Editing Women's rights (section)

==== Mesopotamia ====

[[File:Disk of Enheduanna (2).jpg|thumb|Ancient [[Sumer]]ian bas-relief portrait depicting the poet [[Enheduanna]]]]

Women in ancient [[Sumer]] could buy, own, sell, and inherit property.<ref name=Kramer1963>{{citation|last1=Kramer|first1=Samuel Noah|title=The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character|year=1963|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago, Illinois|isbn=978-0-226-45238-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/sumerianstheirhi00samu/page/78 78]|url=https://archive.org/details/sumerianstheirhi00samu/page/78}}</ref> They could engage in commerce,<ref name=Kramer1963/> and testify in court as witnesses.<ref name=Kramer1963/> Nonetheless, their husbands could [[divorce]] them for mild infractions,<ref name=Kramer1963/> and a divorced husband could easily remarry another woman, provided that his first wife had borne him no offspring.<ref name=Kramer1963/> Female deities, such as [[Inanna]], were widely worshipped.<ref name=Nemet1998>{{citation|last=Nemet-Nejat|first=Karen Rhea|author-link=Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat|year=1998|title=Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia|publisher=Greenwood|isbn=978-0313294976|url=https://archive.org/details/dailylifeinancie00neme}}</ref>{{rp|182}} The [[Akkadian Empire|Akkadian]] poet [[Enheduanna]], the priestess of Inanna, is the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded.<ref>{{cite book|last=Binkley|first=Roberta|year=2004|title=Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9780791460993|page=47|chapter=Reading the Ancient Figure of Enheduanna}}</ref> 

[[First Babylonian dynasty|Old Babylonian]] law codes permitted a husband to divorce his wife under any circumstances,<ref name=Nemet1998/>{{rp|140}} but doing so required him to return all of her property and sometimes pay her a fine.<ref name=Nemet1998/>{{rp|140}} Most law codes forbade a woman to request her husband for a divorce and enforced the same penalties on a woman asking for divorce{{Undue weight inline|date=October 2024}} as on a woman caught in the act of [[adultery]].<ref name=Nemet1998/>{{rp|140}} Some Babylonian and [[Assyria]]n laws, however, afforded women the same right to divorce as men, requiring them to pay the same fine.<ref name=Nemet1998/>{{rp|140}} The majority of [[East Semitic]] deities were male.<ref name=Nemet1998/>{{rp|179}}