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1. Gender in the Ancient Near East
8:20 - 10:25am Saturday, 20th November, 2021
Presentation type Paper Presentations
Session Chair(s) Stephanie Lynn Budin
This session pertains to on-going archaeological, art historical, and/or
anthropological work and research into the construction and expression of gender
in antiquity, ancient women/womanhood, masculinities (hegemonic and
otherwise), Queer Theory, and the engendering of ancient objects and spaces.
99 Gendering Names in Sealand I Onomastics
Michael A. Chapin
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Abstract
In Assyriological literature on naming, the grammatical gender of a name is often used to identify the
gender of the individual; e.g., Mūrānum (Puppy)—a masculine noun—would be borne by a man and Mūrāntum
(Puppy)—a feminine noun—would be borne by a woman. This practice of equating of a name’s grammatical
gender with an individual’s gender is particularly used to identify female names which lack an explicit feminine
determinative.
For this paper, I apply a socio-linguistic approach to the onomastics of a southern Mesopotamian Sealand I
palatial archive (ca. 1550-1450 B.C.E.) and I argue that the gendered naming practices in this archive are more
complex and cannot be reduced simply to grammatical gender. While the majority of names explicitly marked
with a feminine determinative are indeed grammatically female, there are clear examples in the Sealand I
period of grammatically male names marked with feminine determinatives and grammatically female names
borne by individuals that can be identified as male. Additionally, compared with names of unmarked gender,
women’s names with feminine determinatives are substantially less likely to contain a theophoric element, are
more likely to contain an element referring to a relative, and are more likely to consist of a single word rather
than a short phrase.
Identifying gendered naming practices beyond that of grammatical gender may offer us an avenue into
identifying other women, perhaps not marked by a female determinative, who have until now remained
invisible in our corpus and beyond.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East

2. 292 Assumptions About the Assinnu
Kelsie Ehalt
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA
Abstract
Members of the ancient Mesopotamian cult of Ištar have been subjected to various interpretations by
scholars despite only a small number of textual references to them. This paper will discuss attestations of
assinnu in ancient textual sources, which have been deployed for various interpretations and translations. It
will then provide a systemic discussion of the issues of sex assignment at birth, castration, sexuality,
prostitution, and transvestism—all while adding modern gender scholarship into the discussion. The
incorporation of modern gender theories—from Judith Butler’s framing of gender as performative and socially
reified to Jack Halberstam’s investigation of gender performance at the margins of normative binary categories
—will aid with the deconstruction of long-held interpretive traditions within Ancient Near Eastern scholarship
and provide a new analysis of the gender performance of the assinnu. I reject the interpretation of assinnu as
being males who perform a feminine gender and instead will show that there is no specific evidence that the
assinnu must have been assigned male at birth. I similarly reject assumptions of castration, homosexuality,
prostitution, and transvestism and instead posit that assinnu performed a gender that eludes easy
categorization into a masculine/feminine binary and that, perhaps, a more specific discussion is impossible
given the limited textual attestations.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East

3. 663 The Yauna Revisited: Re-Conceptualizing Gender and its Terminologies at
Persepolis
Neville McFerrin
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA
Abstract
In reliefs across the site of Persepolis, men and displays of idealized masculinity are iteratively present.
From royal heroes grappling with lions to the delegates depicted upon the Apadana, nearly all depicted figures
within the site are men—with the lioness, who appears amidst the Elamite delegation, serving as the site’s
sole depicted female. Such a visual program may seem to generate and support both the gendered hierarchies
and gender binaries. Yet, throughout these reliefs, similar apparent binaries, ranging from distinctions between
king and subject to differentiations between architecture and bodies, are consistently deconstructed—often
through the lens of dress.
To explore the ways in which depictions of dress at Persepolis help to highlight entanglements between
gendered categories, conceptualizing gender as a mutually constituting system functioning in parallel to
Achaemenid conceptualizations of empire, this paper focuses upon a single delegation upon the Apadana, that
of the Ionian Greeks—the Yauna. Building upon the work of Margaret Cool Root, this paper explores the ways in
which Greek notions of normative gendered dress are deliberately confronted in this depiction to highlight, not
tensions between gendered categories, but slippages. Juxtaposing the depicted dress of the Yauna with the
contemporary normative dress of Greek men, with dress depicted elsewhere upon the Apadana, and with
extant Achaemenid adornments, the paper argues that, within this context, gendered distinctions are of less
interest than sensorial substantiation—suggesting that the use of modern gendered terminologies in
discussions of the site may obscure, rather than clarify the site’s visual program.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East

4. 784 A Gender Perspective on Manners and Etiquette in Ancient Assyria
Ludovico Portuese
Università degli Studi di Messina, Messina, Italy. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Abstract
During the European Middle Ages and in Renaissance courts and cities, writers and intellectuals began to
reflect on the manners and protocol practices, leaving an abundance of precepts on conduct and socially
acceptable behavior both for men and women. The ancient Near East does not provide us with written
treatises of this kind nor guides to living well, but an examination of textual sources (i.e., inscriptions, letters,
rituals, and treatises), archaeological evidence (e.g., bathrooms and remains of bathtubs), and visual artefacts
(i.e., reliefs, wall paintings, and seals) of the Neo-Assyrian period may support scholars in reconstructing a
gender-related etiquette.
Archaeological contexts, visual representations, and inscriptional evidence tends to relate primarily to elite
individuals and their families and provides a symbolic and idealizing gendering of male and female identity
and practice. This paper builds on past sociological studies that do not adopt the rigid division between sex
and gender but rather rely on what produces a gender system. Accordingly, gender is seen as produced by
social situations and interactions among individuals. Thus, this paper will scrutinize each piece of evidence
that helps to identify behaviors and manners through the interactions between men and women in first
millennium Assyria. It is concluded that manners and etiquette were an essential strategy for highlighting
social interactions between men and women, as well as eunuchs, in the formation of identity at the Assyrian
court. In other words, manners and etiquette may contribute to gender persons in Assyrian society.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East

5. 832 Turf Wars? Spatial Negotiations between Two Ideal Assyrian Masculinities,
Priest and King
Ilona Zsolnay
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Abstract
Using the concept of hegemonic masculinity as a framework, this paper will interrogate points at which two
celebrated gender constructs, priest and king, come in contact during two state rituals—the coronation and a
battle-ceremony. It will interrogate how, in performances orchestrated by the cult, the creators of these rituals
negotiate the presence of a seemingly rival and equally illustrious construct of masculinity within their
precinct.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East

6. 866 The house beyond its walls. Gender and practice at the Amarna Workmen’s
Village.
Thais Rocha da Silva
University of São Paulo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Abstract
The investigation of houses in Egyptology privileged typologies and the division of internal spaces. Artefact
distribution and architectural features were the main sources of information to address questions about
gender, kinship and economic activities in the domestic sphere. Egyptologists privileged the house unity and
framed domestic life in a 19th-century Victorian fashion, ignoring other elements of the archaeological context.
This attitude projected notions of domestic life from a Western and European experience, reinforcing the house
as the realm of comfort, privacy and family. In this paper, I question previous studies by providing a new
framework for the Workmen’s Village of Amarna, a special-purpose settlement from the New Kingdom (1550-
1069 BCE). This perspective integrates a large dataset from houses (artefacts, architectural features), facilities
located outside the enclosure wall (pigpens, the quarry, chapels), and official buildings spatially distributed
around the settlement. This presentation highlights a holistic approach that benefits from new developments
from Household Archaeology, Material Culture and Sensory Archaeology. I explore new models to understand
houses through material culture that offer an updated perception about the domestic boundaries in Ancient
Egypt. With a new understanding of the ancient Egyptian house, I hope to shed light on a new dynamic of
social relations in which gender emerges.
Session/Workshop
Gender in the Ancient Near East (Virtual)