Children in the Ancient Near East

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One might think that the life of a child in the ancient world was fairly simple, a period of protected innocence wherein a child was nurtured and remained naïve. Hollywood and historical fictions have added to this picture, inundating our imaginations with Biblical children in pastoral settings who only faced hardships and the realities of life as they came of age. However, these are modern understandings of childhood superimposed on past realities. In fact, the notion of “childhood” as a social phenomenon was not even recognized in the ancient world. Children were understood as members of a household and participants in the household economic system—contributing as was appropriate for their age.

The information available to us suggests that ancient societies were careful to control the movements of everyone in the household. Many of the materials available for studying children contain information regulating a child’s entrance or exit from a household. Although few attest to the life of the child within the household, it is still possible to040 study the functional role of children within ancient Near Eastern family units.

Since most ancient texts categorize individuals by social ages over and against chronological ages, we will follow suit and use the following umbrella terms: infant (birth–2 years old), child (3–12 years old), juvenile (13–15 years old), and adult (15+ years). The cutoff for the category “adult” may seem early, but keep in mind that in the ancient world people married and started families at a much younger age. Within the larger categories of infant and child, more specific social categories (e.g., suckling, weaned child, adopted child, and orphan) can be seen.

Looking for children in ancient texts and archaeological remains can be difficult. Children are underrepresented in both corpuses. With respect to texts, we can attribute this to two different causes: First, children did not write texts. We know little of what a child thought, felt, or experienced. Not every child was taught to read and write. Works like The Diary of Anne Frank were simply nonexistent. We do not even have biographies or works of fiction about children. The closest we get to an ancient Laura Ingalls Wilder is a narrative about a child, such as the Biblical story of David and Goliath. But here we run into the second cause: When children are present in the texts, the presentation of the children comes from an adult’s point of view. Thus, young David’s grand assertion that he was capable of fighting Goliath because he had felled lions and bears with his bare hands (1 Samuel 17:34–35) smacks more of theological ideology than reality.

Archaeological realia poses its own set of issues. Historically, archaeologists have focused on finding city plans and uncovering large public buildings. Smaller buildings, such as houses where children resided, were—until recently—ignored. Even with a focus on domestic architecture, the examination of the people in that space has largely been focused on women and trying to identify which artifacts were primarily used by them.^a

Perhaps the best place to find archaeological evidence of children is in burials. Here too the archaeologist runs into problems, as burials are subject to the serendipity of discovery. It is easy for excavators to overlook child burials since young bones are small, delicate, and can disintegrate easily. Additionally, child burials are not always included in cemeteries. Younger members of the family are often buried differently than adults and in a different location, such as in jar burials under house floors. Further, the number of child burials discovered in ancient Israel is not consistent with the demographic estimates for the number of children at each site. Either some child burials are lost, or, more probably, a number of children were not buried in a traditional manner.Despite the difficulties just presented, child burials, burial assemblages, and texts offer useful information about how children fit into the ancient Near Eastern household.

Legal documents, such as wet-nurse contracts, adoptions, inheritance, debt-slave sales, and slave sales, contain rich information about children. The largest corpus of legal texts concerning children in the ancient Near East describes their adoption. In traditional adoptions, a child left his natal household and entered a new household. However, the status with which he left the natal household may or may041 not be the same status with which he entered the new household. Once in the household, an adopted child could also change his or her status. The texts often read like legal rabbinic materials wherein many different hypothetical situations are considered. A situation is presented, and then different outcomes are listed, each one depending upon new factors that might affect the child’s place in the household.

Just as in the modern world, adoptions in the ancient world could take place at any point in a child’s life. The Code of Hammurabi 185 states that a child could be taken for adoption at the moment of birth, literally from its “birthing waters” (amniotic fluids). The cry of Rachel, “Give me children, or I will die!” and her subsequent plan to have her maid Bilhah “bear on her knees so that through her I [Rachel] may have children,” is reminiscent of adopting a newborn infant (Genesis 30:1–3, author’s translation).

Other texts tell us that infants were adopted as sucklings (children who were still nursing). In these kinds of adoptions, a wet-nurse would be hired until the child was weaned, around three years of age. Such contracts call to mind Pharaoh’s daughter adopting Moses and hiring his mother as a wet-nurse. From the very moment of a baby’s birth, texts bear witness to the fact that an infant was a person and beginning the process of attachment to a family structure; hence, there was a need to demarcate who was responsible for the infant and how the infant fit within a particular household.

Many adoption records have survived from Nuzi, a site in northeastern Iraq (c. 1600–1350 B.C.E.). Some are basic, while others are quite complicated. Most adoption texts concern an age-old problem: The head of the household does not have a son or male heir. As we know from the patriarchal narratives in Genesis, having an heir to carry on the family name was very important. Before Abraham had a biological son, he adopted his servant Eliezer (Genesis 15:3). Many adoption contracts specify where the adopted child falls in the line of inheritance. In most cases, the adopted boy enters the household with the special status of the firstborn child, meaning he will receive a double inheritance portion. Contracts often dictate whether additional sons can be adopted. They also deal with the possibility of a biological son being born. Should this happen, the adoptee often gets demoted to second-in-line. Just as Ishmael, the biological son of Abraham, displaces Eliezer, the Nuzi adoptions show a preference for inheriting through biological children over and against adopted children.¹

Adopted girls and boys alike were expected to help take part in their new household economic system. Often that help came by way of caring for their adoptive parents in old age. In a way, the institution of adoption was like an ancient Medicare system. Despite this, many of the contracts make clear that042 the new parents considered the adoptee like a son or daughter—but not the same as a biological son or daughter.

For adopted girls, a whole new set of complications come to the fore, namely, her marriage prospects. The new parents become legally responsible for providing a dowry and for ensuring and protecting the girl’s virginity until they found and married her off to a man of their choosing. The Nuzi adoption contracts are notable because some discuss the possibility that a girl might be taken in adoption as a daughter or daughter-in-law; she could be married to the neighbor boy, the adopter’s own son, or even a slave! The upshot here is that a girl’s status within the household was not necessarily established upon her initial entrance into the household. Instead, her status remained fluid until her adoptive parents decided what to do with her.

The closest thing to a Biblical adoption law is found in Exodus 21:7–11. It states that a father may sell his daughter as a handmaiden (’amah). The law is peculiar because no other law, Biblical or non-Biblical, states that a freeborn daughter could be sold into servitude. The law goes on to say that the daughter should be treated “according to the Law of Daughters,” and that the girl will be married off to the buyer or his son. The law also makes provisions for the girl should she become the second wife in a marriage. Since this is the only time we hear of this law in the Bible, we are left to conjecture to what social institution these verses refer. Based on the rights and provisions given to the girl, it does not appear that she is sold as a slave.² Yet, it also does not operate like adoptions we find in the rest of the ancient Near East. Instead, the law describes a girl who has a complex status. As an ’amah, she has a lifetime of household service. At the same time, she will also be treated like a daughter until she becomes a wife in the new household.

While the Biblical text may not include laws regulating children in mundane social institutions, such as adoption, slave sales, wet-nurse contracts, and the like, it does include many references to a practice not often found in other ancient Near Eastern writings: child sacrifice.^b The Bible records three kinds of child sacrifice. The first kind of sacrifice is done to fulfill a vow or a test. Jepthah’s daughter (Judges 11) and the near sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) fall into this category. The second category includes sacrifice done during community-wide distress. Passages such043 as 2 Kings 3 and 2 Kings 6 suggest that parents eat or sacrifice their children as a part of an eliminatory ritual, similar to that of the Canaanite ritual, to relieve wartime stress. Finally, we have the much-discussed passages wherein a child is sacrificed as part of a religious ritual.³ This latter practice has come under much scrutiny in light of the mass graves or tophets found at Carthage and other Punic sites. While no such physical evidence has been found in ancient Israel, all the Biblical passages describing child sacrifice and proclaiming that Yahweh did not command it seem almost to protest too much.

The Biblical narratives attest to another kind of early death for children: infanticide. A practice at odds with our modern values, infanticide was done for the well-being of the family. Unhealthy babies might be cast out because they were too difficult to rear. Parents might also cast off children who would require more time, money, and energy to raise than they could afford. Other reasons include internal family strife and infanticide by decree. The Torah records two such cases of attempted infanticide: that of young Ishmael (Genesis 21:10, Genesis 17–20) and baby Moses (Exodus 2:3). In both cases the children are miraculously spared. The Book of Ezekiel also records an allegorical case of infanticide in which the parents of Jerusalem, for unknown reasons, expose her in an open field (Ezekiel 16:5).

The archaeological record does not show evidence for either male or female infanticide in ancient Israel. However, this is not to say it did not occur. A child left to die in the street or field would either be picked up by another person or die. If picked up, a child’s status could vary. Most likely the child would become a slave. In some cases, like that of Moses, the child might be adopted. If left to die, the unburied body would be consumed by animals and the elements, leaving no traceable trail of the practice.

Burials provide us with a complex set of information on infants and children. Throughout Canaan and ancient Israel, burials present a similar pattern from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age (3600–539 B.C.E.): Infants were buried in jars under floors, and children were buried in a manner similar to that of the adults in their community.⁴ While there are some variations, for the most part sites containing burials of children and infants conform to this pattern.⁵

Excavators found children buried both intramurally and extramurally. This contrasts to infants, which are found primarily in intramural jar burials. When children were buried within a site, they were buried individually. It is much more common to find children buried with adults in cemeteries. Of the044 443 burials examined,⁶ 55 contained both children and adults. Of these burials, only 14 contained an adult buried with multiple children. When burials contained a single adult and a child (or children), the adult is often a female. In a few cases, we see mothers buried with young infants in their arms; presumably both died as a result of complications in childbirth. An Iron Age II burial from the Tel ‘Ira cemetery contains a female lying on a bench holding a seven- or eight-year-old child. It is possible that like families in Sparta, children of both genders were associated with their mothers until a certain age, say, seven or eight years old.

The overwhelming majority of infant remains found in a burial context belong to infant jar burials. These burials are generally found within a site and, more specifically, underneath the floors of domestic areas. Anthropologists and archaeologists alike have suggested that jar burials represent a return to the womb—or a return to a place of rebirth.⁷ Support for this theory is found in the way that infants are situated in the jar. Their heads are placed towards the narrow opening of the jar, much like an infant is birthed with its head facing the cervix and birth canal.

Since infants were buried in a manner different from that of the rest of their community, a third way of interpreting this unique practice is to understand infant jar burials as representative of social status. A person’s social persona is a compilation of the social identities they have in life, such as age, sex, social status, and membership in the community. Upon death, these identities are recognized in the mortuary ritual. For a very young individual, their social persona is not complex. They are not full members of their household and community, but rather members in potential. Accordingly, they were not buried like those who are full members of the community.

The grave goods found with infants versus those found with children reinforces the notion that infants were perceived differently than children. For example, throughout the Bronze Age, an infant’s burial comprises three main objects: store jars, bowls, and juglets. The first two items are not unusual. Store jars serve as the burial receptacle, and070 bowls were often a means of sealing the jar. The juglets, however, are significant. An infant’s diet consists mainly of milk, and the best receptacle for milk outside the mother’s body is a juglet (think of it as a proto-bottle). The fact that the overwhelming number of jar burials include a juglet suggests infants were provided in the afterlife with the one item they could drink: milk.

Children, too, are provided with grave goods meant to support them in the afterlife. Their grave goods mimicked the goods found in nearby adult burials. At times, they share the ceramic grave goods with the adults in the burial, and at other times they have their own grave goods. In addition to ceramic items for feeding the dead, children are found with personal items, such as jewelry. Infants in jar burials are generally not found with personal items.⁸ However, in the Iron Age things start to change. Juglets are no longer prevalent in infant burials—likely because jar burials go out of vogue. Instead, if anything is included with the burials, it is a personal item, such as a piece of jewelry.

In most cases, evidence of children comes from either texts or archaeological realia, but there are rare instances, such as footprints on texts, that combine both data sets. At times the text is inside the footprint, and other times the text is on the backside of the print. For example, a Neo-Babylonian text describing the adoption of a foundling—literally a child thrown to the mouth of the dog—includes the footprint of the small child on the back of the tablet.⁹

In some cases a document is found in conjunction with a footprint. A group of three footprints found at Emar accompany a document that records the sale of three children into servitude. It states, “And here are their feet: Zadama, their father, and Ku’e, their mother, have impressed [their feet] in clay.”¹⁰ The footprints all include the seals of the same witnesses who certified the sale document.

These prints have been the subject of much speculation and debate. What do they mean? Why include a print and a text? Initially scholars thought that footprinting was like ancient fingerprinting so that people could verify that the child listed on the sale or adoption document was indeed the child before them. This idea gave way to the now-standard view, that possession of the child’s footprint was like a title of ownership.

I suggest a third way of understanding the footprints. When a legal transaction takes place, be it a sale or an adoption, a child goes through a three-step rite of passage. The child leaves his previous status and is cast out into a071 liminal space. In the foundling text, the liminal space is designated “for the dogs,” that is, a place outside of civilization. For the sales text, the liminal area is unnamed. In this liminal space, the child is stripped of his previous identity and left without a status. The child is a clean slate, neither free nor slave.

When the child is picked up from that liminal space by owners, the child gains a new status determined by his place within the new household. The clay footprints represent the new owner’s rights to the child. In essence, the footprints represent the supplanting of the new owner’s rights over those of the parent. While we have no Biblical examples of a child being footprinted, the idea behind the transfer of status and ownership seen in footprinting might be reflected in the halitzah ceremony. Levirate law requires a man to marry his brother’s widow in order to produce an heir for his deceased brother. Deuteronomy 25:5–10 states that if a man refuses to marry the widow, the woman will “un-shoe” him, literally breaking the relationship between the two. Ruth 4:7 also recognizes renunciation of (property) ownership through the passing of a shoe.

The footprints also tell us something about the child’s age and physical health. The footprints belonging to the two little boys in the Emar document measure 4 inches, and the little girl’s print measured 5 inches. Scholars have compared the Emar prints to footprints of children living today and conclude that, at the time of the sale, the girl was two years old and the boys one year old. The footprint from the Neo-Babylonian text was broken, so the same kind of comparison could not be done. However, the footprint did show evidence of a bunion on the ball of the foot, which likely indicates that the child could walk. Combining this information with the text suggests that the child was about two years old.

The above examples demonstrate the vastness of our data pool—and how one can go about mining information from it. Where the Biblical text is ambiguous, ancient Near Eastern texts can help fill in the blanks, and where the texts are silent, archaeology can speak up.

What we start to see is that a child’s status was not fixed, but variable. Like a page in a coloring book, it could change depending on the day and who was in charge of coloring in the picture. Overall, the texts and archaeological data present a picture wherein the degree to which a child was considered a member in the house increased with age and varied according to the status afforded to them. Further work in the field will continue to fill out our picture of the individuals we call infants and children in the ancient Near Eastern household.

What was it like to be a child in the ancient Near East? What role did they play in the household? How were they treated? Through texts and archaeological remains, we can reconstruct a picture of ancient children’s lives.