French historians are concerned by women’s history since thirty years, but studies are manly dealing with the Occident. For the ancient Near East, there is now a great deal of limited studies on women and gender history, but few syntheses. Furthermore, economic history is well represented in Assyriology, thanks to the good preservation of dozen of thousands of clay tablets recording administrative operations, contracts and acts dealing with family law. Despite these voluminous sources, the topic of work has not been much addressed. The thirty participants of this conference will examine the various economic occupations involving women, in a gender perspective, over the three millennia of Near Eastern history.

Programme

Wednesday, November 5 (4th-3rd millennia)

9h30-10h00 : Registration

• 10h00-10h15 : B. Lion and C. Michel : Welcome and Introduction
• 10h15-10h45 : F. Joannès : Historiography on Studies Dedicated to Women and Economy in the REFEMA context

Keynote speech I

• 10h45-11h15 : Jerrold S. Cooper : The Job of Sex : The Social and Economic Role of Prostitutes in Ancient Mesopotamia

11h15-11h30  : Coffee break

• 11h30-12h00 : Catherine Breniquet : Weaving, Potting and Churning : Women at Work during the Uruk Period. Evidences from the Cylinder Seals
• 12h00-12h30 : Camille Lecompte : The Representation of Women in Lexical Texts

12h30-14h00 : Lunch

• 14h00-14h30 : Fumi Karahashi : Women and Land in the Presargonic Lagash E2-MI2 Corpus
• 14h30-15h00 : Maria-Giovanna Biga : Women at Work at the Ebla Court (a Syrian Court of 3rd Millennium BC.)
• 15h00-15h30 : Massimo Maiocchi : Women and Production in Sargonic Adab

15h30-16h00  : Coffee break

• 16h00-16h30 : Bertrand Lafont : Women at Work and Women in the Economy during the Neo-Sumerian Period
• 16h30-17h00 : Agnès Garcia-Ventura : Weaving Textiles, Weaving Lives : Engendering Ur III Textile Work Force

• 17h00-17h45 : General discussion on the 4th and 3rd millennia

Thursday, November 6 (2nd millennium)

• 9h30-10h00 : Adelheid Otto : Women at Work during the 3rd and 2nd Millennia According to Depictions in the Minor Arts of Mesopotamia
• 10h00-10h30 : Cécile Michel : Gender and Work in the Old Assyrian Private Archives
• 10h30-11h00 : Nele Ziegler : The Data from Mari on the Economic Activities of Women (18th century BC)

11h00-11h15 : Coffee break

• 11h15-11h45 : Ichiro Nakata : Economic Activities of nadītum Women of Šamaš as Reflected in the Field Sales Contracts Published in MHET II/1-6
• 11h45-12h15 : Katrien de Graef : Cherchez la femme ! The Economic Role of nadītum Priestesses in Old Babylonian Sippar

12h15-14h00 : Lunch

• 14h00-14h30 : Sophie Démare : Women at Work in Mesopotamia : the Legal Point of View
• 14h30-15h00 : Matteo Vigo : Sources for the Study of the Role of Women in the Hittite Administration
• 15h00-15h30 : Brigitte Lion : Work, Gender and Society at Nuzi

15h30-16h00 : Coffee break

• 16h00-16h30 : Josué Justel : The Involvement of Women in the Economic Agreements : The Case of the Syrian Late Bronze Age Archives
• 16h30-17h00 : Masamichi Yamada : On the kubuddāʾu in the Emar Texts
• Daisuke Shibata (Tsukuba University, Tokyo, Japan – Middle Assyrian)

17h00-17h45 : General discussion on the 2nd millennium

20h00 : Conference dinner for contributors

Friday, November 7 (1st millennium)

• 9h30-10h00 : Eiko Matsushima : Women in Elamite Royal Inscriptions
• 10h00-10h30 : Virginie Muller : Women and their Activities According to Cuneiform Divinatory Corpus

• 10h30-10h45 : Coffee break

• 10h45-11h15 : Louise Quillien : Invisible workers : the role of women in textile production during the 1st millennium BC Mesopotamia
• 11h15-11h45 : Yoko Wataï : A Prosopographic Data-Base of Women in the Neo-Babylonian Sources
• 11h45-12h15 : Laura Cousin : Beauty Experts in the Documentation of the 1st Millennium BC : the Female Perfume-Makers

• 12h15-14h00 : Lunch

• 14h00-14h30 : Julien Monerie : Prebend-Owning Women and Temple Economy in Hellenistic Uruk
• 14h30-15h00 : Violaine Sébillotte : Women, Gender and the Economic History of the Ancient Greek World

Keynote speech II

• 10h45-11h15 : Saana Svärd Teppo : Women’s Work and Female Administrators in the Neo-Assyrian Palaces

17h00-17h45 : General discussion on the 1st millennium and final discussion

Colloque international Organisé par Brigitte Lion (Université de Lille 3, HALMA-IPEL) Cécile Michel (CNRS, ArScAn-HAROC, Nanterre)