"Remarkably, two perfume recipes from the Middle Assyrian Period (roughly 1400–1000) were attributed to the expertise of female perfumemakers. Of the two texts, only the one translated here preserves a colophon in full. According to this colophon, the compilation of recipes for making perfumed “canus” oil are said to have been dictated, “according to the mouth” of Tapputi-belet-ekallim, the female perfume-maker (Akkadian muraqqitu).
What “according to the mouth” means with regard to the question of authorship can be debated. For example, the colophon was previously translated as “copied on the command of Tapputi-beletekallim.” However, considering that her profession is explicitly mentioned, it rather seems that the literal translation would fit better: according to the tablet, Tapputi-belet-ekallim is recorded as having dictated the recipe, which was then written on a clay tablet and baked by a scribe. Middle Assyrian perfume recipes were found within a mixed archaeological context preserving both Middle Assyrian and later Neo-Assyrian clay tablets. Nevertheless, an exact date for the text can be found in the colophon, which dates the text to the fifth regnal year of king Tukulti-Ninurta I (whose reign is conventionally dated to 1244–1208): “month Muhur-ila¯ni on the 20th day; the eponymate of Šunu-qardu rab šaqê.” In other words, the text most probably dates to the year 1239 BCE.
As a genre, manuals are unified by a common linguistic register, characterized by conditional clauses and the use of second-person verbs that instruct an anonymous doer (“you”) to make a certain product or reproduce a particular expert skill. One of the principal goals of manuals is to transmit expert knowledge by means of step-by-step instructions. The transmission of expert knowledge via manuals, however, presents a number of compelling and complex questions regarding the nature of technical knowledge itself, its value for cuneiform intellectual societies, and the efficacy of transmitting “hands-on” knowledge by means of texts. Questions may also be asked of particular manuals, such as this one’s unusual attribution to a female perfume-making expert."
Women's Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Anthology of the Earliest Female Authors, Charles Halton, Saana Svärd
