Tony Crisp Interpretation:
In considering the beliefs of another culture, especially in the distant past, we have to remember that individuals and cultures have vastly different mental worlds they live in. The peoples of Assyria and Mesopotamia were animists—that is, they saw themselves surrounded by natural forces that linked with gods to be propitiated and devils to be feared. Anxious in the present, fearful for the future, feeling themselves the prey of powerful forces beyond their comprehension or control, they turned to a whole armory of devices for protection and reassurance— amulets and magic spells, prophecy, divination, and dream interpretation. There seems to be little doubt that in Assyria, as in Egypt, dreams were used in therapeutic processes. There are many rituals for dispelling the effect of evil dreams (i.e., dealing with anxiety): about 1700 b.c., a poem from Babylon describes how a noble had been made ill by demons coming from the netherworld, and how three dreams lead to his recovery. This is why the interpretation of bad dreams was more important than the deciphering of pleasant or obvious dreams—something had to be done about them. Anticipating contemporary psychoanalysis, the Assyrians believed that once the enigma presented by the dreams had been worked out, the disturbing symptoms or the affliction would pass. But whereas modern psychoanalysis uses the dream to reveal the hidden conflicts and repressed anxieties of the patient, the Assyrians believed either that a demon must be exorcized, or that the appropriate deity would reveal the means by which the sufferer could be treated. This means they dealt with the anxiety symbolically. The Assyrians relied on dream books for help. This much we know from clay tablets found at Nineveh, in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who reigned between 669 and 626 b.c. This library, the oldest directly known to us, was a repository of learning reaching back to the dawn of civilization—possibly to 5000 b.c. The Nineveh tablets, in fact, provide the link in a chain of dream theory that stretches from the most remote past to our time. It is believed that Ashurbanipal’s dream book was used by the Roman soothsayer Artemidorus (about a.d. 140), whose work has in turn inspired almost every subsequent compiler of dream books. The Ashurbanipal tablets tell us, for example, that if a man flies repeatedly in his dreams, whatever he owns will be lost. In Zolar’s Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Dreams, published in New York in 1963, we read: “Flying at a low altitude: ruin is ahead for you.” Another idea that persisted is that dreams go by contraries. If an Assyrian dreamed that he was blessed by a god, he expected to experience that god’s wrath; but “if the god utters a curse against the man, his prayer will be accepted.” If you are cursed in a dream, Zolar tells us in 1963, “ambitions will be realized.” Again, these are obvious ways to deal with anxiety.