Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

196 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
kind of music academy for upper-class girls (and boys),” and for elite and slave
adults as well, in which they would have “received instruction in singing and
playing of musical instruments as part of their education (which in Mesopotamia
did not usually include reading and writing).” 104 It is easy to overlook this
possible tension between lower-rank performer, cultic performer and aristocratic
poetess, because of the dearth of sources and the desire to make some sense of
the little we have. 105 We also learn from Sargon’s letter to Ashur that during his
third campaign “Hezekiah, the Judean” had given him a considerable tribute:
That Hezekiah, fear of the radiance of my majesty … With 30 talents of gold,
800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, daggassu stone, wood, all that
heavy treasure (along with) his daughters, his concubines, male and female
musicians, he caused them to bring back to me to Nineveh, the city of my
sovereignty, and in order to pay tribute and make obeisance, he sent his
messenger. 106
Pictographic and archival evidence also supports this activity, although it—
obviously—does not acknowledge composers, unless they are also performing.
John Franklin, a musicologist, mentions the following lists of musicians as
“prizes of conquest or diplomatic gifts, to Nineveh from various subject states”
as part of Assyrian ideological imperial propaganda:
Records of wine rations from Nimrud, spanning perhaps half of the eighth
century, show that as many as two hundred and forty musicians, both male and
female, might be resident in the palace at any one time, including a large
proportion of foreigners: Kassite, Chaldaean, Neo-(Hittite), Aramaean,
Tabalites, Arpadites, and Kommagenes are all specified, and we have only a
small fraction of the original records … Similarly, one bread list from the
palace of Sargon (ca. 721–705 BC) contains a large enough distribution for
perhaps two hundred musicians … A relief from the reign of Sennacherib
(704–681 BC) shows three foreign lyre-players being driven into captivity; it is
generally thought that these are the Judaean musicians mentioned in the
emperor’s annals, sent as tribute by Hezekiah after the campaign of 701. … A
propaganda piece from Ashurbanipal’s reign shows the so-called Elamite
Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. John G. Gammie & Leo G. Perdue; Winona Lake:
Eisenbrauns, 1990), 32.
104
Rivka Harris, “The Female ‘Sage’ in Mesopotamian Literature (with an Appendix on Egypt)” in
The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 10.
105
That is a point well taken by Bird, review of Engelken, 319: “…failing to recognize any conflict
between the status of a performer or palace attendant and that of an aristocrat.” I do not bring it here
to be critical of Engelken, but as a reminder to myself of the danger of overlooking important
differences in our sources.
106
Brent A. Strawn, Sarah C. Melville, Kyle Greenwood & Scott Noegel, “Neo-Assyrian and Syro-
Palestinian Texts II,” in The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation (ed. Mark
Chavalas; Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 347.