- The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East ed. by Beth Alpert Nakhai
This short volume (215 pp. including indices) has nine chapters plus an introduction by the editor. These articles represent some of the papers given at ASOR’s annual meetings in the unit World of Women: Gender in Archaeology 2000–2007. The majority of research about women in antiquity focuses on the wealthy elite, women in religious institutions, and goddesses and is based on written records rather than archaeological materials. Most of the studies here attempt to recover the lives of ordinary women through archaeological findings.
“Dark Men, Light Women,” attempts to demonstrate that the male/female color differentiation in the Fourth Dynasty reflects the complementarity of their opposite colors (red vs. yellow/white) which indicates the union of male and female, i.e. equilibrium. Mary Ann Eaverly claims, quite questionably, that the god Atum is androgynous because although creation came from the act of ejaculation it had potential for both male and female within it. Although she categorizes the biblical creation story in Genesis 2:7 as the creation of the male first followed by the creation of female, it should be noted that the word ha-adam is without gender until the creation of woman. The creation story in Genesis 1:27, however, is clearly the creation of an androgynous being and this idea is fully developed in later midrashic literature which harmonizes it with the contradictory creation story in Genesis 2:7, making them both the creation of an androgynous being. There are a number of other parallels to Biblical and rabbinic literature of topics mentioned in this article and it would have benefited from such cross-cultural [End Page 115] comparison. What she claimed as greater legal rights for Egyptian women, i.e. the ability to own property (3), is also found in the Bible both in reference to inheritance and ownership.
In “A Taste of Women’s Sociality,” Aubrey Baadsgaard bases her argument on cross-cultural studies of gender and studies on household archaeology. This article functions as a critique of earlier patriarchal models of domestic labour, which did not consider the relationship between workspaces and sociality. As ovens were often situated near entryways or in courtyards, social contact and shared working spaces with neighbours were the norm. The existence of other domestic utensils near ovens implies that cooking areas were multi-use areas, increasing the likelihood that a high degree of sociality within the family and with neighbours was possible. Baadsgaard does not discuss issues of temperature; the winter would increase the use of the food preparation area while in the summer the courtyards were focal points for various activities including cooking. In my opinion, Baadsgaard, relying on Sered, over-emphasizes the sacredness of the domestic chores; they may have taken on a more sacred aspect around holidays when particular foods were prepared in honour of that holiday. Food preparation was a repetitive job, which allowed multitasking including childcare, spinning, or socializing.
Jennie Ebeling and Michael Homan trace the production and consumption of beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt and claim that similar patterns existed for Israelite society in “Baking and Brewing Beer in the Israelite Household”. The connection between baking and brewing is strong because the same ingredients were used and both were dietary staples. Utensils for both were found in the same area. Despite the fact that no textual or artistic sources connecting Israelite women to brewing are found, the authors assume cross-cultural proofs. The authors rely on C. L. Meyers’ claims that being in control of bread production allowed women to gain power in the ancient Israelite household and larger community, and have transferred Meyers’ idea to brewing.1 It is less clear what actual powers were gained by fulfilling societal expectations of women’s work in the family context and how these transferred to the larger social/political realms of power. Certainly in the rabbinic era baking was also...