Describing women as a separate topic of study has its problems. Women are not a "special issue," but form half of the population. Furthermore, we face the obvious problem of scope: Mesopotamia covers a huge area, over a period of three thousand years, and there was considerable variation in the roles of women within this geographical and chronological framework. Additionally, textual evidence from Mesopotamia is very uneven. Some areas and time periods are very well documented but there are also huge gaps. However, we can begin to fill in some of these gaps with information from the archaeological record and iconographic evidence. Despite these challenges, we felt it was necessary to give the reader some basic background information regarding some of the most salient features in Mesopotamian women's lives. Thus, the following identifies some features of women's lives which werein most places and timescommon denominators for them. In this chapter, we first outline women's position in society, followed by a discussion of women in and out of matrimony. Finally, elite women's lives in some specific periods and places are described. 1 1 Several studies have been published regarding Mesopotamian women. In addition to those mentioned in the footnotes of this chapter, some of the most relevant and/or most recent volumes include: Mark Chavalas (ed.

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The Mesopotamian civilizations have left behind rich textual material in the Akkadian language, written in cuneiform script on artifacts excavated from that area.2 A variety of cuneiform scripts were used to write different languages in the ancient Near East,3 but we are here interested in what has often been called the Mesopotamian cuneiform tradition, which means texts mostly written in Sumerian (which has no known language relatives) and Akkadian (a Semitic language). Michael Streck estimated in 2010 that the number of published texts in Sumerian was approximately 102,300 (3.076 million words) and in Akkadian was approximately 144,000 (9.9 million words).4 Of course, the published texts are only a segment of the total number of objects with cuneiform text in the museums of the world, and there are doubtless still more texts that have not been excavated that are still unknown to us. Due to the challenges of the cuneiform script, as well as the small number of Assyriologists, the texts are being published at a slow rate, but the number of published texts is continuously growing. According to some estimates, only 10 percent of the excavated texts on cuneiform tablets have been published. Since the late 1990s, 1 We thank Dr. Sebastian Fink for his feedback and Dr. Albion Butters for helping to improve the English of this essay. We also gratefully recognize the financial support of the Academy of Finland for the writing of this essay. 2 Mesopotamia refers to a region situated within the Tigris-Euphrates river system, in modern days roughly corresponding to most of Iraq and the eastern parts of Syria. A number of cultures and political units flourished in the area. The most prominent political entities that used Akkadian are usually referred to as Assyria and Babylonia. 3 The cuneiform script was originally developed by Sumerians c. 3000 bce. In the following centuries, the script was adapted for Akkadian (a Semitic language in use from about 2500 to 500 bce). It was also used to write several other ancient Near East languages, such as Hittite and Elamite. Although passing centuries and new languages caused the form of the signs to change, the basic shapes-triangular wedges left by a reed stylus-stayed the same. 4 Streck 2010; see esp. the summary on pages 53-54. Here "published text" refers to a cuneiform text that has been made available as a drawing, transliteration, or translation in a credible scholarly publication.

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