Who Banned Polyandry?

Urukagina or Enmetena?

It doesn’t matter. Either way, half-a-millennium before Hammurabi, women were restricted first:

Multiple husbands, or ‘polyandry’, was criminalized (while multiple wives was ‘fine’), long before the birth of Judaism or Christianity, by ancient Sumerian ruler, and earliest known law-maker, “Urukagina”, a male whose name rhymes with “vagina”, if you want it to, or possibly by “Enmetena”, two centures before the first female author, “Enheduanna”!

(Enheduanna is sometimes called ‘the first author’, but in fact, men were given as the authors of still earlier documents: ancient laws, used to control women.

Later, the earliest Roman laws devoted their entire opening to codifying patriarchy—just to clarify—and even today the proto-law ‘instructions’ of still-earlier male authors like Shuruppak and Ptahhotep are presented on youtube with titles like “Listen to your Sumerian Daddy”… the patriarchy’s alive and well!)

So, not named as authors at all, women couldn’t write in protest in 2350 BC when banned from loving two men ‘that way’, like founding anarcha-feminist Emma Goldman did write after escaping arranged marriage in 1885 AD — In 2350 BC they were ‘de-platformed’ at the outset: women were pre-de-platformed.

Today 26 centuries and 3 or 4 male prophets later, polyandry is still against the law, and in more modern cases even the unique male in a marriage contract, if he exists, plays by rules of exclusivity: chivalrously, and gallantly, he erases this ancient double-standard, enshrined originally in the earliest laws of time…or does he?

“Is either party getting ripped off?”

With this jealous suspicion harbored by either party comes the enforcement of Monogamy, and as I’ve written elsewhere, I’ve yet to see an effective enforcement mechanism that isn’t gross in its coercive control, which has become a crime in the UK. And this perverse incentive to control and to surveil the other party for fear of breach of contract is even greater when it comes to men controlling women, as women are the bottleneck in reproduction—(women and children first in the lifeboats!)—This is one reason we’ll always need feminism, despite silly arguments to the contrary, especially anarcha-feminism, to “question the institution of Marriage,” or rather, to question the abolition of polyandry long before women could write in any manner that comes down to us with their names attached.

(We’ll also always need Analytic Feminism.)

But the short answer is:

Men. Men did. Men banned polyandry. Women were not consulted.

[Here’s a basic timeline of the oldest texts surviving, leading up to the first female author:

2600BCE: THE KESH TEMPLE HYMN
2600BCE: THE INSTRUCTIONS OF SHURUPPAK
2500BCE: THE INSTRUCTIONS OF HARDJEDEF
2500BCE: THE DIARY OF MERER
2500BCE: HYMN TO ENLIL
2500BCE: ENLIL AND NINLIL
2500BCE: DEBATE BETWEEN SHEEP AND GRAIN
2400BCE: THE CODE OF URUKAGINA
2375BCE: THE TEACHINGS OF PTHAHOTEP
2323BCE: THE PYRAMID TEXT OF UNAS
2291BCE: THE PYRAMID TEXT OF TETI
2283BCE: THE PALERMO STONE
2270BCE: ENHEDDUANA’S HYMNS]