was the canaanite society matriarchal?

[Hildegarda]

Earlier, we were talking about matrist societies being more peaceful and psychologically safe for a growing child: \\\http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=10194.0

Then, you have some people denying that strictly matriarchal societies have ever existed only matriarchal society, although they talk about more or less matrifocal communities around the globes.

When it comes to ancient cultures, the only one that seems to be mentioned as "semi-matriarchal" or "matri-polytheistic" is the Canaanites and their descendants in Carthage. I.e., very strong female element in mythology, matrilinearity, open fertility rituals, etc.

The problem is in the archeological evidence of wide-spread child sacrifices, which seems to confirm the accounts of Greek scholars and the biblical accounts. Even though more modern studies dispute those remains were results of sacrifice (\\\http://phoenicia.org/childsacrifice.html), still, mass burials of "stillborn fetuses" suggest some kind of abortive practices. A lot of conflict in the region, too.

How does that reconcile with a more supposedly peaceful matrifocal society? Is it even correct to refer to Canaanites as semi-matriarchal?

The reason why I am asking is that I have seen an argument based on those facts, that matriarchy "doesn't work", it is "bad" and patriarchy is "good", as the latter restores the natural balance of male and female roles in society and therefore better protects all its members. This came from a catholic woman with strong anti-abortion and anti-feminist opinions.

I am not looking to argue with her and the likes of her, but may be some more knowledgeable minds can help me understand the contradiction, and where exactlt the holes are in her argument.

thank you very much

 

[mamadrama]

Hi, Hildegarda.

You may find Lucia Chiavola Birbaum's paper, "Dark Mother, Dark Others, and a new World Case of Sardinia," presented at the Second World Congress on Matriarchal Studies interesting.

_http://www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com/birnbaum.html

After african migration to Sardinia (4300-3000 BCE), the other significant migrations were of semites, originally african, in return migration. After 2300 BCE, semites (a language group) from Ur in west Asia called, "peoples of the sea," or the shardana, swept through Europe carrying images of a nurturant dark mother (offering breasts), settling in Sardinia. After 1500 BCE canannites (called phoenicians by the greeks) from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon took icons of the dark mother all over the "known world," in a peaceful trading empire whose base was Carthage in Africa and whose hub was Sardinia.

Although the dark mother was subsequently subordinated and whitened by greeks, romans, and the christian church, the memory of the african dark mother continued to be transmitted in the common epoch by subaltern classes not only in images of black madonnas and other dark women divinities of the world, but in other folklore -- crafts, art, stories, rituals, dance, and song -- conveying her values *justice with nurturance/compassion/healing; *equality of all her children;*transformation.

The problem is in the archeological evidence of wide-spread child sacrifices, which seems to confirm the accounts of Greek scholars and the biblical accounts. Even though more modern studies dispute those remains were results of sacrifice (\\\http://phoenicia.org/childsacrifice.html), still, mass burials of "stillborn fetuses" suggest some kind of abortive practices. A lot of conflict in the region, too.

I'm not sure the mass infant burials mean abortive practices. It seems just as possible that they were in fact just "stillborn fetuses" but a rather outrageous thought did occur to me: What if they were aborting the fetuses from "bad seed?" Not likely but who knows?

How does that reconcile with a more supposedly peaceful matrifocal society? Is it even correct to refer to Canaanites as semi-matriarchal?

One thing you may want to consider is that whenever you have an "archy," which means ruled by, you have a situation of domination. With that in mind, I think it is quite possible for imbalance to occur in a matriarchal society, as well. If you read Riane Eisler, she proposes a partnership model rather than a domination one.

Partnership & domination models
Eisler proposes that we need new social categories that go beyond conventional ones such as religious vs. secular, right vs. left, capitalist vs. communist, Eastern vs. Western, and industrial vs. pre or post industrial [matrist vs patrist...L], which she notes do not describe the whole of a society's beliefs and institutions. She coined the term domination culture to describe a system of top-down rankings ultimately backed up by fear or force, noting that one of the core components of this system of authoritarian rule in both the family and the state is the subordination of women--be it in Nazi Germany and Khomeini's Iran today or in earlier cultures where chronic violence and despotic rule were the norm. She analyzes the androcracy (governance of social organization dominated by males) of Indo-European and other societies, versus what she proposes was a partnership model (as distinct from matriarchy) for the social organization of Neolithic Europe and the later Minoan civilization that flourished in prehistoric Neolithic Crete. To support the idea that neither men nor women dominated one another, Eisler cites archeological evidence from southeast Europe, especially Crete, drawing much from the research of Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, Nicolas Platon, and Vere Gordon Childe. Her hypothesis about prehistory also relies strongly on sources such as the Gnostic Gospels and on the history portrayed by the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod. To support her thesis for contemporary societies, she draws heavily from cross-cultural studies. She and others using her partnership/domination conceptual framework have applied her analysis to fields ranging from politics and economics to religion, business, and education

One interesting aside, I was reading the story of Jacob in Genesis for an OT seminar I am taking, and came across Rebekah's (his mother) lament about the Canannite women:

Then Rebekah said to Issac, "I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?"
Then Issac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, "You shall not marry one of the Canannite women. Go at once to Paddan - aram to the house of Betheul, your mother's father; and take as wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

Maybe some food for thought...

 

[Green_Manalishi]

When it comes to ancient cultures, the only one that seems to be mentioned as "semi-matriarchal" or "matri-polytheistic" is the Canaanites and their descendants in Carthage. I.e., very strong female element in mythology, matrilinearity, open fertility rituals, etc.

Riane Eisler in her work refers to the Cretan culture as the last true society where a gilania (the social partnership system, between the two halves of humanity coined by her, and explained in the previous post by Black Swan).

One explanation for the fact that goddess societies are described performing actions as sacrifice, is that the ponerization of such societies did not happen from day to night, it was a process where some of the old practises where maintained and new ones where adopted and where thus superimposed in the same time reference. In some cases the figure of a female goddess which is almost invariably associated with fertility and so forth is inverted and is transformed in a war deity, not loosing completely the former atributes . As an example the case of Athens:

Athena's birth "is a desperate theological expedient to rid her of matriarchal conditions" says J. E. Harrison. She was the Goddess of Wisdom, and the daughter of the Titaness who basically personified it. By having her born only from Zeus, it gave males authority and power over something that had previously only been a female realm. Zeus swallowed Metis, and so was able to assimilate her crafty wisdom. Athena did not have any loyalty to a mother figure, which probably played a major role in her self-description as misogynist.

By what little I've read about the matter, if the society in question is before 3000 BCE we could expect it to be without the ponerization elements brought by the nomad tribes, and if it is after the referred period it most certainly will have a mix between old and new costumes, the new onebeing introduced by foreign elements.