Title: Lamaštu, the Stranger
Source document: Sacra. 2022, vol. 20, iss. 1, pp. 7-25
Extent
7-25
-
ISSN1214-5351 (print)2336-4483 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.76816
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The Mesopotamian demoness Lamaštu is commonly portrayed in the sources as an attacker of babies and mothers, who often commits her crimes disguised as a nanny or a wet nurse. The paper analyses her nature through the pattern of strangeness: a subjective attribute of difference from known patterns, related to unacceptability and danger. I suggest that Lamaštu's nature is expressed as a negation and estrangement of cultural identities, such as humanity, indigenousness, womanhood, and professional childcare. The former two identities encompass and define the whole of the indigenous society, therefore, any patterns of their negation must lie beyond the society's borders in principle. However, the latter two represent only a specific part of society and their strange forms may appear within its borders, which makes them problematic. Their connection to the former two might deny their ambivalence and relate their danger to absolute strangeness. The paper then finds specific patterns of strangeness in relation to social positions of nannies and women, and in the context of gender transgression and patriarchal structures.
References
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[36] Saldukaityté, J. (2016). The Strangeness of Alterity. Levinas Studies, 11, 95–120.
[37] Selz, G. J. (2016). Raum, Raumordnung und sozio-politische Identitäten im frühen Mesopotamien. In S. Schmidt-Hofner, C. Ambos & P. Eich (Eds.), Raum-Ordnung: Raum und Sozio-Politische Ordnungen im Altertum (pp. 301–324). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
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[48] Wiggermann, F. A. M. (2010). Dogs, Pigs, Lamaštu, and the Breast-Feeding of Animals by Women. In D. Shehata, F. Weiershäuser, & K. V. Zand (Eds.), Von Göttern und Menschen. Beiträge zu Literatur und Geschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Brigitte Groneberg. Leiden – Boston: Brill.
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[2] Farber, W. (2014). Lamaštu. An Edition of the Canonical Series of Lamaštu Incantations and Rituals and Related Texts from the Second and First Millennia B.C. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
[3] George, A. (2003). The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[4] Rudik, N. (2015). Die Entwicklung der keilschriftlichen sumerischen Beschwörungsliteratur von den Anfängen bis zur Ur III-Zeit. Ph.D. thesis. Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena.
[5] Asher-Greve, J. & Sweeney, D. (2006). On Nakedness, Nudity, and Gender in Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art. In S. Schroer (Ed.), Images and Gender. Contribututions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art (pp. 125–176). Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg.
[6] Bácskay, A. (2019). Incantations and Healing Treatments against Lamaštu in Mesopotamian Therapeutic Prescriptions. In Ç. Salih, A. Faruk, K. Ömer & T. Koray (Eds.), Current Debates on Social Sciences 2: History (pp. 5–13). Ankara: Bilgin.
[7] Bahrani, Z. (2001). Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia. London: Routledge.
[8] Bauman, Z. (1993). Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[9] Brison, O. (2007). Aggressive Goddesses, Abusive Men: Gender Role Change in Near Eastern Mythology. Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici, 49, 67–74.
[10] Brown, T. N., Sellers, S. L., & Gomez, J. P. (2002). The Relationship between Internalization and Self-Esteem among Black Adults. Sociological Focus 35(1), 55–71.
[11] Burney, S. (2012). Pedagogy of the Other: Edward Said, Postcolonial Theory, and Strategies for Critique. New York: Peter Lang.
[12] Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
[13] De Beauvoir, S. (1949). Le Deuxième Sexe. Paris: Gallimard.
[14] De Graef, K. (2018). Puppets on a String? On Female Agency in Old Babylonian Economy. In S. Svärd & A. Garcia-Ventura (Eds.), Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East (pp. 133–156). University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns.
[15] Douglas, M. (1966, ed. 1984). Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London – New York: Routledge.
[16] Garcia-Ventura, A. (2016). The Sex-Based Division of Work versus Intersectionality: Some Strategies for Engendering the Ur III textile Work Force. In B. Lion & C. Michel (Eds.), The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East (pp. 174–192). Boston – Berlin: De Gruyter.
[17] George, A. (2018). Kamadme, the Sumerian Counterpart of the Demon Lamaštu. In G. Van Buylaere, M. Luukko, D. Schwemer, & A. Mertens-Wagschal (Eds.), Sources of Evil: Studies in Mesopotamian Exorcistic Lore (pp. 150–157). Leiden: Brill.
[18] Goff, B. (2004). Citizen Bacchae. Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley, Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
[19] Helle, S. (2019). Weapons and Weaving Instruments as Symbols of Gender in the Ancient Near East. In M. Cifarelli (Ed.), Fashioned Selves. Dress and Identity in Antiquity (pp. 105–115). Oxford – Philadelphia: Oxbow Books.
[20] Jacskon, L., Harris, C., & Valentine, G. (2017). Rethinking Concepts of the Strange and the Stranger. Social and Cultural Geography, 18(1), 1–15.
[21] Kapur, R. (2000). Law and the Sexual Subaltern: A Comparative Perspective. Cleveland State Law Review 48(1), 15–23.
[22] Koefoed, L. & Simonsen, K. (2011). 'The Stranger', the City and the Nation: on the Possibilities of Identification and Belonging. European Urban and Regional Studies, 18(4), 343–357.
[23] Kotus, M. E. (2012). Encyclopedia of Gender in Media. Los Angeles – London – New Delhi – Singapore – Washington DC: SAGE Publications, Inc.
[24] Lacan, J. (1973). Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan. Livre 11: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse: 1964. Paris: Seuil.
[25] Lion, B. (2011). Literacy and Gender. In K. Radner & E. Robson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture (pp. 90–112). Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press.
[26] Liverani, M. (2014). Ancient Near East. History, Society and Economy. London – New York: Routledge.
[27] Lupton, D. (1999). Dangerous Places and the Unpredictable Stranger: Constructions of Fear of Crime. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 32(1), 1–15.
[28] May, N. N. (2018a). Neo-Assyrian Women, Their Visibility, and Their Representation in Written and Pictorial Sources. In S. Svärd & A. Garcia-Ventura (Eds.), Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East (pp. 249–288). University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns.
[29] May, N. N. (2018b). Female Scholars in Mesopotamia? In S. Lynn Budin, M. Cifarelli, A. Garcia-Ventura, & A. M. Albà (Eds.), Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East: Approaches from Assyriology and Beyond (pp. 149–162). Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona edicions.
[30] McCarthy, A. (2016). Business Women and Their Seals in Early Mesopotamia. In S. Lynn Budin & J. Macintosh Turfa (Eds.), Women in Antiquity (pp. 101–112). London – New York: Routledge.
[31] Milgram, S. (2010). The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity. In T. Blass (Ed.), The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments (pp. 60–62). London: Pinter & Martin.
[32] Pollock, S. (1991). Women in a Men's World: Images of Sumerian Woman. In J. M. Gero & M. W. Conkey (Eds.), Engendering Archaeology: Woman and Prehistory (pp. 366–387). Oxford – Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
[33] Pongratz-Leisten, B. (1994). Ina šulmi īrub. Die Kulttopographische und Ideologische Programmatik der Akītu Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
[34] Richey, M. (2021). The Mesopotamian Demon Lamaštu and the Monstrosity of Gender Transgression. In J. P. Laycock & N. L. Mikles (Eds.), Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters (pp. 145–156). Lanham: Lexington Books.
[35] Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
[36] Saldukaityté, J. (2016). The Strangeness of Alterity. Levinas Studies, 11, 95–120.
[37] Selz, G. J. (2016). Raum, Raumordnung und sozio-politische Identitäten im frühen Mesopotamien. In S. Schmidt-Hofner, C. Ambos & P. Eich (Eds.), Raum-Ordnung: Raum und Sozio-Politische Ordnungen im Altertum (pp. 301–324). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
[38] Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
[39] Stol, M. (1995). Women in Mesopotamia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 38(2), 123–144.
[40] Stol, M. (2016). Women in the Ancient Near East. Boston – Berlin: De Gruyter.
[41] Stol, M., & Wiggermann, F. A. M. (2000). Birth in Babylonia and the Bible. Groningen: Styx Publications.
[42] Svärd, S. (2012). Women, Power, and Heterarchy in the Neo-Assyrian Palaces. In G. Wilhelm, (Ed.), Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East (pp. 507–518). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
[43] Thureau-Dangin, F. (1921). Rituel et Amulet Contre Labartu. Revue d'Assyriologie et d'Archéologie Orientale, 18(4), 161–198.
[44] Waldenfels, B. (1996). The Other and the Foreign. In P. Ricouer & R. M. Kearny (Ed.), The Hermeneutics of Action (pp. 111–124). London – Thousand Oaks – New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd.
[45] Waldenfels, B. (2011). Phenomenology of the Alien. Basic Concepts. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
[46] Weiershäuser, F. (2018). Narrating about Men, Narrating about Women in Akkadian Literature. In S. Lynn Budin, M. Cifarelli, A. Garcia-Ventura, & A. M. Albà (Eds.), Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East: Approaches from Assyriology and Beyond (pp. 273–283). Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona edicions.
[47] Wiggermann, F. A. M. (2000). Lamaštu, Daughter of Anu. A Profile. In M. Stol & F. A. M. Wiggermann, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible (pp. 217–252). Groningen: Styx Publications.
[48] Wiggermann, F. A. M. (2010). Dogs, Pigs, Lamaštu, and the Breast-Feeding of Animals by Women. In D. Shehata, F. Weiershäuser, & K. V. Zand (Eds.), Von Göttern und Menschen. Beiträge zu Literatur und Geschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Brigitte Groneberg. Leiden – Boston: Brill.
[49] Wiggermann, F. A. M. (2011). Sumuqan (Šakkan). In E. Ebeling et al. (Eds.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. Band XIII (pp. 308–309). Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter.
[50] Wilcke, C. (1976–1980). Inanna/Ištar (Mesopotamien). A. Philologisch. In E. Ebeling et al. (Eds.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. Band V (pp. 74–87). Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter.