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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Recent years have brought a proliferation of studies on the family on such topics as household composition, marriage patterns, childbearing practices, and life-cycle transitions. Scholars in ancient near eastern studies have contributed mainly to the legal and economic aspects of family history. Frequently the work done has centered on philological questions. The cuneiform data on the Mesopotamian family, accidental and all too often limited, is spread over a period of some three thousand years. Nevertheless it is time to broaden the focus despite the inherent problems. In this essay, I treat the question of the dynamics of Mesopotamian family life, more specifically intergenerational conflict, a topic barely touched upon by scholars in the field.
1 See Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Ebeling, E. and Meissner, B., eds. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1928)Google Scholar under such topics as Erbe, Gesetze, Familie for more information and see the monograph “Keilschriftrecht,” by Korošec, V. in Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1964),Google Scholar 49–219, for a discussion on and bibliography of cuneiform legal materials and see below, note 13.
2 But see Kramer, S.N., “Modern Social Problems in Ancient Sumer: Evidence from the Sumerian Literary Documents,” Gesellschaftklassen im Alten Zweistromland und in den Angrenzenden Gebieten (XVII Recontre assyriologique internationale) (München: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften 75, 1970), 114–121,Google Scholar especially 118–20. See also chapter, Kramer's, “Father and Son: The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency,” in History Begins at Sumer, 3rd ed. rev. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 14–17.Google Scholar Here he discusses an angry dialogue between a scribe and his rebellious son who refuses to follow his father's profession, a case of generational conflict. For a critical edition of this text, see Sjoberg, A., “Der Vater und sein Missratener Sohn9,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 25 (1973), 105–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Little work has been done on generational conflict in ancient Near Eastern societies. But for ancient Israel, see Wolff, H.W., “Problems between the Generations in the Old Testament,” in Essays in Old Testament Ethics, Crenshaw, J.L. and Willis, J.T., eds. (New York: Ktav, 1974), 79–94;Google ScholarMarcus, D., “Juvenile Delinquency in the Bible and the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University, 13 (1981), 31–52.Google Scholar See also Malamat, A. on elders and young men in Organs of State Craft in the Israelite Monarchy (Jerusalem: Siwan, 1964), 15–18,Google Scholarand Stager, L.E., “The Family in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Society of Oriental Research, 260 (1985), 18–35,Google Scholar especially 25–27. See the recent study by Steinmetz, D., From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox, 1991)Google Scholar especially her first chapter. In Egypt and Ugarit, mythological materials exist which are relevant to the topic. For the former, see Hornung, E., Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982),Google Scholar J. Baines, trans., 153–5. For the latter, see Caquot, A. and Sznycer, M., Ugaritic Religion (Iconography of Religions, 15:8) (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 121.Google Scholar Especially important from Egypt are the instructional texts which teach the proper relations between young and old, children and parents.
3 For a sampling of Mesopotamian letters, see Leo Oppenheim, A., Letters from Mesopotamia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).Google Scholar The corpus of Mesopotamian letters, especially from the Old Babylonian period (1894–1595 B.C.E), is incredibly rich, but its contents are outside the purview of this essay.
4 Ibid., 64.
5 Published by Columbia University Press (New York, 1984). She has an extensive bibliography.
6 Ibid., ix.
7 Note the comments by Foner, 250–6, on “the question of the relative importance of age hierarchy” in comparison with gender inequalities. She believes that “inequality between young and old may turn out to be more significant than sex inequality in numerous societies.”
8 Foner poses these questions in her introduction and seeks answers to them throughout her book.
9 Ancient Greek sources, for example, strongly suggest that fifth–century Athens was a time and place of enormous generational conflict. Gardner, J. (“Aristophanes and Male Anxiety,” Greece and Rome, 36:1 (1989), 59–61)Google Scholar finds its culmination in the last quarter of the fifth century.
10 Mention should be made of the qualities admired and revealed in the so–called Sumerian schoolboy texts: ambition, competition, and aggressiveness. Therefore the school system for Sumer's elite children upheld and furthered traits very much at variance with respectful restraint and obedience vis-à-vis one's elders. There is no reason to think that these desiderata changed with the political hegemony of the Semites. For this “will to superiority,” as Kramer, S.N. calls it, see his study, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 264–70.Google Scholar
11 The extant inheritance, adoption texts, and lawsuits are a rich source, available from the third to the first millennium B.C.E.
12 For examples of a son receiving his inheritance during his father's lifetime, see Klima, J.Untersuchungen zum altbabylonischen Erbrecht (Prague: Orientalisches Institut, 1940),Google Scholar 74ff. See Stone, E., Nippur Neighborhoods (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 44) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987),Google Scholar 23f, for the possibility that older sons might have taken “their patrimony early in the form of moveable wealth rather than wait until their father died.” In short, there may have been far more flexibility in inheritance division than the extant evidence reveals.
13 In “Economy of the Extended Family,” Oikumene, 5 (1986), 9–13,Google Scholar at 10. On the problems of establishing the types of household patterns, see Diakonoff, I.M., “Extended Families in Old Babylonian Ur,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 75 (1985), 47–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For recent surveys on the family in Mesopotamia, see the excellent study by Glassner, J.J., “De Sumer à Babylone: families pour gérer, families pour règner,” in Histoire de la Famillle, Burguierre, A., eds. (Paris: A. Colin, 1986), vol. 1, 99–133,Google Scholar and the important contribution by Wilcke, C., “Familiengründung im Alten Babylonien,” in Geschlechtsreife und Legitimation zur Zeugung, Müller, E.W. et al. , eds. München: Verlag Alber, 1985), 213–317.Google Scholar Of great ramification for our topic is the breakdown of kinship organization which is replaced by occupational ties in Old Babylonian Nippur (E. Stone, Nippur Neighborhoods, 13–28).
14 The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago (Chicago and Glückstadt: The Oriental Institute and J. J. Augustin, 1956), M:l 314f.Google Scholar
15 Ibid. A:l 71.
16 Alster, B., The Instruction of Suruppak: A Sumerian Proverb Collection. Mesopotamia 2 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1974), 45,Google Scholar line 177. The equation of eldest children with parents contains the seed for sibling rivalry. The Mesopotamian school, the eduba, with its identification of the teacher with father and of the monitor with elder brother, may well have been a way of reinforcing paternal and fraternal dominance and authority.
17 Gilgamesh, III, v. 10. For this translation, see The Assyrian Dictionary, Ṣ 184. Relevant too is the conflict in the Sumerian epic, Gilgamesh andAkka, between the elders and the guruš (the young citizens). The latter want to fight against the city of Kish, the former do not. The young Gilgamesh rejects the advice of the elders. He is backed by the gurus assembly, which confers kingship on him. Katz, Dina (“Gilgamesh and Akka: Was Uruk Ruled by Two Assemblies?”, Revue d' Assyriologie, 81 (1987), 105–12,Google Scholar at 107) suggests that the “epic's representation of the elders versus guruš … should be regarded as a literary pattern, and not as evidence of a bicameral institution as scholars have assumed.”
18 Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29:4 (1987), 715–47),Google Scholar at 737. Late marriage for sons was perhaps a strategy for minimizing father–son conflict.
19 The mother as mediator is a common literary motif in Mesopotamian literature. In my article, “Images of Women in the Gilgamesh Epic,” in Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran, Abusch, T. et al. , eds. (Harvard Semitic Studies, 37) (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 219–30,CrossRefGoogle Scholar I demonstrate the pervasiveness of the mediating maternal image of women in the epic. See Kramer, S.N., “The Woman in Ancient Sumer,” in La Femme dans le Proche–Orient Antique. Compte rendu de la XXXIII Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 7–10juillet, 1986),Google Scholar J. M. Durand, ed. (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, 1987), 112, for examples of the ambivalence in mother-son. relations.
20 Zettler, R., “The Genealogy of Ur–Meme: A Second Look,” Archiv für Orientforschung, 31 (1984), 1–9.Google Scholar In an appendix (Ibid., 9–14), M. Roth presents a reassessment of the crucial text which had been interpreted differently several years before. She clarifies the second lawsuit, which leads to the death of the accuser.
21 Parpola, S., “The Murderer of Sennacherib,” in Death in Mesopotamia 8. Alster, B., ed. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980), 171–81.Google Scholar On the rarity of royal parricide, see Wiseman, D, “Murder in Mesopotamia,” Iraq, 36 (1974), 249–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I owe this reference to one of the anonymous readers for CSSH of this manuscript.
22 The age at death is rarely noted in Mesopotamian sources. See M. Roth (“Age at Marriage and the Household,” 718 n. 8 and 718f n. 9) for a discussion and bibliography on life expectancy in ancient Mesopotamia. What Sailer, R. and Shaw, B.D. detect in “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers, and Slaves,” Journal of Roman Studies, 84 (1984), 124–56,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 136, would be applicable to Mesopotamia: “Short life expectancy and late age of marriage for men meant that only a small minority of children would have had a paternal grandfather alive.” So too are R. Sailer's comments on life expectancy of Roman babies applicable to Mesopotamian babies: “Approximately one–third of babies did not survive the first year, and half did not live to age 10. Of those who did reach 10, about one in three then lived to 60, and only one in seven to age 70” (“Patria Potestas and the Stereotype of the Roman Family,” Continuity and Change, 1:1 (1986), 7–22,Google Scholar at 12). Very much the same figures are cited for eighteenth-century France. See McManners, J., Death and the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 10.Google Scholar
23 E.g.,Schlossman, B.L., “Portraiture in Mesopotamia in the Late Third and Early Second Millennium B.C. Part II,” Archiv für Orientforschung, 28 (1981–1982), 170,Google Scholar suggests that “it is possible that youth and age are depicted in the beardless foundation figurines of Ur-Nammu …and in his bearded countenance on his famous stele now in Philadelphia.” See also the note in Hansen, D.P. and Dales, G.F., “The Temple of Inanna Queen of Heaven,” Archaeology, 15:2 (Summer 1962), 170,Google Scholar about “a statue of an old woman with long hair; such characterizations are rare in Early Dynastic sculpture.” In Egyptian art, however, there are representations of elderly people. In Through Ancient Eyes: Egyptian Portraiture (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1988), 25,Google Scholar D. Spanel speaks of “generic elderly persons” in Egyptian art. Note also the comments by Aldred, C. in “Some Royal Portraits of the Middle Kingdom in Ancient Egypt,” Ancient Egypt in the Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 1–11 (1968–1976), 19,Google Scholar 23. See H. L. Fischer's comments (Ibid., p. 166f) about the representations on the false door of a tomb of its owner as a girl and as an old woman. Most informative on the depiction of old age in Egyptian art is Riefstahl, E., “An Egyptian Portrait of an Old Man,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 10:2 (1951), 65–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 For discussion of this terminology, see Veenhof, K., “A Deed of Manumission and Adoption from the Later Old Assyrian Period,” in Zikir Šumim: Assyriological Studies Presented to F. R. Kraus on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 359–85,Google Scholar at 376–9. See also Greenfield, J.C., “Adi balṭu—Care for the Elderly and its Rewards,” Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 19 (1982), 309–16 for the proper behavior of children toward parents in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the ancient Near East.Google Scholar
25 von Soden, W., “Der grosse Hymnus an Nabǔ,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 61 (1971), 58,Google Scholar line 185f.
26 Mesopotamia, 3 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1975), 67.Google Scholar
27 Alster, , The Instructions of Suruppak, 35,Google Scholar line 18.
28 Gordon, E., Sumerian Proverbs: Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1959), 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Frankena, R., Altbabylonische Briefe, 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1974), no. 15, 17–19.Google Scholar
30 Gordon, E., Sumerian Proverbs, 139.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., 123.
32 Lambert, W.G., Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 85,Google Scholar lines 245–6. There are interesting and contradictory comments in the so–called Babylonian Theodicy on the differing temperaments of children, depending on their birth order. See Ibid. 87, lines 262–3.
33 But see the critical article by R. Sailer, “Patria Potestas,” which questions the stereotypical image of the Roman patriarch with almost absolute power over his extended family.
34 Marcus, “Juvenile Delinquency in the Bible,” 33f. The law here is very severe: “If a son intentionally) strikes his father, his hand will be cut off (Section 195, the Code of Hammurapi). No age is here indicated. Assault against another person would subject the son to a lesser penalty. A person assaulting an unrelated individual would be fined or flogged, depending on the status of the attacker and the victim (Sections 202–208, the Code of Hammurapi). The Code thus served both to support and check paternal authority.
35 The situation of the elder nadītu women of Sippar, a unique institution of celibate women dedicated for life to the sun god Shamash, the chief deity of Sippar, is interesting. They usually adopted younger nadītu's, frequently a relative, or a slave to take care of them in their old age. See my recent discussion of this institution: “Independent Women in Ancient Mesopotamia?,” in Women's Earliest Records, Lesko, B.S., ed. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 145–56.Google Scholar
36 “The Arua Institution,” Revue d' Assyriologie, 66 (1972), 1–32,Google Scholar at 9.
37 For the assumption of social responsibilities by temples, see Leo Oppenheim, A., Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964),Google Scholar 107f.
38 Both the very old and the very young may have performed the same kinds of tasks in the labor force and hence received equivalent rations. See below for more on the equation of the old with the very young.
39 Cited in The Assyrian Dictionary, S 183. See Wiedmann, Th., Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar for the relegation of children, old men, women, and slaves to the margins of Roman society. He argues that their bond is their common physical weakness.
40 Cagni, L., The Poem of Erra. Sources from the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, fascicle 3 (Malibu: Undena, 1977), 28,Google Scholar lines 47–48.
41 Greengus, S., Old Babylonian Tablets from Ishchali and Vicinity (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1979), 75,Google Scholar lines 7–8. I am grateful to Prof. S. Greengus for this reference.
42 In the Ischali treaty, the death of a male slave is compensated with fifteen shekels of silver, a female slave with ten shekels (Ibid.).
43 Greenfield, J.C., “Some Neo–Babylbnian Women,” in La Femme dans le Proche-Orient,Google Scholar 75–80, at 76.
44 See Lloyd-Jones, H., “Psychoanalysis and the Study of the Ancient World,” in Freud and the Humanities, Horden, P., ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 152–180,Google Scholar for doubts about the usefulness of psychoanalytical perspectives in classical studies.
45 Ages in Conflict, 147.
46 In Lethal Speech: Daribi Myth as Symbolic Obviation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 251.Google Scholar
47 Green, M., Eridu in Sumerian Literature (Ph.D. disser., Department of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature, University of Chicago, 1975), 126–8.Google Scholar
48 The Mesopotamians, like the ancient Greeks, may have, as Garland, R. (The Greek Way of Life: From Conception to Old Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 149)Google Scholar observes, “fully appreciated the extent to which a propensity toward violence is engendered in the home and has its roots in one's relationship with one's parents.”
49 Published by Yale University Press (New Haven, 1976), 186–190.
50 See Dalley, S., Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 233–4.Google Scholar
51 For Plato, “generational struggle constituted virtually the basic mechanism in political change, the always disequilibrating factor in systems of government, the prime agent in the alternation of political forms.” See Feuer, L.S., “Generational Struggle in Plato and Aristotle,” in The Conflict of Generations, in Ancient Greece and Rome, Bertman, S., ed. (Amsterdam: Gruner, 1976), 123–7,Google Scholar at 123.
52 For references to Marduk as “the avenger (mutir gimilli)” of his fathers, see The Assyrian Dictionary, M:2 229.
53 For references to Marduk as “the provider (zတninu)” of the gods, see The Assyrian Dictionary, Z 45.
54 Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 233: “Anshar [and] Kishar were born, surpassing them. … Anu their first born son rivalled his forefathers. … He, Nudimmud, was superior to his forefathers.”
55 Oppenheim, A. L. in “Mythology I,” Orientalia (nova series 16 (1947),Google Scholar 230 n. 1, suggests a “hidden rivalry” even between young Marduk and his father Ea. In the case of Tiamat, the younger gods are dismayed when Tiamat turns against them: “Tiamat who bore us is rejecting us” (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 239). The depiction of the old Tiamat as aggressive and powerful may reflect Mesopotamian views about gender differences in the personality of the elderly. In contrast to her, the old male gods appear as passive and timid.
56 Ibid., 236. On relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, see Foner, Ages in Conflict, 55f.
57 Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, 190.
58 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Pritchard, J. B., ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 332.Google Scholar
59 Sources from the Ancient Near East, vol. 2, Fascicle 3 (Malibu: Undena, 1984), 26.Google Scholar
60 As discussed by Bamberger, J., “The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society,” in Women, Culture and Society, Rosaldo, M. Z. and Lamphere, L., eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 263–80.Google Scholar
61 The Harab myth could only have ended, as Jacobsen suggests, with the emergence of civilization. That this is characteristically the theme in those myths involving incest and violence, see Traube, E., “Incest and Mythology”: Anthropological and Girardian Perspectives,” Berkshire Review, 14 (1979), 37–53.Google Scholar
62 Jacobsen, The Harab Myth, 7: 1–12.
63 Ibid., 9: 39–42.
64 Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 11.
65 Ibid., 13.
66 Ibid., 14f.
67 Foner, Ages in Conflict, 147. Moran, W. L. (in “Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood,” Biblica, 52 (1971), 51–61,Google Scholar at 60) describes the unfavorable depiction of the senior god Enlil: “Throughout the epic Enlil cuts a sorry figure. He is not only ‘the counsellor of the gods' but qurādu Enlil, “the warrior Enlil,” an epithet he often enjoys; and yet when his house is besieged by the rebel gods, the only occasion he has to display his valor, he pleads with his attendant Nusku for protection and cowers behind him in fear. Confronted with the stubbornness of the rebels, he breaks into tears. … Throughout the crisis he is singularly inept.”
68 For references to the assembly of elders (Šābūbutu), see Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 13, Soden, W. von, ed. (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976),Google Scholar 1228f. This assembly acting as a judicial body was made up of the citizens of the city. The extent to which age was a criterion for membership is difficult to ascertain. See Evans, G., “Ancient Mesopotamian Assemblies,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 78:1 (1958), 1–11, 114f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69 There is the possibility that Atrahasis was recited to facilitate childbirth magically. For this, see Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 104a.
70 Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 203–7. For discussion of these myths, see Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, 129–34.
71 For the critical edition with commentary and bibliography, see Cooper, J., The Return of Ninurta to Nippur. Analecta Orientalia, 52 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978).Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor Cooper for calling my attention to this myth. For the various interpretations of the myth, see Ibid., 5–8.
72 Ibid., 71, line 87f.
73 Ibid., 75, lines 106, 121f.
74 A special mother–son relationship between the two is tinged with subtle nuances. See Ibid., In. 7.
75 Ibid., 115.
76 For a translation of the myth, see Jacobsen, Th., The Harps That Once … Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 236–72.Google Scholar
77 Ibid., 245f.
