And They Said, Let Us
Make Gods in Our Image:
Gendered Ideologies in Ancient Mesopotamia
Susan Pollock and
Reinhard Bernbeck
Gender and sexuality are key elements in
the analysis of history and archeology
“One reason for the centrality of gender and sexuality
is that they are regularly referred to in contexts that
have nothing directly to do with them.”
Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr
3300 - 2900 BCE
“The late fourth-millenium world was built to a
significant extent on women: in reality on
women’s labor and ideologically on a powerful
goddess who could claim the principal city of the
time as hers.”
…but women appear primarily as menial laborers on
seals, statues, and pottery.
“In other words, the
same ideology that
depicted a powerful
deity as female also
made clear that the
epitome of human
power was male.”