![]() ![]() Sarai and Abram see Hagar in this role and never call her by name. In the world of the ancient Near East, a slave woman could be seen as an incubator, a kind of womb-with-legs. Her husband has the right to take a second wife, but if she wishes to forestall this, she can give her husband a slave. 146), concerns the marriage of a naditu, a priestess, attached to a temple, who is not allowed to bear children. The most famous text, in the Code of Hammurabi (no. A marriage contract, it stipulates that if the wife does not give birth in two years, she will purchase a slave woman for the husband. The first such text, from the Old Assyrian colony in Anatolia, dates from around 1900 BCE. ![]() ![]() However, cuneiform texts of the second and first millennia BCE attest to this custom in ancient Mesopotamia. Although it bears a resemblance to modern technological surrogate motherhood, this custom may seem bizarre. Hagar is Sarai’s Egyptian slave woman, whom Sarai (later Sarah) gives to Abram (later Abraham) as a wife who would bear a child that would be considered Sarai’s ( Gen 16:3). ![]()
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