April 3, 2024 • 36 mins
Omar discusses the importance of studying gender as part of assyriology. What are the big themes now, and how did we get here? He focuses on two areas of special interest: masculinity, and eunuchism. What can we expect from the conference on gender studies (GeMANE) hosted in Malta this April? And what is the context of assyriology in Malta?
0:37 Introducing Ellie
2:56 the importance of studying gender
5:39 current trends
8:59 gender beyond only women
11:54 masculinities
16:21 eunuchs
23:58 organising GeMANE
27:15 assyriology in Malta
29:38 public engagement
Omar's Academia
Omar's university page
GeMANE 6
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Before we go any further, I'dlike to welcome a new voice to
(00:35):
the podcast.
Ellie Bennett (00:37):
Hi, my name is Ellie Bennett, and I am the new
co-host of Thin End of theWedge. I am based at the
University of Helsinki, and I aman assyriologist. I'm interested
in a bunch of stuff, but mostlygender dtudies. I'm interested
in digital methods. And at themoment I'm researching emotions
in ancient Middle Eastern texts.
And I'm really excited to bepart of this project; really
(01:01):
excited to be on this podcast.
And can't wait to talk to somany interesting researchers
about their fascinating work.
What is gender? This questionsounds like it has an easy
answer. Gender is what makes aman and a woman, right? However,
ask any researcher of gender inthe ancient Middle East the same
(01:22):
question and you get a much morecomplicated answer.
Over the decades, gender hasbecome an important topic in
studying the ancient MiddleEast. And it has become clear
that what makes a woman or a manis very different across these
ancient cultures.
Our guest today is organising animportant conference called
Gender and Methodology in theAncient Near East in April.
(01:46):
Since it began in 2014, it hasbecome one of the most important
congregations of researchers ingender in the ancient Middle
East. And the publications thatcome out of it have become
valuable starting points formany young scholars interested
in the field. We wanted to chatwith our guest and find out why
research into gender in theancient Middle East is so
(02:06):
important, as well as thecurrent trends of the field and
what he thinks its future holds.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
Hi, Omar, could you tell us whoyou are and what it is you do?
Omar N'Shea (02:30):
Hello, my name is Omar N'Shea. And I am the
director of the InternationalSchool for Foundation Studies at
the University of Malta. Myresearch interests are in the
Assyrian empire with aparticular focus on gender in
general, and masculinities inparticular. I write in both
English and Maltese. And I aminvolved in both academic
(02:53):
research as well as outreachwriting.
Jon Taylor (02:56):
Why do you focus on gender? What do you think we can
learn from studying gender inthe ancient Near East?
Omar N'Shea (03:02):
The study of gender is important primarily, because
it was actually a very importantaspect of the ancient societies
that we study. The genderidentity of human and non-human
beings was an aspect of identitythat actually mattered. And that
resulted in very specificsocial, political, artistic,
(03:23):
literary, cultic, architectural,as well as cultural
organisation, as well as a broadrange of gender-specific bodily
practices that were consideredto be normative or non-normative
in ancient societies. The studyof gender can help us make sense
of these culture-specificpractices, and therefore leaving
(03:44):
gender outside of the researchagenda and the writing of
history and prehistory wouldmean leaving such aspects
unaddressed.
There is really nothing newabout the study of gender in the
ancient Near East, because earlyscholarship already dealt quite
extensively with matters relatedto sex and gender. And it is not
(04:04):
at all uncommon to findreference to such matters.
Layard, for example, was alreadywriting about eunuchs and the
effective response of the peopleworking at the sites where the
reliefs showing these capableofficials were recovered. Women,
royal or otherwise were alsowritten about.
In a sense, I don't really thinkthat ancient Near Eastern
(04:25):
scholars were lagging far behindtheir colleagues in adjacent
scholarly disciplines and theirendeavours. Even though that is
often the perception. Think, forexample, of Julia Asher-Greve's
work in the 1980s on women inSumer, and Julian Reade's
wonderful study asking perhaps abit playfully, whether evidence
suggests that Sennacherib was afeminist. We also have Joan
(04:48):
Westenholz's review of theproceedings of the 33rd
Rencontre. And then in the1990s, the introduction of the
study of masculinities by IreneWinter in her work on the
masculinity of Gudea. And thenlater on, in the very popular
essay on sex and gender in theVictory Stele of Naram-Sin. And
(05:09):
Megan Cifarelli on how genderconstructs and visual syntax
employed, for example, at thecourt of the Assyrian king,
Ashurnasirpal the Second, wereused to produce the optics of
alterity and otherness. So tocome back to the question, I
think studying gender helps usto make sense of these social,
(05:32):
political, artistic, literary,etc, etc, norms and non-norms
that we have in our record.
Ellie Bennett (05:39):
Wonderful, you make reference to some really
important studies in gender inthe ancient Near East. But what
are some of the current trendsthat you have seen in this
really important topic?
Omar N'Shea (05:50):
Well, I think that at the heart of current projects
that use gender as a tool withwhich to think, and with which
to ask questions of the ancientsource material, is the notion
that gender is marked. Thismeans that gender is defined
heuristically andmethodologically. Past
scholarship left a lot ofassumptions in place about sex
(06:12):
and gender and left themunaddressed. And therefore the
descriptions and analysis oftenrepeated the stereotypes that
were circulating, that werearound. But the problem is that
when we actually look at thedatasets with a gender framework
of analysis, we realise thatthose stereotypes do not
actually hold any weight.
(06:34):
Zainab Bahrani, for example, dida wonderful job and for many a
very inspiring job--for manypeople using gender as a tool of
analysis in the ancient NearEast this was a very inspiring
book--by starting to elaborate aframework for the study of women
in ancient Mesopotamia in thebook Women of Babylon. More
recently, Martti Nissinen, forexample, made it very
(06:55):
clear--this was about a decadeago--that we need methodologies
that are born out of ourdatasets and not methodologies
developed from other sourcematerial. And then sort of
applied uncritically inassyriology. Nissinen was
specifically referring to thestudy of masculinities and
Mesopotamia, but the argument isapplicable to other genders as
(07:16):
well.
The study of gender is, ofcourse, tied to the wider world
of theory and methodology. Andin a sense, it is also deeply
influenced by it. So somescholars continue to write about
gender from strictlyessentialist perspectives,
whereas others seek toproblematise that position, by
(07:37):
going to the sources to indicatethat some evidence suggests that
already in the ancient record,gender was seen as a lot more
malleable. So existing on aspectrum. And that the view of
two genders is too reductive tobe an accurate reflection of
what the sources say.
In this field, we're also seeinga renewed interest in the
(08:01):
materiality of the body, whichfor a while, for a long while,
actually had gone out offashion. Partly because it
didn't serve the advocacy of thesocial construction school of
thought at the outset. Now,those who adhere to the social
construction school of thought,are complicating this by
re-evaluating the theoreticalwork of Michel Foucault, for
(08:22):
example, and Judith Butler, inlight of the sources that we
have, and emerging issues anddebates. Also, amongst scholars
of the ancient Near East, aswell as amongst some of my
students, we are witnessing someof the more interesting
discussions that are coming outof the strengths and the
tensions at play when we crossqueer theory with trans
(08:43):
scholarship. Particularly whenwe're talking about the figures
in our record, like the assinnu,the kurgarru. I think most of us
are actually looking forward tohaving more of these
discussions, and to see what theancient record can actually tell
us about these matters.
Ellie Bennett (08:59):
You've been really, really careful to not
limit your answers to talkingabout Near Eastern women or
ancient Middle Eastern women.
And I'm wondering if that isreflective of the field as a
whole? Does studying gender inancient Near Eastern sources, in
ancient Middle Eastern texts orart or archaeology, mean that
you have to look at women? Or doyou feel like it's pretty
(09:21):
representative of the field tosay that you're looking beyond
it? And could you explain why wewould want to look at not just
women when looking at gender?
Omar N'Shea (09:32):
There was a time when the study of gender meant
the study of women only. And formany people, scholars and
non-scholars alone, only womenhad a gender. Men did not,
because men were considered tobe universal. Men were
universal. At that point, sexand gender, or at least the way
the terms are used in theEnglish language and in
(09:54):
Anglophonic research agendas,the two notions sex and gender
seem synonymous for many, partlybecause they were tied to the
notion of difference. At thatpoint, research focused on
revealing the androcentricassumptions of the literature
being produced about the past,as well as the lack of equity in
academia, in archaeologicalexcavations, for example.
(10:19):
Nowadays, for instance, with mystudents, things have really
changed. They've changed in thescholarship, but also
particularly it's gone down,it's percolated, it's trickled
down to even the classrooms. Ifwe talk about women in the
ancient Near East, they tend toassume that what we're doing is
feminist readings, or feministinterpretations. Whereas if we
talk about non-binary persons,or trans persons, that we're
(10:41):
doing gender. In this sense,therefore, it's as if things
have now shifted, and onlynon-binary or trans persons are
gendered. And this is also notquite accurate and not right.
Gender really is about people,primarily. And increasingly, we
are seeing an interest in usinggender as an analytical tool to
(11:02):
talk about non-human persons aswell, to talk about gender and
materiality, for example. At arecent scholarship on the
materialities of theNeo-Assyrian empire, which was
hosted by La Sapienza Universityin Rome and organised by Lorenzo
Verderame and Davide Nadali, Itried to combine a new
materialities approach withgender. And it seems like our
(11:23):
sources can afford us a richavenue of research. So we have
moved well beyond one particulargender to represent all the
genders that we have in our datasets. The problem is that for
some people, we continue to markgender only for some
subjectivities, or not for allsubjectivities or to even resist
(11:46):
taking gender beyond humanbodies into non-human persons
and into non-human materiality.
Jon Taylor (11:54):
Can we turn to those men, then? What do you think are
the key components of being aman in Assyria during the
Neo-Assyrian empire? Do youthink they're very different
from the expectations of being aman today? If we were able to
visit Nineveh or if an Assyrianwould walk down the street in
Valetta, what degree of cultureshock would there be?
Omar N'Shea (12:14):
Right, Jon, perhaps this is a good opportunity to
apply what we have been talkingabout up to now. Obviously, it's
such a question for us kind ofhave a straight answer. Because
if we define genderheuristically, either as a
cultural discourse and a bodilypractice that is attached to a
particular body type, or as thefeeling that is situated in the
(12:36):
body or elsewhere in our beingvis-a-vis our being in the
world, and our entanglement witheveryone and everything around
us, then we would never come upwith a single universal answer
of what it means to be a man. Imean, I think at this point,
even orthodox essentialists willtell you that there is no one
way of being a man or a woman,for example.
(12:57):
In this sense, therefore, therewas there was no one way of
being a man in the Neo-Assyrianperiod of Assyrian history. In
the same way that there is noone way of being a man anywhere
in the world right now, nomatter how culturally-specific
we get. This is because in caseswhere we talk of universals,
those universals are usuallysomewhat artificial. And they
(13:19):
exclude or gloss over nuances,that would be theoretically
inconvenient. What I would say,however, is that an honest
research answer would tell youthat for example, a Neo-Assyrian
king was one type of man in theroyal inscriptions, but a
somewhat different man in thevisual culture of the palace on
the reliefs, and a ratherdifferent man in the letters
(13:43):
written to his scholars. And atotally unrecognisable type from
all of these in the letterswritten to and from the royal
physician.
And to complicate this, evenfurther, the king was a
different man in differentstages of his life, with
different people and indifferent life circumstances.
And if we wish to elaborate thiseven further, we could say that
(14:07):
different kings expresseddifferent understandings of
masculinities and thereforeperformed and lived out their
manhood differently.
Sennacherib's way of being aman, for example, was enormously
different to Ashurnasirpal theSecond's expression of manhood.
Sennacherib's notion ofmasculinity was rooted in the
idea of statesmanship, and hismilitary masculinity was
(14:30):
downplayed in the visual cultureof the palace. The royal
inscriptions continued themilitary masculinity of the
state and of the ruler, but thevisual culture allowed for a
different view of his genderexpression.
Esarhaddon's ways of being a manof very complex, because they
intersect with variouspathologies, somatic and
(14:52):
psychosomatic. And then there isthe view from the outside. Often
we get the hegemonic view ofmasculinity from the criticisms
leveled against our past actorsfor failing to do this, or for
failing to do that. In Assyria,militarised masculinity was to
be found everywhere, however (15:10):
in the human body; in the
structures that came to dominatethe state; and in the
materialities of the empire. Itsdiscourse came to serve a very
useful function for itsterritorial ambitions. And it
gave the Assyrians an effectivediscourse that was aligned with
the rationale of rule.
(15:31):
So I think that when we'reasking questions like, you know,
what was it like to be a man inthis particular period or that
particular period, I think we'vegot to be careful, first of all,
about the media in which thattype of manhood is being
represented. Because as we seein the Neo-Assyrian empire, for
example, the visual culture isdisseminating one form of being
a man. Whereas the textualculture seems to be a lot more
(15:55):
conservative of certain notionsof gender than the visual
culture is. The letters affordedus a completely different view.
At times, we even get a glimpseof affect, or you know the
personal circumstances that giverise to certain emotions. When
we compare these readingstogether, we realise that
(16:15):
different media are constructingdifferent notions of manhood and
masculinity for the period.
Ellie Bennett (16:21):
Moving a little bit away from the king of
Assyria, I was wondering aboutthis really interesting group,
which we normally refer to aseunuchs. Do you see the same
kinds of nuances in thedifferent source material for
eunuchs? Or are they universallyseen and depicted the same way
(16:43):
across the material?
Omar N'Shea (16:45):
So, Ellie, thank you for this question. One of my
main research interests is thisclass of persons that we refer
to as eunuchs. These persons arereferred to as sha reshi in the
ancient record. Not everyone inassyriology and ancient Near
Eastern history agrees thatthese people were castrated men.
In fact, there's a very livelydebate going on, in a way
(17:09):
lively, yes, but in a way thisdebate on whether the sha reshi
actually referred to castratedmen or not, has in a way stopped
or slowed down the advancementof the study of eunuchism in the
Assyrian empire. But let's forthe sake of convenience call
these two groups the minimalistand the maximalist: hose who
(17:30):
refuse the claim in itsentirety, and those for whom all
sha reshi were castrated males.
Because that is what the termmeans for them--eunuch. My
interest is in this class ofpeople in the middle, and in the
Neo-Assyrian periods,particularly the metropolitan
urban identities.
I belong in a way to themaximalist school of thought.
(17:53):
But I do read the minimalistsvery, very carefully and very
closely. In the Middle Assyrianperiod, for example, we don't
have much literature, muchsecondary literature, or we
don't have any studies really,that make reference to eunuchs
or eunuchism in the MiddleAssyrian period. But the
datasets are quite interesting.
So in the Middle Assyrianperiod, eunuchs are referred to
(18:15):
in the palace decrees, theso-called, unfortunately
so-called "harem edicts". Wehave a problem in gender
studies, particularly, we have aproblem with the word harem or
harem, because there's a lot ofretrojection and a lot of
orientalism in the term. Solet's just call this group of
texts "the palace decrees".
(18:38):
They're referred to in thepalace decrees, in these texts,
as a consequence of their bodymodification. These people are
employed to give or deny accessto people to specific areas in
the women's quarters.
But beyond the palace decrees,there are also a lot of other
documents, which clearlyindicate that these eunuchs were
(19:01):
doing other things in themetropolitan areas. For example,
they were employed as capableofficials in charge of the
crown's stores of grain. Theywere trading, dealing and barley
and grain, especially selling tobird feeders and millers. They
were in charge of the foodprovisions for the troops, for
Assyrian troops and captivetroops. They were overseeing the
(19:24):
building of cities, offortification walls. They were
also involved in the procurementof fabric, of wood, of gold and
perfume.
In the Middle Assyrian period,we also have enough information
about particular individualswhose biographies, short
biographies--short butinteresting biographies--we can
(19:46):
start drafting or we can startwriting. Also in the Middle
Assyrian period, castration isseen also as a punitive measure.
There are two laws in particularthat are based on the notion of
lex talionis. That is aneye-for-an-eye scenario in which
we see grim symmetry ofpunishment if you want. In one
(20:08):
of them, a male adulterer wouldbe punished by being turned into
a sha reshi, while in the other,the penetrator in a man to man
sex act between two socialequals is likewise punished by
castration. I'm imagining thisto be a case of non-consensual
sex between two male equals.
In the Neo-Assyrian period,things get even better for
(20:30):
eunuchs, and they become verycentral figures at the royal
court. They take on every dutyimaginable, and are often seen
leading campaigns and referredto as worthy men and mighty
soldiers. We see entireprocessions of eunuchs at
Dur-Sharrukin--Sargon theSecond's palace in
(20:50):
Khorsabad--but for some reason,they seem to vanish during the
reign of Sennacherib, only tocome back in the reins of
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Some queries to the sun godreveal in this period a certain
fear or paranoia that theeunuchs might conspire against
(21:11):
the king, and to try to seizethe crown. However, when we
compare this period to laterperiods, for example,
particularly in the classicalperiod, we notice one thing in
particular. That eunuchs arenever referred to in negative
light, in negative terms, genderor otherwise. In later periods,
they become repudiated, but alsodesirable subjects at the same
(21:35):
time. To be fair, a eunuch doestake the throne of Assyria
towards the last days of theEmpire. But this reign was
really short-lived. And it wasactually the reign that might
have given some really goodmaterial to the later criticism
of Ashurbanipal's effeminaterule, the so-called effeminate
rule.
(21:55):
The negative gendering ofeunuchs, however, is not an
Assyrian thing at all. And infact, some of the studies that
try to portray Assyrian eunuchsas either limitedly gendered or
as non-binary gendered or asthird gendered individuals will
have to deal with the fact thatthere is nothing in the Assyrian
(22:16):
record to indicate that theywere referred to in any other
term but strictly militarisedmasculine men. At some point in
the Assyrian sequence, eunuchismbecame a very useful tool for
this sort of imperial ambitionto maintain the holdings away
from the centre. The dependenceof the Neo-Assyrian period and
(22:40):
the dependence of Neo-Assyriankings on a fully functioning
provincial system, created theneed for a figure, an
individual, that did not createproblems of succession. It was
at this point that eunuchs wereemployed as provincial
governors. And for example, inthe correspondence of
Sennacherib, and in thecorrespondence of Sargon, in
(23:03):
particular, as well as in thecorrespondence of
Tiglath-Pileser the Third, wesee that many people, many of
the individuals working asprovincial governors were
actually eunuchs. We have a lotof information.
Currently, I'm working on amonograph, to try and bring all
the information together to tryand figure out the networks that
(23:23):
were being created. Who were theindividuals, you know, what they
were writing to each other,their roles as provincial
governors. But for example, inthe reign of Sargon, most of the
provincial governors wereactually eunuchs. They were
referred to as sha reshi. And atone point, we even have
references of areas where thesesha reshi lived, and where they
(23:46):
were so strong. We know very,very little about the
background, partly becausebecoming sha reshi involved the
erasure of the past, becausethen you became subject of the
crown.
Ellie Bennett (23:58):
Absolutely fascinating. And you're clearly
very busy pumping out researchabout gender, about
masculinities, about thisfascinating group of eunuchs.
But that's not all. You're alsoorganising a conference in
April. Can you tell us moreabout it and what you're most
looking forward to?
Omar N'Shea (24:14):
Right? Yes, I'm very excited that we are
organising the sixth iterationof the Gender Methodology and
Ancient Near East conference.
The sixth iteration is going totake place on the University of
Malta, the Valletta campus. Itwill be held from the 8th to the
11th of April of 2024 this year.
And we have four full days offascinating papers. It's an
(24:38):
international conference, thereare scholars coming from
everywhere. The GenderMethodology and Ancient Near
East conference is known in thecommunity as "Je-mah-nay". Some
people say "Ge-mah-nay". Westill haven't really agreed on
the proper pronunciation forthis, which is fine.
I'm co-organising this with mycolleague here in Malta, with
Dennis Mizzi, but also withEllie Bennett, with Saana Svärd,
(25:01):
with Megan Cifarelli, and AgnèsGarcia-Ventura. We have a number
of different sessions. So we hiton a lot of subjects. There are
some really fascinatingcontributions. This year
particularly we have a wholesession on eunuchs. We also have
a whole session on culticpractice. And we also have some
(25:21):
fascinating papers that arecoming from outside Mesopotamia
proper. So Uroš Matić will betalking about the gender in
ancient Egypt, for example. Wehave some Phoenician Punic
studies. We have biblicalscholarship as well. So we
understand the Near East, theancient Near East, in the
broadest way possible.
GeMANE or GeMANE has alwaysgiven us a really strong sense
(25:44):
of community, and an enormouslysafe space in which we can use
the rigours of academia, butalso to talk openly and to
discuss in a really friendlyway, some of the most
challenging aspects of study ingender. Particularly the
methodologies that we employ,particularly methodologies that
are born out of our datasets. Sowe've continuously been
(26:07):
problematising the idea oftaking existing methodologies
that are used elsewhere, andthen importing them lock, stock
and barrel to our datasets. Andso we're seeing more and more
methodologies that are comingout of the datasets that are
relevant to ancient Mesopotamia,specifically the ancient Near
East in general, but alsoAncient Egypt.
(26:29):
I'm particularly looking forwardto a business dinner that we
have one evening of theconference. Over here, we will
be talking openly in the entireGender Methodology and Ancient
Near East Conference, on thefuture of this workshop, of
these conferences. We areinterested in talking about, for
example, the modalities of theworkshop itself: whether to have
(26:51):
parallel sessions, or tocontinue having non-parallel
sessions to ensure thateverybody gets to listen to
everybody's papers. We are alsovery much interested in the
creation of a scientificcommittee, and also of a general
committee for the workshop andfor the conference, as well as
identifying future venues forthis conference to take place.
Jon Taylor (27:15):
Thank you. I wonder if we could turn a little bit
now more towards you, and yourown context, as it were. So
you're based in Malta, whichisn't one of the traditional big
centres of assyriology. So I waswondering, first of all, how did
you become interested in thistopic? And what is the state of
assyriology in Malta today?
Omar N'Shea (27:37):
Thank you, Jon.
Yes, exactly. One is a littlebit isolated when doing
assyriology in Malta, in asense. But I get the feeling
nowadays, more and more so ,thatone is always isolated, wherever
one does decide to doassyriology. {LAUGHS} So I think
this is only possible, I thinkit's only possible to do
assyriology in Malta now,because of the ease of travel.
We are very well connected tomost European cities now. So
(27:58):
travel has become a lot easier.
But also to the generosity ofpeople who are not so isolated,
and people who have access toresources and sources away from
the island and who can sendthings over very, very easily.
And so the exchange ofinformation has become a lot,
lot easier.
So I think one can doassyriology wherever really now.
(28:19):
So that's, that's reallyinteresting. I came to it
because I did ancient NearEastern Studies at the
University. We have a departmentof Middle Eastern and Asian
languages and cultures. And it'sa wonderful department. And
we've had Near Eastern Studiesfor a very, very long time. And
this is where I came from. Icome from archaeology and Near
Eastern Studies. I originallystudied Hebrew and Arabic, but
(28:42):
also in the archaeology classes,I did Phoenician, Punic, and
Aramaic.
I remember we had a languagecomponent. We had a language
study unit that was an elective,and you could choose whichever
language you wanted. And I didmy project on Akkadian. And I
haven't looked back since. Myprofessor had studied Akkadian
(29:02):
in Rome. He is a biblicalscholar. So we have a strong
tradition of biblicalscholarship here, and also the
wider biblical world. And I sortof entered assyriology through
that channel.
In terms of the current state ofassyriology on the island, we
are about to start a course inAkkadian. I will be teaching
Akkadian at the university, andI'm trying to promote this study
(29:23):
unit to the best of myabilities. I am currently
teaching ancient Near Easternmythology. So I think some of
those students will now want tocome and do Akkadian. So we're
trying to start it off. We'retrying to make it popular with
students, and we're hoping itwill work.
Jon Taylor (29:38):
Yeah, that's fantastic. You mentioned at the
start that you are very activeboth in the traditional academic
arena, but also in publicoutreach. I was wondering, in
terms of the Maltese audience,what do they find interesting
about the ancient Middle East?
Omar N'Shea (29:55):
Thank you for this question. This is an aspect of
my profession that I reallyenjoy. And this is reaching out
to people in the community.
Maltest is a Semitic language.
So when we talk about Babylonianliterature, when we talk about
Akkadian, you know, there'salways this sort of foreignness
to Akkadian and Babylonianliterature, for example. But
(30:15):
when we talk about theselanguages being Semitic
languages, people start to feela sense of proximity and a sense
of belonging here, right.
I have recently started writingabout assyriology in Maltese.
And one of the first things thatI did for a Maltese literary
journal called Aphroconfuso,with the editors, Loranne Vella,
and Joe Gatt to address theexisting, the one and only
(30:39):
existing translation ofGilgamesh into Maltese. This is
unfortunately translated fromthe English. And when I looked
at it, of course, you realiseimmediately that it is not a
translation from the original,but it's a translation from
English. But it was done in apolitical context when the
Maltese were looking for aSemitic identity. And so there
(31:01):
is a sort of political layer tothis translation, about which I
have written in this articlecalled "Gilgamex, Dak li Ra
l-Qiegħ" (Gilgamesh, he who sawthe deep). When I was doing
that, I realised that bytranslating Gilgamesh from
English, we missed out on a lotof the very meaningful
proximities between certainBabylonian words and certain
(31:22):
words in Maltese. And so thatwas the time to start thinking
about translating Gilgamesh intoMaltese from Babylonian.
So, you know, through thisoutreach, writing, I think we're
starting to get people torealise that you cannot really
have a literary scenario inMalta without having a
translation of Gilgamesh, andsome of the other stories that
(31:43):
come from the region thatinterest us.
Ellie Bennett (31:45):
That's so exciting. What do you think the
future of gender studies in theancient Near East is?
Omar N'Shea (31:52):
I think I'll be better able to answer this
question after the GenderMethodology and Ancient Near
East conference. But I sensethat it's definitely a growing
community. There are peoplecoming from everywhere,
especially young postgraduatestudents who are sending out
correspondence; reallyinterested in building on
existing work. Particularlythose people who come from
(32:15):
theory, cultural theory,critical theory, who are
interested in bringing thoseframeworks with them to the
study of ancient Near East. Nowthat we have very good editions
of literature, now that we arebeginning to have online tools
for the study of visualcultures, for example, I think
we can safely say that a lot ofpeople are seeing these corpora
(32:36):
that are very useful. Forexample, in my classroom, I have
a number of people who areinterested in gender and
medicine, for example, in genderand magic, but also a number of
people who are interested innon-human gender. And I think we
are definitely heading in thatdirection.
Jon Taylor (32:53):
Thank you very much indeed, Omar.
Omar N'Shea (32:54):
Thank you for having me
Ellie Bennett (32:55):
Thank you so much.
Omar N'Shea (32:56):
Thank you.
Jon Taylor (32:58):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Jiménez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
(33:18):
Andrew George, Yelena Rakic,Zach Rubin, Sabina Franke, Shai
Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
Smith, Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
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Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
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Jackson, Susannah Paulus, EricWhitacre, Jakob Flygare, Jon
Ganuza, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
(34:28):
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
(34:51):
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
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you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Before we go any further, I'dlike to welcome a new voice to
(00:35):
the podcast.
Ellie Bennett (00:37):
Hi, my name is Ellie Bennett, and I am the new
co-host of Thin End of theWedge. I am based at the
University of Helsinki, and I aman assyriologist. I'm interested
in a bunch of stuff, but mostlygender dtudies. I'm interested
in digital methods. And at themoment I'm researching emotions
in ancient Middle Eastern texts.
And I'm really excited to bepart of this project; really
(01:01):
excited to be on this podcast.
And can't wait to talk to somany interesting researchers
about their fascinating work.
What is gender? This questionsounds like it has an easy
answer. Gender is what makes aman and a woman, right? However,
ask any researcher of gender inthe ancient Middle East the same
(01:22):
question and you get a much morecomplicated answer.
Over the decades, gender hasbecome an important topic in
studying the ancient MiddleEast. And it has become clear
that what makes a woman or a manis very different across these
ancient cultures.
Our guest today is organising animportant conference called
Gender and Methodology in theAncient Near East in April.
(01:46):
Since it began in 2014, it hasbecome one of the most important
congregations of researchers ingender in the ancient Middle
East. And the publications thatcome out of it have become
valuable starting points formany young scholars interested
in the field. We wanted to chatwith our guest and find out why
research into gender in theancient Middle East is so
(02:06):
important, as well as thecurrent trends of the field and
what he thinks its future holds.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
Hi, Omar, could you tell us whoyou are and what it is you do?
Omar N'Shea (02:30):
Hello, my name is Omar N'Shea. And I am the
director of the InternationalSchool for Foundation Studies at
the University of Malta. Myresearch interests are in the
Assyrian empire with aparticular focus on gender in
general, and masculinities inparticular. I write in both
English and Maltese. And I aminvolved in both academic
(02:53):
research as well as outreachwriting.
Jon Taylor (02:56):
Why do you focus on gender? What do you think we can
learn from studying gender inthe ancient Near East?
Omar N'Shea (03:02):
The study of gender is important primarily, because
it was actually a very importantaspect of the ancient societies
that we study. The genderidentity of human and non-human
beings was an aspect of identitythat actually mattered. And that
resulted in very specificsocial, political, artistic,
(03:23):
literary, cultic, architectural,as well as cultural
organisation, as well as a broadrange of gender-specific bodily
practices that were consideredto be normative or non-normative
in ancient societies. The studyof gender can help us make sense
of these culture-specificpractices, and therefore leaving
(03:44):
gender outside of the researchagenda and the writing of
history and prehistory wouldmean leaving such aspects
unaddressed.
There is really nothing newabout the study of gender in the
ancient Near East, because earlyscholarship already dealt quite
extensively with matters relatedto sex and gender. And it is not
(04:04):
at all uncommon to findreference to such matters.
Layard, for example, was alreadywriting about eunuchs and the
effective response of the peopleworking at the sites where the
reliefs showing these capableofficials were recovered. Women,
royal or otherwise were alsowritten about.
In a sense, I don't really thinkthat ancient Near Eastern
(04:25):
scholars were lagging far behindtheir colleagues in adjacent
scholarly disciplines and theirendeavours. Even though that is
often the perception. Think, forexample, of Julia Asher-Greve's
work in the 1980s on women inSumer, and Julian Reade's
wonderful study asking perhaps abit playfully, whether evidence
suggests that Sennacherib was afeminist. We also have Joan
(04:48):
Westenholz's review of theproceedings of the 33rd
Rencontre. And then in the1990s, the introduction of the
study of masculinities by IreneWinter in her work on the
masculinity of Gudea. And thenlater on, in the very popular
essay on sex and gender in theVictory Stele of Naram-Sin. And
(05:09):
Megan Cifarelli on how genderconstructs and visual syntax
employed, for example, at thecourt of the Assyrian king,
Ashurnasirpal the Second, wereused to produce the optics of
alterity and otherness. So tocome back to the question, I
think studying gender helps usto make sense of these social,
(05:32):
political, artistic, literary,etc, etc, norms and non-norms
that we have in our record.
Ellie Bennett (05:39):
Wonderful, you make reference to some really
important studies in gender inthe ancient Near East. But what
are some of the current trendsthat you have seen in this
really important topic?
Omar N'Shea (05:50):
Well, I think that at the heart of current projects
that use gender as a tool withwhich to think, and with which
to ask questions of the ancientsource material, is the notion
that gender is marked. Thismeans that gender is defined
heuristically andmethodologically. Past
scholarship left a lot ofassumptions in place about sex
(06:12):
and gender and left themunaddressed. And therefore the
descriptions and analysis oftenrepeated the stereotypes that
were circulating, that werearound. But the problem is that
when we actually look at thedatasets with a gender framework
of analysis, we realise thatthose stereotypes do not
actually hold any weight.
(06:34):
Zainab Bahrani, for example, dida wonderful job and for many a
very inspiring job--for manypeople using gender as a tool of
analysis in the ancient NearEast this was a very inspiring
book--by starting to elaborate aframework for the study of women
in ancient Mesopotamia in thebook Women of Babylon. More
recently, Martti Nissinen, forexample, made it very
(06:55):
clear--this was about a decadeago--that we need methodologies
that are born out of ourdatasets and not methodologies
developed from other sourcematerial. And then sort of
applied uncritically inassyriology. Nissinen was
specifically referring to thestudy of masculinities and
Mesopotamia, but the argument isapplicable to other genders as
(07:16):
well.
The study of gender is, ofcourse, tied to the wider world
of theory and methodology. Andin a sense, it is also deeply
influenced by it. So somescholars continue to write about
gender from strictlyessentialist perspectives,
whereas others seek toproblematise that position, by
(07:37):
going to the sources to indicatethat some evidence suggests that
already in the ancient record,gender was seen as a lot more
malleable. So existing on aspectrum. And that the view of
two genders is too reductive tobe an accurate reflection of
what the sources say.
In this field, we're also seeinga renewed interest in the
(08:01):
materiality of the body, whichfor a while, for a long while,
actually had gone out offashion. Partly because it
didn't serve the advocacy of thesocial construction school of
thought at the outset. Now,those who adhere to the social
construction school of thought,are complicating this by
re-evaluating the theoreticalwork of Michel Foucault, for
(08:22):
example, and Judith Butler, inlight of the sources that we
have, and emerging issues anddebates. Also, amongst scholars
of the ancient Near East, aswell as amongst some of my
students, we are witnessing someof the more interesting
discussions that are coming outof the strengths and the
tensions at play when we crossqueer theory with trans
(08:43):
scholarship. Particularly whenwe're talking about the figures
in our record, like the assinnu,the kurgarru. I think most of us
are actually looking forward tohaving more of these
discussions, and to see what theancient record can actually tell
us about these matters.
Ellie Bennett (08:59):
You've been really, really careful to not
limit your answers to talkingabout Near Eastern women or
ancient Middle Eastern women.
And I'm wondering if that isreflective of the field as a
whole? Does studying gender inancient Near Eastern sources, in
ancient Middle Eastern texts orart or archaeology, mean that
you have to look at women? Or doyou feel like it's pretty
(09:21):
representative of the field tosay that you're looking beyond
it? And could you explain why wewould want to look at not just
women when looking at gender?
Omar N'Shea (09:32):
There was a time when the study of gender meant
the study of women only. And formany people, scholars and
non-scholars alone, only womenhad a gender. Men did not,
because men were considered tobe universal. Men were
universal. At that point, sexand gender, or at least the way
the terms are used in theEnglish language and in
(09:54):
Anglophonic research agendas,the two notions sex and gender
seem synonymous for many, partlybecause they were tied to the
notion of difference. At thatpoint, research focused on
revealing the androcentricassumptions of the literature
being produced about the past,as well as the lack of equity in
academia, in archaeologicalexcavations, for example.
(10:19):
Nowadays, for instance, with mystudents, things have really
changed. They've changed in thescholarship, but also
particularly it's gone down,it's percolated, it's trickled
down to even the classrooms. Ifwe talk about women in the
ancient Near East, they tend toassume that what we're doing is
feminist readings, or feministinterpretations. Whereas if we
talk about non-binary persons,or trans persons, that we're
(10:41):
doing gender. In this sense,therefore, it's as if things
have now shifted, and onlynon-binary or trans persons are
gendered. And this is also notquite accurate and not right.
Gender really is about people,primarily. And increasingly, we
are seeing an interest in usinggender as an analytical tool to
(11:02):
talk about non-human persons aswell, to talk about gender and
materiality, for example. At arecent scholarship on the
materialities of theNeo-Assyrian empire, which was
hosted by La Sapienza Universityin Rome and organised by Lorenzo
Verderame and Davide Nadali, Itried to combine a new
materialities approach withgender. And it seems like our
(11:23):
sources can afford us a richavenue of research. So we have
moved well beyond one particulargender to represent all the
genders that we have in our datasets. The problem is that for
some people, we continue to markgender only for some
subjectivities, or not for allsubjectivities or to even resist
(11:46):
taking gender beyond humanbodies into non-human persons
and into non-human materiality.
Jon Taylor (11:54):
Can we turn to those men, then? What do you think are
the key components of being aman in Assyria during the
Neo-Assyrian empire? Do youthink they're very different
from the expectations of being aman today? If we were able to
visit Nineveh or if an Assyrianwould walk down the street in
Valetta, what degree of cultureshock would there be?
Omar N'Shea (12:14):
Right, Jon, perhaps this is a good opportunity to
apply what we have been talkingabout up to now. Obviously, it's
such a question for us kind ofhave a straight answer. Because
if we define genderheuristically, either as a
cultural discourse and a bodilypractice that is attached to a
particular body type, or as thefeeling that is situated in the
(12:36):
body or elsewhere in our beingvis-a-vis our being in the
world, and our entanglement witheveryone and everything around
us, then we would never come upwith a single universal answer
of what it means to be a man. Imean, I think at this point,
even orthodox essentialists willtell you that there is no one
way of being a man or a woman,for example.
(12:57):
In this sense, therefore, therewas there was no one way of
being a man in the Neo-Assyrianperiod of Assyrian history. In
the same way that there is noone way of being a man anywhere
in the world right now, nomatter how culturally-specific
we get. This is because in caseswhere we talk of universals,
those universals are usuallysomewhat artificial. And they
(13:19):
exclude or gloss over nuances,that would be theoretically
inconvenient. What I would say,however, is that an honest
research answer would tell youthat for example, a Neo-Assyrian
king was one type of man in theroyal inscriptions, but a
somewhat different man in thevisual culture of the palace on
the reliefs, and a ratherdifferent man in the letters
(13:43):
written to his scholars. And atotally unrecognisable type from
all of these in the letterswritten to and from the royal
physician.
And to complicate this, evenfurther, the king was a
different man in differentstages of his life, with
different people and indifferent life circumstances.
And if we wish to elaborate thiseven further, we could say that
(14:07):
different kings expresseddifferent understandings of
masculinities and thereforeperformed and lived out their
manhood differently.
Sennacherib's way of being aman, for example, was enormously
different to Ashurnasirpal theSecond's expression of manhood.
Sennacherib's notion ofmasculinity was rooted in the
idea of statesmanship, and hismilitary masculinity was
(14:30):
downplayed in the visual cultureof the palace. The royal
inscriptions continued themilitary masculinity of the
state and of the ruler, but thevisual culture allowed for a
different view of his genderexpression.
Esarhaddon's ways of being a manof very complex, because they
intersect with variouspathologies, somatic and
(14:52):
psychosomatic. And then there isthe view from the outside. Often
we get the hegemonic view ofmasculinity from the criticisms
leveled against our past actorsfor failing to do this, or for
failing to do that. In Assyria,militarised masculinity was to
be found everywhere, however (15:10):
in the human body; in the
structures that came to dominatethe state; and in the
materialities of the empire. Itsdiscourse came to serve a very
useful function for itsterritorial ambitions. And it
gave the Assyrians an effectivediscourse that was aligned with
the rationale of rule.
(15:31):
So I think that when we'reasking questions like, you know,
what was it like to be a man inthis particular period or that
particular period, I think we'vegot to be careful, first of all,
about the media in which thattype of manhood is being
represented. Because as we seein the Neo-Assyrian empire, for
example, the visual culture isdisseminating one form of being
a man. Whereas the textualculture seems to be a lot more
(15:55):
conservative of certain notionsof gender than the visual
culture is. The letters affordedus a completely different view.
At times, we even get a glimpseof affect, or you know the
personal circumstances that giverise to certain emotions. When
we compare these readingstogether, we realise that
(16:15):
different media are constructingdifferent notions of manhood and
masculinity for the period.
Ellie Bennett (16:21):
Moving a little bit away from the king of
Assyria, I was wondering aboutthis really interesting group,
which we normally refer to aseunuchs. Do you see the same
kinds of nuances in thedifferent source material for
eunuchs? Or are they universallyseen and depicted the same way
(16:43):
across the material?
Omar N'Shea (16:45):
So, Ellie, thank you for this question. One of my
main research interests is thisclass of persons that we refer
to as eunuchs. These persons arereferred to as sha reshi in the
ancient record. Not everyone inassyriology and ancient Near
Eastern history agrees thatthese people were castrated men.
In fact, there's a very livelydebate going on, in a way
(17:09):
lively, yes, but in a way thisdebate on whether the sha reshi
actually referred to castratedmen or not, has in a way stopped
or slowed down the advancementof the study of eunuchism in the
Assyrian empire. But let's forthe sake of convenience call
these two groups the minimalistand the maximalist: hose who
(17:30):
refuse the claim in itsentirety, and those for whom all
sha reshi were castrated males.
Because that is what the termmeans for them--eunuch. My
interest is in this class ofpeople in the middle, and in the
Neo-Assyrian periods,particularly the metropolitan
urban identities.
I belong in a way to themaximalist school of thought.
(17:53):
But I do read the minimalistsvery, very carefully and very
closely. In the Middle Assyrianperiod, for example, we don't
have much literature, muchsecondary literature, or we
don't have any studies really,that make reference to eunuchs
or eunuchism in the MiddleAssyrian period. But the
datasets are quite interesting.
So in the Middle Assyrianperiod, eunuchs are referred to
(18:15):
in the palace decrees, theso-called, unfortunately
so-called "harem edicts". Wehave a problem in gender
studies, particularly, we have aproblem with the word harem or
harem, because there's a lot ofretrojection and a lot of
orientalism in the term. Solet's just call this group of
texts "the palace decrees".
(18:38):
They're referred to in thepalace decrees, in these texts,
as a consequence of their bodymodification. These people are
employed to give or deny accessto people to specific areas in
the women's quarters.
But beyond the palace decrees,there are also a lot of other
documents, which clearlyindicate that these eunuchs were
(19:01):
doing other things in themetropolitan areas. For example,
they were employed as capableofficials in charge of the
crown's stores of grain. Theywere trading, dealing and barley
and grain, especially selling tobird feeders and millers. They
were in charge of the foodprovisions for the troops, for
Assyrian troops and captivetroops. They were overseeing the
(19:24):
building of cities, offortification walls. They were
also involved in the procurementof fabric, of wood, of gold and
perfume.
In the Middle Assyrian period,we also have enough information
about particular individualswhose biographies, short
biographies--short butinteresting biographies--we can
(19:46):
start drafting or we can startwriting. Also in the Middle
Assyrian period, castration isseen also as a punitive measure.
There are two laws in particularthat are based on the notion of
lex talionis. That is aneye-for-an-eye scenario in which
we see grim symmetry ofpunishment if you want. In one
(20:08):
of them, a male adulterer wouldbe punished by being turned into
a sha reshi, while in the other,the penetrator in a man to man
sex act between two socialequals is likewise punished by
castration. I'm imagining thisto be a case of non-consensual
sex between two male equals.
In the Neo-Assyrian period,things get even better for
(20:30):
eunuchs, and they become verycentral figures at the royal
court. They take on every dutyimaginable, and are often seen
leading campaigns and referredto as worthy men and mighty
soldiers. We see entireprocessions of eunuchs at
Dur-Sharrukin--Sargon theSecond's palace in
(20:50):
Khorsabad--but for some reason,they seem to vanish during the
reign of Sennacherib, only tocome back in the reins of
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Some queries to the sun godreveal in this period a certain
fear or paranoia that theeunuchs might conspire against
(21:11):
the king, and to try to seizethe crown. However, when we
compare this period to laterperiods, for example,
particularly in the classicalperiod, we notice one thing in
particular. That eunuchs arenever referred to in negative
light, in negative terms, genderor otherwise. In later periods,
they become repudiated, but alsodesirable subjects at the same
(21:35):
time. To be fair, a eunuch doestake the throne of Assyria
towards the last days of theEmpire. But this reign was
really short-lived. And it wasactually the reign that might
have given some really goodmaterial to the later criticism
of Ashurbanipal's effeminaterule, the so-called effeminate
rule.
(21:55):
The negative gendering ofeunuchs, however, is not an
Assyrian thing at all. And infact, some of the studies that
try to portray Assyrian eunuchsas either limitedly gendered or
as non-binary gendered or asthird gendered individuals will
have to deal with the fact thatthere is nothing in the Assyrian
(22:16):
record to indicate that theywere referred to in any other
term but strictly militarisedmasculine men. At some point in
the Assyrian sequence, eunuchismbecame a very useful tool for
this sort of imperial ambitionto maintain the holdings away
from the centre. The dependenceof the Neo-Assyrian period and
(22:40):
the dependence of Neo-Assyriankings on a fully functioning
provincial system, created theneed for a figure, an
individual, that did not createproblems of succession. It was
at this point that eunuchs wereemployed as provincial
governors. And for example, inthe correspondence of
Sennacherib, and in thecorrespondence of Sargon, in
(23:03):
particular, as well as in thecorrespondence of
Tiglath-Pileser the Third, wesee that many people, many of
the individuals working asprovincial governors were
actually eunuchs. We have a lotof information.
Currently, I'm working on amonograph, to try and bring all
the information together to tryand figure out the networks that
(23:23):
were being created. Who were theindividuals, you know, what they
were writing to each other,their roles as provincial
governors. But for example, inthe reign of Sargon, most of the
provincial governors wereactually eunuchs. They were
referred to as sha reshi. And atone point, we even have
references of areas where thesesha reshi lived, and where they
(23:46):
were so strong. We know very,very little about the
background, partly becausebecoming sha reshi involved the
erasure of the past, becausethen you became subject of the
crown.
Ellie Bennett (23:58):
Absolutely fascinating. And you're clearly
very busy pumping out researchabout gender, about
masculinities, about thisfascinating group of eunuchs.
But that's not all. You're alsoorganising a conference in
April. Can you tell us moreabout it and what you're most
looking forward to?
Omar N'Shea (24:14):
Right? Yes, I'm very excited that we are
organising the sixth iterationof the Gender Methodology and
Ancient Near East conference.
The sixth iteration is going totake place on the University of
Malta, the Valletta campus. Itwill be held from the 8th to the
11th of April of 2024 this year.
And we have four full days offascinating papers. It's an
(24:38):
international conference, thereare scholars coming from
everywhere. The GenderMethodology and Ancient Near
East conference is known in thecommunity as "Je-mah-nay". Some
people say "Ge-mah-nay". Westill haven't really agreed on
the proper pronunciation forthis, which is fine.
I'm co-organising this with mycolleague here in Malta, with
Dennis Mizzi, but also withEllie Bennett, with Saana Svärd,
(25:01):
with Megan Cifarelli, and AgnèsGarcia-Ventura. We have a number
of different sessions. So we hiton a lot of subjects. There are
some really fascinatingcontributions. This year
particularly we have a wholesession on eunuchs. We also have
a whole session on culticpractice. And we also have some
(25:21):
fascinating papers that arecoming from outside Mesopotamia
proper. So Uroš Matić will betalking about the gender in
ancient Egypt, for example. Wehave some Phoenician Punic
studies. We have biblicalscholarship as well. So we
understand the Near East, theancient Near East, in the
broadest way possible.
GeMANE or GeMANE has alwaysgiven us a really strong sense
(25:44):
of community, and an enormouslysafe space in which we can use
the rigours of academia, butalso to talk openly and to
discuss in a really friendlyway, some of the most
challenging aspects of study ingender. Particularly the
methodologies that we employ,particularly methodologies that
are born out of our datasets. Sowe've continuously been
(26:07):
problematising the idea oftaking existing methodologies
that are used elsewhere, andthen importing them lock, stock
and barrel to our datasets. Andso we're seeing more and more
methodologies that are comingout of the datasets that are
relevant to ancient Mesopotamia,specifically the ancient Near
East in general, but alsoAncient Egypt.
(26:29):
I'm particularly looking forwardto a business dinner that we
have one evening of theconference. Over here, we will
be talking openly in the entireGender Methodology and Ancient
Near East Conference, on thefuture of this workshop, of
these conferences. We areinterested in talking about, for
example, the modalities of theworkshop itself: whether to have
(26:51):
parallel sessions, or tocontinue having non-parallel
sessions to ensure thateverybody gets to listen to
everybody's papers. We are alsovery much interested in the
creation of a scientificcommittee, and also of a general
committee for the workshop andfor the conference, as well as
identifying future venues forthis conference to take place.
Jon Taylor (27:15):
Thank you. I wonder if we could turn a little bit
now more towards you, and yourown context, as it were. So
you're based in Malta, whichisn't one of the traditional big
centres of assyriology. So I waswondering, first of all, how did
you become interested in thistopic? And what is the state of
assyriology in Malta today?
Omar N'Shea (27:37):
Thank you, Jon.
Yes, exactly. One is a littlebit isolated when doing
assyriology in Malta, in asense. But I get the feeling
nowadays, more and more so ,thatone is always isolated, wherever
one does decide to doassyriology. {LAUGHS} So I think
this is only possible, I thinkit's only possible to do
assyriology in Malta now,because of the ease of travel.
We are very well connected tomost European cities now. So
(27:58):
travel has become a lot easier.
But also to the generosity ofpeople who are not so isolated,
and people who have access toresources and sources away from
the island and who can sendthings over very, very easily.
And so the exchange ofinformation has become a lot,
lot easier.
So I think one can doassyriology wherever really now.
(28:19):
So that's, that's reallyinteresting. I came to it
because I did ancient NearEastern Studies at the
University. We have a departmentof Middle Eastern and Asian
languages and cultures. And it'sa wonderful department. And
we've had Near Eastern Studiesfor a very, very long time. And
this is where I came from. Icome from archaeology and Near
Eastern Studies. I originallystudied Hebrew and Arabic, but
(28:42):
also in the archaeology classes,I did Phoenician, Punic, and
Aramaic.
I remember we had a languagecomponent. We had a language
study unit that was an elective,and you could choose whichever
language you wanted. And I didmy project on Akkadian. And I
haven't looked back since. Myprofessor had studied Akkadian
(29:02):
in Rome. He is a biblicalscholar. So we have a strong
tradition of biblicalscholarship here, and also the
wider biblical world. And I sortof entered assyriology through
that channel.
In terms of the current state ofassyriology on the island, we
are about to start a course inAkkadian. I will be teaching
Akkadian at the university, andI'm trying to promote this study
(29:23):
unit to the best of myabilities. I am currently
teaching ancient Near Easternmythology. So I think some of
those students will now want tocome and do Akkadian. So we're
trying to start it off. We'retrying to make it popular with
students, and we're hoping itwill work.
Jon Taylor (29:38):
Yeah, that's fantastic. You mentioned at the
start that you are very activeboth in the traditional academic
arena, but also in publicoutreach. I was wondering, in
terms of the Maltese audience,what do they find interesting
about the ancient Middle East?
Omar N'Shea (29:55):
Thank you for this question. This is an aspect of
my profession that I reallyenjoy. And this is reaching out
to people in the community.
Maltest is a Semitic language.
So when we talk about Babylonianliterature, when we talk about
Akkadian, you know, there'salways this sort of foreignness
to Akkadian and Babylonianliterature, for example. But
(30:15):
when we talk about theselanguages being Semitic
languages, people start to feela sense of proximity and a sense
of belonging here, right.
I have recently started writingabout assyriology in Maltese.
And one of the first things thatI did for a Maltese literary
journal called Aphroconfuso,with the editors, Loranne Vella,
and Joe Gatt to address theexisting, the one and only
(30:39):
existing translation ofGilgamesh into Maltese. This is
unfortunately translated fromthe English. And when I looked
at it, of course, you realiseimmediately that it is not a
translation from the original,but it's a translation from
English. But it was done in apolitical context when the
Maltese were looking for aSemitic identity. And so there
(31:01):
is a sort of political layer tothis translation, about which I
have written in this articlecalled "Gilgamex, Dak li Ra
l-Qiegħ" (Gilgamesh, he who sawthe deep). When I was doing
that, I realised that bytranslating Gilgamesh from
English, we missed out on a lotof the very meaningful
proximities between certainBabylonian words and certain
(31:22):
words in Maltese. And so thatwas the time to start thinking
about translating Gilgamesh intoMaltese from Babylonian.
So, you know, through thisoutreach, writing, I think we're
starting to get people torealise that you cannot really
have a literary scenario inMalta without having a
translation of Gilgamesh, andsome of the other stories that
(31:43):
come from the region thatinterest us.
Ellie Bennett (31:45):
That's so exciting. What do you think the
future of gender studies in theancient Near East is?
Omar N'Shea (31:52):
I think I'll be better able to answer this
question after the GenderMethodology and Ancient Near
East conference. But I sensethat it's definitely a growing
community. There are peoplecoming from everywhere,
especially young postgraduatestudents who are sending out
correspondence; reallyinterested in building on
existing work. Particularlythose people who come from
(32:15):
theory, cultural theory,critical theory, who are
interested in bringing thoseframeworks with them to the
study of ancient Near East. Nowthat we have very good editions
of literature, now that we arebeginning to have online tools
for the study of visualcultures, for example, I think
we can safely say that a lot ofpeople are seeing these corpora
(32:36):
that are very useful. Forexample, in my classroom, I have
a number of people who areinterested in gender and
medicine, for example, in genderand magic, but also a number of
people who are interested innon-human gender. And I think we
are definitely heading in thatdirection.
Jon Taylor (32:53):
Thank you very much indeed, Omar.
Omar N'Shea (32:54):
Thank you for having me
Ellie Bennett (32:55):
Thank you so much.
Omar N'Shea (32:56):
Thank you.
Jon Taylor (32:58):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Jiménez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
(33:18):
Andrew George, Yelena Rakic,Zach Rubin, Sabina Franke, Shai
Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
Smith, Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(33:43):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
(34:06):
Jackson, Susannah Paulus, EricWhitacre, Jakob Flygare, Jon
Ganuza, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
(34:28):
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
(34:51):
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
(35:16):
simply subscribe to the podcast;leave us a five star review on
Apple Music or your favouritepodcatcher; recommend us to your
fri (35:24):
@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
sign up for our newsletter. Youcan find all the links in the
show notes and on our website atwedgepod.org. Thanks, and I hope
you’ll join us next time.
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