Women’s Position in Babylonia and Judea, Part Five

One of the reasons a married woman could maintain her  independence was her dowry, since it was her uncontested property with no  strings attached. If a divorce occurred, the dowry was hers to take back to her  father's house, or to buy her own home or business. But that did not leave the  poorer woman at the mercy of her husband, either. In most cases, even if the  bride did not bring a sizable dowry, a clause in the marriage contract required  the husband to pay a specific sum of money in case of a divorce. An interesting  marriage contract from the days of King Nebuchadnezzar specifies that if the  husband married a second wife, it would be considered the equivalent of a  divorce from the first wife. The first wife would  get  her full dowry back, with an additional sum of money to compensate her for the  loss of her married state. This document is not unique; polygamy was discouraged  and penalized financially.

A dowry did not have to consist of strictly money. It  could include slaves,  domestic animals, furniture, and household goods. In such  cases, the value of  the people, animals, and objects was carefully calculated  and stated clearly in  the contract. If the father of the bride was dead, or her mother was a well-to-do  divorced  woman, the mother would supply the dowry. If both parents were dead,  another  member of the family would do so. And there were many nuances to family   relationships and responsibilities. For example, another document from the time  of Nebuchadnezzar states that the father of the bride says that the creditors of   the groom’s father should never have a claim on the bride’s dowry, or anything   else that she personally possesses. It is amusing to think that the bride’s   father suspected his new in-law of not being entirely solvent. Why did he  allow  his daughter to marry into a family he suspected of financial trouble  remains  shrouded in the mists of time, but it’s entirely possible that the girl  was in  love and determined to marry this young man. There is nothing new under  the  sun…

The groom benefitted from this system as well as the bride. He was seen  as acquiring nothing but good – a wife, future children, an estate, and the  right to enjoy the rewards of all these new assets. So he had to accept the  conditions, and he could not change them. Very often the dowry was used to buy  the young couple’s new home, or set them in business, and the realization that  the money would have to be returned in case of a divorce helped the young man to  understand his responsibilities toward his wife and treat her with respect.  Sometimes, if the husband was already established in business, the new wife would start her own business with the dowry, and that would help the young  family thrive as well. In Babylonia, which was all about business and commerce,  money represented freedom and independence.

This system was in complete  opposite of the customs of Judea, where the dowry was paid by the groom, not  the father of the bride. If a groom in Babylon paid the dowry, it would be  considered buying a woman, not contracting a marriage. It did happen, of  course, but in those cases it was acknowledged that this was not an entirely  equal marriage, but a civilized way of purchasing a high level slave. The  husband/owner had the rights to all the wife/slave’s  possessions.  When the Jews were exiled to Babylonia, they had to submit to the new laws. It  must have been a shock to the Jewish men to realize they had to entirely change  their customs, but most likely pleased the women. Evidence in documents shows  that the Jews adjusted to it and their views of marriage and divorce quickly began  to match those of the Babylonians around them. It is amazing how quickly the  Jews adapted and even thrived in the Babylonian Diaspora –which cannot fail to  remind one of what happened two thousand years later when the Jews started  arriving in America from Eastern Europe, changed many of their customs, and  adapted perfectly to the new country. 

The one area of inequality was  the issue of adultery. As mentioned above, polygamy was not practiced, but a man  was not physically punished for visiting a prostitute and there were no rules  against having as many concubines as he could afford. A wife, on the other  hand, would be put to death if her adultery was discovered, usually by drowning  or by the sword. The reasons for such blatant inequality is the issue of the  children. Adultery by the husband would result in a child that was his.  Adultery by the wife could result in a child that was another man’s, and  paternity  was the most important  thing in the world during these times.  The concubines were usually  former slaves that were bought by the husband, or sometimes given to the husband  by his wife, if she thought she was past the age of bearing children and felt  the need for increasing the family. The wife maintained her important position  in the household no matter how many concubines were added to it.

As mentioned in a previous  segment, the story about regular women working as prostitutes is a myth invented  by Herodotus. However, there were plenty of prostitutes in Babylonia, and  usually they were either protected by the laws of the country or in service of a  temple. There is evidence that prostitutes were connected to the temple of  Ishtar. They probably were not the same women who functioned as Ishtar’s  prophetesses, but the distinction is not too clear and would require more  research. It is possible that their services were considered sacred, since the  Hebrew word Kedeshah, (קדשה) which is what they called the  temple prostitutes, is derived from the root k-d-sh, (קדש) ‎  meaning  “sacred.” Other prostitutes were connected with the service of the demons Lil  and Lilat (the predecessor of Lilith) since these demons were thought to be  active at night, when most prostitutes worked. 

Clearly, being a  woman in Babylonia was not paradise, but by comparison to other cultures of the  time, or even some modern cultures, it was not a bad life. Active, free,  educated and business-like, she was not hidden behind a veil or afraid to leave  her house. She was engaged in the bustling and sophisticated world around her during her entire life.