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Reviews
The second chapter (pp. 62-278) deals with the Sortes Astrampsychi in 21
subchapters of very uneven length (from a single page to over 50 pages). In the
first of these ("Who was Astrampsychus?") the reader is brought into contact
with Napoleon's Book of Faith (pp. 69-71), which is at best a far-away spin-off
of the ancient oracle book. The list of thirteen papyrus fragments of the third
to sixth centuries, on which the work is centered (pp. 77-79), is immediately
followed by the medieval Byzantine manuscripts (pp. 79-80), which date from
the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries but are completely preserved. Ancient
and medieval sources are discussed together, although this may sometimes
be problematical, e.g. for the hemerology on p. 86 (was the seven day week
already in use when the Sortes Astrampsychi were first written?) and for the
role played by priests (the author is inclined to attribute the Sortes Astrampsychi to the same milieu as the ticket oracles but does not offer proof of this).
The largest subchapter (pp. 204-278) subdivides the questions posed in the
Sortes Astrampsychi into fifteen categories, such as health, love and family life,
travelling, inheritance and property, and theft (which could be considered a
subsection of property), and ends in a tentative "portrait" of the typical client.
The absence of women seems to distinguish the Sortes Astrampsychi from the
ticket oracles, but since the questions are anonymous in the case of the Sortes
Astrampsychi, this is perhaps of little importance: the gender could easily be
adapted to a female client.
Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the medieval Sortes Sangallenses and the Sortes
Sanctorum (which do have a few precursors in the papyri), whereas in Chapter
5 ("Sortes im Zeitenlauf") several other types of oracles by lot are discussed, in
different periods, religions, and languages in a rather haphazard order (ending
with "Losorakel aus aller Welt").
Chapter 6 discusses the so-called ticket oracles, mainly known from papyri (demotic, Greek, and Coptic). A list of these oracles is offered on pp. 362-365,
according to the fifteen categories which the author has distinguished for the
Sortes Astrampsychi on pp. 218-276. Hundreds of ticket oracles found recently
in Tebtynis and addressed to Soknebtynis, are, however, still awaiting publication and may completely overturn this rather subjective order (and certainly
the pie chart of the gods on p. 399). The link between the ticket oracles (most
of them with the choice between positive and negative answer) and the book
oracles of the Astrampsychus type is far from self-evident and is not proven
by pointing out that the same questions return in both. The problem is raised
again by a sensational recent discovery in the eastern desert (see H. Cuvigny,
Chiron 40 [2010] 245-299: for the first time we now have ticket oracles found
inside a temple with full-fledged answers as in the astragalos oracles of Asia
Minor, discussed on pp. 318-328).
