 Hello and welcome everyone who's tuning in to today's installment of the Women and Gender Performance Lecture Series. My name is Melissa Craddock and I am the curator at the Body Museum of Archaeology. Before I introduce today's speaker, I am first going to read a statement on behalf of the museum. We'd like to begin by acknowledging that Berkeley, California is on the territory of the Hootium, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone. We respect the land and the people who have stewarded it throughout many generations, and we honor their elders, both past and present. We're living in a moment that warrants deep reflection on our past and present. Across many global contexts, equal access to healthcare, education, fair wages and human rights is contested on the basis of sex and gender identity. In an effort to bring light to these timely issues, to serve a broader public audience online, and to connect to the local community that it serves, the museum is taking action to become a more inclusive, welcoming and equitable institution that practices the philosophy of radical inclusion adopted by his parent institution, Pacific School of Religion. One of these steps is the creation of public programming. Through this lecture series, we hope to highlight new and established scholars who are engaging with risky and marginalized topics concerning women, gender performance and sexuality in the past. We invite you to participate in these programs so that together we can listen, learn and work toward creating a more inclusive museum community. Thank you for joining us today. It is now my pleasure to introduce today's speaker. Christine Henriksen Garroway is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, where she teaches in the rabbinical school program at the Lockheim School of Judaic Studies at USC. Her research centers on children and families in the ancient Near East. She's author of children in your Eastern households, and growing up in ancient Israel, which won the Biblical Archaeology Society's award for best book related to the Hebrew Bible in 2019. Her current project examines the personhood of children in the land of ancient Israel, as revealed into funerary practices and the cult of dead king. So that very exciting introduction. Christine, the floor is yours. Take it away. Thank you very much, Melissa for that lovely introduction and thank you to the organizers for inviting me to be a part of this incredible series. Take a moment here to share my screen with you all. There we go. So we can see it just fine. Just a legend. Okay, thank you. Great. I'm delighted to be here with you all today. My research is noted in the introduction focuses on children in the ancient Near East. As a part of my research, I investigate families, family structures and women. Since children stayed with their mothers and other women in the household during their early years, my talk today will focus primarily on these years. What I will share with you are snapshots of different moments in a child's life, looking at five different areas in which women had a direct impact on the life of a child. The desire for children, fairness and infertility, dangers and pregnancy and birth, naming children, feeding infants and transporting them and dressing and adorning children. The information I'll be presenting comes from many different sources, including texts, archaeology and anthropology. Because information on daily life is sprinkled here and there in our texts, our understanding of this topic requires some additional sources. The archaeological record can provide further insight into activities in domestic spaces through iconographic depictions and material remains. Sometimes these two sources can be oblique that can be brought to life through careful use of ethnographic studies. Using a combination of all three sources presents a more robust idea of what it would have been like to raise a child in ancient Israel. If you are interested in learning more about how these three sources can be combined to uncover everyday lives of people in ancient Israel, I would point you to the excellent work being done by Jenny Ebling, Carol Myers, Beth Alpert and Akai, and Susan Ackerman, among others. Children were desired. They were valuable for many different reasons. First, they contributed to the family's household economy. Archaeologists have estimated that upward of 90% of Israelites lived in agricultural settlements, and children would have been an integral part of the household economy, contributing as their age allowed. In kinship-based societies, having an heir, generally a son was of utmost importance as he would inherit the father's land, good, livestock, and family name. Children were also needed to tend to their aging parents and to carry out funerary and memorial rights at their deaths. The phases of a woman's life were laid out in the Mesopotamian Hymn de Goua. I am a daughter. I am a bride. I am a spouse. I am a housekeeper. The position of housekeeper identifies the important role a woman would have had as a mother and in running the household. It was expected that married women have children. Not only were women expected to have children, but they also desired them. Rachel cries out to her husband in Genesis 30 verse 1, give me children or I shall die. The state of barrenness was akin to a disability in the ancient world, depriving women of a particular social status, and as Susan Ackerman has argued, perhaps even excluding them from Israelite temples. If a woman was barren, she had various avenues to explore in order to gain a child. Since the divine was considered the opener of wombs, we find texts describing prayers and sacrifices pleading with the divine to show the barren woman favor. Genesis 25 21 states, Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren. And the Lord responded to his plea, and his wife, Rebecca conceived. In a neo-Azerian text, a man also bemoans the fact that the gods did not answer his prayers, ignoring all the banquets he gave for them. It says, I have visited the Kinmuro Temple in Nineveh and arranged a banquet. Yet my wife has troubled me for five years she has been neither dead nor alive. Her womb is barren, and I have no son. When prayer didn't work, another avenue would be turning to the religiomedical literature, which lists different methods to cure infertility. Such remedies included using fumigation, stones, and pest theories. A Mesopotamian text calls for fumigating the vagina to assess whether or not it is blocked. If blocked, then a woman could take a potion of alum, juniper, resins, and a white plant to help her clear it up. Stones were also used. Stones could be hollow, with a pebble inside, or sometimes magnetite was used. Here the principles of sympathetic magic were probably in operation, with the object representing the desired outcome. A stone that was hollow with a pebble inside represented the desire to have a child inside the womb. Stones such as magnetite would represent keeping a child in the womb. Another Mesopotamian text calls for inserting a suppository or peciary consisting of a piece of wool soaked in medicines into the vagina. The wool is then checked after a period of time to see whether it has changed color. Other times one simply leaves the item in the vagina. To make a non-child-bearing woman pregnant, you play an edible mouse, open it up, and fill it with myrrh. You dry it in the shade, crush it and grind it up, mix it with fat, you place it in her vagina, and she will become pregnant. This is followed with the very helpful instructions for the woman to go have sex with her husband. We might understand the story of Rachel, Lea, and the Mandrakes in Genesis chapter 24 as another such magical medical text due to the aphrodisiatic properties of the Mandrakes. While these texts might sound a bit odd to the modern ear, the number of texts describing herbal remedies attest to the fact they were considered efficacious in the ancient world. If none of these mentioned tactics worked, it was possible to either divorce a wife or turn to a concubine, second wife, or slave girl to provide the desired child. Genesis 16 one through two provides a well-known example of the latter practice. Sarah, Abraham's primary wife, gives her handmade to Abraham so that she might be built up through the children of Hagar, meaning any children born to Hagar would count as Sarah's own child. This practice can be seen in the old Assyrian texts as well, stating if she has not produced a descendant for him within two years, she shall herself by a slave girl and as soon as she later produces a child for him, she might sell her to whomever she wishes. What we see in both examples is that it fell on the shoulders of the women to provide children for her husband. In what seems like perhaps a cruel twist of fate, almost as soon as this much desired child was conceived, its life was put in danger. Miscarriages, along with various maladies, such as diseases, sudden infant death syndrome, and non-hygenic conditions could also lead to harmful situations. Even simple things like the inability to latch and suckle could put an infant's life in peril. While the cause of the diseases and illnesses are understood scientifically today. In the ancient world, the cause of these infant deaths was often attributed to the divine realm and seen as the act of demons. The terrifying story of a destroyer who enters the house to kill the firstborn child in Exodus 12, or a mythology that includes, to borrow a phrase from Joanne Skirlock, baby-snatching demons who preyed on the young, suffice as explanations for why children died. So how did ancient Israelite women keep their children safe? With harmful horses roving around, families employed a variety of methods to keep their children safe from things that go bump in the night. Excavations in the Levant have uncovered a wide range of amulets and protective figures meant to counteract evils and protect children from harm. Amulets, whether inscribed or not, made of stone, ceramic, or metal, were all thought to keep evil horses at bay. They protected the where or the area in which they were placed. Amulets, with and without writing, are found throughout the southern Levant. Beth, a minor Egyptian deity, was quite popular in the Iron Age II period, and amulets depicting him were found at many major sites. He is a protector of pregnant women, small children, and children's beds. A grotesque-looking fellow, he is shown with legs akimbo, a beard, and a tail. The fearsome posture, along with the scowling face, was meant to scare danger away. Pazazu was another popular foreign figure. Unlike Beth, Pazazu was a demon who hails from Mesopotamia. Amulets, the Pazazu's head, portray the demon with a canine or leonine head, with oversized eyes and horns. These amulets are also found in ancient Israel during the Iron Age II period. Protective eyes, like the Egyptian wedged eye or eye of Horus, are other amulets found peppered across the ancient Near Eastern landscape. Within ancient Israel they were found in Iron Age Jericho, Gezer, Gerar, and Bershava. As sympathetic magic, these could keep one safe from the evil eye, an entity known across the ancient Near East, from Egypt to Ugarit to Mesopotamia. When directed at a person, the evil eye can cause much harm. It is said to devour flesh and guzzle blood. Some evil eye texts are specifically related to infants and women in labor. One text describes the eye as swooping into a room and causing discord, probably crying, among infants, and then strangling babies. Ethnographic studies from the 1930s conducted in the village of Artus, which is just outside Bethlehem, found the fear of the evil eye was still prevalent. New things, like newborns, are particularly prone to the force of the evil eye. So parents in the village attached shiny objects to the swaddling clothes so that the intent of the eye might bounce off the reflection and leave the child unharmed. Along a similar vein, it appears that metal jewelry and metal objects that created light were also used to protect ancient Israelite children. Job 29.3 and Proverbs 6.20-23 describe the divine protection in the form of light. The physical form of this divine protection come by way of the ubiquitous clay oil lamps found in excavations of burials, houses, and public buildings. Most metal amulets are uninscribed, meaning it was the power imbued in the object itself that was embraced to protect the wearer. However, the burial site of Ketafunom near Jerusalem proves that written amulets were also used. The burials there belonged to the elite, and two amulets found there were inscribed in silver. The shiny properties of the silver, along with the words of the blessing, were meant to protect the wearer. Because the amulets were found in a repository of bone and grave goods, all mixed together, they cannot be directly linked to children. Yet we should note that children's bones were found in the repository. And as Jeremy Smallock has keenly observed, the small size of one of the amulets could indicate it was meant for a child. With infants in particular, malevolent forces were alerted to the presence of a potential victim by the sound of crying. Thus keeping a child quiet was paramount to the child's survival. But how did families accomplish this feat? How did they quiet the infant? Mesopotamian incantation texts allude to a tradition of lullabies. These texts were specifically meant to ward off the demonist Lamashtu while quieting the infants. The texts of a lullabies or incantations provide a window into the thoughts and rationale of parents trying to keep their infants safe and quiet. The link between the problem, demons attracted to crying, and the solution, a lullaby to soothe the infant and ward off evil, is clearly made. One lullaby states, little one who dwelt in the house of darkness. Well, you are outside now, have seen the light of sun. Why are you crying? Why are you yelling? Why didn't you cry in there? You have roused the God of the house. He has woken up. Who roused me? Who startled me? The little one has roused you. The little one has startled you. As unto drinkers of wine, as unto ticklers, may sleep fall upon him. Presumably infants in ancient Israel also cried, yet the material record lacks similar incantations or lullabies. The amulets found throughout ancient Israel attest to the belief that evil forces were thought to be afoot. So how did women and families in ancient Israel keep their infants safe and quiet? Did they too use unwritten lullabies or were amulets enough? The archaeological record presents another possible method, which is rattles. I recently suggested that the corpus of rattles found in the Levantine record needs to be reassessed. Rattles are known for their percussive noises that quiet children, which would keep harmful beings from hearing their cries. Rattles are also known from the anthropological record for their apopatriac use. Again, warding off evils that lurk about waiting to harm children. Instead of thinking about rattles as musical instruments or related to funerary rights of adults, we should think about the broader role of these rattles, which are found throughout the ancient Near East in areas used by the living to those areas inhabited by the dead. From private space to public space. Once children were born, they were named. Hurrian and Hittite birth texts state that names were given when a child was placed on the father's lap. Placing the child on the lap and naming the child both served as a means of legitimizing the child. Names were given for various reasons. A child might bear a name prompted by their birth circumstances, such as Benoni, son of Maya affliction, or by a characteristic. Not an L, L or God has given. Shamiah, Yahweh has heard. Nabu Apal-Iden, Nabu has given an air. Or even Amenhotep, Amen has proved to be gracious. In the Hebrew Bible, two-thirds of naming instances are done by women. However, this might not be the case in every society. For in the Hurrian and Hittite birth texts, it is the father who is the most often found to be the one who names the child. Biblical texts would have us believe that naming occurred right as the child came out of the womb. However, again, this might not be the case. The biblical texts could be telescoping the birthing events. Slave sale documents from Neobabalonia speak to a practice of referring to a mother-infant pair as a unit, where the infant is left unnamed, while older children who are sold on their own or with their families do have a name. Thus, attesting to the fact, perhaps, that children's naming practices were dependent upon their social status. You can see in the text here, it talks about a woman and a child, the slave woman Nana Itiyat and the daughter of three months. The daughter is unnamed, while the mother who is being sold is named. The fact that these two are sold together attests to the dependency that infants had on their mothers or wet nurses. This moves us to our next topic, feeding and transporting. Figures depicting women nursing or with large breasts were popular in the ancient Near East. From Anatolia to Syria to Ugarit, Cyprus, Egypt and Mesopotamia. In here, I would point you to the work being done by Stephanie Lynn Boudin. Many biblical texts also attest to nursing as the normal course of action, describing the act as one of comfort and closeness. The text here in Isaiah 66 states, for you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts. You will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance. For this is what the Lord says, I will extend peace to her like a river and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream. You will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As the mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. And you will be comforted over Jerusalem. Text from across the ancient Near East, but just that infants were nursed until at least age two, if not age three or four. And the iconographic evidence shows nursing children might have been even old enough to stand. How did you transport young children? Deuteronomy 3112 is a call for all people to come and hear the words of the Torah. Assemble the people, men, women and children, and the foreigners residing in your town. So they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. The verse goes to great lengths to describe that it is everyone, not just Israelite men who are to come. We might ask then, how would nursing mothers transport their infants? The Egyptian iconographic raptured offers different depictions of baby carriers. Slinges made from textiles wrapped over a shoulder can support nursing children in the front or older children in the back. Slinges continue in use today in traditional societies and with the rise of attachment parenting are being embraced again in Western society, as can be seen with products such as the hot sling or Moby wrap. The last aspect of raising children I'll explore with you here today is clothing and adorning them. Archaeology of gendered spaces has shown that women were involved in textile production. We know from ethnographic sources that women make clothing and teach their daughters how to sew. In such societies, younger children wear a dress, while older children, boys and girls appear in clothing similar to that of their adult counterparts. The Lachish reliefs from 701 BCE, which depicts the Assyrian sack of the city and subsequent deportation of families, show that children were dressed in adorned. While the reliefs likely depict the more elite members of Lachish and therefore their particular style of dress, we can see differences in the way that children of different ages are clothed. We might imagine that similar differences by age were seen in the dress and adornment of children in all classes. First a brief word about the anthropology of dress. While clothing has a practical function, we know it also functions as an unspoken means of communication. Different designs, fringes, materials, or shapes may have some aesthetic meaning to the wearer, but often these choices are driven by something else. The presence or even absence of clothing can be an indicator of age or gender, as well as a marker of both ascribed and achieved status within a community. I should note that my comments which will follow, follow the convention of many who study iconography that see a correlation between the size of the individuals in a single register and their relative ages. We begin then with the image of a family. You can see a woman and the children in the cart. The child held by the woman, perhaps his mother, is shown naked and with some hair. And here's a close up. The close up shows a curly sidewalk. So we're looking at the child who is facing the woman, and you can see a sidewalk of hair. We know that the sidewalk was worn by Egyptian children from the Old Kingdom onwards. A wonderful study of Egyptian sidewalks can be found in the book Childhood in Ancient Egypt by Ahmadine Marshall. The French edition came out in 2013, but the English translation just became available in 2022. Egyptians also depict the Canaanite children wearing a sidewalk. It might be simply then the Egyptian convention to show any child naked and with a sidewalk. What is interesting here is that the neo-Azerian artists depicted the elite Judean children in the same manner. One wonders whether this attest to the reality of Canaanite and Israelite children perhaps wearing a sidewalk as well. If so, we might again wonder if the other naked and seemingly bald children in the Lahish relief also has a sidewalk not visible from the right side, which is to say, depending on which side they're showing facing the viewer, perhaps we're missing some sidewalks. So the other child in cart two, the child who's seated behind, is depicted much differently. This child has not a little tunic and is clearly shown with short curly hair. The tunic is long like the ones worn by females we will see next, but other than that, no overt gender identification is indicated. If and I stress if this is a little girl and the naked infant, a little boy, then we might see a practice common to many patriarchal societies of letting children be in mixed company until they are older. This slide here shows what are clearly younger females. They follow two grown women and based on their height seem perhaps to be adolescents. Like the women in front of them, they wear a long tunic and a long overcoat. Perhaps this is a cloak that covers their hair for travel. Unlike the little girls, the boys seen in the relief are not many knees. The boys shown in the relief are shown with various heights and ages and stages of dress. Note that whereas the girls were seen with the female, the boys who can walk are walking with the men, not the women. In the last few minutes here, I want to discuss the relationship between the boys and the belts that they're wearing. What we'll see is the progression in the ornamentation and length of the boys belts as they grow. The boy in this slide on the left is wearing the simple tunic like the Gideon men in the relief. Unlike the child in the cart, however, this child's tunic is shorter and it's belted with a plain sash. Elsewhere in the relief, we see a male child of similar height, perhaps similar age, in a similar dress. And again, the belt is unadorned. These children appear to be either wearing a skull cap or perhaps have a bald head. Going back to our two children here, if we turn our attention to the boy on the right, we can see that he is slightly taller. In his belt, while also still simple, has some decoration. It appears that line, perhaps representing different colors, are on the belt. Note that the belt of the adult male he accompanies also has lines on the sash. Again, the child sports either a bald head or some skull cap and finally our last individual. This boy represents what I might call a teenager or adolescent. He is clearly the tallest of the children depicted and has the important job of leading an animal. The child has the same head covering as some of the adult men in the relief, a cap with ear flaps. His belt is also different. Unlike the other boys, his belt has a length hanging down in imitation of the belt worn by the grown men. Likewise, his tunic is a bit more ornate with a stripe halfway between the waist and the knees. The use of the belt to show social ages is significant, for it is how males gird their loins. Catherine Lowe has linked the relationship between gender and loin girding to the display of strength and power in the Hebrew Bible. If Lowe's observations regarding loin girding in the Hebrew Bible are as displays of social power correlate to dress, then it is possible the progression in the length and ornamentation of the boys belts were used to signify their rank in the social order. Perhaps as boys reach different social ages or passed through rites of passage within their family or society, the mother would make them a new belt. Like the belting ceremonies used in various martial arts, which distinguish different ranks. To wrap up, I set out here today to relate ways in which women's roles as mothers and caretakers intersected with the lives of children in ancient Israel. While women certainly interacted with children at all ages and stages of their lives. These two groups were most closely bound together during a child's early years. While the ancient world at times seems far removed from that of a contemporary Western world. We see that many of the concerns facing those in ancient Israel still exist today. Parents and caretakers alike are still responsible for clothing and feeding their children, keeping them safe from danger, and most importantly, raising up the next generation. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Gary way for that fascinating talk and insights and glimpses into a part of Israelite life that are often not a focus at all are or are. So they're either overlooked or downplayed so your your research has really played an important role in revealing this very important at segment of our ancient societies. So we do have some questions coming in from the internet audience. And I'm just going to go ahead and read a few of them off. And so we look forward to engaging you in a little bit of questions and answers. The first one is the questioner says I am intrigued by the materiality of apotropaic objects that were used to protect infants and young children from demons and the evil eye attributes like shiny materials as in the case of the silver amulets like a defenome or the ability for an object to make noise to cover a baby's crying as in the ceramic rattles. Were there other characteristics of materiality that were meaningful for either apotropaic objects intended for babies or for fertility treatments for women who are attempting to conceive. Excellent and well laid out question. I would say that materiality of objects is and materiality of I would call these religious objects is a newer field of study that is being engaged. And I'm trying to think I guess the one that comes to the top of my mind are the troublesome Judean pillar figurines which no one can figure out exactly what they are what they did, lots of suggestions. Sonya has recently published an article that looks at the materiality of the clay and the clay as representative of in myths, ancient Near Eastern myths for creating and birthing. And that maybe these Judean pillar figurines had something to do with fertility based on the large bosoms of the women. And also something to do, as Aaron Darby has argued with, you know, warding off evil perhaps you know meant to be handheld or waved. That the two link together that these objects were made out of clay because they were linking into this material, a creative material, but also warding off evil in that way by their very nature. So that's the one that comes to the top of my head right now but I know that there's a lot of other work being done out there. Especially when it comes to rethinking objects that we are really familiar with right the Kentucky gnome amulets and the shiny aspects of them this is recent work recently being done by Jeremy smoke. But we've known about these objects for a long time so I'd say keep your eyes open for articles coming out. And thank you. And actually if you don't mind me, vamping on that a little bit because actually when you were giving your talk, and you mentioned, I want to get this right so I'm just checking my notes here. Oh right there were the hollow pebbles. I mean the hollow stones with the rocks inside related to infertility. And the first thing that left to my mind were the rattles. So, you know, I mean what if those could have been used for, you know, passing over the stomach of a pregnant woman or a non pregnant woman as well. You know, so. All right, I'm going to add that into my thought. That's a great thought. Great use it. You know because I've always wondered because I mean they're called rattles but they didn't really make that much noise. I mean it's a, it's a clay pellet inside of a clay. You know housing, right, right. So they're not super noisy. Anyway, I mean, you know the other thing that can be pleasurable and frustrating about archaeological objects is that you know they may have had many uses honestly. And, you know, so again just sort of following up on some of these things to I've been wondering through your talk, you know the role that color played or colors I should say in the in the plural. As of course, the meanings of colors obviously vary by societies but you can think about the textual evidence for, you know the red threads and things like that so red certainly had a certain and then of course later in Kabbalistic times. You know it has that apotropaic quality to it. And of course when when I mean threads are not going to survive but bronze when it's when it's actually polished so not with a Tina that we get it, you know, in excavations has a has a red kind of sheen to it. And so and that's another thing too that's different, you know that sort of shininess. So presumably all these metals would have been polished. You know, and, and that's kind of missing at least to the, to the modern eye. Yeah, I guess I would also point there and thinking about color and to the color blue, which is seen still in these ethnographic studies from the early 1900s as a very powerful color. And in my children with blue eyes that was, oh boy. But we see that's a highlight color in the biblical texts and like these colors being associated with power, namely the kingship and the priesthood. So, you know, there are definitely seems to be something about color blue as well. Your, your best figuring area was is blue faeans right. Yeah. And we have blue glass and things like that. Okay, sorry, I'm getting distracted. I'll move on to the second question. But it's so nice to be in conversation with you as well. Do texts in your study corpus from Mesopotamia and the Hebrew Bible include how fertility treatments impacted women on whom the treatments were applied, like success rates. Do they ever address potential harmful effects or contradictions of fertility treatments like vaginal fumigation and suppositories. Right. So of course the first thing that happens when we read these texts today as we think, oh my gosh please don't do that that sounds so harmful. Like what are you thinking by way of a caveat, most of these texts were that were found were in would have been in a corpus of literature, very specialized and done by a religious religious, religious magic practitioner, perhaps we'll call them. And so it's also hard to know if they were actually used. I mean we have a ton of these texts that seems like maybe they were used like maybe they were on to something maybe one person one time this this worked. But we don't have lists of success rates, as far as I know. And just we just have all of these different texts talking about different methods which I mean I guess in a way makes sense because with the extremely high rate of infant mortality and infant, not just infant mortality but then miscarriages that could happen, which may not have even been understood as the miscarriage but as, you know, something like just simply not being pregnant or not understanding that the carriage was happening. It could have seemed to the ancients like it was very a woman was barren or or it was very difficult for them to get pregnant so they came up with, you know, different methods. So definitely to answer the question in brief. No, we don't have success rates. We do seem to have this is slightly different texts from Egypt in the medical papyri that if you want to figure out if you're having a boy or a girl. The woman was to urinate on different grains and if one sprouted it was a girl and if one sprouted it was a boy. I don't know how reliable either but text do seem to talk about that. And the outcomes there. Fascinating, not a lot of materiality involved with. There can be remains of those kinds of tests. And then you know pregnant pregnancy tests are coming to my mind and and then of course coven tests, given the time. And then digressing once again. But you know I think it's important for our audience to remember to with this question that, you know, so, so many bits of evidence that we're lacking right I mean so it's not like there was a scribe they are keeping track, you know, like the the records in a doctor's office, right, who actually got pregnant and who didn't. It's, it's these kinds of traditions that are passed on, oftentimes orally. In the case of Mesopotamia we're very fortunate that someone that someone along the way wrote them down on non perishable. You know, writing materials. But that you know things like those mundane records that are are kept in hospitals. They just are completely lacking. So they're there what there weren't any hospital administrators who were also jotting down, you know things in a case. Would that we have the diaries of midwives we, we know a lot more, if they wrote such things. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, I'm digressing again so I'll get back to that. There's, I believe one last question. What are the contextual evidence for what might happen to a slave girl, or a concubine, who is used as a surrogate birth mother for infertile wives. Are there indications of relationships between the birth mothers and the family, or were they considered to be disposable after their rendering after rendering their service. Did they have any agency. Right. So, of course, there's the biblical texts of Sarah and Hagar and Hagar being a handmade somewhat of a lower social status. And the relationship between them doesn't go so well as those familiar with the biblical texts will know. Whereas with the matriarchs, Leah and Rachel and their handmaids, Bill, the relationship does seem to go well. So, a testing to two different, I think, possibilities. Now, when we look outside of the biblical texts. We don't get a lot of narratives that discuss sort of an ongoing relationship between people. Many of these texts that we do see that reference women being taken as a second wife or some sort of sale. These are short, document, well, relatively short, not a narrative documents that would be slave sale documents, or perhaps, like in the case of Newsy and we get sort of strange adoptions that happen so that if someone is adopted as a wife, but she doesn't produce an air then it will have a clause about she's required to provide a woman from like the loop, the Lululean I believe I'm remembering correctly a foreign woman to act as as a surrogate womb. We get glimpses into this practice via administrative records which are not interested in the follow up. But if anyone knows of texts I'm happy to be proven or not proven wrong but to get to get more information on that. And you know, it's wrong to mind to, you know, one of your opening slides where, you know, your part part of the evidence that you are using is our, you know, things are modern traditional society so anthropology, or anthropology. And what I always tell my students is that, you know, those kinds of examples while removed, you know, thousands of years and maybe even in a different geographical zone that kind of thing. We provide a kind of full framework, right, because, as you well know but our internet audience might not know our evidence is so fragmentary. So you're using texts or archaeology or art historical texts I mean art historical images that without that sort of fuller framework, it's hard to put our fragmentary evidence into a picture that's more meaningful. So if you're using, you know, modeling from anthropological data. It sort of gives a clue as to, you know, where these very fragmentary bits of information can fit. And then those fragments can, you know, with that theoretical framing can it helps to kind of fill out those pictures. And so I just wanted to thank you on behalf of our internet our internet audience for, you know, doing that sort of wonderful job of using different strands of evidence to paint a fuller picture, and also just to remind folks out there that, you know, 1520 years ago, it's, you know, it was as if children didn't exist in the ancient world. They theoretically existed. Well, I mean, I, you know, I used, I joked, you know, in the early 2000s that, you know, having recently finished up graduate school that, you know, I would have never known that a woman existed in the ancient world. Okay. So obviously, you know, based on modern modeling, there must have been women in the ancient world, and of course children. Thank you for your research, and for, you know, bringing these groups that were marginalized, you know, both in modern points of view, but also in the ancient world to light. And that I will, you know, I think that adds really to the importance, you know, of this lecture series, which is just an outcome of the groundbreaking research that that all of our presenters are doing. So, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. On that note, we'll just wrap things up.