Movilidad y parentesco en los rituales de investidura de las sacerdotisas de Emar

Rocío López Karababikian; Dana Abigail Godoy

doi:10.35305/cl.vi23.153

Authors

Rocío López Karababikian Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dana Abigail Godoy Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35305/cl.vi23.153

Keywords:

Mobility, Kinship, Pilgrimage, Status, Emar

Abstract

The discovery of a series of Akkadian language tablets in the 1970s has led to an awareness of two religious rituals related to the installation of religious authorities in the city of Emar, in the north of present-day Syria. In the tablets Emar 369 and Emar 370, we find descriptions of the installation rituals for the NIN.DINGIR and maš’artu priestesses of the temple of the storm god. The parallels between these rituals are many; in particular, both have a strong emphasis on the mobility of the future priestesses, who throughout the ritual move continuously between their family homes and the temples. Considering that the nature of this mobility has not been as of yet thoroughly explored, the present work aims to analyse the rituals together to understand the role of religious mobility in shaping the social relations of the kingdom, focusing on how it transforms the status of the people involved and how it reaffirms the existing social order while simultaneously altering social relations among subjects (particularly regarding how it affects parental bonds) and with the deities. We also revisit the hypotheses proposed by Daniel E. Fleming and Daniel Arnaud relating to the communal nature of the rite as independent from and preceding the state structure.

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References

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