ABSTRACT
Human adolescence is a difficult period of transition between childhood and adulthood. The death of a young man or woman in the flower of youth is also a tragic event, deeply felt, and attended by feelings of guilt, which translate to the idea that ghosts of such persons might have legitimate reasons for haunting the living. When, then, ancient Mesopotamian scholars needed an explanation for the stresses experienced by adolescents, and diseases or conditions that seemed disproportionately to afflict them, they attributed these stresses, diseases or conditions to a class of demons, lilû, lilītu and ardat lilî, who were recruited from among young persons who died just before or just after marriage and who usually victimized persons of the opposite sex but of the same age as themselves.
