Thèse soutenue

L'idée de bonheur dans la littérature suméro-akkadienne
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Auteur / Autrice : Brigitte Lion
Direction : Dominique Charpin
Type : Thèse de doctorat
Discipline(s) : Histoire
Date : Soutenance en 1993
Etablissement(s) : Paris 1

Résumé

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The analysed sources are literary cuneiform tablets in Akkadian and Sumerian from the third to first millenium b. C. The first condition of human's happiness is the agreement with the divine will. Leaving descendants is the most important individual wish, it is the best form of survival in such a civilization that does not believe in the next world. Less important is the search of material well-being. The necessity of living in society is showed by everyone's wish to integrate into a harmonious familial and social frame : loneliness is always feeled negatively. Those yearnings are perceptible through nice descriptions of collective feasts in social concord and abundance of goods. Happiness is easily imagined in a distant past with which one must renew by following the tradition. Present happiness is also appreciated, but there is no interest for the future which is frightening. Human realization has the known world as ideal spatial frame : the steppe scares and faraway worlds did not give rise to utopia. Divine happiness follow the same model as human happiness, but there are two differences : immortality and divine idleness (Gods created men in order to make them work for them). The oldest representations of the general scheme appear in some particular social groups studies, like soldiers or nomads, which develop an ethic sometimes opposite to the ideals above-mentioned.