"Women in all periods of ancient Mesopotamian history played a significant role in the workforce, from midwives to weavers and a great many things in between. They were the backbone of the textile and milling industries, and in some cities also worked in farming, at irrigation systems, and in transportation and boat towing on canals. This doesn’t mean they received equal pay for their work. As oil-pressers in the city of Umma, female workers were paid rations in barley and oil equivalent to less than half of the rations of their male counterparts. The pay gap, it seems, has an incredibly long history.
Around the same time period as the naditum in Sippar, women of ancient Assyria further north were part of a far-reaching international trade network, centred on the trading quarter in the city of Kanesh (in Turkey). Donkeys in trade caravans carried tin and textiles for weeks at a time from Assur to Kanesh, a distance of 620 miles, where those goods would be sold or traded, and they returned to the Assyrian heartland with silver and gold. The same trade caravans also carried clay letters back and forth between business partners and family members, including husbands and wives who worked together. The exchanges between one woman named Lamassi and her husband, Pushu-ken (the same man who did time for dodging tax), show the perils of mixing professional and married life. In an exasperated letter, she asks why Pushu-ken constantly accuses her of sending sub-par textiles:
Who is this man who lives in your house and who is criticizing the textiles when they get to him? As for me, in order that from each caravan trip at least 10 shekels of silver accrue to your house, I try my best to make and send textiles to you!
She ends her letter here, without so much as a final sign-off. In another letter, she complains that she is struggling to make enough cloth for her family’s trade in Kanesh, for her children, and for other household personnel, on top of her daily responsibilities like making beer and fielding an annoying neighbour – the trials of a working mother 4,000 years ago.
Even in ancient Assyria, mothers were expected to work like they didn’t have children and raise children like they didn’t have work. Lamassi may have had seven children – five boys and at least one but possibly two girls. Not including her husband’s prison sentence, she would have raised them alone for years at a time. One of her letters contains a heartfelt plea for him to come home: ‘Be an honourable man, break your obligations, and come here!’ In the same letter, she also asks that he finally pay the export duty he owes so that the tax man will stop badgering her to fork up the silver for it.
Women like Lamassi often got paid for their textiles independently of their husbands – about 10 to 12 shekels a piece after tax. Considering that they were responsible for every stage of production – from sourcing wool and weaving the textiles to sometimes arranging their donkey DHL to Kanesh – this financial outcome is only fair. They even knew what prices their work should fetch in the markets of Kanesh, and sometimes even gave instructions to relatives on the ground not to sell particular pieces for anything less than the market value. A woman named Taram-Kubi, for example, complains that she was underpaid for previous products and instructs her brother not to sell the next lot of textiles she has sent him for anything less than a third of a mina per textile (about 20 shekels). Many of these women also learned enough cuneiform to be able to write their own letters to remote family members and business partners without relying on professional scribes. They acted as producers, traders, and scribes, in addition to running their households and raising their kids.