The Decline of Female Professionals—and the Rise of the Witch—in the Second and Early First Millennium bce

Thousands of cuneiform documents from ancient Mesopotamia—Sumer and Akkad, and later Babylonia and Assyria—inform us about the daily lives, customs, ideas, and beliefs of its inhabitants from the second half of the third millennium BCE until the first century CE. Written in wedge-shaped characters on clay tablets and other objects, they record administrative and legal transactions, letters, hymns and prayers, rituals, medical recipes, royal propaganda, etc. These records offer us a unique insight into women's public and private duties and responsibilities. Naturally, our information is patchy and uneven, reflecting in part the accidents of discovery. Moreover, information concerning northern Mesopotamia is not necessarily valid for the south, and vice versa. Economic and political situations were in constant flux; and professional roles and descriptions may have changed over three millennia. Combining data from administrative sources with the ideological writings of scholars gives a more nuanced, but still restricted, picture of women's activities. As most of the sources, especially in later periods, were written by male scribes, it is the male perception that is recorded on clay, a perception that was increasingly negatively disposed towards women.

In this article, I will examine the processes whereby women, particularly of a certain social and religious status, were marginalized and, in some cases, also demonized in second to first millennium BCE Mesopotamia. I will focus on the decline in power and legitimacy experienced by female professionals, including consecrated women such as the nadītu and qadištu, and instigated by male scholars. A certain mystery must have shrouded these women's activities in the eyes of men. Their rites and esoteric knowledge, steeped in magic, however, were not written down, leaving us with limited information about these women's expertise—limited and biased, as the male scholars were free to denigrate their female competitors, bringing them down to the level of witches. Equating these once highly respected and exclusively female professionals with witches served both to dehumanize and demonize them. They retained a degree of power and operated within a sphere of agency that could not be effectively usurped by men. It is perhaps not surprising, under these circumstances, that exorcists and qadištus did sometimes cooperate.²

1. historical overview: the roles and status of women from the third to the first millennium bce

Marginalizing Women and Goddesses in Mesopotamia

In 1992, Tikva Frymer-Kensky published her famous book, In the Wake of the Goddesses, exploring the world of female deities in Mesopotamia, and, in so doing, drawing attention to gender in the ancient Near East and the growing marginalization of women throughout its history. As she demonstrated, the roles and functions of the goddesses in surviving narratives mirror those of mortal women.³ Frymer-Kensky's work revealed that the goddesses' occupations were increasingly taken over by male gods. And what occurred in the divine sphere was also, increasingly, reflected in the human sphere in the ancient Near East.

The Wise Women of Sumer: Women in the Third Millennium BCE

In the Sumerian pantheon, both male and female divinities were well represented and had their own roles to play, reflecting the duality of nature. The goddesses acted as mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, mothers-in-law, or queens in the divine families, thus embodying the female in the family.⁴ Just as the male gods were patrons of "manly" activities, goddesses were patrons of activities that were considered "womanly" in Sumerian culture. It is significant that goddesses oversaw the cultural activities that defined civilized life: weaving, spinning, and making cloth (Uttu); grain and food preparation (Nisaba); and making beer (Ninkasi).⁵ Moreover, the goddess Nisaba supervised the storage of surplus goods, which entailed the surveying and accounting of the stocks, recorded in writing on clay. Thus, Nisaba was also the patron of writing and learning.⁶ Healing was supervised by Gula and other goddesses associated with her. In short, production, storage, administration, wisdom, and healing were the province of goddesses. The goddess Ningirima, the "(great) exorcist...