The Sal-Zikrum, or "woman-man"...?
Aug. 7th, 2015 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetBefore the library began to shake, roar, and be evacuated (what was that all about?!), I read with interest a short article from the journal Iraq, from 1939. It concerns a figure called the SAL-ZIKRUM, who appears in the Code of Hammurabi, and in just one another Old Babylonian text. The word's meaning is disputed, but one interpretation is Sumerian "female" plus Akkadian "male", and in texts it's used as though it's feminine.
In Hammurabi, the SAL-ZIKRUM appears in six sections: firstly, in laws about priestesses and their dowries, and secondly, in laws about the adoption of a son by either the chamberlain of the palace or by a SAL-ZIKRUM. The one other document, possibly to do with a palace or temple, concerns rations for women weavers and for a SAL-ZIKRUM.
The authors conclude that the SAL-ZIKRUM was probably a eunuch who dressed as, and was treated as, a woman; but to my inexpert eye, this seems to involve a lot of assumptions that aren't given support in the article - for example, that the chamberlain of the palace was a eunuch. They refer to an earlier commentator who "suggested that it is intended to describe either "female men" in the sense of women designated as men or else some kind of female eunuch." Well, the eunuch part doesn't sound likely to me either, though celibacy (or rather, not having children) is a possibility. Equally difficult for the authors to imagine is "the treatment of women as men, ie of the inferior as the superior sex" - though to be fair they probably intended to indicate the attitude of the Babylonians, and not necessarily their own - even if it was 1939. :)
What if, though, we have here a glimpse of a "fourth gender" in Mesopotamia? We know about plenty of cultic functionaries who are apparently feminised men and who are at least somewhat recognised and integrated. If the SAL-ZIKRUM actually was the "woman-man", is it possible she, or he, was a masculinised woman? Or - perhaps like the authors - am I trying to build too large an edifice on too small a foundation?
* This translation of Hammurabi gives "devoted woman", and Brigitte Groneberg similarly interprets the word as SALsekretu, referring to a class of cloistered priestesses and to members of a harem.
__
G.R. Driver and John C. Miles. The SAL-ZIKRUM "Woman-Man" in Old-Babylonian Texts. Iraq 6(1) spring 1939 pp 66-70.
Groneberg, Brigitte. Die sumerisch-akkadische Inanna/Ištar: Hermaphroditos?. Die Welt des Orients 17 (1986), pp. 25-46.
In Hammurabi, the SAL-ZIKRUM appears in six sections: firstly, in laws about priestesses and their dowries, and secondly, in laws about the adoption of a son by either the chamberlain of the palace or by a SAL-ZIKRUM. The one other document, possibly to do with a palace or temple, concerns rations for women weavers and for a SAL-ZIKRUM.
The authors conclude that the SAL-ZIKRUM was probably a eunuch who dressed as, and was treated as, a woman; but to my inexpert eye, this seems to involve a lot of assumptions that aren't given support in the article - for example, that the chamberlain of the palace was a eunuch. They refer to an earlier commentator who "suggested that it is intended to describe either "female men" in the sense of women designated as men or else some kind of female eunuch." Well, the eunuch part doesn't sound likely to me either, though celibacy (or rather, not having children) is a possibility. Equally difficult for the authors to imagine is "the treatment of women as men, ie of the inferior as the superior sex" - though to be fair they probably intended to indicate the attitude of the Babylonians, and not necessarily their own - even if it was 1939. :)
What if, though, we have here a glimpse of a "fourth gender" in Mesopotamia? We know about plenty of cultic functionaries who are apparently feminised men and who are at least somewhat recognised and integrated. If the SAL-ZIKRUM actually was the "woman-man", is it possible she, or he, was a masculinised woman? Or - perhaps like the authors - am I trying to build too large an edifice on too small a foundation?
* This translation of Hammurabi gives "devoted woman", and Brigitte Groneberg similarly interprets the word as SALsekretu, referring to a class of cloistered priestesses and to members of a harem.
__
G.R. Driver and John C. Miles. The SAL-ZIKRUM "Woman-Man" in Old-Babylonian Texts. Iraq 6(1) spring 1939 pp 66-70.
Groneberg, Brigitte. Die sumerisch-akkadische Inanna/Ištar: Hermaphroditos?. Die Welt des Orients 17 (1986), pp. 25-46.
