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Divine love is the central theme of many ancient Mesopotamian compositions. Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts poetically describe the love and sexual relationship between gods. The object of this study is to analyse, through a gender and anthropological perspective, the metaphorical language used to describe divine love relationships, focusing on the use of images from agriculture, pastoralism, and the plant world. Such metaphors contribute to the creation and at the same time to the reinforcement of a sexual imaginary, not only divine but also human. Divine sexuality and the metaphors used to describe it become, over the millennia, paradigms for understanding and thinking about human sexuality: male power and vigour, female desire, and sexual intercourse. Moreover, these texts certainly have a ritual implication, probably linked to the celebration of the so called ‘Sacred Marriage,’ whose aim is the political legitimisation of the rulers. It is divine sex that guarantees not only the political but also the socio-economic regeneration of the community, renewing the alliance between the human and divine spheres

Il volume esamina il senso di precarietà della vita sperimentato dagli iraniani e dalle iraniane nel primo decennio del ventunesimo secolo. La dissoluzione dei legami familiari, la precarietà lavorativa, le disuguaglianze di genere e di classe, un intenso individualismo, un senso di homelessness (mancanza di terra natia): tutti questi fenomeni contribuiscono alla determinazione delle vite precarie. Descritti dalla società come improduttivi e come un peso per la società, le giovani e i giovani iraniani sono sottoposti a una perenne incertezza determinata dal dispositivo dell’attesa, continua e senza fine, che li costringe in una pietrificante immobilità sociale e spaziale. Nelle vite precarie, il presente è incerto e il domani appare senza futuro. Tuttavia, attraverso un’attenta ricerca sul campo tra i giovani di Teheran ed Esfahan, nonché tra i lavoratori migranti delle aree rurali, Khosravi descrive anche il sogno “a occhi aperti” e la speranza delle giovani generazioni per il cambiamento, praticato attraverso la mobilitazione e la solidarietà nelle proteste politiche, nei carnevali di strada e nei movimenti sociali. The volume examines the sense of precariousness of life experienced by Iranian men and women in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The dissolution of family ties, job insecurity, gender and class inequalities, intense individualism, a sense of homelessness (lack of homeland): all these phenomena contribute to the determination of precarious lives. Described by society as unproductive and as a burden to society, Iranian young men and women are subjected to a perennial uncertainty determined by the device of continuous and endless waiting, which forces them into a petrifying social and spatial immobility. In precarious lives, the present is uncertain and tomorrow appears without a future. However, through careful field research among the youth of Tehran and Esfahan, as well as migrant workers from rural areas, Khosravi also describes the "daydreaming" and hope of the younger generation for change, practiced through mobilization and solidarity in political protests, street carnivals and social movements.