Surrogate Parenting in History
Nov. 11th, 2017 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmith ... as attested in marriage contracts.
By the way, they don't mention whether a surrogate was actually needed because you can't amend a contract written in clay. If you want to find that information, you'd need to look for hierodule bills of sale, birth records (which would be needed to prove that the hierodule fulfilled her contract), manumission records, and/or inheritance records -- all of which would be filed separately from marriage contracts. Oh, and temple records, because people would pray for offspring, but that's usually distinct from secular records. It's a bureaucracy; it records everything; if you can't find what you're looking for, try a different room. Then cross-reference the names. Important people had more records kept than less important people, so there's a non-zero chance of connecting records about the same individuals.
By the way, they don't mention whether a surrogate was actually needed because you can't amend a contract written in clay. If you want to find that information, you'd need to look for hierodule bills of sale, birth records (which would be needed to prove that the hierodule fulfilled her contract), manumission records, and/or inheritance records -- all of which would be filed separately from marriage contracts. Oh, and temple records, because people would pray for offspring, but that's usually distinct from secular records. It's a bureaucracy; it records everything; if you can't find what you're looking for, try a different room. Then cross-reference the names. Important people had more records kept than less important people, so there's a non-zero chance of connecting records about the same individuals.
