Messaggeri degli dei: Infanzia e divinazione nell’antica Mesopotamia

In ancient Mesopotamia, infancy is an elusive category. Although vague- ly defined from a lexical viewpoint, the concept of childhood is almost en- tirely absent from literature, and seldom represented in non-literary textual sources. Texts regarding childbirth, however, constitute an exception to this. Several sources, from mythological accounts of creation (anthropogonies) to therapeutic texts and omens, shift their attention to birth and the baby. Taking this fact into account, in this paper I focus on the role that children bodies play in divination. More specifically, I analyze how the appearance of the baby different body parts conveys a message that can concern both the baby – as carrier of his/her individual destiny written in his/her body (physi- ognomy), and the whole community (teratomancy), the child becoming at the same time both the message and messenger of the gods