This thesis project puts forward a new glance on the ancient Greek and Mesopotamian systems of religious beliefs. Thanks to a contrastive approach, the Greek goddess Aphrodite is compared to the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ištar. By studying in the two different pantheons the goddesses’ modes of action “from the inside”, the purpose of this study is to understand how the idea of divine “power” works in the Archaic Greek texts and Paleo-Babylonian compositions from the IInd millennium B. C. Shares of honor, finery, corteges are the expressions of Aphrodite’s and Inanna/Ištar’s networks of power. They can be transmitted or traded and they convey specific sovereignties of the goddesses. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to study different expressions of divine “powers” within two separate cultural structures (the Greek world and Mesopotamia), to catch their internal dynamics, and then to compare the results to shed a new light on the functioning of Greek and Sumero-Akkadian pantheons.
