The mythopoesis of creation in Ancient Mesopotamia. Female archetypes in the psychical and rhetorical transmission of good governance

Within this system of connections, which we have attempted to trace across both written and figurative planes, woman appears to play the principal role in the creation story and to act as an intermediary, ensuring the transfer of political power. These two conditions were to have concrete repercussions on the socio-political organisation of Sumer, and would serve as the basis for psychical and rhetorical archetypes that would be translated in a variety of different ways within the ancient world. Gender studies in the recent past, often fuelled by a modernist desire to celebrate the autonomous and independent position of the female universe, have frequently contributed to the female 9 sphere displaying behaviour whose character is exclusive and occasionally self-referential. Such an attitude was not adopted in this documentary selection Ex Oriente, but perhaps it played a marginal role in the archaeological cultures of ancient Mesopotamia in the past.