The Little-Known Life of Mesopotamian Temples.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 20552 |
| Format | 13.5 x 21 |
| Détails | 256 p., 44 illustrations, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2017 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251446714 |
Ancient Mesopotamia has been the subject of fascinating discoveries since the 19th century. The cradle of our civilization, it witnessed the birth of writing towards the end of the 4th millennium BC. The hundreds of thousands of texts that have come down to us from these distant eras, combined with archaeological evidence, reveal an enchanted world where everything, to varying degrees, is sacred. Every human activity involves the intervention of a god. In this context, the temples dedicated to the deities have something surprising about them. Far from being simply places of worship, where the clergy cared for the deities represented in statues, they were the setting for daily activities: the temples of Shamash, the god of justice, functioned as courts; those of Gula, the goddess of health, as healing centers; those of Nabu, the god of writing, as libraries; and those of Ishtar, the goddess of love, as houses of pleasure. In a word, tracing the little-known life of these temples is an attempt to recover that of these men of another time. This is the purpose of this book, which is the result of Dominique Charpin's teaching at the Collège de France.
Ancient Mesopotamia has been the subject of fascinating discoveries since the 19th century. The cradle of our civilization, it witnessed the birth of writing towards the end of the 4th millennium BC. The hundreds of thousands of texts that have come down to us from these distant eras, combined with archaeological evidence, reveal an enchanted world where everything, to varying degrees, is sacred. Every human activity involves the intervention of a god. In this context, the temples dedicated to the deities have something surprising about them. Far from being simply places of worship, where the clergy cared for the deities represented in statues, they were the setting for daily activities: the temples of Shamash, the god of justice, functioned as courts; those of Gula, the goddess of health, as healing centers; those of Nabu, the god of writing, as libraries; and those of Ishtar, the goddess of love, as houses of pleasure. In a word, tracing the little-known life of these temples is an attempt to recover that of these men of another time. This is the purpose of this book, which is the result of Dominique Charpin's teaching at the Collège de France.