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

FEMALE WORKERS RELATED TO THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD | 251
the West-Semitic area?” 45 The answer to this question determines whether one
would expect the biblical תנכס, Abishag, to have been a bedroom attendant or
whether she was accorded, even if only by the narrator, a higher status, as the
šakintu had in Ugarit and later in the Neo-Assyrian period.
As Dalley and Postgate point out, the šakintu, according to the texts of fort
Shalmaneser was the female housekeeper of the queen i.e. of the MÍ.É.GAL or
MÍ.KUR .... At her disposal were also the queen’s scribes and according to the
texts 39 and 40 also a female scribe (A.BA-tú) as also ... “the deputy (female)
of the šakintu”. But naturally not all the staff of the šakintu was female. ...
A text from Ugarit from the XIII cent. B.C.E. U.V, 161 dealing with landtransactions
of the queen of Ugarit lists among the witnesses... “Matenu, the
sākinu of the palace (household) of the queen”. In another land-transaction of
the same queen the same Matenu is called ... “the abarakku of the queen”.
From here we learn, that at least in this case the abarakku and sākin bîti were
identical. Otherwise we know that the female counterpart of the abarakku -
abarakkatu is often mentioned among the palace-personell [sic] in the texts of
Mari of the XVIII cent. B.C.E., which also belongs to the West-Semitic area.
The abarakkatu belonged to the senior palace-personell [sic] also there.
Therefore, it is possible that we have here an old West-Semitic parallel to
biblical sōkenet and this was the position of Abîšag (var. bat ’Abîšag) 46
If one opted for the latter possibility, there are still further questions for
which there are no answers. These concern the narrator’s choice; since he chose
a term that points to an officer and not a bedroom attendant, was he serious or
ironic? Was he exalting or despising Abishag? What kind of ideological
intention should one attribute to Dtr?
In his narrative study on the Samuel cycle, Fokkelman has noted a chiastic
structure, which leaves at the center “she will be his sōkenet.” 47 Around this
center, her “job description” is enclosed by three references to “the king” and
the fourth one, to “lie on his bosom.” Such a crafty combination of diverse
45 M. Heltzer, “The Neo-Assyrian Šakintu and the Biblical Sōkenet (I Reg. 1,4),” in La Femme dans
le Proche-Orient Antique: XXXIIIe. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Edited by Jean-Marie
Durand. Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations: Paris, 1987, 89. According to Heltzer, 89, “the
šakintu does not appear in Old- and Middle Assyrian texts, and in Neo-Assyrian the term appears
only in the Sargonide period. Therefore it is not impossible that the office of the šakintu came to
Assyria from the West, but the word by itself is not of West-Semitic origin.” See also R. Henshaw,
“The Office of Šaknu in Neo-Assyrian Times;” Edward Lipiński, “Škn et Sgn dans Le Sémitique
Occidental du Nord,” UF 5 (1973): 191–207.
46 Heltzer, “Neo-Assyrian Šakintu,” 87, 89–90. References not included in this quotation.
47 J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel: A Full Interpretation Based on
Stylistic and Structural Analyses, I: King David (II Sam. 9–20 & I Kings 1–2) (Assen: Van Gorcum,
1981), 347.