Jana Matuszak
Biographic Data
| ID | 4101319 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jana Matuszak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jana |
| FAMILY NAME | Matuszak |
| SIGNATURE | MATUSZAK J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4676-4132 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 5 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Doing Gender in Babylon
In this paper, I argue that Sumerian literary disputations between male and female peers from the Old Babylonian period (2000–1600 BCE ) offer insights into the first attested conscious construction of gender and ideal womanhood. Through a detailed analysis of the sources, several of which are not yet widely accessible, I demonstrate that the texts advocate for a strictly binary, sexual division of labor. Conversely, social and behavioral norms w…
Of Captive Storm Gods and Cunning Foxes
This paper publishes the editio princeps of an Early Dynastic IIIb tablet from Nippur, which contains a unique yet fragmentary Sumerian narrative about the storm god Iškur’s captivity in the netherworld, from which he appears to be rescued by Fox. While the incomplete state of preservation prevents a reconstruction of the plot, individual motifs can be traced across the entire cuneiform corpus, allowing for a preliminary case study of continuity …
A Sargonic Exercise Tablet Listing “Places of Inanna” and Personal Names
This article publishes a remarkable school tablet, probably from Sargonic Umma, which contains two lexical exercises. While the reverse appears to be an ad hoc list of personal names, many of which start with or contain the sign a, the obverse compiles “places” (ki) where certain mythological events involving the goddess Inanna had occurred. Unusually for lexical lists, each of these places is described in a complete sentence following a loosely …
A Complete Reconstruction, New Edition and Interpretation of the Sumerian Morality Tale ‘The Old Man and the Young Girl’
This paper presents the complete reconstruction of the Sumerian tale ‘The Old Man and the Young Girl.’ The identification of a new manuscript permits not only the recovery of the hitherto missing beginning and end, but also a reassessment of the text’s plot, function, and socio-cultural context. Rather than as a folktale, I propose to interpret it as a satirical morality tale, which was composed in scribal milieux
Es streite, wer kann! Ein neuer Rekonstruktions- und Interpretationversuch für das sumerische Schulstreitgespräch ‚Dialog 1‘
Abtract On the basis of the recent edition of Dialogue 1 by J. C. Johnson and M. J. Geller (2015), this article offers a revised text reconstruction as well as a differing interpretation of the text and its protagonists. The interpretation of Dialogue 1 as a verbal contest between two schoolboys of rather unequal rhetorical proficiency is based on a rhetorical analysis of the dialogue and a more systematic contextualisation within the corpus of S…
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Es streite, wer kann! Ein neuer Rekonstruktions- und Interpretationversuch für das sumerische Schulstreitgespräch ‚Dialog 1‘
Abtract On the basis of the recent edition of Dialogue 1 by J. C. Johnson and M. J. Geller (2015), this article offers a revised text reconstruction as well as a differing interpretation of the text and its protagonists. The interpretation of Dialogue 1 as a verbal contest between two schoolboys of rather unequal rhetorical proficiency is based on a rhetorical analysis of the dialogue and a more systematic contextualisation within the corpus of S…
A Complete Reconstruction, New Edition and Interpretation of the Sumerian Morality Tale ‘The Old Man and the Young Girl’
This paper presents the complete reconstruction of the Sumerian tale ‘The Old Man and the Young Girl.’ The identification of a new manuscript permits not only the recovery of the hitherto missing beginning and end, but also a reassessment of the text’s plot, function, and socio-cultural context. Rather than as a folktale, I propose to interpret it as a satirical morality tale, which was composed in scribal milieux
Of Captive Storm Gods and Cunning Foxes
This paper publishes the editio princeps of an Early Dynastic IIIb tablet from Nippur, which contains a unique yet fragmentary Sumerian narrative about the storm god Iškur’s captivity in the netherworld, from which he appears to be rescued by Fox. While the incomplete state of preservation prevents a reconstruction of the plot, individual motifs can be traced across the entire cuneiform corpus, allowing for a preliminary case study of continuity …
A Sargonic Exercise Tablet Listing “Places of Inanna” and Personal Names
This article publishes a remarkable school tablet, probably from Sargonic Umma, which contains two lexical exercises. While the reverse appears to be an ad hoc list of personal names, many of which start with or contain the sign a, the obverse compiles “places” (ki) where certain mythological events involving the goddess Inanna had occurred. Unusually for lexical lists, each of these places is described in a complete sentence following a loosely …
Doing Gender in Babylon
In this paper, I argue that Sumerian literary disputations between male and female peers from the Old Babylonian period (2000–1600 BCE ) offer insights into the first attested conscious construction of gender and ideal womanhood. Through a detailed analysis of the sources, several of which are not yet widely accessible, I demonstrate that the texts advocate for a strictly binary, sexual division of labor. Conversely, social and behavioral norms w…
Ancient Near East History (5 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Sumerian (3 works) · Ancient history (2 works) · Epistemology (2 works) · Families in Therapy and Culture (2 works)