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Women in the Ancient Near East: A Sourcebook. Edited by Mark W. Chavalas. Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World. London: Routl edge, 2014. Pp. xii + 319. $43.95 (paper).
Mark Chavalas' Women in the Ancient Near East is a collection of primary sources intended to provide the reader with an introduction and overview of the lives of females in the Ancient Near East (ANE) and the sources that give the documentary evidence for those lives. As Chavalas explains the project, "I have created a primary source textbook that has excerpts of Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern (specifically Hittite) texts and other primary source materials, which further an understanding of women in the context of ancient Near Eastern history" (p. 5). That said, there are a few things of which the reader must be aware in approaching the book. The work deals exclusively with Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite sources. No aspect of the Levant is covered-Canaanite (Ugarit), Phoenician, or Israelite. Nor are there any Persian data; as Chavalas notes, the work only extends "to the end of Mesopotamian political autonomy in the sixth century bc." So, this is not a book about ANE women so much as it is a book about Mesopotamian women, with a glance at Anatolia.
Second, the approach is exclusively textual. There is not a single picture in the book; art historical and archaeological data are eschewed in preference for the written sources. Third, as Chavalas notes, the book is a "supplemental textbook for a course on women's or ancient Near Eastern history" (p. 3). More so the latter than the former: There is nothing approaching an introduction to the ANE for the "general" (i.e., non-Assyriologist) reader. There are no maps, no time lines, no explanation of what "cuneiform" is. While this is hardly problematic for the ANE scholar, it does limit the usefulness of the text for, say, a Classicist trying to learn more about the women to her ancient east.
The book begins with an introduction of aims and methodology by Chavalas, including an example of the kind of historiographic problems that face those studying women in the ANE, in particular, the ostensibly on-going question of the existence of sacred prostitution. This brings up the first criticism about the book...