This podcast interview with Uroš Matić looks at new trends in the study of sex and gender in ancient Egypt, especially as influenced by gender and queer theories. Considering notions of binary gender, third gender, and same sex relations, with a final look at the endurance of folk tradition in Egyptian fertility practices.

This article considers the symbolic meanings of the face, breasts, vulva, and branch images which typify the schematic piriform pendants which first emerged in Tell el-‘Ajjul in the Late Bronze Age and spread through the Levant. In contrast to the usual hypotheses regarding fertility, I suggest that each of these elements refer to the Egyptian goddess Hathor as aspects of her attributes and powers in the Levant under Egyptian domination.

It is commonly believed that women were the preparers of food and drink in the Iron Age (ca. 1200–586 B.C.E.) Israelite household while men were primarily responsible for agricultural field activities. Various lines of evidence suggest, however, that this indoor female/outdoor male dichotomy as related to food production was not always the reality, especially during the crucial harvest seasons. The Hebrew Bible and other textual sources, iconography, and Middle Eastern ethnography suggest that women not only took part in the cereal grain, grape, and olive harvests, they were also valued for their participation in these seasonal field activities and the festivals that celebrated them. In this article, I shall examine the evidence for male and female participation in ancient Israelite harvests and challenge popular assumptions about how men and women contributed to the production of food and drink in ancient Israel.

Music: http://www.bensound.com

We intereviewed Dr. Bruce Wells on his recent Near Eastern Archaeology magazine article, "Sex Crimes in the Laws of the Hebrew Bible." Although biblical texts identify a range of sexual behavior as illicit, adultery is the only sexual act addressed in the law collections of the Hebrew Bible as a crime – i.e., as a serious harm against another person for which punishments beyond financial compensation are allowed. Some scholars have argued that the treatment of adultery in biblical law is better and more favorable toward women than that found in the cuneiform law collections; others have argued precisely the opposite. What is more likely is that biblical law is largely in keeping with how ancient Near Eastern societies other than Israel and Judah handled adultery and should not necessarily be evaluated as either better or worse from a modern perspective.

This article offers an introductory overview of the topic of crime and punishment in the Hittite kingdom. I offer general background to the topic and focus on one case-study: crimes related to sexual behavior. Even within this narrower topic, the discussion is limited to one main example, incest prohibitions and the regulation of kin relations, which have not previously been studied as a distinct topic.

We spoke with Dr. Megan Perry about a recent Near Eastern Archaeology article she co-authored.

In the 8th to 10th century c.e., six adult individuals, five males and one female, were murdered in the northern Badia of Jordan amongst the ruins of Qasr Hallabat. The four males and one female show a combination of blunt force trauma to the head and sharp force trauma to the arms and legs. Who are these individuals, and what are the circumstances surrounding their deaths? Forensic and bioarchaeological analyses of the skeletal remains uncover evidence surrounding this crime and how these individuals may have ended up meeting their deaths at Hallabat.