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[German version] The emmer (Babylonian kunasu) variety of wheat was well known from 2800 BC and was the second most important form of grain in the whole of the Ancient Near East, as e.g. in Ugarit ( ksm; Hebrew kussemet) [2. 114f.] and the Jewish colony in Elephantine (Aramaic kntn) [4. 83]. Its yield could occasionally be higher than that of barley [1. 96]. That emmer was supplanted by the more resistant barley because of increasing saltiness is now disputed; barley's higher status is thought to derive from its ‘superior reliability’ [5]. Th…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In Babylonia and Egypt midwives are only known from allusions found in literary texts. In the Atraḫasis myth the mother goddess opens the womb, lets the woman deliver the baby ‘on the birth brick’ (cf. Ex 1,16) and determines the child's fate while cutting the umbilical cord. Stol, Marten (Leiden) Bibliography E. Brunner-Traut, s.v. Hebamme, LÄ 2, 1074f. M. Stol, Zwangerschap en geboorte bij de Babyloniërs en in de Bijbel, 1983, 84-86. [German version] II. Greece The story of Agnodike (Hyg. Fab. 274), the first midwife, who allegedly went, …

[German version] A. Ancient East In the Ancient East bread was a staple form of  nutrition. As far as may be judged from epigraphical and archaeological evidence,  barley was the principal bread grain in Mesopotamia from the 3rd millennium,  emmer and  wheat being less important. In Asia Minor, Syria/Palestine and Egypt wheat seems to have played a greater role than barley. Institutional establishments looked after their members and the workforce in their employ with regular rations of bread grain (e…