Salvation in everyday life having the woman as a primary force: Bet-Chan in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries a.n.e.

Abstract

In light of the social context, this paper will examine the stratigraphic levels of the Late Bronze Age (XV and XIV centuries BC) from the site of Beth-Shean (Palestine) and study the female terracotta figurines that appeared in private and public settings.

Portrayed specially in texts, the roles performed by men and women compelled researchers to assume that in public, men played the most important functions and had more social power, relegating women agency to domestic settings.

Bearing in mind that literary texts are utopic creations, they hold the aim to embellish oral traditions, ideologies, rituals and myths, turning them in imperfect archetypes for real social dynamics and so, the study of archaeological places, like Beth-Shean, becomes indispensable as textual counterpoint.

Considering the female figurines as symbols, shaped and manipulated by women, we sometimes assume in first hand that they too were mostly related to domestic settings, although, their archaeological survival in both contexts demonstrates that their purpose was not completely disconnected from public activities.

One of the ways in which, without becoming radicals, we can put women in social scenarios, is studying Salvation occurring in daily requests and practices. From text references, we see women power in the generation and education of offspring, the sharing of oral knowledge, the healing of illnesses and fears, the resolution of matrimonial problems, the liberations from demons, the communication to entities and gods and above all, the irreplaceable ability to connect earthly and spiritual realms.

The concepts of mother-woman, wise-woman or healer-woman are here treated as a gender sign that defines the supplementary but not inferior roles women performed, in a place full of ethnic and functional diversity where the daily practices of salvation spread by the females influenced all social settings without gender distinctions.