Cécile Michel’s work on testaments to entrepreneurial Assyrian women featured on the BBC

3 February 2021, by Webmaster

Photo: Vanessa Tubiana-Brun

Professor Cécile Michel’s work on ancient cuneiform clay tablets features in a BBC article on the emergence of the well-documented role of women in ancient Assyrian merchant society from 1900 to 1850 BC. Read the full article here.

In her 2020 book Women of Assur and Kanesh: Texts from the Archives of Assyrian Merchants, Professor Michel, Head of the working group ‘Ethics’ at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and Principal Investigator at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, retraces the struggles and accomplishments of these women as they acted as head of the family business while the men were away. For this project, some 300 tablets discovered in excavations of the Old Assyrian private archives at Kültepe in Central Anatolia, among them marriage and divorce contracts, last wills, loans, and purchase contracts, were translated and paint a vivid portrait of women aspiring to improving their social status.