letteratura accadica

Messaggeri degli dei: Infanzia e divinazione nell’antica Mesopotamia

In ancient Mesopotamia, infancy is an elusive category. Although vague- ly defined from a lexical viewpoint, the concept of childhood is almost en- tirely absent from literature, and seldom represented in non-literary textual sources. Texts regarding childbirth, however, constitute an exception to this. Several sources, from mythological accounts of creation (anthropogonies) to therapeutic texts and omens, shift their attention to birth and the baby. Taking this fact into account, in this paper I focus on the role that children bodies play in divination.

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