The Research of Women's Status and Roles in the Orient

1991 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 01510241
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: History of Europe and America
• Research Institution: Osaka Shoin Women's Junior College
• Principal Investigator: KAWASE Toyoko Shoin Junior College, General Education, Associate Professor, 一般教育, 助教授 (10195092)
• Project Period (FY): 1989 – 1990
• Keywords: The Orient / The Haxamanis- (Achaemenid) Persian Empire / The Persepolis Fortification Texts / Women / Female

Research Abstract

The Persepolis Fortification texts, which covers the period from 509-494 B. C., are very useful source materials for elucidating the women s status and roles in the Haxamanis- (Achaemenid) Persian societies. The following facts emerged from the detailed analysis of these texts.
1. Female workers number nearly half the total workers who were engaged in the various productive activities for the Persepolis royal economy.
2. An accepted principle is that each man received 3 BAR of grain per month for his work, woman 2 BAR, boy/girl 0.5-2.5 BAR. Some skilled women were much more highly valued than the ordinary men.
3. The female workers who had just delivered children were freed from their assigned works for a month, which may have been helpful for the health of mothers in childred.
4. The royal women possessed their own estates and workers. They sometimes conducted cults in place of the king.
Furthermore the Greek historians frequently report that the influencial women, such as queen-consorts or queen-mothers, were active in conspiracies and intrigues in the Haxamanis- harem.
These facts permit the assumption that the women in the Persian societies were not so completely secluded from the social/public life as the contemporaneous Greek polis-states, which confined the citizenwomen to their houses for the domestic chores and child-bearing.