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The study of women in Sumerian literature has received only limited attention thus far (Kramer 1 987). 1 This is in contrast not only with Akkadian literature (Harris 1 997), but with many other fields of ancient studies. For instance, in both biblical and classical scholarship, recent monographs have appeared that shed light on the relations between women's social roles and the images of women in literary documents (Brenner 1985; Brenner and Fontaine 1997; Pomeroy 1975; Hawley and Levick 1995). Thus, in her discussion of the image of women in Athenian literature of the fifth century B.C.E., Sarah Pomeroy (1975: 96) pointed out that "[t]he mythology about women is created by men and, in a culture dominated by men, it may have little to do with flesh-and-blood women." Indeed there is a great divide between the heroines portrayed in Greek tragedy and comedy and actual women living in ancient Greece. Similarly, Ken Dowden (1992: 56) argued that "the subject of women in mythology offers better value to the student of mythology than to the student of women."
The case of Mesopotamia, however, is quite different. Indeed, as I will show below, the portrayal of women in Sumerian literature had everything to do with real women. I will discuss the available evidence on women in Old Babylonian Sumerian literature within the larger framework of a socio-functional approach to this corpus.2 Before presenting the evidence, it is necessary to review briefly the basics of this approach to the study of Old Babylonian Sumerian literature. According to Niek Veldhuis, one of its foremost students, Sumerian literature can be defined as "(1) the corpus of poetic texts that was (2) used in the advanced phase of the curriculum of the scribal school (3) in order to create a common Sumerian heritage and history" (Veldhuis 2004: 47).· This corpus includes narrative compositions, hymns, and wisdom literature as well as the various epistolary collections.3
Veldhuis argues that Sumerian literature had a twofold pedagogical purpose: first, it was used to further the students' knowledge of Sumerian. More importantly, however, Sumerian literature served to create an esprit du corps among these advanced students. Veldhuis also suggests that the Old Babylonian Sumerian literary corpus was an invented tradition assembled in order to stress the...