Inequality in the Ancient World

Catalog description

This course examines various forms of inequality in the ancient world as well as the range of responses to it by those who resist it and reject it. The axes of inequality we shall investigate vary from culture to culture, but often include the privileging of male/masculine over female/feminine, native over foreign, whole-bodied over “defective” or “blemished,” old over young, ritually pure over polluted, holy over common or profane, rich over poor, free over enslaved, honored over shamed, or the couplings of men and women over same-sex couplings. The course is comparative, with a primary focus on texts and artifacts from ancient Israel and coastal West Asia, Babylon and Assyria, Greece and Rome. Texts we will study include various passages from the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Laws, the Middle Assyrian Laws, the Iliad, and