Ancient Belief in the Gods

Citizens of the classical world had no such alternative resources, and so any questions that they had of the world û from whether the rains would finally come to if their child would recover to whether justice could be expected in a given circumstance had to come through divine intercession.

This dependence of humans on the gods for direct help in everything from medicine to justice probably made people more inclined than we ourselves are today to depend on oracles, prophecies and curses, all of which are direct links between the gods and humans (although in each of these cases some humans might act as intermediaries between the gods and other humans). Moreover such institutions as oracles not only provide for a direct connection between the gods and mortals but they allow for direct action between the perfect world of the gods and the imperfect world in which people had to live, something that must have appealed to people in a ti

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ns, this crosses the line between magic and religion. In religion, humans can come to share in divinity by acquiring knowledge usually left to the gods alone (as in prophesies or at oracles). In magic, humans can compel divine forces to work to meet human ends, as in curses (Aveni, 1994, p. 98). A curse is simply a way of getting the gods to do oneÆs dirty work for one. This allows one to maintain (and even to some extent truthfully) oneÆs own innocence while also demonstrating to both the victim and society at large that the curse was truly earned by the victim û for the gods only punish the truly guilty. A Brief Survey of Oracles in the Ancient World Oracles, like prophesies, date from the greatest antiquity and are documented as far back into history as is nearly any human practice (Hooke, 1963, p. 50). Among the ancient Egyptians, for example, all the temples were probably oracular and in the later days of classical Egyptian civilization, one of the most renowned of all Egyptian temples was that of the oracle of Amon, in the oasis of Siwa, Egypt (Hooke, 1963, p. 73). Oracles were also used extensively by the Hebrews, as in the consultation of the Urim and Thummim by the high priest and it is probably through the Hebraic use
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