Other than Mother: On Childlessness as Part of the Social Identity of Nadītu Women

Katrien De Graef
Additional contact information
Katrien De Graef: Ghent University, Belgium

Avar, 2023, vol. 2, issue 1, 9-30

Abstract: In Old Babylonian society, nadītu and other women who held religious offices were not allowed to bear children. Traditionally, this taboo on childbearing has been explained as a taboo on sex (chastity) or a taboo on blood (cultic impurity). I believe these traditional explanations to be faulty and inadequate, and suggest an alternative approach based on the concepts of alterity and constructed social identity. By not fitting the norm of their social group, viz. women, by definition birth giving beings, they are ‘othered’ as non-birth-giving-beings, which indeed is the literal meaning of nadītu: ‘the fallow (woman).’ However, their ‘otherness’ is not conceived as negative or problematic, on the contrary, it added greatly to their social status as a privileged group within society. As such, their childlessness was an important part of their social identity.

Keywords: Childlessness; nadītu women; Old Babylonian period; otherness; social identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://avarjournal.com/avar/article/view/2094/2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mig:avarjl:v:2:y:2023:i:1:p:9-30

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://avarjournal. ... ormation/librarians/

DOI: 10.33182/aijls.v2i1.2094

Access Statistics for this article

Avar is currently edited by Isaac Alderman, Shane M. Thompson and Eric M Trinka

More articles in Avar from Transnational Press London, UK
Bibliographic data for series maintained by TPLondon ().