Gender in Mesopotamia 3
Julia Asher-Greve begins her chapter "The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body" by talking about how the "Western philosophical tradition" sees "mind" as separate from, and superior to, "body", and the many, many associated concepts. I thought it'd be useful to diagram them:
That was fun, I'm going to do another one in a minute!
Anyway, Asher-Greve's argument is that Ancient Near Eastern Thought didn't have this division between "mind/body, mind/matter or spiritual/material" and the associated "denigrating view of women". For example, the Sumerian word ša, literally heart, also means the body, the internal organs, and "mind, thought, plan, desire", with the heart considered "the seat of will, thought and feeling". (She points out the parallel with the Egyptian word ib.)
Asher-Greve notes that Sumerian lacks a specific term for "mind" or "human brain", the closest thing being the "word for intelligence, understanding and sense, geštu", written with the sign for ear, which indicates these faculties were acquired by hearing... in many cultures understanding, thinking and knowing are associated with hearing". What's more, in Mesopotamian mythology, human beings are created in one go; the Biblical creation story has the body created before the soul.
More from the chapter later. On a side note, it includes a photo of this statue of a woman, which IMHO is exploding with personality. What a nose! :D
(Something that keeps popping up in these things is the equation of "neuter" with "androgynous" - for example, angels in Western art, or the sex of the primordial human in myth. I think this must tie in with the idea that, in Western culture, you must have a gender, you must have one gender, and it must be clear which one. (Paraphrasing Susan Stryker in Transgender History there.) If you don't, you're supernatural at best. Even Mesopotamia seems to have that association between the divine and the breakdown of simple gender categories. Hmmm.)
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Asher-Greve, Julia. "The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body". in Wyke, Maria (ed). Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean. Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1998.
That was fun, I'm going to do another one in a minute!
Anyway, Asher-Greve's argument is that Ancient Near Eastern Thought didn't have this division between "mind/body, mind/matter or spiritual/material" and the associated "denigrating view of women". For example, the Sumerian word ša, literally heart, also means the body, the internal organs, and "mind, thought, plan, desire", with the heart considered "the seat of will, thought and feeling". (She points out the parallel with the Egyptian word ib.)
Asher-Greve notes that Sumerian lacks a specific term for "mind" or "human brain", the closest thing being the "word for intelligence, understanding and sense, geštu", written with the sign for ear, which indicates these faculties were acquired by hearing... in many cultures understanding, thinking and knowing are associated with hearing". What's more, in Mesopotamian mythology, human beings are created in one go; the Biblical creation story has the body created before the soul.
More from the chapter later. On a side note, it includes a photo of this statue of a woman, which IMHO is exploding with personality. What a nose! :D
(Something that keeps popping up in these things is the equation of "neuter" with "androgynous" - for example, angels in Western art, or the sex of the primordial human in myth. I think this must tie in with the idea that, in Western culture, you must have a gender, you must have one gender, and it must be clear which one. (Paraphrasing Susan Stryker in Transgender History there.) If you don't, you're supernatural at best. Even Mesopotamia seems to have that association between the divine and the breakdown of simple gender categories. Hmmm.)
__
Asher-Greve, Julia. "The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body". in Wyke, Maria (ed). Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean. Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1998.