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

272 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
In the vast corpus of millions of legal, administrative, economic, and literary
cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia, prostitution—that is, sex in exchange for
wealth—is clearly documentable in only one passage: a song (or songs)
addressed to the goddess Inanna (as Nanaja) known from a number of nearduplicates,
all dating to the Old Babylonian period … and we are, remember,
still talking about the price for the goddess Inanna here, not about that for a
mortal whore. 11
The Sumerian text referred to by Roth is the balbale to Inanna/Nanaja, in
which a provocative goddess offers herself to a patron (“farmer”) and stipulates
her price; the lines in question (19–20), however, do not appear in all versions of
the poem and they are not equally assessed by all scholars. At any rate, it could
teach us more on “womanly” manners and male fantasies on goddesses and
women, than on the real life of poor women who made a living by selling drinks
and/or sex. One thing, however, seems to be confirmed by the scenario of this
poem, namely, that “the wall” is one place where men are eroticized by
accessible women:
16–20 Your hand is womanly, your foot is womanly. Your conversing with a man
is womanly. Your looking at a man is womanly. ... As you rest against the wall,
your patient heart pleases. As you bend over, your hips are particularly
pleasing.
20A–29 (mss. a and c add 2 lines: My resting against the wall is one lamb. My
bending over is one and a half gij.) Do not dig a canal, let me be your canal. Do
not plough a field, let me be your field. … 12
What is the significance of “the wall” and which wall is it? And, what other
element/s or space/s could be posted as more comfortable? A room or a tent
somewhere? The inner-city as opposed to the garbage disposal? Both are
possible locations for harlots, homeless, impure, “untouchable” and other
people, falling out of the social system. Also the Gilgamesh hero Enkidu curses
his initiator Shamhat, invoking upon her “the shadow of the city wall” as the
place where she will stand!
11 Roth, “Marriage, Divorce, and the Prostitute in Ancient Mesopotamia,” 24–25. Also Julia Assante,
“What Makes a ‘Prostitute’ a Prostitute? Modern Definitions and Ancient Meanings,” Historiae 4
(2007): 129, and “Erotic Reliefs,” 70, who even states that both cuneiform and Egyptian languages
lacked any vocabulary for “prostitute” or “brothel.” Cf. Steele, “Women and Gender,” 305, who
states that “in only two literary texts is a harīmtu explicitly identified as a sex professional.”
Unfortunately she does not identify these texts.
12 I have taken it from the ETCSL project, referred to by Roth. Cited 25 November 2010. Online:
http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4078.htm. Roth’s translation, “Marriage, Divorce, and
the Prostitute in Ancient Mesopotamia,” 24–25, is a bit different, but the general sense is the same:
“When you stand against the wall your nakedness is sweet,/When you bend over, your hips are sweet
… When I stand against the wall it is one shekel, /When I bend over, it is one and a half shekels.”