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

ON THE SHOULDERS OF OUR PREDECESSORS | 71
Kuhrt’s analysis on women in this same period is a good supplement.
Against Mendelsohn and Dandamaev, she suggests that female temple slaves
enjoyed some advantages over privately-owned ones, because
slave-girls in households frequently bore children to their owners (note the fact
that household-slaves are usually identified by the name of their mother only)
and had, one assumes, little chance of either fending off their master’s advances
nor any legal claims on their owner as a result of bearing him children ...
Because of their reproductive and sexual function, moreover, those who were
beautiful were highly prized (CT 22,201;202), and lost their value as they aged.
...
By contrast, female temple slaves were less vulnerable to sexual advances as
of right since their owners were institutions, and as they were inalienable
temple-property their age, physical attributes, state of health etc. could not
affect their market-value and hence insidiously influence (in that respect, at
least) the regard which they were accorded. A significant difference between
temple and private slaves is that temple-slaves were almost always identified
by their patronymic suggesting the existence of a regular family-structure
among this group. 45
Institutional conditions such as obedience to a master or a great institution
would have affected every slave; if the slave was lazy, for instance, a private
owner would have tried to remedy it sooner than a supervisor in the temple,
likely also a slave. Kuhrt calls attention to particular aspects in which the type of
ownership had different consequences for a woman because of her gender. Since
in Babylonia temple slaves could not achieve manumission or be sold to an
individual, manumission or sale could not be used as coercive elements. Unlike
the slave owned by a man, the temple slave’s value was not tied to her beauty,
age, or reproductive capacity.
Resources on women in the ANE, as reflected in ancient written documents
(sales, adoptions, marriages, lists), 46 in pictorial documents (Nineveh reliefs, the
easy access to replacement of slaves through prisoners of war, and thus could afford being careless
about accounting. See also his “Prisoners of War in Early Mesopotamia,” JNES 32 (1973): 70–98;
and “Approaches to the Study of Ancient Society,” JAOS 87 (1967): 1–8.
45
Amélie Kuhrt, “Non-Royal Women in the Late Babylonian Period: A Survey,” in Women's
Earliest Records, 231.
46
Rivka Harris, “Woman in the ANE,” in IDBSup (ed. K. Crim. Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), 961–
62. Of importance are also her “Independent Women in Ancient Mesopotamia?” in Women’s
Earliest Records, 145–56, and “The Organization and Administration of the Cloister in Ancient
Babylonia,” JESHO 6 (1963): 121–57, where she studies the institution of the naditu women,
priestesses related to the temple. M. Roth, Babylonian Marriage Agreements, 7th–3rd Centuries B.C.
(AOAT 222; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer/Neukirchener Verlag, 1989).