Ricerc@Sapienza

In this paper I discuss the Mesopotamian concept of time, from its mythological foundation to its ritual reckoning in calendrical festivals, taking the Babylonian Poem of Creation as a main guideline. From the creation, and conception, of time in cosmogonies I proceed to treat the dichotomy mythical vs. historical time and the preeminent theories on time when applied to religious phenomena. The recitation of the Poem of Creation during the New Year festival (ak?tu) is taken as a key element to deal with the function and relation of rituals with time marking, creation, and control.

The theme of violence is largely represented in the visual media of ancient Mesopotamia and Syria, from ancient times (fourth millennium BCE) up to the periods of the great empires of Assyria and Babylonia in the first millennium CE. Violent scenes, mostly related to war, principally show the punishment and killing of enemies according to recurrent visual topoi – such as beheading, beating, impalement, blinding, cutting and amputation of limbs – on different media, from cylinder seals to inlays and larger reliefs.

In this paper I analyze the different occasion and reason for traveling of the Neo-Assyrian experts of scribal, mantic, and therapeutic disciplines (ummânu).

In this paper I deal with the role dress and clothing play in the constitution and shaping of individual identity. Through the close analysis of a number of case studies, namely the substitute king (“King of substitution” šar pūḫi) and “A man’s substitute for Ereškigal” (ana pūḫi amēli Ereškigal) rituals, as well as the practice of exposing royal robes as representation of the king in his absence, I explore the mechanisms that make possible for clothing to both represent and substitute the individual.