it was his duty to superintend the preparation of certain
offerings for the occasion. In order that he should not have to leave
his duties, the king put off the hearing of the case until after the
festival had been duly celebrated. The king also exercised a strict
control over the priests themselves, and received reports from the chief
priests concerning their own subordinates, and it is probable that the
royal sanction was obtained for all the principal appointments. The
guild of soothsayers was an important religious class at this time,
and they also were under the king's direct control. A letter written by
Ammiditana, one of the later kings of the First Dynasty, to three high
officials of the city of Sippar, contains directions with regard to
certain duties to be carried out by the soothsayers attached to the
service of the city, and indicates the nature of their functions.
Ammiditana wrote to the officials in question, stating that there was a
scarcity of corn in the city of Shagga, and he therefore ordered them
to send a supply thither. But before the corn was brought into the city
they were told to consult the soothsayers, who were to divine the future
and ascertain whether the omens were favourable. If they proved to be
so, the corn was to be brought in. We may conjecture that the king took
this precaution, as he feared the scarcity of corn in Shagga was due
to the anger of some local deity or spirit, and that, if this were the
case, the bringing in of the corn would only lead to fresh troubles.
This danger it was the duty of the soothsayers to prevent.

Another class of the priesthood, which we may infer was under the king's
direct control, was the astrologers, whose duty it probably was to make
reports to the king of the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, with a
view to ascertaining whether they portended good or evil to the
state. No astrological reports written in this early period have
been recovered, but at a later period under the Assyrian empire the
astrologers reported regularly to the king on such matters, and it is
probable that the practice was one long established. One of Hammurabi's
letters proves that the king regulated the calendar, and it is
legitimate to suppose that he sought the advice of his astrologers as
to the times when intercalary months were to be inserted. The letter
dealing with the calendar was written to inform Sin-idinnam, the
governor of Larsam, that an intercalary month was to b