Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household.

AuthorBroida, Marian
PositionBook review

Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household. By KRISTINE GARROWAY. Explorations in Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, vol. 3. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2014. Pp. xvii + 374. $57.50.

Kristine Garroway's useful book joins the growing number of works devoted to children and families in the ancient Near East or the Hebrew Bible. In this volume--based largely on material from her 2009 dissertation--Garroway explores children's social status in the household, through the analysis of Mesopotamian laws and contracts, biblical texts, and burial data from Canaan and surrounding areas. Garroway's subject matter and methodology are intentionally eclectic. Her plan is not to present a narrowly focused study, but to build a composite picture of children's social status through an array of sources and methods.

Garroway devotes her introduction and initial chapter to theory, including definitions of the age categories she uses and discussion of the methodologies she employs: processual-plus archaeology, anthropology, and gender theory. She spends the next seven chapters analyzing selected textual evidence pertaining to particular categories of children. Chapter 2 looks at adopted children, chapter 3 studies those lacking one or both parents, chapter 4 looks at child debt-slaves, and chapter 5 examines children who are chattel slaves or hired out. In these chapters, Garroway's sources are cuneiform texts, principally the Code of Hammurapi, Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian contracts, and Nuzi contracts and seals, with some references to Middle Assyrian laws.

In chapter 6, "Children in Biblical Israel," Garroway's attention shifts to inheritance among half-siblings as evidenced in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis. Chapter 7, entitled "Child Sacrifice," also focuses on biblical texts after a survey of the state of scholarship on child sacrifice in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The next two chapters shift focus again as Garroway moves from analyzing texts to studying burials in selected sites dating from the Early Bronze Age through Iron II, first in regions surrounding Canaan/ancient Israel, and then in Canaan/Israel proper. Garroway synthesizes her conclusions at the end of each chapter, then draws them together in chapter 10. The book ends with three appendices (cuneiform texts and translations, burial data, and a catalog of burial sites), a brief glossary, a bibliography, and separate indexes for authors, Scripture, and ancient...

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