Women and References to Women in Mesopotamian Royal Inscriptions: An Overview from the Early Dynastic to the end of Ur III period

Authors

• Stefan Nowicki University of Wrocław

Keywords:

ancient Mesopotamia, women, society, royal inscriptions

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present textual fragments from Mesopotamian royal inscriptions (and some texts dealing with them) created in the third millennium bc between the Early Dynastic and Ur III periods, that were written by women or include references to women. When possible, this article also contains short descriptions and discussion of the specific women and the context of their appearance in a given text. The main reason for limiting this short study to royal inscriptions is the huge number of preserved texts of different kinds (economic, legal, religious, etc.) in which women are mentioned. As this article focuses only on mortal women; any references to goddesses as well as other female supernatural beings will be omitted.The main finding of this research is that there are significant differences in the number of references to women, and in roles that they play in specific texts – as well as a changing number of personal inscriptions from women – dependent on the period of a text’s origins.