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Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records General Editor: Gonzalo Rubio Editors: Nicole Brisch, Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Petra Goedegebuure, Amélie Kuhrt(†), Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski, Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts, and Kim Ryholt Volume 30 Women and Religion in the Ancient Near East and Asia Edited by Nicole Brisch and Fumi Karahashi ISBN 978-1-5015-1861-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1482-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1453-1 ISSN 2161-4415 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950059 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com To the memory of our mothers Foreword and Acknowledgements This book and all its contributions originated in the discovery in 2015 that Chuo University in Tokyo and the University of Copenhagen are partner universities. As we discovered this connection, an idea began to take shape that we wanted to use a small subject like Assyriology to create a platform for knowledge exchange between Japan and Denmark, two countries that are commonly counted among the periphery of academia in general and Assyriology in particular, even though both countries have long traditions in the study of the ancient Near East. It so happened that we were both researching the roles of women in ancient Mesopotamia, and so we decided to hold two workshops on the topic of women and their interaction with the sphere of the religious in ancient Mesopotamia, a topic that, to our mind, had not received enough attention (see below). The first workshop took place in 2015 and was funded by the Asian Dynamics Initiative (ADI), a cross-faculty initiative at the University of Copenhagen that seeks to facilitate exchange in research and teaching and has the goal to “grasp the dynamics of Asia” for which it is necessary to “both understand and learn from Asia.”1 The second workshop took place in 2017 and was funded by Faculty of Letters and Institute of Cultural Science at Chuo University and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).2 While intellectual traditions and societal dynamics are very different in Japan and Denmark, the study of the ancient Near East, including ancient Egypt, in both countries can offer a platform for an exchange of knowledge of a third cultural area that is geographically, culturally, and chronologically remote from both of these countries. The two workshops as well as this volume would not have been possible without the help of the abovementioned sponsors and the speakers and contributors. We would like to sincerely thank them. We are also very grateful to the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies of the University of Copenhagen and the Department of Western History at Chuo University for their logistical support. This publication would not have been possible without the generous support from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute for Advanced Study, which hosted Fumi Karahashi in February 2020 as a guest of Nicole Brisch. This made it possible for us to get started with our editorial duties. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Gonzalo Rubio and the staff at DeGruyter for having accepted our book for publication. And finally, we are very grateful to Simone  See the web portal of the Asian Dynamics Initiative https://asiandynamics.ku.dk/english/ about-asian-dynamics-initiative/ (accessed on May 14, 2021).  JSPS Grants-in-Aid of Scientific Research C, No. 16K03095. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514821-202 VIII Foreword and Acknowledgements Willemoes Skjold Sørensen for having helped with the book in the final stages of preparing the manuscripts for publication. This book would not have been possible without the brilliant support we received from everyone mentioned here and we are extremely grateful. Please note: unless stated otherwise, abbreviations follow the Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago (CAD) or the list of abbreviations on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initative (CDLI) (https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/abbreviations). Contents Foreword and Acknowledgements VII Nicole Brisch and Fumi Karahashi Introduction 1 Yuko Matsumoto Women’s History and Gender History in Japan 11 Part I: Businesswomen, Empresses, and Royal Women Agnès Garcia-Ventura and Fumi Karahashi Socio-Economic Aspects and Agency of Female Maš-da-ri-a Contributors in Presargonic Lagash 25 Katsuji Sano The Role of Women in Assyrian Foreign Policy 45 Yoko Watai Women Involved in Daily Management in Achaemenid Babylonia: The Cases of Rē’indu and Andiya 63 Huang Haijing Wu Zetian’s Buddhist Policy: A New Perspective 81 Part II: Priestesses Seraina Nett The Office and Responsibilities of the En Priestess of Nanna: Evidence from Votive Inscriptions and Documentary Texts 95 Nicole Brisch High Priestesses in Old Babylonian Nippur: The NIN and NIN-dingir Priestesses of Ninurta 121 X Contents Ada Taggar-Cohen Hittite Royal Ideology and the Uniqueness of the Priestess Titled NIN. DINGIR 141 Ulla Koch The Roles of Women in the Practice of Ancient Mesopotamian Divination 163 Part III: Goddesses Sophus Helle Enheduana’s Invocations: Form and Force 189 Piotr Michalowski On Language, Gender, Sex, and Style in the Sumerian Language 209 Troels P. Arbøll Venomous Scorpions and Venerable Women: The Relationship Between Scorpions, the Goddess Išḫara, and Queens in the Neo-Assyrian Period 263 Carolina López-Ruiz The Networks of Ashtart-Aphrodite and the Archaic Mediterranean Koiné 289 Nozomu Kawai The Lioness Goddess Statuary from the Rock-Cut Chambers at Northwest Saqqara and Their Cult in Middle Kingdom Egypt 303 Index 339