From My Fantasy Writing Desk
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Archaeology I Enjoyed
Insidious Shift
#MeToo in Mesopotamia? This outstanding article discusses a shift in the status of women between the oldest periods of Sumer to the first millennium BCE. It traces distinct changes in men’s attitudes toward women in Mesopotamia.
In the early period, Mesopotamian society revered women as sources of esoteric wisdom and the originators of civilization. Female goddesses dominated these areas of culture. Women held varied roles in daily economic life. In addition, the customs and social institutions treated women with respect both as participants in domestic households and in the outer world.
Then gradually the female goddesses disappeared. Women of wisdom and medical skills became feared as witches. The laws treated women as second class members of the culture and denied them economic rights such as the right to own and transmit property. Even the myths shifted so that they told of male deities who created the world instead of women.
The writer of this excellent article, Greta Van Buylaere, has a book called The Decline of Female Professionals—and the Rise of the Witch—in the Second and Early First Millennium BCE. We tend to think of history as “progressing” toward more rights for women, but a careful read of history gives a more nuanced and useful view about how and why women get relegated to the sidelines. Click here for The Ancient Near East Today “#MeToo-potamia (or systemic gender inequality in Mesopotamia)”