Metoo-Potamia (Or Systemic Gender Inequality in Mesopotamia) by Greta Van Buylaere
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#MeToo-potamia (or systemic gender inequality in Mesopotamia) By Greta Van Buylaere The contributions of women to Mesopotamian society, while significant, are largely invisible to contemporary eyes. They are underrepresented, and their achievements mostly ignored, in the cuneiform records. Composed mainly by men, the sources offer us only a partial picture of women’s public and private duties, responsibilities and achievements. It is clear that, just like today, men restricted women’s personal and professional lives in order to change the gender balance to their advantage. However, things may have been different 5000 years ago… In the oldest stories, like Enmerkar and En-suḫkeš-ana, there are women who were esteemed for their wisdom and inventiveness, their care for others and their femininity. But with the growing power of men and male professionals, especially in medicine and healing, women’s activities become less visible and are progressively restricted to the household. Women who do not conform to the norms set by men are perceived and presented in increasingly negative ways. By the first millennium BCE, female professionals and their esoteric wisdom are frowned upon; scholarship and learning are the prerogatives of men. Non-normative women, such as women performing cultic functions and/or midwifery, are regarded as a threat, which led to their demonization as “witches” in anti-witchcraft rituals. Systemic gender inequality is nothing new. The constrained conditions for women in first millennium BCE Mesopotamia are interesting to consider in light of the contemporary call for more gender equality and diversity in the workplace and in positions of leadership. They also bring to mind the current #MeToo movement, in which many women not only react to sexual harassment and sexual assault but also to abuse of power in the professional and public spheres so that women’s career opportunities, as well as their ways of being, are sharply limited by their gender. Nevertheless, studies show that a diverse and inclusive workforce leads to companies’ improved productivity and higher revenue. It is interesting that sources from the earlier periods of Mesopotamian history do not reflect similar constraints on women. In the Sumerian pantheon, the goddesses are the patrons of civilized life: they supervise weaving and spinning, grain and food preparation, making beer, writing and learning, healing, exorcism, sexual love and warfare. These divine responsibilities reflect the roles and functions of mortal women in the third millennium BCE, while also recollecting women’s contributions to civilization. Female worshipper from Nippur, ca. 2600–2500 BCE. The women of Sumer take care of children and helpless people, help other women with pregnancy-related problems and birth, have an advisory role with respect to their husbands and children, prepare food and have a certain knowledge of plants and herbs, all the while also looking after the household and the stores. The goddesses’ scholarly patronage may even imply female origins of writing and scholarship. A wise woman defeats a male exorcist in the story of Enmerkar and En-suḫkeš-ana, recalling a period when female sages were respected, and their advice heeded. Contemporary documents show that women are professionally active in administration, religion, diplomacy, economy and healing. Women manage and transfer property. Women and men both make valued contributions to the community and seem to be on a more equal footing than in later times. Stele of Ur Nanshe depicting the goddess Nisaba. But after the end of the Ur III period, around the turn of the third and second millennium BCE, the status of the goddesses takes a turn for the worse, and male gods usurp their agency. The goddess Nisaba, previously the main patroness of wisdom and learning, virtually disappears: Enki/Ea, lord of the subterranean ocean, becomes the primary god of wisdom and exorcism, and Nabû the major patron of writing. The changing roles of gods and goddesses reflect the growing gender inequality at the time. Female agency becomes even less visible in the first half of the second millennium BCE. According to the Old Assyrian tablets (20th–18th cent. BCE), women remain active in many fields, but, unlike men, they only rarely receive professional recognition. Nevertheless, several of the women in the merchant’s families at Kaneš and Aššur can read and write, and enjoy a fair level of social and economic independence. In southern Mesopotamia, the ideal woman is a stay-at-home wife/mother/housekeeper, according to the Sumerian literary texts from the Old Babylonian period (2003–1595 BCE). Only certain groups of women, the nadītu- priestesses in Sippar foremost among them, are economically active. The Codex Hammurapi (ca. 1750 BCE) regards women as second-class citizens. Couple from Southern Mesopotamia, ca. 2000–1700 BCE. After the Old Babylonian period, the professional healers are increasingly male physicians (asû) and exorcists (āšipu/mašmaššu) with privileged access to knowledge. And knowledge, of course, is power. At the end of the second millennium BCE, Ištar/Inanna is the only powerful goddess left; the male gods have assumed many of the goddesses’ functions. “Though a woman’s strength is very great, it is not equal to a man’s,” the gods Ea and Anu claim in the Babylonian Epic of Creation, Enūma Eliš (II 92, 116), highlighting the gender gap at the time and portraying an “ideal” patriarchal world in which women are not needed, not even for procreation: the female act of giving birth is taken over by a male. The myth justifies the male takeover of female power. According to the Middle Assyrian Laws (ca. 1050 BCE), women’s roles and movements seem more and more restricted. Married women are regarded as their husbands’ possessions. The demon Pazuzu who frightens the evil demon Lamashtu who threatens childbirth, ca. 8th century BCE. In the first millennium BCE, witchcraft is a serious source of concern and a possible cause of a man’s ailments and misfortunes. The male exorcists resort to various legitimate anti- witchcraft rituals to cure the patient. The activities of women performing cultic functions and/or midwifery, however, are suspect. Childbirth is and remains a female affair, but as every birth entails a danger for the mother-to-be and the foetus, women attending to a birth have an almost demonic competence. Fear of women’s power and exclusive knowledge, and a feeling of male superiority may in part explain the use of their professional titles as designations of female witches in anti- witchcraft rituals. Nevertheless, some Neo-Assyrian queens and queen mothers are powerful, and have female professionals among their staff. Apart from that, professional women are largely invisible in the cuneiform records of the first millennium. The oldest cuneiform sources, then, speak of goddesses and women with a wide range of tasks and responsibilities in the third millennium BCE; later sources depict women in much more restricted circumstances with declining professional opportunities, transformed, to a great degree, into possessions and property, to be managed, controlled and transferred by and among men. The fact that men depend on women for their male offspring must have upset the gender balance from the outset. Male doubt, the fear of women’s power and the anxiety that they might escape control led to the restriction of women’s actions and movements, denying them access to knowledge and scholarship, and excluding them from many professions. Mesopotamian myths defend the myth of male superiority and strengthen the idea that male order is needed to overcome female chaos. Women who do not conform to the male ideal of housewife and mother (of preferably male offspring), but who rather possess mysterious esoteric knowledge, are suspect in the eyes of the exclusively male exorcists, who probably have only a vague idea and understanding of their activities. How different are things today? Woman at the window, ca. 9th–8th century BCE. Greta Van Buylaere is researcher at the University of Würzburg. Her publications include “The Decline of Female Professionals—and the Rise of the Witch—in the Second and Early First Millennium BCE,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2019, pp. 37-61. .