Os canídeos na Antiga Mesopotâmia: novas abordagens para o estudo das representações dos animais nas fontes cuneiformes (3º - 1º milênio AEC)

This work shall focus on the representation of a specific group of animals, the canids family, in Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform sources. By doing so, I aim to demonstrate that those texts do not really seek to represent the animals themselves, but should be understood as a reflection of how human populations from Mesopotamia conceptualized their own interactions with those species. To such purpose, I shall mobilize different types of textual sources from a wide chronological range, from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE to the Neo-Babylonian period (626-539 BCE). The material shall be studied through a transversal approach, considering both physiological and behavioral characteristics from canids, thus evidencing, thanks to the support of disciplines such as zoology and ethology, how cuneiform texts reflect interactive patterns between those animals and humans populations.