This book provides the general reader with an account of the diverse and often highly complex oracular techniques which made verbal communication with the gods possible. As negative oracles and omens were mostly an expression of divine anger, skilled experts attempt to divert the anger by ritual magic means and thus to correct the future or transgressions from the past.

The topic of "Hittite mantics" has hitherto been largely neglected, except in specialist literature, although mantics was of supreme importance for Hittite society and was closely bound up with politics and cult.

Volkert Haas, Freie Universität Berlin.