Persian Pay Records and Working Women: Trustworthy Because Nobody Meant It For Us

A clay tablet the size of a hand records barley issued on a named day to a woman, listed with a trade. Most of the group receive one amount and one person receives more. These tablets survive because a building fell on them, and they are reliable for one reason: nobody wrote them for posterity. This video reads the ledgers carefully. What a payment record can establish is not what anybody believed, which is unreachable; it is what was actually issued, to whom, and at what rate. We look at a workforce where some are paid more and work out what that can and cannot mean; at the rare chance to compare like with like; at a source that supports you in one line and undercuts you in the next, which means reading it well requires refusing to make it agree; at what these records do not show — nothing about a woman trading on her own behalf; and at the odd question of why this material exists at all, when we know nothing about the offices that closed normally. ⏱ Chapters: 00:00 One payment, one named woman, one trade 02:17 What a ledger can and cannot establish 04:35 Most get one amount, one gets more 06:49 Comparing like with like 09:08 A source that undercuts itself 11:22 What these records do not show 13:38 Why this material survives at all 15:54 Rulers, or everybody else #history #persia #archaeology #womenshistory