Nadītu or
Naditu is the designation of a legal position for women in
BabylonBabylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
ian
societySociety or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....
and for
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ian temple slaves. The latter were primarily involved in business activities and were allowed to own property.
Nadītu were mainly particular women not living in the
patriarchOriginally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy...
al family relations that Babylonian society regarded as normal.
Nadītu lived in monastic buildings, but in general did own their home within these complexes, and were independent.
Nadītu or
Naditu is the designation of a legal position for women in
BabylonBabylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
ian
societySociety or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....
and for
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ian temple slaves. The latter were primarily involved in business activities and were allowed to own property.
Nadītu were mainly particular women not living in the
patriarchOriginally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy...
al family relations that Babylonian society regarded as normal.
Nadītu lived in monastic buildings, but in general did own their home within these complexes, and were independent. They could engage in contracts, borrow money and perform other business transactions normally denied to women; records show that they were very active. Usually these women were part of the elite, often from royal families.
Their financial independence was based on their
dowryA dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage. Compare bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both dowry...
, which they were not allowed to pass on to a man; the dowry was the compensation for not being included in the inheritance, as this was passed on through the patriarchal line. It is not exactly clear whether the
nadītu were allowed to marry, or whether this right was only reserved for the
nadītu that belonged to the
MardukMarduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to slowly...
temple. According to some sources
celibacyCelibacy is defined as the lifestyle of someone who is, and is striving to remain, unmarried all his/her life. It is also used to describe a state of life where one chooses to abstain from all sexual activities...
was required, or at the least they had to remain childless, which is reflected in the meaning of the word
nadītu -
the fallow. When the nadītu died, the dowry fell to her brothers or other relatives.
There were a lot of writers among the nadītu. According to the
epic of GilgameshThe Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Ancient Iraq and is among the earliest known works of literary writings. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the mythological hero-king Gilgamesh, which were gathered into a longer Akkadian poem much later;...
, writing is attributed to a
goddessA goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheistic system that includes several deities in a pantheon. In some cultures goddesses are commonly associated with the Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, often reflecting the historical gender roles of that culture...
. In the temple of
InannaInanna is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare.Alternative Sumerian names include Innin, Ennin, Ninnin, Ninni, Ninanna, Ninnar, Innina, Ennina, Irnina, Innini, Nana and Nin, commonly derived from an earlier Nin-ana "lady of the sky", although Gelb...
in
ErechErech was an ancient city in the land of Shinar, the second city built by king Nimrod after the destruction of the Tower of Babel...
the earliest writing tablets are found, dating back to the
4th millennium BCThe 4th millennium BC saw major changes in human culture. It marks the beginning of the Bronze Age and of writing.The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt are established and grow to prominence. Agriculture spreads widely across Eurasia...
. Many nadītu lived there as priestess.
Along the rivers
TigrisThe Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates. The river flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
and
EuphratesThe Euphrates is the longest and historically one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia. Together with the Tigris, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
many temples are still found in worship of Inanna and where these nadītu resided in active service. The 5000 year old temple in
UrukUruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā,...
(biblical Erech) is the largest of these, being regularly rebuild and expanded. A sculpture of a woman's head and the well-known vase of Uruk (now in the museum of
BaghdadBaghdad is the capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate, with which it is coterminous. Having a municipal population estimated at 6.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq and the second largest in the Arab World....
) have been discovered there, showing reliefs of archaic
Mother goddessA mother goddess is a term used to refer to any goddess associated with motherhood, fertility, creation or the bountiful embodiment of the Earth...
culture: images of sacred properties and forests, men harvesting produce and goats indicating the symbols of social order of that time.
In the later
Greek antiquityAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, the
HetaeraIn ancient Greece, hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, sophisticated companions and prostitutes.- Overview :...
obtained a similar status within the patriarchal society of the time. The status of the assisting hierodules was considerably lower, as was their level of education.
Further reading