The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Women and gender in Babylonia —
The text suggests that the prohibition of Hammurabi against selling a slave woman
who had borne her master’s children (LH §146) no longer was observed in sixthcentury
Babylonia, if indeed it ever had been; 25 Shamash-zer-ushabshi is legally
prevented from selling Nubtâ only because she ultimately belongs to the temple
rather than to him (Dandamaev 1984: 410).
NOTES
1 Cf. Assante 1998: 59. In addition to the fact that the passage is directed to Gilgamesh (though
ostensibly delivered by the woman Siduri), it is difficult to imagine that a Babylonian mother
would likewise be enjoined to “consider the child who clutches your hand” (s.ubbi s.ihram s.abitu
qātika). The verb sˇakanu used in line 8 connotes authority (cf. CAD Sˇ ), as if to suggest that
a man must “establish the institution of happiness” in his household. Indeed, the perspective
of this passage is strongly reminiscent of the similarly male-oriented wisdom literature (see
n. 2 below).
2 We learn, for instance, a great deal about male politics, relationships, entertainment, hygiene,
clothing, and modes of travel in the Standard Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh. The wisdom
literature in particular is explicitly for and about men; the Late Babylonian Counsels of Wisdom,
for example, define the ideal wife only by contrast to undesirable candidates for marriage (lines
66–80; Lambert 1960: 103). G. Leick rightly observes that:
[in] Sumerian, the most suitable medium for the articulation of physical love was lyric
poetry, and we found that the woman’s voice was its most vociferous exponent. In Akkadian,
the tone of poetry is more solemn and official, . . . which makes the intimate revelation
of feeling more difficult. However, the Old Babylonian dialogues do betray a new delicacy
and sensitivity. But as we have so few love-songs in Akkadian, we have to beware of
jumping to conclusions.
(Leick 1994: 78)
3 That we have so little information about Babylonian girlhood is somewhat surprising, since
several pre-adult stages – i.e., nursing child, weaned child, child, and adolescent – are identified
in Neo-Babylonian sources (cf. Stol 1995a: 487).
4 See also the Neo-Babylonian version of Nergal and Ereshkigal, in which the queen of the
netherworld complains that “since I was a young girl, I have not known the play of maidens,
nor have I known the frolic of little girls” (Foster 1993: 424). Sumerian texts, many of which
were copied in later periods, more frequently extol the pleasures of girlhood (e.g., Sefati 1998:
187).
5 Roth (1998: 82) speculates that the typical bride lacked legal independence, unlike the
autonomous groom, primarily because of a difference in age rather than in gender per se, given
the fact that most husbands were at least a decade older than their wives (cf. Roth 1987).
6 Westbrook (1988: 42–43) notes that this sort of kallūtum arrangement merely prevented third
parties from committing adultery with, or raping, the inchoate bride, who was still considered
a virgin at the time of her completed marriage. Because fathers-in-law in these arrangements
had themselves offered the terhatum payment on behalf of their (presumably minor) sons, they
were party to the contract and were not considered to be outsiders. Similarly, the friends with
whom the groom delivered his marriage gifts might attempt to gain access to the bride, but
these friends would forfeit their claim to the bride in case they managed to convince the
groom’s father-in-law of the groom’s unworthiness (Malul 1991: 282).
7 Roth 1989: 26–28 for the Neo-Babylonian period; see Westbrook, 1988 for further discussion
of the role of the terhatum.
8 In these documents, the payment by the groom to the bride’s agents is known as biblum rather
than terhatum and possibly is even more clearly conceived as a counter-dowry (Roth 1989: 12).
Like the OB terhatum, however, the financial value of the NB biblum was often less than that
of the dowry (cf. Westbrook 1988: 55 and Roth 1989: 1–12); Stol (1995b: 126) raises the
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