Another important religious class at this period was the guild of soothsayers, and they also appear to have been directly under the royal control. This we gather from a letter of Ammi-ditana, one of the later kings of the First Dynasty, written to three high officials of Sippar, which illustrates the nature of their duties and the sort of occasion on which they were called upon to perform them.[42] It had come to the king's knowledge that there was a scarcity of corn in Shagga, and since that town was in the administrative district of Sippar, he wrote to the officials concerned ordering them to send a supply thither. But, before the corn was brought into the city, they were to consult the soothsayers, in order to ascertain whether the omens were favourable. The method of inquiry is not specified, but it was probably liver-divination, which was in common use during all periods.[43] Only if the omens proved favourable, was the corn to be brought into the town, and Ave may conclude that the king took this precaution as he feared that the scarcity of corn in Shagga was due to the anger of some local deity. The astrologers would be able to ascertain the facts, and, in the event of their reporting unfavourably, no doubt the services of the local priesthood would have been called in.
We have already seen that flocks and herds which were owned by the great temples were sometimes pastured with those of the king, and there is abundant evidence that the king also superintended the collection of temple-revenues along with his own. Collectors of both secular and ecclesiastical tribute sent reports directly to the king, and, if there was any deficit in the supply expected from a collector, he had to make it up himself. From one of Hammurabi's letters, for example, we gather that two landowners, or money-lenders, had lent money or advanced seed-corn to certain farmers near the towns of Dûr-gurgurri and Rakhabu and along the Tigris, and in settlement of their claims had seized the crops, refusing to pay the proportion due to Bît-il-kittim, the great temple of the Sun-god at Larsa. The governor of Larsa, the principal city in the district, had rightly, as the representative of the palace, caused the tax-collector to make up the deficiency, but Hammurabi, on receiving the subordinate officer's complaint, referred the matter back to the governor, and we may infer from similar cases that the defaulting parties had to make good the loss and submit to fines or punishment.[44] The document throws an interesting light on the methods of government administration, and the manner in which the king gave personal supervision to the smallest details.