In ancient Babylon, women were exposed to certain “customs,” which were nothing more than mistreating and humiliating them. Herodotus, a historian of antiquity, wrote in his writings about this peculiar tradition, which he himself called the most infamous. It consisted of the following: during ancient Babylon, every woman was obliged to prostitute herself once in her life for some outsider.
The women of the time had to go to the temple of Venus and wait for a stranger to choose her. Women could not return home until a man threw money in her lap, that money could not be touched, because it became sacred money. The woman could not despise the man, likewise, Herodotus related that not even the women of the nobility were saved from this hideous custom. The only difference in them was that they waited for the stranger in carriages until he chose them.
Women just had to learn to live with it, and evidently, their opinion had no importance.
Babylonian laws for women
The Babylonian king created codes that governed women. These specific aspects of the codes help us to understand the mentality of the people of the time. For example, social order is above any kind of individual rights. By law, the husband or father was the head of the family, and the legitimacy of the offspring was considered essential; therefore, the sexual freedom of women was strictly limited.
Women were subjected to the authority of men, whoever he was. Children were considered possessions of the father. Women belonged to their husbands. It is said that women did not have the right to own property; most commonly, the father or husband was the one who administered the family property.
What was marriage like in Babylon?
If women were to marry, there were a series of rules. For example, there had to be some sort of contract to endorse the engagement. There had to be a ceremony on the wedding night, and the couple had to engage in intimate relationships; the bride had to become pregnant (obviously, as expected, the bride had to be a virgin). If the bride was not a virgin or could not conceive, she could be returned to her family.
Infertility was considered a disgrace, and a man could take a second wife. In addition, a man could divorce a woman without having to have any justification. However, if he had had children with her, he kept the property rights of the children. Not only that, if the ex-husband died, she would only get a small portion of his property.
Is there anything more detestable than all those rules and customs of ancient Babylon, just reading these cases that happened makes me think how far we have come as a society, but it also makes me reflect on how much we still need to improve?
Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
