Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia

The Epic of Gilgamesh excites the modern reader with its poetry and adventure, but for the scholar, it also reveals ancient Mesopotamian attitudes about men and women and attitudes about aging. Rivkah Harris uses a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary approach to examine gender and generation in Gilgamesh and other ancient Mesopotamian literature. Harris examines Mesopotamian perspectives on the ideal woman; relationships between men and women; women's place in cultural activities; gender differences in aging, youth, adulthood, and old age; and generational conflict. To uncover Mesopotamian attitudes in the extant literature, Harris combed through literature and myth, letters, economic and legal texts, and visual materials.