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

FEMALE WORKERS RELATED TO THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD | 261
wealthy Roman home and worked as clerks, secretaries, ladies’ maids, clothes
folders, hairdressers, haircutters, mirror holders, masseuses, readers,
entertainers, midwives, and infirmary attendants. Children born into slavery in
a wealthy Roman home thus stood a fair chance of receiving some education. 77
In this sub-section I have reviewed briefly the information available on wet
nurses. Not every contract or every name recorded has been brought up,
especially because these are not biblical or Syro-Palestinian; furthermore, they
belong to diverse cultures, times and locations, even if they provide much
helpful information. The evidence revised allows me to draw a few conclusions:
First, there is far less information than there were wet nurses.
In the Hebrew Bible, our best source is Exod 2, because it portrays wet
nursing as a job stipulated by a contract between the adoptive mother, Pharaoh’s
daughter and the wet nurse. When the contract is over, the wet nurse returns the
infant to his mother’s place. It is not clear when the wet nurse receives her
wages. Genesis 24 confirms information encountered in other sources, that the
relationship between wet nurse and suckling child lasted well beyond breastfeeding;
we cannot know what percentage of relationships lasted, of course, but
at least in a few instances it is well attested.
Extra-biblical material attests to the variety of situations in which one finds
these women, from women ascribed to a court well past their wet nursing
service, receiving daily rations, to women serving as particulars for about a
three-year period; from upper-class to lower-class women; from beloved and
mourned nurses to provisos about breach of contract or death of a baby.
With regard to DtrH, only one of them appears in a narrative. As a sidecommentary
to Queen Athaliah’s murder of the royal lineage, 2 Kgs 11:1–3 tells
that the king-to-be was hidden by his aunt, with his wet nurse, for six years.
That’s it. This matter-of-fact way of recognizing there were wet nurses in the
palace attests to the low consideration they enjoyed for this historian. They
belong to service personnel, like several others, unworthy of much attention.
On the positive side, nothing at all of what is said in the three biblical
stories has to do with their sexual purity or fidelity. If anything, they are
appreciated by their being present as accompanying, trusted persons in case of
danger (hidden child in court, long journey to an unknown land and husband in
the case of Rebekah). Exodus 2 is more complicated in this regard for its
legendary character and as a trickster story. Here nothing is said about the wet
nurse’s conditions as such, because being the child’s biological mother and
being the whole thing a ruse to protect him, what other credentials would she
77
Pomeroy, Goddesses, 191–2; see also above, n. 136 on Keuls’ The Reign of the Phallus. See also
Vogt, Ancient Slavery, 105–9.