This volume examines how gender relations were regulated in ancient Near Eastern and biblical law. The textual corpus examined includes the various pertinent law collections, royal decrees and instructions from Mesopotamia and Hatti, and the three biblical legal collections. Peled explores issues beginning with the wide societal perspective of gender equality and inequality, continues to the institutional perspective of economy, palace and temple, the family, and lastly, sex crimes. All the texts mentioned or referred to in the book are given in an appendix, both in the original languages and in English translation, allowing scholars to access the primary sources for themselves. Law and Gender in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible offers an invaluable resource for anyone working on Near Eastern society and culture, and gender in the ancient world more broadly.

This volume examines how gender relations were regulated in ancient Near Eastern and biblical law. The textual corpus examined includes the various pertinent law collections, royal decrees and instructions from Mesopotamia and Hatti, and the three biblical legal collections. Peled explores issues beginning with the wide societal perspective of gender equality and inequality, continues to the institutional perspective of economy, palace and temple, the family, and lastly, sex crimes. All the texts mentioned or referred to in the book are given in an appendix, both in the original languages and in English translation, allowing scholars to access the primary sources for themselves. Law and Gender in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible offers an invaluable resource for anyone working on Near Eastern society and culture, and gender in the ancient world more broadly.

This volume publishes the proceedings of the eleventh annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar. Its central goal is to present a cross-cultural study of the intersection between law and gender relations in the ancient world, with a focus on the ancient Near East. When reflecting upon the formation, perpetuation, and interactions of social structures that frequently come into conflict with each other, one discovers that gender constructs are used by mechanisms of social monitoring and control; structures of power. One such example is the realm of jurisdiction and legislation. This volume uses the sphere of legal institutions as a prism through which to consider gender relations in the ancient world, both in the Near East and beyond. The way in which similar issues were manifested in different cultural and historical contexts is examined, with the goal of identifying common denominators as well as particularities. The three themes discussed in this volume are examined through multiple historical-cultural examples.