Life, Death, and Coming of Age in Antiquity: Individual Rites of Passage in the Ancient Near East and Adjacent Regions: Vivre, grandir et mourir dans l'Antiquite: rites de passage individuels au Proche-Orient ancien et ses environs

Biological and social life of human beings is punctuated by rites of

passage. Although some of them are documented in detail, rites of

passage in ancient Near Eastern cultures have not previously been

presented comprehensively and parallel to each other. A thorough study

is achieved in this volume by combining various approaches and

disciplines. The basic rites of passage are examined: birth,

adolescence, changes of social status, and death.
The

present volume consists of twenty-one contributions by specialists of

ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, and neighbouring cultures. It is

structured around three main axes: Becoming someone: The social

dimension of rites of passage , where the interface between the

religious sphere and the socio-political structure is examined; Real

life, symbolic life: Ritualized life and death in rites of passage , or

how each threshold crossed by an individual is perceived as a new

beginning; and Liminality and impurity: The dangers of transformation ,

which defines the complex relation between notions of purity and

impurity and rites of passage.