Women in the Ancient Near East

A Sourcebook

Mark Chavalas

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135008246
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Ancient History

Women in the Ancient Near East provides a collection of primary sources that further our understanding of women from Mesopotamian and Near Eastern civilizations, from the earliest historical and literary texts in the third millennium BC to the end of Mesopotamian political autonomy in the sixth century BC. This book is a valuable resource for historians of the Near East and for those studying women in the ancient world. It moves beyond simply identifying women in the Near East to attempting to place them in historical and literary context, following the latest research. A number of literary genres are represented, including myths and epics, proverbs, medical texts, law collections, letters, treaties, as well as building, dedicatory, and funerary inscriptions.

1

AN EXPLORATION OF THE WORLD OF WOMEN IN THIRD-MILLENNIUM MESOPOTAMIA

Harriet Crawford

Attempts to reconstruct and understand the past are, by the nature of the evidence, always incomplete. Some artefacts and some groups are far more visible in the past record than others and are therefore easier to identify. Men’s activities are generally easier to identify than women’s and the public sphere, often thought to be predominantly male, is more accessible than the private. This inevitable incompleteness is exacerbated by the fact that scholars have frequently been rather selective in their fields of study, interested only in certain areas: in specific classes of artefacts, such as seals or metalwork; in the activities of certain classes of person; or in constructing a certain picture of the past. This approach can mean that even such evidence as exists is not fully exploited or is distorted, but with persistence and ingenuity it is possible to throw light on less visible and more neglected areas.

It is generally accepted today that there are other reasons too for this imbalance in the fields of study. In the past the relative lack of women in the archaeological profession and their generally junior status contributed to a certain myopia in scholars and to a tendency to overlook the female world of the past. For example, Trigger has written that in the 1980s “It was also demonstrated that the marginalization of women (in archaeology) had resulted in biased and androcentric interpretations of archaeological evidence” (Trigger 2006:458). Since then the situation has changed, more women are to be found in senior positions and a more holistic approach to the study of the past has begun to emerge, but problems still remain and new approaches and new models are still needed (Gilchrist 1999).

In addition, all models of the past are consciously or unconsciously coloured by the cultural and ideological background of the interpreter. This can be a particular problem when western scholars are dealing with non-Western European societies. One minor example of such a cultural bias, which is frequently quoted in the literature dealing with women in the past of Mesopotamia, is the concept of the harem, which defines the place of many women in Islamic times. This model, largely derived from the writings of early travellers in the Islamic world, coloured much of the early Western work on women in pre-Islamic times, too, even though it has yet to be shown that it is a relevant model. Recent work suggests that it is almost certainly an inappropriate concept in Mesopotamia in the later third millennium BC (al Zubaidi 2004). The issue of the veiling of women, another “oriental” custom, has also been much discussed, but there is little or no evidence for this custom either, prior to the later second millennium. Both these stereotypes need to be excluded from studies of women in early Mesopotamia (Bahrani 2001, Westenholz 1990).

Initially, scholarly work on the role of women in the early states of south Mesopotamia concentrated mainly on the professional roles of individual women. This paper will begin by reiterating and expanding the evidence for professional women, especially in the later part of the third millennium, and will then go on to suggest that these women were often based in a world that was distinct from that of men and that might best be described as a parallel universe from which they made major contributions to public life. Finally the paper will consider the relationship between the male and female worlds. It is hoped that these proposals will lead to a re-balancing of our picture of life in Mesopotamia and to a more accurate assessment of the complexity and sophistication of society in the second half of the third millennium. Finally, some new questions for future research will be briefly explored.

The evidence: potential and problems

We are fortunate that there is relevant evidence to be found in a range of different fields. Archaeologically there are representations of women in a number of media. Some of the most informative evidence is found on cylinder seals, sometimes accompanied by inscriptions. There are also female figures on inlays and votive statues in the round, which again are occasionally inscribed. Problems can arise because of the difficulty of identifying the sex of some of the figures represented on both seals and inlays. Unless the figure is naked to the waist, or bearded, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the sex, as both male and female are known to have worn their hair long at some periods, and in a bun at others. One well-known example of such a quandary is provided by the seals of the early third millennium showing people with pig-tails weaving and pot-making. These figures are usually thought to be female, but the male “page” on the Uruk vase wears his hair in a similar fashion.

If we accept that domestic buildings are well adapted to the practical and social needs of their inhabitants, they too can provide us with generic evidence for the domestic life of non-elite women. In the third millennium, house plans show no evidence for the seclusion of women, although the situation may have been different in the royal households. There is the possibility of a women’s quarter in the Mari palace. However, there is no word for such an area in the Mari texts (Ziegler 1999:7 and 17). Graves, with one or two exceptions, are not very informative, as bone preservation in Mesopotamia tends to be bad and much of the evidence was uncovered before anthropological examination of bones became a standard procedure, so that scientific attribution of sex is often not available, or even possible. Nor is it easy to deduce the sex of a body from its associated items as it is now widely accepted that our own preconceptions of male/female activities can produce a circular argument. The position is further complicated as there is now some evidence for the deposition of objects in graves by mourners and these offerings reflect the sex of the mourner rather than that of the primary burial.

Iconography on these goods can be misleading too. There is sometimes an implicit assumption that seals found in graves that bear scenes showing women as the main actors probably belonged to females, but two male burials from Ur (PG1422 and PG1850, Woolley 1934), have produced lapis seals with females as the main figures in presentation scenes. In the first grave the seal was worn by the main male burial, so was not an offering. It could perhaps be tentatively suggested that these particular males were high-ranking servants in a female household, owning seals that validated their appointments by the female head of the household as officials in such an establishment (Winter 1987 and below). The opposite is also true and females could have seals with combat scenes on them, a scene more often associated with men. A fine example comes from Mozan where seal impressions of a daughter of Naram-Sin of Agade called Tar’am Agade, who was married to the ruler of Urkesh, carry a combat scene of a type that seems to have been used exclusively by members of the royal family of both sexes (Buccellati and Buccellati 2002). A study of sealings from the archive of Ur-Utu dating to the early second-millennium Old Babylonian period has found that women chose the same subjects as men (Colbow 2002:90).

We are fortunate in having textual records, too, covering a number of relevant fields, of which the most important from our point of view is the administrative, followed by the economic, dedicatory and literary ones. Use of such sources also presents problems, not only because of the well-known bias of such texts towards the public institutions, but also that caused by the difficulty of identifying female names with certainty in Sumerian (Van de Mieroop 1999 chap.5). Further difficulties are introduced by the fact that that some Sumerian words, such as DUMU, are not necessarily gendered and so can stand for child as well as son.¹ Gemebau/baba daughter of Enentarzi sanga of Ningirsu at Lagash, is described in her dedicatory inscription as DUMU, yet the statue and her name are undoubtedly female. The name means slave of the goddess Bau/Baba (Bahrani 2001:101). These factors taken together would seem to indicate that the number of women in all types of evidence, both visual and textual, has probably been considerably underestimated, as in the case of uncertainty there is an (unconscious) bias on the part of scholars towards identifying participants in public life as male.

Studies of modern traditional societies in the Arab world can also broaden our understanding of the possible ways in which women live and how they may contribute to public life, although such studies can do no more than this and certainly cannot be taken as paradigms for earlier societies.

The scope of this paper

It is not possible to make broad generalisations about the world of women that hold good across time and space; their situation changes in response to many factors: social, economic and political. For example, early industrialisation and the increase in demand for manufactured goods, especially textiles and garments, in third-millennium Mesopotamia had a major impact on the lives of women. The manufacturing process was moved from the home into “factories” run by the palace and the temple or by rich individuals. The majority of the workers in these institutions seem to have been women and their children, who thus became institutionalised for the first time and reliant at least in part on rations provided by the employer (Pollock 1999:220, Wright 1996). There were also opportunities for professional advancement and some women rose to be foremen in charge of twenty or so weavers with higher wages, though the foremen could also be male. The position of women can also alter in response to political or ideological change in ways that need to be further explored. For example, the advent of the Amorites to power at the end of the first-quarter of the second millennium seems to have brought considerable social change in its wake in south Mesopotamia (Sharlach 2007). In the modern world we can point to the changes that took place in the lives of women in Afghanistan with the rise to power of the Taliban.

This study will therefore focus on south Mesopotamia in the period from the third to the early second millennium when there is for the first time enough evidence from a variety of sources to allow us to examine the world of women in some detail. The conclusions reached are relevant only to this area and time. The evidence for our chosen period does not cover all women equally, but is slanted in favour of the top and bottom echelons of society, and to the urban rather than the rural. The top echelons of society created most of the records that have survived and these deal largely with their own activities and concerns. The records also deal with the working women who formed a crucial part of the large royal and upper class households, which characterised the organisation of society. The professional women in the middle ranks are not so well documented, and rural and nomadic women are barely mentioned at all. Modern parallels suggest that their lives may have been substantially different to those of their urban sisters (Abu Lughod 1993).

Royal women

The exemplar of the professional woman was the queen who exercised real power both within her sphere and outside it. Her court was staffed by professional people, both male and female, and was hierarchical in its organisation. She exercised this power in much the same spheres as her husband having religious, diplomatic, administrative and economic responsibilities. She does not seem to have had legal or military duties. In addition to running large agricultural estates, it must be remembered that a household or oikos of the third millennium produced saleable commodities, especially textiles. These were produced under factory conditions by hundreds of workers (Maekawa 1973/4) and were probably sold in order to acquire goods and materials that the household did not produce itself. The wives of state governors sometimes held high positions in the royal women’s households (Glassner 1989:33).

The role of the queen in both the Early Dynastic and Ur III periods can be reconstructed in some detail. Her ceremonial role is shown, for example, on the Banquet seals popular in the later Early Dynastic period (c.2,600–602,200BC), which show women at public functions, usually together with a man, but a few examples of women-only banquets are also known. For example, two seals from the Royal Cemetery show only women as the main actors. The first is U.11871, a lapis seal from PG1163, which has a women as the main figure and which is also unusual in being a single-register seal. The second, U.10872, is also of lapis and is a two-register seal, which shows two women in the top register and one in the lower. It comes from PG800, the grave of the lady Puabi, who was probably a queen and is one of three belonging to her. The possession of three seals in itself indicates her involvement in administrative affairs as they were used to sign and validate documents, and the main figure in the banquet may represent Puabi herself performing her public functions. In addition to Puabi’s seal, U.12380 from the Great Death Pit, PG1237, although worn, seems to show three women banqueting on the top register, while the lower shows an animal combat (Woolley 1934). This seal, like the others mentioned, is of lapis, a prestigious material indicating high rank in its possessor. It seems from these all-women seals that, whatever the precise nature of the ceremony, it could be carried out by women on their own.

There is no certainty that all examples of this type of seal illustrate actual royal banquets, some may be religious ceremonies, for example, while others may depict less exalted households, but they all show an apparent equality in standing between the male and female participants. The plaques representing banquet scenes also show male and female drinkers the same size.² It is interesting to note that in both media the women are occasionally shown drinking from straws like their male partners, but more often are shown drinking from cups. (Men may also be shown drinking from cups so this is not an exclusively female attribute.) Presumably the straws were used for drinking unfiltered beer, while cups might hold wine or some other beverage. The public aspect of banqueting would also, incidentally, argue against the seclusion of royal women.

It is also possible that some of the banquet seals may show the royal couple entertaining foreign dignitaries, as some show three or four main figures. Others could show the funerary rituals, which involved feasting with the royal women of the past (Glassner 1989:89). We know from texts at Mari that the queen would receive foreign delegations together with her husband, so that there is no doubt that she was an active part of the diplomatic process as well as the ceremonial (Ziegler 1999:7). At Lagash the queen exchanged gifts with the wife of the ruler of Adab (Prentice 2010). In addition, women of the royal family had an important though passive diplomatic role as the brides of foreign rulers with whom alliances were formed. Once married these women transmitted useful information back to their home country and could act as intermediaries. They travelled to their new homes with a large entourage and must have had a considerable cultural impact as well as a diplomatic one. Royal women were given as wives of high officials within the kingdom, perhaps to ensure their loyalty, while foreign women of high status also decorated the courts of Mesopotamian kings.

It is difficult to identify the precise type of activity taking place on the banquet seals and this is partly because the various spheres of activity that we have mentioned in fact overlap considerably. The demarcations between sacred and secular did not exist in the forms to which we are accustomed and, equally, it is difficult to distinguish between diplomacy and trade in the exchange of goods. Administrative duties included all the other areas of activity.

Another public or quasi-public function of elite women that took place within the female world is shown on some of the so-called presentation or audience scene seals, which show a single seated woman receiving homage. As with the comparable male scenes it is often difficult to tell whether the main seated figure is human or divine. In the absence of a horned crown, or of divine symbols, it seems reasonable to suggest that the seated figure is human. Such seals again occur at Ur in the Royal cemetery in both male and female graves. They apparently show the queen bestowing positions on her senior officials, an interpretation that has already been suggested by Winter for the male version of the scene (Winter 1991). For example, U.7954 is of lapis with a gold cap and both registers show a presentation to a female figure. From the same grave, apparently that of a woman, U7956, also of lapis, shows a double presentation. In the top register a woman is presented to a goddess and in the lower to a human female. The material of which these seals are made and the subject matter both suggest that they were the property of important officials, while the iconography suggests that they held these positions in a female household, although we have already seen that iconography is not a very reliable indicator. There are also a few presentation seals that seem to show more domestic scenes, such as the royal nanny in the presence of the queen and her children at Urkesh (Buccellati and Buccellati 1995/6). A particularly charming audience scene, also of lapis, shows Amar-Ashtar, a servant of Tutanapsum, another ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 An exploration of the world of women in third-millennium Mesopotamia
• 2 The feminine in myths and epic
• 3 Sumerian wisdom literature
• 4 Akkadian wisdom literature
• 5 Medicine and healing magic
• 6 Women and law
• 7 The Epic of Gilgamesh
• 8 The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld compared to Nergal and Ereshkigal
• 9a Akkadian Texts—Women in letters: Old Assyrian Kaniš
• 9b Akkadian Texts—Women in letters: The Neo-Assyrian period
• 10a Women in Neo-Assyrian texts
• 10b Women in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions
• 11 Women in Hittite ritual
• 12 Hurro-Hittite stories and Hittite pregnancy and birth rituals
• Index