Page 51 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

38 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS

The wind blew on high,... was quelled by force. The foulness was reduced to its depths.1
The air was radiant in its midst; quiet and repose were there, and the Lord was praised
for his wisdom, thanksgiving went up for his grace.
From that mingling and blending that was left, from the . . . essences he wrought the
whole creation of the upper and the lower things.2
And lo, the natures, all of them—with created things they hastened, to purify themselves
and remove what was mingled with the nature of evil.
In the cultured society of Edessa we find, as we should expect, a liberal
attitude towards womenfolk. Women are shown in dignified poses in the
family groups of the mosaics and stone reliefs in the cave-tombs. Several
memorial texts are inscribed to women. Statues to women were evidently not
uncommon; not only was the statue of Queen Shalmath erected on the Citadel
mount, as we have seen, but the two free-standing statues that have survived
at Urfa are of women. The tomb tower at Birtha, on the Osrhoenian bank of
the Euphrates, was for the 'mistress of the house' as well as for the owner and
his children. In two cases, moreover, a tomb near Edessa was prepared in
honour of a woman. One was apparently dedicated by the dead woman's
nephew; the other carries a long text to the memory of the deceased woman,
while at the side is a curt sentence, in memory of a man who, if we judge
from his name, may be the woman's father!3
Women, then, enjoyed respect at Edessa, and held an honoured position
in the family. So highly was their chastity regarded that not only was an
Edessan woman who had committed adultery put to death, but one against
whom a charge of adultery had been preferred received summary punishment.
Nevertheless, it should not be thought that they were the equals of men in
the eyes of the law. Women were entitled to their own property, but the Greek
legal practice was followed which required them to be represented at a
formal transaction by a guardian; if a woman were married the guardian was
her husband. In the document of 243, therefore, the signature of the Edessan
woman who sells a slave is countersigned by her husband. That the women in
the family groups of the mosaics and of the reliefs in cave-tombs are unveiled,
may not mean that the veil was not used at this time, but that in these por-
traits it is necessary to identify their features. We observe too that in these
tableaux the wife of the occupant of the tomb (but in one mosaic the mother-
in-law of the deceased) is shown on his left. It was, no doubt, the right side
that was considered the more honourable, and here stand the children of the
dead man. So, too, in the Family Portrait mosaic a daughter stands with her
brothers to the right of her father, but she stands after her brothers. Signi-
ficantly, it is only in the Tripod mosaic, set up by a family of relatively

1 Drijvers, op. cit., 101, translates, 'and the z Ibid, translates, 'of the elements he made
confusion was suppressed by force and flung all creation, that which is above and that which
into its abysses'. is below'. 3 See p. 59 below.

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