Search

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.

After more than fifty years since the last publication, the cuneiform texts relating to the treatment of the loss of male sexual desire and vigor in Mesopotamia are collected in this volume. The aim of the book is to present Mesopotamian medical tradition regarding the so-called nīš libbi therapies. šà-zi-ga in Sumerian, nīš libbi in Akkadian, lit. "raising of the 'heart'", is the expression used to indicate a group of texts intended to recover the male sexual desire. This medical tradition is preserved from the Middle Babylonian period to the Achaemenid one. This broad range testifies to the importance of the transmission of this material throughout Mesopotamian history. The book provides the edition of this textual corpus and analyzes it in the light of new knowledge on ancient Near Eastern medicine. Moreover, this volume aims to show how theories and methodologies of Cultural Anthropology, Ethnopsychiatry and Gender Studies are useful for understanding the Mesopotamian medical system. This edition is an important tool for understanding Mesopotamian medical knowledge for Assyriologist, however since the texts have been translated and discussed using the anthropological and gender perspectives they are accessible also to scholars of other research fields, such as History of Medicine, Sexuality and Gender.

Il contributo lega il rinnovato interesse per le figure e l'immaginario arboreo allo sviluppo delle environmental humanities sullo sfondo del dibattito sull'Antropocene. In particolare, introduce gli orientamenti teorici principali che sottendono lo studio delle "dendrolatrie" negli ambiti di studio della memoria e del patrimonio culturale, dell'antropologia e della storia delle religioni e nel campo dei cultural studies. The study put into perspective the renewal of interest toward trees and botanical figures with the development of environemental humanities in the framework of the Anthropocene. In particular, it introduces the main theoretical orientations undelying the study of the cults of trees in the fields of memory and heritage studies, of anthropology and history of religion and of cultural studies.

In the Sumerian and Akkadian mythological literature, the ruler of the city of Uruk, Gilgameš, uproots and/or cuts down trees on several occasions: the ḫalub-tree (mahaleb cherry) linked to the goddess Inanna and the eren (juniper)/erēnu (cedar) trees of the Forest guarded by Ḫuwawa. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider "wilderness", with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness, as opposed to the city and the country of Sumer. In order to become useful, this otherness must be conducted in the city and subject to processes of organization. This article illustrates the symbolic implications of the uprooting, cutting down and subsequent transport of these tree species to the city and the importance of these actions not only for Gilgameš but also for his urban community. The sovereign's action on the tree, similar to that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent creation of 'artefacts', allows, through the cultural organisation of the tree's power, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human community and the divine world.

Research on the medical systems of ancient Mesopotamia has progressed considerably in recent years and has been enriched by theoretical contributions from the social sciences. This paper aims to show how theories and methodologies of Medical Anthropology can be useful to understand the internal logic of nīš libbi therapies, which aim to regain the male sexual desire. The article explores Mesopotamian classificatory systems related to the body and pathologies, as well as the relationship between male and female agencies in the therapeutic itinerary. Other issues are investigated: recipients of treatment; symptomatology and ideology of binding; interrelationship between incantations and prescriptions; etiological analysis; function of abracadabra and historiolae.

Dialogo tra antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

Analisi antropologica del componimento mitologico sumerico Gilgamesh, Enkidu e gli Inferi

The topic of the paper is Bībī Šahrbānū’s Shia shrine near Ray (Iran) which shows a continuity of places of worship and ritual practices from the pre-Islamic period to the Islamic one. It was a place of worship dedicated originally to Anāhīd, the Zoroastrian goddess of water and fertility, protector of the royalty of the ancient Persian empires. The symbolic connector element is the water, sacred to the goddess Anāhīd, and important in the Shia worship of Bībī Šahrbānū, but also in the Zoroastrian sanctuaries near Yazd, such as that of Bānū-Pārs and Pīr-e Sabz.

Introduzione alla storia della musica nell'antica Mesopotamia.

Il contributo indaga il rapporto tra città sumeriche e divinità poliadi nella Mesopotamia del III millennio a.C.

The Distant Worlds Journal (DWJ) is an online peer-reviewed journal established especially for presenting the research of early-career scholars on the ancient world. Each edition of the DWJ centres on a specific question or topic pertinent to the diverse disciplines engaged in the study of ancient cultures. In our fourth edition, we explore cultural anthropological theories and methods in the ancient studies, both in terms of the opportunities they offer for the study of ancient cultures and the problems they pose when applied

The paper attempts to reconstruct the cosmogonic and cosmological doctrines of the Mesopotamian peoples over their three millennia of history. It focuses on both Sumerian and Akkadian sources that describe the origin, formation, and organization of the universe according to Mesopotamian religious thought.

Although many assyriological studies have been done on internal organs in the Mesopotamian worldview, the pathologies associated with them, and their metaphorical and ideological value, little attention have been paid to the fact that, sometimes, internal organs are associated with verbs of movement. Perhaps, this limited regard can be attributed to the assyriological look at the Mesopotamian body being shaped by the modern biomedicine. According to biomedicine, in fact, the human internal anatomy is composed of a series of organs which stay fixed in their positions. On the contrary, I want to show how the internal organs in Mesopotamian anatomy are thought as capable to move. I will demonstrate, thanks to the contribution of the cultural anthropological perspective, that these movements of internal organs can determine two conditions: emotional and psychological states; and pathological signs. Consequently, some organ movements are considered necessary, in accordance to the functioning of the Mesopotamian anatomical-emotional system, while others produce alterations considered negative. In addition, the first case shows that there is no a clear distinction between “mind” and “body” in Mesopotamian, but that, on the contrary, the psycho-emotional dimension and bodily processes are strongly interrelated and that such expressions with internal organs and verbs of movement referring to emotional states should not be intended only metaphorically, but in the concreteness of bodily processes.

Ressenya, Recensione

In this paper we present a bibliographical list of works published between 2002 and 2015 which have focused on women and gender in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the list, we also provide an introduction in which we consider the relationship between women’s studies and gender studies and present a selection of the trends and theoretical positions which have emerged since the late 1980s either inside the framework of gender studies, or in closely related fields such as queer studies, postcolonial studies and feminist epistemologies – the predominant trends in the time span covered by this overview. We hope that this work will provide ancient Near Eastern scholars with a useful research tool.

The Old-Babylonian text “A man and his god” has enjoyed a wide reputation for its many parallels with the biblical story of Job, and has been the subject of accurate philological analysis. This composition describes the suffering and pain of desperate man calls his God for healing. The aim of this work is to show how you can apply to the Mesopotamian literary texts dealing with the issue of suffering, pain and discomfort-disgrace, the theoretical and methodological tools of medical anthropology. An anthropological approach to the problem of illness in Mesopotamia can understand, in a deeper sense, the symbolic, socio-cultural and political complexity. The essay provides much food for thought on the concept of sickness and the body in the Old-Babylonian Mesopotamia. The affliction of the protagonist is both physical and mental. The words of the poem does not refer only and exclusively to the sphere of physical suffering. The verbs are used in their more general semantic value, showing a man debilitated, helplessly, the victim of an imbalance, which upsets not only the physical and psychological well-being, but also social relations. The pains are part of a broad category which is that of misfortune. Therefore, there is a clear distinction between the evils that affect physically and emotionally man and the events of the most varied nature, which affects his difficult life. The ignorance of the divine will seems to be the human condition. The miserable situation of the sufferer is determined by an inscrutable divine decision.

Sri Lanka, durante las dos últimas décadas, fue el escenario de una prolongada guerra civil entre la mayoría cingalesa budista y la minoría tamil hindú, que ha defendido su independencia. La primera parte de este artículo muestra que no fueron las diferencias de origen étnico-cultural las que llevaron a la guerra, sino las razones políticas y económicas. La guerra civil ha llevado a una radicalización y cristalización de las diferencias étnicas a través de la manipulación del pasado y del papel político del budismo. La guerra provocó la diáspora tamil en todo el mundo, incluyendo también Sicilia. En la segunda parte del artículo, se presentan algunos puntos del trabajo de campo realizado con la comunidad tamil en la ciudad de Palermo, Sicilia. In the last two decades, Sri Lanka was the stage of a long civil war between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and the Tamil Hindu minority, that fought for independence. The first part of the article shows that war was not caused by ethnic-cultural differences, but rather by political and economic reasons. The war has led to a radicalization and crystallization of ethnic differences, through the manipulation of the past and the political role of Buddhism. The conflict has created Tamil diaspora in whole world, and in Sicily too. In the second part of the article I present some items of the field-work done inside the Tamil community located in Palermo, Sicily. Fil: Zisa, Gioele. Università degli Studi di Palermo, Dipartimento Culture e società; Italia