As a general rule, we tend to assume that International Working Women's Day , or International Women's Day It is an invention of the 20th century. However, looking at ancient history we can find the surprise that the last century was not the one of the invention of women's rights but, on occasions, of their recovery.
In ancient Sumeria, women had a series of rights that they would not recover until centuries later. For example, they were allowed to study (if they could pay for the classes, of course) and, above all, they could live from their work, since not only were they allowed to carry out trades of all kinds, but what they earned was their property. We know of numerous cases of working women and many tablets with commercial contracts appear with female signatures. The queens and princesses of the first dynasties had their own personal offices, with their private scribes, apart from their husbands (the scribes are listed as “servants ” of them, and not theirs). From those offices they ran businesses in which her husband had no hand, except to benefit from being married to them. Some of these women made their spouses rich, as in the case of the queens Tashlultum , wife of Sargon of Akkad (first Akkadian monarch) and Tutasharlibish , wife of Sharkalisharri (fifth Akkadian monarch), who traded grain and building stone, respectively.
Outside the framework of royalty we come across cases like that of Ashag , wife of a high priest of the Temple of Ur, who became rich selling wheat; or that of Ninkhula , wife of a governor of Umma in the Third Dynasty of Ur, who traded in furs, grain, gold, and perfume. We even discovered curious cases of “multinationals ” of the time, like the one shared by the aforementioned Ninkhula and the royal consort Nimkalla , which had trade delegations along the entire trade route from the southern border at Lagash to the northern border at Mari (what today would be the territory between the Iraq-Iran border, along the Persian Gulf, and the border area between Syria and the south of Turkey).
Among the humble people, women carried out all kinds of commercial activities and practiced trades that for centuries would be considered “masculine ”, such as carpentry or carving statues. Interestingly, in the Sumerian culture certain tasks were considered very “feminine ”, although men were not excluded from them, such as the herbalist (the pharmacists of the time), the perfumer or the masseur. It should be noted that the masseuses of those times were very close to medicine, due to the use they made of essential oils. And in this field of health we can highlight in the III Dynasty of Ur to Kubatum , Zamena and Ummeda , all of them doctors. It was also very popular for lower-class women to own taverns, sometimes dispensing the wine they themselves produced on land belonging to their dowry.
As a summary, it can be pointed out that we know of two tablets indicating the existence of 13,000 working women in the city of Ur during the II Dynasty of Ur and 7,000 working women in the city of Lagash in the III Dynasty of Ur. And It is in this framework of women's work, in which we find a first case of celebration in honor of working women. Upon death Gemen-Ninlila , who was the consort of King Shulgi, second king of the III Dynasty of Ur, he decrees, in honor of her deceased, seven days off work for the working women of the kingdom . After the death of another consort, Eanisha , she returns to decree another seven days off. Both consorts had been successful businesswomen (and had brought him a fair amount of profit).
So, when you celebrate the International Day of Working Women, you already know in honor of whom you have to toast with a few beers.
Contributed by Joshua BedwyR author of In a Dark Blue World
Image:History of women