CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WOMEN AND GENDER
IN BABYLONIA
Laura D. Steele
I
n the Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Siduri the barmaid
encourages the hero to return to his household and to enjoy the good things in
life:
You, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full;
Day and night enjoy yourself.
Each day, sustain happiness;
Day and night dance and play.
Let your clothes be immaculate;
Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water.
Consider the child who clutches your hand;
Let your wife enjoy herself in your lap.
(Gilg. Me. iii, 6 – 14 ; Tigay 1982 : 168 ; Dalley 1998 : 150 )Thus are wives introduced as the domestic pleasure par excellence. The next line of the
text is broken, but it likely reads “For this is the work [of women]” (Tigay 1982 :
168 n. 17 ). If so, the passage explicitly defines the ideal life of a woman as well as
that of a man, and the wife (marhitum) becomes the crux of the daily life extolled by
Siduri (Abusch 1993 : 4 ). The broken line 14 refers most immediately to the sexual
task of procreation adduced by lines 12 – 13 (Assante 1998 : n. 15 ), but the “work of
women” is implied throughout the passage: someonemust launder clothes, prepare
food, heat water, and bear children so that Gilgamesh might live up to the male
ideal (Harris 1990 ). Ultimately, the androcentric language of this passage spares
Gilgamesh from the labors associated with the “good life.”^1
Other such glimpses of what Babylonians might have considered to be the ideal
domestic life are rare. Lines 64 – 65 of a Late Babylonian hymn to Gula describe the
lifecycle of a typical free woman: “I am daughter, I am bride, I am spouse, I, indeed,
manage the household” (Lambert 1967 ; translation in Foster 1993 : 496 ; cited in Stol
1995 a). Lest we think of Gula as a quotidian household goddess, she goes on to claim
prowess as a physician (ll. 79 – 87 , 146 , 177 – 187 ), as a warrior (l. 101 ), and as a
diviner (ll. 182 – 184 ). Omen apodoses of all periods also give a sense of some women’s