Gender in Mesopotamia
Mar. 28th, 2011 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetHave recently read a couple of extremely interesting chapters from Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East.
In one, Kathleen McCaffrey points out: "In our culture, gender tends to be regarded as a biological constant, but not all cultures share this belief." She points to the "third and fourth gender categories" recognised "in localities as diverse as India, Thailand, the Phillipines, Oman, Polynesia, Nigeria, the Balkans, Brazil and among Native American tribes" and modern Iran and Iraq. For these cultures, "genitals are not an essential sign of gender", but rather "social role and status" - the person's dress, occupation, and behaviour signify their gender.
If the Mesopotamians took a similar approach, then applying "Western taxonomic classifications" to the evidence will result in confusion. McCaffrey discusses Inanna/Ishtar's ability to change men into women and vice versa; scholars have debated whether this involved a physical change, such as castration, or perhaps referred to hermaphroditism or intersexuality. But perhaps this is only the Western "common sense" assumption that sex = genital sex. (OTOH, that curse invoking Ishtar of Alalakh implies a physical change - or is that a matter of interpretation?)
McCaffrey points to a number of examples which seem confusing to "Western gender logic", such as the statue of Ur-Nanshe, who appears female but has a masculine name and dress, and evidence from art and graves that some men at Hasanlu wore women's garments.
In the same book, Stephanie Dalley (in "Evolution of Gender in Mesopotamian Mythology and Icongraphy with a Possible Explanation of ša rešen, 'the man with two heads'") discusses creation mythology. Very briefly summarised, the first creatures are sexless or bisexual; the division into male and female, and sexual reproduction, arises later. She suggests that, for Babylonian thinkers, this might have been the result of translating from Sumerian into Akkadian - from a language with the genders "animate" and "inanimate" into a language with the genders "male" and "female". "... for them words were deeply rooted in the actual nature of the things they described... the change in noun categories would mirror a change in the objects which these nouns represented". (Similarly, she suggests, this could explain apparent inconsistencies in divine gender, such as male deities with Nin- in their names, and Shapash/Shamash, Ishtar/Athtar, and Tiamat/Yam.)
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McCaffrey, Kathleen. "Reconsidering Gender Ambiguity in Mesopotamia: Is a Beard Just a Beard?". in Parpola, S. and R. M. Whiting (eds). Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriolgique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001. Compte rendu, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 47. Helsinki : Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002.
In one, Kathleen McCaffrey points out: "In our culture, gender tends to be regarded as a biological constant, but not all cultures share this belief." She points to the "third and fourth gender categories" recognised "in localities as diverse as India, Thailand, the Phillipines, Oman, Polynesia, Nigeria, the Balkans, Brazil and among Native American tribes" and modern Iran and Iraq. For these cultures, "genitals are not an essential sign of gender", but rather "social role and status" - the person's dress, occupation, and behaviour signify their gender.
If the Mesopotamians took a similar approach, then applying "Western taxonomic classifications" to the evidence will result in confusion. McCaffrey discusses Inanna/Ishtar's ability to change men into women and vice versa; scholars have debated whether this involved a physical change, such as castration, or perhaps referred to hermaphroditism or intersexuality. But perhaps this is only the Western "common sense" assumption that sex = genital sex. (OTOH, that curse invoking Ishtar of Alalakh implies a physical change - or is that a matter of interpretation?)
McCaffrey points to a number of examples which seem confusing to "Western gender logic", such as the statue of Ur-Nanshe, who appears female but has a masculine name and dress, and evidence from art and graves that some men at Hasanlu wore women's garments.
In the same book, Stephanie Dalley (in "Evolution of Gender in Mesopotamian Mythology and Icongraphy with a Possible Explanation of ša rešen, 'the man with two heads'") discusses creation mythology. Very briefly summarised, the first creatures are sexless or bisexual; the division into male and female, and sexual reproduction, arises later. She suggests that, for Babylonian thinkers, this might have been the result of translating from Sumerian into Akkadian - from a language with the genders "animate" and "inanimate" into a language with the genders "male" and "female". "... for them words were deeply rooted in the actual nature of the things they described... the change in noun categories would mirror a change in the objects which these nouns represented". (Similarly, she suggests, this could explain apparent inconsistencies in divine gender, such as male deities with Nin- in their names, and Shapash/Shamash, Ishtar/Athtar, and Tiamat/Yam.)
__
McCaffrey, Kathleen. "Reconsidering Gender Ambiguity in Mesopotamia: Is a Beard Just a Beard?". in Parpola, S. and R. M. Whiting (eds). Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriolgique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001. Compte rendu, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 47. Helsinki : Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002.
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Date: 2011-02-28 03:58 pm (UTC)More seriously, this is chewy stuff. I didn't know a lot of this.
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Date: 2011-02-28 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-02 12:20 am (UTC)I like to think my arms send a message. So far, that message seems to be that I am spiritually promiscuous.