Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature (Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible) 9781575064635, 9781575064642, 1575064634

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Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature

Bosworth

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Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature

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THOSE WHO HAVE SPENT TIME within earshot of a crying baby know the stress this sound can induce. Considerable scientific research has been devoted to the causes and consequences of infant crying because it is a public health concern implicated in parental frustration and infant abuse. Infant Weeping seeks to draw on the extensive research on infant crying in order to understand better the motif of infant weeping in ancient literature. The present book contributes to the growing interest in correlating scientific and humanities scholarship. Scientific research can help bridge the cultural distance that separates modern readers from ancient texts. For example, the Akkadian incantations for soothing infants may appear to be strange magical texts from a foreign world (which they are), but they also reflect common human realities that have been part of the parent-infant relationship in all times and cultures. The incantations reflect and evoke emotions and responses familiar to anyone who has cared for a baby. Fuller understanding of the dynamics of the parent-child relationship can help us see commonalities across differences and make foreign texts more interesting and relevant. David Bosworth draws on the natural sciences to develop a theory for analyzing infant weeping in literature. He then analyzes ancient Akkadian magical incantations for soothing crying babies as well as portions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood stories; in the Hebrew Bible, he explores two infant abandonment stories (Genesis 21 and Exodus 2) and the many parallels between them that have been overlooked; finally he examines a select corpus of Greek infant abandonment stories, including stories found in Herodotus, Sophocles, and Diodorus, among other authors. He ultimately places these textual corpuses in comparison with one another.

Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible 8

David A. Bosworth

Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature

C ritical S tudies

in the

H ebrew B ible

Edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn

Nathan MacDonald

Stuart Weeks

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

University of Cambridge

Durham University

1.  A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, by Bernard M. Levinson 2.  The Prophets of Israel, by Reinhard G. Kratz 3.  Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New, by Katharine J. Dell 4.  Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible? by Konrad Schmid 5.  No Stone Unturned: Greek Inscriptions and Septuagint Vocabulary, by James K. Aitken 6.  Joel: Scope, Genre(s), and Meaning, by Ronald L. Troxel 7.  Job’s Journey, by Manfred Oeming and Konrad Schmid 8.  Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature, by David A. Bosworth

Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature

David A. Bosworth

Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2016

© Copyright 2016 Eisenbrauns All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bosworth, David Alan, 1972– author. Title: Infant weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek literature / David A. Bosworth. Description: Winona Lake, Indiana : Eisenbrauns, 2016. | Series: Critical studies in the Hebrew Bible ; 8 | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Identifiers: LCCN 2016020811 (print) | LCCN 2016021175 (ebook) | ISBN 9781575064635 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781575064642 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Incantations, Assyro-Babylonian. | Crying in infants. | Abandoned children—Biblical teaching. | Greek literature—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PJ3791 .B67 2016 (print) | LCC PJ3791 (ebook) | DDC 809/.93354—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020811 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ♾™

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   ix General ix Reference Works  ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1 Chapter 1.  Infant Crying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4 Infanticide and Infant Abandonment  6 Eliciting Caregiving  10 Infant Abuse  18 Conclusion 21 Chapter 2.  Infant Crying in Mesopotamia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The Magic of Music  22 Crying in Mesopotamian Incantations  33 Noise and Its Consequences in Mythic Narratives  53 The Babylonian Creation Epic  54 The Babylonian Flood Story  59 Other Creation Texts  64 Conclusion 66 Chapter 3.  Weeping in Infant Abandonment Stories in the Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Exodus 2:1–10  67 Genesis 21:14–21  77 Ezekiel 16  88 Conclusion 90 Chapter 4.  Weeping in Infant Abandonment Stories in Ancient Greek Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Herodotus 93 Pindar 98 Sophocles 98 Euripides 99

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Contents Diodorus of Sicily  101 Semiramis 101 Cybele 102 Heracles 103 Telephus 104 Agathocles 105 (Pseudo-)Apollodorus 106 Zeus 106 Pelias and Neleus  107 Perseus 108 Telephus 108 Zethus and Amphion  109 Oedipus 109 Paris 110 Aelian 111 Conclusion 112

Chapter 5.  Comparative Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115

Appendix: Concordance of Baby Incantations . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Index of Authors  138 Index of Scripture  142 Index of Other Ancient Sources  144

Preface This book contributes to a growing literature that combines humanities scholarship and scientific research in an attempt to understand human beings and their cultural productions. Humans are both biological and cultural creatures, so the study of humans cannot be limited to the sciences or humanities. Furthermore, the boundary between biology and culture has become obscured by discoveries such as epigenetics and the growing understanding that human behaviors have been shaped by evolution. Culture is not a pristine arena untouched by nature anymore than nature is untouched by culture. Consequently, firm disciplinary boundaries between the sciences and humanities cannot endure. Infant weeping behavior is mostly driven by biology, since infants have not yet internalized their culture and its rules about crying. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that patterns of infant crying persist across cultures. Adult responses to infant crying are more complex because both biology and culture influence them. The sound of cries induces stress in adults which may lead to a variety of behaviors that are shaped by communal tradition and individual experiences and circumstances. The representation of infant crying in literature reflects the biology of infant cries and adult responses but also encodes complex cultural interpretations. The present book summarizes the science of infant crying and analyzes its representation in three separate ancient traditions. Many people and institutions have helped bring this project to fruition. The works cited provide a partial indication of these debts. The Catholic University of America has provided research support, including a quality library encompassing biblical and scientific scholarship and a sabbatical that enabled me to complete this project. The school also funded graduate research assistants María Rodríguez and Andrew Montanaro, who both contributed to this project. I also enjoy excellent colleagues, among whom Bob Miller and Kevin Irwin merit special mention. They participated with me in the “Science for Seminaries” grant from the American Association for the Advancement of Science made possible with funding from the Templeton Foundation. The grant enhanced my own scientific education and thinking about science and religion as we and vii

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other colleagues worked to incorporate relevant scientific material into our seminary courses. Conversations with my teaching assistant Isaac Alderman also improved my efforts to integrate science into my teaching and research. My participation in the Sinai and Synapses Fellowship at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership has brought me into dialogue with scholars who are wrestling with the same problems. Shawn Flynn graciously took time to comment on this work in draft form. The editors at Eisenbrauns provided helpful feedback on the manuscript, and Beverly McCoy’s copy-editing saved this book from many mistakes. But the most important supports for this project have been closer to home. My wife, Britt Silkey, has brought many wondrous things into my life. Our son is the most wondrous of all. Alex, when you were a baby you taught me things about infant crying that I could not have learned from books. This book is dedicated to you when you were an infant. I’m so glad you are not a baby anymore.

Abbreviations General Ant. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities chap(s). chapter(s) col(s). column(s) Diod. Diodorus Siculus DSS Dead Sea Scrolls DtrH the Deuteronomistic History (Genesis–2 Kings) ed. edited by/editor LXX Septuagint MT Masoretic Text n(n). note(s) NA Neo-Assyrian NRSV New Revised Standard Version of the Bible no(s). number(s) OB Old Babylonian obv. obverse Oed. tyr. Sophocles, Oedipus tyrannus Ps.-Apol. Pseudo-Apollodorus rev. reverse Theod. Theodotion trans. translator/translated by v(v). verse(s) Vorl. Vorlage

Reference Works ASORDS BDF BHS BibInt BJS BTB BZABR

American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series Blass, Friedrich, Albert Debrunner, and Robert W. Funk. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961 Elliger, K., and W. Rudolph (eds.). Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1984 Biblical Interpretation Brown Judaic Studies Biblical Theology Bulletin Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte

ix

x BZAW CAD

Abbreviations

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Oppenheim, A. L., et al. (eds.). The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 21 vols. (A–Z). Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956–2011 CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series EANEC Explorations in Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual IBHS Waltke, B. K., and O’Connor, M. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990 ICC International Critical Commentary JBQ Jewish Bible Quarterly JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. http://www.jhsonline.org JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies Joüon Joüon, Paul. Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique. 2nd ed. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1923 JPS Torah Commentary  Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series LCL Loeb Classical Library LSJ Liddell, H. G., and Scott, R. Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with revised supplement. Revised by H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996 MC Mesopotamian Civilizations OTL Old Testament Literature SAACT State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts SBLWAW Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament SubBi Subsidia Biblica TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association VT Vetus Testamentum WBC Word Biblical Commentary WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zerwick Zerwick, Max. Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament. Translated by Mary Grosvenor. 5th ed. SubBi 39. Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2010

Introduction Why do babies cry? What effects do their cries have? These two questions may have the same answer: babies cry to elicit care from adults. However, infant crying turns out to be more complex than this answer implies. As a practical matter, caregivers sometimes struggle to discern the causes of a baby’s cry and soothe the infant. The frequency of infant cries and the stress this sound causes to hearers have motivated an extensive body of research literature. Scientists in several fields study weeping, but the bulk of the published work focuses on infant crying because infant crying induces significant stress in adults, especially when they perceive the crying as excessive or inconsolable. As a result of this stress, caregivers may engage in behaviors destructive to themselves or the child, and parents commonly seek help from pediatricians. Since adults cry much less than babies, adult tears do not rise to the level of a public health concern. Scholars doing scientific research on weeping often view it through the lens of attachment theory, which is a well-supported scientific theory that describes how infants and children develop attachments to their caregivers. Infants motivate adult caregiving through a variety of means, including crying. The present book seeks to draw on the extensive research on infant crying in order better to understand the motif of infant tears in ancient literature. Two kinds of texts appear especially interesting: Akkadian incantations for soothing crying infants and stories of infant abandonment in Hebrew and Greek. All of these texts draw on and reflect the relational dynamics described by attachment theory. The focus on scientific theory and empirical evidence serves several purposes. First, the science of infant weeping provides a well-grounded theory or lens through which to view the literary evidence. Much of the humanities scholarship on weeping in literary contexts suffers from the lack of any guiding theory. Second, humanities scholars writing about childhood have been heavily influenced by social sciences and the observation that childhood is socially constructed. This perspective offers several important insights, such as helping scholars see the differences between their own and others’ views of childhood and highlighting the diversity of cultural beliefs and practices surrounding childhood. It also resists biological determinism, 1

2

Introduction

which has been implicated in a range of social evils (e.g., racism, sexism, eugenics). However, it obfuscates the real importance of biological influences and underestimates the power of evolutionary theory to explain difference and diversity as well as commonalities among humans. Several biological and behavioral sciences reveal a growing volume of sometimes surprising information about children and human development that can improve our understanding of ourselves and the texts we study. Interpreters have long used science to elucidate the “flora and fauna” of the Bible but have only recently employed developments in biology, psychology, and cognitive sciences to understand human behaviors, emotions, and relationships described in the Bible. The present book contributes to the growing interest in correlating scientific and humanities scholarship. Third, the scientific discussion can help bridge the cultural distance that separates modern readers from ancient texts. For example, the Akkadian incantations for soothing infants may appear as strange magical texts from a foreign world (which they are), but they also reflect common human realities that have been part of the parent-infant relationship in all times and cultures. The incantations evoke emotions and responses familiar to anyone who has cared for a baby. Fuller understanding of the dynamics of this relationship can help us see commonalities across difference and make foreign texts more interesting and relevant. The present work may also be situated within the interaction of childhood studies and the study of ancient texts. The field of childhood studies pursues deeply interdisciplinary research related to children and childhoods, but its application to biblical and related texts has typically dropped the natural-science dimensions of the wider field, especially developmental psychology, attachment theory, and evolutionary biology. In this book, I seek to use these natural sciences to provide a theory for analyzing texts. Furthermore, childhood studies applied to ancient texts have generally overlooked infancy. Infancy is a brief period of the life span (defined as the first year in modern medical contexts) that might be expected to leave relatively few traces in the written record. Identification of infants is no less difficult than the identification of children in ancient texts that employ terms that do not neatly correspond to modern definitions of childhood and infancy. The texts discussed here clearly do concern infants. In the first chapter, I will summarize research on infant crying and other infant behaviors that elicit caregiving. I will place these infant behaviors in an evolutionary context of high infant mortality, then describe attachment behaviors that evolved to motivate caregiving, and show how

Introduction

3

weeping can also evoke anger, hostility, and abuse. Since all the ancient texts discussed reflect realities described by attachment theory, the first chapter is devoted to describing these realities. In the second chapter, I analyze the Akkadian magical incantations for quieting crying babies. These texts reflect both the care and hostility that infant cries create in adult hearers. After presenting the incantations, I continue to describe the motif of noise and disturbance that appears in Akkadian mythic narratives. This and other correspondences between the incantations and narratives show the seriousness of the threat to the baby in the baby incantations. In the third chapter, I explore the two infant abandonment stories in the Old Testament (Genesis 21; Exodus 2), both of which involve infant weeping. Since the story of Ishmael is not often seen as an infant abandonment story, many parallels between Moses and Ishmael have been overlooked. In the fourth chapter, I examine a select corpus of Greek infant abandonment stories. Infant abandonment was common in Greece, and the extensive surviving Greek literature includes several stories about abandoned infants. The chapter will examine each story and note common patterns among them. In the fifth and final chapter, I compare all of these diverse literary texts with each other in light of the scientific research summarized in chap. 1. The guiding theory described in chap. 1 can be applied to additional literary corpora that include infant weeping (lullabies, incantations, narratives, etc.). The present book is limited to ancient literature that includes relevant material that I can read in the original langauges, but other scholars may extend this comparative work to Egyptian and Latin literatures or into the modern period. Although chaps. 2–4 periodically refer to chap. 1, each chapter may be read on its own. However, the scientific background provides useful insight into each corpus of literature discussed. Furthermore, each of the various linguistic corpora can be understood more fully in light of a comparison with the others. Consequently, a reader who is interested in only one chapter may still find much to gain by reading them all.

Chapter 1 Infant Crying The primary effect of infant cries on those who hear them is stress. The bulk of modern scientific research on crying has focused on infant crying because infant crying is a major health issue for babies and their caregivers. Infants presumably cry because they are in distress, and caregivers often struggle to discern the source of distress and respond appropriately. Sometimes caregiver stress and frustration leads to infant abuse. Considerable evidence confirms an early hypothesis that infant crying induces both empathetic caring responses (helping the baby) and self-centered behaviors (protecting the listener). Crying that a hearer deems excessive can transform a caregiver’s empathetic response into a selfish one and increase the risk of abuse.1 These considerations drive a heightened interest in infant weeping that has not been applied to adult crying. Crying is a behavior that can affect whether and how infants are cared for. I therefore begin this chapter with an evolutionary perspective on infancy, which has been characterized as “the crucible of human evolution.”2 Natural selection does not merely operate on mature specimens of species; rather, it operates constantly through the whole course of an organism’s life span. A newborn must survive to adulthood, and surviving infancy is especially difficult. The infant mortality rate is the number of babies less than one year old who die out of 1,000 live births. Globally, the infant mortality rate was estimated at 35 for the year 2011, or almost 5 million babies dead within the first year (down from 63 in 1990).3 The infant mortality rate varies considerably by location and social circumstances. It is over 6 times higher in the World Health Organization African Region 1.  Anne D. Murray, “Infant Crying as an Elicitor of Parental Behavior: An Examination of Two Models,” Psychological Bulletin 86 (1979) 191–215. 2. Tony Volk and Jeremy Atkinson, “Is Child Death the Crucible of Human Evolution?” Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology 2 (2008) 247–60. 3. World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/gho/child_health/mortality/ neonatal_infant_text/en/index.html.

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than the European Region (63 to 10). Even within the same city, infants born to the poorest 20% of parents are about twice as likely to die in the first year as those born to the wealthiest 20%.4 Modern medicine has brought infant mortality to unprecedented low levels. The infant mortality rate in the United States in 1911 was 135; it was 6.3 in 2008. Evidence and inference suggest that infant mortality rates in ancient times was around 250–333, or one-fourth to one-third of all infants.5 Then as now, the rate probably varied considerably, but infancy was an extremely dangerous period. Even the infants who survived the first year still had long odds to survive to adulthood, although the most dangerous periods were and are the earliest. In the United States, 57% of all deaths of children under age 5 occurred in the first month, and 35% of all deaths of children under 5 occurred on the day of birth. Around the world, the first day of life is the most dangerous day, and the first month is the most dangerous month. The high rate of infant mortality in ancient times and the particular dangers of the first month may explain why the Israelite law of redemption of the firstborn specifically excludes those who are less than one month old (Num 3:40–51).6 Only the infants deemed viable (because they lived for a month) were redeemed. By most definitions, a neonate is an infant less than one month old, so this one-month limit has currency in contemporary medicine. Evolution forged the attachment behavioral system as a solution to the problem of infant mortality. Infants of many species engage in attachment behaviors such as crying that evolved as adaptive means of maximizing the likelihood of survival by motivating adult caregiving.7 In this chapter, I will describe the significance of infant crying as a survival mechanism that 4.  World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/outcomes/ infant_mortality_text/en/index.html. 5.  Volk and Atkinson, “Is Child Death the Crucible of Human Evolution?” See also Tim Parkin, “The Demography of Infancy and Early Childhood in the Ancient World,” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (ed. Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkin with the assistance of Ros­lynne Bell; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 40–61, esp. pp. 46–50. 6. Jacob Milgrom, Numbers: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990) 23. 7.  For more on attachment theory generally, Robert Karen (Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998]) provides an excellent introduction to attachment theory and how it developed. For a current concise summary, see David Howe, Attachment across the Lifespan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Jude Cassidy and Philip R. Shaver (eds.), Handbook of Attachment (2nd ed.; New York: Guilford, 2008) is a massive volume of essays representing the range of attachment research for the convenience of researchers and clinicians.

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has diverse causes and effects. First, I will analyze selective parental investment in children, which places children in the position of having to elicit the care they need to survive. An infant cannot assume that its mother will care for it. This important point prepares for the second part, a discussion of how infants elicit care and the role of crying in those strategies. Finally, the effect of infant crying is not entirely predictable, and in the third section I describe how infant crying can trigger hostility and abuse.

Infanticide and Infant Abandonment Some people embrace “mother love” as an idealized and pure form of totally reliable love and caregiving. However, this is only an ideal. In reality, human mothers sometimes abandon their infants or directly kill them. Other primate mothers rarely abandon their young, and although infanticide occurs in non-human primate species, individuals other than the mother are typically the ones who kill infants.8 Human parents selectively invest in their offspring, as several biblical texts attest. For example, Isaac and Rebecca had their own reasons for favoring Esau and Jacob, respectively, and Jacob had a favorite son who received affection and resources not made available to his siblings. A considerable body of research now describes the personal, social, and cultural factors affecting maternal investment, which can make the difference between a baby’s being raised by its mother (in more-or-less caring circumstances), given up for adoption, abandoned to die, or directly killed. Infant cries can impact these maternal decisions. The occasional well-publicized cases of maternal infanticide are widely regarded as aberrant and the infanticidal mothers as monstrous exceptions to the rule of reliable maternal love. In fact, mothers and fathers “are designed by evolution to withhold care, distribute it differentially, give up on some infants and children, and give children away under certain economic 8.  Species that give birth to litters often cull the young, but primate mothers typically give birth to singleton young whom they stubbornly refuse to abandon. However, some firstborn primates die due to incompetent maternal care or are abandoned due to extreme distress, such as being stalked by a male intent on killing the infant. Apart from humans, the other exception to this primate rule is the Callitrichidae family of New World monkeys, which includes tamarins and marmosets, who abandon approximately half of their young. Humans and these New World monkeys are very distantly related but have an important common feature: they are cooperative breeders, meaning that mothers depend on community support to raise their young. Consequently, they are vulnerable to communal pressure to abandon their young. See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) 99–101.

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and cultural constraints that disproportionately affect women and girls.”9 Most scientists have come to accept the evidence that infanticide among humans is an evolved and therefore adaptive behavior.10 How can infant abandonment be adaptive? Why would such a behavior evolve as a “natural” or “normal” part of any animal’s behavior? Darwin’s evolutionary theory emerged in a European culture that was convinced of the reliability of mother-love, and Darwin’s theory was interpreted to sanction this belief. In the struggle to survive and reproduce, women were thought to be biologically determined to be nurturing mothers. Feminists lost patience with this ideology of motherhood, since it did not fit their felt experience, so they turned on evolutionary theory. Along with social scientists trying to explain the phenomenon of child abandonment, they turned to strictly environmental explanations and deconstructed social constructions of motherhood.11 Environmental considerations are indeed critical to the decisions people make about parental investment, but there are underlying evolutionary reasons that explain why and how circumstances matter. Reproductive success is not about having children; it is about having grandchildren. Having children that do not survive to adulthood and reproduce is, in evolutionary terms, fruitless. A large number of children competing for scarce resources (e.g., breast milk) can be counterproductive and endanger the survival and success of all the children. Consequently, natural selection has favored humans who determine their level of parental investment based on a wide range of factors as they seek to calculate their most likely path to reproductive success. This decision is influenced by personal, social, and cultural factors, and the same parent may make different decisions as these circumstances change. 9. Melvin Konnor, Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010) 426. 10.  But see Amanda Rees, The Infanticide Controversy: Primatology and the Art of Field Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). The controversy she examines is not whether infanticide occurs, since is is well known in a wide variety of species. Only in the field of primatology, however, has a controversy persisted over “whether infanticide is a pathological response to particular social and environmental conditions or represents an adaptive strategy” (p. 2). The most common form of infanticide in nonhuman species is a male killing an unrelated infant in order to mate with its mother and produce its own offspring (as the adaptive position explains it). Humans are unusual in that infanticide (understood to include infant abandonment) is commonly practiced by the mother. 11.  Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon, 1999) 308–9. On the experience of maternal ambivalence, see Barbara Almond, The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

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In the history of European child abandonment, mothers who were unmarried were more likely to leave their infants in foundling homes.12 If their circumstances improved, they sometimes returned to the homes looking for their children, who had usually died. Maternal age is another consideration. Young mothers are more likely to withhold investment since they have opportunities to conceive again, while older mothers show greater willingness to invest. The same woman may invest differently in her children over the course of her life as both her age and her social and economic circumstances change.13 Societal conditions can dramatically influence the decision to abandon. European foundling homes were created to save infants who would otherwise be abandoned or killed. However, they became magnets for massive numbers of unwanted children since the existence of such institutions encouraged parents to abandon children whom they might otherwise have kept. For this reason, contemporary “safe haven” laws (also known as “baby Moses laws”) that permit people to abandon infants at hospitals without risk of prosecution have been controversial. The laws decriminalize infant abandonment and strip parental rights from fathers and other family members. All 50 states and the District of Columbia now have such laws, which were enacted to curb the problem of mothers abandoning infants in garbage dumpsters or public restrooms.14 12.  Infanticide and infant abandonment have been studied extensively. See John Bos­ well, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Rachel G. Fuchs, “Legislation, Poverty, and Child Abandonment in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (1987) 55–80; Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Mark Johnson (ed.), Infanticide: Historical Perspectives and Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002); Margaret G. Spinelli (ed.), Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2003). Cultural and psychoanalytic studies have examined maternal ambivalence about children. See Rozsika Parker, Mother Love/Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal Ambivalence (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Wendy Halloway and Brid Featherstone (eds.), Mothering and Ambivalence (New York: Routledge, 1997); Almond, The Monster Within; Lisa Baraitser, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Disruption (New York: Routledge, 2009). 13.  Hrdy, Mother Nature, 314–15. 14.  Laurette T. Liesen, “The State’s Response to Parental Divestment: Could Safe Haven Laws Lead to More Child Abandonment?” in Biology and Politics: The Cutting Edge (ed. Steven A. Peterson and Albert Somit; Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2011) 11–28; Jennifer Trost, “From Juvenile Court to Safe Haven: The Lessons of Juvenile Justice History and the 2008 Nebraska Safe Haven Law,” Criminal Justice Review 38 (2013) 291–302; Carol Sanger, “Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life,” Columbia Law Review 106 (2006) 753–829; Jeffrey A. Parness, “Lost Paternity in the Culture of Motherhood: A Different View of Safe Haven Laws,” Valparaiso Law Review 42 (2007) 81–89.

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There are a wide variety of ways in which mothers disengage from infants. Deliberate and intentional infanticide is one possibility. It is practiced in some cultures but often in private, and families strive to keep the killing secret and pass it off as accidental.15 Infant death through “overlying” is sometimes disguised infanticide, but medical professionals recognize that it can be accidental and therefore urge parents not to co-sleep with infants.16 Some cultures approve the practice of abandoning infants in the wilderness, where they are expected to die by starvation or predation. The ancient Greeks accepted this practice, and their literature includes hopeful stories about abandoned infants being nurtured by adoptive parents. Many European parents who left their children in foundling homes harbored similar fantasies about survival and upward mobility for their abandoned children. Parents abandoning an infant this way could feel that they were not responsible for killing their baby. Adoption provides another means by which a mother can abandon her infant. Since the decline of foundling homes, adoptions may work in various ways. Some parents may place their child in an orphanage in ways that closely resemble the historical pattern of foundling homes. Other mothers may exert more control over who adopts the child, thereby ensuring that her hope for the child’s survival and upward mobility is realistic. There are still other ways to rid oneself of an unwanted baby. Western experts often assume that mothers in developing nations who bottle feed their babies with unclean water are ignorant rather than admit the possibility that some of these mothers may know that this method of feeding will endanger the child’s life and adopt it for this reason. If an impoverished mother’s circumstances improve, she may choose breastfeeding for her new baby, whereas the (deceased) older siblings received the bottle.17 15.  For discussion of this phenomenon in India during the 1980s, see Elisabeth Bumiller, May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons (New York: Random, 1990). 16.  Helen L. Ball and Charlotte K. Russell, “Nighttime Nurturing: An Evolutionary Perspective on Breastfeeding and Sleep,” in Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development: From Research to Practice and Policy (ed. Darcia Narvaez et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 241–61; Hrdy, Mother Nature, 290–91. 17. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 459; Hrdy, Mother Nature, 314–15. Scheper-Hughes is frequently cited in contexts of parental divestment and the alleged fallacy of maternal sentiment. She regards maternal behaviors as being socially produced without regard to any psychobiological script (Death without Weeping, 292). Other anthropologists working in Brazil have analyzed her findings within their own research (Marilyn K. Nations and Linda-Anne Rebhun, “Angels with Wet Wings Won’t Fly: Maternal Sentiment in Brazil and the Image of Neglect,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 26 [1988] 1245–59). Konnor (Evolution of Childhood, 412–25) reviews the work of Scheper-Hughes and Arthur Wolf ’s work on Taiwanese adoption-marriages (“Maternal Sentiments: How Strong Are They?” Current Anthropology 44 [2003] 531–49) and the discussion that has evolved around them,

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In short, parents selectively invest in their children and rid themselves of unwanted babies. Different societies construct diverse means by which parents are permitted to abandon children, which may include adoption, safe haven laws, direct (or “accidental”) killing, or exposure as “indirect” killing. Given that adult humans are discerning creatures who selectively invest in their offspring and may abandon their young to die or may even directly kill them, how is a baby to survive? The scarcity or uncertainty of lifesaving parental care means that significant selection pressures may influence infant behaviors and favor those who discover means to motivate adult caregiving. In other words, the unreliability of parental care for human infants provides the critical context for understanding infant cries.

Eliciting Caregiving How do infants elicit caregiving from parents who may be ambivalent? It helps to be cute. Adults are attracted to certain features of babies. In some species, newborns have a flamboyantly colorful coat compared with its dull parents (e.g., dusky leaf monkey, American coots), and this coloration attracts the fascination of adults, who preferentially provide care for these brilliant neonates.18 Human newborns are comparatively similar to their parents, but they have disproportionately large heads, big eyes, small noses and mouths, chubby cheeks, and soft skin. These infant features are generally regarded as “cute.” This cuteness helps motivate parental investment as well as investment by potential alloparents, or adults who may help the parents care for the baby.19 Human neonates are also unusually fat, and this excess although he omits the work of Jónina Einarsdóttir (“Tired of Weeping”: Child Death and Mourning among Papel Mothers in Guinea-Bissau [Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology 46; Stockholm: Gotab, 2000]), which also contradicts Scheper-Hughes. ScheperHughes and Wolf caricature evolutionary and psychobiological views in order to tear them down. Evolutionary perspectives acknowledge that parental “instincts” can be modulated or switched off in response to the environment, but this fact does not mean that they do not exist or that they are not extraordinary powerful when “switched on.” They do not realize how their evidence fits neatly into the evolutionary views of parental behavior that they seek to discredit. 18.  Hrdy, Mother Nature, 445–48. 19. Konrad Lorenz postulated that certain infantile physical features, which he termed the Kindchenschema (“baby schema”), elicited caregiving from adults. This theory has been abundantly confirmed. See Lorenz, “Die angeboren Formen mögliche Erfahrung,” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 5 (1943) 233–519; Melanie L. Glocker et al., “Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults,” Ethology 115 (2009) 257–63; Wakako Sanefuji, Hidehiro Ohgami, and Kazudihe Hashiya, “Development of Preference for Baby Faces across Species in Humans,” Journal of Ethology 25 (2007)

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fat serves both to enhance survival (breast milk may not be available for several days) and to signal to parents that the baby is viable and worth their investment.20 The attractiveness of neonatal fat can by discerned by looking at premature babies, who were born before these fat deposits were formed (which occurs in the latest stages of pregnancy) and are perceived as less attractive.21 The physical appearance of infants attracts care from children as young as two years old, and this pattern holds across cultures.22 Primate mothers closely examine and inspect their newborns. They may be looking for signs of viability. Modern neonatologists agree that the criteria for determining a baby’s viability are correctly identified by Soranus, a Hellenistic physician whose treatise on gynecology has survived: [The midwife] should also consider whether [the newborn] is worth rearing or not. And the infant which is suited by nature for rearing will be distinguished by the fact that its mother has spent the period of pregnancy in good health. . . . Second, by the fact that it has been born at the due time, best at the end of nine months . . . but also after only seven months. Furthermore by the fact that when put on the earth it immediately cries with proper vigor; for one that lives for some length of time without crying, or cries but weakly, is suspected of behaving so on account of some unfavorable condition. Also by the fact that it is perfect in all its parts, members, and senses; that its ducts, namely of the ears, nose, pharynx, urethra, anus are free from obstruction, and that the natural functions of every [member] are neither sluggish nor weak; that the joints bend and stretch; that it has due size and shape and is properly sensitive in every respect. This we may recognize by pressing the fingers against the surface of the body, for it is natural to suffer pain from everything that pricks or squeezes. And by conditions contrary to those mentioned, the infant not worth rearing is recognized.23 249–54; Tobias Brosch, David Sander, and Klaus Sherer, “That Baby Caught My Eyes . . . : Attention Capture by Infant Faces,” Emotion 7 (2007) 685–89; James K. Rilling, “The Neural and Hormonal Basis of Human Parental Care,” Neuropsychologia 51 (2013) 731–47, esp. pp. 738–41; Hrdy, Mother Nature, 448–49. 20.  Ibid., 475–84. 21.  Ibid., 458. 22.  Konnor, Evolution of Childhood, 604–5; Marta Borgi et al., “Baby Schema in Human and Animal Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Gaze Allocation in Children,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014) article 411. 23.  Soranus, Gynecology (trans. Oswei Temkin; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956) II iv[xxvi] 10[79]. See also Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Sex, Evolution and Behavior: Adaptations for Reproduction (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury, 1978) 1281–82.

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Some cultures have used various viability tests to help decide whether a baby should be raised. A bath in cold water was a common test that many preterm or underweight babies without a significant layer of fat would have failed. Despite Church attempts to outlaw infanticide, many European cultures perpetuated the belief that some babies were actually “changelings”—that is, fairy or demonic creatures that had been substituted for the real human baby. Since they were not human, changelings could be abandoned. Villagers recognized certain locations where newborns identified as changelings could be left overnight. If they died, they were changelings that the fairies refused to take back. If they lived, then the fairies had returned the human baby. Changelings are variously described but generally appear to have resembled preterm or sickly babies.24 Evidently, evolution has forged human babies to possess certain physical features that enhance their survival by eliciting care from adults. In addition to good looks, infants employ behaviors that motivate caregiving. For example, they instinctively grasp a finger or other object placed in their palms, and this reaction involves touch and encourages relationship. Touch is a powerful bonding agent in itself.25 Another touchrelated instinctive behavior is suckling. When infants suckle, they are necessarily in close, skin-to-skin contact with their mothers, and the act of suckling induces several hormonal changes in the mother, including the release of oxytocin which encourages a beatific calm and facilitates social bonding. Like adults, infants are drawn to the visual stimulus of the human face.26 The face is a complex, three-dimensional form with a combination of fixed features, constant variability, and animation as facial expression changes. Adults tend to show exaggerated facial expressions to infants compared with expressions shown to other adults, and infants sometimes imitate these expressions.27 Babies also quickly develop a preference for gazing at their mother’s face over other faces as early as 48 hours after birth. They also pay close attention to human voices over other sounds and prefer their mother’s voice to other voices.28 Due to these preferences 24.  Hrdy, Mother Nature, 464–68. 25. Tiffany M. Field (ed.), Touch in Early Development (Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum, 1995); idem, Touch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); Jean O’Malley Halley, Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007). 26.  Rilling, “The Neural and Hormonal Bases of Human Parental Care,” esp. pp. 738–41. 27.  Tiffany M. Field, The Amazing Infant (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007) 86–89, 93, 120–26. 28.  Ibid., 80–84.

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and behaviors, infants draw adults into frequent face-to-face interactions. Babies become noticeably agitated if their mother adopts a “still-faced” or expressionless and quiet attitude. They may correctly read this as lack of parental engagement and investment, possibly motivated by maternal depression, which can have a range of negative outcomes for the infant.29 Among the facial expressions that infants show their caregiver, perhaps the most endearing is the smile. Smiles are classified as “Duchene smiles” and “non-Duchene smiles.” The Duchene smile is sometimes called the “felt” smile because it communicates joy and includes the raising of both mouth corners and both cheeks and involves the whole face. Scientists used to think this smile only emerged in infants after 2–3 months, but recent studies indicate it is present in newborns although becomes more reliable after a couple months. Smiles that parents often attribute to “gas” may be felt smiles motivated by changes in stimulus.30 Around six months, babies begin to laugh, which typically delights caregivers and facilitates bonding and caregiving. Newborn smiling and engagement in face-to-face interactions appear to motivate parental investment. Crying is a major motivational behavior babies employ to elicit care.31 As much as smiling is a powerful positive stimulus to parents, crying is a powerful negative stimulus. “The sound of a crying baby . . . is just about the most disturbing, demanding, shattering noise we can hear.”32 It is so noxious that interrogators have used recordings of infant cries to torture prisoners.33 Infant crying can be parsed into a variety of different specific needs, but some infant weeping appears inexplicable and leaves caretakers frustrated and helpless to resolve the crying. A widespread belief shared by parents and clinicians is that infant cries have discrete sounds that sensitive caregivers can differentiate in order to discern the specific cause of the crying, such as hunger, pain, or fatigue. Evidence does not support the thesis 29.  Ibid., 97–117. 30.  Ibid., 120–21. 31. Joseph Soltis, “The Signal Functions of Early Infant Crying,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2004) 443–90; Debra M. Zeifman, “An Ethological Analysis of Human Infant Crying: Answering Tinbergen’s Four Questions,” Developmental Psychobiology 39 (2001) 265–85; Rilling, “Neural and Hormonal Basis of Human Parental Care,” 736–38; D. Out et al., “Physiological Reactivity to Infant Crying: A Behavioral Genetic Study,” Genes, Brain and Behavior 9 (2010) 868–76. For an overview of scientific research on weeping generally, see Ad Vingerhoets, Why Only Humans Weep: Unraveling the Mysteries of Tears (Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2013). For a discussion of crying as an attachment behavior, see Judith Kay Nelson, Seeing through Tears: Crying and Attachment (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2005). 32. Sheila Kitzinger, The Crying Baby (New York: Viking, 1989). 33. Jerome Groopman, “The Colic Conundrum: The Crying That Doctors Can’t Stop,” The New Yorker, Sept. 17, 2007, pp. 46–54.

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that infant cries are discrete or correlated to specific causes. However, these cries are not random noise either. Infant crying “is a graded signal whose meaning is derived from both intensity cues and contextual factors rather than as a discrete signal which conveys a single message.”34 The acoustics of infant cries and their effects on hearers have been extensively studied. An infant cry is a biological siren, “an acoustic signal comprised of a repetitive, oscillating rhythm of sounds that rise and fall in amplitude and frequency.”35 The frequency or pitch of an infant’s cry can have a significant impact on how caregivers respond. Adults perceive cries of higher frequency, or hyperphonated cries, as “more arousing, urgent, aversive and sick sounding.”36 Hyperphonated cries may sound sick because they are typically emitted by infants with a wide range of illnesses of the nervous system that predict suboptimal development.37 Modern acoustic studies with spectrographic measurements have allowed researchers to provide a precise description of what a “vigorous cry” (of the kind that Soranus uses to determine whether a baby is worth rearing) sounds like. It has a fundamental frequency between 400 and 600Hz. Hyperphonated cries may range as high as 2000Hz, and significant perceptual effects in hearers emerge above 685Hz.38 These high-pitched cries create strong reactivity in hearers that may lead to caregiving or abuse. Apart from the variable of frequency, shorter pauses between expirations also sound increasingly urgent to caregivers. These variations in pauses do correspond to the level of infant arousal but do not indicate pathology. Several additional elements of the infant cry may have communicative value, such as the length of expiration or rising or falling melody, and caregivers combine this information with contextual clues such as facial expressions and caretaking schedules in order to discern the discrete cause of the distress and resolve it.39 Infant crying behavior shows patterns apart from acoustical qualities. One pattern is known as the “normal crying curve.”40 The frequency of 34.  Zeifman, “Ethological Analysis,” 270. 35.  Philip Sanford Zeskind, “Infant Crying and the Synchrony of Arousal,” in Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in Man (ed. Eckart Altenmüller et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 155–74. 36.  Ibid., 163. 37.  Soltis, “Signal Functions,” 450–52. 38.  Zeskind, “Infant Crying,” 162, 166. 39.  Gwen E. Gustavson, Rebecca M. Wood, and James A. Green, “Can We Hear the Causes of Infant Crying?” in Crying as a Sign, a Symptom, and a Signal: Clinical, Emotional, and Developmental Aspects of Infant and Toddler Crying (ed. Ronald G. Barr et al.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 8–22. 40.  Ronald G. Barr, “The Normal Crying Curve: What Do We Really Know?” Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 32 (1990) 356–62; Liisa Lehtonen, Siobahn Gormally, and Ronald G. Barr, “‘Clinical Pies’ for Etiology and Outcome in Infants Presenting

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infant cries over the first few months can be charted as an n reflecting relatively minimal crying that rapidly becomes more frequent and peaks around six to eight weeks, followed by a steady decline to previous levels. This basic curve holds across cultures. The volume of crying varies (infants who have more contact with caregivers generally cry less overall), but the basic curve is valid across populations. The timing of the curve also reflects gestational age rather than environmental cues; the crying behavior of premature babies follows the same curve based on their gestational age rather than their chronological age (i.e., postnatal experience). As infants mature, they develop a range of other ways of communicating their needs, and their brains mature to enable inhibition of brain stem circuits, so they cry less. This early crying behavior has been characterized as a “bridge” between the “premature” status of all human infants and the onset of attachment around the fifth month.41 Furthermore, infants cry more often in the evening hours, which is one reason that sleeplessness is a common complaint among new parents. Parents, clinicians, and researchers have long distinguished “colic” as an excessive amount of inconsolable crying. The most widely used definition is that an infant has colic if it cries for at least three hours per day, three days per week, for three weeks. The definition has a range of problems (three weeks is a long time to wait for a diagnosis, and three hours is an arbitrary limit), and researchers and clinicians have long struggled to understand and resolve colic. Many babies outgrow their “excessive” crying, while others persist. Some colic may be motivated by organic disease or relational dysfunctions in the family.42 However, most researchers now think that colic is part of the normal crying curve, and “colicky” babies just cry more but not usually for any reason other than that is what infants do.43 This conclusion raises the question of why the normal crying curve exists. Why should babies cry more within the first few months of life? A similar crying curve has been discerned in many mammalian species, so with Early Increased Crying,” in Crying as a Sign, a Symptom, and a Signal (ed. Ronald G. Barr, Brian Hopkins, and James A. Green; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 67–95; Soltis, “Signal Functions,” 453–54. 41.  Konnor, Evolution of Childhood, 214–19. 42.  Ronald G. Barr and Megan Gunnar, “Colic: The ‘Transient Responsivity’ Hypothesis,” in Crying as a Sign, a Symptom, and a Signal (ed. Ronald G. Barr, Brian Hopkins, and James A. Green; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 41–66; Lehtonen, Gormally, and Barr, “Clinical Pies.” 43.  Parenting manuals are often not informed by empirical research on infant crying. For an informed presentation for parents, see purplecrying.info. The period of PURPLE crying encompasses the normal crying curve and last from about two weeks until two–three months of age. The acronym PURPLE characterizes this crying: Peak of crying, Unexpected, Resists soothing, Pain-like face, Long lasting, Evening.

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this infant behavior may have deep evolutionary roots, but its causes are unknown. The crying curve may be an adaptive behavior: evolution has “programmed” babies to cry a great deal in early infancy in order to elicit caregiving from adults.44 Infant cries elicit adult caregiving. In general, the strategy is highly effective. Most responses to infant crying involve a range of caregiving behaviors that involve physical touch and effectively soothe the baby. The most common response to infant crying in many cultures is to place the infant to the breast. This act involves skin-to-skin contact and feeding. The connection between infant crying and feeding appears to have a deep evolutionary history since the sound of an infant cry can be sufficient stimulus to cause a lactating woman’s letdown, or milk-ejection reflex.45 The adaptiveness of infant crying was illustrated in a study of infant temperaments among the Masai cattle herders of east Africa. Thirteen babies were studied who were all born in a time of draught and famine. Only seven of the infants survived to the end of the study. The survivors were the temperamentally more fussy and crying babies. Only two of the seven babies with calm temperaments survived, but five of the six with fussy temperaments survived. As in many cultures, Masai mothers respond to infant cries by putting them to the breast. Consequently, infants feed several times per hour rather than one larger feeding every three hours as is common among Western mothers. Evidently, these crying Masai babies were frequently put to the breast, which stimulated their mothers to produce more milk. Calmer babies were put to the breast less often, which negatively impacted their mother’s milk production, especially in a time of famine.46 Thus, babies who cried more gained a significant survival advantage compared with less fussy infants in a time of community distress. This phenomenon may help explain the normal crying curve. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the lifesaving power of infant crying is a well-documented case of infant abandonment among the Eipo of Papua New Guinea. Their population had been stable for decades preceding the arrival of anthropologists in 1974 due to a high rate of infanticide. Mother’s were permitted to decide whether to keep a newborn or not, and daughters were more likely to be abandoned. The anthropologists recorded the case of one pregnant woman, who repeatedly stated that she would not keep the baby if it were a girl because she already had 44.  Soltis, “Signal Functions.” 45.  Ruth A. Lawrence and Robert M. Lawrence, Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession (6th ed.; Philadelphia: Elsevier Mosby, 2005) 290. 46.  Hrdy, Mother Love, 461.

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a daughter but no son. After she gave birth to a daughter, she left the placenta attached to the baby and wrapped it ferns. While the baby cried and writhed, she sat thoughtfully nearby and finally walked away but without placing the bundle in the bushes as would be typical practice in Eipo infant abandonment. She returned two hours later, cut the umbilical cord, took the baby, and explained, “This daughter was too strong.”47 This story of an infant persuading a mother (or other adult) to keep it by means of crying has probably been played out many times during human existence. Several cultures include stories about exposed infants who were rescued by strangers moved to pity by their helplessness and crying.48 In George Elliott’s novel Adam Bede, the unwed teenager Hetty Sorrel conceals her pregnancy and leaves her daughter in the woods. In her confession, she describes how she was so disturbed by the sound of the baby’s cries echoing in her memory, that she went back to where she left it, but was too late and the infant was dead.49 Sometimes people become parents to a child without being biologically related. This phenomenon appears frequently in the Greek infant abandonment stories. Why do adults take upon themselves the care of infants not their own, especially considering the high costs of childcare? The juvenile features that elicit care for a child from a parent can also elicit care from a stranger. Adoptive parents often describe “falling in love” with their children. This interest that adults take in even unrelated infants may be found in other species, and humans are not the only animal that may “adopt” the young of others. However, infants of many species are at risk for being harmed or killed by unrelated members of the same species. Sarah Hrdy remarks, “Years ago, I had trouble convincing colleagues that this was so. Today the pendulum has swung the other way, so that genetic relatedness is too simplistic and dogmatically invoked, leading evolutionists to overlook powerful human urges to look out for children.”50 Many cultures facilitate the adoption of infants and children by unrelated adults. Adopted children may be orphans, or their parents may surrender them due to inability to care for them or the hope they may find a better life in

47.  Hrdy, Mother Nature, 454–56. 48.  Some will be examined in detail in the following chapters. For a list of 64 examples of the infant-exposure motif in world literature, see Brian Lewis, The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth (ASORDS 4; Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980) 150–95. 49. George Elliott, Adam Bede (London: Penguin, 1985) 499–500. The novel was based on a true story of infanticide. 50.  Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 229.

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adoptive care. Parents often adopt because they are childless, which is an indication of the powerful need many people have to care for a child.51

Infant Abuse As noted above, the primary effect of infant cries on those who hear them is stress. This physiological reaction may lead to providing comfort and care for the infant and strengthening the parent-child bond through breastfeeding, cuddling, or other caregiving activity. However, this stress can also lead to anger directed at the infant in the form of aggression, including physical aggression.52 Infant abuse may lead to death or a variety of injuries. Research indicates that infant crying is a major trigger of infant abuse. One may object that drawing the connection between infant crying and infant abuse amounts to blaming the victim. With respect to infant abuse, it is important to note that infant behavior is not the most predictive variable. Babies who cry frequently may be gently cared for, while others who cry less frequently may be abused. I will summarize the evidence that infant cries may trigger abusive episodes, but then I will also indicate the more-significant predictors of infant abuse, which are the predispositions and circumstances of the abusers rather than the abused. The causes of abuse lie in the abuser. If infant crying is a trigger for abuse, then instances of infant abuse should trace along a curve similar to the normal crying curve. Studies of reported instances of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) have revealed this result.53 Previously, crying as a trigger for SBS was widely assumed due to anecdotal evidence and its intuitive reasonableness, but these studies indicate a parallel between the well-defined normal crying curve. However, the SBS curve peaks at 9–12 weeks rather than 6–8 weeks like the crying curve. Since as many as 70% of diagnosed SBS cases have experienced episodes previous to the diagnosis, the delay in the SBS curve may reflect delays in diagnosis. Additionally, almost one-third of cases are not diag51. Peter Conn, Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) 27–28; Konnor, Evolution of Childhood, 445–47. 52. Hung-Chi Lin and Robert McFattter, “Empathy and Distress: Two Distinct but Related Emotions in Response to Infant Crying,” Infant Behavior and Development 35 (2012) 887–97. 53.  Ronald G. Barr et al., “Age-Related Incidence Curve of Hospitalized Shaken Baby Syndrome Cases: Convergent Evidence for Crying as a Trigger to Shaking,” Child Abuse and Neglect 30 (2006) 7–16; Cynthia Lee et al., “Age-Related Incidence of Publicly Reported Shaken Baby Syndrome Cases: Is Crying a Trigger for Shaking?” Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 28 (2007) 288–93; I. Talvik et al., “Shaken Baby Syndrome and a Baby’s Cry,” Acta Pediatrica 97 (2008) 282–85.

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nosed the first time they appear in the emergency room. Since those who shake their babies tend to do so repeatedly, the delay may be the result of multiple prior shakings, adding up to clinical symptoms. Although the identification of SBS has been controversial in legal contexts, physicians accept that shaking is one of several causes of abusive head trauma.54 The Period of PURPLE Crying program originated with the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome and Ronald Barr, who found relationships between infant crying and abusive head trauma and implemented the program to prevent infant abuse and help parents cope with infant cries.55 The frustration that caregivers experience as a result of infant crying appears often in literature, lullabies, and parenting blogs. Abundant scientific evidence confirms that infant weeping creates distress in care­ givers, but not all crying is equal in this regard.56 Crying may be soothable or unsoothable, and crying bouts may be more or less prolonged. Unsoothable crying is especially frustrating to caregivers, especially when it is prolonged.57 Since there are no discernible acoustic differences between unsoothable and other crying, it is the prolonged and inconsolable qualities of this crying that most frustrate caregivers who feel out of control.58 This crying leaves mothers feeling helpless, guilty, and incompetent.59 Although all infant crying induces distress, this distress often motivates empathetic caregiving. But as infant cries are prolonged and unresponsive to caregiving, the distress can lead to more selfish and less baby-oriented behavior, including abuse. 54.  On the medical consensus surrounding SBS, see the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Understanding Abusive Head Trauma in Infants and Children: Answers from America’s Pediatricians,” (2015) and the extensive documentation cited online at https://www2.aap .org/sections/childabuseneglect/PDFs/Understanding_AHT_Infants_and_Children.pdf. In legal contexts, the issue is sometimes whether the cause of trauma was intentional and sometimes whether prosecutors have relied on overly simplistic diagnostic criteria. See Robert  M. Reece, “Controversies in Shaken Baby/Shaken Impact Syndrome,” in The Shaken Baby Sundrome: A Multidisciplinary Approach (ed. Vincent J. Palusci and Stephen Lazoritz; Binghamton, NY: Haworth, 2001; repr. New York: Routledge, 2012) 367–88; Stefan Timmermans, Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) esp. pp. 113–56; Deborah Tuerkheimer, Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Sundrome and the Inertia of Injustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Several homocide convictions based on SBS testimony have been overturned. 55. purplecrying.info. 56. Takeo Fujiwara et al., “Infant Distress at Five Weeks of Age and Caregiver Frustration,” The Journal of Pediatrics 159 (2011) 425–30. 57.  Ibid., 428. 58.  Ibid.; Ian St. James-Roberts, S. Conroy, and K. Wilsher, “Bases for Maternal Perceptions of Infant Crying and Colic Behavior,” Archives of Disease in Childhood 75 (1996) 375–84. 59.  Ibid., 383.

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Although infant cries may precipitate infant abuse, infants cannot be blamed for their suffering. Abuse is the fault of the abuser, and the most important predictors of infant abuse lie in the abusers, not the infants. Factors that predispose adults to abuse infants include cognitive ideas about children and crying, inability to inhibit aggression, poor problem-solving skills, poor parenting skills, and social isolation. Parents who abuse their children are more likely to attribute malicious intent to their child’s behavior and imagine that their child misbehaves on purpose in order to annoy or manipulate the parent. These attributions correlate with unrealistic expectations about what children are or can be.60 For example, six-week-old infants are not capable of deceptive crying for the purpose of manipulation, but abusive parents may imagine that they are. Some interpretations of the Christian doctrine of original sin have been implicated in attitudes toward children that facilitate abuse. One Christian parent stated: “When the baby comes out of the womb, it wants what it wants, and it wants it now. And if it doesn’t get it, it’s going to start crying. That’s nothing but sin.”61 Many Christian parenting manuals advocate similar attitudes concerning the sinfulness of infants.62 Abusive parents may be less able to inhibit their aggression toward children in part due to aggressive interactions in their families of origin. People who experienced physical punishment (e.g., spanking) as children tend to endorse physical punishment as an acceptable parenting practice.63 The cognitive parenting scripts that these people develop inhibit their overall parenting skills because it reduces the range of parenting strategies they perceive. Challenging child behavior, such as inconsolable infant crying elevate distress and challenge a parent’s ability to cope with stress, and the poorer problem-solving skills of abusive parents combined with attributing blame to the child make aggressive responses more likely. Parents who abuse experience lower levels of social support, greater social isolation, and more negative interactions with the family and friends that they 60. Alexandra C. Seng and Ronald J. Prinz, “Parents Who Abuse: What Are They Thinking?” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 11 (2008) 163–75, esp. pp. 164–65. 61. Janet Heimlich, Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2011) 99. 62.  Ibid., 99–110. Several parents who killed their adoptive children were found to be employing abusive parenting techniques advocated by Michael Pearl and Debi Pearl, To Train Up a Child (Pleasantville, TN: No Greater Joy Ministries, 1994). The title is taken from Prov 22:6. 63.  Murray A. Straus, The Primordial Violence: Spanking Children, Psychological Development, Violence, and Crime (New York: Routledge, 2014). Straus summarizes the extensive research documenting the wide variety of negative effects that spanking has on children. A majority of parents in the United States spank their children, often beginning within the first year of the child’s life.

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do have.64 This point coheres with the wider insight that humans are cooperative breeders, and infanticide is more likely when resources, including social support are lacking. Infant crying behavior appears to have evolved because it helped elicit adult caregiving, but it can have the opposite effect.

Conclusion Infant cries create stress in adult hearers that typically motivate caregiving. Both mothers and fathers are primed to feel more sympathy for infants who cry than nonparents, and this evidently facilitates caregiving responses to infant cries.65 Even parents, however, are not perfectly reliable caretakers and may abuse their infants, often in response to infant cries. Frustrated parents are advised to secure their fed and diapered infants in a crib or in the care of another person, walk away, and engage in another activity in order to calm down and reduce the risk of harming the baby.66 The ancient texts analyzed in the following chapters provide some evidence of how ancient parents in diverse circumstances responded to infant cries. The scientific evidence regarding infant crying provides a theory through which the literary motif may be fruitfully analyzed. Infant crying behavior occurs in the context of the infant-caregiver relationship described by attachment theory. In literary manifestations of infant cries, the crying behavior may not appear in isolation but in the context of other attachment behaviors that collectively elicit adult caregiving. Similarly, the impact of cries on those who hear them may provoke either caregiving or hostile responses, or these reactions may appear together, reflecting caregiver ambivalence (e.g., the Akkadian incantations). Since literature reflects life, the literary motif of infant crying may occur in a larger context, reflecting attachment relationships that provide the necessary context for understanding the impact of the weeping on characters and the reader. 64.  Seng and Prinz, “Parents Who Abuse,” 168–72. 65.  Rilling, “Neural and Hormonal Bases of Human Parental Care,” 736–38; Helen P. Crowe and Philip Sanford Zeskind, “Psychophysiological and Perceptual Responses to Infant Cries Varying in Pitch: Comparison of Adults with Low and High Scores on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory,” Child Abuse and Neglect 16 (1992) 19–29. 66. Grace Evanoo, “Infant Crying: A Clinical Conundrum,” Journal of Pediatric Health Care 21 (2007) 333–38.

Chapter 2 Infant Crying in Mesopotamia As documented in chap. 1, the primary effect of infant cries on those who hear them is stress. Ancient Mesopotamian magicians employed incantations to soothe crying babies and get them to sleep, and their incantations provide insight into the impact of infant cries on ancient households as well as caregiver responses. The incantations have been collected and edited by Walter Farber.1 Although some examples appear in anthologies of Akkadian literature, these fascinating texts have remained largely unstudied by scholars. Since the claim that these incantations originated in the lullaby traditon has been controversial, we will first examine lullabies. A cross-cultural analysis of lullabies can support the theory that the incantations originated in the lullaby tradition. The expression of hostility toward the crying infant that appears in the incantations also appears in many lullaby traditions, and the science of infant crying and caregiver stress explains why this happens. Second, in this chapter I provide the text of the incantations for soothing babies with a brief commentary on each text and observations about general patterns. A concordance of the texts appears at the end of the volume. Third, I will examine the motif of noise and disturbance in mythic narratives, which illustrate the seriousness of the baby’s crying and imply the harm that may result from it. Fourth, a conclusion will draw together the patterns within the incantations and narratives in an effort better to understand infant crying in the incantations.

The Magic of Music Do these magical incantations, some of which include brief rituals, actually work? One may suppose that they worked about as well as lul1. W. Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schalf! Mesopotamische Baby-Beschwörungen und -Rituale (MC 2; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989).

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Infant Crying in Mesopotamia

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labies, which is to say that they worked, but not perfectly. As noted on pp. 14–15 above, infants cry according to a fixed pattern that researchers call the normal crying curve. Not even the best parenting can flatten this curve. However, even though the pattern of increased crying over the first couple of months may persist, the frequency and duration of crying episodes may vary based in part on parental behaviors. For example, in cultures where infants are constantly carried, infants cry less than in cultures where they are more physically separated from caregivers. This difference may be explained in part by the power of touch to calm babies. Infant-directed speech, or “motherese,” can also calm crying babies. The term motherese implies that only mothers modify their speech when talking to infants, but fathers and adults who are not parents change their speech patterns in similar ways. Consequently, researchers prefer the term infant-directed speech. The incantations to soothe crying babies appear to qualify as infant-directed speech because the texts typically address the baby directly, and associated rituals involve contact with the baby. The texts do not supply much information about the performance aspects of the incantations and rituals, but the spoken discourse was probably modified as infant-directed speech or may have been performed as music rather than speech. This assumption is grounded partly in evidence about how babies may be soothed through speech and partly in the poetic quality and stated purpose of the texts themselves. The Akkadian incantations have long been discussed in connection with lullabies, but scholars have not yet seriously engaged with scientific research on infants or cross-cultural research on lullabies. Farber notes the poetic structure of the incantations, which he thinks strongly implies musical performance of texts that originated as lullabies.2 Across cultures and through history, lullabies have been developed and transmitted by women within the context of child care, and they have not been regarded as important cultural products to be elevated to canonical status as “longduration texts” committed to writing.3 Instead, lullabies have long been 2.  Idem, “Magic at the Cradle: Babylonian and Assyrian Lullabies,” Anthropos 85 (1990) 139–48. 3.  See David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); idem, Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Some Sumerian lullabies appear to have been preserved in writing, but these appear to be scribal exercises related to royal babies. See Samuel N. Kramer, “u5-a a-u5-a: A Sumerian Lullaby,” in Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra (ed. A. Giuffrè; Milan: Universitá di Roma, 1971) 191–201; Margaret Jacques, “Two Lullabies,” in He Has Opened Nisaba’s House of Learning: Studies in Honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg (ed. L. Sassmannhausen; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 61–72.

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“submerged texts” or works that are not recorded and preserved.4 For example, ancient Greek literature refers to mothers singing lullabies to their babies, but no lullabies have survived.5 The lullaby text-type never faded; the lullaby tradition has continued in Greek to the present day. However, all the specific texts performed before the modern era are lost. The same phenomenon appears in other written cultures. As the compositions of often illiterate women handed down through oral tradition for the specific purpose of soothing babies within the domestic sphere, lullabies have generally remained submerged literature. Indeed, Farber’s association between the baby incantations and lullabies may partly explain why these texts have received so little scholarly attention. Some scholars have elevated the importance of these texts by dissociating them from lullabies. Karel van der Toorn insists that these texts are part of the professional lore of the a­̄šipu, or magical expert, often translated as ‘exorcist’, and that they are separate from lullabies.6 Geller also differentiates these incantations from lullabies for two reasons: first, lullabies often do not soothe babies with colic; second, the lullaby explanation fails to account for the hostility expressed in the incantations.7 However, we have seen above that diagnosis of “colic” is grounded in an arbitrary rule and is not well supported by the evidence. More importantly, research on infants shows that many aspects of lullabies can be effective at calming babies. In any case, there is no reason to expect, as Geller evidently does, that the magical spells were more effective than lullabies. Regarding his second objection, even casual research on lullabies reveals that hostility toward infants is common in lullaby traditions across cultures, as one might expect, given the documented effects of infant cries on adult hearers (i.e., stress). Thus, the lullaby explanation accounts for the expressions of hostility. Nevertheless, one might surmise that an expert 4.  On submerged literature, see Giulio Colesanti and Manuela Giordano (eds.), Submerged Literature in Greek Culture: An Introduction (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014). The conclusion by contributing authors is (p. 178): “The concept of submerged literature embraces several manifestations of verbal art which share the common trait of having always been, or having at some stage become, marginal in the dynamics of textual circulation, conservation, and transmission.” 5. Giulio Colesanti, “Two Cases of Submerged Monodic Lyric: Sympotic Poetry and Lullabies,” in ibid., 90–106, esp. pp. 102–6. 6. Karel van der Toorn, “Magic at the Cradle: A Reassessment,” in Mesopotamian Magic (ed. Tzvi Abusch and Karel van der Toorn; Groningen: Styx, 1999) 139–47, esp. pp. 139–40. 7.  Markham J. Geller, “Magic and Mesopotamia: How the Magic Works,” Folklore 108 (1997) 1–7, esp. pp. 4–5. Geller’s article correctly points to the psychological functions of magical practices but unfortunately relies too heavily on outmoded Freudian theories rather than contemporary psychological research.

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would not be summoned simply to sing a lullaby, which anyone could have done. Rather, Mesopotamian parents would likely have understood the interventions of the a­̄šipu as being especially skilled and endowed with the power of the gods as distinct from the lullabies composed by women (not gods) and performed on a daily basis. Indeed, while lullabies tend to be “anonymous” in the sense that their authorship is unknown, incantations are frequently attributed to specific deities. However, the distinction between lullabies (that anyone could sing) and incantations (that only experts could properly perform) does not necessarily mean that the magical tradition developed entirely independently of the lullaby tradition. Given the empirical support for the effectiveness of lullabies for soothing babies, it seems highly likely that magical specialists seeking to quiet babies would more or less have had to use lullaby-like incantations. The effectiveness of lullabies may explain why caregivers (typically women) across cultures sing lullabies. A universal cultural practice probably has a biological basis and an evolutionary history. Scientists have lately investigated the natural history of lullabies specifically and music more generally.8 The present discussion will focus on the power of the human voice and music to soothe babies. However, caregivers often sing lullabies while holding babies, rocking them, looking into their eyes, trying to distract them with various stimuli, or some combination of the above. All of these techniques can help quiet a crying baby, and the incantations investigated below appear to resemble lullabies and often occur in a ritual context involving touching the baby. It is not clear whether the babies would have been in a cradle or held in the arms of a caregiver or exorcist. The texts also do not clarify the age of the babies involved, but since babies cry most in the first few months, most targets for these rituals would likely have been newborns. Modern parents seek help with crying babies precisely when babies cry the most: the first few months. Older babies cry less, and near the end of the first year babies become anxious in the presence of strangers; a visit from an exorcist at this age would probably have provoked cries rather than ameliorated them. In short, Farber is probably correct that the incantations developed from the lullaby tradition, but his claim in no way denigrates the incantations, as van der Toorn and Geller appear to imagine. In particular, 8. Robin Panneton Cooper et al., “The Development of Infants’ Preference for Motherese,” Infant Behavior and Development 20 (1997) 477–488; Laurel J. Trainor et al., “The Acoustic Basis of Preferences for Infant-Directed Singing,” Infant Behavior and Development 20 (1997) 383–96; Takayuki Nikat and Sandra E. Trehub, “Infants’ Responsiveness to Maternal Speech and Singing,” Infant Behavior and Development 27 (2004) 455–64.

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van der Toorn says, “To say that our incantation was originally just a folksong is mere speculation based on an impressionistic reading.”9 The word “just” also appears when he says the text “is not just a lullaby.”10 The relationship (if any) between lullabies and baby incantations can only be a matter of speculation, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that Farber’s speculation has much to recommend it. The following discussion will add substance to Farber’s conjecture. Across cultures, people speak differently when addressing infants rather than adults. Specifically, infant-directed speech has a more musical quality, with a more pronounced rhythm and melody. Speakers elevate the fundamental frequency (pitch) of their voices, vary their pitch more widely and frequently, and often repeat themselves. Also, “speech to infants is peppered with arousing exclamations (Wow!) and non-vocal (e.g., handclapping, finger snapping) or non-verbal (e.g., clicks) sounds.”11 It also involves exaggerated facial expressions. Singing to infants is as universal as “motherese,” and infants significantly prefer singing to speech.12 As with speech, researchers have examined infant-directed singing compared with non-infant-directed singing. Singing directed at infants sounds different to both infants and adult listeners. Compared with singing in the absence of an infant, mothers sing for their infants at a higher pitch. Adults rate this infant-directed singing as more emotionally engaging and it includes more jitter and shimmer, which are associated with emotional intensity. Jitter and shimmer refer to the variation of frequency (pitch) and amplitude (volume) over the smallest period of time (a single wave period).13 Research on singing to infants indicates a distinction between play songs and lullabies, which have acoustical differences that correspond to differences in the effect on the infant. Play songs are stimulating and focus infant attention outward, while lullabies are relaxing and focus attention inward.14 Given the purpose of baby incantations, they would likely have been performed like lullabies, meaning the accentual stress would not have been exaggerated, and the performance would not have been as rhythmical as an arousing play song. Scholars have identified three major functions of 9.  Van der Toorn, “Magic at the Cradle,” 140. 10.  Ibid., 139. 11.  Nikat and Trehub, “Infants’ Responsiveness,” 457. 12.  Ibid. 13.  Trainor, “Acoustic Basis,” 388, 392–93. 14.  Adrienne M. L. Rock et al., “Distinctive Messages in Infant-Directed Lullabies and Play Songs,” Developmental Psychology 35 (1999) 527–34; Shannon M. de l’Etoile, “Infant Behavioral Responses to Infant-Directed Singing and Other Maternal Behaviors,” Infant Behavior and Development 29 (2006) 456–70.

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infant-directed speech and music: to focus attention, to communicate and regulate emotion, and to convey linguistic structure.15 The last purpose is more characteristic of speech, and the first two of music. The idea that in infant-directed singing, the melody is the message has become widely accepted because music communicates emotion in a direct and powerful way, independent of the meaning of the lyrics. Singing to infants involves the co-regulation of affect, in that the singer uses music to soothe or arouse the infant into a new emotional state, or matches the singing to suit the emotional state of the infant. Infants make important contributions to the singing directed at them through their behavioral responses. The value of music for emotional regulation has led to the use of musical therapy in neonatal intensive care units and other medical contexts. This therapeutic use of music may mirror the widespread use of music in magical contexts, probably including the Mesopotamian baby incantations.16 Due to the universality of infant cries and adult stress, lullabies often seek to soothe the baby through music, even while expressing the adult’s frustration in words. As we shall see, this phenomenon is well attested in the baby incantations. Lullabies (like the Akkadian incantations below) manifest adult care for babies and the desire to calm and soothe crying infants. However, since infant cries produce stress, lullabies often express adult frustration with infant crying and hostility toward the baby. Aggression toward the baby may be found in several lullaby traditions, including English, Ukrainian, and Japanese.17 I will here focus on Spanishlanguage lullabies because they have been relatively more-fully studied, due in part to an essay on lullabies by the famous Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.18 He observes the sadness of some lullaby melodies and lyrics and wonders: 15. Laurel J. Trainor, “Infant Preferences for Infant-Directed versus Non-InfantDirected Playsongs and Lullabies,” Infant Behavior and Development 19 (1996) 83–92, esp. pp. 83–84; Cooper at al., “Development of Infants’ Preference for Motherese,” 477. 16. Yoshihiko Igekami, “The Lullaby as Magic: A Textual Analysis of Traditional Japanese Children’s Songs,” in The Oral and the Literate in Music (Tokyo: Academic Press, 1986) 96–109; Trainor, “Infant Preferences,” 84; Sandra E. Trehub and Laurel J. Trainor, “Singing to Infants: Lullabies and Play Songs,” in Advances in Infancy Research (ed. Carolyn RoveeCollier et al.; Stamford, CT: Ablex, 1998) 12.45–75, esp. pp. 50–54. 17.  Robert B. Klymasz, “Social and Cultural Motifs in Canadian Ukrainian Lullabies,” The Slavic and East European Journal 12 (1968) 176–83; Erick Eiichi Masuyama, “Desire and Discontent in Japanese Lullabies,” Western Folklore 48 (1989) 144–48. For further bibliography and cross-cultural analysis of lullabies, see Lauren R. Castro, When the Cradle Falls: The Secrets, Subversion, and Sentimentality of Lullabies (Senior Project, California Polytechnic State University, San Louis Obispo, 2013), http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/musp/49/. 18. Federico García Lorca, “Canciones de cuna españoles,” in Obras completas (ed. Miguel García-Posada; Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 1996) 3.113–31.

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Chapter 2 Why are the songs most bloody and least suitable for their delicate sensibility reserved for lulling children to sleep (para llamar al sueño del niño)? We should not forget that the lullaby (la canción de cuna) was invented (and its texts express it) by the poor women whose children are for them a burden, a heavy cross (una carga, una cruz pesada) which they are many times unable to bear. Each child, in place of being a joy is a sorrow (pesadumbre), and, of course, they can’t help but sing, even in the midst of their love, about their dissatisfaction with life. There are exact examples of this attitude, of this resentment against the child (resentimiento contra el niño) who, though desired (queriendo) by the mother, has arrived when it ought not to have arrived in that manner. In Asturia, they sing this in the city of Navia: This boy who clings to my neck is from a lover called Vitorio, May God who gave him [the boy] to me, take me [with Him] so that I no longer have to carry Vitorio clinging to my neck. And the melody with which it is sung is in keeping with the miserable sadness (la tristeza miserable) of the lyrics.19

The mother singing this lullaby expresses the wish that she would die so that she might be relieved of the burden of her illegitimate child. García Lorca continues to make observations about the purpose and methods of lullabies that should inform scholarship on Akkadian incantations and their relation to lullabies: . . . two rhythms are needed: the physical rhythm of the cradle or chair and the intellectual rhythm of the melody. The mother weaves these two rhythms, for the body and for the ear, with distinct meters and rests, combining them until she obtains the exact tune to enchant the child (el tono justo que encanta al niño).20 Some ancient incantations have no words, and therefore are not part of this study. However, wordless songs are common to magic and lullabies: 19.  Ibid., 116–17. I am indebted to Daniel García-Donoso for help with translating the Asturian lullaby. 20.  Ibid., 118.

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It is not at all important that the song have words (texto). Sleep comes with rhythm alone and the vibration of the voice over that rhythm. The perfect lullaby (la canción de cuna perfecta) would be the repetition of two notes between themselves, lengthening its duration and effects. But no mother wants to be a snake charmer (fascinadora de serpientes), although fundamentally she employs the same technique (técnica).21 This observation accords with scientific research and common sense: an infant who does not understand language does not depend on the lyrics of the lullaby. Indeed, lullabies can describe hostility toward the child in part because the child does not understand the words. However, many lullabies continue to be sung to children well after they have outgrown infancy and can understand the lyrics, and older siblings understand the lullabies sung to infants. The resentment expressed toward the child that García Lorca notes in the lullaby in which the mother wishes her baby dead appears in many other forms. Sometimes the mother may have other tasks to attend to, and the crying baby is an unwelcome distraction: Let us not forget that the fundamental purpose of the lullaby (la nana) is to get a child to sleep who is not sleepy (dormir al niño que no tiene sueño). They are songs for the day and hour when the child wants to play. In Tamames they sing: Duérmete, mi niño, que tengo que hacer, lavarte la ropa, ponerme a coser.

Sleep, my child, I have things to do, wash the clothes, set myself to sew.

And at times, the mother conducts a real battle that ends with lashes, crying, and ultimately sleep (una verdera batalla que termina con azotes, llantos y sueño al fin).22 Or she herself may desire sleep: Tengo seuño, tengo sueño, tengo ganas de dormir. Un ojo tengo cerrado, otro ojo a medio abrir.23

21.  Ibid. 22.  Ibid., 118–19. 23.  Ibid., 123.

I’m tired, I’m tired, I want to go to sleep. One eye I have closed, the other eye half open.

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In the Spanish lullaby tradition, resentment against the child also finds expression in the coco or cuco of Spanish lullabies.24 The coco appears throughout the Spanish-speaking world and represents a supernatural threat to the safety of the baby that can be avoided if the child stops crying and sleeps. Its disciplinary function continues as children grow older, and it resembles the boogeyman familiar to English-speakers. As we shall see, the Akkadian incantations include a similar threat; they frequently express the annoyance of adults and supernatural agents at the baby’s cries. The powerful magic of the coco (La fuerza mágica del Coco) is precisely its vagueness (desdibujo). It is never able to appear but hangs around the home. And its charm (delicioso) is that it continues vague to everyone. One is dealing with a poetic abstraction and, for this, the fear that it creates is a cosmic fear, a fear that the senses are not able to place saving limits on, objective walls to defend us—in the midst of danger—from other greater dangers, because they have no possible explanation.25 García Lorca does not provide examples of the coco/cuco in lullabies, but these abound. Several examples appear in a corpus of Puerto Rican lullabies:26 Duérmete, nene, que viene el Cuco y te saca los ojos si lloras mucho.27

Sleep, child, for the cuco is coming and it takes out your eyes if you cry a lot.

Duérmete, mi chiquito que viene el cuco y se come a los niños que lloran mucho.28

Sleep, my boy, for the cuco is coming and it eats the children who cry a lot.

Duérmete, nene, que el coco viene,

Sleep, child, for the coco is coming,

24.  Cuco is a common Latin American variant that differentiates cuco from coco (coconut). 25.  Ibid., 119. 26.  Marcelino J. Canino Salgado, La canción de cuna en la tradición de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1970). In the first four appendixes, Canino Salgado provides Puerto Rican lullabies collected by himself and several previous researchers. These lullabies total 200 examples, although there is some overlap (variant forms of a given lullaby). He also reprints within his text (pp. 25–30) the 41 Spanish lullabies from Francisco Rodriguez Marín, Cantos populares españoles (Seville: Álvarez, 1882) 1.3–9. 27.  Canino Salgado, Canción de cuna, 79 (collected by Canino Salgado). 28.  Ibid., 91 (collected by María Cadilla de Martínez).

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia y se come a los niños que no se duermen.29

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and it eats the children who are not sleeping.

The Puerto Rican lullabies include ample examples of hostility toward the baby that find expression without mention of the cuco: Si son los bebés buenos y juiciosos, los papás les compran juguetes preciosos. Mas si son traviesos, merecen azotes en lugar de besos.30

If babies are good and sensible, fathers buy them lovely toys. But if they are naughty, they deserve lashes in place of kisses.

Duérmase este niño que ahí viene el toro, con los cuernos de plata y la cola de oro.31

Sleep, child, for here comes the bull, with horns of silver and a tail of gold.

Angelitos del cielo vienen volando a llevarse a este niño que está llorando.32

Angels from heaven come flying to take away this child who is crying.

One interesting lullaby from Spain presents the relationship between singing mother and crying baby as a battle. It uses the same image and term (batalla) employed in García Lorca’s description of the mother’s battle with a non-sleepy infant: Duerme, niño chiquito, duérmete y calla: no le das a tu madre tanta batalla.33

Sleep, little boy, sleep and shut up: don’t put up such a battle with your mother.

The Spanish-language lullaby tradition includes ample expressions of hostility toward the baby who is addressed in the lullaby. This anger finds expression in the alleged disturbance of supernatural agents and indications of the parent’s frustration. The same phenomena appear in the Akkadian incantations. One lullaby quoted by García Lorca specifically mentions the 29.  Ibid., 102 (collected by Mason). 30.  Ibid., 91. 31.  Ibid., 41. 32.  Ibid., 91. 33.  Ibid., 30 (collected by María Cadilla de Martínez).

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mother’s need to do chores, and a variant of it appears in Puerto Rico.34 An Akkadian incantation also references the mother’s need to do chores, and one stressful aspect of a baby’s crying and refusal to sleep is the lost opportunity to complete household tasks. The cries of the baby and the frustrated responses of the caregivers and others appears in lullabies across cultures and in the Akkadian incantations. Consequently, Farber’s suggestion that there is a connection between lullabies and incantations appears likely. Furthermore, García Lorca reminds us that lullabies are magical, that they enchant the infant, and that a mother resembles a snake charmer. Magical experts developing rituals to calm crying babies probably borrowed techniques, motifs, and whole texts from women who themselves received and elaborated lullaby traditions from their mothers. After the borrowing, any observable similarities between incantations and lullabies could have been reanalyzed as women borrowing texts from rituals that they had witnessed. The “anonymous” nature of lullabies (i.e., their authorship becomes forgotten) would have facilitated this process; since lullabies have no known author, they may, like the incantations, have come from the gods. Furthermore, lullabies themselves sometimes identify their power. I return to the Spanish-language tradition: A los niños que duermen Dios los bendice y a las madres que cantan Dios las asiste.35

Children who sleep God blesses and mothers who sing God helps.

This lullaby claims supernatural assistance and indicates the magical power of music. Some incantations similarly reflect on their own potency. The Akkadian incantations below probably developed from a lullaby tradition but seem to have developed from a specific part of this tradition. The incantations all share striking similarities, but it is hard to imagine that any lullaby tradition could have been so limited. I suspect that the magicians who first developed these rituals borrowed from the relatively narrow range of lullabies that reflected animosity toward the baby due to the noise of its crying (comparable to the coco tradition in Spanish lullabies, which reflect a small fraction of the total tradition).36 They may have selected this tra34.  Ibid., 101. 35.  Ibid., 92. 36. Of the 241 lullabies examined (41 from Spain, 200 from Puerto Rico), only 7 mention the coco (and one mentions the Moorish woman as a comparable boogey-man figure). Another 9 clearly express hostility toward the baby. In all, about 6% of the corpus of

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dition because it fit their theories about the causes and potential consequences of infant cries. These cries disturbed the household deities, who might retaliate by leaving the infant unprotected from demonic attack. As we shall see, these motifs also cohere within Mesopotamian mythology, which may have been a further motive to borrow from this strand of the lullaby tradition. Despite the objections of some scholars, Farber’s proposed connection between lullabies and incantations has much to recommend it. The above analysis allows a more specific speculation: that incantations developed from a particular strand of the lullaby tradition, which expressed anger toward the baby. Consequently, the incantation texts that have survived provide some insight into the submerged lullaby tradition from which they evidently evolved.

Crying in Mesopotamian Incantations In this section, we will examine the incantations for soothing babies that serve as the corpus for this study. The following analysis will examine the patterns of crying and its effects on hearers, especially the typical connection between crying babies and distressed hearers. In the following section, we will place this motif from the incantations in the larger context of Mesopotamian myth. The tradition of Mesopotamian incantations shows significant variation within fixed parameters. Certain themes appear in almost all examples in an established order, and many express these themes through the same or similar words. However, the corpus is not monolithic, and the texts sometimes evince unique methods of achieving the standard form. Farber enumerates six themes, indicated by Roman numerals as indicated below: I. Introduction: the opening alludes to the baby’s presence in    the darkness in the womb II. Birth: the incantations often reflect on the baby’s birth III. Disturbance: the motive for the incantation is stated IV. Remedy: the solution to the disturbance is described V. Success: the effectiveness of the remedy is imagined VI. Conclusion: a formula typical of incantations generally All of these themes can be seen in the following Neo-Assyrian incantation (see #32 below):

Spanish-language lullabies articulate hostility toward the baby. Additional lullabies might be counted as expressing hostility, but the total would not rise above 10%.

34

Chapter 2 (I) The one who dwelt in darkness where no light shone, (II) he has come out and has seen the sunlight. (III) Why does he scream so his mother cries, and the tears of Antu in heaven stream? “Who is this who makes such noise on earth? (IV) If it is a dog, someone give it food, if it is a bird, someone throw a clod at it, if it is a mischievous human child, let someone cast the spell of Anu and Antu over him. (V) Let his father lie down to get the rest of his sleep, Let his mother, who has her chores to do, get her chores done.” (VI) The spell is not mine, it is a spell of Ea and Asalluhi, a spell of Damu and Gula, a spell of Ningirimma, mistress of spells. They said it to me, I repeated it.

The conclusion (VI) claims divine origins and inspiration for the incantation. It comes from the gods and not from the exorcist himself. The passage from the darkness of the womb to seeing the light (I and II) quickly introduces the incantation. The bulk of this incantation concerns the disturbance (III) and the remedy (IV). The baby is crying, and the noise is so frustrating that his mother is crying, and even the goddess Antu sheds tears. These tears might be motivated by empathy for the baby, frustration at the noise, or both. Antu’s speech provides analogies that indicate both a caregiving response to noise (giving food to a barking dog) and an aggressive response (throwing a clod at a noisy bird). In the example of casting a spell over the baby, the spell might be seen as analogous to the food offered to the dog or to the clod thrown at the bird. The ambiguous quality of the spell may be a deliberate strategy to express the ambivalence of the mother’s reaction to her baby’s cries: she wants to help the baby but also feels angry about the baby’s crying and refusal to be comforted. Antu’s speech imagines the spell as effective (V), and the baby’s silence allows additional insight into the disturbance: the father can sleep, and the mother can get her chores done. Of the texts in Farber’s work, some are incantations for soothing babies. Others are intended to ward off evil from pregnant women and babies. Some are relatively complete, others too fragmentary for any kind of analysis. I have limited the corpus of texts for this study to the incantations intended to soothe babies that are sufficiently complete for some analysis. However, I have briefly noted the other texts in order to provide a sense of the context for the baby incantations under study, since the ancient

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia

35

scribes included them together, and this context may be significant for understanding the baby incantations. This context suggests that the cries of babies were understood as symptoms of supernatural attack, or that the protective spirits might abandon the baby to such an attack to escape the stress of the infant’s cries. Infant crying is a symptom in Mesopotamian diagnostic texts texts, and “it is regularly the crying of the infant which indicates the presence of Lamaštu,” the most infamous child-snatching demon.37 Incantations for crying babies and incantations against Lamaštu overlap when the crying is understood as symptomatic of demonic threat.38 Each text is presented in transliterated Akkadian followed by a translation.39 For the Neo-Assyrian texts, Farber provides line numbers based on the position of the line on a larger tablet collection. Each text retains Farber’s designation so that the reader can easily locate any passage in Farber’s edition. (See Farber for detailed notes and full accounting of textual variants.) Brief remarks follow each incantation. A more holistic discussion of patterns across the corpus concludes the presentation. Vorl. 1 (Old Babylonian) ṣe-eḫ-ru-um wa-ši-ib bi-it ek-[le-tim] lu ta-ta-ṣa-am ta-ta-ma-ar n[u-ur dŠamšim] a-mi-in ta-ba-ki a-mi-in tu-g[a-ag] ul-li-ki-a a-mi-in la ta-ab-[ki] i-lí bi-tim te-ed-ki ku-sa-ri-[k]u-u[m] ig-gi-il-tim40 ma-nu-um id-ki-a-ni ma-nu-um ú-ga-li-ta-ni ṣe-eḫ-ru-um id-ki-ka ṣe-eḫ-ru-um ú-ga-li-it-ka ki-ma ša-tu-ù ka-ra-ni-im ki-ma ma-ar sà-bi-tim li-im-qù-ta-šum ši-tum —————————— ši-ip-tum ša ṣe-eḫ-ri-im nu-úḫ-ḫi-im

(5)

(10)

Baby, who has dwelt in the house of darkness, you have now emerged and seen the light of the sun. Why do you cry? Why do you scream? In there, why did you not cry? (5) The household 37.  Frans A. M. Wiggermann, “Lamaštu, Daughter of Anu: A Profile” in Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (Groningen: Styx, 2000) 217–52, esp. p. 237. On Lamaštu, see also W. Farber, Lamaštu: An Edition of the Canonical Series of Lamaštu Incantations and Rituals and Related Texts from the Second and First Millennia B.C. (MC 17; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014). 38.  Wiggermann, “Lamaštu,” 237–38; Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! 142–44. 39. Translations are my own but have benefited from Farber’s German translations and notes. 40.  The orthography is unusual for either iggelti (indicative) or iggeltêm (ventive).

36

Chapter 2 god you have awakened, the kusarikkum woke up. “Who awakened me?” “Who disturbed me?” The baby has awakened you, the baby has disturbed you. Like a drunkard, (10) like the son of a barmaid, fall asleep! —————————— Incantation for soothing a baby

The introductory lines employ the image of birth as movement from darkness to light, which appears frequently in the incantations and beyond (cf. Job 3:16, 20; Spanish dar la luz ‘to give birth’). The speaker addresses the baby to inquire about the cause of the crying, especially in light of the baby’s previous silence in the womb. The baby’s crying is described using the verb bakû. The durative tabakki in line 3 suggests the incessant and unsoothable nature of the infant’s crying that requires the incantation, which does not apply to the preterite negative form lā tab[ki] in line 4. Although he acknowledges that it is uncertain, I have followed Farber’s reconstruction of line 3. He proposes that tug[gag] derives from a proposed verb egēgu meaning ‘klagen schreien’, or, ‘to cry plaintively’, which also appears in #5.68 and #32.3.41 Foster renders it ‘fretting’.42 The only entities specifically mentioned as being disturbed by this noise are the household god and the kusarikkum, using the verbs dekû and nagaltû, respectively. Here, dekû has the well-attested sense of rousing from sleep (transitive), and nagaltû of waking up (intransitive). The kusarikkum is a protective deity represented visually as having bovine hindquarters and the human head, arms, and torso. It is associated with Ea in #4.58. Like humans who are subjected to the sound of a crying baby, the kusarikkum is stressed by the unpleasant sound. The verb dekû occurs three times, which strongly emphasizes the problem that the infant cries have created for the household god. Similarly, the verb ugallit (the D-stem of glt ‘to frighten’) forms a wordplay with nagaltû (N-stem of gltʾ ‘to awaken’). Thus, the kusarikkum ‘waking up’ is verbally connected to the baby’s ‘frightening’ the god. The speaker asks the baby to fall asleep like someone overcome by alcohol. Vorl. 2 (Old Babylonian) [a]t-ta-a-ma ṣ[e]-e[ḫ]-ru[m] [w]u-úr-du-um ša a-wi-lu-ú-[tim] 41.  Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! 34, 49, 99–100. 42. Benjamin Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2005) 172.

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia lu-ú ta-at-ta-ṣ[i]-a-am lu-ú ta-ta-mar dutu nu-r[a-am] a[m]-mi-ni i-na li-ib-bi um-[m]a-ka ki-a-am la te-te-ep-pu-uš ki-i ša du-um-qá-am [t]e-pu-šu a-ba-k[a] s[u-qá]-am ša ni-ši um-ma-ka tu-uš-bi-ʾu5 tu-uš-ta-aʾ-di-ir ta-ri-ta-am ta-ad-da-li-ip mu-še-ni-iq-ta-am i-na ri-ig-mi-ka i-li bi-tim ú-ul i-ṣa-al-la-al iš-ta-ar bi-tim ú-ul i-ḫa-az ši-it-tum [m]a-an-na-am lu-uš-pu-ur a-na en-ki-du10 ša-ki-in ša-la-a-aš-ti a-na ma-aṣ-ṣa-ra-tim li-iṣ-ba-as-[s]ú-ú-mi [š]a iṣ-ba-tu-ú maš.dà l[i]-ka-as-sí-[š]ú-mi š [a] ú-ka-as-sú-ú ar-wi-[am] i-[n]a ṣe-e-ri-im li-id-di-i[š-šum] [m]i-e-ḫi-ru-um ši-na-as-s[ú] a-li-ik egir gud.ḫi.a ši-it-ta-šu li-zi-ib-šum a-di um-ma-šu i-de-ku-ú-šu a-a-i(-)ig-ge-el-ti —————————— ka.inim. ma lú.tur ír.šeš4[.a.kam]43

(5)

(10)

(15)

(20)

(25)

You, baby, newborn human, you have now emerged, you have now seen the sun, the light. (5) Why, in the womb of your mother, did you not treat her like this? Instead of treating your father well, allowing your mother to lead a normal life, you have terrified the nanny, (10) you have kept the wet-nurse awake! With your noise the household god is no longer sleeping, sleep does not grab the household goddess. (15) Whom shall I send to Enkidu, who fixed the three night watches, [saying,] “Let him overcome him, (20) the one who overcame the gazelle, 43. Normalized: ̆ siptum ̆ sa ṣuḫarim bākim.

37

38

Chapter 2 let him bind him who bound the gazelle’s kid.” In the open country, let someone he meets give him his sleep, (25) let an ox-driver let him have his sleep. Until his mother wakes him, let him not wake up. —————————— Incantation for a crying baby

This incantation does not use the term bakû (although the Sumerian rubric refers to the baby crying); rather, the baby’s behavior is described as ‘your noise’ (rigmika). The emphasis in the incantation falls on the effect that the infant has on others rather than on the baby’s activity. The infant is ‘doing/making’ (epēšum) problems for his parents and their household, when he should be ‘doing/making’ his father well. The mother is not able to lead a normal life (lit., ‘walk the street of the people’)44 due to the baby, who has terrified (tuštaʾdir) the nanny and is keeping the wet nurse awake (taddalip). The perfect forms present the nanny’s fear and the wet nurse’s sleeplessness as an ongoing result of the infant’s behavior. The effect of the infant’s noise extends to the divine realm, where the household god cannot sleep (ul iṣallal), and the household goddess can’t fall asleep (ul iḫḫaz šittum). Both situations are ongoing problems (durative forms) created by the baby’s incessant noise. The incantation calls for consulting Enkidu for help and imagines the baby falling asleep and remaining asleep until his mother wakes him, in language familiar from Vorl. 1 (dekû, nagaltû). The image of the baby as a gazelle appears frequently in the incantations (cf. ##2, 3, 4, 25, 26, 29, 30, 40). Here, the text speaks of overcoming (ṣabātu) and binding (kasû) the gazelle. The verb ṣabātu has a range of meanings involving seizing and holding, including capturing a wild animal and seizing a person with magic.45 The sense here appears related to the use of magic, and the incantation thereby describes its own effectiveness. Similarly, the verb kasû may refer to binding a person by means of magic.46 In a separate image, the text presents sleepless people as able to give their sleep to the baby. It represent teamsters as sleepless workers who drive oxen through the night and may therefore be able to give the sleep they are missing to the baby who needs it. This inference is consistent with the economic pressures that lead those who deliver merchandise to hasten, even at the expense of sleep. Also, the teamster appears parallel to a 44.  The idiom also appears in incantation #31.24. See Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! 36, 96. 45.  CAD Ṣ 36a (wild animals) and 35b (magic). 46.  CAD K 252a–b.

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traveler who can give sleep to a baby (cf. #4). However, sleepless teamsters must eventually collapse in sleep, and this sleep may be the image invoked in #25, which invites the baby to be like still water and a reclining cattle herder. The vocabulary of sleep and wakefulness pervade the incantation, which identifies the infant’s noise as the cause of widespread sleeplessness and the infant’s sleep as the only possible solution. Incantation #1 . . . [up-p]u-uṭ la da-gil s[u-uk-ku-uk la še-mi] [am-mi-ni] ta šà ama-ka ta-[at-ta-ṣi-ma ta-bak-ki] [am-mi-n]i ina šà ama-ka ḫa-d[u-ú libbū-ka] [ši-man-n]i šèr-ru la-[ku-ú at-ta] [. . .]-na-aḫ ta-rit-ka [. . .] [. . .] ama-ka u [. . .] [. . .] la ṣa-la-la[. . .]

(20)

[beginning broken] Blind one who does not see, deaf one who does not hear, why have you come out of the womb of your mother crying? Why were you in your mother’s womb happy. Listen to me, baby, you are a sucking . . . (20) . . . your nanny . . . . . . your mother . . . . . . cannot sleep. . . . This example is too broken to know much about the original incantation. Farber restores the text based on parallels, and this text is probably reflecting on the contrast between the crying baby and the quiet fetus it once was. The speaker imagines that the baby must be deaf, so it is not disturbed by its cries as everyone else is (see also #29). Like Vorl. 2, it refers to a nanny, a mother, and sleeplessness. If it included a ritual, it is lost. Incantation #2 . . . [ki-ma] a.m[eš] a-gam-[mi lu-ú né-ḫe-e-ta] [l]u-ú ṣa-al-la-ta ki-m[a] a[r-me-i dumu maš.dà] [ki-m]a a.meš pú lu-ú [táq-na-a-ta] [né-e]š ká.gal ù né-re-bi-šá ú-[tam-me-ka] (40) [i-n]a qí-bit de.a dutu ù [dasal.lú.ḫi] [én dd]a-mu ù dgu-la b[e-let ti.la] —————————— [dù.dù.bi qin-ni] sim.mušen šá im.si.sá ta-sa[k ina ì ḫi.ḫi] [én 3-šu a]na šà šid-nu lú.tur š[eš-ma ina-aḫ]

40

Chapter 2 . . . Be still like swamp water, sleep like a baby gazelle, be secure like well water. (40) By the gate and its entrance I bind you! By the command of Ea, Shamash, and Asalluḫi! It is an incantation of Damu and Gula the goddess of health. —————————— Its ritual: The nest of a northern swallow you crush and mix with oil. Recite the incantation three times. In the middle, anoint the baby; then it will be quiet.

Only the end of this incantation survives, where the baby is bid to be like still water and a sleeping gazelle. Then it concludes with divine invocations and the accompanying ritual, which involves touch and specifies that the incantations should be recited three times. The image of still waters re­surfaces in ##3, 25, 26, 30, 31, 40 and normally appears with sleepy gazelles (##3, 25, 26, 30, 40). The term tamû in the D here has the specifically magical sense ‘to adjure’ (cf. Vorl. 2). The ritual involves touching the baby. Incantation #3 én e-dil é ud-du-lu ká na-du-ú ḫar-gul-lim (45) ek-let-a im-lu-ú su-ú-qu a-ba-ka su-qa ša la ti-du-ú tul-ta-aṣ-bit lu ṣal-la-ta ki-ma ar-me-i ša47 maš.dà lu né-ḫe-tá ki-ma a.meš pú né-ḫu-tú a­-lik ár-ki al-pi da-li-pu-te šit-ta-šú lid-din-ka (50) —————————— dù.dù.bi ina é si-bi a-šar ḫu-bu-ru šak-nu ina qul-ti saḫar ina bi-ri-šú-nu ta-šab-bu-uš saḫar kib-si ša sila.4 ta-sàk3 it-ti-šú-nu ana šà ì.giš šub-di-ma én šid-ma ina ì.giš ḫi.ḫi lú.tur šéš-ma ina-a-aḫ (45) Incantation: The house is closed, the door is shut, the ring lock is in place, darkness fills the street. Your father you sent on a street that you do not know. Sleep like a kid, the baby of a gazelle; be still like still cistern water! (50) May the driver of sleepless oxen give you his sleep! —————————— Ritual: In brewery where the barrels stand, in the silence (of the night) you sweep up the dust among them; pound hard-packed 47. Or: dumu (see Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf!).

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia

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earth from a road crossing, mix it in fat, rub it on the baby; then it will be quiet. The beginning of the incantation sets a nighttime scene of a locked house and darkened streets. The father of the house is wandering the dark streets because the baby ‘sent’ the father away, which probably means that the father has left the house to escape the sound of infant cries, although this incantation does not actually use any vocabulary of crying. The speaker implores the baby to be like still water and a gazelle, then hopes a teamster may give the baby his sleep (see Vorl. 2, #4, #31). The ritual involves touching the baby. The inclusion of dust from a brewery recalls the association of alcohol and sleep in Vorl. 1, #25. Also, the term huburu means both ‘barrel’ and ‘bustle, clamor’ (of humans). The associative magic involves silencing the baby’s noise with material from barrels gathered in silence.48 Incantation #4 én šèr-ru ša id-lu-ḫu a-ba-šu (55) ina i-ni ama-šu iš-ku-nu di-im-tu49 ana ri-gi-me-šú ana ri-gim ba-ke-e-šum ku-sa-rik-ku ig-ru-ru-ma dé-a ig-ge-el-tú d bad ig-ge-el-tu-ma la i-ṣal-lal d xv ul i-ṣab-bat šit-tu (60) šit-tu lit-ta-ad-nu-šum ki-ma ar-me-i ṣa-la-la [dumu ṣ]a-bi-i-ti ša ṣe-e-ri ki-i a-li-ki šá [ge]r-ri50 u ḫar-ra-ni šit-ta-šu lid-din-ku te én —————————— én an-ni-tú ana šà 1xgiš šub51 lú.tur šu-a-tu šeš-ma52 én e-li lú.tur šid-nu-ma ina-aḫ (65) (55) Incantation: Baby, who has kept his father awake, placed tears in the eyes of his mother, at whose noise, at the noise of whose cries, the kusarriku are disturbed. Ea wakes up and cannot get back to sleep. Sleep does not overcome Ishtar. Let them give him sleep like a sleeping goat-kid of the open country.

48.  Ibid., 45. 49. Or: d[i-m]a-t[ú] 50. Or: ur-ḫu 51. Or: šid. 52. Or: eš-ma.

42

Chapter 2 Let the young of a wild gazelle give his sleep to you like one traveling on road and street. Incantation. —————————— Speak this incantation over oil, rub it on that baby, then (65) recite the incantation over the baby: then it will be quiet.

This incantation uses the terms rigmu and bakû to refer to the baby’s behavior. However, the emphasis falls on the effects that these behaviors have on others. Within the human realm, the father is kept awake (dalāpu), and the mother’s tears (dimtu) are directly attributed to the infant. The kusarikku is disturbed (garāru) and Ea is awkened (nagaltû), and both Ea and Ishtar cannot get back to sleep (lā iṣallal, ul iṣabbat šittu). Like the teamster in Vorl. 2, the traveler seems to indicate a person who is not sleeping and can give his sleep to the baby. However, the young goat appears to be imagined as a sleepy creature that represents what the baby should be like. The wild gazelle resembles the sleepless traveler, although elsewhere gazelles seem to be represented as sleepy animals (see Vorl. 2.20; #2.38). The associated ritual involves anointing the baby with oil and repeating the incantation three times. Incantation #5 én.é.nu.ru a-šar du lu-u ṣal-l[a-a-ta] i-til la-a te-te-e[b-bi] lu-ú ṣal-la-a-ta la-a te-e[g-gi-ig] li-im-ḫur-ka li-i-mu[- . . .] li-im-ḫur-ka nam-maš-šu-ú šá edin (70) li-iṣ-bat-ku ri-šá-tu ù ra-šá-n[u] ki-ma mi-i-ti la ti-na-a bir-ka i-na qí-bit dinger.meš ša mu-ši-t[i] —————————— kìd.kìd.bi ki-ma53 dutu.šú.a ana dutu ki-a-am du11.ga d utu ki-ma ad diš ki . . . ta . . . ša-da-du (75) saḫar ki.maḫ u g[ul-gul . . .] ša lú.tur li-ṣi-i nenni d[umu nenni] [. . . . an-na]m du11.ga-ma [. . . . . gul-]gul-la-tim [. . . . i]na-aḫ (80)

53. Or: ina.

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Enuru-incantation: What are you doing?54 You should sleep! Lie still. You should sleep, not scream. May it take . . . (70) May the wild animal take, may it take your redness and rash. Like a dead one, do not roll over. At the command of the gods of the night. —————————— Ritual: at sunset, speak to Shamash thus: (75) “Shamash, like a father . . . . . . to drag dust of a grave and skull . . . . let . . . come out of the baby, NN son of NN . . . . this you speak . . . . skull (80) . . . . he will be quiet This fragmentary example lacks any extant reference to weeping (bakû), but Farber partially restores a form of the verb egēgu with his proposed meaning ‘to cry plaintively’.55 Although it does not mention gazelles, a generic wild animal is asked to take away the baby’s skin conditions, which are regarded as the cause of the infant’s cries and sleeplessness. The terms rīšātu and rāšânu are not precisely understood, but both appear to refer to skin ailments. This text appears to refer directly to a medical condition connected with the baby’s crying. Furthermore, some of the incantations in this collection are for warding off sickness (#13, #15, #18, #19) or demons, a common source of illness (#34, #41–46) in babies. Consequently, anxiety about demons and illness may underlie even the incantations that make no explicit reference to these dangers. The ritual is too broken to know whether it involved touching the infant. The next 19 incantations are not part of the present study for various reasons but are briefly noted here for context. Incantations #6 and #7 The sixth spell of the tablet is entirely lost, as is most of the seventh, which is divided by Farber into 7a and 7b based on the rubric in lines 136 (Sumerian) and 137 (Akkadian): “Two incantations in Sumerian for a crying baby (ṣeḫri bāki). It will be quiet (inâḫ̮).” Incantation #8 This spell is an untranslatable abracadabra-incantation. The rubric identifies it as an incantation to bring sleep (ṣullulu) to a baby (naʾru).56 The ritual requires rubbing an oil mixture on the child (naʾru), who will fall asleep (iṣallal). 54.  Farber does not venture to translate the curious phrase that literally reads ‘Where are you?’ He reads du as izuzzu (i.e., gub), but the same sign may be read alāku. 55.  Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! 99–100. 56.  On this unusual Akkadian term for a youth or baby, see ibid., 53–54.

44

Chapter 2 Incantation #9 This spell is badly damaged and untranslatable, but the rubric identifies it as an incantation for a baby (lú.tur) with a ritual involving anointing. Incantation #10 This spell is an untranslatable abracadabra-incantation for a baby (lú.tur). The ritual involves anointing and promises that the baby will be quiet (inâḫ). Incantations #11 and #11a A broken abracadabra-incantation with a rubric for quieting a gazelle, which seems to be a way of referring to a baby. The ritual involves binding obsidian wrapped in wool to the target. Incantation #12 An abracadabra-incantation. The rubric identifies it as an ‘Incantation for a baby (lú.tur), against Lamaštu’. The ritual involves binding wool to the hands and feet of the baby. Incantation #13 The spell is in Sumerian, followed by a rubric and ritual in Akkadian. The spell is intended for ‘a baby that continuously cries and shakes’ (lú.tur lezû pārid ìr.meš luḫ.luḫ-ut). See #18 and #19. Incantation #14 The incantation and rubric are too broken to translate, and too little is left of the ritual to know whether it involved anointing. Incantations #15 and #15a These two rituals are for warding off sickness (marṣu) from a baby (lú.tur). Both involve touching the baby. Incantations #16 and #16a An untranslatable abracadabra-incantation designed to ward off evil (lemnu) from a baby (lú.tur). Incantation #17 Too fragmentary for analysis. Incantations #18 and #18a These two separate texts with some overlap provide rituals for ‘a baby that continuously cries and shakes’ (lú.tur lezû pārid ìr. meš luḫ.luḫ-ut). See #13 and #19.

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia Incantation #19 An abracadabra-incantation and ritual for “a baby that continuously cries and shakes” (lú.tur lezû pārid ìr.meš luḫ.luḫ-ut). See #13 and #18. Incantation #20 This bilingual text is too broken for analysis, but mentions sleeplessness and weeping. Incantation #21 This broken text includes a ritual for a baby that cries continuously (lú.tur ibtanakki). Incantations ##22–24 Too broken for analysis. Incantation #25 [. . .] d láḫ-mu ig-ru-ru dinanna ina ur-ši-šá ul i-ṣab-bat šit-tú li-ni-iḫ-ka šit-tú du10.ga šit-tu ba-la-ṭu u pa-šá-ḫu ugu-ka lim-qut (360) i-tal gim šá-ak-ri na-ḫar-šá-iš ki-ma dumu maš.da [e]n ama-ka tal-la-kam-ma ta-lap-pat-ka ta-la-qé-ka gim a.meš pú lu-u táq-na-a-ta gim a.meš ia-ar-ḫi lu-u né-ḫa-a-ta gim lú.sipa gud na-a-a-li lu tam-qu-tak-ka šit-tú (365) ši-man-ni-ma šèr-ru la-ku-ú at-ta lu ṣa-al-la-ta ṣa-li-lu i-pa-áš-ša[ḫ] én ul iu-tú-un én dnin.gìr[im be-let én] én dme.me be-let t[i.l]a én dé-a u dasal-[lú]-ḫi ugu-ka lib-ši én (370) —————————— [k]a.inim.ma šèr-ri ṣe-eḫ-ri —————————— [dù.dù.bi én an-ni-tú] 3-šu ana šà ìxgiš šid-nu eš.meš-su [én 7-šu ana ugu l]ú.tur šid-nu [ka-šu . . . . . . . ta-]lap-pat-ma ina-aḫ [beginning lost] The laḫmu is disturbed. Sleep does not overcome Ishtar in her bedroom. Let sweet sleep bring you to rest. (360) Sleep, health, and rest come upon you, lie still like a drunkard, collapse like a baby gazelle, until your mother comes to touch you, to take you

45

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Chapter 2 up. Like swamp water be secure, like cistern water, be motionless! (365) Like a cattle herder reclining, let sleep fall on you. Hear me baby, you infant, sleep! The sleeper rests. The incantation is not mine. It is an incantation of Ningiru, mistress of incantations, an incantation of Gula, mistress of health, (370) an incantation of Ea and Asalluhi; may it work for you. Incantation. —————————— Incantation for a little baby —————————— Its ritual: Recite the incantation three times over oil, and annoint him. Recite the incantation seven times over the baby. Touch his mouth . . . . . and he will be quiet.

The beginning of the incantation is lost. The extant portion begins with the disturbance of the laḫmu and Ishtar, employing vocabulary familiar from other texts. The laḫmu appears also in #29 and #31 and is a protective deity like the kusarikku, who appears in #29 and #31 in association with Ea. It is represented in iconography as a bearded man. The text uses the expression may sweet sleep bring you to rest (linīḫka šittu ṭābtu). The incantations frequently speak of sleep, but only here is it described as ‘sweet’ (cf. Gilg. X v 28; Ludlul III 76 [‘not sweet’]). As elsewhere, sleep is something that may ‘fall’ (maqātu) on a person (Vorl. 1.11; #29.15; #31.26). Only this incantation speaks also of health (balāṭu) and rest (pašāḫu), which may fall with sleep. The reference to health resembles the concern for skin ailments in #5 and highlights the possibility that the baby’s cries and sleeplessness may be caused by some kind of illness. The speaker hopes for sleep and rest for the baby that resemble the sleep of a drunkard (cf. Vorl 1.9–10), a gazelle (cf. Vorl. 2.20; #2.38), or a cattle herder (cf. #3.50). It also uses the image of still waters (cf. ‘pond water’ in #25.364 and ‘swamp water’ in #2.38). The speaker imagines the baby sleeping until its mother comes to wake it (cf. Vorl. 2.7–8; #29.16; 30.21). The waking (lapātu) of the baby appears more gentle than the baby’s disturbing of the laḫmu (garāru). The associated ritual involves touching the baby. Incantation #26 [én šèr-ru a-šib ek-le]-te la a-mi-ru ṣi-it dutu [ta-at-ta-ṣa-am-ma] ta-ta-mar izi.gar dutu [lu né-ḫe-e-ta ki-ma] a.meš pú né-ḫu-ú-tim [lu ṣal-la-a-ta ki-ma ar]-me-i dumu maš.dà

(375)

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia . . . . . . . . . . . . —————————— [ka.inim.ma lú.tur . . . l]a i-ṣ[a]l-lal . . . . —————————— [dù.dù.bi . . . .]

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[beginning broken] [Baby who dwelt in dark]ness and did not see the sunrise, [you have now come out] and seen the light of the sun. [Be still like] the still water of a cistern, [sleep like a kid,] the baby of a gazelle. . . . —————————— Incantation for a baby that will not sleep —————————— [Its ritual . . . .] This fragmentary text includes a reflection on birth and the images of still water and baby gazelles for sleepiness. Incantation #27 Too fragmentary for analysis. Incantation #28 The text is too fragmentary for analysis. The surviving fragment consists mostly of a ritual that involves touching the baby (lú.tur). Incantation #29 [é]n up-pu-uṭ la da-gíl suk-ku-ku la še-me i-lit-ti ek-let u[r.tur . . .] ana gù-šú ana gù ba-ke-šú làḫ-me ig-ru-ru-ma dbad ig-gél-tu š [it-tu šub-ku] (15) ki lag šá sila ki ár-me-i šá maš.dà en um.me.ga.lá-ka i-dak-ku-ka [te.én] —————————— dù.dù.bi saḫar kun4 igi-ti saḫar e.sír ša 150 saha ͗ r ki.mah šá la [. . .] lú.tur šeš úḫ-su ina ì ḫi.ḫi liq ka-šu u kuš.suḫ[ub].meš-[šu. . .]

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Chapter 2 Blind one who does not see, deaf one who does not hear, offspring of darkness, child of . . . . (15), at whose noise, at the noise of whose cries, the laḫmu are disturbed, Ea awakens. May sleep fall on you like a clump of earth in the street, like a baby gazelle, until your wet nurse wakes you. [Incantation.] —————————— Its ritual: dust from the threshold, dust from the street on the left, dust from a gravemound, which has not . . . . rub on the baby, mix his spit with oil, sprinkle? his mouth and his boots.

The opening reference to the blind and deaf appears also in #1. The baby is presented as crying (bakû), and its cries as noisy (rigmu, twice); then the impact of its cries on the laḫmu and Ea are noted without reference to similarly disturbed humans. Images for sleep include the gazelle and, unusually, a clump of earth in the street. This earth may be mentioned because the associated ritual involves dust from various sources, including the street. The ritual also involves touch. As in #25, this incantation pictures the wet nurse waking (dekû) the baby. The language implies a more forceful waking than the mother’s action in #25 (lapātu ‘to touch’ in #25.362). Incantation #30 én a-š  [ib e]k-let la a-mir ṣi-it dutu-ši è.meš [tātamar nūr Šamši] lu né-ḫe-tú k[i a.meš a]-gam-mi lu ṣal-la-ta ki ár-[me-i šá maš.dà] (20) gim níg.du šá dingir.meš mu-nak-ki-ru e tar-ši [te.én] —————————— dù.dù.bi qin-ni si-nun-⟨ti⟩ ta-[s]àk ina ḫ[i.ḫi . . .] Who dwelt in darkness and did not see the sunrise, you have now come out and seen the light of the sun. Be still like swamp water, sleep like a baby gazelle, like a boundary stone of the gods; may no hostile one acquire you. Incantation. —————————— Ritual: You crush a dove’s nest and mix it with oil . . . This incantation closely resembles #26, except that the still water is swamp water rather than cistern water. Also, this text adds a boundary stone as another image for motionless sleep (cf. clump of earth in #29). Incantation #31 én udu.sila4 ek-let ur.tur u ud . . . ama-ka . . . [. . .] tad-da-làḫ ad-ka sila šá un.meš ama.ka ul du [. . .]

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làḫ-mu ig-ru-ru-ma dbad ig-gél-tu ki ⟨mê⟩ né-ḫu-t[ú lu né-ḫe-tú] (25) ki a-lik ár-ki gud.meš da-li-pu-tú li[m-qu-ta-kum šit-tú] én ul i-tu-un én dbad u d[asal-lú-ḫi . . . te.én] —————————— én 7-šú ana igi-šú u egir-šú šid-nu [. . .] Incantation: Offspring of darkness, child of . . . Your mother . . . You have kept your father awake, you mother cannot live a normal life . . . (25) the laḫmu are disturbed, Ea awakens. Be quiet like still water. Like a sleepless cattle herder, let sleep fall on you. The incantation is not mine; it is an incantation of Ea and [Asalluhi . . . Incantation.] —————————— Recite the incantation seven times before and behind him . . . This brief incantation consists entirely of language known from others given above. ‘Offspring of darkness, child of . . .’ appears in #29. ‘You have kept your father awake’ is almost identical to #4, and the reference to the mother as unable to lead a normal life occurs in Vorl. 2. The disturbance of the laḫmu appears in #29, and the awakening of Ea in #4 and #31. The reclining cattle herder is in #25, and still waters appear frequently. Incantation #32 én a-ši-ib ek-le-ti la nam-ru-te it-ta-aṣ-ṣa-ma e-ta-mar zalág dutu-ši am-me-ni e-gi-ig-ma ama-šu i-bak-ki ša an-tum ina an-e il-la-ka di-ma-a-šá an-nu-ú man-nu šá ina qaq-qa-ri i-nam-du-u rig-mu (5) šum-ma ur.gi7 lik-su-pu-šú ku-sa-a-pu šum-ma iṣ-ṣu-ru li-su-ku-šú kir-ba-nu šum-ma rag-gu lil-li-di a-me-lu-ti li-du-šu-u-ma ši-pat da-nim u an-tum [a]d-šu li-na-al57 šit-ta-šú li-qat-te (10) [am]a-šú e-piš-te éš.gàr (iškari) li-qat-ta-a éš.gàr-ša (iškarša) én ul ia-a-tu én ddiš u dasal-lú-ḫi én dda-mu u dgu-la én dnin-gìrim be-let [én] šu-nu iq-bu-nim-ma ana-ku ú-šá-an-ni tu6.én (15) —————————— 57.  One copy adds -ma.

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—————————— dù.dù.bi ina sag.du lú.tur a-kal-lu gar-an én an-ni-tú 3-šu šid-nu ta sag.du-šu en gìr.ii-šú tu-kap-par ninda šu-a-tú a-na ur.gi7 ta-na-suk lú.tur bi i-na-aḫ The one who dwelt in darkness where no light shone, he has come out and has seen the sunlight. Why does he scream so his mother cries, and the tears of Antu in heaven stream? (5) “Who is this who makes such noise on earth? If it is a dog, someone give it food; if it is a bird, someone throw a clod at it; if it is a mischievous human child, let someone cast the spell of Anu and Antu over him. (10) Let his father lie down to get the rest of his sleep; Let his mother, who has her chores to do, get her chores done.” The spell is not mine; it is a spell of Ea and Asalluhi, a spell of Damu and Gula, a spell of Ningirimma, mistress of spells. (15) They said it to me; I repeated it. —————————— Incantation: to soothe a baby —————————— Ritual: Place bread by the head of the baby. Recite this incantation three times. Rub it (the bread) on him from head to foot. Throw this bread before a dog. This baby will become quiet. The incantation represents itself as analogous to food given to a dog and a clod thrown at a bird. These images provide both empathetic and aggressive responses to stressful noise, and the incantation may be understood as motivated by either concern for the baby or the stress of those who hear it crying. Antu in heaven cries (either from empathy or frustration) and asks someone to cast a spell to silence the baby. The use of nadû ‘to cast’ in reference to a spell echoes Vorl. 2, which also represents the effectiveness of magic. The conclusion attributes the incantation to several gods, but Anu and Antu are not included among them, despite the reference to them in the quoted speech of Antu. The associated ritual involves touching the baby with bread. Incantation #33 Too fragmentary for analysis.

Infant Crying in Mesopotamia Incantation #34 An incantation for warding off evil generally and Lamaštu particularly. The ritual involves anointing the baby (lú.tur). Incantation #35 The incantation is too broken for analysis. The ritual involves touching the baby. The conclusion states, ‘The baby who cried continuously will become silent’ (lú.tur ša ibtanakku inâḫ). Incantations ##36–38 Too broken for analysis. Incantation#39 A ritual to protect a pregnant woman from magic so that she does not miscarry. Curiously, the incantation following the ritual is addressed to the baby and reads like an incantation to soothe a baby. In the broken text, only the wet nurse’s distress appears: “Dweller in darkness, human being, why did you not cry in your mother’s womb until you came out and saw the rays of the sun? You have caused your nurse to cry. You have made afraid. . . .” Farber’s #39A is a fragmentary text with overlapping material from a separate tablet. Incantation#40 A ritual text to be applied to protect a pregnant woman, which also includes an incantation addressed to the baby: “Dweller in darkness, who did not see the light of the sun, you have come out and seen the light of the sun. Be still like swamp water; sleep like a baby gazelle until the sun rises and releases you.” Incantation #41 A brief text that calls for making an inscribed seal to protect a baby (lú.tur) from Lamaštu. Incantation #42 A ritual and incantation for treating epilepsy in a child (lú.tur). Incantation #43 Additional rituals for sick children (lú.tur). Incantation #44 Brief ritual to protect a baby (lú.tur) from “the hand of a god.” Incantation #45 To protect a child (lú.tur) from a lilû-demon.

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Chapter 2 Incantation #46 To protect a child (lú.tur) from an alû-demon.

Thirteen incantations for soothing babies are sufficiently complete for analysis (Vorl. 1, Vorl. 2, ##1–5, ##25–26, ##29–32). Two incantations closely resemble these but are intended to protect a pregnant woman rather than soothe a baby (##39–40). The motif of noise/crying creating stress that requires an incantation to soothe the baby appears clearly in Vorl. 1, Vorl. 2, #3, #4, #29, #31, #32. In each of the three fragmentary texts, one may assume that the original incantation included the missing elements. The beginnings of #2 and #25 are broken but seem likely to have had the conventional features detailing the noise/cries. The conclusion of #1 is missing but probably had the standard imperatives ordering the baby to sleep. Two texts urge the baby to sleep without specifically indicating that the baby has been crying (#26, #30), and another indicates the baby’s cries but does not note any disturbance in those hearing them (#5). In all three cases (#3, #26, #30), the existence of the incantation is evidence of a baby’s crying and adult stress, although the different textual features distinguish these from the others. In the texts that specify the disturbance of listeners, the hearers may be identified as human (#1, #3), divine (Vorl. 1, #25, #29), or both human and divine (Vorl. 2, #4, #31, #32). Humans who are disturbed are the mother, father, wet nurse, and nanny. Deities disturbed are Antu, Ea, Ishtar, household gods, kusariku, and laḫmu. The incantations also invoke deities (Ea, Shamash, Asalluhi) or name them as sources for the spells (Ea, Asalluhi, Ningira, Damu, Gula). In every incantation that refers to the disturbance created by noise/crying, sleeplessness is specifically mentioned except in #3, where the father’s walking the streets at night clearly means he is awake. Most often, the persons not sleeping are divine (Vorl. 1; Vorl. 2, #4, #25, #29, #31). The father is also mentioned as lacking sleep (#4, #31, #32; cf. #3). By contrast, the mother is never mentioned as lacking sleep, even though she also must be unable to sleep. In #32, Antu speaks of the father getting sleep and the mother getting her chores done. In Vorl. 2 and #31, the mother cannot live a normal life (lit., ‘walk the path of the people’), but it is not clear whether this expression evokes sleeplessness or inability to get chores done. The mother weeps in #4 and #32. In Vorl. 2 and #25, she is envisioned as waking the baby after he sleeps, as task performed by the wet nurse in #29. Although the mother’s sleeplessness is never mentioned as a problem, the wet nurse’s sleeplessness is mentioned in Vorl. 2,

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and the subject of sleeplessness cannot be identified in #1. The spells are rich in vocabulary that describes lack of sleep and stress in the individuals who are exposed to infant crying. The existence of the incantations themselves testifies to the frustration and desperation of parents, who summoned ritual experts to resolve the problem of the crying baby whom they found themselves unable to soothe. In sum, the incantations focus on the problem of infant cries as creating distress in the household. The texts recognize that fathers, gods, and goddesses may suffer sleeplessness as a result of a baby’s cries, but the mother’s anguish focuses on her own tears or her inability to live a normal life and finish her chores.

Noise and Its Consequences in Mythic Narratives The appearance of the incantation motif of noise as disturbing the members of the household (human and divine) seems unsurprising considering that these incantations were created to soothe crying babies, and infant cries are notoriously stressful to hear. But the motif is not limited to incantations for soothing babies. The disturbing effects of noise on listeners is well attested in Mesopotamian mythic stories in which the noise of lesser deities or humans disturbs the gods. The presence of the motif in both of these contexts suggests some connection between the human experience of living with babies and the way that these ancient people imagined the experience of gods living with humans. Furthermore, the deployment of the motif in narrative contexts to explain the cause of violent and fatal conflict highlights the sinister element of the incantations. The disturbance that the baby creates by making noise could result in aggression toward the baby by the human or divine hearers. As documented above, infant cries produce stress in hearers that may lead to abuse. In the incantations, this threat is present but muted. Read in the wider context of Mesopotamian myth, however, the muted threat seems loud. Below, I will discuss the theme of noise in the Babylonian creation story (Enuma eliš), the flood story (Atra-ḫasīs), and less-studied creation narratives recently collected and edited by Wilfred. G. Lambert.58 Several scholars have long suspected that “noise” in Atra-ḫasīs (and by extension, in narratives generally) must refer to wicked behavior for two reasons: first, the scholars are influenced by the parallel in the biblical flood story, 58.  Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (MC 16; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013); idem and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999).

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in which the flood is presented as punishment for sin (Gen 6:5–7, 11–13); second, they cannot imagine that simple noise could be sufficient motive for the gods to flood the earth. The research summarized above on the stressful effects of infant crying may be expanded to include the well-documented effects of noise more generally (loud music, car alarms, construction, etc). Anyone who can recall being subjected to irritating noise beyond one’s control can understand why sleep-deprived gods might want to destroy humanity. Yağmur Heffron summarizes this discussion and uses the baby incantations to argue persuasively that the noise in Atra-ḫasīs is noise and not code for sin.59 While she uses baby incantations to illuminate Atra-ḫasīs, I will use mythic narratives generally to illuminate the baby incantations. The Babylonian Creation Epic The most famous Akkadian poem about creation, the Enūma Eliš, begins with the intermingling of Apsu and Tiamat, who subsequently beget several gods, whose noisy play disturbs their parents. The mother and father respond differently to this stress. The situation is first described by the narrator: The divine brothers got together, their clamor got loud (na-ṣir-šú-nu iš-tab-bu), confusing (e-šu-ú)  Tiamat. They disturbed (dal-ḫu-nim-ma) the mind (ka-ras-sa) of  Tiamat, and through their dancing, they spread fear (šu-ʾ-du-ru) in  Anduruna. Apsu did not reduce their noise (ri-gim-šu-un), and Tiamat was silent (šu-qám-mu-mat) before them. Their conduct annoyed (im-tar-ṣa-am-ma) her; their behavior was not good (la ṭa-bat), but she spared (i-ga-me la) them. (Enūma Eliš I 21–28) Several different terms describe the noise of the gods and the effect that this noise has on their parents. The disturbance originates with clamor (naṣiru) and noise (rigmu) attributable at least in part to dancing. The noise, therefore, is not the sound of weeping and crying that parents of newborns find so stressful and that the incantations reflect. Rather, this 59.  J. Heffron, “Revisiting ‘Noise’ (rigmu) in Atra-ḫasīs in Light of Baby Incantations,” JNES 73 (2014) 83–93.

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noise seems joyous. Like older children, the gods are engaged in noisy play that disturbs their parents. Some texts read the verb šabû and some šapû. Most scholars (following CAD and AHW) understand the b/p interchange to be a variant of the same verb, which may mean ‘to become dense’ (of clouds, darkness) or ‘to become loud’ (of noise). Lambert suggests that šapû and šabû are distinct verbs, the first referring to visual and the second to auditory phenomena.60 However, the existence of both variants here appears to undermine rather than support his claim. If the verbs have the distinct meanings that he claims, then it is hard to understand how the scribes confused them as they did. The verb šapû appears in the Gtn, indicating that the gods are consistently making their clamor loud (the variant šabû is also Gtn). Since the context concerns sound only, it would be hard to explain how an alleged verb šapû focused exclusively on visual phenomena would arise as a variant here. The passage places much more emphasis on the stress that this racket creates for Tiamat (Apsu’s reaction is described later). It confuses (ešû), disturbs (dalāḫu), and annoys (marāṣu) her. Anduruna is a cosmic place associated with heaven and literally means ‘where Anu dwells.’61 Tiamat remains silent about the noise of her children. Despite her displeasure at their bad behavior, she spares them (gamālu). So far, the language used to describe the disturbance has minimal overlap with expressions found in the incantations. The terms rigmu and dalāḫu both appear in incantation #4, but even without the collocation of these terms, the motif of noisy children disturbing an adult appear regularly in the incantations and in the opening of Enūma Eliš. The relationship between the incantations and Enūma Eliš continue to develop when Apsu introduces the theme of sleeplessness when he addresses Tiamat about the problem: “Their behavior annoys (im-[ta]r-ṣam-ma) me. I cannot rest (la šu-up-šu-ḫa-ku) in the daytime or sleep (la ṣa al-la-ku) at night. I will destroy and disperse their behavior 60.  Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 470. 61. Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (2nd, corrected printing; MC 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011) 128. Lambert (Babylonian Creation Myths, 470) thinks it is part of the netherworld. The term is not explained in the poem, perhaps because it meaning had been forgotten (Horowitz, Cosmic Geography, 109), but it can be inferred from a few earlier references.

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Chapter 2 so that silence (qu-lu) may be established and we may sleep (i  ni-iṣ-lal-ni-i-ni).” When Tiamat heard this, she raged and cried out to her spouse, she cried in distress (is-si-ma mar-ṣi-iš), angry alone, she took the evil to heart, “How can we destroy what we have created? Though their behavior causes distress (lu šum-ru-ṣa-at-ma), let   us be patient.” Mummu answered and counseled Apsu; as an insubordinate vizier was the counsel of his Mummu: “Destroy, my father, that wild behavior, so that you may rest (lu-ú šup-šu-ḫa-at) in the daytime and sleep  (lu-ú ṣal-la-at) by night!” (Enūma Eliš I 37–50)

The gods learn of this plan and are suddenly silent (I 58). Apsu’s speech reveals that he is at least as troubled by the noise as Tiamat but less willing to be merciful. The language for both parents uses marāṣu in the perfect (with eli ‘to annoy’), focusing attention on this result at the end of the description of Tiamat’s reaction and the beginning of Apsu’s speech. He highlights sleep as the primary problem with the conduct of his children and proposes to destroy them so that both he and Tiamat can sleep. His reference to day and night suggests that he consistently seeks rest that he cannot find because the gods are noisy all the time. Tiamat reacts more strongly to Apsu’s suggestion than she does to the noise of her children. Some of the same vocabulary describes both of her disturbances, but her reaction to Apsu’s plan causes her to break her silence and become loud herself. She rages, cries out in distress, and begs her husband to be more merciful. This passage elaborates the theme of noise and disturbance both by reusing previously introduced words and adding language about sleep that indicates sleeplessness as a specific problem created by the noise. The connection between the noise of the children and the sleeplessness of the parents is familiar from the incantations, which use some of the same vocabulary (pašāḫu ‘to rest’; ṣalālu ‘to sleep’). The difference between the reactions of father and mother have a limited parallel in the incantations. The reactions of all the adults to the babies’ cries are basically similar: everyone is stressed, but there is no explicit threat of filicide. However, the issue of sleeplessness is more associated with fathers and deities in the incantations than mothers. Similarly, the narrative emphasizes Apsu’s sleeplessness but does not mention sleeplessness with reference to Tiamat.

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When the gods learn of Apsu’s murderous plans, they fall silent and Ea makes plans: The gods heard it and were disrupted (i-dul-lul). They seized silence (qu-lu) and sat quietly (šá-qu-um-meš). The one surpassing in wisdom, skilled, and resourceful, Ea was aware of everything and recognized their tricks. He fashioned it and made it to be all-encompassing, he skillfully made it surpassing, his pure incantation (ta-a-šu). He recited it and made (Apsu) rest in the waters (im-nu-šum-ma   ina memeš ú-šap-ši-iḫ).62 he poured sleep (šit-tu) on him, slumbering deeply (ṣa-lil  ṭu-ba-tiš). He lulled Apsu to sleep (ú-šá-aṣ-lil-ma) pouring out sleep  (šit-tum).  (57–65) [After Ea’s victory,] inside his chamber he [Ea] rested quietly (šup-šu-ḫi-iš  i-nu-úḫ-ma), he called it Apsu . . .  (73–76) The gods learn of Apsu’s plan, and Ea puts Apsu to sleep with an incantation and then kills him. This use of an incantation to induce sleep provides a striking connection to the incantations for soothing crying babies, which expresses the same idea with common vocabulary (šittu ‘sleep’; ṣalālu ‘to sleep’; nâhu ‘to rest’; tû ‘incanation’; manû ‘to recite’; mû ‘water’). One baby incantation seems to imagine the incantation as a weapon deployed against the crying baby, analogous to a clod of earth thrown at a noisy bird (#32). Furthermore, sleeping babies are sometimes compared in incantations to still pools of fresh water (swamp water, pond water, still water), and Apsu is associated with fresh water. Indeed, ground water was understood to be connected to the Apsu.63 Only in this poem is Apsu represented as 62.  Lambert (Babylonian Creation Myths, 53) and Philippe Talon (Enuma Eliš [SAACT 4; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2005]) both understand this line to mean that Ea recited the incantations and set the spell on the waters. However, the verb pašāḫu in the Š-stem means ‘to rest; cause to rest’ (not ‘to place’) both here and in the parallel combat with Tiamat (II 77, 100, 102, 150; see also I 38, 50, 110). Thus, Foster’s interpretation (Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadain Literature [Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2005] 441) is preferable: “He recited it and brought (him) to rest in the waters.” Also, it is not clear that an incantation was thought of as a physical object that could be placed on water. 63.  Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 334–39.

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a deity. Later in the story and elsewhere in Akkadian literature, Apsu is the body of fresh water underneath the earth that is the dwelling place of Ea.64 The association between sleeping infants and still waters in the incantations echoes this representation of Apsu, first, as a deity desiring rest whom Ea puts to sleep, and second, as a place where Ea finds rest. Ea’s reputation as a deity skilled in incantations appears also in many Mesopotamian incantations, including three of the four baby incantations that have surviving conclusions (#25, #31, #32), and even the fourth invokes Ea in the spell itself (#2). Ea also appears in #4 and #29 and is the most frequently referenced deity in the baby incanations, typically as someone who is kept awake by the baby’s cries (#4, #29, #31). In Enūma Eliš, Ea appears as a deity who disturbs the repose of his parents and uses an incantation to put his father to sleep. In the baby incantations, Ea appears as a deity kept awake by infant cries, who offers spells for putting babies to sleep. The still water of ponds and wells illustrates the peaceful slumber of the baby and evokes the Apsu in which Ea dwells. Ea proceeds to procreate, and Marduk emerges as his most brilliant and important offspring. Marduk’s grandfather Anu gives Marduk the four winds and tells him: . . . “My son, let them play.” He formed dust and set a storm to carry it, he formed a wave and it disturbed (ú-dal-làḫ) Tiamat. Tiamat was disturbed (dal-ḫat); day and night she was disrupted  (i-dul-lul). The gods did not rest (la šup-šu-ḫa); they bore the brunt of each  wind. They plotted evil in their hearts and addressed their mother, Tiamat: When Apsu, your husband, was killed, you did not go at his side but sat quietly (qa-liš). He fashioned four winds that are terrifying; they disturb (šu-ud-lu-ḫu) your mind, and we cannot sleep (ul ni-ṣal-lal). You did not take to heart Apsu, your spouse, nor Mummu, who is a prisoner. You sit alone. From today, you will be in constant disruption (dul-lu-ḫiš  ta-dul-li), and as for us, who cannot rest (ša la ni-sak-ki-pu), you do not   love us. 64.  Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 445.

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Look at our burden. Our eyes are hollow. Break the immoveable yoke so that we may sleep (i ni-iṣ-lal). Make battle, avenge them! (Enūma Eliš I 106–23) Tiamat accepts their advice and the deities who want nothing more than rest commit themselves to an unresting anticipation of battle (“unresting [la sa-ki-pu] by day and night,” I 130). The passage repeats vocabulary of sleep (ṣalālu ‘to sleep’; pašāḫu ‘to rest’) and disturbance (dalāḫu ‘to disturb’) that also appears in the baby incantations. The first tablet of Enūma Eliš makes extensive use of the theme of the noise of children and the stress it causes their elders. The same theme dominates the incantations for soothing a crying baby. When these incantations reflect the disturbance that the baby’s cries create for deities, both ancient and modern audiences may be reminded of the creation epic and the role that noise and stress played in the violent intergenerational conflict among the gods, which ultimately led to the creation of humans. The connection between the incantations and the Enūma Eliš significantly enhances the threat to the baby that underlies the indication that its cries are disturbing the gods. It also highlights the power of incantations to lull babies to sleep by narrating Ea’s success with Apsu. The baby incantations often claim the authority of Ea and ask the baby to be like still water (like the Apsu). The theme of noise and stress is mostly limited to the first tablet of Enūma Eliš. However, the creation of human beings briefly returns to the theme. After Marduk has defeated Tiamat, he creates humans to do the work of the gods so that the gods may rest (lū pašḫu, VI 8). The creation epic here recapitulates the previous theme of the deities’ desiring rest and adumbrates the flood story, which is not included in this text. Marduk anticipates that creating humans will allow rest for the gods. Readers of the poem know that the problem of noise and stress will arise as the humans multiply. The Babylonian Flood Story The Babylonian flood story is most famously told in Atra-ḫasīs and involves events near the beginning of creation, including the creation of human beings. Like Enūma Eliš, Atra-ḫasīs is known from many copies in OB and NA. It is often referred to as the Babylonian flood story, but it is not a continuation of the “creation story” narrated in Enūma Eliš. Rather, it is a separate composition that reflects points of continuity and discontinuity with the creation story. For example, Marduk does not figure in the story at all. But most important for our purposes, the flood story features the theme of noise and the stress it causes. The poem begins with the Igigi

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deities doing the work for the seven divine Anunaki. They suffer the work “day and night” for 40 years until they decide to bring their complaint to Enlil: “Let us unnerve (i ni-iš-ši-a) him in his dwelling” (I 44, 46). They gather around Enlil’s temple: It was night, halfway through the watch, the temple was surrounded, but the god did not know. Kalkal observed it and was disturbed (ú-te-[ši]).65 He slid the bolt and watched [. . .] Kalkal roused (id-de-ki) [Nisku] and they listened to the noise (ri-ig-ma) . . . Nusku roused (id-de-ki) [his] lord, he got [him] out of bed. (I 72–79) As in other narratives and the baby incantations, noise awakens a deity. The complaint of the Igigi elicits tears from Enlil: When he heard that speech, Elili’s tears flowed ([i]l-la-ka di-ma-šu). The god was distressed (i-ta-dar) at what he had learned.   (I 166–68)66 The context is sparse and does not elaborate on the cause of Enlil’s tears. He proposes to Anu that one of the Igigi be killed. He does not explain why, but he seems to want help in crushing the rebellion. Anu, however, expresses sympathy with the Igigi, whose work is hard. In baby incantations, the cries of the baby create stress in others and even provoke tears (#4, #32), and this distress motivates the application of the incantation. Anu’s speech notes that the Anunnaki could hear the noise of the Igigi’s labor. Anu proposes the creation of human beings to bear the work of the Igigi. The creation of humans involves the sacrifice of one god and the mixing of divine blood with clay. The humans multiply and generate noise, which motivates Enlil to bring disasters on the humans to wipe them out. The text uses the same language to narrate the noise and Enlil’s reaction each time: 65.  The Sippar tablet reads, “Kalkal observed it and watched (i-ḫi-iṭ).” See Andrew R. George and Farouk N. H. al-Rawi, “Tablets from the Sippar Library VI: Atra-ḫasīs,” Iraq 58 (1996) 147–90, esp. p. 160. The verb ḫiātu appears in the next line in K, but this text is broken in the Sippar tablet. Except for the Sippar tablet, all references to the Babylonian Flood Story are from William G. Lambert, Alan R. Millard, and M. Civil, Atra-Ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, with the Sumerian Flood Story (repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999). 66.  Line 68 is restored from Sippar tablet II 53.

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Their former noise (ri-gi-im-ši-in) started again, their days of well being returned, the womb was open and producing babies (še-er-ru)67 Twelve hundred years had not yet passed when the land became wide and the peoples multiplied. The land was bellowing (i-š-ab-bu)68 like a bull, the god got disturbed with their uproar (i-na ḫu-bu-ri-ši-na i-lu it-ta-aʾ-da-ar). Enlil heard their noise (ri-gi-im-ši-in) and addressed the great gods, “The noise of mankind has become loud (ik-ta-ab-ta ri-gi-im a-wi-lu-ti); with their uproar I am deprived of sleep” (i-na ḫu-bu-ri-ši-na ú-za-am-ma ši-it-ta). (Atra-ḫasīs I 352–59;   II i 1–8; II ii 43–50) Assyrian recension: Twelve hundred years had not yet passed when the land became wide and the peoples multiplied, He got disturbed with their noise ([i-na] rígri-gi-me-ši-na it-ta-[ʾ]-[dar]) With their uproar, sleep did not overcome him ([i-na] ḫu-bu-ri-ši-na la i-ṣa-ba-su [ši-tu]) Enlil convened his assembly and addressed the gods: “The noise of humans has become loud ([ik]-tab-ta-m[a r]i-gi-im a-me-lu-te); I have got disturbed by their noise ([i-na r]ígri-g[i]-me [ši-n]a at-ta-a-di-irdar); with their uproar, sleep does not overcome me . . .” ([i-na ḫ]u-[bu]-ri-ši-na la i-ṣa-ba-ta-ni ši-it-ta). (rev. iv 1–8) Enlil proposes first plague, then famine, and finally a flood to wipe out the noisy humans. The repetition of these words that explain the origins of each catastrophe underscores the importance of noise and the disturbance it creates as a major motif in the narrative. Understanding the meaning of this noise has therefore occupied interpreters of the poem. Kvanvig

67.  Only preserved in Sippar tablet V 40–42. 68.  See note on šabû/šapû above, p. 55.

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helpfuly summarizes all the occurrences of rigmu in the epic in her discussion of the theme of noise in Atra-ḫasīs: The Igigi complaining of their work (SI II rev. 66; cf. G ii, 6; Lambert and Millard 55; I iii 179) The Igigi revolt (I ii 77; cf. SI I rev. 68) The noise of Igigi wanting humankind (I v 242; II vii 32) The noise of humans that disturbs Enlil (I vii 356, 158; II i 5, 8;   SI V obv. 40, 46, 49) Noise of the heralds’ proclamation (I vii 377; I viii 392, 404;   II ii 8, 22) The intercession of Atrahasis for the people (SI V rev. 74, 84) The sound of the destructive divine storm (III ii 50; III iii 23) Noise of the land smashed in the flood (III iii 10) Cry of despair of both humans and Mami (III iii 43, 47).69 Throughout the story, noise disturbs the rest of Enlil. Enlil’s attempts to resolve the problem only make things worse. He creates humans to eliminate the noise of the Igigi’s work and lament, but the humans turn out to be noisy. His attempts to destroy humans generate more noise as the heralds noisily promulgate Ea’s plans to foil Enlil. The storm and flood that Enlil brings create a crescendo of noise: the storm itself makes noise, the people cry out, and the goddess Mami wails in heaven. What does all the sound and fury signify? Kvanvig argues that noise represents activity. The problem with the creation of humans is that they generate considerable noise, and every attempt of the gods to resolve this problem only creates more noise. The noise does not represent sin or wickedness; noise is sufficient motive to explain the destructive anger of the gods.70 Laslett highlights the presence and noise of children in preindustrial societies: In the pre-industiral world, there were children everywhere; playing in the village street and fields when they were very small, hanging around the farmyards and getting in the way, until they had grown enough to be given child-sized jobs. . . . The perpetual distraction of childish noise and talk must have affected everyone almost all the time . . . ; incessant interruptions to answer questions, quieten fears, rescue from danger or make peace between the quarreling.71 69.  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic. An Intertextual Reading (Leiden: Brill, 2011) 76–77. 70. Similarly, Heffron, “Revisiting ‘Noise.’” 71. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost Further Explored (3rd ed.; London: Methuen, 1983) 119.

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Parkin applies this consideration to the ancient world to remind modern scholars that children were much more numerous in the ancient world than in the modern West and that child death was much more common.72 He notes that the silence of children in extant ancient records does not represent the reality of childish noise in the ancient world. More specifically, one may assume that the noise of crying babies would have been common. The noise that disturbed the gods in the Babylonian flood story, however, was not limited to the noise of children but would have included the noise of adult activity, such as hammering, sawing, and so forth. Ultimately, the gods discovered a solution that worked: they limited the population of humans so that they could do the work to sustain the gods but not make too much noise. Population control involved instituting celibate priestesses, creating some women infertile, and infant mortality. The poem about the flood relates to the baby incantations in two major ways. First, the motif of noise and disturbance appears prominently in the poem and the incantations. Both texts use common key vocabulary words: (rigmu ‘noise’; šerru ‘baby’; dekû to rouse’; dimtû ‘tear’; adāru ‘to be afraid’; šittu ‘sleep’). Infant cries disturb deities, and the story indicates how serious this disturbance may be. The sleepless deities may respond in violent ways that may encompass the infant and others, so it is in everyone’s best interest for the baby to be quiet. Second, the origins of infant mortality connect to the incantations as one potential end for a crying baby who has disturbed deities: Let there be among the peoples the Pāšittu-demon to snatch the baby (še-er-ra) from the lap of her who bore it. (Enūma Eliš III vii 3–4) Pāšittu (i.e., exterminator) is another name for Lamaštu, the child-snatching demon who appears to be in the background of the incantations for soothing crying babies.73 This context for the incantations may reflect a concern that a crying baby that could not be soothed by the usual means (holding, breastfeeding, etc.) might be afflicted with an illness (i.e., a demon). A magical specialist might be called in such circumstances. The reference to infant mortality as a result of human noise in the myth clarifies a dimension of threat to the incantations for soothing babies.

72. Tim Parkin, “Demography of Infancy and Early Childhood,” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 40–61, esp. p. 42. 73.  Wiggermann, “Lamaštu,” 225.

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Other Creation Texts In Babylonian Creation Myths, Lambert edits 17 creation texts in addition to Enūma Eliš. Most of these are fragmentary and may or may not have included the motif of noise and disturbance in their original complete form. However, four of these texts do attest the motif, although the full narrative context of the motif is not available. “The Toil of Babylon” is an OB text composed on a six-column tablet, most of which has not survived.74 The beginning has survived: [All the Anunnaki] hated the father of [all the gods,] [and Marduk, in] his [temple,] was despondent. [All the gods] hated the father of all the gods, [and Marduk, in] his [temple,] was despondent. [The people of Babylon] were impressed into forced labor, [small and] great had to bear the toil. [All the people] of Babylon were impressed into forced labor, [small] and great had to bear the toil. [He heard] their groaning ([ri-i]m-ma-as-si-na), was upset  (i-šu-uš) in the daytime, through their complaints he could not sleep soundly (ú-ul  ú-qat-ta ši-it-ta) in bed. Scattering discretion to the wind in his fury He determined to overthrow the dynasty. (“Toil of Babylon”   i 1–13) This introduction clearly reflects the noise of oppressed people who are disturbing the rest of a deity, most likely Marduk. Another surviving fragment from col. v shows all the gods weeping in sympathy with Babylon (v 17–20). Presumably, the story ended with Babylon’s being relieved of its toil. This fragmentary text provides clear evidence of the motif of noise as creating disturbance and lack of sleep, which appears also in the baby incantations. “The Defeat of Enutila, Enmešarra, and Qingu” has some close connections to Enūma Eliš but is highly fragmentary.75 Like Enūma Eliš, it depicts the gods disturbing Apsu and Tiamat, but the disturbance appears to be a battle among the gods in which Apsu and Tiamat do not participate: 74.  Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 301–10. 75.  Ibid., 326–29.

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[Thier clamor] got loud [as they threw Tiamat into a turmoil.] [They jarred] the nerves of Tiamat, [and by their dancing they spread alarm] in Anduruna. [Apsu did not diminish] their noise (ri-gim-šu-un), [and Tiamat was] silent at their hubub. (lines 2–6) The subsequent lines describe the aftermath of a battle, including the execution of defeated deities. The story exists in a few Late Babylonian copies, and Lambert suggests that it is the work of a compiler in late times who assembled diverse materials, which may have included some form of Enūma Eliš. It reflects the noise and disturbance motif in Enūma Eliš I 21–28. “The Slaying of Labbu” begins with humans lamenting and disturbing Enlil’s sleep: The cities became exhausted, the people [. . . the people were diminished [. . . Because of their lamentation, [Enlil could] not [sleep], (a-na ik-kil-li-ši-na u[l i-ṣal-lal den-líl]) because of their groaning [sleep] did not [overcome him] (a-na rim-ma-ti-ši-na ul i-ṣab-[ba-su šit-tú]). (obv. 1–4) The story is known in one fragmentary copy on a small tablet.76 Enlil proceeds to make a serpent for reasons that are not clear, and the serpent then needs to be destroyed for reasons that are also obscure. A deity defeats the serpent and evidently becomes king as a result. In this difficult text, the motif of noise and disturbance emerges fairly clearly. It closely parallels Atra-ḫasīs, and Lambert notes that the missing phrase in line 4 can be restored from the Assyrian recension of Atra-ḫasīs rev. iv 3, 8, 41. “Enki and Ninmaḫ” is a difficult Sumerian narrative known from OB copies about the creation of human beings.77 The surviving parts include unusual language and orthography. The beginning of the story is relatively well understood and familiar from other Mesopotamian creation myths. At the dawn of creation, the gods multiply through reproduction, and younger gods do the work. They complain and weep about their toil, and this news wakes Enlil from sleep. He then creates humans, but here the narrative departs from other stories and breaks off. The beginning, however, does clearly present the familiar image of Enlil as awakening to the complaints of workers. 76.  Ibid., 361–65. 77.  Ibid., 330–45.

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Conclusion Read together, the baby incantations and mythic narratives shed light on one another. Most significantly, the consequences of noise in the mythic material are severe, which makes the divine disturbance referred to in the incantations appear ominous rather than “fond humor and mockdrama.”78 Scholars either regard the incantations as non-serious due to their connection to lullabiues or deny the lullaby association in order to heighten the seriousness of the spells. Both tendencies derive from a debatable evaluation of lullabies as frivolous. The references to illness in the incantations and to infant mortality in Atra-ḫasīs underscore the seriousness of the threat to the baby described in the incantation. The force of the incantations also becomes clearer with the use of spells in the narratives. Ea’s spell to put Apsu to sleep is especially striking given the association between Apsu and fresh water and the frequent imagery of the infant as becoming like still water. Furthermore, Ea appears frequently in the baby incantations. While incantations express hostility toward a crying baby and reflect the stress that cries create in hearers, the existence of the texts attests the care and concern that parents had for the health and well-being of their infants. The baby incantations served to alleviate the anxiety of parents who were worried that their baby was ill or at risk of a demonic attack. Like lullabies, the incantations expressed hostility toward the baby even as they extended care to the baby and thereby reflected the positive and negative aspects of the stress that infant cries induce. 78. Andrew George, “Review of Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! by Walter Farber,” JNES 52 (1993) 298–300, esp. p. 300. Similarly Lambert, Babylonian Creation Stories, 230.

Chapter 3 Weeping in Infant Abandonment Stories in the Old Testament In this chapter, I will examine the two ancient Hebrew infant abandonment stories in Exod 2:1–10 and Gen 21:8–21. In both narratives, the salvation of the abandoned infant hinges on the baby’s cries. The following analysis will situate these stories in the wider context of parental investment and infant survival in order to appreciate the significance of weeping in both cases. The first section will discuss Exod 2:1–10 and the second section Gen 21:8–21. After an examination of Ezekiel 16 in the third section, the concluding section compares the first two stories with each other.

Exodus 2:1–10 The narrator of Exodus draws on the parent-child bond and the sympathy that suffering children can elicit to entice the audience into the emotions surrounding the infancy narrative of Moses. The slavery of the Hebrews is twice described as ‘cruel’ (‫פרך‬, v. 13, 14), their work is ‘hard’ (‫קשׁה‬, v. 13), and their life is ‘bitter’ (‫מרר‬, v. 14). This dark portrait of their servitude and the tyranny of Pharaoh prepare for the infanticidal command. Since the people multiply more, even as their forced labor is increased, Pharaoh commands the midwives to kill the infant Hebrew boys. The midwives manage to disobey Pharaoh, so he orders his people to throw Hebrew infant boys into the Nile. Although normally rendered ‘his people’, the term ‫ עמו‬may here mean ‘his army’. The text does not describe the execution of this order, and it will later emerge that there is no lack of Hebrew men Moses’s age.1 However, the command establishes the context in which Moses is born: 1.  The motif of annihilation disappears after Exod 2:10, after it has served its purpose in the infancy narrative. See Jonathan Cohen, The Origins and Evolution of the Moses Nativity Story (Leiden: Brill, 1993) 5.

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Chapter 3 MT: The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son (‫)בן‬. She saw that he was good (‫)ותרא אתו כי טוב‬, and she hid him (‫ )ותצפנהו‬for three months. When she was no longer able (‫)יכלה‬ to hide him, she acquired for him a reed basket and sealed it with bitumen. She placed (‫ )ותשׂם‬the baby (‫ )הילד‬in it, and placed (‫[ )ותשׂם‬the basket] in the reeds on the bank of the Nile. (Exod 2:2–3) DSS (4QExodb): She said to her maidservant (‫)לשפחתה‬, “Go and place it (‫ )לכי ותשׁים אותו‬in the reeds on the bank of the Nile.” LXX: And she became pregnant and gave birth to a male (ἄρσεν). Since they saw that he was cute (ἰδόντες δὲ αὐτὸ ἀστεῖον), they hid (ἐσκέπασαν) him for three months. When they were no longer able (ἠδύναντο) to hide him, his mother acquired a basket for him and sealed it with bitumen and put the child (ἐνέβαλεν τὸ παίδίον) in it, and placed (ἔθηκεν) it in the reeds alongside the river.

The statement that Moses’s mother “saw that he was good” is an important observation explaining why she hid Moses as long as she could. Here, good (‫ )בוט‬probably has two senses: the baby is cute and viable.2 Moses’s mother faces significant incentives to abandon her boy to die. As a presumably poor slave, her resources are minimal. She already has a daughter and possibly an older son, although Aaron is not in view in the present pericope (he is mentioned before Moses in Exod 6:20, suggesting that Moses is the younger son). She has a husband, but the text offers no information about how supportive he is as a father. He is not mentioned again until Exod 6:20 and only ever appears in his role as progenitor. However, the LXX uses plural verbs to indicate that both parents see the baby as good and conceal him for three months. Neither the MT nor the LXX 2.  Like most modern commentators, Houtman thinks the emphasis falls on viability over cuteness and objects to translations such as ‘fine, beautiful’ and prefers ‘strong, energetic’. He underestimates the importance of the baby schema in decisions about caring for infants. Cornelis Houtman, Exodus (trans. Johan Rebel and Sierd Woudstra; 3 vols.; Historical Commentary on the Old Testament; Kampen: Kok, 1993) 1.271. Similarly, Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary (trans. J. S. Bowden; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962) 25; Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus (OTL; Louisville: Westminster, 1974) 18; John I. Durham, Exodus (WBC 3; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987) 16; Thomas B. Dozeman, Exodus (Eerdmans Critical Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009) 80. André Lacocque (Le devenire de Dieux [Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1967] 51) thinks the terms here means ‘apte . . . à remplir sa vocation’. Some commentators recognize that the term refers to both cuteness and viability. For example, Umberto Cassuto, Commentary on Exodus (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967) 18; Werner H. Schmidt, Exodus (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988) 67–68.

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indicates that the father has any role in the decision to abandon Moses, the preparation of the basket, or the actual abandonment. An intriguing variant from the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates that Moses’s mother hands him over to her maidservant to be abandoned. This addition represents her as wealthy enough to have a maidservant and unwilling to participate directly in the abandonment. In Greek infant abandonment stories, the unpleasant task is sometimes entrusted to agents other than the parent. As a newborn Hebrew male, Moses is condemned by Pharaoh to die, so if his mother spares his life, she must raise him in secret. Secrecy complicates the already arduous work of raising an infant with at least one older sibling. Even if she can raise him to adulthood, his fate is uncertain. At best, he will be forced to live under the harsh slavery of his people. In modern contexts, infanticide among slaves is well documented.3 The condition of slavery, especially if it is “harsh” (Exod 1:13), may incline a mother toward not investing in her infant because its future is bleak. The personal and environmental circumstances of Moses’s mother are sufficient reason to move some mothers to abandon an infant. However, she may be culturally predisposed to keep her son since the Hebrews appear to value highly the birth of sons and reproduction generally (Gen 1:28; Prov 17:6; Pss 127:3–5; 128:3; 1 Sam 1:11) and abhor infertility (Gen 16:4–5; 30:1, 23; 1 Sam 1:6–8). Even under the stress of slavery, the Hebrew birth rate actually accelerates, suggesting a strong commitment to reproduction in spite of harsh conditions (Exod 1:12). In terms of her decision to keep and protect Moses, the narrative says only that she saw that he was “good.” From the previous discussion of infant abandonment, we may infer that two observations motivate her decision: Moses is cute and viable. Although specifically Israelite ideas about infant viability are unknown, the Hellenistic physician Soranus is more specific, and his criteria (quoted in chap 1, p. 11) may have wider cultural applicability since they are scientifically accurate guidelines for predicting infant health and survival. Moses’s mother evidently perceives in her son both a cuteness and a viability that incline her to strive to keep her baby alive. So she raises him in secret as long as she can. Since the perception of Moses’s goodness is so important to his survival, later interpreters have developed this point. The LXX translates ‫טוב‬ as ἀστεῖον only in Exod 2:2. The term ἀστεῖον appears with a negative to describe Balaam’s journey as ‘not good’ (Num 23:32), but it more often 3.  Most famously, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved is based on an actual case of an escaped slave who tried to kill all her children rather than allow them to be returned to slavery. She was only able to kill her infant before she was restrained.

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positively describes the attractive physical appearance of a person: the handsomeness of Eglon (Judg 3:17; MT reads ‫‘ בריא‬fat’) and the beauty of Judith (Jdt 11:23) and Susanna (LXX Susanna 7; Theod. Susanna 2 calls her καλὴ). It also describes the beauty or nobility of Eleazar’s decision to become a martyr (2 Macc 6:23). In wider ancient Greek, the term (derived from ἄστυ ‘urban center’) means ‘cosmopolitan, elegant’ and ‘pretty, graceful, charming’.4 The LXX translator has therefore selected an appropriate Greek term to highlight the cuteness that Moses’s mother sees in him. In 1 Kgs 20:3, ‫ טוב‬is used to describe the attractiveness of women and children, although the LXX omits the word. In places where ‫ טוב‬is used with forms of the root ‫ראה‬, it refers to physical beauty (Gen 26:7; 1 Kgs 1:6; 1 Sam 16:12), but the LXX uses ὡραῖος (‘bloom of youth’) in the first two, and άγαθος (‘good’) in the last, rather than ἀστεῖος. In Exod 2:2, Aquila opts for the more conventional translation of ‫ טוב‬as άγαθος, and Symmachus selects the more elevated καλός. Both of these translations may be motivated by a desire to represent Moses as morally good even from infancy. The midrash appears to adopt this moral interpretation by claiming that Moses was named Tob or Tobiah by his parents because he was fit for prophecy. It also claims that he was born circumcised and that light filled the house when he was born.5 The translations of Aquila and Symmachus also maintain the connection present in the Hebrew between God’s perception that creation is “good” and Moses’s mother’s perception that her baby is “good.” The use of ‫ ראה‬with ‫ כי טוב‬provides one of several connections between the beginning of Genesis (1:4; 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) and the beginning of Exodus (2:2) that indicate that the birth of Moses is an event of cosmic significance.6 Other connections include the use of ‫ תבת‬to describe both Noah’s ark and the basket that Moses is left in as comparable “instrument[s] of salvation,”7 the focus on generational transition, and the multiplication of descendants.8 In Greek traditions of interpretation, the term ἀστεῖον seems to have shaped interpretations toward physical beauty. The narration of the birth of Moses in Acts 7:17–22 retains the LXX rendering ἀστεῖον but interest4.  LSJ 260–61. 5.  Exodus Rabbah 1:20. 6. Carol Meyers, Exodus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 43; Dozeman, Exodus, 80. The LXX uses καλός in these verses, which also appears in Gen 1:8. Aquila uses άγαθος in Gen 1:31, and Symmachus uses καλός, and each uses the same term in Exod 2:2. 7. Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken, 1986) 28. 8.  Dozeman, Exodus, 58–60.

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ingly refers to him as ἀστεῖος τῷ θεῷ ‘beautiful before God’ (Acts 7:20). Some translators and commentators take this expression as an ethical dative indicating God’s perception of Moses, but others see it as a Hebraism that expresses the superlative (‘extremely beautiful’; cf. Jonah 3:3; 2 Cor 10:4).9 The passage implies a connection between Moses’s ἀστεῖος and his parents’ decision to hide him. The connection is explicit in Heb 11:23: By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that he was a beautiful child (ἀστεῖον τὸ παιδίον) and were not afraid of the decree of the king. Moses’s excellent appearance inspires his parents (not only his mother) to care for him and strive to protect him from Pharaoh’s infanticidal command. Philo similarly expands considerably on Moses’s beauty. At the time of Moses’s birth, he uses Moses’s exceptional beauty (ἀστειοτέραν) to explain why his parents kept him despite Pharaoh’s order (Moses 1.2.9). When they finally must abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter adopts him due in large measure to his beauty: Surveying him from head to foot, she approved of his beautiful form and vigor. (εὐμορφίαν και εὐεξίαν, Moses 1.4.15) Similarly, after he is weaned, his beauty continues to impress Pharaoh’s daughter: He was goodly and noble to look at. (εὐγενῆ καὶ ἀστεῖον ὀφθῆναι, Moses 1.5.18–19) Philo builds on the basis of the biblical text for Moses’s beauty and develops this theme with inspiration from Plato’s claim that the philosopherking should be beautiful (Republic 7.535a).10 Josephus does not dwell as much on Moses’s beauty, and his parents’ decision to hide him is explained by a dream that his father has. However, Pharaoh’s daughter decides to save Moses because she is ‘charmed by his size and beauty’ (μεγέθους τε ἕνεκα καὶ κάλλους, Ant. 2.224). Moses’s mother chooses to protect her son, but she is constrained to make another choice when, for reasons not stated, she is no longer able to conceal him. Modern commentators sometimes speculate that the 9. BDF 193; Zerwick §56; Dulcinea Boesenberg, Moses in Luke–Acts (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2013) 361–65. 10. Louis H. Feldman, Philo’s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism (Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series 15; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) 55–57.

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baby may have cried too loudly to be concealed.11 She places her baby in a waterproof basket she made, then places the basket among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. The verb ‫‘( שׂם‬put, place’) both describes her actions and suggests care and concern for the child that is not indicated in Pharaoh’s command to abandon (‫תשׁליכו‬, Exod 1:22) infant Hebrew boys. The verb ‫ שׁליך‬appears to be a technical term for ‘abandonment’ that should not be read in Exod 1:22 as a literal ‘throwing’ or ‘casting’, meaning that the male Hebrew infants were to be drowned.12 Rather, it indicates ‘removing something or someone from one’s presence’ and may be used in the context of infant abandonment (cf. Gen 21:15; Ezek 16:5).13 Moses’s mother gives up on her attempt to raise and protect her son, but by making the basket, she leaves open a possibility that his life might somehow be spared or at least that, whatever happens, she will not have killed him directly. The biblical text is silent about why Moses’s mother was no longer able to conceal him. What is clear is that Moses, unlike many abandoned infants (e.g., Sargon; cf. Ezek 16:4–5), is wanted by his mother.14 This fact makes Moses’s infancy narrative different from foundling stories, in which the infant is not wanted.15 The text offers no indication that she placed him in a strategic way to be found by Pharaoh’s daughter or anyone else, and the wider context does not suggest that discovery of Moses by anyone could save him from death. Moses’s mother surrenders her son to probable death when she reluctantly abandons him by the river. But the basket she makes and waterproofs provides a sliver of hope that at least he may not die too quickly, and she does not linger to see what happens to her son.16 Perhaps she cannot bear to watch him die (compare with Gen 21:16). 11.  Noth, Exodus, 25; Childs, Exodus, 18.; Durham, Exodus, 16. 12. Morton Cogan, “A Technical Term for Exposure,” JNES 27 (1968) 133–35. 13.  Monica J. Melanchthon, Rejection by God: The History and Significance of the Rejection Motif in the Hebrew Bible (Studies in Biblical Literature 22; New York: Peter Lang, 2001) 36. 14. For discussion of the relationship of the Moses story to the Sargon legend, see Otto Eckart, Mose: Geschichte und Legende (Munich: Beck, 2006) esp. pp.  35–42; idem, “Die Geburt des Mose: Die Mose-Figur als Gegentwurf zur neuassyrischen Königsideologie im 7. Jh. v. Chr.,” in Die Tora: Studien zum Pentateuch. Gasammelte Schriften (BZABR 9; Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009) 9–45. Eckart notes that the hiding for three months, which highlights the love of the mother for her child, is missing from the Sargon legend (p. 20). 15.  Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 30. 16.  Durham (Exodus, 16) says that the basket “is not a means of exposure but a lovingly made means of salvation.” He seems to imagine that Moses’s mother places him among the reeds as part of an ongoing plan to conceal him where he could not be found. However, most commentators rightly imagine that she does abandon Moses, albeit reluctantly and under duress.

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Philo (Moses 1.2.10–12) depicts Moses’s father and mother weeping as they sorrowfully abandon their son together and reproach themselves for trying to save him and intensifying their own and their son’s pain by not consigning him to death when he was born. Josephus (Ant. 2.3–4) imagines more confident parents who have received a dream about the child’s destiny as a liberator. In the Qurʾanic story (28:3–13), Allah commands Moses’s mother to suckle him and tells her to throw him in the river if she becomes afraid, and Allah will save him and return the baby to her.17 Later retellings depict God as involved in the events surrounding Moses’s birth, but the biblical narrative includes no reference to the deity. Unlike his mother, Moses’s sister does stand by: His sister stood at a distance to learn what would be done with him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile while her maids walked along the riverside. She saw the basket in the midst of the reeds and sent a maid to retrieve it. She opened it and saw him, the child, a boy crying (‫ותראהו את־ילד והנה־נער‬ ‫)בכה‬. She took pity on him (‫ )ותחמל עליו‬and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children (‫)מילדי‬.” His sister said to the daughter of Pharaoh, “Shall I go and call for you a wet nurse from among the Hebrews so that she may nurse the baby (‫ )הילד‬for you?” The daughter of Pharaoh said to her, “Go,” so the girl went and called the mother of the baby (‫)הילד‬. The daughter of Pharaoh said to her, “Take this baby (‫ )הילד‬and nurse him for me and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the baby (‫ )הילד‬and nursed him. When the child (‫ )הילד‬was weaned, she brought him to the daughter of Pharaoh, and he became her son. She named him Moses, because she said “I drew him out of the water.” (Exod 2:4–10) Pharaoh’s daughter evidently sees what Moses’s mother sees: a baby who somehow demands to be cared for and protected. The unusual Hebrew phrasing of v. 6 is smoothed out in the versions. A pronominal suffix in apposition to a following noun is well attested in Hebrew.18 Additionally, the term ‫ נער‬has a range of meanings that includes unborn children (Judg 13:5, 7, 8, 12) and babies (Gen 21:17–19; Exod 2:6).19 The striking 17. John Kaltner, Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qurʾan for Bible Readers (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999) 134–38. 18.  Joüon 146e; IBHS 12.4; Lacocque, Le devenir de Dieux, 55. 19.  Julie Faith Parker, Valuable and Vulnerable: Children in the Hebrew Bible, Especially the Elisha Cycle (BJS 355; Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2013) 60–64; Naomi Steinberg, The World of the Child in the Hebrew Bible (Hebrew Bible Monographs 51; Sheffield: Phoenix, 2013) 28–32.

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language draws attention to the evidently surprising contents of the basket as “a baby, a boy, crying.” She quickly recognizes that it is a boy and a Hebrew. Some interpreters have imagined that she recognizes his ethnicity by his circumcision, while others assume she draws on contextual clues to infer that a Hebrew woman was more likely to abandon an infant under the circumstances created by Pharaoh, her father. Houtman notes that her statement provides suspense, since her recognition of his ethnicity raises the question of what she will do to the baby rather than the question of how she knows he is a Hebrew.20 The previous indication that Moses looked “good” to his mother should be understood here also. Moses is an exceptionally cute baby who shows signs of vigor and vitality that appeal to the daughter of Pharaoh as well as to his mother. Now that he is three months old, he is probably even more appealing. By this age, infants are smiling, responding strongly to human faces, potentially imitating facial expressions, and clearly tracking the movement of potential caregivers. At three months, Moses would be significantly more appealing and engaging than he was when his mother first saw him. As noted above, Philo and Josephus make this analogy explicit by dwelling on Moses’s attractive qualities as perceived by his mother and then by Pharaoh’s daughter. Apart from looking good, “with respect to actions, Moses does what small children usually do: he cries and grows (Exod 2:6, 10).”21 He draws Pharaoh’s daughter into caring for him with a negative stimulus (crying) in addition to positive stimuli (cuteness). The ‫ הנה‬particle implies surprise on her part; she may not have expected to find a baby in the basket.22 If so, then Moses may be imagined to have been sleeping until she lifted the lid and disturbed his rest (i.e., there were no sounds of crying to reveal what she would find before she opened the basket).23 She may have felt moved to comfort an infant she had so disturbed by picking him up. His crying (‫ )בכה‬is here the only explicit explanation for her empathetic response, although his “goodness” is in the background. The term ‫ בכה‬refers to weeping behavior and is the standard means of refering to crying in prose.24 20.  Houtman, Exodus, 283–84. 21. Mikael Larsson, “In Search of Children’s Agency: Reading Exodus from Sweden,” in Exodus and Deuteronomy (ed. Athalya Brenner and Gale Yee; texts@contexts; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012) 79–94, esp. p. 84. 22.  Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé and C. H. J. van der Merwe, “‫ ִהּנֵה‬and Mirativity in Biblical Hebrew,” Hebrew Studies 52 (2011) 53–81. 23.  Schmidt, Exodus, 70. 24.  On the vocabulary of weeping, see my “Weeping in the Psalms,” VT 62 (2013) 36–46, esp. p. 38.

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The expected and desired response to weeping is caregiving and empathy (2 Kgs 20:5; 22:19; Ps 6:9; Esth 8:3). The response of Pharaoh’s daughter to the baby’s cry is paradigmatic: she has ‘pity’ (‫ותחמל‬, LXX ἐφείσατο) for the child. What does this language suggest about the emotional state of Pharaoh’s daughter when she sees the crying child? The term often applies to situations in which someone spares or saves another (1 Sam 15:9; Ezek 36:21; Joel 2:18; Mal 3:17) or, alternatively, when another is not spared (1 Sam 15:3; Isa 9:18; Jer 13:14; 51:3; Lam 2:2, 17, 21; 3:43; Prov 6:34). It often occurs with ‫( חוס‬Deut 13:9; Jer 13:14; 21:7; Ezek 5:11; 7:4, 9; 8:18; 9:5, 10), which refers to being troubled or moved to compassion. With the preposition ‫על‬, the verb ‫ חמל‬seems to refer to the emotion that may motivate one to spare or protect another, or the sparing itself. Both meanings appear to be operative in the text, where Pharaoh’s daughter feels pity for a doomed and crying infant and spares his life.25 Philo (Moses 1.4.13–14) and Josephus (Ant. 2.9.7) explain the behavior of Pharaoh’s daughter as being motivated by her own childlessness and desire to become a mother. Childlessness is a common motive for adoption in infant abandonment stories and among adoptive parents in multiple cultures. Miriam cleverly inserts herself into this moment. She has been watching to see what will happen to her baby brother. She evidently perceives that the Egyptian princess intends to let the boy live (because she sees her pick up the baby?) and manages to arrange events so that her mother gets paid to nurse the very son she thought she had to surrender.26 This result reverses the usual dynamics of wet-nursing. Many ancient and modern societies have accepted wet-nursing as an established and regulated institution.27 Through most of human history, breast milk made the difference 25. Victor Hamilton (Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011] 21) insists that she experienced compassion rather than pity because, by his peculiar definition, pity does not lead to action but compassion does. 26.  Durham (Exodus, 16) says that Miriam comes forward “when she sees the princesses’s reaction to her brother’s tears.” The princess must be imagined as doing something kind toward Moses to allow Miriam to recognize her opportunity, and lifting him up is the most obvious action. Many children’s Bibles illustrate this scene with Pharaoh’s daughter holding the baby Moses surrounded by maidservants. 27.  Ruth A. Lawrence and Robert M. Lawrence, Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession (6th ed.; Philadelphia: Elsevier Mosby, 2005) 290; Mayer I. Gruber, “BreastFeeding Practices in Biblical Israel and in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia,” in The Motherhood of God and Other Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 69–107; Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible in Its Mediterranean Setting (Gröningen: Styx, 2000) 181–89; Tim Parkin, “The Demography of Infancy and Early Childhood” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 40–61, esp. pp. 50–57; Gale A. Yee, “ ‘Take This Child and Suckle It for Me’: Wet Nurses and Resistance in Ancient Israel,” BTB 39 (2009) 180–89.

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between life and death for infants. But sometimes mothers died in labor, suffered from mastitis, or for some other reason were unable to nurse.28 A wet nurse provided a lifesaving service. However, wet-nursing is not limited to these cases. More typically, an affluent mother would hire a wet nurse to breastfeed her baby. Mothers had (and still have) several possible motives for not breast-feeding.29 Nursing may be painful, especially at the beginning. Nursing also provides a natural birth control that prevents conception until after weening, which evidently evolved to prevent multiple children taxing the resources of one mother.30 A wealthy mother might have preferred to outsource the inconvenience of breastfeeding and the temporary infertility it involves to a wet nurse, while she proceeded to have more children. Infant nutritional needs put a significant strain on a mother’s time. Modern parents, whether breast- or bottle feeding, know the stress and sleep deprivation that infant care entails. For a woman of means, a wet nurse may be a welcome relief. The wet nurse was correspondingly drawn from the poorer class. As noted above, a mother under certain circumstances might abandon her infant either to die or be adopted. Wet nurses were often impoverished mothers who might have lost or abandoned their own infants but were willing to nurse another mother’s child for pay. Since nursing provides a form of natural birth control, this arrangement allowed the wealthy woman to have more children than she otherwise could while preventing the poor wet nurse from becoming pregnant, and this arrangement could be amenable to both women. However, Mesopotamian law codes and trials reflect the fact that the relationship was not always smooth. The parents might fail to pay the wet nurse, the wet nurse might provide substandard care (e.g., contracting to feed multiple infants without informing the parents), or the wet nurse might abscond with the baby and try to claim it as her own.31 Since Miriam orchestrates the reunion of mother and child, the poor biological mother gets paid to nurse her own child at the expense of the princess, in a reversal of the usual social situation (cf. Isa 49:23).32 Al28.  Lawrence and Lawrence, Breastfeeding, 559–627. 29.  Ibid., 231–33; Florence Williams, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (New York: Norton, 2012) 157–71. 30.  Lawrence and Lawrence, Breastfeeding, 735–60. 31. See Gruber, “Breast-Feeding,” 92–100. 32.  Cynthia R. Chapman argues that Moses’s identity as an Israelite is reinforced by receiving breast milk from his mother rather than an Egyptian wet nurse. See Chapman, “ ‘Oh That You Were like a Brother to Me, One Who Had Nursed at My Mother’s Breasts’: Breast Milk as a Kinship-Forging Substance,” JHS 12 (2012) 1–41, esp. pp. 30–33.

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though the text does not clarify whether Pharaoh’s daughter is childless, it may be that the Hebrew slaves experienced greater reproductive success than the Egyptian princess, which would have been consistent with the reported pattern of greater fecundity among Hebrews than Egyptians (Exod 1:7, 9, 12). Commentators have rightly credited the courage of the women who save Moses’s life but have typically overlooked the ways in which the baby Moses elicits their care.33 As an infant, he appears as an object in the sight of others: “All the action revolves around the baby; all the actors are motivated by him.”34 He draws on both the positive and the negative stimuli that babies use to motivate adults to care for them. He is cute and viable and probably engages in typical infant behaviors that endear him to the adults who interact with him. He also cries, which is a powerful negative stimulus that stresses adults and motivates them to end the crying by providing care. The text mentions Moses’s weeping at the critical moment when Pharaoh’s daughter discovers him, and his weeping appears in the context of his cuteness and viability. The adorable baby in distress elicits the compassion and care of an adult stranger, who saves him from death. Moses appears in the narrative from the perspective of the several women who save him. His own experience and contribution to his own salvation have been overlooked.

Genesis 21:14–21 The story of the abandonment of Ishmael has understandably drawn considerable exegetical attention due to several problems. Among these are five questions that are pertinent to the present discussion: Why does Sarah want Hagar and Ishmael cast out? Why does God agree with Sarah’s plan? Why does Abraham provide so little food and water for Hagar and Ishmael? How old was Ishmael at the time? Who cries in Gen 21:16? On the day that the family celebrates the weaning of Isaac, Sarah sees Ishmael ‫מצחק‬. Considerable discussion has focused on the meaning of this 33.  For example, Gordon F. Davies (Israel in Egypt: Reading Exodus 1–2 [JSOTSup 135; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992] 98) refers to the baby Moses as “an important but inactive character” because Moses is not the subject of many verbs; Davies underestimates how infants actively elicit the care and attention that they receive from adults. 34.  Angeline M. G. Song, “Imaging Moses and Miriam Re-Imagined: Through the Empathetic Looking Glass of a Singaporean Peranakan Woman,” in Exodus and Deuteronomy (ed. Athalya Brenner and Gale Yee; Texts @ Contexts; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) 169–82, esp. p. 174. Song notes that Miriam is comparatively ignored in the narrative and wonders about Moses’s experience when his biological mother hands him over to a stranger after weening him.

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term and what relationship it may have to Sarah’s determination to have Ishmael cast out.35 At issue is whether the term identifies an activity that discredits Ishmael (e.g., ‘mocking, scorning’) and justifies Sarah’s desire to exclude him from inheritance, or whether there is nothing untoward in Ishmael’s behavior (e.g., ‘laughing, playing’). The LXX addition of the complement “with Isaac” does not answer the issue, since Ishmael’s activity with Isaac might be either mocking or playing. LXX Gen 21:9 uses παίζοντα to render ‫מצחק‬, which may likewise be understood in either a positive or a negative sense. The available Hebrew evidence is insufficient to decide among a range of possible meanings for the verb. Consequently, the meaning must be decided on other grounds. The claim that Ishmael deserves the ill treatment he receives is at least as ancient as Gal 4:29, which describes Ishmael as ‘persecuting’ (ἐδίωκεν) Isaac. This interpretation has been dominant in Jewish and Christian traditions and remains popular among modern commentators who seek in this verb a justification for Sarah’s desire to expel and disinherit Ishmael.36 Westermann, however, justifies Sarah’s action without reading the verb as being negatively charged: 35. Claus Westermann, Genesis 12–36 (trans. John J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 339; Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16–50 (Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 82; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18–50 (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995) 79; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (rev. ed.; trans. John H. Marks; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972) 232; David J. Zucker, “What Sarah Saw: Envisioning Genesis 21:9–10,” JBQ 36 (2008) 54–62; François Mirguet, “Isaac et Ismaël en Gn 21,1–21: Quand l’entente (shmʾ) suscite le rire (çḥq),” Science et Esprit 55 (2003) 75–88. 36. For a survey of premodern commentators, see Aron Pinker, “The Expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael (Gen 21:9–21),” Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 6 (2009) 1–24, esp. pp. 3–6; John L. Thompson, “Hagar, Victim or Villain? Three SixteenthCentury Views,” CBQ 59 (1997) 213–33; Bernard P. Robinson, “Characterization in the Hagar and Ishmael Narratives,” SJOT 27 (2013) 198–215, esp. pp. 208–9; Nina RulonMiller, “Hagar: A Woman With an Attitude,” in The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives (ed. P. R. Davies and David J. A. Clines; JSOTSup 257; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 60–89, esp. p. 81; Joshua Schwartz, “Ishmael at Play: On Exegesis and Jewish Society,” HUCA 66 (1995) 203–20; Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifices in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993) 82–110. Interreligious scholarship has focused on Hagar (rather than Ishmael) and her reception history. See David J. Zucker and Rebecca Gates Brinton, “‘The Other Woman’: A Collaborative Jewish-Christian Study of Hagar,” in Perspectives on Our Father Abraham: Essays in Honor of Marvin R. Wilson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010) 339–83; Adele Reinhartz and Miriam-Simma Walfish, “Conflict and Coexistence in Jewish Interpretation”; Elizabeth A. Clark, “Interpretive Fate amid the Church Fathers”; and Riffat Hassan, “Islamic Hagar and Her Family”—all in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives (ed. Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006) 101–25, 127–47, and 149–67, respectively; Thomas Michel, “Hagar: Mother of Faith in the Compassionate God,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 16 (2005) 99–105.

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Hagar’s son, “whom she had borne to Abraham,” threatens both her son’s and her own future, even though he is also Abraham’s son. . . . To censure Sarah’s demand from the point of view of individual ethic or our own religious attitude is to fail to see that Sarah is engaged in a struggle for her own very existence.37 Sonek thinks that Westermann “proves that Sarah’s reaction should be regarded as normal, given the circumstances of ancient patriarchal culture.”38 This solution is a bit too neat. Sarah’s reaction may be called “normal” but this need not imply “moral.” Furthermore, her reaction is hardly unique to patriarchal societies. Inheritance issues surrounding large estates and multiple potential heirs often provoke conflict. Westermann rightly judges that the meaning of ‫ מצחק‬is not the key to understanding Sarah’s behavior toward Ishmael and Hagar; her own interest is sufficient explanation. The birth of Isaac and the fact that he has survived the first few years of life changes everything for Sarah.39 The adoptive son she once welcomed as Abraham’s heir is now the competition who stands to reduce her own son’s inheritance. She disinherits Ishmael for the same reason that Onan spills his seed (Gen 38:9): greed.40 The narrative appears to understand Sarah’s greed the way most of us understand vicious court battles between siblings over their parents’ estate: these disputes elicit ugly behaviors driven by self-interested motives that we can recognize in ourselves. As part of his effort to defend Sarah’s character, Westermann identifies Sarah’s very survival as being imperiled and suggests that some adjustment must be made by a modern Western reader to appreciate the realities of her situation, since her situation (not Ishmael’s behavior) justifies her action. My own sense, derived in part from Abraham’s reaction to her request, is that 37.  Westermann, Genesis 12–36, 339. 38. Krzysztof Sonek, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in Biblical Narratives: A Hermeneutical Study of Genesis 21:1–21 (BZAW 395; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009) 44. 39. See Gruber (“Breastfeeding,” 79) on three years as the likely time of Isaac’s weaning feast. 40. Onan stood to inherit two-thirds of Judah’s estate if Tamar remained childless, but only one-fourth if she gave birth to a son. He pretends to perform the duty of levirate marriage in order to obey his father and avoid disgrace but spills his seed to avoid the loss in wealth that Tamar’s pregnancy would cause. See David A. Bosworth, The Story within a Story in Biblical Hebrew Narrative (CBQMS 45; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 2008) 54 n. 45; Raymond Westbrook, “The Law of the Biblical Levirate,” in Property and Family in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 113; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 69–89; Dvora E. Weisberg, “The Widow of Our Discontent: Levirate Marriage in the Bible and Ancient Israel,” JSOT 28 (2004) 403–29; Kristine Garroway, Children in the Ancient Near East (EANEC 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014) 162–64.

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ancient readers may have seen Sarah’s greed and understood its basis. In short, they would have appreciated the complexity of motivation involved and the problem of simplistic moral evaluation.41 Isaac and Ishmael could divide the inheritance and both survive. Instead, Sarah wants more for her son, denigrates Ishmael as a low-status slave, and imperils the survival of Ishmael in an effort to enrich her son. Many parents would do and have done the same. The laws of inheritance pertaining to children born to wives and those born to slave women further elucidate Sarah’s concern and demonstrate that the situation was not unique to Sarah. The insignificance of the term ‫ מצחק‬as a motive for Sarah’s behavior appears evident from Sarah’s own speech. She does not seize on ‫ מצחק‬as a reason for expelling Hagar and Ishmael but focuses instead on their inferior social status as slaves and her concern that Ishmael may be elevated to Isaac’s equal or superior and share in the inheritance of Abraham’s estate. The customary inheritance rules that the narrator and audience assume are not known, but evidence from Mesopotamian law codes are suggestive.42 A section of the Code of Lipit-Ishtar addresses a situation similar to Ishmael and Isaac’s: §25. If a man marries a wife and she bears him a child and the child lives and a slave woman also bears a child to her master, the father shall free the slave woman and her children; the children of the slave woman will not divide the estate with the children of the master.43 This law reflects concern that the child of a slave woman should not inherit with the child of the wife. However, the slave woman and her children are granted freedom. Although Genesis 21 depicts Hagar as leaving with her child as a free woman, she is forced out of the household rather than merely being permitted to leave, and she is given almost no provision. The next section of the law code imagines a variation of the previous case: 41.  None of the characters in the story provides readers with perfect moral examples. See Robinson, “Characterization in the Hagar and Ishmael Narratives.” 42. Frederick Greenspahn (When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of Younger Siblings in the Hebrew Bible [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994]) notes that “Israelite practice conforms to the patterns of inheritance and succession found in its own environment” (p.  82) but also notes that none of the ancient Near Eastern law codes is entirely analogous to the situation in Genesis 21. Pinker (“Expulsion of Hagar,” 6–9) adduces ancient Near Eastern law codes to understand the customs operating in Genesis 21. 43.  Trans. Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (2nd ed.; SBLWAW; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 31.

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§26. If his first-ranking wife dies and after his wife’s death he marries the slave woman (who had borne him children), the child of his first-ranking wife shall be his (primary) heir; the child whom the slave woman bore to her master is considered equal to a native free-born son and they shall make good (his share of) the estate.44 If this custom, or one similar, is understood to be operative in Abraham’s family, then Sarah may have been concerned that Abraham might marry Hagar after her own death, that Hagar would thereby be elevated to the status of a wife (not slave), and that Ishmael would become equal to Isaac and inherit half of Abraham’s estate (or more, if Ishmael were reckoned as the firstborn).45 Abraham will later marry Keturah, after Sarah’s death, and her children receive gifts but no part in Isaac’s inheritance.46 The Code of Hammurabi also has provisions regarding the case of a man fathering children with both his wife and a slave woman: §170. If a man’s first-ranking wife bears him children and his slave woman bears him children, and the father during his lifetime then declares to (or: concerning) the children whom the slave woman bore to him, “My children,” and he reckons them with the children of the first-ranking wife—after the father goes to his fate, the children of the first-ranking wife and the children of the slave woman shall equally divide the property of the paternal estate; the preferred heir is a son of the first-ranking wife, he shall select and take a share first.47 §171. But if the father during his lifetime should not declare to (or: concerning) the children whom the slave woman bore to him, “My children,” after the father goes to his fate, the children of the slave woman will not divide the property of the paternal estate with the children of the first-ranking wife. The release of the slave woman and her children shall be secured; the children of the first-ranking wife will not make claims of slavery against the children of the slave woman.48 44.  Ibid., 31. 45. Ina Willi-Plein suggests that Ishmael was the firstborn since Sarah declared him her own son. See Willi-Plein, Das Buch Genesis: Kapital 12–50 (Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar Altes Testament 1/2; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2011) 113. 46.  §31 of Lipit-Ishtar’s law code stipulates that a father may give a gift to a favored son and that this gift may not be rescinded in the division of the estate after the father’s death. 47. Trans. Roth, Law Collections, 113–14. 48.  Ibid., 114.

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The Code of Hammurabi also indicates a concern for whether a slave woman’s children may or may not inherit, and here the critical point is whether the father has explicitly included the slave woman’s children as his own (free) children. As in the Code of Lipit-Ishtar, the slave woman and her children either inherit or are granted freedom. Although these Mesopotamian laws cannot be assumed to be background to Genesis 21, they do suggest at least that Sarah’s concern that Ishmael might inherit with Isaac was common in other societies that sought to address this problem equitably. Ancient readers of Genesis may have appreciated the problem that Sarah confronted and may have had diverse opinions about the equity and justice of her solution. In the story, God fully supports Sarah’s intention and assures Abraham that Ishmael will also become a great nation (Gen 21:13). God reiterates that Isaac, not Ishmael, will be the son through whom Abraham will become the father of a great nation that will inherit a promised land and special relationship with God (Gen 21:12; cf. 17:15–21). In this case, this distinction means that Ishmael must be sent away. God’s concurrence with Sarah may indicate either that Sarah’s plan responds to a realistic concern or that both God and Sarah persecute Hagar unjustly. It correlates the problem of evaluating the morality of Sarah’s action with evaluating the morality of God’s action. This correlation has normally resulted in elevating Sarah’s character rather than denigrating God’s.49 A central question for interpreters has been the meager provision that Abraham allows to Hagar when he sends her away and what this act indicates about Abraham’s character. Some have claimed that the bread and water are shorthand for a more lavish array of foodstuffs, or that Abraham’s meager allowance reflects his confidence in God’s promise to make Ishmael into a great nation. But most commentators recognize that Hagar receives little food or water, no pack animal to carry a larger store of provisions, and that this seems a poor treatment for a son he elsewhere appears to cherish (Gen 17:18; 21:11).50 This poor provisioning seems all 49.  “Sarah perceives a real threat in the teenager’s scoffing reaction to her hope and joy. The Lord’s response to send the boy away validates this interpretation.” With these words, Bruce Waltke (Genesis: A Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001] 294) advances the common understanding that God’s approval of Sarah’s plan vindicates Sarah’s righteousness and establishes Ishmael’s wickedness. 50.  Westermann (Genesis 12–36, 341) excuses Abraham’s poor provisioning on grounds that Hagar could not carry more. He forgets that Abraham could have spared a pack animal. Similarly Waltke, Genesis, 295. For the view that Abraham trusts in God’s promise to provide for Ishmael, see Jeffrey M. Cohen, “Was Abraham Heartless?” JBQ 23 (1995) 180–81. Aron Pinker (“The Expulsion of Hagar,” 18–19) proposes that Abraham planned for Hagar and Ishmael to settle in Beersheba, a short distance from his location near Gerar, but Hagar de-

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the more harsh considering Abraham’s wealth. The narrative leaves many gaps for readers to fill. Did Abraham and Sarah have any conversation about this provisioning? Did Sarah always intend that Hagar should not merely be cast out but also sent way with almost nothing? Although the sparse narrative makes Abraham appear stingy, he may imagine himself to be generous. Jane Austen elucidates similar dynamics in the opening of Sense of Sensibility, in which one of the wealthiest men in England excuses himself from a deathbed promise to provide for his half-sisters as the result of a conversation with his wife, yet he still manages to think himself an agreeable and generous person.51 Inadequately provisioning Hagar raises questions about both Abraham and Sarah and their treatment of Hagar. However, this consideration may not be uppermost in the narrative. On a narrative level, the poor provisioning of Hagar leads to her abandonment of Ishmael and the subsequent intervention of God. Whatever the motives of Sarah and Abraham are, the narrator has a compelling reason to present Hagar as poorly prepared for any journey. If she had received a donkey from Abraham laden with ample food and water, than she could disappear into Egypt or the wilderness without any tale of divine intervention, since none would be needed. The involvement of God does not resolve the issue of God’s justice, since God has put them in the dire situation from which God then rescues them. Commentators have also struggled over the question of Ishmael’s age in this episode. According to the chronological indications in Gen 17:25, where he is 13, he should be a teenager (add about 4 years for Sarah’s pregnancy and the weaning of Isaac; cf. Isa 7:14–16; 2 Macc 7:27).52 However, the present passage seems to assume that he is an infant who can be carried on his mother’s back and left under a bush to die. The bulk of exegetical discussion has centered on Gen 21:14 and whether Ishmael is actually carried by Hagar or not. Many scholars (and BHS) emend the text to move liberately wandered in the wilderness, intending to extract vengeance on Abraham by killing Ishmael. Note that all these interpretations exonerate Abraham. 51. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility: An Annotated Edition (ed. Patricia Meier Spacks; Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2013) chaps. 1–2. In chap. 2, the conversation between John Dashwood and his wife is at once humorous and horrifying as she talks him out of sharing a small percentage of his wealth with his half-siblings. Based on information in the text, John Dashwood would have been among the top 300–400 wealthiest men in England (annotation 5, p.  45), but he concludes “that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighborly acts as his own wife pointed out” (p. 49). Austen’s prose vividly depicts the socialemotional dynamics involved in a situation analogous to Abraham’s household. 52.  Gruber, “Breastfeeding,” 79.

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the expression ‫ ואת־הילד‬immediately before the verb ‫שׂם‬.53 They reason that the text originally spoke directly of Ishmael’s being placed on Hagar’s back, but this phrase was displaced by a redactor who was embarrassed by the (later) Priestly chronological notice in 17:25. Moving the phrase created a strange and difficult Hebrew syntax intended to suggest that Ishmael merely accompanied his mother but was not carried by her. This theory posits a peculiar and incompetent redactor. This redactor allowed a wide range of major inconsistencies to permeate the book of Genesis but lightly edited this text to create a difficult syntactical expression that did not adequately resolve the problem of the inconsistent age of Ishmael. Such alleged editorial intervention no longer has a place in biblical exegesis since recent work on scribal practice has made these redactional models untenable.54 The difficult text is reflected in the ancient versions and is probably original. Since the phrase ‫ ואת־הילד‬cannot be a complement of ‫ וישׁלחה‬which comes after it, it must be an object of the participle ‫ שׂם‬along with the implied objects of bread and water.55 Abraham places Ishmael on Hagar’s back, indicating that Ishmael is a baby and not a teenager. The result is an inconsistency in the Genesis narrative that is far less significant than many other similar inconsistencies. For example, the two creation stories and two flood stories do not cohere. Many smaller contradictions appear throughout the narrative: the 70 people who go to Egypt in Genesis 46 can hardly include Judah’s grandchildren (46:12), Bathshema cannot have two different fathers (Gen 26:34; 36:2–3) nor can Laban (Gen 28:5; 29:5) or Korah (Gen 36:14–15; cf. vv. 5, 14, 18), and both Midianites and Ishamaelites take Joseph to Egypt (Gen 37:28, 36; 38:1). We may extend these observation to Exodus by noting that there are more than four generations between Abraham and Moses (Exod 6:16–20 contra Gen 15:16) and that the extermination of Hebrew boys leaves no trace in the text outside the story of Moses’s birth (i.e., there appear to be many Hebrew males later). These sorts of contradictions have long been noticed by readers who expect the narrative to have a high degree of coherence on the literal level. 53.  For example, Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997) 27; John A. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. CLark, 1910) 324; Westermann, Genesis 16–36, 337; von Rad, Genesis, 228. 54.  See especially David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); idem, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 55.  Larry L. Lyke, “Where Does ‘the Boy’ Belong? Compositional Strategy in Genesis 21:24,” CBQ 56 (1994) 637–47. Lyke thinks that the syntax resembles Gen 22:3 and is one factor among others that invite comparison between the stories of Abraham’s two sons.

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Otherwise critical scholars often participate in this expectation in spite of ample evidence that the text does not support such a literalistic reading. I note so many examples (which could be multiplied ad nauseum) because scholars have insisted on reading the story of Ishmael’s abandonment in the context of the chronological notice making him a teenager even though the immediate context demands that he be understood as in infant. When Hagar departs with meager provisions, she wanders in the wilderness of Beersheba. The verb may imply that she gets lost or that she simply does not know where to go. Even if she had followed a straight path, her provisions were not likely to last in the wilderness. Her path immediately leads her away from Egypt, where she might be expected to go and where she later finds a wife for Ishmael. Her choice of direction may be another means (like the stingy provisioning) by which the narrator creates the situation of dire need that elicits divine intervention. When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child (‫ותשׁלך‬ ‫ )את־הילד‬under a bush. She went and sat down at a distance, about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch while the child dies (‫)אל־אראה במות הילד‬.” She sat at a distance and lifted up her voice and wept (‫)ותשׂא את־קלה ותבך‬. God heard the sound of the boy (‫)וישׁמע אלהים את־קול הנער‬, and an angel of God called to Hagar from the sky and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, because God has heard the sound of the boy (‫ )שׁמע אלהים אל־קול הנער‬where he is. Go pick up the boy (‫)הנער‬ and let your hand grasp him, for I will make him a great nation.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and let the boy (‫ )הנער‬drink. God was with the boy (‫)הנער‬, and he grew up and lived in the wilderness and became a bowman. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. (Gen 21:15–21) The verb ‫ שׁליך‬may be used here as a technical term for infant abandonment (cf. Ezek 16:5).56 Some mistakenly imagine Hagar as wantonly casting the child like trash, which fails to capture the sense of the verb here.57 However, Trible’s attempt to read into the verb an elaborate process by which Hagar lovingly prepares a grave for her not-quite-dead son 56. Morton Cogan, “A Technical Term for Exposure,” JNES 27 (1968) 133–35. 57. See the NRSV: ‘cast’; and Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: Norton, 1997) ‘flung’ (p. 100).

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also seems wide of the mark.58 She is abandoning her baby. Like Moses’s mother, she does so reluctantly and under duress. Nothing certain is known about Israelite infanticidal practice, but it may be reflected in Hagar’s actions, which resemble practices depicted in ancient Greek texts, in which the infant is typically left in a remote area far from human settlement. Placed away from human settlement, the crying infant cannot be heard by people. Predators, however, may be attracted by the noise, or the baby may die of hunger or exposure. In any case, the child dies without tormenting other humans with its pitiful cries. The audience might be expected to know from the term ‫ שׁליך‬and the phrase “under a bush” that Hagar intends to leave her baby to die because he is already near death, and she has no hope of sustenance to keep him alive. The reader is evidently meant to assume that she has no breast milk to give due to her own malnourishment. Presumably, she expects to die as well but prefers not to witness the death of the child. She moves a bowshot away from her abandoned baby. This expression anticipates Ishmael’s future as an archer (21:20) and indicates a distance far enough so that Hagar will not hear his cries. The language highlights her isolation (“by herself ”) and her proximity to “the child,” not “her child,” but a child from whom she seeks physical and emotional distance as his death nears. She sits ‫מנגד‬. The preposition ‫ נגד‬may indicate either oppositeness (i.e., orientation facing) or distance, but ‫ מנגד‬more reliably suggests distance (Ps 31:23; Isa 1:6; Jonah 2:5), and “the distance of a bowshot” clarifies that this expression emphasizes distance rather than orientation.59 The distance of a bowshot admits of many variables (bow, arrow, archer, weather). The expression appears to refer to the maximum distance that an average archer could shoot with a typical bow, or what we would call a “flight shot,” which would be 350–450 meters (or 382–492 yards), far enough away not to hear the cries of a dying baby.60 The significance of the 58. Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing,” in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives (ed. Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006) 33–69, esp. p. 48. 59. Contra Trible (ibid., 48), who wants to understand Hagar as facing Ishmael and keeping an eye on him. But the language indicates precisely that she does not want to watch Ishmael die, so he seems to be presented as obscured from her view by the bush and the distance. 60.  An arrow at this maximum flight range could do no damage, since air resistance would slow its velocity dramatically. If the expression refers to the maximum effective range of an archer (the distance at which the arrow could kill or injure), then the distance would be about 160–75 meters (174–91 yards), or still far enough away to mute the noise of a crying baby. See Wallace McLeod, “The Range of the Ancient Bow,” Phoenix 19 (1965) 1–14, which is based on ancient Greek textual evidence. See also Reinhard Miller, Ellen McEwen, and Christine Bergman, “Experimental Approaches to Ancient near Eastern Archery,” World

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“bowshot” is that it is beyond “earshot.”61 She says to herself, “I will not watch the boy die.”62 There is considerable pathos in this statement that is lost in the widespread wooden translation “let me not see when the child dies.”63 The cohortative form often expresses the strong desire or will of the speaker, but this emotional expression is lost in the usual translation.64 The verb ‫ ראה‬here has a wider sense of ‘perceive’, and Hagar most likely seeks to avoid hearing the cries of her baby calling for her help.65 Hagar’s inability to provide relief for her son compounds the stress of Ishmael’s cries with a sense of helplessness that intensifies this stress. The end of v. 16 reports, “She lifted up her voice and wept.” The term ‫ קול‬with ‫ בכה‬points to a weeping behavior including voiced groans or sobs. This weeping may be heard as well as seen, and its audibility likely indicates the depth of the weeper’s distress. In the MT, Hagar is clearly the weeper because both the verbs of lifting the voice and weeping are feminine. In the LXX, however, the young Ishmael is the subject of these verbs as the addition of παιδίον makes clear. Furthermore, both the MT and the LXX agree that in the subsequent verse God responds to the sound of Ishmael’s weeping. The Hebrew and Greek offer significantly different stories. In the MT, Hagar weeps (Gen 21:16), but God hears the sound of Ishmael, as both the narrator and the angel state (21:17). The story seems peculiar because, even as Hagar’s tears stream down her face, the angel tells her that God has heard her son’s cries, which she has been at pains to avoid hearing. Hagar’s cries do not seem to matter at all.66 By contrast, the Greek story seems less strange: Ishmael cries, and God hears the cries of Ishmael and comes to Hagar to show her how to help him. The strangeness of the MT may be an argument in favor of its Archaeology 18 (1986) 178–95; Christophe Zutterman, “The Bow in the Ancient Near East: A Re-Evaluation of Archery from the Late 2nd Millennium to the End of the Achaemenid Empire,” Iranica Antiqua 38 (2003) 119–65; Bob W. Kooi and Christopher A. Bergman, “An Approach to the Study of Ancient Archery Using Mathematical Modeling,” Antiquity 71 (1997) 124–34. 61.  Pamela Tamarkin Reis, “Hagar Requited,” JSOT (2000) 75–109, esp. p. 101. In 1 Samuel 20, Jonathan can call to the boy retrieving his arrows. He has shot them as if at a target (20:20), suggesting a range not greater than 50–60 meters, in which archers can shoot with accuracy and in which shouts can be heard. See McLeod, “Range of Ancient Bows,” 8. 62. Thus Waltke and O’Connor, IBHS 34.5 (pp. 373–75). 63.  Thus the NRSV; similarly translations and commentators. 64.  Waltke and O’Connor, IBHS 34.5 (pp. 373–75). 65.  Reis, “Hagar,” 101. 66. Hubert Irsigler, “Erhörungsmotiv und Ismaelname in Gen 16,11 und 21,17,” in Die Vater Israels: Beiträge zur Theologie der Patriarchenüberlieferungen im Alten Testament (ed. Manfred Görg; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1989) 107–38. He notes that “Ishmael selbst, nicht Hagar, ist von Gott erhört” (p. 131) and that Hagar is “hilflos” (p. 129, emphasis his).

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originality.67 In either case, God hears the cries of Ishmael. Commenting on the MT version, Irsigler notes, “Wichtig ist nicht das Scheien, sondern daß Gott den Knaben ‘hört’.”68 The text twice states that God hears the cries of Ishmael, even though it does not say that Ishmael cries. God’s hearing forms a play on Ishmael’s name (‘God hears’), which was given by God in Gen 16:11.69 The wordplay depends on contextual knowledge, since it highlights the fact that this chapter never identifies Ishmael by name. He is always ‫( בן‬vv. 9, 10 2×, 13), ‫( ילד‬vv. 15, 16), or ‫( נער‬vv. 12, 17 2×, 18, 19, 20). Of these three, the term ‫ ילד‬most reliably signifies youth and is limited to the two verses describing Ishmael under the bush and close to death.70 God hears the infant’s cry as a cry for help, and the hearing already implies a favorable response. The juxtaposition of crying and hearing reflects the paradigmatic situation of prayer, and Irsigler connects this passage to Ps 6:9–11, in which the speaker expresses confidence that God has heard the sound of his weeping (‫ )קול בכיי‬and will help.71 Here as elsewhere (2 Kgs 20:5; Ps 39:13), God typifies the ideal response to weeping, which is empathy and caregiving.

Ezekiel 16 Ezekiel 16 deploys the infant abandonment story as a metaphor. Jerusalem is like an unwanted baby who rejects the man who rescues her and raises her. Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanite. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Canaanite. As for 67. Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (WMANT 57; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984) 312; Hans-Christoph Schmitt, “Menschliche Schuld, göttliche Führung und ethische Wandlung: Zur Theologie von Gen 20,1–21,21 und zum Problem des Beginns des ‘Elohistischen Geschichtswerks’,” in Gott und Mench im Dialog: Festschrift für Otto Kaiser zum 80. Geburtstag (BZAW 345/1; ed. Markus Witte; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004) 259–70, here p. 264. Westermann (Genesis 12–36, 341) follows the LXX reading because it fits the expected pattern “X cried, Y heard X.” The MT does not follow this expected pattern, which suggests it is more likely that it was original and subsequently changed than that the LXX reading was modified to create the unusual MT reading. 68.  “The crying is not important, but rather that God ‘heard’ the child.” Irsigler, “Erhörungsmotiv,” 128. 69.  Mirguet (“Isaac et Ismaël”) charts the wordplays on the names of both Isaac and Ishmael. 70.  J. F. Parker, Valuable and Vulnerable, 64–65; Steinberg, World of the Child, 32–39. The term sometimes describes a newborn (Gen 21:8; Exod 2:3–10; 2 Sam 12:15; 1 Kgs 3:25; Isa 9:5; Ruth 4:16), which appears to be the case here, since an older child would have the power of locomotion to follow Hagar. 71.  Irsigler, “ Erhörungsmotiv,” 130.

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your birth, on the day you were born, your umbilical cord was not cut, you were not washed clean with water, you were not rubbed with salt or swaddled in cloth. No eye looked with pity (‫לא חסה‬ ‫ )עליך עין‬on you to do any of these things for you to care (‫)לחמלה‬ for you. You were cast on the open field (‫)ותשׁלכי אל־פני השׂדה‬. Your life was disregarded (‫ )בגעל‬on the day of your birth. Then I passed by you and saw you flailing in your blood (‫)מתבוססת בדמיך‬ and I said to you in your blood, “Live!” (Ezek 16:3b–6) The text offers no explanation for Jerusalem’s abandonment other than the monstrosity of her non-Israelite parents (see 16:44–45), the fact that she is female, and perhaps that she is generally deemed undesirable (neither cute nor viable). It is not clear whether the specifics of the abandonment reflect Israelite practice or the imagined practice of Amorites, Hittites, or Canaanites. With its negative description, it appears to indicate what was normally done for a newborn who was kept and raised, and the lack of these practices (cuting the cord, washing, annointing, swaddling) indicate that the decision to abandon was made quickly, perhaps before birth.72 The abandonment in the field (‫ )השׂדה‬indicates a place remote from human settlement where the liklihood of rescue was small, but the abandoned child was eligible to be adopted.73 The text uses the emotion words ‘pity’ (‫ )חסה‬and ‘compassion’ (‫ )לחמלה‬to indicate what Jerusalem did not receive from her parents or anyone else. The term ‫ חוס‬refers to the emotions of pity or compassion as well as to the act of sparing (Deut 7:16; 25:12). The verb ‫ חמל‬has a similar range of meanings, and the two terms appear together in Jer 21:7. Here, the actions normally performed for a newborn represent care (‫ )חמל‬that is not offered to the infant Jerusalem. When Yhwh passes by and sees the baby, she is naked and covered in blood, with her cord still conecting her to the nearby placenta. She is also ‘flailing’ (‫)מתבוססת‬, which may suggest her vigor and viability. In context, however, her flailing seems to highlight her helplessness rather than her 72. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB 22; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 274– 75; Margaret S. Odell, Ezekiel (Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2005) 189; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1979) 338–39. Most of the abundant scholarship on this chaprer focuses on the later passages involving the abuse of the woman rather then the abandonment of the infant. See, for example, Peggy Day, “Adulterous Jerusalem’s Imagined Demise: The Death of a Metaphor in Ezekiel XVI,” VT 50 (2000) 285–309; idem, “The Bitch Had It Coming to Her: Rhetoric and Interpretation in Ezekiel 16,” BibInt 8 (2000) 231–54; Linda Day, “Rhetoric and Domestic Violence in Ezekiel 16,” BibInt 8 (2000) 205–30. 73. Meir Malul, “Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents: A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16:1–7,” JSOT 46 (1990) 97–126.

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attractiveness. There is nothing in the infant Jerusalem to indicate that she is worth saving, yet God extends pity to her. However, he does not offer the missing care until she is sexually mature, and he chooses her and washes her. The focus of the infant abandonment is on the belated rescue of the baby rather than the circumstances of her parents. Foundlings were sometimes adopted in the Mediterranean world, but often they were raised as slaves. By later making Jerusalem Yhwh’s bride, the text indicates that Yhwh spared the infant girl with some hope for her possible future. The dissappointed hope motivates anger. The narrative in Ezekiel 16 differs from the other abandonment stories because it is presented as a metaphor, and the text concentrates on her rescue rather than abandonment. The focus on her blood may serve to arouse disgust or otherwise make Yhwh’s rescue of the child unexpected and unmerited. The infant does not cry or appear especially attractive, yet Yhwh rescues her.

Conclusion The stories in Exod 2:1–10 and Gen 21:9–23 have often been placed in comparison with other texts but rarely with each other. Scholars have often noted how the story of the endangered infant connects Moses to Sargon or to Jesus, but the parallel with Ishmael is rarely explored.74 For some commentators, the potential parallel is broken by their understanding that Ishmael is not an infant in the story but a teenager. Many commentators regard Ishmael as a wicked child who deserved to be expelled from Abraham’s house and from the covenant community of God. Above, I have argued in favor of the view that Ishmael is an infant in the story and has done nothing to deserve his fate. Understood as a vulnerable baby, Ishmael appears similar to the baby Moses. Unlike children in many infant abandonment stories in other languages, both Moses and Ishmael are wanted by their respective mothers. The MT is ambiguous, but LXX Exod 2:1–10 explicitly includes Moses’s father as one of those desiring to keep him. In Genesis 21, Abraham at first appears reluctant to send Ishmael and Hagar away, although he later expels them with minimal provisions. Both babies are abandoned but under circumstances that indicate that their mothers do so out of necessity. Moses’s mother is unable to hide him from Pharaoh’s murderous decree 74. Andreas Kunz-Lübcke (Das Kind in den antiken Kulturen des Mittelmeers: Israël– Ägypten–Greichenland [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007] 62–70) compares the birth of Moses to that of Romulus and Remus.

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and Ishmael’s mother has no provisions with which to keep her son alive. Both women would much rather keep their sons than abandon them, and both narratives make a point of highlighting this fact. The stories thereby characterize the mothers as loving their sons and wanting them, but the larger point may be the characterization of Moses and Ishmael. They are cute, viable babies that elicit the love and care of their mothers, rather than being infants with dubious prospects who are wisely abandoned by their prudent parents. The point is reinforced in the case of Moses, who also motivates the caregiving of his sister and Pharaoh’s daughter. By contrast, Ishmael does not elicit care from Sarah. Sarah, however, is acting selfishly to aggrandize her own son at the expense of Ishmael, whom she formerly adopted. Sarah’s change in status from infertile woman to mother of a son motivates her changed attitude toward Ishmael. The contrasting compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter is unexplained by any motive other than the appealing qualities of Moses, although later traditions have understood her to be childless. Although one may expect that an abandoned infant is unwanted, the story clarifies the duress under which these mothers acted. This characterization emphasizes that there was no “deficiency” or “defect” in either infant that would explain his abandonment. Moses and Ishmael both weep, and both are rescued. Furthermore, both stories connect the weeping with the rescue. Pharaoh’s daughter sees the crying baby and is moved to compassion to care for him and protect him. Hagar makes a particular effort not to hear her son’s cries because she has no power to help him. However, God hears the cries of the child and intervenes to provide Hagar with the means to save him. Both stories reflect the power of infant cries by showing the pull that their cries have on those who hear them. In one case, the mother avoids hearing the cries to protect herself from the pain and stress that the cries cause. In the other case, a woman responds with care motivated by emotional arousal. When Hagar chooses not to hear Ishmael’s cries, the text emphasizes that God does hear them and that God’s intervention is explicitly connected to hearing the cries. God may be predisposed to intervene to save Ishmael because God has made a promise to Abraham about Ishmael’s future. A separate passage (Gen 16:10–12) also records a promise of God to Hagar, which is reiterated in Gen 21:18. Although this context suggests that God should help Ishmael, God’s intervention is explained with reference to his cries rather than any prior commitment of God’s. Similarly, Pharaoh’s daughter responds to Moses’s cries, and his cuteness and viability are not recalled in the context of her discovery of the baby. Later

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interpreters have developed her backstory in an effort to explain her motivations, but the biblical text focuses on her vision of the weeping baby Moses. Both stories draw on the power of infant weeping within the human attachment system. Infant cries stress adults and motivate caregiving. God also hears infant cries and may be drawn into infant care in ways that are analogous to humans caregivers. Genesis 21 (like several other biblical passages) understands God through the lens of parent-child relationships. Exod 2:1–10 provides a striking connection between weeping and an emotional reaction that both assumes and mirrors the human experience of parenting and infant caregiving. Genesis 21 avoids applying this emotional language to God but does show God participating in the human experience of infant caregiving. Both stories deploy a powerful emotional signal that has a strong effect on hearers in order to draw readers into the emotional dynamics of the story. Ezekiel 16 stands apart from these two stories. The infant does not weep, and the focus is on Yhwh’s unmotivated rescue of the infant girl. The story is shaped to serve the purposes of the metaphor by highlighting Yhwh’s mercy and Jerusalem’s ingratitude.

Chapter 4 Weeping in Infant Abandonment Stories in Ancient Greek Literature Infant abandonment was a socially acceptable practice in the ancient Greek world. The Greeks constantly struggled to produce enough food to feed their population, and infanticide tends to be culturally accepted, sometimes even expected in communities that struggle to subsist. Greek literature reflects Greek practice and includes several examples of infant abandonment stories. These stories probably reflect Greek fantasy more than reality, since the infants in these stories are routinely saved. There was not much point in telling the story of an abandoned infant who then died, as most would have done. In the present chapter, I will analyze a corpus of ancient Greek stories of infant abandonment with a view to their common elements and the overlooked role of the infant in its own salvation within this genre. These legendary tales cut across several genera, and some are retold repeatedly. The present corpus consists primarily of historiographical narratives but includes one lyric poem and two plays. It specifically includes the abandonment of Cyrus as told by Herodotus, of Iamus as told by Pindar, of Oedipus as told by Sophocles, of Ion as told by Euripides, and the several infant abandonment stories told by Diodorus of Sicily and (Pseudo-)Apollodorus. The story of Oedipus is told twice in the corpus, and Telephus is told three times.

Herodotus Herodotus’s Histories have been much celebrated and studied, but the historical reliability of the work is debatable.1 The specific story of the 1.  See K. H. Waters, Herodotus the Historian: His Problems, Methods, and Originality (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985); J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus, Explorer of the Past: Three Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Eggbert J. Bakker et al. (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Carolyn Dewald and John

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infancy of Cyrus (Hist. 1.107–22) is widely recognized as unhistorical, but it provides an example of Herodotus’s celebrated literary style. Herodotus narrates the most detailed of all the Greek infant abandonment stories studied here. Astyages, king of Persia, has a dream that is interpreted to mean that his daughter Mandane’s child will rule in his place, so he determines to destroy the child. Astyages orders his most faithful Median servant, Har­ pagus, to take the newborn baby away, kill him, and bury him. Harpagus carries the child home, weeping as he goes (ἤιε κλαίων ές τὰ οἰκἰα, 1.109). He explains to his wife that he refuses be be part of this murder (οὐδε ἐς φόνον τοιοῦτον ὑπερετήσω. . . . οὐ φονεύσω, 1.109) because the child is kin to himself, because Astyages has no male heir to inherit the throne, and because he fears what Mandane will do to him as the murderer of her son when she becomes queen. He therefore resolves to arrange that another servant of Astyages should carry out the murder, a cowherd in a remote region inhabited by wild animals and suitable for exposing an infant. Harpagus hands the baby to the cowherd Mitradates with a stern command: Astyages bids you take this child and lay it in the most desolate part of the mountains, that it may this perish as soon as possible (τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο λαβόντα θεῖναι ἐς τὸ ἐρημότατον τῶν ὀρέων, ὅκως ἂν τάχιστα διαφθαρεἰη). And he bids me say that if you do not kill the child, but in any way save it alive, you shall die a terrible death, and I am the one who am ordered to see it exposed.2 (Hist. 1.110) Mitradates returns home to his wife, Cyno, who has delivered a stillborn child in her husband’s absence. He describes his journey to his wife: Marincola (eds.),The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Some biblical scholars have demonstrated similarities between Herodotus’s Histories and biblical narrative (Genesis–Kings) that have sometimes included specualtion that one of the works influenced the other. I assume no such influence. See John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997); Sara Mandell and David Noel Freedman, The Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 60; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); Flemming Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 251; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Katherine Stott, “Herodotus and the Old Testament: A Comparative Reading of the Ascendancy Stories of King Cyrus and David,” SJOT 16 (2002) 52–78. 2. Translation of Herodotus are modified from A. D. Godley (The Persian Wars [4 vols.; rev. ed. trans. A. D. Godley; LCL 117–20; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920]).

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  All the house of Harpagus was full of weeping (κλαυθμῷ κατείχετο), and I was astonished and entered, and immediately saw a child laid there struggling and crying (ὁρέω παιδίον προκείμενον ἀσπαῖρον τε καὶ κραυγανώμενον), decked out with gold and multicolored raiment (κεκοσμημένον χρυσῷ τε καὶ ἐσθῆτί ποικίλῃ). And when Harpagus saw me, he bid me take the child with all speed and bear it away and lay it where there are most wild beasts in the mountains. . . .   So I took him up and carried him away supposing him to be of someone in the house, but I could never have guessed whose. But I was amazed at seeing him decked with gold and raiment (χρυσῷ τε καὶ εἵμασι κεκοσμημένον) and at hearing the manifest sound of weeping (κλαυθμὸν) in the house of Harpagus. (Hist. 1.111) When Mitradates left the home of Harpagus, a servant had informed him of the true parentage of the child (and the term βρέφος ‘infant’ is used in this context, 1.111). Now, as he arrives at the end of the story, Mitradates shows the baby to his wife: The cowherd uncovered and showed it. But when the woman saw how fine and fair the child was, she wept and laid hold of the man’s knees and begged him not to expose him (ἥ δὲ ὡς εῖδε τὸ παιδίον μέγα τε καὶ εὐειδὲς ἐόν, δακρ´υσασα καὶ λαβομένη τῶν γουνάτων τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐχρήιζε μηδεμιῇ τέχνῃ ἐκθεῖναι μιν). (Hist. 1.112) Mitradates resists his wife’s entreaty because spies will come to see that the deed is done, but he relents when she tells him that their own son was born dead. They agree to switch the babies and raise the son of Mandane as their own, passing off the remains of their own child as Mandane’s son. The narrative notes that “the cowherd’s wife took and reared the boy who was afterward named Cyrus, but she gave him not Cyrus but some other name” (1.113). As with Moses, the child’s original name is forgotten.3 Ultimately, Cyrus’s royalty and Harpagus’s disobedience are recognized when Cyrus’s young friends make him king in their games. Astyages punishes Harpagus by duping him into eating the cooked flesh of his own son, but he welcomes Cyrus after the Magi say that the prophecy of the child’s taking the kingship was fulfilled when his playmates made him king, and he therefore poses no threat. Herodotus also reports that Cyrus, while relating how he was raised by the cowherd’s wife, is full 3.  Strabo (Georgr. 15.3.6 [729]) says he was originally called Agradates.

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of the praises of Cyno (Κυνώ), so his parents circulate the story that Cyrus was suckled by a dog (κύων έξέθρεψε) in order to make his salvation seem ‘more marvelous’ (θειοτέρως) to the Persians (Hist. 1.122).4 Herodotus adds that the Magi held dogs in high regard (1.140). The story of Cyrus’s being exposed as an infant is fully developed and detailed compared with comparable Greek stories but includes several elements common to other examples.5 A foreboding prophecy motivates a male relative (in this case, the grandfather) to expose the child. Exposed infants are often said to be saved by animals, although in this case the text rationalizes this claim as a deception grounded in a wordplay. The child is ultimately recognized and reunited with his parents. The narrative provides motivation for the various people who cooperate in the rescue of the child, and there is an element of “providence” in the tale (evidenced in references to prophecy and δαίμονα in reference to Cyno’s stillborn child in §111). Harpagus prefers not to kill the child partly out of fear that the child will later be avenged, so he passes the responsibility on to Mitradates. Herodotus draws out the anxiety of Mitradates and his wife, Cyno, because they are apart during the time of her own labor but their first conversation on reuniting concerns the baby Cyrus rather than their own child. Cyno appears consoled over her stillborn baby by having the opportunity to nurse Cyrus, and her husband accedes because his own dead son can provide the remains that Harpagus will demand as proof. The ornate raiment of Cyrus is placed on the dead baby, and his parents hope for a royal burial for their stillborn son while becoming parents to the adopted Cyrus. Cyrus contributes significantly to his own salvation. Cyno fights to keep Cyrus and persuades her husband, but her motives are not limited to the sad result of her own labor. She is stirred by the story her husband tells about a fine-looking, luxuriously swaddled baby crying in the house of Harpagus. The house is full of sympathetic weeping over the doomed newborn. Cyrus is struggling and crying (ἀσπαῖρον τε καὶ κραυγανώμενον), which suggest his vitality and strength. He is a vital living presence, a baby that could not be exposed due to being defective. Mitradates conveys his 4.  Herodotus gives her name as Spako (Σπακώ), which he says is the Median word for ‘dog’, which justifies his name for her. 5. Robert Drews (“Cyrus and Mesopotamian Folk History,” JNES 33 [1974] 387– 93) argues that the birth of Cyrus as reported by Ctestis (fifth century b.c.e.) and retold by Nicolaus of Damascus (first century c.e.) developed from the birth legend of Sargon, which indicates that a folk version of Sargon’s birth had been applied to Cyrus in Babylon in the fifth century.

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own amazement, which Cyno must also feel over the events he describes. Mitradates learns from a servant that the child is from the royal family, which may heighten Cyno’s reluctance to let him die. At the conclusion of his story, he shows the baby to his wife, and when she sees how fine he is (μέγα τε καὶ εὐειδὲς), she weeps and begs her husband to spare him. The terms μέγα and εὐειδὲς (or close variants) often appear together, especially in Herodotus to describe people. The second term often describes good-looking or beautiful people (Hist. 1.32, 1.196; LXX Dan 1:4). In the present context, it indicates that the baby Cyrus draws out Cyno’s desire to care for him due to his cuteness. The first term appears in some other infant abandonment stories and likely identifies the baby as large, although Godley translates the expression as ‘fine and fair’.6 However, Grene renders it ‘big and beautiful’, which captures the fact that μέγα in this collocation refers to size, as some examples clarify.7 In Hist. 1.60, a woman who is dressed to impersonate Athena is described as tall (μέγαθος) and beautiful (εὐειδής), with her height stated as “three fingers short of four cubits,” or about five feet ten inches tall. A man who appears in a dream to Xerxes is also tall and handsome (μέγαν τε καὶ εὐειδέα, 7.12), and two Persian commanders are characterized by their size and fine appearance (Masistios in 9.25 and Tigranes in 9.96). Elsewhere, the issue of stature appears less salient, but μέγα continues to be used with εὐειδής to indicate characters who are understood to be attractive, typically women (1.199; 3.1; 5.12), but the terms describe desirable children (τέκνα) in 3.3. The mother of the children so described complains that she is neglected by her husband, Cyrus, even though she has given birth to τέκνα εὐειδέα τε καὶ μεγάλα. In another text (3.1), a woman described as μέγαλε τε καὶ εὐειδής is also adorned in gold and fine raiment (κοσμήσας ἐσθῆτί τε καὶ χρυσῷ), just as is the baby Cyrus. As in the case of the abandonment of Cyrus, the royal clothing is placed on a substitute woman, who is passed off as someone she is not. The description of the baby Cyrus indicates both his size and cuteness. A large newborn probably has ample fat deposits that add to its cuteness, but the weight of a baby is a significant predictor of its health and vitality. Underweight babies are often premature and may suffer from a range of issues that predict sub­optimal development. Cyrus’s size indicates the high likelihood that he will live, which may appeal to a woman who 6.  Godley, in Herodotus, Persian Wars, 1.145. 7.  Idem, The History (trans. David Grene; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 86.

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just gave birth to a stillborn baby. The two terms μέγα and εὐειδὲς highlight Cyrus’s viability and desirability, respectively.

Pindar In his sixth Olympian Ode, Pindar celebrates the victory of Agesias of Syracuse in a mule-car race in 476, 472, or 468.8 Agesias was descended from Iamus, the progenitor of a family of prophets. The Ode includes the story of the birth, abandonment, and rescue of Iamus. Euadne becomes pregnant and conceals beneath the folds of her loose garment (κόλποις) the birth pangs of her virginity (παρθενίαν ὠδῖνα, an oxymoronic expression, line 31). However, in her final month, she sends messengers to Aepytus, who ruled where she grew up and was seduced by Apollo, asking him to rear the child (βρέφος, 33). He inquires of the oracle at Delphi, but before she hears from him, Euadne gives birth outdoors with divine assistance. Although she is distressed, she leaves the baby where it lay (τὸν μὲν κνιζομένα | λεῖπε χαμαί, 44–45). The sense of κνιζομένα is hard to capture. It indicates irritation, and Burnett’s translation, ‘weeping’, captures the expected emotion and reaction, although this term does not denote crying.9 In any case, Euadne is presented as being reluctant to abandon her infant. She had belatedly attempted to make arrangements for his care but, as an unwed woman, she does not think that keeping the baby herself is a viable option. The infant is nourished by serpents, who give it honey.10 Aepytus’s inquiry at Delphi reveals that the child was fathered by Apollo and destined to be a great prophet, so he asks members of the household about he child (παῖδα, 49) and retrieves the baby from a field of flowers, which provides the inspiration for his name, Iamus (ἴων ‘pansies’).

Sophocles The story of Oedipus is most famously told by Sophocles. Iocaste initially tells the story of her son’s exposure to reassure Oedipus by illustrating that prophecies do not necessarily come to pass (Oed. tyr. 707–10), so he should not be concerned about the ranting of the prophet Tiresias. She 8.  Pindar, Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes (ed. and trans. William H. Race; LCL 56; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 100–117. 9.  Idem, Odes for Various Athletes (trans. Anne Pippin Burnett; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) 30. Anthony Verity translates the term ‘distress’ (Pindar, The Complete Odes [Oxford World Classics; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007] 17). 10.  Both serpents and honey symbolize prophecy (Pindar, Selected Odes [ed. Thomas D. Seymour; Boston: Ginn, Heath, 1882] 103).

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recalls the prophecy that her son by Laius should kill his father, then notes that Laius was killed at a place where three roads meet. But the birth of the child (παιδὸς) was not three days past when he fastened his ankles together in that way and cast him out (ἔρριψεν) by other hands on the inaccessible   mountain (ἄβατοω ὄρος).11 (Oed. Tyr. 717–19) Jocaste’s attempt to ease Oedipus has the opposite effect because he is struck by the description of the place where Laius was killed. His investigation continues, and he questions the shepherd who was charged with exposing Jocaste’s infant. The shepherd admits that his instructions were to destroy the child (ὡς ἀναλώσαιμί νιν, 1174) due to the prophecy that he would kill his parents. He also admits that he gave the child to another shepherd to keep because ‘I felt pity for it’ (κατοικτίσας, 1178). Elsewhere in Sophocles, pity motivates people to identify with the person suffering (Odysseus’s pity for Ajax [Aj. 121–26], Oedipus’s pity for the suppliants [Oed. Col. 58]). In Sophocles’ play, the baby Oedipus is never described, so although the cuteness or weeping of the infant may have motivated adults to protect him, these motivations are left unstated. Instead, the shepherd pities the baby for unstated reasons and passes him to another person rather than consigning him to death. The second shepherd, who received this baby, delivered him to Polybus, who is persuaded to raise the baby due to his own childlessness (Oed. Tyr. 1024).

Euripides Euripides’ play Ion concerns the foundling Ion’s search for his mother. The play opens with Hermes setting the stage by narrating Ion’s birth story. Near Athens, Apollo raped Creusa (ἔζευξεω γάμοις | βίᾳ Κρέουσαν, 10–11)12 in a cave. 11.  Translation modified from Hugh Lloyd-Jones (trans.), Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrranus (LCL 20; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 399. 12.  Eurypides, Tojan Women, Iphegenia among the Taurians, Ion (ed. and trans. David Kovacs; LCL 10; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) 322–24. Hermes indicates that the encounter was rape, but Creusa expresses desire for Apollo in 887–89. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz (“Greek Tragedy: A Rape Culture?” Eugesta 1 [2011] 1–21) notes that the play’s descriptions of the encounter “oscillates between scenarios of rape and desire” (p. 10). See also Emily Kearns, “Pindar and Euripides on Sex with Apollo,” The Classical Quarterly 63 (2013) 57–67.

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She tied elements of her clothing to the child (τέκνῳ, 26) and left him to die (ἔλιπεν ὡς θανουμένῳ, 27). The ὡς expression in both instances suggests that Creusa herself does not know whether she expected the child to die or not. In 965, she speaks as though she hoped Apollo might save his offspring (γόνον), but elsewhere she speaks of leaving the boy (κοῦρον, 898) to wild animals (cf. 348; 902–3; 916–17; 951; 1494). The exposure of the child is spoken about five times: in the introduction narrated by Hermes (8–36), in Creusa’s pretended story to Ion about her friend (330–59), in her diatribe against the injustice of Apollo (860–922), in her dialogue with the old man (936–70), and in her confession to Ion (1397–1467). Creusa conceals her pregnancy, particularly from her father (14, 340) and gives birth alone (14–15, 448–49). She abandons her child due to fear of her mother (898) and the hope that Apollo will save him (965), but goes back to look for the baby and finds no evidence of him (350–52). The preferred verb for the abandonment is ἐκτίθημι (18, 951, 954, 1398, 1413; cf. ἔκθεσις, 956), but λείπω (27, 958) and (ἐκ/ἀπο)βάλλω (899, 964, 1496, 1498) also appear. In answering the old man’s questions about how she could have abandoned her baby, Creusa describes her grief and sorrow, including references to the baby’s appeal: “If you had seen him stretch out his hands!” (961). The following lines refer to her refusal to breast-feed (962–63; cf. 318–19, 762, 1492). The infant Ion is never described as weeping, but Creusa describes his appeal, and the priestess is drawn to him. Hermes leaves the cradle open so that someone may see the child, indicating that his appearance should motivate the desired caregiving response (39–40). The priestess who finds the baby (παιδὶ νηπίῳ, 43) at first intends to leave it outside the temple precinct, astonished (ἐθαύμασ᾽, 44) that a woman of Delphi would dare to abandon her illegitimate infant in the temple, “but 13.  Almost the same expression appears in line 27: ἔλιπεν ὡς θανουμένῳ. 14.  Translation modified from Kovacs, LCL. The rare term ἀντίπηγος appears in lines 40, 1338, and 1391 but nowhere else. Translator Arthur S. Owen (Euripides, Ion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939] 69–70) notes that it could not have been a wheeled perambulator as LSJ suggests, since it could not easily be pushed into a cave.

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her pity expelled the cruel impulse” (οἴκτῳ δ᾽ ἀφῆκεν ὠμότητα, 47). She kept the child, who grew up as a servant of Apollo. There are many tears shed in sympathy with both Creusa’s rape and pregnancy.15 Creusa weeps as she indicts Apollo (876), and the chorus leader and old man weep in sympathy with her (924, 940, 967, 970). Ion weeps when the priestess reveals the cradle he was found in (1389). Creusa seems to describe her own tears, not Ion’s, when she tells Ion: ‘Child, your birth was not without tears / in sorrow you were torn from your mother’s arms’ (τέκνον, οὐκ ἀδάκρυτος ἐκλοχεύῃ, | γόοις δὲ ματρὸς ἐκ χερῶν ὁρίζῃ, 1458–59). The text refers to the infant Ion’s failed appeal to his mother and successful appeal to the priestess.

Diodorus of Sicily Diodorus Siculus (or Diodorus of Sicily) composed a compendious universal history called the Bibliotheca historica. Its narrative arc describes mythological times in various regions and carries the story forward to the first century b.c.e. Of the original 40 books, Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive. This surviving corpus includes five infant abandonment stories, four of them within the first 5 books and one in book 19. Semiramis The legend of Semiramis may have evolved from the memory of Shammuramat, the queen of Shamshi-Adad V. Shammuramat ruled as regent for five years after her husband’s death and before her son came of age.16 However, the Greek legend of Semiramis far exceeds any historical reality and has little connection to Shammuramat. Semiramis was widely credited with many monumental achievements in the Near East, including 15. Ann Suter (“Tragic Tears and Gender,” in Tears in the Greco-Roman World [ed. Thorsten Fögen; New York: de Gruyter, 2009] 59–83) finds that weeping is not as gendered in Attic tragedy as previous scholarship imagined and that the majority of weeping incidents reflect grief or sympathy. 16. Stephanie Dalley (“Semiramis in History and Legend: A Case Study in Interpretation of an Assyrian Historical Tradition, with Observations on Archetypes in Ancient Historiography, on Euhemerism before Euhemerus, and on the So-Called Greek Ethnographis Style,” in Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity [ed. Erich S. Gruen; Orens et Occidents 8; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005] 12–22) searches for the historical reality underlying the Semiramis legend. See also Iris Sulimani, Diodorus’ Mythistory and the Pagan Mission: Historiography and Culture-Heroes in the First Pentad of the Bibliotheke (Leiden: Brill, 2011). For a reception-historical perspective on Semiramis from the ancient sources to today, see Julia M. Asher-Greve, “From ‘Semiramis of Babylon’ to ‘Semiramis of Hammersmith’ in Orientalism, Assyriology, and the Bible (ed. Steven W. Holloway; Hebrew Bible Monograph 10; Sheffield: Phoenix, 2006) 322–73.

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the hanging gardens of Babylon. Diodorus provides the most elaborate narration of her legend from ancient times in 2.1–22. Semiramis was born of a goddess who had been duped by Aphrodite into becoming pregnant by an obscure Syrian youth, and filled with shame of her sinful deed (καταισχυνθεῖσαν δ᾽ἐπὶ τοῖς ἡμαρτημένοις), she killed the youth and exposed the child in a rocky desert region (τὸ δὲ παιδίον εἴς τινας ἐρήμους καἰ πετρώδεις τόπους ἐκθεῖναι). . . . But within the region where the babe was exposed (τὸ βρέφος ἐξετέθη), a great multitude of doves had their nests, and by them the child was nurtured (τὸ παιδίον διατρέφεσθαι) in an astounding and miraculous manner.17 (Diod. 2.4) While some doves kept her warm with their wings, others brought milk in their beaks from a nearby dairy farm. After she had grown a year and needed more solid food, the doves brought cheese. The cowherds noticed the cheese theft, kept watch, and ‘found the infant, which was of surpassing beauty’ (εὑρεῖν τὸ βρέφος, διαφέρον τῷ κάλλει, 2.4) They handed her over to Simmas, the childless keeper of the royal herds, who named her Semiramis, which Diodorus (erroneously) reports as being slightly altered from the Syrian word for dove (2.4).18 The girl grew into an extraordinarily beautiful woman with exceptional intelligence, who became queen of the Assyrian king Ninus. When Ninus died, she impersonated her son and led the army to conquer Asia and then Libya and Ethiopia. The infancy narrative includes an illegitimate pregnancy motivating the exposure, miraculous feeding of the exposed infant by animals, and discovery by humans, who are motivated by the baby’s cuteness to save her. Finally, a childless adult adopts the baby as his own, and she grows to be an extraordinary adult. Cybele Cybele was an Anatolian mother goddess whose introduction into Greece was controversial. Diodorus relates an account according to which the king of Phrygia 17.  Translation of Diodorus modified from Charles H. Oldfather (trans.), Diodorus, The Library of History, Books 1–4 (LCL 279–80; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933–35); and Russel M. Geer (trans.), Diodorus, Library of History, Book 19 (LCL 377; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947). 18.  However, in Assyrian the word for ‘dove’ is summatu. Doves were sacred to Ishtar, and in some locations Semiramis was an avatar of Ishtar; Lucian reports that Semiramis became a dove (De Syria Dea 14, 33, 54). See Edwin Murphy, The Antiquities of Asia: A Translation with Notes of Book II of The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989) 6.

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fathered an infant female, but being unwilling to raise her, exposed her on the mountain (γεννῆσαι μὲν παιδίον θῆλυ, τρέφειν δ᾽αὐτὸ μὴ βουλόμενον εἰς ὄρος) which was called Cybelus. There, in accordance with some divine providence, both the leopards and some of the other especially ferocious beasts offered their nipples to the child and so gave it nourishment, and some women who were tending the flocks in that place witnessed the happening, and being astonished at the strange event took up the babe (ἀνελέσθαι τὸ βρέφος) and called her Cybele after the name of the place. As she grew up, the child excelled in both beauty and virtue (κάλλει καὶ σωφροσύνῃ) and came to be admired also for her intelligence (συνέσει). . . . She taught how to heal the sicknesses of children (παιδιὰς) and flocks by means of rites of purification. Since babies were saved by her spells (τῶν βρεφῶν ταῖς ἐπῳδραῖς σωζομένον) and were generally taken up in her arms, her devotion to them and affection for them led all the people to speak of her as “the mother of the mountain.” (Diod. 3.58) Here again, animals have a role in preserving the life of an abandoned infant. There is no obvious motive for her abandonment other than the fact that she was female, and her royal father did not want to bother raising her. The place of her exposure is a mountain, which supplies the name by which she becomes known. She is saved by shepherd women, although the text does not clarify whether she is adopted into a specific family. As she grows, she demonstrates magical skills and a tender concern for children that was absent in her father but present in the women who saved her. The women appear to be motivated by witnessing the wild animals that tended the infant, and the child’s particular appeal is not noted until she has grown into the beautiful and intelligent “mother of the mountain.” The story suggests that Cybele employed magic or purification rituals to heal children, but later devotees of Cybele are known as ecstatics without being associated with magic.19 Within the corpus of Greek magic, there is no recognizable genre of rituals intended to soothe a crying infant analogous to those in Akkadian. Heracles Diodorus describes how Zeus seduced Alcmene for the purpose of procreation rather than love, and he knew that the child would be powerful. When Alcmene went into labor, Zeus declared to the gods that he would make the child born that day king over the descendants of Perseus. 19. Derek Collins, Magic in the Ancient Greek World (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006) 50.

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Hera stayed the labor of Alcmene and brought Eurystheus to birth before his time so that he might be king, thus laying the foundation for the labors of Heracles. After Alcmene had given birth and because she was afraid of Hera’s jealousy, she exposed the infant (ἐξέθηκε τὸ βρέφος) at a place which to this time is called after him the field of Heracles. At the same time, Athena was approaching the place with Hera and, being amazed at the natural vigor of the child (θαυμάσασα τοῦ παιδίου τὴν φύσιν), persuaded Hera to offer it the breast. But when the boy tugged on her breast with greater violence than would be expected at his age, Hera was unable to endure the pain and cast the babe from her (τὸ βρέφος ἔρριψεν), whereupon Athena took it to its mother and urged her to rear (τρέφειν) it. And anyone may well be surprised at the unexpected turn of events, for the mother whose duty it was to love her own offspring was trying to destroy it, while she who cherished toward it a stepmother’s hatred, in ignorance saved the life of the one who was her natural enemy (στέργειν ὀφείλουσα μήτηρ τὸ ἴδιον τέκνον ἀπώλλυεν, ἡ δὲ μητυριᾶς ἔχουσα μῖσος δι´ ἄγνοιαν ἔσωζε τὸ τῇ φ´υσει πολέμιον). (Diod. 4.9) The infant Heracles is abandoned twice. First his mother exposes him for fear of Hera. Then Hera rejects him for causing pain when she attempted to suckle him. Both verbs are used elsewhere of infant abandonment: ἐκτίθημι is the standard verb for this use, but ῥιπτω is attested in Sophocles, Oedipus 719. Athena is the key to his salvation, and she is moved by his extraordinary vigor (φύσις). One of the many meanings of φύσις is to refer either to the outward form of something or to its intrinsic nature, constitution, or character. As a result, this single word seems to convey a range of qualities that Athena observes in the child, including its cuteness, size, or vigorous behavior. The single word here seems to summarize everything that one might look for in a child worth rearing. The text indicates the remarkable turn of events that parallels the story of Moses: the child is abandoned by his own mother, only to be saved by his enemy and returned to his mother. The verb στέργειν ‘to love’ is used particularly with familial love, such as the affection that binds parents and children. Telephus Heracles, himself a foundling, fathered a foundling of his own. He seduced Auge, the daughter of his host Aleos. After Heracles had left, Alea

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saw his daughter’s pregnancy and demanded to know who had violated her but refused to believe her honest answer. He consigned her to his friend Nauplius, whom he ordered to drown her in the sea. But as Auge was being led off to Nauplia and was near Mount Parthenium, she felt herself overcome by the birthpangs and withdrew to a nearby thicket as if to perform a certain necessary act. There she gave birth to a male child, and hiding the babe in some bushes, she left it there (τεκοῦσα δὲ παιδίον ἄρρεν ἀπέλιπε τὸ βρέφος εἴς τινας θάμνους κρύπσασα). After doing this, Auge went back to Nauplius. (Diod. 4.33.9) Nauplius decides not to drown her but gives her to some Carians, who carry her to Asia and give her to the king of Mysia. As for the infant (βρέφος) that had been left near Parthenium by Auge, certain herdsmen came upon it as it was getting its food from the teat of a hind (τῳ μαστῷ τρεφόμενον) and brought it as a gift to their master. Corythus received the child (τὸ παιδίον) gladly, raised (ἔτρεφε) him as if he were his own son, and named him Telephus after the hind which suckled it. (Diod. 4.33.11) Telephus would grow up and consult the oracle at Delphi in order to be reunited with his mother in Asia. The infant is doomed by its grandfather rather than its mother, who seeks to kill both her and the baby, although not directly by his own hand. Both survive and are ultimately reunited. The salvation of neither is explained explicitly, but the herdsmen must have been struck by the unusual sight of a hind nursing a human infant. It is not clear whether or how they knew that their master would happily accept the child as his own. Agathocles Agathocles, king of Syracuse, began life as a foundling in Diodorus’s history. Carcinus, a Carthaginian living in Sicily, impregnated a Sicilian woman and asked traveling Carthaginians to inquire about the unborn child at Delphi. They reported that the child would be the cause of great misfortune to Carthage and Sicily. Learning and being frightened, Carcinus exposed the infant in a public place (ἐξέθηκε τὸ παιδίον δημοσία) and set men to watch him that he might die (ἵνα τελευτήσῃ παρακατέστησεν). After some days had passed the child had not died, and those who had

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Chapter 4 been set to watch him began to be negligent. At this time, then, the mother came secretly by night and took the child (τὸ παιδίον); and, since she feared her husband, she did not bring him into her own home, but left him with her brother Heracleides and called him Agathocles, the name of her own father. The boy became much fairer in face and stronger in body (ὁ παῖς ἐξέβε τήν τε ὄψιν εὐπρεπὴς καὶ τὸ σῶμα εὐρωστος) than was to be expected at his age. When he was seven years old, Carcinus was invited by Heracleides to some festival and, seeing Agathocles playing with some children of his own age, wondered at his beauty and strength (ἐθαύμαζε τό τε κάλλος καὶ τὴν ῥώμην). On the woman’s remarking that the child who had been exposed (ὁ ἐκτεθείς) would have been of the same age if he had been brought up, he said that he regretted what he had done and began to weep incessantly (καὶ συνεχῶς ἐδάκρυεν). Then she, seeing that the desire of the man was in harmony with her own past act, disclosed the entire truth. Gladly hearing her words, he accepted his son. (Diod. 19.2.4–7)

The infant is exposed due to an adverse prophecy. The father arranges the exposure, but the mother undermines the effort and saves her baby to be raised by her brother. The infant is not described per se (although he is vigorous enough to survive several days), but we are told he quickly grows into a small child of exceptional beauty and strength, and thus his biological father marvels at the boy when he is seven and rejoices to discover that the special child is his own. The only tears are those of the father, who regrets exposing his son.

(Pseudo-)Apollodorus The Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus provides a systematic synthesis of Greek mythology. This Apollodorus has been identified with Apollodorus of Athens, but this tradition has been questioned, and many think the true author was Castor of Rhodes. Given the lack of clear evidence of authorship, many speak of the author as Pseudo-Apollodorus, while others prefer to speak of him as Apollodorus. In any case, the work dates to the first century b.c.e. Zeus Chronus swallowed his children as they were born because of a prophecy that he would be dethroned by his own son. His wife and sister Rhea became enraged that he consumed her first five children:

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[S]he went to Crete when she was big with Zeus and gave birth to him in a cave in Dicte. She gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse. These nymphs fed the child (παῖδα) on the milk of Amalthia and the Curetes in arms guarded the babe (βρέφος) in the cave, banging their spears on their shields so that Chronus might not hear the child’s sound (τοῦ παιδὸς φωνῆς). But Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Chronus to swallow as if it were a newborn baby (γεγεννημένον παῖδα).20 (Ps.-Apol. 1.1.6–7) In some ways, this narrative is almost the opposite of an infant abandonment story. Rhea strives to hide her baby from the danger of exposure and (unlike the mother of Moses) succeeds. The motif of infant weeping appears here as a noise that may attract the attention of Chronus, who will kill the baby, so it is covered by another, louder noise. Pelias and Neleus Apollodorus narrates the birth of twin boys to Tyro: Poseidon in the likeness of Enipeus lay with her and after she secretly gave birth to twin sons (διδύμους παῖδας), she exposed them (ἐκτίθησιν). While the infants (τῶν βρεφῶν) lay there, a mare belonging to some passing horse keepers kicked with its hoof one of the infants (βρεφῶν) and left a bruise (πέλιον) on its face. The horse keeper took up both the children and reared them. The one with the bruise he called Pelias, and the other Neleus. (Ps.-Apol. 1.8) These twins grow up to discover their mother and kill their stepmother for mistreating her. As in the Library generally, the account of these children is concise, and the motives of characters are not spelled out. The text does not clarify whether Tyro realizes that she is deceived by Poseidon, but her abandonment of the twins seems to be motivated by her realization either that Poseidon is the father or that her passion for the river Enipeus is itself an illegitimate union. In either case, she abandons her infants as illegitimate offspring. The motivation of the horse keeper who rears them is not explained by any consideration such as childlessness or the attractiveness of the infants. As often, the exposure story includes an explanation for the name of one of the twins. 20.  Trans. of Apollodorus modified from James G. Frazer (trans.), Apollodorus, The Library (2 vols.; LCL; New York: Putnam’s, 1921).

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Perseus Acrisius receives a prophecy that his daughter Danae will give birth to a son who will kill him, so he locks his daughter away. When Acrisius learned that she had got a child Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea (τὴν θυγατέρα μετὰ τοῦ παιδὸς εἰς λάρνακα βαλὼν ἔρριψεν εἰς θάλασσιν). The chest washed ashore on Seriphus, and Dictys took up and reared him (ἄρας ἀνέτρεφε τοῦτον). (Ps.-Apol. 2.4.1) Danae is also saved, so Perseus is raised by his mother, who needs no special motive to keep him since she never sought to abandon him. In this example, the sea rather than a wilderness is the intended instrument of exposure, and the chest that was supposed to be a coffin became a lifeboat. Telephus Apollodorus twice alludes to the story of Telephus, which is also narrated by Diodorus. The basic story is familair from Diodorus, but Apollodorus shows different emphases: On his way past Tegea, Heracles deflowered (ἔφθειρεν) Auge without realizing that she was the daughter of Aleus. She gave birth to her infant (βρέφος) in secret and placed (κατέθετο) it in the temenos of Athena. Since the land was being ravished by a pestilence, Aleus entered the temenos and there discovered the evidence of his daughter’s labor. He exposed (ἐξέθετο) the infant (βρέφος) on Mt. Parthenius, but by divine providence, it was saved, for a doe that had just given birth suckled it, and shepherds retrieved it and called it Telephus. Aleus gave Auge to Poseidon’s son Nauplius to sell abroad, and he gave her to Teuthras, the lord of Teuthrania, who married her. (Ps.-Apol. 2.146–47) The second account, in 3.103–4, clarifies elements left unstated in the first account, especially concerning the circumstances of his birth and discovery: Now Auge, after being deflowered (φθαρεῖσα) by Heracles, secreted her infant (βρέφος) in the temenos of Athena where she was a priestess. But when the land became barren and remained that way, and the oracles disclosed that there was an unholiness

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(δυσσέβια) in the temenos of Athena, Auge’s act was brought to light, and she was handed over by her father to Nauplius for execution. Naupliuus gave her to Tuethras, lord of the Mysians, who married her. Her baby (βρέφος) he exposed (ἐκτεθὲν) on Mt. Parthenius and it grabbed onto the teat of a doe, and was called Telephus. After being raised by the herdsmen of Corythus, he went to Delphi in search of his parents (γονέας). When he learned from the god who they were, he made his way to Mysia, where he became Teuthras’s adopted son and heir to his rule at his death. Auge’s choice of the temenos as a place to keep her baby secret is explained by her status as a priestess with access to the temenos, a sacred space set apart for the deity. The second account clarifies what is less clear in the first: Auge keeps her baby a secret but evidently strives to keep him alive. The infant is not “exposed” until her father sends him to die on a mountain. Zethus and Amphion Antiope became pregnant by Zeus and ran away from her father, Nycteus, who threatened her. She married a man in Sicyon, but her father before killing himself, sent Lycus to punish her, so he subdued the city, killed Antiope’s husband, and led her away captive: On the way she gave birth to two sons at Eleurethe in Boeotia, who were lying there when a cowherd found and reared them (οὕς ἐκκειμένους εὑρὼν βουκόλος ἀνατρέφει), and he called the one Zethus and the other Amphion. (Ps.-Apol. 3.5.5) This very concise tale explains that the infants were abandoned due to the implacable enmity of their late grandfather, but the motive for the cowherd’s adoption is unstated. The usual vocabulary for infant abandonment is missing. Oedipus Apollodorus briefly explains that Laius had been warned by “the oracle” (i.e., Delphi) not to beget a son because he would kill him. But when he was drunk, he had sex with his wife. When it was born he pierced the child’s ankles with brooches and gave it to a herdsman to expose (ἐκθεῖναι δίδωσι νομεῖ). The

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The motive for exposing the child is the prophecy about his future, and the exposure is entrusted to a third person. There is no explanation for why the cowherds saved the child or why Periboea accepted him as her own, although Sophocles reports that she was childless (and her name was Merope). Paris The account of the birth of Paris provides more detail than the other abandonment stories in Apollodorus: When a second infant (βρέφους) was about to be born, Hecuba dreamed she had brought forth a firebrand and that the fire spread over the whole city and burned it. When Priam learned of the dream from Hecuba, he sent for his son Aesacus, for he was an interpreter of dreams, having been taught by his mother’s father Merops. He declared that the child was begotten to be the ruin of his country and advised that the babe should be exposed (ἐκθεῖναι τὸ βρέφος ἐκέλεθε). When the baby (τὸ βρέφος) was born, Priam gave it to a servant to take and expose (ἐκθεῖναι) on Ida. The servant was named Agelaus. The infant was exposed by him (τὸ δὲ ἐκτεθὲν ὑπὸ τούτου βρέφος), and nursed for five days by a bear, and when he found it safe, he took it up, carried it away, brought it up (ἔτρεφεν) as his own son on his farm, and named him Paris. When he grew to be a young man, Paris excelled many in beauty and strength (κάλλει τε καὶ ῥώμῃ) and was afterwards surnamed Alexander because he repelled robbers and defended the flocks. And not long afterward he discovered his parents. (Ps.-Apol. 3.12.5) The exposure of the infant is motivated by a prophecy of doom. King Priam entrusts the task of exposure to a servant, and the place of exposure is far from human occupation, where the infant’s cries cannot be heard. The servant returns to check on the infant and discovers the fantastic circumstance that he is being nursed by a bear, or at least finds that after five days he is still alive. The fantastic involvement of a bear or the simple

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survival of the baby may have been enough to motivate the servant to raise the child as his own. The infant is not described, but he grows into a young man of exceptional beauty and strength.

Aelian Aelian was a second-century c.e. Roman rhetorician who wrote in Greek. He tells an infant abandonment story in On Animals 12.24 that is noteworthy because the name of the infant is Gilgamesh (Γίλγαμος). This indicates that some recollection of Gilgamesh survived in the Hellenistic age, although the story familiar from Akkadian sources is not present. According to Aelian, Babylonian prophets told the king of Babylon that his daughter’s son would take his kingdom. He guarded his daughter closely, yet she became pregnant by an obscure man. Her guard, fearing her father’s wrath, ‘cast the baby from the citadel’ (ἔρριψαν έκ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως, On Animals, 12.21) where she was imprisoned, but an eagle saw the child (τὸ βρέφος) falling, flew beneath, caught, and carried him safely to a garden: When the keeper of the place saw the pretty baby, he fell in love with it and nursed it (τὸ καλὸν παιδίον θεασάμενος ἐρᾷ αὐτοῦ καὶ τρέφει), and it was called Gilgamesh and became the king of Babylon. This story names Gilgamesh, although the story more closely resembles that of the Akkadian narrative of the abandonment of Sargon. It also resembles the Akkadian story of Etana, who rode an eagle to heaven. Over the course of centuries, the name of Gilgamesh appears to have survived but was attached to another story or was simply imported into a standard Greek infant abandonment tale.21 The birth legend of Sargon is the only infant abandonment story in Akkadian that I will briefly note here in connection with Aelian’s Gilgamesh story. The text is written in first-person autobiographical style and begins with Sargon’s birth and abandonment, then relates his rise to kingship and empire. He says that his mother was a priestess who gave birth to him in secret (i-na pu-uz-ri, line 5), evidently because she was supposed 21. Wouter F. M. Henkelman, “The Birth of Gilgames (Ael. NA XII.21): A CaseStudy in Literary Receptivity,” in Altertum und Mittelmeerraum: Die Antike Welt diessein und jenseits der Levante. Festschrift für Peter W. Haider (ed. R. Rollinger and B. Truschnegg; Oriens et Occidens 12; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006) 807–56. Henkelman provides the most current critical text for this pericope and traces the story’s probable origins to multiple Near Eastern narratives.

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to be chaste.22 She set her son in a wicker basket sealed with bitumen and placed (id-dan-ni) him in the river which took Sargon to Aqqi the wagterdrawer who raised Sargon as his adopted son and gardener. The terse narrative does not indicate any appeal the baby made to Aqqi, who motives are unspecifified (e.g., he is not identified as childless). Placing the baby in a water-tight basket may represent the mother’s reluctance to abandon her baby.

Conclusion Weeping is rare in Greek abandonment stories. The motif appears prominently in Herodotus’s narrative of Cyrus but is otherwise absent. It appears in the story of Zeus but in an unusual way. Rather than helping explain why he is saved, the infant Zeus’s cries are mentioned as a noise that may give away his existence to the father who seeks to destroy him. The other authors in the corpus provide relatively terse narratives compared with Herodotus’s elaborated and emotional story. Euripides’ Ion has considerable emotive poetry surrounding the abandonment of the baby, but the baby’s cries are not mentioned. Although weeping rarely appears, the texts often identify the baby as cute and/or viable (Cyrus, Ion, Semiramis, Heracles, Paris, Gilgamesh) or observe the beauty of the rescued child after it has been rescued (Cybele, Agathocles). These descriptions of the infants indicate a caregiving interest in the viability of the infant rather than its emotional appeal. In still other cases, the baby is not described at all (Iamus, Oedipus [both stories], Telephus [all three stories], Pelias and Neleus, Perseus, Zethus and Amphion). The rarity of weeping in Greek infant abandonment stories may be explained in two ways. First, Herodotus provides a lively, detailed, emotional story in which many characters involved in the infant abandonment weep over the sadness of abandoning the royal infant. Most of the stories (14 of 18), however, appear in Diodorus and Apollodorus, both of whom compose terse narratives intended to encompass many episodes over a long period of time. The styles and motives of the authors partially explain the shape of the infant abandonment stories and the infrequency of infant weeping. Donald Lateiner examines weeping in several centuries of Greek historiography and finds that some authors (e.g., Herodotus) 22.  The precise role of an ēntu remains unclear. See Brian Lewis, The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth (ASORDS 4; Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980) 37–42. See Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 36–49.

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represent private emotions and weeping, while others avoid them (e.g., Thucydides).23 Second, the attitudes of ancient Greeks toward infant abandonment may help explain why infant weeping is not a standard part of the genre. Given the power of infant cries to elicit adult caregiving, one might expect narrators to describe rescued babies as crying. However, the genre avoids weeping in favor of either no description of the baby or only an indication of its cuteness or viability. Adult care is explained in the stories as a result of the providential appearance of animal involvement in keeping the infants alive (Iamus, Semiramis, Cybele, Telephus [all three versions], Paris, and Gilgamesh). Herodotus rationalizes the animal involvement and highlights emotional motivations. Most authors, however, avoid emotional descriptions of the rescuers’ motivations. This lack of tears in the genre may be a result of the widespread Greek practice of evaluating whether an infant was worth rearing. If not, it was abandoned. Greek attitudes are complex and difficult to reconstruct reliably. Emiel Eyben scours the evidence for attitudes toward birth control, abortion, and exposure in ancient Greece and Rome among diverse genres of writing, including law, philosophy, medicine, and religion.24 In general, exposure was an accepted although sometimes controversial practice and one that people resorted to in desperate circumstances. Since there was a degree of calculation in abandoning an infant and it was often emotionally difficult, the crying of the child may not have been regarded as sufficient reason to rescue it. If it were, then almost no baby would have been abandoned. Consequently, the Greek stories may omit the weeping of the infant as being irrelevant to its rescue. Cynthia Patterson explains that the ancients made an ethical distinction between exposure, which was acceptable, and infanticide, which was not. She identifies four factors that could place an ancient Greek child at increased risk of exposure: physical defect, illegitimacy, poverty, and being female.25 Physically defective infants seem to have been dispatched routinely. None of the infant abandonment stories in the corpus involves a malformed infant. Since all the babies in the stories are rescued and many 23. D. Lateiner, “Tears and Crying in Hellenistic Historiography: Dacryology from Herodotus to Poilybius,” in Tears in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Thorsten Föger; New York: de Gruyter, 2009) 105–34. 24. E. Eyben, “Family Planning in Greco-Roman Antiquity,” Ancient Society 11–12 (1980–81) 5–82. 25. C. Patterson, “ ‘Not Worth the Rearing’: The Causes of Infant Exposure in Ancient Greece,” TAPA 115 (1985) 103–23; Judith Evans Grubbs, “Infant Exposure and Infanticide” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 83–107, esp. pp. 84–92.

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go on to become heroes, a physical defect would be a major impediment to saving a baby and a significant mark against a heroic figure. Consequently, the stories do not reflect this aspect of social reality. The other risk factors appear less dangerous. Many infant girls were raised, but more girls than boys were abandoned. Again, the stories do not reflect this historical reality. Of the 15 babies in the 18 stories, only 2 are female (Semiramis, Cybele). In the case of Cybele, the father is explicitly characterized as being unwilling to raise a girl, even though he is royal and wealthy. His daughter ultimately becomes a goddess. Although girls were more likely to be abandoned than boys, it may be that boys were more likely to be rescued. Nevertheless, the gender disproportion in the corpus appears to reflect a greater narrative interest in men than women, rather than a journalistic interest in the number of girl and boy babies abandoned. Illegitimacy appears as a significant circumstance in almost half of the narratives (Iamus, Ion, Semiramis, Heracles, Telephus [all three versions], Pelias and Neleus, Zethus and Amphion, and Gilgamesh), although the pregnancy typically involves a deity or hero, which elevates the genealogy of the character and may partially excuse the illegitimacy in the eyes of the reader. Although poverty may have been a major consideration for parents who abandoned infants, it does not appear in the corpus. The rescued infants tend to become important people, which may partially explain why their origins are not depicted as impoverished, even if their adoptive parents were poor.

Chapter 5 Comparative Perspectives Infant weeping appears in the Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek corpora. Since the Hebrew and Greek corpora both consist of infant abandonment stories, there are several comparisons that may be made within this common genre. The Akkadian incantations, however, complicate the comparison because they are a different kind of literature. They are the only texts in this book that reflect the ambivalence caused in adults by the stress from infant cries. They express both empathy and hostility toward the crying infant and were intended as real-world, practical texts that would soothe a crying baby. The infant abandonment stories imply some animosity toward the baby that explains its rejection, but this rejection is tied to factors extrinsic to the baby, such as an illegitimate pregnancy or adverse prophecy. Certain commonalities may be expected across cultures and across genres because they represent aspects of parent-child relationships grounded in human biology. For example, across cultures, people experience stress when hearing the sound of a baby’s cries. The various corpora illustrate the power of infant weeping in different ways. The Akkadian incantations exist because ancient Mesopotamian parents (like parents in many cultures) sought professional help to obtain relief from their babies’ frequent crying. Their existence provides eloquent testimony regarding the stress that infant cries caused to adults. Furthermore, several details of the incantations further reflect the power of infant weeping. The cries that disturb adults also disturb divine entities. As Mesopotamian myths indicate, great danger exists when the gods are disturbed and sleepless due to human noise. Indeed, high infant mortality is presented as a divine means of controlling human population and therefore noise. The danger to babies came primarily from demonic entities, and the incantations for soothing babies appear in contexts associated with magical rituals for warding off demonic attack. Thus, the details 115

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of the incantations themselves, their placement in a series of magical texts, and their wider mythic context all highlight the extraordinary power of infant weeping to disturb adults and deities in ways that provoke stress. In turn, this stress may result in either caregiving or aggression. The reference to Cybele’s purification rites that heal infants and children recalls the magical incantations from Mesopotamia that soothed crying babies and warded off evil from babies and pregnant women. There is no Greek corpus of magical texts comparable with the Akkadian material for soothing infants, but the Cybele story reveals that ancient Greek parents sometimes drew on magical rites to protect their children from illness. Since the details of the magic that Greek parents may have enlisted is largely lost, we cannot know how similar it may have been to the Akkadian incantations. There may have been no cultural connection. Instead, we might imagine that parents in diverse cultures employ whatever means are available to them to save their children, and magical rituals can provide a sense of control to anxious parents. The Hebrew and Greek infant abandonment stories represent infant weeping in different ways. The two Hebrew stories, like the Akkadian incantations, present infant weeping as a powerful means of evoking caregiving. Pharaoh’s daughter feels pity for the crying baby Moses, and God hears the wails of Ishmael. However, the narratives do not indicate hostility, as the incantations do. Rather, infant cries elicit empathy and care from human and divine audiences. Among the Greek stories, only Herodotus’s account of Cyrus employs the motif of weeping to elucidate the care shown to the baby. Perhaps infant cries are not depicted as powerful enough to compel caregiving because the Greek practice of infant abandonment was relatively common, and babies could not be saved merely because they cried. Instead, the infants in the stories are rescued for other reasons (e.g., their viability, the wondrous involvement of animals, or childless adoptive parents). However, the lack of infant cries may (also) be a consequence of the nature of the sources in the corpus. Both Diodorus and Apollodorus write terse narratives, unlike Herodotus’s more famously detailed and engaging style. In addition to crying, infants elicit care through their cuteness and viability. These two features are sometimes hard to distinguish in the texts, but both appear with or without weeping as explanations for care given to abandoned infants. In the Hebrew narrative, Moses is depicted as cute and/or viable, but Ishmael’s vigor is only implied by his weeping. The Greek stories, which typically lack weeping, mention the viability or cuteness of the baby as an explanation for its rescue or as a feature that is evident as the child grows.

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Given the appeal of the abandoned infants who are rescued, the narratives need to explain why they are abandoned in the first place. Mothers are sometimes depicted as reluctant abandoners. Their reluctance may be understood in several ways. The literary depiction reflects the common, real-world experience of mothers who bond with their babies during pregnancy and characterizes the mother as a decent person (not monstrous) and child as desirable (not unwanted). Eurypides’ Ion takes up this question of the mother’s character by showing both Creusa and the old man wondering about how the mother could abandon her baby (925–70). The reluctance of mothers to abandon sometimes correlates with male pressure to abandon. In the case of Moses, the pressure comes from the infanticidal command of Pharaoh, but there is no indication that his family does not want him. Ishmael, however, is rejected by his father, although Abraham is depicted as reluctant to send him away (Sarah with God’s help insists). Male pressure or force is common in the Greek stories (Cyrus, Oedipus [both versions], Cybele, Telephus [all versions], Agathocles, Perseus, Zethus and Amphion, Paris, Gilgamesh). The mother of Heracles is afraid of Hera rather than Zeus, and Creusa expresses fear of her mother. So, as with Ishmael, the pressure to abandon may come from another woman. However, the pressure comes primarily from men, especially fathers. Whether it is the mother or someone else who wants to abandon the infant, the illegitimacy of the child provides a common motive in Greek stories that does not appear in Hebrew. The illegitimate pregnancies are often the result of rape or seduction by a god or hero. Zeus fathers Heracles by pretending to be Alcmene’s husband, and Poseidon likewise deceives the mother of Peleus and Neleus. Zeus fathers Perseus and Zethus and Amphion. Apollo fathers Iamus and Ion by raping their mothers. Heracles fathers Telephus by rape/seduction. The mother of Semiramis is a goddess who becomes pregnant by an obscure young man due to Aphrodite’s trickery. Similarly, an obscure man impregnates the mother of Gilgamesh. This literary trope coheres with the known history of child abandonment and infanticide. Since illegitimate birth are often strongly discouraged, unwed mothers are more likely than their married counterparts to abandon their offspring. Although illegitimacy appears in many Greek abandonment stories, it is absent from both Hebrew stories. Hagar’s pregnancy may be unusual to many modern readers, but it is legitimate within the cultural frame of the narrative. In one case (Cybele), the infant is abandoned because it is female. Semiramis is abandoned by her goddess mother, but seemingly not because of her gender. In the social world of ancient Greece, infant girls were at greater risk of abandonment than boys. However, infant abandonment

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stories are overwhelmingly about male children. In this respect, this literary trope does not reflect reality since the various factors that led parents to abandon babies disproportionately affected girls. This relative disregard for female life also appears in the preference for telling infancy narratives about male rather than female characters. Semiramis has an infancy narrative and goes on to be a male-like ruler who accomplishes great things. Cybele has an infancy narrative and becomes divinized. Their exceptional destinies were the motivatation for their infancy narratives. The above aspects of the literature involving infant weeping may be partially explained based on the biology of differential investment by parents described in chap. 1. Other elements common to two or more corpora appear to be due to cultural continuity rather than common biology. For example, both Moses and Perseus are cast into water in a waterproof container. This motif is at least as old as the Sargon birth narrative. It may reflect historical reality, if parents sometimes abandoned their infants in the hope that they would be adopted by others. However, the infants who were saved from abandonment seem most often to have been raised as slaves. The stories of Moses and Heracles both involve a striking turn in which an infant is rescued by someone who is his enemy. Pharaoh’s daughter saves the infant who will become the instrument of divine violence against Egyptians. Hera hates Heracles yet inadvertently offers him her breast. Similarly, both stories show the mother who abandons her baby receiving it back again. In the Hebrew examples, both mothers receive their abandoned infants and raise them. This result is rare in the Greek corpus, but Heracles and Perseus are raised by their mothers, and Agothocles is rescued by his mother, who places him with her own brother until the danger to him is past. Many of the infant abandonment stories include an etiology of the baby’s name. Moses draws his name from his discovery in water. Ishmael has a name before he is abandoned, but his name derives from another narrative, in which his mother flees while pregnant (Genesis 16). Ten of the 18 Greek infant abandonment stories include a name etiology (Iamus, Oedipus [both versions], Semiramis, Cybele, Telephus [all three versions]. Pelia and Neleus, Paris/Alexander). The name etiologies are related to the circumstances of abandonment, except for Paris, who receives the name Alexander after he grows up, repels robbers, and defends flocks. Some significant aspects of these texts are specific to a given corpus. Only the Greek stories include examples of infants being abandoned due to adverse prophecies. This distinctive feature may indicate a Greek interest in predictive prophecy noticeable in other Greek texts (e.g., Homer,

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Herodotus) that does not have a literary correlate in the Hebrew stories (but see “the word of Yhwh” in DtrH). Similarly, only the Greek stories depict animals caring for abandoned babies. The Greek stories are also unique for their depiction of deities as parents of abandoned babies. These divine parents may be fathers (Zeus or Apollo) or mothers (the mother of Semiramis). Finally, the Greek corpus has a relative wealth of infant abandonment stories compared with Hebrew. There are many possible reasons for this disparity. Although Hebrew literature constitutes a small corpus compared with the vast Greek literature, the difference in scope may not fully explain the disparity. Apollodorus and Diodorus both offer lengthy narrative complexes encompassing myth and history that were of interest to Greek readers. The narrative complex of Genesis–2 Kings is not dramatically shorter but shows much less interest in infant abandonment stories. This may indicate either a relative lack of interest in infant abandonment stories among Hebrews or a hostility toward them that was analogous to the Hebrew animosity to the idea of divine-human parentage (e.g., Gen 6:1–4), which was popular in Greek literature. In the Hellenistic period, Jewish (and subsequently Christian) culture articulated an ethical stance opposed to the accepted Greek practice of infanticide.1 It is hard to know what earlier generations of Jews thought about infant abandonment, but this opposition to the practice may have been inherited from earlier times. In short, the stories in Genesis and Exodus may reflect a pronatal culture that encouraged parents to raise their children and disapproved of infant abandonment. This may also help explain why the Hebrew texts characterize the mothers as reluctant abandoners whose infants are returned. 1. Erkki Koskenniemi, The Exposure of Infants among Jews and Christians in Antiquity (Sheffield: Phoenix, 2009).

Appendix Concordance of Baby Incantations abu: ‘father’ [ad]: Vorl. 2.7; #3.47; #4.55; #5.75; #31.24; #32.10 abullu: ‘gate’ [ká.abul]: #2.40 adāru: ‘to be afraid’: Vorl. 2.9 adi: ‘until’: #25.362 agāgu: ‘to become furious’ [proposed egegu ‘to cry plaintively’]: Vorl. 1.3; #5.68; #32.3 adāru: ‘to be afraid’: Vorl. 2.9 adi: ‘until’ [en]: Vorl. 2.27; #29.16 ahāzu: ‘to seize’: Vorl. 2.14 akalu: ‘bread’ [ninda]: #32.17, 32.20 aksuppu: ‘threshold’ [kun4]: #29.17 alāku: ‘to walk’ [du]: Vorl. 2.25; #3.50; #4.63; #5.66; #25.362; #31.24, 31.26; #32.4 alpu: ‘ox, cattle’ [gud]: Vorl. 2.25; #3.50; #25.365; #31.26 amāru: ‘to see’: Vorl. 1.2, 2.4; #26.375, 26.376; #30.19 (2×); #32.2 ammīni: ‘why?’: Vorl. 1.3 (2×), 1.4, 2.5; #1.17, 1.18; #32.3 ana: ‘to’: Vorl. 2.16, 2.18; #2.44; #3.53; #4.57 (2×), 4.64; #5.74; #25.372, 25.373; #29.15 (2×); #31.28; #32.20 anāku: ‘I’: #32.15 annû: ‘this’: #4.64; #5.78; #25.372; #32.5, 32.18 Antu: ‘Antu’: #32.4, 32.9 Anu: ‘Anu’: #32.9 armu: ‘male gazelle’: #2.38; #3.48; #4.61; #26.378; #29.16; #30.20 arwium: ‘male gazelle’: Vorl. 2.22 Asalluḫi: ‘Asalluhi’: #2.41; #25.370; #31.27; #32.12 ašru: ‘place’: #3.51; #5.66 atta: ‘you’: Vorl. 2.1; #1.19; #25.366 awilūtu: ‘humankind’: Vorl. 2.2; #32.8 bābu: ‘door’ [kà]: #3.45 bakû: ‘to cry, weep’: Vorl. 1.3, 1.4; #1.17; #4.57; #29.15; #32.3 balāṭu: ‘to mix’ [ḫi.ḫi]: #2.43; #3.54; #25.360; #29.18; #30.22 balāṭu: ‘health’ [ti.la]: #2.42; #25.369

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baʾû: ‘to go along’: Vorl. 2.8 bašû: ‘to exist’: #25.370 bēltu: ‘mistress’: #2.42; #25.368, 25.369; #32.14 biri-: ‘among’: #3.52 bītu: ‘house’ [é]: Vorl. 1.1, 1.5, 2.11, 2.13; #3.45, 3.51 dagālu: ‘to see, look’: #1.16; #29.14 dalāḫu: ‘to disturb, stir up’: #4.55; #31.24 dalāpu: ‘to be sleepless, (trans.) keep awake’: Vorl. 2.10; #3.50; #31.26 Damu: ‘Damu’: #2.42; #32.13 dekû: ‘to rouse’: Vorl. 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 2.27; #29.16 dimtu: ‘tear’: #4.56; #32.4 dumqu: ‘good’: Vorl. 2.7 ē: ‘not’: #30.21 Ea: ‘Ea’: #2.41; #4.58, 4.59; #25.370; #29.15; #31.25, 31.27; #32.12 edû: ‘to know’: #3.47 edēlu: ‘to shut’: #3.45 (2×) egēgu: ‘to cry plaintively’: Vorl. 1.3; #5.68; #32.3 ekletu: ‘darkness’: Vorl. 1.1; #3.46; #26.375; #29.14; #30.19; #31.23; #32.1 eli: ‘on’ [ugu]: #4.65; #5.360; #25.370, 25.375 Enkidu: ‘Enkidu’: Vorl. 2.16 enû: ‘to change’: #5.72 enuru: enuru-incantation: #5.66 eperu: ‘soil; dust’ [saḫar]: #3.52, 3.53; #5.76; #29.17 (3×) epēšu: ‘to do’: Vorl. 2.6, 2.7; #32.11 epēšu: ‘ritual’ [dù]: #2.43; #3.51; #25.372; #26.383; #29.17; #30.22; #32.17 erbu: ‘sunset’ [dutu.šú.a (ereb šamši)]: #5.74 ezēbu: ‘to leave (behind)’: Vorl. 2.26 galātu: ‘to frighten’: Vorl. 1.7, 1.8, 2.28 garāru: ‘to be scared’: #4.58; #25.358; #29.15; #31.25 gerru: ‘path’: #4.63 Gula: ‘Gula’ [dme.me]: #2.42, #25.369; #32.13 gulgullu: ‘skull’: #5.76, 5.79 ḫadû: ‘to rejoice’: #1.18 ḫarrānu: ‘road’: #4.63 ḫargallu: ‘locking ring’: #3.45 ḫubūru: ‘beer jar’; ‘noise’: #3.51 iltānu: ‘north’ [im.si.sá]: #2.43 ilittu: ‘offspring’: #29.14 ilu: ‘deity’: Vorl. 1.5, 2.11; #5.73; #30.21 ina: ‘into’: Vorl. 2.5, 2.11, 2.23; #1.18; #2.41, 2.43; #3.51, 3.52 (2×), 3.54; #4.56; #5.73; #25.358; #29.18; #30.22; #32.4, 32.5, 32.17

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īnu: ‘eye’: #4.56 iṣṣūru: ‘bird’: #32.7 iškāru: ‘work, chores’ [éš.gàr]: #32.11 (2×) Ištar: ‘Ishtar; goddess’: Vorl. 2.13; #4.60; #25.358 ištu: ‘from’ [ta]: #1.17 itti: ‘with’: #3.53 itūlu: ‘to lie down’: #5.67; #25.361; #32.10 kalbu: ‘dog’ [ur.gi7]: #32.6, 32.20 kalītu: ‘kidney’ [bir]: #5.72 karānu: ‘to wipe’: #32.19 karānu: ‘wine’: Vorl. 1.9 kasāpu: ‘to break into bits’: #32.6 kasû: ‘to bind’: Vorl. 2.21, 2.22 kī: ‘like, how?’: Vorl. 2.7; #4.62; #29.16 (2×); #30.20; #31.25, 31.26 kīam: ‘thus’: Vorl. 2.6; #5.74 kibsu: ‘track’: #3.53 kikiṭṭû: ‘ritual, procedure’ [kìd.kìd(.da/bi)]: #5.74 kima: ‘like’ [gim]: Vorl. 1.9, 1.10; #2.37, 2.38, 2.39; #3.48, 3.49; #4.61; #5.72, 5.74, 5.75; #25.361 (2×), 25.363, 25.364, 25.365; #26.377, 26.378; #30.21 kimaḫḫu: ‘grave, tomb’ [ki.maḫ]: #5.76; #29.17 kirbānu: ‘lump (of clay)’: #29.16; #32.7 kudurru: ‘boundary stone’: #30.21 kusāpu: ‘scrap of bread’: #32.6 kusarikku: ‘protective deity’: Vorl. 1.5; #4.58 lā: ‘not’: Vorl. 1.4, 2.6; #1.16 (2×), 1.22; #3.48, 3.49; #4.59; #5.67, 5.68, 5.72; #25.375, 25.382; #29.14 (2×), 29.17; #30.19; #32.1 laḫmū: ‘protective deity’: #25.358; #29.15; #31.25 lakû: ‘suckling’: #1.19; #25.366 lapātu: ‘to touch’: #25.362, 25.373 leqû: ‘to take’: #25.362; #29.18(?) libbu: ‘heart, belly’ [šà]: Vorl. 2.5; #1.17, 1.18 (2×); #2.44; #3.54; #4.64; #25.372 lillidu: ‘offspring’: #32.8 lū: particle: Vorl 1.2, 2.3, 2.4; #2.37, 2.38, 2.39; #3.48; #5.66, 5.68; #25.363, 25.364, 25.365, 25.367; #26.377, 26.378; #30.20 (2×) maḫāru: ‘to receive’: #5.69, 5.70 māḫiru: ‘one facing’: Vorl. 2.24 maḫru: ‘front’ [igi]: #29.17; #31.28 malû: ‘to be fill’: #3.46 mannu: ‘who?’: Vorl. 1.6, 1.7; #32.5 manû: ‘to recite’ [šid]: #2.44; #3.54; #4.65; #25.372, 25.372; #31.28; #32.18 maqātu: ‘to fall, happen’ [šub]: Vorl. 1.11; #25.360, 25.365; #29.15; #31.26 māru: ‘son’ [dumu]: Vorl. 1.10; #2.38; #4.62; #5.77; #25.361; #26.378

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maṣṣaru: ‘watch’: Vorl. 2.18 mīrānu: ‘young (animal)’ [ur.tur]: #29.14; #31.23 mītu: ‘dead one’: #5.72 mušēniqtu: ‘wet-nurse’: Vorl. 2.10; #29.16 mušītu: ‘night’: #5.73 mû agamme: ‘swamp water’: #2.37; #30.20 mû būrti: ‘cistern/well water’ [a.meš pú]: #2.39; #3.49; #25.363; #26.377 ⟨mû⟩ nēḫūti: ‘still water’: #31.25 mû yarḫi: ‘pond water’: #25.364 nagaltû: ‘to wake up’ Vorl. 1.5, 1.7, 1.8, 2.28; #4.58, 4.59; #29.15; #31.25 nadānu: ‘to give’: Vorl. 2.23; #3.50; #4.61, 4.63 nadû: ‘to lay down; cast’ [šub]: #3.45, 3.53; #32.5, 32.9 naḫaršušu: ‘to collapse’: #25.361 nâḫu: ‘to rest’ [ḫun.gá]: Vorl. 1.12; #2.37, 2.44; #3.49 (2×), 3.54; #4.65; #5.80; #10.167; #25.359, 25.364, 25.374; #26.377 (2×); #30.20; #31.25 (2×); #32.16, 32.21 nakaru: ‘to be hostile’: #30.21 nâlu: ‘to lie down’: #25.365; #32.10 nammaštû: ‘wild animal’: #5.70 namrūtu: ‘light’: #32.1 nasāku: ‘to throw’: #32.7, 32.20 nērebu: ‘entrance’: #2.40 nēšu: ‘life’: #2.40 Ningiru: ‘Ningiru’: #25.68; #32.14 nišu: ‘people’ [un.meš]: Vorl. 2.8; #31.24 nūru: ‘light’ [izi.gar; zálag]: Vorl. 1.2, 2.4; #26.376; #30.19; #32.2 pašāḫu: ‘to rest’: #25.360, 25.367 pašāšu: ‘to annoint’ [šeš, eš]: #2.44; #3.54; #4.64; #25.372; #29.18 puḫādu: ‘lamb’ [udu.sila4]: #31.23 pû: ‘mouth’ [ka]: #25.374; #29.18 qabû: ‘to say’ [du11.ga]: #5.74, 5.78; #32.15 qaqqadu: ‘head’ [sag.du]: #32.17, 32.19 qaqqaru: ‘ground’: #32.5 qatûm: ‘to finish’: #32.10, 32.11 qibītu: ‘command’: #2.41; #5.73 qinnu: ‘nest’ [gùd]: #2.43; #30.22 qūltu: ‘silence’: #3.52 raggu: ‘wicked’: #32.8 rašû: ‘to get’: #30.21 rēʾû: ‘shepherd’ [lú.sipa]: #25.365 rigmu: ‘noise’ [gù]: Vorl. 2.11; #4.57 (2×); #29.15 (2×); #32.5 rīšûtu: ‘redness’: #5.71

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rāšānu: ‘skin condition’: #5.71 rašû: ‘to acquire’: #30.21 rūʾtu: ‘spittle’ [uḫ]: #29.18 sābītu: ‘barmaid’: Vorl. 1.10 sakānu: ‘to put, place’ [gar]: Vorl. 2.17; #32.17 sâku: ‘to crush, pulverize’: #2.43; #3.53; #30.22 sebe: ‘seven’: #25.373; #31.28 sību: ‘brew’: #3.51 sinūntu: ‘swallow (bird)’ [sim.mušen]: #2.43; #30.22 sukkuku: ‘deaf ’: #1.16; #29.14 sūqu: ‘street’ [sila; e.sír]: Vorl. 2.8; #3.46, 3.47, 3.53; #29.16, 29.17; #31.24 ṣabītu: ‘gazelle’ [maš.dà]: Vorl. 2.20; #2.38; #3.48; #4.62; #25.361; #26.378; #29.16; #30.20; #40.12 ṣabātu: ‘to seize’: Vorl. 2.19, 2.20; #3.47; #4.60; #5.71; #25.358 ṣalālu: ‘to sleep’: Vorl. 2.12; #1.22; #2.38; #3.48; #4.59, 4.61; #5.66, 5.68; #25.367 (2×); #26.378, 26.382; #30.20 ṣītu: ‘(sun)rise’: #26.375; #30.19 ṣeḫru: ‘baby’: Vorl. 1.1, 1.8 (2×), 1.12, 2.1; #25.371 ṣēru: ‘open country’ [edin]: Vorl. 2.23; #4.62; #5.70 ṣuḫāru: ‘baby, boy’ [(lú).tur]: #2.44; #3.54; #4.64, 4.65; #5.77; #25.373; #26.382; #29.18; #32.16, 32.21 ša: ‘of ’: Vorl. 1.12, 2.2, 2.7, 2.8, 2.20, 2.22, 2.43; #3.47, 3.48, 3.53; #4.55, 4.62, 4.63; #5.70, 5.73, 5.77; #29.16 (2×), 29.17 (2×); #30.20, 30.21; #31.24; #32.4, 32.5 šabāšu: ‘to gather’: #3.52 šakānu: ‘to place’: #4.56 šaknu: ‘placed’: #3.51 šakru: ‘drunkard’: #25.361 šalāš: ‘three’: Vorl. 2.17; #2.44; #25.372; #32.18 šamnu: ‘oil’ [ì(.giš)]: #2.43; #3.53, 3.54; #4.64; #25.372; #29.18 Šamšu: ‘sun; Shamash’: Vorl. 1.2, 2.4; #2.41; #5.74 (2×), 5.75; #26.375, 26.376; #30.19 (2×); #32.2 šamû: ‘heaven’ [an]: #32.4 šanû: ‘to do again’: #32.15 šapāru: ‘to send’: Vorl. 2.15 šatû: ‘to drink’: Vorl. 1.9 šemû: ‘to hear’: #1.16, 1.19; #25.366; #29.14 šēpu: ‘foot’ [gìr]: #32.19 šerru: ‘baby’: #1.19; #4.55; #25.366, 25.371; #26.375 šiptu: ‘spell’ [én; ka.inim.ma]: Vorl. 1.12; #2.42, 2.44; #3.45, 3.54; #4.55, 4.63, 4.64, 4.65; #5.66; #25.363, 25.368 (2×), 25.369, 25.370 (2×), 25.371; 25.372; #26.375, 26.382; #29.14, 29.16; #30.19, 30.21; #31.23, 31.27 (3×), 31.28; #32.1, 32.9, 32.12 (2×), 32.13 (2×), 32.15, 32.18

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šittu [šiṭṭu]: ‘sleep’: Vorl 1.11, 2.14, 2.24, 2.25; #3.50; #4.60, 4.61, 4.63; #25.358, 25.359, 25.360, 25.365; #29.15; #31.26; #32.10 šuāti: ‘him, her’: #4.64; #32.20 šuḫuppatu: ‘boots’ [kuš.suḫub]: #29.18 šumēlu: ‘left (hand)’ [150]: #29.17 šumma: ‘if ’: #32.6, 32.7, 32.8 šunu: ‘they’: #32.15 ṭābu: ‘good’: #25.359 tamû: ‘to swear; D=bind’: #2.20 taqānu: ‘to be secure’: #2.39; #25.363 tārītu: ‘nurse, nannny’: Vorl. 2.9; #1.20; #39.19 tebû: ‘to get up’: #5.67 tû: incantation-formula [tu6]: #4.63; #29.16; #30.21; #31.27; #32.15 u: particle: #2.40, 2.41; #4.63; #5.71, 5.76; #25.360, 25.370; #29.18; #31.27, 31.28; #32.9, 32.13 ul: ‘not’: Vorl. 2.12, 2.14; #2.42; #4.60; #5.358; #25.368; #31.24, 31.27; #32.12 ullikiʾa: ‘there’: Vorl. 1.4 ummu: ‘mother’ [ama]: Vorl. 2.5, 2.8, 2.27; #1.17, 1.18, 1.21; #4.56; #25.362; #31.23, 31.24; #32.3, 32.11; #39.17 uppuṭu: ‘blind’: #1.16; #29.14 uršu: ‘bedroom’: #25.358 (w)arki: ‘after, behind’ [egir]: Vorl. 2.25; #3.50; #31.26, 31.28 (w)aṣu: ‘to go out’ [è]: Vorl. 1.2, 2.3; #1.17; #5.77; #26.376; #30.19; #32.2 (w)ašābu: ‘to sit, dwell’: Vorl. 1.1; #26.375; #30.19; #32.1 wurdu: ‘slave’: Vorl. 2.2 yāʾu: ‘my’: #25.368; #32.12 yuttun: ‘mine’: #31.27

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Index of Ancient and Modern Authors Aelian 111 Almond, B.  7, 8 Al-Rawi, F. N. H.  60 Alter, R.  85 Apollodorus of Athens  106 (Pseudo)-Apollodorus  93, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 116, 119 Aquila 70 Asher-Greve, J. M.  101 Atkinson, J.  4, 5 Austen, J.  83 Bakker, E. J.  93 Ball, H. L.  9 Baraitser, L.  8 Barr, R. G.  14, 15, 18, 19 Bergman, C.  86, 87 Blum, E.  88 Boesenberg, D.  71 Borgi, M.  11 Boswell, J.  8 Bosworth, D. A.  35, 74, 79 Brinton, R. G.  78 Brosch, T.  11 Bumiller, E.  9 Cadilla de Martínez, M.  30, 31 Canino Salgado, M. J.  30, 31, 32 Carr, D.  23, 84 Cassidy, J.  5 Cassuto, U.  68 Castor of Rhodes  106 Castro, L. R.  27 Chapman, C. R.  76 Childs, B. S.  68, 72 Civil, M.  60 Clark, E. A.  78 Cogan, M.  72, 85

Cohen, J.  67 Cohen, J. M.  82 Colesanti, G.  24 Collins, D.  103 Conn, P.  18 Conroy, S.  19 Cooper, R. P.  25, 27 Crowe, H. P.  21 Dalley, S.  101 Daly, M.  11 Darwin, C.  7 Davies, G. F.  77 Day, L.  89 Day, P.  89 Dewald, C.  93 Diodorus  93, 101, 102, 103, 105, 108, 112, 116, 119 Dozeman, T. B.  68, 70 Drews, R.  96 Durham, J. I.  68, 72, 75 Eckart, O.  72 Einarsdóttir, J.  10 Elliott, G.  17 l’Etoile, S. M. de  26 Euripides  93, 99, 100, 112, 117 Evanoo, G.  21 Evans, J. A. S.  93 Eyben, E.  113 Farber, W.  22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 51, 66 Featherstone, B.  8 Feldman, L. H.  71 Field, T. M.  12, 13 Foster, B.  36, 57

138

Index of Ancient and Modern Authors Freedman, D. N.  94 Fuchs, R. G.  8 Fujiwara, T.  19 García-Donoso, D.  28 García Lorca, F.  27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 Garroway, K.  79 Geller, M. J.  24, 25 George, A. R.  60, 66 Giordano, M.  24 Glocker, M. L.  10 Gormally, S.  14, 15 Green, J. A.  14 Greenberg, M.  89 Greenspahn, F.  80 Groopman, J.  13 Grubbs, J. E.  113 Gruber, M. I.  75, 76, 79, 83 Gunkel, H.  84 Gunnar, M.  15 Gustavson, G. E.  14 Halloway, W.  8 Hamilton, V.  75, 78 Hashiya, K.  10 Hassan, R.  78 Heffron, Y.  54, 62 Heimlich, J.  20 Henkelman, W. F. M.  111 Herodotus  93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 112, 113, 116, 119 Homer 118 Horowitz, W.  55, 57 Houtman, C.  68, 74 Howe, D.  5 Hrdy, S. B.  6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17 Igekami, Y.  27 Irsigler, H.  87, 88 Jacques, M.  23 Johnson, M.  8 Josephus  71, 73, 74, 75 Joüon, P.  73

139

Kaltner, J.  73 Karen, R.  5 Kearns, E.  99 Kitzinger, S.  13 Klymasz, R. B.  27 Konnor, M.  7, 9, 11, 15, 18 Kooi, B. W.  87 Koskenniemi, E.  119 Kramer, S. N.  23 Kunz-Lübcke, A.  90 Kvanvig, H. S.  61, 62 Lacocque, A.  68, 73 Lambert, W. G.  53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66 Larsson, M.  74 Laslett, P.  62 Lateiner, D.  112, 113 Lawrence, R. A.  16, 75, 76 Lawrence, R. M.  16, 75, 76 Lee, C.  18 Lehtonen, L.  14, 15 Levenson, J. D.  78 Lewis, B.  17, 112 Liesen, L. T.  8 Lin, H.-C.  18 Lorenz, K.  10 Lucian 102 Lyke, L. L.  84 Malul, M.  89 Mandell, S.  94 Marincola, J.  94 Masuyama, E. E.  27 McEwen, E.  86 McFattter, R.  18 McLeod, W.  86, 87 Melanchthon, M. J.  72 Merwe, C. H. J. van der  74 Meyers, C.  70 Michel, T.  78 Milgrom, J.  5 Millard, A. R.  53, 60, 62 Miller, R.  74, 78, 86 Miller-Naudé, C. L.  74 Mirguet, F.  78, 88

140

Index of Ancient and Modern Authors

Morrison, T.  69 Murphy, E.  102 Murray, A. D.  4 Nations, M. K.  9 Nelson, J. K.  13 Nicolaus of Damascus  96 Nielsen, F.  94 Nikat, T.  25, 26 Noth, M.  68, 72 O’Connor, M.  87 Odell, M. S.  89 Ohgami, H.  10 O’Malley, J.  12 Out, D.  13 Parker, J. F.  73, 88 Parker, R.  8 Parkin, T.  5, 63, 75 Parness, J. A.  8 Patterson, C.  113 Pearl, D.  20 Pearl, M.  20 Philo  71, 73, 74, 75 Pindar 98 Pinker, A.  78, 80, 82 Plato 71 Prinz, R. J.  20, 21 Rabinowitz, N. S.  99 Rad, G. von  78, 84 Rebhun, L.-A.  9 Reece, R. M.  19 Rees, A.  7 Reinhartz, A.  78 Reis, P. T.  87 Rilling, J. K.  11, 12, 13, 21 Robinson, B. P.  78, 80 Rock, A. M. L.  26 Rodriguez Marín, F.  30 Roth, M. T.  80, 81 Rulon-Miller, N.  78 Russell, C. K.  9 Sander, D.  11

Sanefuji, W.  10 Sanger, C.  8 Sarna, N. M.  70, 72 Scheper-Hughes, N.  9, 10 Schmidt, W. H.  68, 74 Schmitt, H.-C.  88 Schwartz, J.  78 Seng, A. C.  20, 21 Shaver, P. R.  5 Sherer, K.  11 Skinner, J. A.  84 Soltis, J.  13, 14, 15, 16 Sonek, K.  79 Song, A. M. G.  77 Sophocles  93, 98, 99, 104, 110 Soranus  11, 14, 69 Spinelli, M. G.  8 Steinberg, N.  73, 88 St. James-Roberts, I.  19 Stol, M.  35, 75 Stott, K.  94 Strabo 95 Straus, M. A.  20 Sulimani, I.  101 Suter, A.  101 Symmachus 70 Talon, P.  57 Talvik, I.  18 Terpstra, N.  8 Thompson, J. L.  78 Thucydides 113 Timmermans, S.  19 Toorn, K. van der  24, 25, 26 Trainor, L. J.  25, 26, 27 Trehub, S. E.  25, 26, 27 Trible, P.  85, 86 Trost, J.  8 Tuerkheimer, D.  19 Van Seters, J.  94 Vingerhoets, A.  13 Volk, T.  4, 5 Walfish, M.-S.  78 Waltke, B. K.  82, 87

Index of Ancient and Modern Authors Waters, K. H.  93 Weisberg, D. E.  79 Wenham, G.  78 Westbrook, R.  79 Westenholz, J. G.  112 Westermann, C.  78, 79, 82, 84, 88 Wiggermann, F. A. M.  35, 63 Williams, F.  76 Willi-Plein, I.  81 Wilsher, K.  19 Wilson, M.  11

Wolf, A.  9, 10 Wood, R. M.  14 Yee, G. A.  74, 75 Zeifman, D. M.  13, 14 Zerwick, M.  71 Zeskind, P. S.  14, 21 Zimmerli, W.  89 Zucker, D. J.  78 Zutterman, C.  87

141

Index of Scripture Genesis 1:4 70 1:8 70 1:10 70 1:12 70 1:18 70 1:21 70 1:25 70 1:28 69 1:31 70 6:1–4 119 6:5–7 54 6:11–13 54 12–36 79 15:16 84 16 118 16:4–5 69 16:9 88 16:10 88 16:10–12 91 16:11 88 16:12 88 16:13 88 16:15 88 16:16 88 16:17 88 16:18 88 16:19 88 16:20 88 17:15–21 82 17:18 82 17:25  83, 84 21  3, 80, 82, 90, 92 21:8 88 21:8–21 67 21:9–23 90 21:11 82

Genesis (cont.) 21:12 82 21:13 82 21:14 83 21:14–21 77 21:15 72 21:15–21 85 21:16  72, 77, 87 21:17 87 21:17–19 73 21:18 91 21:20 86 22:3 84 26:7 70 26:34 84 28:5 84 29:5 84 30:1 69 30:23 69 36:2–3 84 36:5 84 36:14 84 36:14–15 84 36:18 84 37:28 84 37:36 84 38:1 84 38:9 79 46 84 46:12 84 Exodus 1:7 77 1:9 77 1:12  69, 77 1:13 69 1:22 72 2 3

142

Exodus (cont.) 2:1–10  67, 90, 92 2:2  69, 70 2:2–3 68 2:3–10 88 2:4–10 73 2:6  73, 74 2:10  67, 74 2:13 67 2:14 67 6:16–20 84 6:20 68 Numbers 3:40–51 5 23:32 69 Deuteronomy 7:16 89 13:9 75 25:12 89 Judges 3:17 70 13:5 73 13:7 73 13:8 73 13:12 73 Ruth 4:16 88 1 Samuel 1:6–8 69 1:11 69 15:3 75 15:9 75 16:12 70

Index of Scripture 1 Samuel (cont.) 20 87 20:20 87

Psalms (cont.) 127:3–5 69 128:3 69

2 Samuel 12:15 88

Proverbs 6:34 75 17:6 69 22:6 20

1 Kings 1:6 70 3:25 88 20:3 70 2 Kings 20:5  75, 88 22:19 75 Esther 8:3 75 Job

3:16 36 3:20 36

Psalms 6:9 75 6:9–11 88 31:23 86 39:13 88

Isaiah 1:6 86 7:14–16 83 9:5 88 9:18 75 49:23 76 Jeremiah 13:14 75 21:7 89 21:8 75 51:3 75 Lamentations 2:2 75 2:17 75 2:21 75 3:43 75

143 Ezekiel 5:11 75 7:4 75 7:9 75 8:18 75 9:5 75 9:10 75 16  67, 88, 90, 92 16:3–6 89 16:4–5 72 16:5  72, 85 16:44–45 89 36:21 75 Daniel 1:4 97 Joel 2:18 75 Jonah 2:5 86 3:3 71 Malachi 3:17 75

Deuterocanonical Literature Judith 11:23 70

2 Maccabees 6:23 70 7:27 83

Acts 7:17–22 70 7:20 71

Galatians 4:29 78

New Testament

2 Corinthians 10:4 71

Hebrews 11:23 71

Index of Other Ancient Sources

Exodus Rabbah 1:20  70 n. 5

Qur ʾan 28:3–13 73

Ancient Near Eastern Sources Atra-ḫasīs I 44  60 I 44  60 I 72–79  60 I 166–68  60 I 352–59  61 II I 1–8  61 II ii 43–50  61 rev. iv 1–8  61 rev. iv 3, 8, 41  65 III vii 3–4  63 V 40–42 (Sippar) 61 Baby Incantations (Farber) Vorl. 1  35–36, 38, 41, 46, 52 Vorl. 2  36–38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 49, 50, 52 #1  39, 48, 52, 53 #2 38, 39–40, 42, 46, 52, 58 #3  38, 40, 40–41, 46, 52 #4  36, 38, 39, 41, 41–42, 49, 52, 55, 58, 60 #5 36, 42–43, 46, 52

Baby Incantations (Farber) (cont.) #6 43 #7 43 #8 43 #9 44 #10 44 #11 44 #12 44 #13  43, 44, 45 #14 44 #15  43, 44 #16 44 #17 44 #18  43, 44, 45 #19  43, 44, 45 #20 45 #21 45 #22 45 #23 45 #24 45 #25  38, 39, 40, 45–46, 46, 48, 49, 52, 58 #26  38, 40, 41, 46–47, 48, 52 #27 47 #28 47 #29  38, 39, 46, 47–48, 48, 49, 52, 58

144

Baby Incantations (Farber) (cont.) #30  38, 40, 46, 48, 52 #31  40, 41, 46, 48–49, 49, 52, 58 #32  33–34, 36, 49–50, 52, 57, 58, 60 #33 50 #34  43, 51 #35 51 #36 51 #37 51 #38  38 n. 44, 51 #39  51, 52 #40  38, 40, 51, 52 #41  43, 51 #42  43, 51 #43  43, 51 #44  43, 51 #45  43, 51 #46  43, 51 Birth Legend of Sargon 72 111–12 Code of Hammurabi 170 81 171 81

Index of Other Ancient Sources Code of Lipit-Ishtar 25 80 26 81 Defeat of Enutila 2–6 65 Enki and Ninmaḫ  65 Enuma eliš I 21–28  54, 65 I 37–38  55–56 I 38  57 n. 62

Enuma eliš (cont.) I 50  57 n. 62 I 58  56 I 57–65  57 I 73–76  57 I 106–23  58–59 I 110  57 n. 62 I 130  59 II 77  57 n. 62 II 100  57 n. 62 II 102  57 n. 62 II 150  57 n. 62 VI 8  59

145

Gilgamesh X v 28  46 Ludlul III 76  46 Slaying of Labbu Obv. 1–4 65 Toil of Babylon I 1–13  64 V 17–20  64

Greek Sources Aelian, On Animals 12.21 111 12.24 111 (Pseudo-)Apollodorus, Library 1.1.6–7 107 1.8 107 2.4.1 108 2.146–47 108 3.103–104 108–109 3.5.5 109 3.7 109–10 3.12.5 110 Diodorus of Sicily, Bib. Hist. 2.1–22 102 2.4 102 3.58 103 4.9 104 4.33.9 105 4.33.11 105 19.2.4–7 105–106 Euripides, Ion 8–36 100 10–11 99 14 100

Euripides, Ion (cont.) 14–15 100 14–19 100 18 100 26 100 27 100 39–40 100 43 100 44 100 47 101 318–12 100 330–59 100 340 100 348 100 350–52 100 448–49 100 762 100 860–922 100 876 101 898 100 902–903 100 916–17 100 924 101 936–70 100 940 101 951 100 954 100 961 100 962–63 100

Euripides, Ion (cont.) 965 100 967 101 970 101 1389 101 1397–1467 100 1398 100 1458–59 101 1492 100 1494 100 1496 100 1498 100 Herodotus, Hist. 1.32 97 1.60 97 I.107–22 94 I.109 94 1.110 94 1.111  95, 96 1.112 95 1.113 95 1.122 96 1.140 96 1.196 97 1.999 97 3.1 97 3.3 97 5.12 97

146

Index of Other Ancient Sources

Herodotus, Hist. (cont.) 7.12 97 9.25 97 9.96 97 Josephus, Ant. 2.224 71 2.3–4 73 2.9.7 75 Philo, Moses 1.2.9 71 1.2.10 73 1.4.13–14 75 1.4.15 71 1.5.18–19 71

Pindar, Olympian Ode 6 31 98 33 98 44–45 98 49 98 Plato, Republic 7.535a 71 Sophocles Ajax 121–26 99 Oed. Col. 58 99

Oed. Tyr. 707–10 98 717–19 99 719 104 1024 99 1174 99 1178 99 Soranus, Gynecology 11 Strabo, Geography 15.3.6  95 n. 3