Life, Death, and Coming of Age in Antiquity = Vivre, grandir et mourir dans l’Antiquité : Individual Rites of Passage in the Ancient Near East and Adjacent Regions = rites de passage individuels au Proche-Orient Ancien et ses environs / edited by Alice Mouton and Julie Patrier.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Alice Mouton and Julie Patrier -- I. Becoming someone : the social dimension of rites of passage -- De la ville au temple : l’intronisation du haut-clergé babylonien à la fin du IIIe millénaire av. J.-C. / F. Huber Vulliet -- Comment devient-on un autre – un héros, un sage, une épouse (divine) ? Notes sur des possibles rites de passage dans la culture syro-mésopotamienne ancienne / Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault -- Rites of Marriage, Divorce, and Adoption in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia / Norman Yoffee -- Purification and Liberation of an Individual according to Syrian and Hittite Texts / Robert Hawley, Alice Mouton and Carole Roche-Hawley -- The Enthronement of the Hittite King as a Royal Rite of Passage / Amir Gilan and Alice Mouton -- Royal Rites of Passage and Calendar Festivals in the Hittite World / Susanne Görke and Alice Mouton -- Kingship and Liminality : Rites of Passage in a Babylonian akītu Festival / Julye Bidmead -- The Coronation Ritual of the Sacred Living Falcon at Edfu : A Divine, Royal and Cyclical Rites of Passage / Carina van den Hoven -- Intégration du mort dans la vie sociale égyptienne à la fin du IIIe millénaire av. J.-C. / Sylvie Donnat and Juan Carlos Moreno García -- II. Real Life, Symbolic Life : Ritualized Life and Death in Rites of Passage -- Une lecture anthropologique des rites de naissance mésopotamiens / Sophie Laribi-Glaudel -- Iconographie et archéologie des rites de passage de la petite enfance dans le monde romain. Questions méthodologiques / Véronique Dasen -- The Cyclical Character of Human Life in Ancient Egypt and Hittite Anatolia / Marie-Lys Arnette, Christian Greco and Alice Mouton -- Funerals, Initiation and Rituals of Life in Pharaonic Egypt / Christopher Eyre -- Les dépôts alimentaires dans les tombes du Proche-Orient ancien d’après les témoignages archéologiques. Études de cas / Marie-Lys Arnette, Julie Patrier and Isabelle Sachet -- ‘His Wind is Released’ – The Emergence of the Ghost. Rite of Passage in Mesopotamia / Dina Katz -- III. Liminality and Impurity : The Dangers of Transformation -- Liminarité, impureté et franchissements rituels en Anatolie hittite / Alice Mouton -- Rites of Passage and Purification in Greece and the Aegean : 2nd-1st millennia BC / Daniela Lefèvre-Novaro and Ian Rutherford -- Itinéraires initiatiques et poésie rituelle en Grèce ancienne : rites de passage pour adolescentes à Sparte / Claude Calame -- Existe-t-il une « homosexualité initiatique » ? Pour une anthropologie de la sexualité antique / Sandra Boehringer -- Rites de passage en Mésopotamie : le rôle d’Inanna-Ištar / Jean-Jacques Glassner -- First Glimpses of the Liminal Hero / Gregory Mobley.

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.

Contributions in English and French.