Abstract
In ancient Mesopotamia, the practice of giving one’s daughter in marriage to a god is well documented. The Sumerian titles designating these women, even at a time when Sumerian was no longer a spoken language, trace this custom back to an ancient past; it was subsequently adopted and adapted by the various Semitic peoples who settled, after the Sumerians, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The variety of these titles also shows that, within the same geographical area, several women coexisted with this distinction. It is impossible today to convey, through an adequate and sufficiently precise translation, the reality embodied by each title. By convention, and despite the risk of anachronism to which these terms are prone, we refer to ‘nuns’ or ‘consecrated women’ when the title is held simultaneously by several women in the service of the same god. The translation ‘priestess’ is reserved solely for the Sumerian title EN, which was particularly prestigious and reserved for only one woman at a time; this woman was of royal descent and given in marriage to a major god of the pantheon. In all cases, the women thus distinguished, whilst not taking a vow of chastity – a concept entirely absent from Mesopotamian literature – were required to observe a prohibition on bearing children. Thus, the Legend of Sargon recounts how he was born in the utmost secrecy to a ‘religious’ mother and set adrift on the river in a sealed basket before being rescued and fulfilling his destiny as king.
To gain an insight into the daily lives of these women and attempt to understand the significance of this institution, the abundant cuneiform documentation produced during the Early Babylonian period (20th–17th centuries BC) is particularly valuable. We shall then see that many political considerations became intertwined with religious concerns.
