Woman in Ancient Near East Ilse Seibert

A kind of magic has always surrounded The East. Every child knows the fairy-tales of "A Thousand and One Nights", and the image of the lovely Sheherezade who is telling them conceals many another matter which is known to us about the Ancient East. Frequently thoughts about oriental women of the Middle Ages or of antiquity conjure up at once the gay life in the harems, where women with flashing eyes, wrapped in gossamer veils, are supposed to be happy to meet proud rulers with equally flashing eyes, and to enjoy with them a life devoted to flirtation, free of any cares. One imagines - often against one's better judgement - the women in the East spending all their lives filled with the beauty and the ease shown by our popular musical comedies; these and nursery fairy-tales certainly contributed most in producing this picture. But the world conjured up by them is only a fairy-tale world, a beautiful illusion; it certainly ought not to be generalized, either for the Is­lamic Middle Ages or for the Ancient East. The everyday life of the vast majority of oriental women in ancient times hardly ever seems to have been fairy-tale-like and, therefore, the book we present here is not a pleasant book of fairy-tales. It is rather a report of facts, for as much as possible of what historical sources had to say about the life of women in ancient times, has been col­lected in these pages. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Woman in Ancient Near East (Ilse Seibert)