experiences, especially in cases – such as childbirth and adultery – that appear
frequently because of their significance to a male audience (Koch-Westenholz 2002 ;
Guinan 1997 ). Babylonian mythological and wisdom texts do not provide much
information regarding the actual lives of (mortal) women, whereas we may glean a
number of details regarding the activities and perspectives of men, to whom the
literature is primarily directed.^2
For a social history of women and gender, we must therefore rely principally upon
the law codes, individual legal documents, and personal letters, which can be most
revealing (Oppenheim 1967 : 64 ). Taken together, the documentary sources allow us
to elaborate the characteristics of various gendered categories (Roth 1998 : 174 ; Asher-
Greve 2002 b: 16 ). The best-documented category comprises free women whose lives
conformed more or less to the ideals expressed above and whose lives and choices
customarily revolved around and were circumscribed by male relatives – father,
husband, brother, or son – before, during, and after their marriages. Most free women
did, however, retain a legal and social status allowing them to do business, to own
property, and to participate in court proceedings. In addition to this category, we
may distinguish other gendered groups that deviated, to varying degrees, from the
norm represented by free, adult, married, domestic women. Indeed, the study of
“minority” groups is essential to an understanding of the role of women and of gender
in Babylonian society, for the legal and literary texts adduce each group selectively
in order to define the ideal. I will focus on the Old and Neo-Babylonian periods,
from which most of our documentation comes; and I will devote more attention to
slave women than is usually accorded them by general surveys of women in
Mesopotamia.
FREE, MARRIED OR MARRIAGEABLE WOMEN IN
UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSEHOLDSWe know very little about the early lives of Babylonian women, regardless of class,
in part because the high rate of infant mortality precluded the legal and economic
documentation of most girls until they had reached marriageable age.^3 As with
members of the “minority” groups we shall consider below, the fate of an individual
girl in Mesopotamia would have been documented only if it had attracted the attention
of a third party who required a contract or a court decision, an unlikely circumstance
given the institution of male inheritance. Rare glimpses of Babylonian girlhood are
provided, however, by a few abstract texts: a late incantation against phantoms
(Landsberger 1968 : 45 ff., cited in Cooper 2002 : 92 ), for example, describes the
unfortunate soul of a girl who died before marriage: she is “the girl who was never
impregnated like a woman, the girl who never lost her virginity like a woman” (SBTU
II 6 , pp. 38 – 49 ); “the girl who made her cheek ugly through unhappiness, who did
not enjoy herself with (other) girls, who never appeared at her city’s festival” (SBTU
II 7 , pp. 4 – 7 ; trans. Foster 1991 : 871 ).^4 Texts such as this one suggest that Mesopotam-
ians did not value premarital virginity inherently if a girl were unable to experience
the closure provided by wife- and motherhood (Leick 1994 : 228 ). Virginity was,
rather, a social and financial asset that attracted appropriate husbands and that
promoted patriarchal control over the family (Cooper 2002 : 101 – 105 ). It is interest-
ing to note that the corresponding male phantom-demon, Etel-lilî, is not explicitly
— Laura D. Steele —