ABSTRACT
The brief review of these models for evaluating the status of ancient women and the relationship of that status to the presence of goddesses and their worship leaves us with some directions for inquiry and cautions about how we proceed. As we turn to women's texts from the ancient world then, we must beware of the temptation of generalization. Status of elite, goddess-identified women (see Enheduanna and Pudul].epa, below) may not extend to their lower-class sisters, nor should we assume that the presence ofgoddesses always implies a higher view offemale authority and power. Questions of status should always be asked in conjunction with study of the economic power held by women. Future work should attempt to test Sanday's hypothesis about women's contribution to a culture's subsistence needs and the percentage of full-service goddesses in the society, although that is beyond the scope of the present essay. Further, insofar as possible given the texts with which we are working, we should attempt to press our questions about women's roles and status into the domestic sphere and not simply in the public domain where only a few exceptional women find a place. We should be alert to recurring patterns within the literature and cultures studied, while simultaneously resisting the easy assumption that a given motif or pattern will carry the same oncology and meaning in one culture as it does in another. Finally, we must be sensitive to the "literary" nature of the texts studied with respect to the proportion of cultural verisimilitude likely to be present, preferencing economic texts and correspondence, for example, more highly than tales and myths. With these injunctions in mind, let us now turn to the examination of texts by some ancient women ofMesopotamia and Anatolia.
