Laura Cousin

In Mesopotamia, statues are considered actual incarnations of the divinity, which must be sustained and clothed. Their temples therefore house real treasures, accumulations of wealth in the form of cult objects (sacred vessels made of silver or gold) or jewellery for the officiants to use for adorning the statues. Based on textual data in cuneiform writing and on certain objects discovered through archaeological excavations in the Near East, this contribution attempts to determine, on the one hand, whether mirrors, combs and cosmetic containers, mentioned in the administrative documentation of the temples, are part of the vessels and jewellery exclusively attributed to the goddesses and, on the other hand, to what extent they are more broadly associated with femininity in Mesopotamian society.

in M. Sauvage (dir.), Atlas Historique du Proche-Orient ancien, Paris, p. 130.

This Historical and Archaeological Atlas of the Ancient Near East brings together accurate and high-quality maps and reports on the latest research findings. It responds to a pressing need for the entire international scientific community working on the pre-classical Near East. The atlas covers the period from the beginning of the Epipaleolithic, around the 20th millennium BC, to the extinction of cuneiform writing at the turn of our era. The geographical area chosen is globally that of the extension of cuneiform writing: from Eastern Anatolia to Western Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. The maps take into account the relief, the variations in the layout of the coastlines and the course of the rivers. They highlight the boundaries of the different political entities, as well as, in a hierarchical manner , the communication routes and the main cities (the maps of about twenty cities are thus detailed). Each map is accompanied by a short commentary explaining the cartographic choices, the limits of knowledge and the advances in research in the field of historical geography over the last twenty years. After the map book, a chapter brings together the sources and a selection of the most up-to-date bibliographical references for each contribution. In addition, there is a geographical index listing the modern and ancient names of the sites and their different variants, as well as an index of proper names. In total, the project, directed by Martin Sauvage, an archaeological research engineer at the CNRS, brings together some fifty contributors: university lecturers in France and abroad, CNRS researchers and engineers , students and post-doctoral students, mainly attached to three teams of the UMR (Unité mixte de recherche) ArScAn but also to 5 other UMRs in France and 5 universities abroad.

(Please contact me if you require an offprint of this paper.)

The corpus of personal names of the second and first millennia BC Babylonia represents a wonderful field of research for historians and allows to question several issues like gender, identity and ethnicity. This contribution will focus on the personality and physical traits, and it will propose an approach of the topic from the gender studies, investigating what kind of name is rather attributed to boys and girls. Names can suggest the place of women and men in the society, as well as the role they have been given in the Babylonian society. Thus, the choice of a name in Babylonia helps to establish the history of mentalities and representations in the ancient Near East.

in Histoire Urbaine 56, p. 11-33.
In the first millennium BCE, Babylon was the political and religious capital of its kingdom. The city thus came under a twofold influence: that of the temporal king and that of Marduk, the king of the gods (Babylon’s patron deity and the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon), and his powerful clerics. As a result, even within Babylon, the primary symbolic and architectural markers appear to be those of the religious powers; whereas the palace complex stood out for its monumental size. Based on a combined study of cuneiform sources and excavation reports, this paper focuses on the construction of the identity and renown of Babylon as the religious capital of Mesopotamia, and endeavours to shed light on how the royal power remained visible in Marduk’s city.

in. G. Chambon, M. Guichard and A.-I. Langlois (ed.), avec la participation de T. Römer et N. Ziegler, De l'argile au numérique. Mélanges assyriologiques en l'honneur de Dominique Charpin, Louvain/Paris/Bristol, 2019, p. 299-306.

Please contact me if you require an offprint of this article!

in F. Buccellati, S. Hageneuer, S. van der Heyden and F. Levenson (ed.), Size Matters. Understanding Monumentality Across Ancient Civilizations, 2019, p. 209-222.
This e-book can be dowloaded: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4538-5/size-matters-understanding-monumentality-across-ancient-civilizations/

in online journal Circé n°6: Depuis les années 1960, les historiens se sont emparés de la question du genre et du rôle des femmes dans la société, et l'Assyriologie ne s'est pas montrée en reste grâce à la publication de Averil Cameron et Amelie Kuhrt en 1983, qui élargissait la question de la condition féminine au Proche­-Orient antique, et plus récemment celle de Sophie Lafont en 1999 et de Zainab Bahrani en 2001. Dans les sociétés patriarcales du Proche-­Orient, le mariage se définit du point de vue de l'époux ou du père de la jeune fille. La finalité première de l'union est d'assurer une descendance aux époux, mais les contrats de mariage, qui furent établis dès le début du deuxième millénaire, mentionnent dans de nombreux cas une dot apportée par la jeune fille. Son établissement et sa réception sont au coeur de nombreux documents de la pratique, et au moyen d'exemples concrets des deuxième et premier millénaires, il est possible d'étudier la marge de manoeuvre laissée aux femmes quant à la gestion de leur dot.

Au premier millénaire avant J.-C., Babylone est considérée comme la plus grande ville de Mésopotamie, et comme la capitale politique et religieuse de la Babylonie. Ainsi, Babylone abrite le complexe palatial, composé de deux édifices : le Palais Sud, situé dans la Babylone intra-muros, et le Palais Nord, construit sous Nabuchodonosor II à l’extérieur des remparts. La ville comprend également le complexe cultuel, formé de la ziggurat Etemenanki et du temple de l’Esagil, sanctuaire dédié à Marduk, divinité tutélaire de Babylone et roi des dieux depuis la fin du deuxième millénaire av. J.-C. Babylone se trouve donc sous une double influence : celle du roi temporel et celle du roi des dieux.
À l’intérieur de la ville de Babylone, les principaux repères symboliques et architecturaux sont ceux du pouvoir religieux. Par exemple, la Porte d’Ištar et la Voie Processionnelle sont décorées d’animaux apotropaïques, taureaux, lions et dragons-mušhuššu, qui symbolisent plusieurs divinités babyloniennes, alors que le Palais Sud ne semble se distinguer par aucune particularité, sauf celle de sa monumentalité. De plus, le petit bâtiment perse (Perserbau), probablement construit sous le règne d’Artaxerxès II dans la partie occidentale du Palais Sud, demeure invisible pour les habitants de Babylone.
Fondée sur les données épigraphiques (inscriptions royales néo-babyloniennes, listes topographiques) et les relevés archéologiques, cette contribution propose d’étudier les lieux d’expression du pouvoir temporel, à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de Babylone, et analysera comment le roi temporel demeure visible dans la ville sacrée de Marduk.

See the website https://www.gemane3.ugent.be/

In the first millennium BC, Babylon was the religious and political capital of Babylonia, housing the great religious complex of the god Marduk and the royal palaces. Based on a study of archaeological and epigraphic data (administrative and daily documentation, topographical texts Tintir = Bābilu), this contribution will attempt to determine whether some spaces were dedicated to men and others to women in the domestic sphere, in the major institutions (palaces and temples), and finally within the city itself, in order to lead to an analysis of “gendered spaces” within Babylon.
Firstly, understanding the place of women and men in houses and large ensembles, including the royal palace, is crucial. This question can lead us to a study of the normalization of the space and the distribution of the male and female populations within these structures. Secondly, more broadly, it would be interesting to determine whether certain urban spaces were reserved for men and others for women, raising the question of the circulation of individuals. The topic of the activities and professions that men and women could have carried out in the streets at different times of the day can also be raised. For example, it would seem that the chapels located in the streets, called ibratu, were rather associated with goddesses, especially Ištar, and have been frequented by women, thus attesting to a gendered practice of worship.
This paper will thus reconsider the traditional opposition between a public space that could have been rather reserved for men, and a private and domestic sphere rather reserved for women, and to question the possibility for men and women to have existed and acted in the same external and internal spaces.