“not a single woman appears among the thousands of scribes, scholars, diviners, [and]
astronomers... mentioned by name in Neo- and Late Babylonian documents” (Beaulieu
1993 : 13 ; cited in Assante 1998 ).
A woman named Esirtum appears both as financial associate and as expectant
mother in a representative Neo-Babylonian letter (CT 22 , 40 ) from her brother, who
gets right down to business after congratulating her: “Why do I never hear any news
from all of you? My heart rejoiced about your being pregnant. The things I heard
are bad indeed. Give me that mina of silver, but... get refined silver!”^15 Pregnancy
was of course fraught with the risks common to non-industrial societies, and women
used amulets, plants, and incantations to ward off sorcery, demons, and other causes
of miscarriage and of difficulty in labor (Stol 2000 ; Wiggermann 2000 ). A woman
in labor (harisˇtu) customarily delivered on the “brick of birth,” assisted by a midwife
and perhaps by others,^16 and in the presence of a mother goddess. The fact that all
— Laura D. Steele —Figure 21. 1 Old Babylonian terracotta relief of couple making love, while the
woman is drinking beer through a long straw (Musée du Louvre).