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An oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinion; an infallible authority, usually spiritual in nature. It may also be a revealed prediction or precognition of the future, from deities, that is spoken through another object or life-form (e.g. augury and auspice). In the ancient world many sites gained a reputation for the dispensing of oracular wisdom they too became known as "oracles," and the oracular utterances, called khresmoi in Greek, were often referred to under the same name — a name derived from the Latin verb orare, to speak.

Oracles were common in many civilizations of antiquity. In China, the use of oracle bones dates as far back as the Shang Dynasty, (1600 BC - 1046 BC). The I Ching, or "Book of Changes", is a collection of linear signs used as oracles that are from that period. Although divination with the I Ching is thought to have originated prior to the Shang Dynasty, it was not until King Wu of Zhou (1046 BC-1043 BC) that it took its present form. In addition to its oracular power, the I Ching has had a major influence on the philosophy, literature and statecraft of China from the time of the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 AC).

The earliest known oracle was in the renowned temple of Per-Wadjet. This was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt, which includes the cultural developments of ten thousand years from the Paleolithic to 3100 BC The temple was dedicated to the worship of Wadjet and may have been the source for the oracular tradition that spread to Ancient Greece from Egypt. ^[1] The Per-Wadjet tradition continued through the entire history of the Ancient Egyptian culture. The later Greeks called both the goddess and the city Buto.

Another oracle of note lay in Egypt during the Eighteenth dynasty (1550-1292 BC), in a temple dedicated to Amun, a god who rose to importance during that time. The Greeks associated him with Zeus. Alexander the Great once visited it, and although no record of his query remains, the oracle is thought to have hailed him as Ammon's son, influencing his conceptions of his own divinity.

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