Religion 101: Oracles in ancient Egypt, Greece, and China

Humans live in a four-dimensional world in which the fourth dimension is time. Humans are aware of the past—not only their personal past but, through the mechanism of language—the past of other people. They are also aware of the future. Knowledge about the future can be sought in many ways, from the scientific (predictions based on natural phenomena such as the seasons and the solstices) to the religious (predictions based on the supernatural). Divination is the religious practice of attempting to predict or discover the future through supernatural means. One of the methods of divination involves the use of oracles.

When the word oracle came into English in the late fourteenth century, it referred to a message from a god. In the original meaning, the message was received or interpreted by a priest or priestess and the message was in response to a question from a human about a future event. Over time, oracle came to refer not only to the message from a deity, but also to the location where such messages were received.

We don’t know when humans first began consulting oracles, but we do know that the practice is more common in complex societies: societies which are characterized by social stratification (some people have greater access to goods and services than other people); religions based on the worship of gods; cities, writing; and monumental architecture (temples and palaces).

Briefly described below are some examples of oracles in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and China.

Egypt

Religion in ancient Egypt was complex and was continually changing. In general, however, we can conceptualize two broad types of Egyptian religions: (1) the state-sponsored temple religions, and (2) household religions. The use of oracles in the temples probably dates to the Old Kingdom (2575 BCE to 2125 BCE) when kings would consult the temple god about the outcomes of trading expeditions and military expeditions. The statue of the god would answer the request by moving or by making sounds. By the New Kingdom (1539 BCE to 1069 BCE) the use of oracles reached its peak.

In Egypt, deities lived in temples and could only be seen by the king and some of the temple priests who served them. Their statues were brought out in public processions only on certain festival days. During the New Kingdom, this provided ordinary Egyptians an opportunity to consult them. In their book Ancient Egypt, Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin report:

“Oracles tended to be consulted on certain festival days, when the cult statue of the god was carried in procession out of his or her shrine on the shoulders of a number of priests.”

In his chapter in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Jacobus van Dijk writes:

“Priests would carry the portable bark with the god’s image in procession out of the temple and a piece of papyrus or an ostracon [a piece of pottery used for writing short texts] bearing a written question would be laid before him; the god would then indicate his approval or disapproval by making the priests more slightly forwards or backwards or by some other motion of the bark.”

Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin also write:

“The ancient texts are ambiguous about the way the oracles gave their answers, but there were various ways in which a god might have made his decisions known: by the priests speaking; by mechanical manipulation inside the statue, such as the movement of the head; by the statue carried by the priests moving forwards or backwards; or by the god approaching an affirmative or negative piece of writing placed on either side of the processional way.”

Temple animals in Egypt also played a role in oracle divination. In a chapter in Mummies of the World, Heimo Hohneck explains:

“Another feature of the animal cult was the giving of oracles in Tuna el-Gebel, for example, the priests were able to pose questions to the temple animals which lay buried in the necropolis chambers, transfigured into the god Osiris. Any possible answers would be received in the form of a dream during ‘temple sleep’, also called ‘incubation’.”

During Sheshonq’s reign (945 BCE to 924 BCE), oracular consultations continued but were no longer a feature or regular instrument of government policy.

Greece

Like ancient Egypt, the religions of ancient Greece were polytheistic, and temple-based. In an article in Skeptical Inquirer, Evaggelos Vallianatos reports:

“Greek religion/piety for the gods, however, had no sacred texts, dogmas, or priestly class.”

Evaggelos Vallianatos also writes:

“No Greek polis would start outside of mainland Greece or undertake anything significant such as war without consulting Pythia, the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. In fact, even when Greek armies were facing their enemy, which could be other Greeks or foreigners, they first asked their diviners to look at the entrails of the sacrificial animal for good omens from the gods before they went into battle.”

For more than 1,300 years famous oracles at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi attracted pilgrims from throughout the Greek world and beyond. In his book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Nigel Rodgers reports:

“By the 6th century BC, the Delphic oracle had gained an international reputation.”

The sanctuary is situated on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus at an elevation of about 2,000 feet. Pilgrims would approach the sanctuary along the Sacred Way, stopping at the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia where they would purify themselves in a sacred spring. The sanctuary of Delphi included several buildings with the Temple of Apollo as the largest (it was about 200 feet long). Here the priestess would sit on a tripod over a chasm from which vapors would emerge. Here she would fall into a trance and speak. Her utterances would then be refined by the priests into elaborate lines of poetry. In his book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, Nicholas Wade writes:

“The oracle at Delphi, on the other hand, was based on the inhalations by the prophetess of a subterranean gas, recently defined as probably ethylene. The Pythia, as she was known, fell into a gas-induced trance and her mind possessed by the god Apollo. Her utterances, generally not very comprehensible, were interpreted by priests, and carried considerable political influence in the ancient Greek world.”

In 384 CE, Christians suppressed Delphi and the oracle ceased being a major source for finding out about the future.

China

In China, a form of oracular divination which involved writing was present during the Shang period at about 1766-1122 BCE. This form of divination used scapulimancy (divination using cattle shoulder blades) and plastromancy (divination using turtle shells). In her entry on the Shang civilization in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Sarah Milledge Nelson describes the process this way:

“The bones were prepared by smoothing and polishing and by making hollows on the back, usually in rows. Used for divination, pits were them made in the oracle bones which were then heated. A divination question was written near a pit in the bone and then heat was applied to crack it. The shape of the crack supplied the yes or no answer, with the help of the diviner.”

Sarah Milledge Nelson also reports:

“Questions usually concerned future events, such as the outcome of military campaigns and pregnancies, the weather, and the harvest.”

Other questions about the future included: At what point should the ruler undertake a tour of the country? Where and when should concerts take place? When should sacrifices be done?

Sometimes the oracle bones recorded more than just the questions. In his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Bruce Trigger writes:

“The dates of divinations, the propositions tested, and sometimes the actual outcomes of events were recorded in writing on the shells or bones used for divination.”