Cuando la violencia genera identidad. La guerra en Sri Lanka y la diáspora tamil en Sicilia

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 co…

Il corpo sessuato delle dee. Agricoltura, pastorizia e mondo vegetale nella Mesopotamia antica

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 analyze the metaphorical language used to describe divine love relationships, focusing in particular 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 would, over the millennia, become paradigms for understanding and thinking about human sexuality: male power and vigor, fema…

Recensione, B. Beyzai, Storia del teatro in Iran

Rev. of. M. J. Geller, Melothesia in Babylonia: Medicine, Magic, and Astrology in the Ancient Near East

Leggere il rituale con Rappaport. La cerimonia mesopotamica del mīs pî da una prospettiva ecologica

Vite precarie. Attesa e speranza in Iran

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 precari…

Medicina babilonese e antropologia medica. Sull’efficacia delle terapie per il ripristino del desiderio sessuale maschile in Mesopotamia

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 presc…

Alberi. Figure del pensiero, forme dell'azione

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…

“In quel giorno, in quella notte, in quell’anno”. Cosmogonie e cosmologie sumeriche e assiro-babilonesi

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.

Antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

Dialogo tra antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

Recensione di Ilona Zsolnay (ed.), Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity

Le città sumeriche e i loro dèi nella Bassa Mesopotamia

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

Recensione di S. Bonanzinga, L. Del Giudice, and Th.A. McKean (eds), Street Music and Narrative Traditions.

Dall’alterità alla città. Regalità, sessualità e agricoltura in Gilgameš, Enkidu e gli Inferi

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

The Loss of Male Sexual Desire in Ancient Mesopotamia

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 …

Going, Returning, Rising. The Movement of the Organs in the Mesopotamian Anatomy

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 demons…

Prácticas musicales en la antigua Mesopotamia

Introduzione alla storia della musica nell'antica Mesopotamia.

Vorwort: Altertumswissenschaften und Kulturanthropologie. Chancen und Probleme

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

Conceptual Metaphors and Social Action. Divine Sex as Political-Economic and Gender Paradigm in Ancient Mesopotamia

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 sexual…

Per un’etnomusicologia storica del Vicino Oriente antico

Ressenya

L’acqua, la roccia, la santa. Santuari femminili in Iran tra zoroastrismo e sciismo

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.

Recenzione di Lynn Budin, S., Cifarelli, M., Garcia-Ventura, A. e Millet Albà, A.(a cura di) (2019), Gender and methodology in the ancient Near East. Approaches from Assyriology and beyond, Barcelona, Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona.

Quando Gilgameš taglia i “cedri”. Gli alberi nell’immaginario mitologico mesopotamico

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 t…

L’arte di narrazione orale naqqāli. Storia, politiche culturali e folklore in Iran

Re-giardinieri e Natura selvaggia. Implicazioni politico-simboliche dello sradicamento, taglio e trasporto in città degli alberi nella Mesopotamia del III e II millennio

In Sumerian mythological literature, as in coeval Akkadian one, between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the ruler, foremost among them Gilgameš, on several occasions uproots and/or cuts down trees. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider ‘Wilderness’, with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness compared to the city and, more generally, to the land of Sumer. The action of the king on the tree, like that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent realization of ‘artefacts’, allows, through a cultural organization of the power of the tree, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human communit…

Sofferenza, malessere e disgrazia. : Metafore del dolore e senso del male nell'opera paleo-babilonese "Un uomo e il suo dio": un approccio interdisciplinare

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 though…

Quando l'eroe disturba il mostro. Uno studio comparativo sulla figura del mostro-custode: Ḫubaba, Ladone e il serpente della Colchide

Rev. of the Journal «Etnografie Sonore / Sound Ethnographies»

Dendrolatrie. Miti e pratiche dell'immaginario arboreo

L’avvento dell’Antropoce, epoca in cui l’essere umano è diventato una forza geologica, scompagina la divisione del sapere tra scienze umane e naturali. Per comprenderlo, è necessario costruire nuove forme di alleanza tra discipline. È quanto invita a fare anche il fe- nomeno delle dendrolatrie. Diffuso in ogni luogo e in ogni epoca, il culto degli alberi testimonia come il mondo arboreo abbia plasma- to modi di vivere e di pensare, venendone a sua volta trasformato. Per scavare nella complessità di questo scambio, il volume racco- glie i frutti del dialogo tra un gruppo interdisciplinare di ricercatrici e ricercatori che esplorano l’immaginario arboreo in tre direzioni: quella degli studi s…

Miti, culti, saperi. Per un'antropologia religiosa della Mesopotamia antica

The theoretical and methodological approaches of Cultural and Social Anthropology have long since become indispensable for the study of classical antiquity, so much so that we can speak of a Historical Anthropology of the Ancient World. On the contrary, the dialogue between historians and philologists on the one hand and anthropologists, on the other hand, has been less developed concerning the cultures of the ancient Near East. There are several reasons for this lack of dialogue, the most important of which is the fact that the multilingual cuneiform textual corpus is still largely unpublished and characterized by philological difficulties that make it inaccessible to non-specialists. This…

Chances and Problems of Cultural Anthropological Perspectives in Ancient Studies. Theories – Methods – Case Studies

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.