Women at the Dawn of History 2020

Andromeda Publishing And Academic Services, 2023

The legendary women of ancient Mesopotamia, whose myths of supernatural beings as well as mortal narratives, played a vital role in building the cradle of civilization, were omitted from history until about a hundred years ago, when archaeologists dug them up and an untold story arose. Thanks to these findings and to the writers, historians, and lecturers who valued the women of that region and therefore kept them alive, there is now a lot of information to read about them. Yet, despite the wealth of material available, the role these women played in ancient Mesopotamian history and culture is still a fairly new topic, mostly of interest to scholars and educators who have special interests in the fields of archaeology and ancient history. The rest of the world is unaware of their existence. After all, these women’s stories were buried for thousands of years and only began to resurface about a hundred years ago. Their original roles as oracles, astrologers, and politicians can still be ascertained from their depictions on stone tablets and pottery art that was collected through archaeological research. Since these stories have resurfaced, it is essential that the world recognize their presence. Studying the stories of these women reveals how their systematic omission has contributed to the ruin of ancient Mesopotamia and how this has impacted our world in many negative ways. Studying their stories will also provide an opportunity for healing, growth, and transformation for our society, a society that has been handed down false narratives for thousands of years.

The Morgan Library and Museum, 2022

Women at the Dawn of History, 2020

Perhaps we, as moderns, have been writing ancient women out of history in our facile efforts to include them. We do this, in particular, by emphasizing the absence of women in history, focusing superficially on exceptional images of women, and simplifying women into types that reflect our own expectations and values, and this approach obscures the complexities of ancient Near Eastern womanhood. However, by affording the ancient record its own voice, the individuality and complexity of women’s lives and facets of womanhood emerges to replace, rather than reiterate, the conventional grand narrative on “women” and to remind us that the ancient Near East was not as much of a man’s world as we have made it out to be.

Early Mesopotamian elite women are well attested in the visual record. From the beginning of urban life in the late 4 th millennium BCE and throughout the 3 rd millennium they are represented in statuary, dedicatory reliefs, luxury goods, and glyptic. By contrast, hardly any such images from the 2 nd millennium BCE have come down to us. Does this change reflect a decline in women's social standing, as some scholars argue, or were there other reasons for their earlier depiction? How visible were their images really and what did they represent?

This study explores the role of women in the cultic and divinatory activity of ancient Mesopotamia. It finds that women enjoyed a robust and varied place in such realms, particularly in the interpretation of dreams. Moreover, they were often viewed as serving in a complementary manner to their male counterparts, albeit in a more restrictive sense. Goddesses are also viewed as playing an intricate role in dreams and divination. Moreover, epic literature frequently features feminine characters as primary interpreters of dreams. Pertinent terminology and texts are explored in order to provide a well-rounded approach.

N. Brisch and F. Karahashi (eds.), Women in Religion in the Ancient Near East and Asia, SANER 30, 63–79, 2023

Babylonia from the seventh to the fourth century BCE, in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods, has provided us with an abundance of cuneiform tablets: according to the estimate of M. Jursa (2005: 1 and 2010: 6), more than 16,000 legal or administrative documents have been published, with tens of thousands of unpublished texts housed in museum collections around the world. 1 Most of these documents deal with everyday practical matters, and can be classified as economic texts, familial documents (marriage contracts, documents of division of succession and of transfer of properties, testaments, etc.), administrative records, and letters, mostly drafted in the "long sixth century" (Jursa 2010: 4-5) that lasted about 140 years between the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (620 BCE) and the "end of archives" in the second year of Xerxes (484 BCE). 2 Although far fewer women appear in these texts than men, we estimate that at least several thousand women are mentioned. Most of them were inhabitants of Babylonian cities like Babylon, Borsippa, Uruk, and Sippar, and they represent various social strata: women of free status from urban families, slaves, and oblates at temples. The corpus constitutes, therefore, a good basis for discussing the role, status, situation, and activities of women in the social, economic, and familial frameworks. We find that quite a few women, mainly those of free status, participated in economic activities such as the management of fields, lending and borrowing of silver or commodities, buying of slaves and real estate, transfer of properties, and house rentals. Unfortunately, most of these practical texts do not provide  This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 19K13361. Abbreviations used in the present study follow the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI; abbreviations are listed at http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/abbreviations_for_assyriology).  For more detail on the "end of archives" and its connection with the Persian king's suppression of revolts in the second year of Xerxes,

The aim of this article is to present textual fragments from Mesopotamian royal inscriptions (and some texts dealing with them) created in the third millennium bc between the Early Dynastic and Ur III periods, that were written by women or include references to women. When possible, this article also contains short descriptions and discussion of the specific women and the context of their appearance in a given text. The main reason for limiting this short study to royal inscriptions is the huge number of preserved texts of different kinds (economic, legal, religious, etc.) in which women are mentioned. As this article focuses only on mortal women; any references to goddesses as well as other female supernatural beings will be omitted.The main finding of this research is that there are significant differences in the number of references to women, and in roles that they play in specific texts – as well as a changing number of personal inscriptions from women – dependent on the period of a text’s origins.

People in the ancient Mesopotamian region are given credit for the foundations of our Western law codes, religious rituals, astronomy, mathematics, literature, and writing. Even the calendar and wheel are technologies that these people are given recognition for introducing. Whether all these ideas originated with the civilization that grew up in the lowlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, (Mesopotamia is Greek for the land between the rivers) scholars are continually debating. Ongoing archaeological work in this region and other areas of the world is uncovering fascinating facts regarding our ancient ancestors. As more evidence is being uncovered, it appears that the advent of civilization, whereby people settled into specific structures of government, agriculture, and religious festivals and beliefs, keeps getting older. Many other parts of the world are now vying for the honor of being the oldest site for the beginning of civilization. Until there are more consensuses on another place, ancient Mesopotamia will retain its honored number one place. What did the land and society look like around 4000-3500 b.c.e. when the number of people increased significantly enough to become an urban society and civilization? The people who came into the region came as farmers, because of the rich alluvial soil created by the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, did not find it an easy place to civilize like ancient Egypt because the flooding was unpredictable. This region received no rainfall for eight months of the year, and then came torrential spring showers that produced flooding of such magnitude that irrigation with canals was essential. Especially conducive to farming, the soil was neither rocky nor tree-laden. Cooperation and leadership were needed to harness the rivers and build canals, which then allowed the people to produce enough excess crops to sell. This allowed some of the farmers to venture into the production of goods that could be exchanged for food, and so the artisan crafts developed. This area is now in southern Iraq, and many of the marsh inhabitants of this region still live in almost identical housing and fish from almost identical boats. They tend their crops and flocks just like in ancient times. Over time this area developed into the modern countries of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The sources available to us for reconstructing the lives of women in these ancient times are few in number, but lengthy in size. There are two famous works from these early centuries. One, The Epic of Gilgamesh, can give us some descriptive details on women, and the other, The Code of Hammurabi, can give us quite a lot of prescriptive passages regarding women's legal standing. More law codes from later periods of history also give us additional information, including the Middle Assyrian Laws, from the fifteenth to the eleventh centuries b.c.e. More than twenty thousand clay tablets with writings on them have been uncovered, mainly from the city-state of Mari, but only recently have historians been analyzing them for women's history. Included in these extant tablets are business dealings, poetry, songs, and laments. Scholars refer to this oldest civilized area as Sumer, which was inhabited beginning around 4000 b.c.e. Over time, a city-state form of government was developed into twelve independent kingdoms covering an area the size of the state of Massachusetts. Uruk, Lagash, and Ur were some of their important cities ruled by a theocracy. Their priest/king led the army, administered the economy, served as judge, and was the intermediary between the people and their deities. Because there were no natural barriers as in ancient Egypt, quarrels over water rights and land led to the desire for conquest, making war endemic. The world's first woman ruler came from the city-state of Kish. She was Kubaba, circa 2450 b.c.e. Apparently she started out as a tavern keeper. Many royal women helped legitimize the king's succession to the throne, a practice found all over the world throughout history. Not only rulers, but their spouses were included in the records. Some queens had their own independent courts complete with ministers.

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