While the period that stretches from the chiefdoms to the late empires of Antiquity establishes the power and authority of the masculine in all facets of society, women still enjoy prestige and privileges, and take an active part in the economy. They possess lands and slaves, lend and borrow money, and are involved in commercial activities, whether those of their spouses or their own. In palaces and temples of the third millennium, many women have titles of nobility and occupy high positions. They also are scribe or musician, or practice an independent profession, such as weaver or goldsmith. But women are also objectified, left as a pledge for debts contracted by their father, their brother or their husband, or offered as a tribute. In addition, they practice prostitution.
However, various signs reveal the degradation of their status. A hymn dedicated to the popular goddess Gula confirms the total dependence of women on men: “I am a daughter-in-law, I am a wife, I am a housewife.” The different tables of laws that are written at that time confirm the complete state of subordination imposed on women.
With the exception of the code of Ur-nammu dated 2,200, most codes of laws that have been found are from the beginning of the second millennium, as the one of Eshnunna (about 1950), the one of Lipit-Ishtar from Nippur (about 1850) or the famous Babylonian code of Hammurabi (about 1750) [see Appendix Hammurabi]. Later, besides a Hittite code dating from around 1,300, the codes found in the Old Testament, imitating their political predecessors, will equip the sovereign god with real tables of laws [17].
Numerous laws in the code of Hammurabi as in the Old Testament regulate conjugal relationships, problems of succession and sexual offenses. Regularizing norms that have to be enforced in society, they give a good picture of the state of relationships between men and women.
Among other things, they show to what point sexual customs were loosened at the time. The example of Sodom and Gomorrah [Ge 18:20-21] was not an exception: “I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for [the men] themselves go apart with harlots, and they sacrifice with the prostitutes,” writes Hosea [4:14]
The ardor with which the prophets try to regularize the sexual customs of the Israelites show how serious a problem it was: “A widow, or one divorced, or a profane woman, a harlot, these shall he not take: but a virgin of his own people shall he take to wife” preaches Leviticus [21:14]; “There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel,” one reads in Deuteronomy [23:17].
Codes of laws distinguish three sorts of sexual infractions: rape, fornication, which includes prostitution, and incest.
Rape
Rape is punished differently depending on whether it occurs in the city or in the countryside. In the city, the girl or woman who has been raped but has not shouted – or has not been heard – will share the fate of her rapist, death. In the countryside however, she might have shouted, but not been heard. In that situation, only the man is condemned to death. The Hittite code goes further and condemns the woman who is raped in her house, presupposing that the man could not enter without her agreement. In this case, the rapist is punished only if he’s caught red-handed by the husband who, without hesitation, can kill him as well as his own wife. If the woman is not married but promised to a man and still a virgin, the rapist is put to death while the woman is not blamed for anything. If the woman is not engaged to be married, the rapist is not put to death, but simply has to compensate the girl's father by giving him a sum of money and by marrying his daughter.
Fornication
Fornication can be defined as encompassing all ‘inappropriate’ sexual relationships. Adultery is one of them. In the Assyrian code as in the code of Hammurabi [129], when a woman and her lover are caught in flagrante delicto, they are both bound and drowned. If the husband forgives his wife, or punishes her less heavily, the king might then forgive the lover as well. The biblical laws, on the other hand, exclude all forgiveness: the lovers must die [Le 20:10; De 22:22].
If a wife is accused of adultery by her husband although she is innocent, she can return to her father’s house. But if she is incriminated by a third person, even though she has not done anything, she will drown herself out of respect for her husband [Hammurabi 131-132].
Whereas the woman who commits adultery is always guilty, no mention is made anywhere of the case of an adulterous man. However, a deceived wife can apply for divorce. Yet, she will have to prove that she has been a good housewife and that her morality is without reproach. She will then recover her dowry and return to her father’s house. But “if she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water.” [Hammurabi 143] Besides, a woman whose husband has been absent a long time will be allowed to leave him for another man if there is nothing to eat at her house. But if she wants to leave him while there’s enough food to feed her, she will perish by drowning [Hammurabi 133-134].
Falling under the law against fornication is the case of two non-married individuals that have a sexual relationship. It will be, however, sufficient for them to get married to avoid punishment. Deuteronomy explores the case of a man who accuses the woman he has just married not to have been a virgin at the time of the wedding, and therefore, to have fornicated. It will be the task of her parents to prove that these accusations are false by bringing “forth the tokens of the young lady’s virginity to the elders of the city.” [De 22:15] These will condemn the husband to a fine that will be given to the father of the woman. She will remain his wife, and he won't be able to divorce her as long as she lives. On the other hand, if the woman's virginity cannot be proven, she will be stoned by the people of the city in front of her father’s house until she dies.
Prostitution
Though the laws that are meant to regulate sexual relationships partly ratify norms being already implemented in the society, they let emerge the promiscuous heritage of these populations, which the surviving practices of prostitution, incest and polyandry illustrate. However, while polyandry and incest take their roots in a very distant past and were extremely widespread when paternity did not exist, prostitution is a more recent phenomenon, probably unknown to Neolithic egalitarian communities. It certainly started to flourish with the changes in demographic balance and in social interaction that mark the chiefdoms and the Urban Revolution. It was further greatly influenced by the introduction of slaves, which replaced the practice of kidnapping women, albeit on a much larger scale. In fact, prostitution was probably used to regulate traditional promiscuity, still very much practiced.
Until the codes introduced in the Old Testament, most codes of law allowed prostitution, its practice being deeply anchored in the norms of the society. One of its institutionalized facets was the so-called “sacred prostitution”: “The Babylonians have one most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus, and there consort with a stranger… A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he throws the coin he says these words “The goddess Mylitta prosper thee.” (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians.) … The woman goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no one. When she has gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, she returns home… Such of the women as are tall and beautiful are soon released, but others who are ugly have to stay a long time before they can fulfill the law. Some have waited three or four years in the precinct. A custom very much like this is found also in certain parts of the island of Cyprus.” [Herodotus, 1850]
Sacred prostitution was widespread, from India to Cyprus to Egypt. In Andhra Pradesh (India) for example, evil on a family or on an entire village could be avoided by marrying a girl between five and nine years old to the god Potharaju. Elsewhere, the initiation rituals of devdaasi included a deflowering ceremony giving a priest the right to have intercourse with every girl enrolled at his temple [18].
Providing temples with a regular income, institutionalized prostitution will also be introduced by civil authorities. In Greece, slaves worked in the dicterion as prostitutes, applying a very affordable one-price-fits-them-all policy. Around the same time (end seventh century, begin sixth century), Guan Zhong introduces a similar system in China to increase state income.
The Old Testament will be the only code that severely condemns prostitution. The first mention appears in Genesis, when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, has prostituted herself and is pregnant. He condemns her to be burnt [Ge 38:24], but forgives her when he realizes that she has had sex with him, and that he is the father of her child. In Leviticus, the daughter of a priest is condemned to be burnt because she has dishonored her father [Le 21:9]. “Prostitution, wine, and new wine take away understanding,” writes Hosea [Ho 4:11], while Leviticus recommends fathers not to prostitute their daughters out of fear that “the land falls into prostitution, and the land becomes full of wickedness.” [Le 19:29] But because these laws only concerned the Israelites prostitution flourished, actively practiced by “foreign” women.
In fact, prostitution was engrained in the mores of the time, as illustrated by the custom law that allowed a father to sell his daughter who became a concubine during the time established by the contract of sale. The Code of Hammurabi [178-180] even regulates the gifts or dowry a father makes for his daughter, whether she is a devoted woman or a prostitute. As for the adoption of children, their status was identical, whether they were born in the palace or from a “public” woman. [Hammurabi 187/192-193]
Incest
A few examples will illustrate the manner incest was considered. In the first place, all sexual relationships between a son and his mother are punished by death [Hammurabi, 157]. But sexual relations between a man and his stepmother are also condemned to the same punishment. As one can read in Leviticus, this law is not aimed at protecting the ties of blood or at avoiding inbreeding, but is justified by the fact that the father's “nudity” is exposed, that is to say, the father is dishonored [Le 20:10-11].
Similarly, sexual relations between a father and his daughter-in-law, relationships that seemed to be fairly common at that time [Ez 22:11] [19], are also condemned. The father is sentenced to death if the daughter-in-law and her husband have already had intercourse together: the dishonor incurred by the son requires the father's death in repair. But if the marriage has not yet been consummated, the father has only to pay a fine. [Hammurabi 155-156] Punishment is thus entirely dependent on whether the honor of another man has been tarnished, and his procreative exclusivity infringed.
In the case of a relationship between a father and his daughter, the code of Hammurabi [154] only banishes the father. In the story of Lot and his two daughters who sleep with their father and become pregnant [Ge 19:31-36], no one is punished because there is only one male character, the father, and he cannot dishonor himself.
Finally, we observe a certain evolution in the way the Old Testament approaches incest. While the more recent books (Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers) condemn all sexual relationships between relatives, Genesis allows it repeatedly: in the story of Lot and his daughters [Ge 19:30-38]; when Abraham marries his half-sister Saraï [Ge 20:12]; when his brother Nahor marries his half-sister Milcah [Ge 11:29]; and in the case of a wedding between cousins [Ge 28:2]. Still at the time of David, his daughter Tamar says to her brother Amnon that their father will not be opposed to their marriage: “When she had brought them near to him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, ‘Come, lie with me, my sister!’ She answered him, ‘No, my brother, do not force me! For no such thing ought to be done in Israel. Don’t you do this folly. I, where would I carry my shame? And as for you, you will be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.’ However he would not listen to her voice; but being stronger than she, he forced her, and lay with her.” [2Sa 13:11-14]
A Procreative Monopoly
A common value to all these laws is that they build up the procreative rights of men. Judah can forgive the prostitution of his daughter-in-law [Ge 38:26] because he is not dishonored by this act, but foremost because he is the father of the child she carries. Furthermore, the fact that punishment varies whether the marriage has been consummated or not clearly indicates that the law is written to protect man’s procreative property: if the marriage has been consummated, the father has to die in order to protect his son’s procreative monopoly. For the same reason, the codes of law make very little case of incestuous relationships between a father and his daughter [20].
Consequently, if we apply an identical reasoning to the laws concerning adultery, the fact that men are not punished for having a sexual relationship with another woman than their wife is because the law does not seek to limit men sexual activity, but to establish and protect paternity. The law dealing with men who do not honor their paternal task confirms this aspiration: “If a man takes a woman to wife, but has no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him.” [Hammurabi 128] In other words, the law aims at reducing women to their functional status and at imposing on their sexual life the necessary boundaries to demarcate paternal activity [21]. The will to control women’s sexuality and to prevent them from any promiscuous relationship is confirmed by a document of the Urukagina reform. Dating from around 2,400, it forbids the practice of polyandry, an accepted tradition in Sumer until then: “The women of former days used to take two husbands, (but) the women of today (if they attempted this) were stoned with stones (upon which was inscribed their evil) intent.” [Kramer, 1974]
The homogeneity of the various codes of law across time and borders implies that the aspects they rule on were already put into practice in the different societies, and that the norms and values they legislate were already ingrained in the populations they were regulating. The introduction of ancestor cults in the early days of the Chalcolithic could have fostered such an in-depth integration of patrilineal filiation and genealogy into the social fabric.
After the discovery of paternity put an end to the procreative function of the spirits, the role they played in the relationship between the living and the dead was reinvested with a new dimension, the cult of the forebears, sealing paternity into the social structure.
We must first distinguish filial ancestor cults, in which a relationship of filiation exists between the one officiating and the ancestor, from communal ancestor cults that are dedicated to an individual with whom the one officiating has no tie of filiation. Whereas filial cults imply kinship between individuals, communal cults hark back to traditions that take their source in remote myths, as was the case for most of the ancestor cults mentioned in the first part.
While we have seen communities venerating women as their ancestor, filial ancestor cults are characterized by the fact that they are never addressed to a female ancestor. Even in matrilineal communities where an ancestor cult is practiced, only male ancestry is honored, as is the case for the Ashanti (Ghana) who venerate their maternal uncle. In fact, an individual's genealogy becomes important only when fatherhood appears. Filial ancestor cults are, hence, relatively recent, introduced after the paternal function was established, whereas communal ancestor cults have always existed.
With filial ancestor cults, spirits maintain their function in their relationships with the dead, while anchoring in an indelible fashion the father in the social structure. From generation to generation, patrilineal progeny will thus be implanted, constructing a male genealogy that the ruling class will retroactively date back to the dawn of time.
This masculine approach to one’s genealogy reminds us of the bloody rituals marking the accession of boys into the world of men that contrasts with the absence of ceremony signaling the “natural” entry of girls into the fertile world of women [see Part One]. Identically here, men ritualize paternal filiation in an ostentatious manner, whereas the “natural” genealogy of maternal lineages goes totally unnoticed.
Nevertheless, ancestor cults will not be sufficient to cover all facets of the new vision that humans have over themselves and over the position they occupy in the universe. By adapting the spirits to the renewed social conditions, to the recently acquired knowledge, to their new conception of the world, humans will transform them into divinities, creating the real backbone of the polytheistic culture that will dominate the Middle East and beyond for four millennia [22].