Were the Assyrians Pro-life?

In 1076 B.C.E., in the Assyrian capital Assur, a master scribe wrote dozens of laws on a large clay tablet. Today, these laws are known as the Middle Assyrian Laws, named after the period in which they were written. Unlike the better-known Code of Hammurabi, these laws center around a single subject: women.

One law concerns abortion: “If a woman aborted her fetus by herself, and was investigated and convicted, she will be impaled on a stake and not buried. If she died when aborting her fetus, she will be impaled on a stake and not buried. If they hid the woman because she aborted her fetus …”

At this point the tablet is broken, so the punishment for the accomplices is unclear. Yet we can assume that it was extremely violent, like the punishment for the woman.

The directive not to bury the body is significant because, according to Mesopotamian tradition, the deceased had to be buried so that their spirit could descend to the netherworld. There it will dwell, sustaining itself on gifts from relatives. Therefore, if the body of the woman who ended her pregnancy isn’t buried, her spirit will be doomed to wander for eternity over the land in hunger and thirst.

Also, and though this wasn’t specifically stated, the transgression the law seems to be referring to isn’t the abortion but the fact that the woman terminated her pregnancy “by herself” – that is, of her own initiative. If her husband (or in the case of an unmarried girl, her father) had wanted to end her pregnancy, we can assume that this was his right as the head of the family.

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The Mesopotamians most likely used various methods to induce abortions, but we don’t know much about them. We know of only one document on the subject; it recommends to a pharmacist seeking to induce an abortion to grind up a lizard and various plants and mix them with beer for the woman to drink. It’s not clear if this potion was effective; it doesn’t sound particularly tasty.
Either way, unwanted children were born in Mesopotamia. Apparently they were sometimes abandoned, particularly in the street and the marketplace. We know of no Mesopotamian source indicating that this custom was considered unacceptable.

In the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000-1600 BCE), tablets targeted for apprentice scribes provided legal expressions for children who were abandoned but were found and survived:

“Someone who has no father and mother,” “someone who does not know who his father and mother are,” “they found him in a well,” “he was brought in from the street,” “he was snatched from the dog’s mouth.”

It seems these children were sometimes given names such as “The One from the Dog’s Mouth,” “The One Who Was Left from the Dog’s Mouth” – or in a looser translation, “A Dog’s Leftovers.” There was also “Street Boy” (because the infant was found in the street) and similarly, “Market Boy.”

A fragment of a myth about this subject, also from the Old Babylonian period, describes how the goddess Ishtar, who never expressed any interest in raising children, is walking around with the newborn god Ishum in the Ekur (“mountain house” in Sumerian), the temple of the god Enlil in the city of Nippur, in order to calm the child.

She is walking like a wet nurse, to and fro, within Ekur,

“I am wet nurse to my brother, my brother to my brother born.”

Enlil formed his words,

And addressed the lioness Ishtar:

“What brother are you nursemaid to, a brother to your brother born?”

“Ishum! Whom Ninlil to celestial Shamash bore,

“And set aflame, and left out in the street.”

To understand what’s written in this fragment, here’s some background: Shamash, the sun god, is the brother of Ishtar in certain traditions; that’s why she said that Ishum is “my brother to my brother born.” Ninlil, Ishum’s mother, is not married to Shamash but to Enlil, with whom Ishtar is talking. What an embarrassing situation!

That’s why Ninlil abandoned the newborn Ishum in the street. But why does she also set him on fire? Apparently because his name, Ishum, is a male form of the Akkadian word ishatum (fire). Ninlil setting him ablaze explains how he got his name. Yet this explanation is probably not the original one, as the name Ishum is at least several centuries older than the fragment in question. In this as in many other cases, it’s the name that came first, and its supposed meaning was produced later.

And there’s another solution for a woman who could not raise her baby. In a story found in the palace of Ashurbanipal in the city of Nineveh, Sargon, the great king of Akkad, says that his mother was an en priestess – a priestess not allowed to bear children. Another text implies that such priestesses would practice anal sex so as not to become pregnant. But it doesn’t seem that Sargon’s mother did so.

“I am Sargon, mighty king, the king of Agade [the capital of Akkad],

“My mother was an en priestess, my father I knew not.

It continues:

“My city is Azupiranu, on the bank of the Euphrates,

“An en priestess conceived me, and she birthed me secretly,

“She set me in basket made of rushes, sealed the lid in bitumen,

“And cast me down into the river, from which I could not climb,

“And it bore me to the water-drawer Aqqi.

Had the infant Sargon been discovered in his mother’s arms, she would have been punished – and maybe executed. So she had no choice but to send him down the river. (Which begs the question: How did Sargon know that his mother was a priestess if he was just a baby when she cast him away?)

In any case, the story has a happy ending. Sargon was found by Aqqi, the water-drawer, and like Moses he grew up to be a great leader. We can assume that in reality, rather than in legend, most babies abandoned by their parents weren’t as lucky.

The aforementioned Assyrian law on abortions, and the sources concerning child abandonment discussed above, lead to the conclusion that the Mesopotamians didn’t view an infant’s life as sacred, let alone that of a fetus – in contrast to the position of abortion opponents today in the United States.

Mesopotamia was similar in this respect to ancient Greece and Rome, where abortion and the abandonment of newborns were accepted practice. Unwanted pregnancies and their termination are common in all cultures, it seems, ancient or modern.