Virginity in Ancient Mesopotamia*
COOPER VIRGINITY IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA JERROLD S. COOPER Baltimore Virginity in Ancient Mesopotamia* 1. Virginity, Ours and Theirs “ virgin body has the freshness of would be an older adolescent girl. But in secret springs, the morning sheen actual Akkadian usage, ardatu is confined Aof an unopened flower, the orient to literary texts, whereas batultu, attested luster of a pearl on which the sun has never only after the Old Babylonian period, is the shone. Grotto, temple, sanctuary, secret word that would be used for adolescent girls garden – man, like the child, is fascinated in royal enumerations of booty, and in per- by enclosed and shadowy places not yet sonnel lists and legal texts.5 The Sumerian animated by any consciousness, which wait terms are restricted entirely to literary texts; to be given a soul: what he alone is to take the only case where a girl seems to progress and to penetrate seems to be in truth created from ki-sikil-tur to ki-sikil is in Enlil by him.”1 What a pity that neither Sumerian and Ninlil, where Ninlil first appears as ki- nor Akkadian has a proper word for a young sikil-tur (1. 11) alongside Enlil as guruš- woman whose flesh is capable of inspiring tur, but subsequently is called ki-sikil.6 such marvel! At least since the foundational In western languages, too, there is no word articles of Finkelstein and Landsberger,2 that originally designated virgin. Parthenos,7 Assyriologists have recognized that Sume- virgo, Jungfrau – all designate nubile girls rian ki-sikil-tur and ki-sikil,3 Akkadian before marriage,
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