L’onomastica religiosa neo-assira: aspetti qualitativi e quantitativi, riflessi sociali e religiosi - Ermenegildo Nitta (SUD,3)

In 8°, 240 pp. ill.ni a coll.

This monograph aims to provide a study of the religious onomastics of the Neo-
Assyrian period (10th-7th century BC) through the analysis of the main existing
prosopographic catalogue, published starting from the end of the 90s, namely the
“The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire”, known as “PNA”. Religious
onomastics are an aspect of onomastics about personal names that contain the
name of a god, therefore called “theonyms” or “theophorus”. Due to the wideness
of the subject, the research is based on two criteria:
- a small number of divinities, not more than twenty-ive;
- the analysis of anthroponyms relating to the Akkadian origin only.
The choice of the two criteria caused a reduction of the religious anthroponyms.
From a total of 4000 religious personal names in the PNA, about 2060 were considered.
The main purpose of this study is, therefore, not only to provide a catalogue
of religious anthroponyms but also to analyze the social and historical-religious
aspects of the human-divinity relationship by dividing the anthroponyms into eight
large semantic groups (and subgroups):
- domain and authority
- life
- knowledge
- protection
- prosperity
- cult
- justice
- qualitative-descriptive aspects.