The Kassite family letter PBS 1/2, 21 concerns a court procedure in which a female sender is involved. In this article I analyse the language and style of PBS 1/2, 21 with the help of “Speech Act Theory”, which shows that the female sender Rīšat-[...] had limited authority and justified her actions with elaborate quotations of men’s orders, thereby transferring responsibility for her actions to the men she quoted. Only four out of 331 Kassite letters from Nippur were sent by women. The other three Kassite letters from a female sender indicate that a woman named Inbi-ajjari held an influential position in the Nippurean administration and was involved in governance processes. Rīšat-[...]’s letter differs considerably from Inbi-ajjari’s letters. While Rīšat-[...]’s letter illuminates a woman’s societal role within a family, Inbi-ajjari’s bēlu letters illustrate the power of influential women outside their family structures.
