[1] Unless otherwise specified, all dates are BCE (before contemporary era).
ARENDT Hannah (1963): Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London, 1994
[3] We attribute masculine characteristics to the chief, though female chiefs existed: the Powhatan Indians (North America) had two different words to designate this function, one male and one female.
[4] Michael Minkov notes that “In cultures where the whole community’s welfare is dependent on the complex management of common property and the achievement of shared goals, harmony and cooperation are essential.” [Minkov, 2009, 242]
[5] To this effect, Indian tribes of the United States have introduced the “talking stick,” an ornamented stick of wood used during tribal meetings. Changing hands, it gave the possibility for everyone to take the floor, limiting the exercise of power while bringing order to these meetings.
[6] As is the case in Japan today where a special language, almost incomprehensible to the ordinary citizen, must be used in presence of the emperor.
SAHLINS M.D. (1962): Moala: Culture and Nature on a Fijian Island. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor; in Flannery, 2002
[8] In the first part, we saw how the shaman had benefited from such a control.
The Laws of Manu. IX, 33; in Georg Bühler, translator (1886). The Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXV. Oxford, Clarendon Press
[9] It is important to remember here that men and women shared the same procreative vision, notwithstanding some rare exceptions.
AESCHYLUS (1920): The Oresteia… with an English verse translation by R. C. Trevelyan. Cambridge, Bowes & Bowes
[10] From 6,500, the Obeid culture spreads over two millennia. Its capital is Eridu.
FOREST Jean-Daniel (2002): L’apparition de l’État en Mésopotamie; in L’État, le pouvoir, les prestations et leurs formes en Mésopotamie ancienne. Actes du Colloque assyriologique franco-tchèque. Paris, 11-17, 14 (tr. by the author)
[11] These walls were constructed to protect the village from flooding.
[12] “Rather than presenting us with a static picture, Çatalhöyük architecture features an agglutinative development that seems to occur from a relatively open settlement in level VIII to a densely built settlement in levels VII, VIB, and VIA... Later on, in levels V, IV, III, and II, open space becomes more dominant, and streets appear... (23)... an interesting development occurs from the early levels (VII, VIB, and VIA) without streets to the later levels (V, IV, III, II) in which streets are present…” [Düring, 2002, 23-31]
[13] However, bodies are still buried beneath the houses at the time of the archaic dynasties, in the first half of the third millennium.
[14] For millennia, Sargon remained a model for Assyrian and Babylonian kings: 1,800 years after his reign, King Nabonidus undertook excavations to recover his palace.
[15] Many centuries later, in a poem addressed to Marduk, the Assyrian King Assurbanipal (669-around 630) wrote: “I am Assurbanipal the great king, the powerful king, the king of all lands, the king of the country of Assyria, the king of the four shores of the earth, the king of kings…” [Glassner, 2002, 87]
[16] Slavery is not born of a philanthropic desire to save the life of enemies, as some have thought, lives that would have otherwise been simply wiped out. The economy of production, the hierarchization of society, and the need to expand made the creation of a caste of slaves not only possible, but extremely desirable. The working class, the valorization of work and unemployment will all appear after the abolishment of slavery.
[17] Those that define the Alliance in Exodus [20:22 -23:19] are estimated to have been written around the twelfth century. Those of the Deuteronomy [12-28] are from the seventh century. As for those found in the Book of Numbers, Leviticus and the other books of Exodus, they are posterior to the period of the exile (fifth century).
HERODOTUS (2010): The Histories. An account of great and marvelous deeds through the 1920 translation of A. D. Godley. Pax Librorum, I, 199
[18] To fight against child prostitution, devdaasi has been banned in 1982.
[19] In the hymn dedicated to the goddess Gula that we mentioned earlier, a woman is first a daughter-in-law before being a wife, which could mean that the father had certain “rights” towards the women joining his household.
[20] We have to take here into account the custom that married girls had to move into the household of their husband. Intercourse between father and daughter would therefore almost always happen when the girl still lived with her father, when she still was his property. What’s more, the fact that a father had the right to sell his daughter into prostitution made incestuous relationships between them very common.
[21] In the code of laws of Hammurabi, the word ‘father’ appears 61 times against 12 times for the word ‘mother’, whereas the word ‘wife’ appears 36 times against 4 times for the word ‘husband’. Similarly, the word "father" and its variants appear 1,350 times in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it appears 457 times. In comparison, the word “mother” appears 291 times in the Old Testament and 110 times only in the New Testament.
KRAMER Samuel (1974): The Goddesses and the Theologians: Reflections on Women’s Rights in Ancient Sumer. Rome, XXII, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale; in Swidler, 1976, 322
[22] Under polytheism, we understand a system of beliefs organized around several divinities.
ARMSTRONG Karen (1993): A History of God. The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York, Knopf, 9
ACKERMAN Diane (1994): A Natural History of Love. New York, Random House, 47
[23] While integrating fertility as a symbol, Christianity has eliminated all sexual references to Christ's conception. Interestingly, it has used the antediluvian notion of spirit intervening in the procreative process.
[24] Dumuzi appears in Babylon under the name of Tammuz, and is known as Adonis in the Greek pantheon. In the Old Testament, the women of Israel implore Dumuzi during a drought [Ez 8:14].
ROSENSTOCK Bruce (2006): David’s Play: Fertility Rituals and the Glory of God in 2 Samuel 6. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Vol. 31, 1, 63-80, 78
[25] Besides their official religious
functions, these towers offered to a selected few the possibility to escape the
flooding that regularly took place in Low Mesopotamia, the country “between two
rivers.”
Interestingly, it has been noted that the size of the ziggurat of Eridu and its
emplacement correspond to the description that the Bible gives of the Tower of
Babel.
[26] In the Sumerian mythology, Inanna is a very powerful goddess, her various names indicating the multiple facets of her nature. She is Nintud, the Lady who gives Birth; Nintinugga, the Lady who gives life to the dead; Damgalnunna, the Great Wife of the Prince; Nin-Ghursag, the Lady of the Mountain. She is also called Ninnana, the Queen of the Sky, or Ninsianna and personifies the planet Venus. Companion of Enlil, the eldest brother of Enki, she is the wife of Dumuzi, who shares her sanctuary in Uruk. A very complex goddess found in all polytheistic pantheons, Inanna the Sumerian will carry the name of Ishtar in Babylon, of Ashtart in the Ugarit myths, of Ashirat for the Assyrians, of Astarte for the Canaanites, and of Aphrodite for the Greeks. For the Canaanites and the Israelites, she is the wife of Baal and El.
[27] The temples disposed of important domains. In Egypt, they will control a third of the arable land of the country. Their administrators will be chosen by the Pharaoh.
[28] Emile Durkheim defines religion as “a system of beliefs and practices referring to sacred things – beliefs and practices being common to a specific collectivity” [Durkheim, 1907, 8]. In the fourth part, we will see the origin of the notion of “sacred.”
[30] “Paganism
did not usually seek to impose itself on other people … since there was always
room for another god alongside the others.” [Armstrong, 1993, 26]
The idea to amalgamate divinities can seem strange for those of us who live in
a context of religious exclusive rights, in which adherence to a religion
entails the automatic dismissal of all other religions. However, this
phenomenon is relatively recent and limited to the religious systems issued
from Levantine monotheism. Outside this particular context, we find a much more
flexible religious environment, from Africa to the Far East, leaning on the
functionality of the divinity rather than on its ideology. In Japan for
example, the different religious communities count more members than the number
of inhabitants the country possesses, many Japanese belonging to several
confessions at the same time.