Abstract
The present study analyzes religious concepts of the city in antiquity. A selection of texts from the Ancient Near East, from Jewish and Christian traditions and an example from Greece are examined and compared. Based on analytical categories defined by the author and applied to an otherwise heterogenous corpus of documents, the comparison serves to systematize recurring motifs which point to salient features and particular tendencies in the interpretation of urban space within ancient religious symbol systems. The study stresses the great variety of ancient approaches to and religious interpretations of urban space: praises of the city as a space of absolute cosmic order contrast with images of the city as a dimension of chaos and death; descriptions of the city as a space for human life are opposed to representations of transcendent worlds conceived in the form of cities.
Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria