Middle Assyrian Laws

Historical source page 37

36 Morris Jastrow, Jr. be veiled on the highway. The one who is not married is to have her head uncovered on the highway. 32 The unclean 33 [woman] is to be veiled, the harlot 34 is not to be veiled; her head is to be uncovered. 35 Whoever sees a veiled harlot shall seize her. 36 . He shall summon witnesses and bring her to the palace. 37 Hammurabi Code, § 182, might also be married, as Schorr, No. 280. 14, shows, but the Nin-An ('woman of a god'), another class of votaries who live in cloisters, it would appear from the Hammurabi Code, § 127, must remain virgins, as one may also conclude from § 110, prescribing severe punishment for a Nin-An who enters a wine-shop, which was the brothel in Babylonia and Assyria. 31 id mu-tu ih-zu-si-ni, 'whom a man has taken', sc. as a wife, ahazu being the regular term for taking in marriage. 32 Since she does not belong to any man, she need not be marked as a warn- ing to those who might approach her. 33 la-a-lu, see Muss-Arnolt, Assyrian Diet. p. 464b. Because of the demon of sickness or of uncleanliness within her, she must warn those whom she encounters not to come near her, as the leper in the Priest Code (Lev. 13. 45) must go uncovered of head, but cover his upper lip and cry 'unclean, unclean'. 34 Kar-lil = #aran<u (Brunnow, No. 7745) is the common 'woman of the street', as she is called in a Sumerian Code (Lutz, Selected Sumerian and Babylonian Texts, No. 102, col. 2. 12). She is not a hierodule as Langdon renders {Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1920, p. 506). 26 kakkadsa pa-at-tu — which shows that the phrase in the Priestly Code usually translated 'to let the hair of the head go loose' means rather that she is not to go 'covered of head'. So in Num. 5. 18, the case of the woman suspected of adultery — who is for the time being put on a plane with the harlot — must have her head uncovered, while undergoing the ordeal to deter- mine her guilt or innocence. The harlot is to be marked by being both unveiled and uncovered of head. The veiling of women which can now, through our Code, be traced back in the East to the middle of the second millennium, appears to be the custom introduced by a more advanced society and as a protection to the master of the household, so that every one may recognize his wife and his daughters and his mistress as his possessions, and forbidden to everyone else. Hence the harlot as belonging to everyone must not veil herself or cover her head. The veiling naturally leads to the introduction of the social factor. The veil becomes the distinguishing mark of the mistress of the house and therefore slave girls marked as such in other ways are not to be veiled. For a further discussion of this law with its bearings on Biblical passages mentioning the veil, and on the custom of veiling in Mohammedan countries, see an article by the writer on 'Veiling in Ancient Assyria' to appear in the Revue Archeologique. 36 Read i-$a-ba-as-si=isabat-si, as shown by the parallel i-sa-ba-at-si (line 90). The sign sa has dropped out or has been omitted by Schroeder. 37 a-na yi-i ekal-lim, literally, 'to the entrance of the palace'.