• DOI:10.1515/9781614519089-013
• Corpus ID: 133493328

The Job of Sex: The social and economic role of prostitutes in ancient Mesopotamia

@inproceedings{Cooper2016TheJO,
  title={The Job of Sex: The social and economic role of prostitutes in ancient Mesopotamia},
  author={Jerrold Cooper and Brigitte Lion and C{\'e}cile Michel},
  year={2016}
}

• J. Cooper, Brigitte Lion, Cécile Michel
• Published 12 January 2016
• History

Prostitution certainly cannot be shown to be Mesopotamia’s “oldest profession,” but it is attested quite early, from at least the mid-third millennium.1 It is an occupation that, in its practice, as Brigitte Lion has noted (2013: 398), “has left practically no written trace,” and involved, again in her words, a “transaction (...) payable in cash, which made it unnecessary to document on a tablet.” Of course, as Lion implies, this lack of documentation is not a peculiar feature of prostitution, but rather is just one example of the absence of documentation for all small-scale private transactions. People bought vegetables, had their shoes repaired, got haircuts, and satisfied their sexual needs, all without leaving a trace in the great mountain of cuneiform documentation.2 In their call for papers, the conference organizers reminded us that most women’s work was in and around the home, and thus unmentioned and unremunerated. When women worked outside the home, in the great institutions, palace or temple, they were most likely to be found in the textile or grain mills, that is, working in sectors that specialized in just one of the tasks that were part of the traditional chores women did in the home. Might prostitution also be so considered? Was the prostitute earning her livelihood by merely commodifying a single task that other women performed only at home with their husbands? Can we speak of sex workers in ancient Mesopotamia? I ask this question knowing that the terms “sex work” and “sex worker” have become controversial among feminist theorists and activists (Howell 2008). Some seek to support and protect women who satisfy sexual desire for money, and understand the term “sex worker” to be more dignified than “prostitute.” Others are outraged at any attempt to dignify activity that involves the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, and insist that such activity be called prostitution, with all of the opprobrium that the term connotes. A more academic version of this dispute exists in the field of classics, where some scholars