West Asian girls: An enslaved woman stands behind a free Elamite woman who is spinning (600s BC)
Women were oppressed
In West Asia, even more than in most other state societies all over the world, men did not allow women to do all the things that men did. People valued women less than men, and girls less than boys.
Married women in West Asia
Medieval Islamic women
Code of Hammurabi
West Asian people
All our West Asia articles
In Hammurabi’s Code, from 1700 BC, there’s a lower penalty for killing a woman than for killing a man. But even though they were oppressed, West Asian women lived busy, interesting lives. And sometimes they managed to get some power into their own hands.
Baby girls in West Asia
West Asian girls: Enheduanna in a procession (she’s the one in the fancy dress)
As in most places, little girls probably got less food and less good care than little boys, so more girls died in childhood or grew up hungry so that their brains and bodies didn’t grow they way they should have.
West Asian food
Little girls could work
Assyrian prisoners of war from the siege of Lachish (now in the British Museum); a girl sits behind her mother.
By the time they were seven or eight years old, most girls spent most of their time either home spinning and babysitting their younger brothers and sisters, or out in the fields pulling weeds or picking berries along with their sisters and cousins.
Probably girls also spent hours every day gathering firewood or dried dung for cooking fires, and fetching water from wells or springs.
History of spinning
Gathering wild food
Organization of farming
Did West Asian girls go to school?
Cuneiform writing (now in LACMA, Los Angeles)
While some rich boys went to school, girls couldn’t go to school. Many rich girls, like the priestess Enheduanna, did learn to read and write and do math, though. Probably girls were home-schooled by their family or enslaved nannies.
Who was Enheduanna?
West Asian schools
History of slavery
Cuneiform writing
West Asian numbers
West Asian math
Growing up and getting married
Because West Asian girls didn’t eat as well as modern girls go, they usually didn’t reach puberty until they were about fifteen or sixteen. Soon after that, girls usually got married. When girls got married, their families sent a dowry with them to their husband’s house.
What is a dowry?
West Asian inheritance
The dowry was supposed to support the woman, and if her husband died or left her, or she left him, she got the dowry back so she would have something to live on. Women got this dowry, while their brothers got an inheritance from their fathers
Married and Older West Asian Women
Learn by Doing – Property Project
Women in Ancient Egypt
Women in Ancient Greece
Bibliography and further reading about West Asian people:
Find Out About Mesopotamia: What Life Was Like in Ancient Sumer, Babylon and Assyria, by Lorna Oakes (2004).
Ancient Mesopotamians, by Elena Gambino (2000). For kids, retellings ofMesopotamian stories and lots of context.
Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide, by Marian Broida (1999). Not just Egypt! Includes activities for kids about the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, and the Nubians.Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, by Jean Bottero and others (2001). Translated from French.
Life in the Ancient Near East: 3100-332 B.C.E., by Daniel Snell (1998).
