Evidence of Matriarchy being overrun my Patriarchy
phippsmartin_at_hotmail.com
Date: 02/19/05
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Date: 19 Feb 2005 04:27:30 -0800
The Sumerian legend of the Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi (See
http://home.earthlink.net/~templezagduku/dumuzi.html or
http://www.mindspring.com/~mysticgryphon/synopsis.htm or
http://www.craton.net/inanna/main.php?action=synopsis) describes a time
when Sumer was ruled by a woman in a matriarchial society. I find this
interesting. I tried asking anthropologists if Inanna was a real
person but maybe I'll have more response from archeologists.
Inanna -or Ishtar- is probably best known as a character in the Epic of
Gilgamesh (See http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM or
http://novaonline.nv.cc.va.us/eli/eng251/gilgameshstudy.htm). In that
story -reportedly the world's oldest story- Inanna desired Gilgamesh
and he rejected her. Inanna sent "the Bull of Heaven" to kill
Gilgamesh and cursed his friend, Enkidu, to die after the two of them
teamed up to kill it.
The basic problem is that the historical Sumerian king Gilgamesh has
been dated back to 4700 years ago whereas references to Inanna,
presumably, date back 5500 years ago to the begining of Sumerian
writing. Clearly they weren't contemporaries.
I have a theory. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Sumer is clearly becoming a
patriarchy. Gilgamesh is described as "two-thirds god" presumably
because he was fathered by one of his mother's priests and not by
Lugalbanda, his mother's husband, who was also considered a god. Power
was handed down through Gilgamesh's mother, not by Gilgamesh's father.
Nor was his mother considered a whore because she had more than one
consort. Nevertheless, it is Gilgamesh's son, Ur-Nungal who became the
king after Gilgamesh. As a ruler of Sumer, Gilgamesh exploited women
and, his rejection of Ishtar, may have been symbolic of his rejection
of the old matriarchy. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes Ishtar as evil
and vengeful but, ultimately, unable to prevent Gilgamesh from assuming
power without a queen.
>>From http://www.pinn.net/~swampy/inanna1.html
"Inanna relates to the Neolithic Great Mother and is considered one
of the three Great Godesses of the Bronze Age: Isis, Inanna, and Cybele
being the three. As the Great Mother she gives life and to the waxing
and
wanning moon...her mythology revolved around the connections made
between
the dark and light phases...she is Bride, Sister, Mother...and her dark
phases is reflected in her sister, Ereshkigal.
"There is a lot of political change between Inanna and Ishtar, and
perhaps addition of local male gods, and differences in the Goddess's
relation to the new local gods. Civilization is creating itself, and
the
shift from matrilinial to patriarchal is going on here. There are clues
in
the myths if we read them with an open mind and look for traces of
this.
"There was a definite shift when the Semite people from the North
came into the South. The Goddess was the predominate deity in the South
and
the people from the North brought in the male sky Gods; that is when
you
begin to see that a male God "seized" a Goddess. This was not something
that
one sees in the southern cultures, they were still following the older
Neolithic Mother Goddess traditions. Later on, the
Goddess becomes a wife or a sister, not the Great Mother of the past."
The website I just quoted blames Semitic people for crushing the old
matriarchy and introducing patriarchy. I disagree. I think the Epic
of Gilgamesh is about two things: first, the transformation of Sumer
from a matriarchy to a patriarchy and, second, Gilgamesh's realisation
that man can achieve a kind of immortality if his work, in this case
both his part in the building of the city of Uruk and in his supposed
writing of the Epic of Gilgamesh itself, live on to be admired by
future generations. Who can argue with his reasoning, 4700 years later
when the Epic of Gilgamesh is available in bookstores, libraries and on
the net and the city of Uruk, though buried under sand for thousands of
years, exists as evidence that this man actually lived? Patraichy and
immortality are related, naturally, in that by passing on your kingdom
to your male descendents you gaurantee that it is your name that goes
down in history: hence we have the Sumerian King list and not the
Sumerian Queen list. In the battle of the sexes, it was the winner who
got to write the history books, or tablets in this case.
So what happened to transform Sumer into a patriarchy? The Epic of
Gilgamesh speaks of a Great Flood. Perhaps this was a historical event
that happened locally in the mesopotamian region. This historic local
flood could have been -and probably was- the inspiration for the
Biblical global flood. I suspect that the great flood may have
destroyed the old matriarchial society and caused it to be replaced by
the more brutal, less civilized, patriarchial society described in the
Epic of Gilgamesh (in which Gilgamesh claimed the right to have sex
with brides befire their marriage, for example).
The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi clearly portrays a matriachy: Dumuzi
was a mere shepherd who became king by marrying Inanna, the queen. In
a related story, Inanna returns from hell and finds Dumuzi having
assumed the role of king and Inanna has him sent to hell in his place.
In contrast, the Epic of Gilgamesh portrays a king who is firmly in
control and does not need a woman to rule.
Biblical and archeological evidence would place the Great Flood to
around 5250 years ago. There's no evidence of a more recent great
flood in Mesopotamia, certainly not one wiping out the civilization,
and in any case it has to date back more than 4700 years for the story
to have been passed down to the historical Gilgamesh.
Here, I am taking at face value the idea that the Epic of Gilgamesh was
largely written by Gilgamesh hismelf, a fictionalized autobiography if
you will, specifically -and cynically- designed, by his own admission,
as a means by which his name would go down in history. This is similar
to the way Chinese rulers created fictional legends about themselves.
To me, this is a plausible explaination for the origin of the Epic of
Gilgamesh, although I am not by no means an expert and the story was,
no doubt, changed by the time the offical Akkadian version was written
down.
Now I'm thinking that Inanna was a real person who lived before the
Great Flood and Gilgamesh was a real person who lived after the Great
Flood and that the contrast between the Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi
and the Epic of Gilgamesh in terms of the relative importance of male
and female rulers indicates that their society was a matriachy before
the Great Flood and became a patriachy soon after. This makes a lot of
sense to me.
Following the destruction if the Great Flood, men might have been able
to convince people that the Gods had rejected rule by women. Myths
such as that of Pandora's Box and the Garden of Eden seem to reflect
the idea that women cannot be trusted to make decisions and should not
be obeyed. (When I refer to the Garden of Eden as a "myth", I should
point out that it is, at best, a legend because there are no written
records dating back more than 5500 years.)
Presumably Egypt was a matriarchy more than 5000 years ago. Presumably
Egypt became a patriachy with rule by Pharoahs 5000 years ago when
invaders from Mesopotamia brought their patriachial society with them.
Patriachy was set into law in Babylon with the Code of Hummarabi around
3800 years ago. The Code of Hummarabi was a Draconian code in which
women who commited adultery could be stoned to death. Similar laws
were included in the old testament and some Muslim societies, to this
day, strictly follow this code.
If I am right about all this then the Great Flood represented a great
tradegy, not simply due to the loss of life at the time, but due to the
destruction of a great matriarchial society in which women were
actually seen as superior to men. In the past four millenia, women
have been able to win back some of the rights they lost but they will
never be able to achieve equal status with men.
I am going to include some quotes below that I am going to copy and
paste from previous posts of mine on sci.anthropology. Basically, it
would seem that matriarchy was seen as natural because women were able
to have children
but men were not. Only when the connection between sex and fertility
was understood could there be dynasties based on the passing of power
and property from father to son: in a matriarchy in which a female
queen had many consorts, no one consort could claim to be THE father of
her children so there wouldn't have been a clear line of descent from
father to son. Even in Gilgamesh's day, this would appear to have been
true because it was known that the king wasn't his real father and that
he was only "two thirds god (and one third human)". Gilgamesh's son,
however, did succeed him as king.
Anyway, on with the quotes.
http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/ancientegypt.html
"Ancient Egypt's lineage was traced through women and property was
passed through women. For this reason, Ancient Egypt originated as a
matriarchy. The pharoahs were trustees of the property passed down and
their reign was decided by their matrilineal status. Because of the
matrilineal structure, husbands would lose their property and status if
their wife died. The property was passed down to the daughters and
granddaughters. Many incest relations began with fathers and daughters
and granddaughters because the men wanted to stay with the property.
There were also numerous brother/sister incest marriages."
Similarly,
http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F...
"The argument for the existence of prehistoric matriarchal societies
(societies, that is, in which familial and political authority was
wielded by women), first developed by Johann Jacob Bachofen [see also
the section Mother Goddess under Women in Prehistory], was further
articulated by, among others, Friedrich Engels in his book The Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884. Engels
argued that the transition from primate societies to the earliest human
social structure was achieved by granting to solidarity a supreme
importance which transcended even sexual competitiveness and jealousy.
According to Engels, solidarity was achieved through "group marriage"
where whole groups of kin-related women were collectively "married" to
whole groups of men. Under these circumstances, only the mother of a
child was known, so kinship tended to be traced through the female
line, creating what Engels called a "matrilineal clan." The kinship
rights of men were his sisters and her children.
"The question of whether or not some cultures in the early historical
period were, if not matriarchal, then at least matrilineal, is today a
controversial one. The consensus among most anthropologists and
sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed. The
issue has important ramifications. To argue in support of
matrilinearity in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, and Anatolia is
also to argue that these cultures were still matrilineal as they
entered the historical period; that they, and by inference other
cultures too, were matrilineal in the prehistoric era. If this was
indeed the case, then matrilinearity was, and for some still is, a more
"natural" (because prehistoric and therefore "primitive," uncorrupted,
and true) arrangement of human society. This "natural" state, however,
was gradually destroyed as men established the "unnatural" condition of
patriarchy by subjugating women and usurping female power.
"The historical period, beginning around 5,500 years ago, marks the
beginning of the rise of patriarchy. It arose gradually, however, and
for a while women appear to have maintained, mostly by default of
tradition and custom, especially in conservative societies like that in
Ancient Egypt, a position of importance that was not only different
from but, and this is the crucial point, also independent of that of
men. In other words, for a while in Ancient Egypt (and also in Minoan
Crete and still in Archaic Greece), women were recognized as embodying
an identity and power which derived from, and was based upon, the
female, of which the Mother Goddess, and ultimately all female
goddesses, was its manifestation. It was a power acknowledged and
respected by men which resided in the female and could be claimed by
all women; it was not, as it subsequently became in the later Egyptian,
Greek, and Minoan periods and has remained ever since, a power defined
and delimited by men."
Indeed, http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/99/maya/sarah.html
"Worship of the Goddess began in matriarchal prehistoric societies in
which the people did not possess the conscious understanding of the
relationship between sex and conception, and believed that women had
the power to create life, in which men had no part. In these societies,
names, titles, possessions, and territorial rights passed along female
lines. In the Ancient Near East, Southeastern and Central Europe, Egypt
and Crete, women, like the land, were seen as the primary source of
life. These early agriculturalists envisioned a female deity, the Earth
Mother Goddess, as the creative power behind all animal and plant
fertility."
Sumer was probably the same way, except that they clearly recognized
the connection between sex and fertility.
http://www.sexuality.org/l/wh/whsacre2.html
"Both Qualls-Corbett and Monick assert that prior to the Christian era
sexuality was a - or, more likely, the - primary way in which
people experienced and expressed their spiritual leanings. In Sumer,
Babylonia, Phoenicia, and other early civilizations the feminine
principle stood for abundance, fertility, nurturance, and passion.
These archetypal qualities remain where the feminine principle is still
embodied today, but while they were highly valued and praised through
worship of the goddess in matriarchal times, they have fallen in
stature in our patriarchal ones."
If Inanna lived in Sumer 5500 years ago and was considered a goddess
then perhaps the legends of Isis, Venus and Cybelle were based on her.
http://www.ejfi.org/Civilization/Civilization-12.htm
"We see an example in Egypt where the matriarchy was overcome by a
patriarchy invading from Mesopotamia roughly 5,000 years BP, or about
3,000 B.C. Before the patriarchal invasion, writing and tool use were
unknown in Egypt."
Patriarchy was enshrined by the Code of Hummarabi (18th Century BC).
http://www.earth-history.com/Sumer/
"Mesopotamian society was a patriarchal society, and so women possessed
far fewer privileges and rights in their marriage. A woman's place was
at home and failure to fulfil her duties was grounds for divorce. If
she was not able to bear children, her husband could divorce her but he
had to repay the dowry. If his wife tried to leave the home in order to
engage in business, her husband could divorce her and did not have to
repay the dowry. Furthermore, if his wife was a "gadabout, . . .
neglecting her house [and] humiliating her husband," she could be
drowned.
"Women were guaranteed some rights, however. If a woman was divorced
without good reason she received the dowry back. A woman could seek
divorce and get her dowry back if her husband was unable to show that
she had done anything wrong. The mother also chose a son to whom an
inheritance would be passed.
"Sexual relations were strictly regulated as well. Husbands, but not
wives, were permitted sexual activity outside marriage. A wife caught
committing adultery was pitched into the river. Incest was strictly
forbidden. If a father committed incestuous relations with his
daughter, he would be banished. Incest between a son and his mother
resulted in both being burned."
Talk about a 180 degree change in a matter of a few centuries! The
change makes sense if property was passed from father to son rather
than mother to daughter: a father would be more concerned that a child
was his if he was to receive his enheritance whereas a mother would
have no doubt who her daughters were.
The change from matriarchy to patriarcy, of course, affected the way
men and women related: before, men were subject to the whims of women
and then, suddenly, it was reversed and women became almost like slaves
in society. The implications go further, however: a patriarchy is
necessarily more warlike with the male soldiers that once protected the
women now running things. Suddenly there was the possibility for
armies to conquer other lands and subjugate _their_ people. No wonder
patriarchial societies came to dominate! Men have been in control for
thousands of years. The result? We almost destroyed ourselves in
nuclear annihilation! Somehow I think we were all better off, men
included, under matriarchy.
I really want to know what people here think about this.
Martin
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