Property of Sekhmet

Have 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.

I read another chapter of Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, and one from Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean, both by Julia M. Asher-Greve. Let's have the first one first:

In my previous posting I was talking about the possibility that, for the Mesopotamians, gender was not defined by genitals but by dress, behaviour, occupation, behaviours, and so forth. Now in Sex and Gender (her chapter is titled "Decisive Sex, Essential Gender"), Asher-Greve remarks, "Sexual differences were not considered me... But qualities associated with sexual differences are listed as essences." (p 13) Further, marriage is not listed as a me, but kissing and intercourse are. (p 17) If that's right, it'd be a striking bit of evidence in that direction. "Because humans had sex differences and sex roles in common with deities and animals", she suggests, "sex differences were not considered" me, but "gender differences" were "because they make gender what it is". (p 21)

Depressingly, Asher-Greve states that proper gender behaviour was enforced not just by authority figures such as teachers, parents, and by the law, but also by "ridicule, insults, (peer) pressure... Women criticized each other for non-conforming behaviour and pressured themselves to behave in accordance with their gender role." (p 15) So there's something we have in common with the ancients, anyway. (It's striking that then, as now, "normal", "natural" gender behaviour had to be rigorously culturally enforced.)

Mesopotamian thinking about "physiological sex anomalies" was "paradoxical". In Enki and Ninmah, the goddess creates a human without sexual organs; like all the anomalous people she creates, this one is given a place in society, as the king's attendant. But at the same time, intersex children were omens of "miscarriage, death, and even calamity for the country", and may have been killed. (Asher-Greve suggests that, over time, attitudes changed, perhaps alongside the gradual reduction of women's status.)

Asher-Greve argues that historically, androgynous beings have been seen not as half-male and half-female, but as male creatures "incorporating feminine qualities and physicality". Discussing gender ambiguous foundation figures from Mesopotamia, she suggests they should be read as feminine men: kings who, as temple-builders and thus creators, were "perfect", incorporating the female. (She compares this to the feminised representation of Akhenaten.) In this way, the founders resembled the first human, who was created to work for the gods, and represented all humankind.

One thing I'm not clear about is how systematically archaeologists identify the gender of figures in ancient art. Is it a matter of taking figures where the gender is known (eg where there's accompanying text), working out their common characteristics, and then using those to type the unknown figures? Or is it more a matter of "Well, that looks like a woman to me"? Or a mixture of both? (I confess Asher-Greve doesn't provide enough data, especially not directly Mesopotamian evidence, to convince me of some of her extremely interesting ideas.)

The other chapter later!

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S. Parpola 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.