novel but largely unsupported possibility that the terhatum was paid in installments, eventually
equaling the amount of the dowry, and thus qualifying as a true bride-price. The term biblum
occurs in the Old Babylonian period as well but “does not appear in any of the marriage
contracts which so carefully record payment of the terhatum” (Westbrook 1988 : 42 , 101 – 102
and references therein).
9 The penalties for divorce attempts were pecuniary and capital, respectively, in southern and
northern Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period (Westbrook 1988 : 83 ; Malul 1991 : 282 ).
Among the latter, some marriage contracts from Sippar stipulate that the repudiating wife
shall be “bound and cast in the water” or “cast from the tower” (Westbrook 1988 : 83 ).
10 Cf. Stol ( 1995 b: 131 – 132 ), who contends as well that “the primary meaning of the divorce
clause is to determine the degree of (in)dependence of both people.” This interpretation does
not exclude the one suggested here.
11 Cf. Roth 1988 a: 195 , cited in Foster 1993 : 349.
12 There is also some evidence for healthy marital sexuality, and spouses occasionally forgave one
another for sexual or legal faults (cf. references in Bottéro 1992 : 186 – 187 ).
13 Men clearly exercised their extramarital prerogative to solicit other men as well. The Shumma
aluapodoses contemplate several same-sex situations (e.g., a man’s intercourse with an assinnu,
with a male slave, and with a social peer; Guinan 1997 ), and the Late Babylonian “Almanac
of Incantations” (BRM 4 , 20 ) contains a prayer which appeals to the gods for the success of
“the love of a man for a woman, of woman for a man, and of a man for a man” (translation
in Bottéro and Petschow 1975 : 468 ). Bottéro ( 1992 : 192 ) asserts that
the omission of the expected parallel of a woman for a womandoes not indicate that female
homosexuality was condemned or unknown. We have at least one record of it [a divinatory
text in which women are said to “come together” (TCS 4 , 194 : XXIII 33 ?)] and I have
been told that there is a still more explicit one in the Berlin Museum that remains
unpublished.
Asher-Greve ( 2002 b) considers the evidence for a “third gender” in Mesopotamian society,
perhaps made up of intersexed, transgendered, and/or androgynous people, such as the effeminate
or sexless (sinnisânu) dedicants to Ishtar known as assinnu, kurgarru, and kala’um(cf. Bottéro
1992 : 191 ). Gender ambiguity was considered to be related to the powers of magic and of
healing (Maul 1992 ), and some literary texts associate it with liminal places such as the
boundary of the netherworld (Leick 1994 ).
14 See below for a discussion of a Sumerian text preserved in Old Babylonian copies that offers
a sense of the domestic duties of both free wives and their female slaves: “Dumuzi’s Wedding”
(Ni 2377 =DI C 1 , cited in Sefati 1998 ). A number of other texts mention women grinding
flour and weaving textiles.
15 Translation in Oppenheim 1967 : 194 , n. 147 ; cf. Campbell Thompson 1906 : xxxi.
16 Other assistants include conjurers, cloistered priestesses acting as midwives, and family members,
such as the Old Babylonian grandmother who closely watched a delivery and who swore to
the baby’s parentage in a legal case (PBS 5 , 100 ; cf. Stol 2000 : 173 – 174 ).
17 Assante’s ( 1998 ) analysis is far-ranging and not always convincing: her discussion of the legal
rights of slave women vis-à-vis marriage, for example, is unclear (pp. 32 – 33 ; cf. Westbrook
1998 ; 1988 ). But her central point is well-argued and merits further study.
18 Both men and women frequently used comparable rhetoric in their personal correspondence;
in an Old Assyrian letter found at the karumat Kanisˇ, for example, a male trader responds to
a woman as follows: “why have you thus changed your mind and acted to belittle me, (claiming
that) I have loved only money and have not loved our father’s house, you or my brother?”
(KTK 18 ; translation in Larsen 2001 : n. 24 ). Thus, the pleading tone adopted by some women
- e.g., widows (Roth 1991 – 1993 ) and the nadı ̄tuwomen of Sippar (Harris 1989 : 155 – 9 ) – is
not patently gendered. See Van De Mieroop 1999 for an argument that scholars have been too
quick to attribute certain activities and conditions to Mesopotamian women alone without
reference to male parallels.
19 For the treatment of fugitive slaves in general, see Snell 2001 : 46 – 62 , 74 – 86 ; Mendelsohn
1949 : 66 ; Postgate 1992 : 107.
— Laura D. Steele —