Children in the Ancient Near East
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Footnotes
1. See Carol Meyers, “Eves” of Everyday Ancient Israel,” BAR, 40:6.
2. See, e.g., Hershel Shanks, First Person: “Human Sacrifice to an Ammonite God?” BAR, 40:5; Patricia Smith, “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell,” BAR, 40:04.
Endnotes
1.
Isaac, the son of the loved wife, then displaces Ishmael (Genesis 21). Laws concerning the treatment of the sons of handmaids can also be found in the Code of Hammurabi 170–171.
3.
See, among others, Exodus 13:1–2; 22:29; Leviticus 18:21; 20:2–4; 2 Kings 17:17; 21:6; 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35.
4.
A survey of sites dug in the last 150 years in Egypt, Syria/Mesopotamia, and Transjordan follow this same pattern as well.
5.
Of the 58 sites and 443 individual infant and child burials I examined, the notable exception comes in the Early Bronze Age II–III period (3050–2300 B.C.E.), for which there is a dearth of mortuary remains for infants, children, and adults alike. The Middle Bronze Age II (1700–1550 B.C.E.), on the other hand, includes the most child and infant burials.
6.
Based on my study in Kristine Henriksen Garroway, Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014); see also Kristine Henriksen Garroway, Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts, Archaeology and Biblical Studies 23 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming 2018).
7.
Ethnographic studies suggest that the placement of the burials is also important. For example, studies in Borneo and Malaysia show that burying the jar under the house floor keeps the infant’s spirit close by so that it may be reborn again. Other cultures bury infants in places highly trafficked by women so that the infants may secretly enter a woman’s womb as she walks over the burial. Myths such as the Ugaritic Baal Epic and the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris attest to the fact that a belief in rebirth was not a foreign concept in the ancient Near East.
8.
Notably, my study did not find any Judean pillar figurines associated with infant or child burials. One might think that if they were originally intended as toys—personal items of the child—they would have been buried with the child.