany: University of New York Press, 1994.

Nissinen, Martti and Peter Machinist. Prophets and prophecy in the ancient Near East. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

Schmidt, Brian B. Israel’s beneficent dead: ancestor cult and necromancy in ancient Israelite. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996.