Journal of Near Eastern Studies 138 Vol. 65 No. 2 In chap. 5, he examines the form in which Mesopotamians imagined and represented the divine, arguing it was “resolutely polytheistic and anthropomorphic from the beginning” (p. 45). In the next breath, with characteristic honesty, he points out the ambiguities that require a refine- ment of this rather bald statement, suggesting the Mesopotamian vision was rooted in a vision of “figures behind” the “things of this world,” so that Anu, for example, was both Heaven and the god who presided over Heaven, and Misharu, both justice and the god who presided over justice, thus deities imagined in an only partly anthropomorphic fashion. This approach is typi- cal: first stating a simple thesis and then return- ing to modify it and wrestle with contradictions, ambiguities, and changes over time, Bottéro manages to create a model of Mesopotamian religion that is remarkably clear and persuasive without disguising the complexities. Addressing, for example, the problem of how planets (often addressed as “gods”) can be accommodated in an anthropomorphic model of deity, he argues that while heavenly bodies “were often more or less identified with the divinities who repre- sented and ruled over them,” they were believed to have supernatural powers and were prayed to; nevertheless “a true divination of the stars, mak- ing them equal to the gods, never seems to have been formally recognized,” since their names “were not written out in full in the lists of gods” and were “never regularly preceded by the divine determinative” (pp. 62–63), a tour de force of nuanced argument. After a rich discussion of issues such as the Mesopotamians’ drive to organize their vast and motley assortment of gods, and their ideas of the creation of the cosmos and the role of humans in it, he goes on (chap. 6) to describe religious behavior, which he divides into the “theocentric cult,” focused on the housing, care, and feeding of the gods by mankind, and the “sacramental cult” of divination and exorcism, focused on ceremonies carried out for the benefit of humans, which he sees as the basis of the religion of or- dinary people (p. 202). A final chapter (chap. 7) identifies the survival of Mesopotamian religion through its influence on biblical religion and through the impact of astrology on the devel- opment of Roman astral religion and Greek phi- losophy. The book ends with brief endnotes, a short bibliography (up to 1998), and an index. This engaging and profound little book, accessible at last to readers of English, will be a boon to teachers and students, general readers, Assyriologists, and scholars of religion alike. Charming and easily read, despite the great eru- dition that underlies it, this study of Mesopota- mian religion by one of the great scholars of our era will surely become an enduring classic. Barbara Nevling Porter Chebeague Island, Maine Gilgamesch-Epos und Erra-Lied: Zu einem Aspekt des Verbalsystems. By Hans Hirsch. Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 29. Vienna: Institut für Orientalistik der Univer- sität Wien, 2002. Pp. iv + 256. E 62. This monograph focuses on the semantics of the ventive, a morpheme suffixed to Akkadian verbal forms, predominantly used to indicate directionality. The author’s discussion of this aspect of the Akkadian verbal system is inter- woven with personal recollections and remarks. At times, these are not less interesting than the main topic of the book, and they surely enrich it (see, for example, p. 6, n. 9; p. 21, n. 86; or p. 23 at the end of the page). The book opens with Hirsch’s brief memories of Ernst Weidner, the long-time editor of Archiv für Orientforschung (pp. 1–2). The first half of the introduction, which comes next (pp. 3–21), is devoted to a thorough review of previous lit- erature on the ventive morpheme, starting with Landsberger’s seminal study “Der ‘Ventiv’ des Akkadischen” (ZA 35 [1924]: 113–23) and end- ing with G. Buccellati’s A Structural Grammar of Babylonian [Wiesbaden, 1996]). Little is lack- ing in this extensive bibliographical survey, which covers more than eighty years. Only N. J. C. Kouwenberg’s most recent contribution to the study of this morpheme in Akkadian (“Ventive, Dative and Allative in Old Babylonian,” ZA 92 [2002]: 200–240), published concomitantly with Hirsch’s book, and—unless I missed it among the 3,753 footnotes of the book—T. Meltzer’s “The Deictic Nature of alaku in Akkadian” (in