Mesopotamia Gender Roles Essay

Gender is a crucial concept to think carefully about in a society and is made up of social norms that determine the behavior of men and women in a society. A gender role is an appropriate behavior and attitude that has been developed over the centuries that both males and females of society are supposed to go along with and live their life by. Gender has always played a major role in both ancient and modern societies, and even in the different mythologies of distinct cultures. Gender roles change as time progresses but something that does not change is that there will always be two genders. Some generally accepted behaviors of males in our society that people are well-known of are that males are courageous, have strength, and are leaders. Some generally accepted behaviors of females are that they are caring, show affection, and have a life-giving force. The function of gender in mythologies of different cultures are all unique and they are all dissimilar from each other. Depending on the society they live in, males and females are seen differently in the different mythologies of Mesopotamian, Paleolithic/ Neolithic, and Egyptian and one or both genders can have a prominent role whether it being monarchs, parents, heads of households, or housemaids corresponding to their gender, religion, and belief system.

The function of gender in Mesopotamian mythology starting with the male gender is that men were always looked at with great appreciation in that they were granted the rights and capabilities to be in government. The roles of men in this mythology varied from being kings and fathers or even political rule makers. As a result, these roles that males played, gave them the highest sense of command in their Mesopotamian civilization. To add, on page 69 in Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia, men were the heads of their households in Mesopotamia because this mythology was patriarchal. “For the most part, the father as the head of the family retained both possession of and control over land for life.” Since they were the heads of their households, men also had land which they were the owners of for their entire life and this expresses them as playing a prominent role. Since men were the heads of their households, women were seen as playing a less prominent role in the household. Instead, they would be seen as being a housemaid. In Mesopotamian mythology, religion was very important because Mesopotamians believed that the gods had an influence on how they lived their human lives. A well-known male god in Mesopotamian mythology is Marduk, who was the chief god of Babylon. Marduk was an important god during this time because he was the most powerful god of Babylon. The female gender is a bit different due to the different influences that both cultures of Sumer and Babylon had on the female gender and the way they treated women. The female gender was treated with more respect under the rule of the Sumerians in comparison to the Babylonians, who treated women poorly. Sumerian women had roles in their society that were different from males. Women’s roles consisted of being wives and mothers for most of the time but there were other roles that women played which were them being priestesses and housemaids. The gender roles of women changed however under the rule of the Babylonians. The leader of the Babylonians at the time was Hammurabi who was a significant king of Old Babylon. The Babylonians had strict rules during the time, which made for the gender roles of women to quickly change. This was shown since women were starting to be considered as property of their husbands and the sense of liberty that they once had while the Sumerians were in command, was now lost. Even though women were treated this way under the Babylonians, a well-known female goddess in Mesopotamia is Tiamat. Tiamat was the Babylonian she-dragon of chaos and was a strong female goddess who had a life-giving force which is shown when she mingles with Apsu and gives birth to Lahmu and Lahamu.

In Paleolithic/ Neolithic mythology, women were seen as playing more of a prominent role in comparison to men. The female rather than the male, was appointed as the supreme deity in this mythology. In addition, women were seen to be both culturally and governmentally superior to men. On page 11 of When God Was A Woman, “In the very early stages of man’s development before the secret of human fecundity was understood before coitus was associated with childbirth, the female was revered as the giver of life. Only women could produce their own kind, and man’s part in this process was not as yet recognized.” The man’s part in the process of childbirth was not perceived at the time because many did not have an understanding of the relationship between sex and reproduction. Therefore, people believed that babies were born from women because of nature and not because of the sexual intercourse that occurs between males and females. This means that the mother would have been seen as the singular parent of her family. There were also a great many sculptures of women that were discovered in the cultures of the Upper Paleolithic Age. These sculptures were built at the time to provide a sense of devotion to the female gender. In addition, on page 32, “In early society, women wielded the main sources of wealth; they were the owners of the house, the producers of food, they provided shelter and security. Economically, therefore, man was dependent upon woman.” This is taken to mean that women were seen as playing a prominent role in this mythology for all that they did including being the property owners of the house, producers of food, and providing a roof over their families’ heads. However, there was a different view of the female gender once the Northern Invaders arrived. On page 66:

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The arrival of the Indo-Aryan tribes, the presentation of their male deities as superior to the female deities of the indigenous populations of the lands they invaded, and the subsequent intricate interlacing of the two theological concepts are recorded mythologically in each culture. It is in these myths that we witness the attitudes that led to the suppression of Goddess worship.

Once the Indo-Aryan tribe took over, male deities were superior. The worship of female deities was decreasing while the worship of male deities was increasing due to these foreign invaders.

In Egyptian mythology, males had more of a prominent role than females. Egyptian mythology is different with respect to the Paleolithic/ Neolithic mythology because males were claimed to have the prominent role of having a life-giving force in Egyptian mythology, while females in Paleolithic/ Neolithic mythology were seen as having the life-giving force. A story that supports males having the life-giving force is the Ennead in the book Don’t Know Much About Mythology. In the Ennead, the sun god Atum masturbates and creates Shu and Tefnut who then create Geb and Nut. Geb was the god of Earth and Nut was the goddess of the sky. This role in gender in comparison to other mythologies where the deity of the earth is normally a goddess and the deity of the sky is a god, is switched in this civilization. The man plays the role of planting the seed in the woman which means that the child is produced by the man and carried by the woman. On the contrary, women also had important roles in Egyptian mythology. This is shown on page 36 of When God Was A Woman “It is for these reasons, in fact, that it was ordained that the queen should have greater power and honor than the king and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over the husband, husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives.” During most periods of time in Egypt, the culture was matrilineal and the mother was seen as the head of the family, meaning that they had more power. Also on page 36, “Egypt was a land where women had great freedom and control of their own lives, and perhaps of their husbands’ as well.” Women were free in Egypt rather than women that were ruled by the Babylonians.