FRE-VIE MECONNUE DES TEMPLES M

Ancient Mesopotamia has been the object of riveting discoveries since the 19th century. The cradle of our civilization, it witnessed the birth of writing in the late 4th millennium BC. The hundreds of thousands of texts that have been passed down to us from these remote times, combined with archaeological evidence, have revealed to us an enchanted world in which – to some degree – all is sacred. Every human activity involves a god’s intervention. In this context, temples devoted to divinities hold some surprises for us. Far from being just places of worship, they were settings for activities of daily life: the temples of Shamash, the God of Justice, functioned as courts; those of Gula, the Goddess of Health, as spas; those of Nabu, the God of Writing, as libraries; and those of Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, as houses of pleasure. Dominique Charpin is a professor at Collège de France. After serving as a field epigraphist in Mari (Syria) and Larsa (Iraq), since 2015 he has been working with the American mission now in charge of the Ur excavations. His published works include Hammu-rabi de Babylone (2003) and Lire et écrire à Babylone (2008). He is the co-editor of the Royal Archives of Mari, Director of Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, and webmaster of www.archibab.fr.