How the Interpretation of Dreams Lay Interpretations

Despots might well take their dreams seriously, just as they would be deeply interested in any of their own bodily functions, as would their courtiers. A pharaoh and a modern dictator would share the conundrum that although apparently so similar to their subjects, with their same mortal limitations, they have somehow acquired the privilege of uniquely determining their country's future, and deciding on matters of life and death perhaps every day. The fact that soothsayers were employed by rulers from the pharaohs to Hitler is perhaps unsurprising. The advice given by these advisers would have been guided as much by expediency as by any rules of interpretation, and as such cannot be taken to represent a body of thought on dreaming. In modern life astrology seems to have taken over from dream interpretation as the soothsayer's preferred technique.

Fragments of papyri from the second millennium BC seem to be the first writings to deal exclusively with the subject matter of dreams, mainly concerning themselves with incest and bestiality with various animals. The only interpretations offered are 'That is bad' or 'That is good', with no further elaboration. Assyrian cuneiform texts have also been found that give interpretations of dream topics, many of which, again, are taboo behaviors - eating the flesh of one's penis, killing brothers or sons, eating human waste. According to de Becker (1968), however, others are more mundane:

To meet a horse was to obtain a savior. Monkeys, pigs, foxes, mice, cats, birds, snakes and dogs were favorable, indicating posterity and prosperity. But he-goats and sometimes rams were bad omens. Long commentaries were devoted to dreams of flying, even at this period. All, with a few exceptions, signified danger and often death... The problems of physiological life are not forgotten. Importance is given to teeth-grinding, interpreted in a negative way, together with speaking, groaning or snoring while dreaming.

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The most important dream book of this sort was the compilation by Artemidorus in the second century AD, taking material from Middle Eastern, Greek and North African sources. His was not entirely a list of subjects and their meanings, and he preferred to make interpretations by considering a sequence of dreams, and even the personality and circumstances of the dreamer. Quite often a dream was interpreted as an allegory for what was about to happen to the dreamer. The complexity of some of his interpretations and the attention paid to the dreamer has invited comparisons between his methods and those of Freud, centuries later. Charles Rycroft (1979) reports that Artemidorus needed to know at least six facts about a dream before it could be interpreted: 'Whether the events depicted in the dream were plausible or bizarre; whether they were approximately interconnected; whether they were customary for the dreamer; what events prior to the dream could have influenced it; and the dreamer's name and occupation.' His books were not widely circulated, and in one of the last two, which were dedicated to his son and unpublished), was the assertion that it contains instances 'that will make you a better interpreter of dreams than all, or at least inferior to none; but, if published, they will show you know no more than the rest' - a sentiment that Glover (1909) rather pithily describes as suggesting science declining into profession. While interpretations had previously derived their credibility from divine revelations of one sort or another, from then onwards dream interpretations in Europe drew their authority primarily from their antiquity.