Gendering Snakes: Masculinity in the Snake Omens of the Divinatory Series Šumma ālu

Description

Studies on hegemonic masculinity in first-millennium Mesopotamia have mostly focused on the figure of the king and the political and military establishment or on male heterosexuality. Except for the work of Nicla De Zorzi (2017), little attention has been paid to the construction of manhood that emerges from the Mesopotamian divinatory corpus beyond the explicit references to erotic omens (studied by Ann Guinan 1997). In this paper, we aim to investigate the individual, social, and economic attributes and characteristics qualifying hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1985; Messerschmidt 2018) in the Tablets dealing with snake omens, which are part of the first millennium BCE divinatory series Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin ‘If a city is placed on a hill.’ Šumma ālu contains thousands of omens describing inauspicious signs of an urban environment and is the most important source for animal omens in ancient Mesopotamia. The section on snakes (Tablets 22-26) was edited as part of the project ‘Bestiarium Mesopotamicum: Animal Omens in Ancient Mesopotamia.’ In the light of this revised edition, we examine how the snake is used metaphorically to represent the qualities of first-millennium normative manhood. The snake omens manifest a phallocentric worldview in various ways, often focusing on a man’s potency, progeny, and interpersonal relations, especially within the family (women usually appear together with a man). This illustrates that gender has a relational character (West and Zimmermann 1987: 140). Women and other relatives contribute to the reiteration of hegemonic masculinity (Talbot and Quayle 2010; Messerschmidt 2018: 60-62). Indeed, in the omens, the snake is a symbol of disintegration and fragility of social ties. Snake behaviour qualifies the relationships an individual has with his adversaries to the extent where the snake itself can analogically represent the adversary (Lundeen and Rinderer, forthcoming). As part of divinatory knowledge (bārûtu), the snake omens embody the system that perpetuates ancient Mesopotamian social hierarchies, what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as the symbolic order (1998). Michel Foucault’s concept of a “local center of power–knowledge” (foyer locaux de pouvoir–savoir) (1976: 130) elucidates how institutional settings in ancient Mesopotamia, where divinatory and scribal practices occurred, functioned as a place-time for enacting and reinforcing power relations and gender norms. Diviner-scribes were not merely passive collectors and interpreters of ominous signs; they were active agents in constructing and perpetuating cultural narratives, including through the lens of animal behaviour.

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Period	12 Apr 2024
Event title	The Sixth Workshop on Gender, Methodology and the Ancient Near East
Event type	Conference
Location	Valletta, MaltaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International