The Sociological Evolution of Women from Lilith to Eve

No matter how implausible myths and epics may seem, if there hadn't been people who believed in them and developed behaviors in line with these beliefs, we might not be talking about today's civilized human communities. Being listeners to the same narrative was enough to turn people into a community. The indispensable elements of stories were symbols and rituals. Around this abstract theater, clans, tribes, communities, and states were established.

Neither the Epic of Gilgamesh, nor Greek myths, nor the texts of monotheistic religions consist of boring legal paragraphs; they are filled from beginning to end with horror stories, utopias, and dystopias. If an elderly grandmother today tells the story of Noah's Ark, taken from the approximately 4000-year-old Eridu Genesis, to educate her grandchildren, the effectiveness of this method is undeniable. Despite having the same goal, a constitution book could never enter the list of stories this elderly woman would tell her grandchildren before they go to sleep.

What makes traditional narrative powerful are the heroes of the story. While scribes choose each archetype in these stories for a specific purpose, they also know very well what it corresponds to within society. The reason the public perceives the demons, jinn, monsters, saints, sacred beings, and human-animal hybrid chimeras in these stories as real is because they believe in the narrators who are privy to the secrets of writing. Because writing is the medium of communication established by God with humanity.

For the public, who accept the reality of the creatures in the stories with faith, their fears are also real. To cope with these fears, they seek help from the source of the story. Animistic behavior patterns, rituals, and sacred relics enter the lives of the illiterate public at exactly this point. Ritualistic exorcism and jinn-expulsion ceremonies are carefully explained to the public. To get rid of jinn and demons, they place the written text into a copper basin, and once the ink of the writing dissolves in the water, they drink this water. They make an amulet and wear it around their neck or bury it in their garden.

However, they do not know that trapping fear in an object or ritual and repeating it constantly does not eliminate it. On the contrary, by objectifying it and turning it into an action, it makes that fear a part of our lives.

So, which is the most terrifying demon described by the scribes?

Who is the evil queen of the night—of jinn, demons, sirens, and fairies—who steals newborn babies and whispers into the ears of men and women with her wind to seduce them? This demon, who forces women to be with their husbands by seducing them, especially during times when they are not fertile, such as postpartum and menstruation, has only one goal: to waste the man's precious sperm. For the priestly scribes, this is an unforgivable sin.

It seems that the Scribes have as much of a problem with this demonic goddess as the public does; it is not quite clear whether they derive personal satisfaction by describing an erotic and beautiful woman even in religious texts, whether they are afraid of this woman who is powerful enough to make even them kneel before her, or whether they are trying to protect the public from this monster with their exaggerated descriptions.

The first story about this demon begins with 'Woman and Man'; from the very beginning, man uses the physical strength he possesses, unlike woman, to declare himself the master. However, there is a big problem. The slave woman in the man's imagination and the 'woman' herself are very different from each other. The masculine and tyrannical pens of the story writers first crown with holy light an archetype of a woman who is constantly bowing her head, shy, speaking as if begging with the thinnest of voices, constantly pleading for mercy and love with teary eyes, and serving her master at the cost of her life, wrapping her hair and entire body in fabrics, and declaring her a holy saint.

The true protagonist of the narrative is another woman, whose loose red hair falls onto her naked back, who covers neither her hair nor her breasts, and whose scream in the darkness of the night is powerful enough to deafen ears.

The story of this magnificent creature, whose name is Wind, or LiL, begins in Mesopotamia in 3000 B.C. LiL, who first appears as the goddess of life, love, wisdom, wind, and the sky, constantly maintains her existence in different times and different cultures.

In Sumerian, she is called LÍL, in Akkadian lilitu, in Hebrew ????? lîlît, and in Mesopotamian mythology, she is referred to as Lilitu and Ardat Lili (the happy young girl running around laughing in paradise, the virgin lili).

The color remnants on the Babylonian-origin Lil relief, currently in the British Museum, show that the goddess originally had a red body. The manes of the two lions under her feet are black, and on her right and left are two large owls, which are symbols of wisdom. On her head is a four-tiered royal crown, and in her two hands, she holds the ring and rod symbols. These are symbols of sexuality representing woman and man. This relief, for the priestly writers, almost embodies all the undesirable traits in a woman. When we examine the relief a little, we understand what drives them mad and their efforts, spanning thousands of years, to keep women away from everything this relief represents through tricks, lies, and oppression.

Lilitu, with the four-tiered horned crown on her head, rejects any master who might be over her. She defends the freedom to act alone with her wings, and she has strong eagle claws that allow her to hold on by herself, no matter how difficult the conditions are where she goes. The two lions she has taken under her feet symbolize her courage and ability to challenge; Lilitu is a woman who can see even the dangers in the dark with the wisdom of the owls beside her. Most importantly, she holds the ring and rod up in her two hands. These symbols represent that she can control the sexuality of both woman and man simultaneously, because it is known that the way to control a human is to control sexuality, which is the fundamental principle of existence. The segment most aware of this is the clergy.

How does Ardat Lili, who began her life in Mesopotamia as the goddess of wind, love, and life, turn into a terrifying Demon when she comes to the old Orient, banished to a desolate desert where only animals live?

In the region dominated by monotheistic religions, wise men who had long since believed in the power of the patriarch demonized women to the extent that they would take baby girls to the desert and bury them alive in the sand as soon as they had their first period. In such a situation, you can imagine what might happen to a woman who claims to be as human as Adam.

In later periods, the Adams, who realized the power they gave to Lilith as they demonized her, wanted to erase her name from the texts and make people completely forget the existence of such a woman. The role of Eve was already tailored for Lilit, who is no longer mentioned in religious texts nor is her existence accepted, by the scissors of the tyrannical man. But the man's eyes are so blinded by his admiration for his own mastery and tyranny that he could not see the woman's wings, her claws, her intelligence that guides her even in the pitch-black darkness of the night, nor the courage of the two lions she took under her feet.

In the Old Testament, Lilit is mentioned as Adam's first wife; she was created from the same clay as Adam. The first humiliation begins here, with the claim that she left Adam on the grounds that she did not want to be underneath while lying with him, and went to Samuel.

In the Old Testament, Adam says sadly, 'You gave me a companion, but she flew away flapping her wings.' Upon this, Eve is created from Adam's rib. When we look at Adam's expectations of Eve, we immediately understand that the issues in Lilit's departure were not just about sexuality. However, Lilit would ruin Adam's plans here too. Lilit, who is at the top of the tree of wisdom, talks to Eve and convinces her to eat the fruit of the tree of wisdom. And they are expelled from paradise.

When they come to Earth, Lilith does not leave the happy couple alone; it is claimed that she kills newborn children. In fact, what is perceived as killing is exactly birth control. She whispers to the woman, who is very likely to die when giving birth, to be with her husband when she is not fertile, or teaches her how to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These pieces of information, passed down from wise women to each other, are seen as deadly sins.

We all know that the issue is neither Lilith nor Eve, neither demons nor jinn nor angels. The real issue is the tens of thousands of years of struggle of women who are kept under constant pressure by the uncivilized tyrannical man. It is a war started by the man's claim of superiority in a world where half of the world's population consists of men and the other half of women. When we think of women who have been subjected to psychological, physical, and economic violence since childhood, killed, ignored, and silenced, this bloody war, whose first records and narratives we encounter in Mesopotamia B.C., continues with all its might.

Although there are women in some parts of the world who take the wind, which carries the depictions of life, love, wisdom, and freedom, onto their wings and can fly wherever they want and hold on there, the fact that women in Iran are dying to be able to wear the clothes they want, that in some regions of Arab countries and Africa, baby girls have their clitorises cut in primitive conditions to prevent them from experiencing sexual pleasure throughout their lives, the existence of women stoned to death by the public for adultery in Arab countries, and the fact that there are women sold in slave markets with chains on their feet in the 2000s A.D., not in 3000 B.C., is an indication that this war is still very bloody.

The scream that deafens ears and makes the deserts groan, which the tyrannical masculinity trembles with fear before, does not belong to Lilith.

It is the terrifying scream of the woman who is condemned to give birth until she dies in the delivery bed, who has no living space outside the home, who gives birth even to boys so that they may be masters to her in the future, who cannot act alone, who cannot run and play with her friends laughing with happiness, who cannot swim in the sea, who cannot wear the clothes she wants, who cannot travel the world as she wishes, who lives her whole life as if she were the property of a man, whose soul is Lilith but whose existence is squeezed into the mold of Eve, rising as if to deafen ears. It is the scream of Eve, who has been holding the darkness of tens of thousands of years inside her and has come to this day, holding the tyrannical man accountable for the life she could not live...