The Image of Women in Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature

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Reading passages taken from the wide range of texts that fall into the so-called Mesopotamian “wisdom literature” and “popular literature” makes it possible to present a range of female portraits, seen as mothers, wives, sisters, and young brides. Ideal models of women intertwine with the satire on the most common defects attributed to women. In their didactic goals, wisdom texts contain numerous indications on how to behave with women, what to do and what not to do, suggestions to the young men for the bride’s choice, or to the woman on the behaviour to be kept with her husband. Moreover, thanks to the Epic of Gilgameš with its “cameos” of women and other literary texts compared with some prescriptions of laws, especially the ones of the Code of Hammurabi, it is possible to complement the image of the feminine with women’s well-defined social and economic roles, such as musicians, nurses, innkeepers, learned, scribes, and priestesses.