Subproject C02

Ancient Near Eastern Conceptions of Order between Law and Religion

Since the linguistic and conceptional proximity between law and religion in the ancient Near East is striking, this project wants to study the entanglement of these social domains and analyze their mutual impact, which – so the argument goes – was basically established through the use of metaphors. Focusing on the Old Babylonian Period of Mesopotamian history (1^st half of the 2^nd millennium BCE), the project will examine to what extent specific ‘languages’, i.e., a different use of certain phraseologies, have developed in the fields of law on the one hand and religion on the other hand.