Book Review: The Remarkable Women of Ancient Egypt

Review Reviewed Work(s): The Remarkable Women of Ancient Egypt by Barbara S. Lesko Review by: Joann Fletcher Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology , 2001, Vol. 87 (2001), pp. 190-193 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3822383 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology This content downloaded from 2.223.144.93 on Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:42:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 190 REVIEWS were unlikely shops or JEA to 87 have painters been used th development of dwarf repr are not actually made fun considered against the back tionate bodies of dwarfs di they were regarded as lesse ers. However, contrary to citizens. religion Dasen postulates because of their that they were more value unusual beings. ian vases. easily The c In her conclusion to the Greek section, Dasen admits that the role of dwarfs in Greek society is difficult to define owing to the paucity of evidence. Their position is ambivalent, on the one hand being relegated to the margins of society, on the other being regarded in a positive light as helpers of mankind and protectors of children and fertility. Overall, Dasen concludes that dwarfs had specific, but differing, roles to play in both Egyptian and Greek societies. In Egypt dwarfs were equated with youthful qualities and often associated with deities such as Horus, whereas in Greece they were likened to satyrs and associated with Dionysos. Yet there are significant similarities between the attitudes of the two civilizations. In both cultures dwarfs seem to have been accepted and integrated into society with no sense of handicap attached to their physical differences, and on occasion dwarfs appear to have acted as intermediaries between deities and mortals. Most importantly, a contrast is drawn between the negative attitudes towards dwarfs and other persons with physical malformations which developed during the following Hellenistic and Roman Periods, and the positive attitudes towards human dignity and sensibility apparent in Egypt and classical Greece. Section IV is a catalogue of Egyptian and Greek materials associated with dwarfism. The book is well illustrated with 80 black and white plates covering the range of artistic material discussed in the text. Dasen states in her introduction, 'the position of dwarfs and malformed people in ancient communities has never been studied comprehensively', and this book goes a long way towards rectifying this situation. It is well-structured and clearly written, providing a thoughtful discussion of the subject of dwarfism in two ancient cultures, and also serving as an excellent reference volume. JOYCE M. FILER The Remarkable Women of Ancient Egypt. By BARBARA S. LESKO. 215 x 275 mm. Pp. 68, figs. 8, pls. 28. B.C. Scribe Publications, Providence, 1996. ISBN 0 930548 13 2. Price $16.95. Although still a slim volume, this third edition of The Remarkable Women of Ancient Egypt serves as a useful introduction to an increasingly popular subject. As the author states, her revisions and additions reflect the tremendous growth in related research and publications over the last fifteen years or so,' prior to which comparatively little information was available. It soon becomes apparent that Lesko's own views on the status of women in ancient Egypt differ significantly from those of many others now writing on the subject. Her decision to bring out this expanded edition was 'inspired by the realisation that some other authors tend not to see the forest for the trees, or to put it another way, to see the glass half-empty, whereas I admit to seeing it half full, 1 One of the first major studies concentrated on royal women is L. Troy, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History (Uppsala, 1986), with a broader picture in B. S. Lesko (ed.), Women's Earliest Records from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Atlanta, 1989), and more recently the standard work, G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (London, 1993). This content downloaded from 2.223.144.93 on Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:42:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2001 REVIEWS 191 having always been str tory and by the high v Lesko's view is worth into account the relativ where in the ancient wo foreigners and slaves.2 was moved to commen reversed the ordinary seem to have preferred the more inclusive term rmt, 'humankind', with its male and female determinitives).3 On a theoretical level at least, the reasoning behind the Egyptians' relatively enlightened approach may be partly explained by their notion of balanced dualities, in which male and female existed in a state of equilibrium fundamental to the ordered continuity of life. Many of the roles allocated to their female deities also reveal that they did not necessarily equate the male with active pursuits whilst the female remained passive; indeed, so great was the military prowess of the goddesses who accompanied the king into battle that the archetypal warrior pharaoh is himself repeatedly described as being the actual embodiment of several female deities.4 Beyond the confines of mythology, certain royal women are also described as taking an active role in military matters. Lesko refers to those described as leaders of troops, although both royal and nonroyal women can also be portrayed actively bearing arms against male opponents. Whilst these images may illustrate fictional or ritual events, the archaeological evidence of weaponry amongst female grave goods is perhaps less easy to dismiss, and opens up a line of enquiry which might be pursued in any future edition.5 Nevertheless, the use of grave goods to determine gender can still prove problematic: weapons in a burial might be assumed to be purely 'ritualistic' if the sex of the body is unequivocally female. The tendency of excavators to attribute cosmetic items to female burials is no less misguided since it is well known that cosmetics and the equipment with which they were applied were used equally by men and women throughout society. In the case of one Early Dynastic burial at Gurob, the presence of a bone hairpin has recently been used to support evidence that this must have been a female burial, since the hairpin 'is a relatively certain example of a "gendered" artefact, in that there is no evidence that man used such objects', despite evidence from Mostagedda which would suggest otherwise.6 Likewise, the tendency to assume that bodies of indeterminate sex displaying long or highly-styled hair-with or without hairpins-must be female, whereas those with short or shaven hair are identified as male, again reflects stereotypes which seem rather reluctant to go away.7 Grave goods and physical remains are so often the only tangible evidence remaining from which to study the lives of non-elite individuals of both sexes. Their virtual-many would say complete-exclu2 S. B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1975). 3 H. G. Fischer, Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom and of the Heracleopolitan Period (New York, 1989), 24; see also 9. 4 Cf. the cycle of hymns to King Sesostris III (M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, I (Berkeley, 1975), 198-201); Abydos stela of Sehetepibre (ibid. 128); Kadesh battle inscription of Ramesses II (M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Lit- erature, II (Berkeley, 1976), 62, 70). See also A. Roberts, Hathor Rising: the Serpent Power of Ancient Egypt (Totnes, 1995), and S. T. Hollis, 'Goddesses and Sovereignty in Ancient Egypt', in E. Bernard and B. Moon (eds), Goddesses Who Rule (Oxford, 2000), 215-32. As Hollis notes '....kingship and sovereignty incorporated the feminine in many ways little noticed or addressed in the different studies on kingship' (p. 215). 5 E.g. W. M. F. Petrie, Deshasheh, 1897 (London, 1898) pl. iv; Cairo ostracon 25125, in Troy, Patterns of Queenship, fig. 104; W. C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, I: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle Kingdom (New York 1953), 282-3, 305-6; M. Saleh and H. Sourouzian, Official Catalogue of the Egyptian Museum Cairo (Mainz, 1987), nos. 120, 121, 122. 6 Kelsey Museum 1900 from Gurob Tomb 103: T. G. Wilfong, Women and Gender in Ancient Egyptfrom Prehistory to Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1997), 67, contra G. Brunton, Mostagedda and the Tasian Culture (London, 1937), 72, 87. 7 J. Fletcher and D. Montserrat, 'The Human Hair from the Tomb of Tutankhamun: a Re-evaluation', in C. Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists (Leuven, 1998), 401-7. This content downloaded from 2.223.144.93 on Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:42:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 192 REVIEWS JEA 87 sion from the scribal elite makes this particularly true of women. It is therefore essential physical remains are carefully studied and correctly interpreted in an attempt to redress th imbalance created through over-reliance on textual evidence of relevance to a minorit Therefore, the extensive remains of the remarkable women associated with Mentuho deserve more than a single paragraph in a section headed 'Concubines', an archaic, biase seems rather inappropriate when describing Ashayet who held the title 'Great Wife of the nsw wrt). Besides Ashayet we know of four other royal women-Kawit, Kemsit, Sadhe all of whom shared the titles 'Wife of the King whom he loves', 'Priestess of Hathor' a Ornament'. All five were given lavish burials in the royal funerary complex at Deir el the body of the king himself. The complex also included the burial of a female child name may have been the king's daughter, together with the tombs of two further royal women a of Hathor. Yet in the absence of inscriptional evidence relating to two further female bur pejoratively described as 'dancing girls', despite the fact that their tomb's proximity to th might suggest that they were important members of the court. Although the remains of all have greatly deteriorated since they were first discovered in the earlier part of last centu statement that 'some of their mummies reveal successfully healed Caesarean sections' c ported, with the evidence perhaps more suggestive of scarification as an accompaniment to elaborate tattoos.9 Terms such as 'concubine' and 'dancing girl' are surely inappropriate within the context of the royal necropolis, yet the women of ancient Egypt, like so many others, are still being defined by their sexual and/or biological role alone. Although the functions of wife and mother were generally regarded as a woman's lot, with the most common female title 'Lady of the House' (nbtpr) involving running a home and bearing children, they are, as Lesko notes, portrayed in a very public way alongside men at every level of society, where they take an active part in brewing and baking, buying and selling, performing agricultural tasks and even, in one example, steering a cargo ship.10 In discussing financial independence, Lesko also refers to evidence indicating that they received the same payments and privileges as their male colleagues for undertaking the same tasks. As independent citizens equal with men under the law, women could also own their own property, buy and sell it, make wills and even choose which of their children might inherit. Royal women owned their own estates and workshops; some are also known to have controlled the treasury, and whilst the majority of women who held official titles were employed within a temple context, some also functioned as overseers, governors and judges. One is named as an 'overseer of doctors', two held the title of vizier and, of course, there were at least five female monarchs. The achievements of Egypt's female kings are discussed in a section entitled 'Queens', alongside some of the more prominent women to have held this title simply as a result of their relationship to a reigning male king. In addition to the ever-increasing number of studies relating to Hatshepsut and Nefertiti, the recent publication of the intriguing Tractatus De Mulieribus has shed a little more light on the reign of the shadowy Neithikret, the first woman to rule Egypt as monarch, whilst the later female king Sobekneferu has also received welcome attention recently." 8 See e.g. J. M. Filer, 'Mother and Baby Burials', in Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, 391-400; a multi-disciplinary approach employing both human remains and textual evidence is used to great effect in E. Strouhal and G. Callender, 'A Profile of Queen Mutnodjmet', BACE 3 (1992), 67-75. 9 H. E. Winlock, Excavations at Deir el Bahri: 1911-1931 (New York, 1942), 74; J. Fletcher, Ancient Egyptian Cosmetics and Tattoos (Austin, forthcoming); M. F. Gaballah and R. Walker, The Derry-Batrawi Collection Kasr el Einy Faculty of Medicine, Cairo Egypt: an Introduction and Catalogue (Douglas, 1995), with thanks to F. Gaballah and the Bioanthropology Foundation for access to the collection. 10 The woman steering the ship is also reprimanding the man who brings her a meal with the words 'Don't obstruct my face while I am putting to shore', in Fischer, Egyptian Women, 20, fig. 15. For women's varied roles at Deir el-Medina, see B. S. Lesko, 'Ranks, Roles and Rights', in L. H. Lesko (ed.), Pharaoh's Workers: the Villagers of Deir el Medina (Ithaca and London, 1994), 26-34. 11 D. Gera, Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus (Leiden, 1997), 7, 101-5; V. G. Callender, 'Materials for the Reign of Sebekneferu', in Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, 227-36; for the royal woman Mutnodjmet see also Strouhal and Callender, BACE 3, 67-75. This content downloaded from 2.223.144.93 on Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:42:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2001 REVIEWS 193 Throughout Egyptian society mination which were clearly them in much of the world t lights an ideal which the mod regarded by some as over-opt able individuals who made u JOANN Katalog mm. Agyptischer Pp. 144, pls. Sammlun 162. Main Ce volume est annonce com tous les objets egyptiens et c'est a dire, pour leur imme minces complements de l'An der Deutschen Biicherei et d l'Agyptisches Museum est le que On fut Georg Steindorff n'insistera pas sur qui, les qu conservation est malheureusem de figurines en terre, des fem Giza, Steindorff, fouilla le com et une partie du Western Cem de statues royales de la IVe dy IVe comme de la Ve dynastie. fondamental statues de royales quelques durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Holscher massacrees inedits, ainsi co de que l Sans qu'en soient precisees les raisons, les catalogues des antiquites egyptiennes de Leipzig ne s'integreront pas dans la serie en constant developpement du Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum, dont ils s'inspirent pourtant totalement dans leur structure comme dans leur methodologie. La diff6rence essentielle reside dans la reliure, puisque le principe de la fiche volante a ete rejete au profit du livre classique. Je le regrette, personnellement, car la fiche libre possede une souplesse d'utilisation incom- parable pour l'examen comparatif que la rigidite du livre rend toujours difficile, meme si-pour des raisons bien comprehensibles-elle est la bete noire des bibliothecaires. On peut deja rever d'ailleurs d'une prochaine etape, d'une banque de donnees informatisee et normalisee de tous les objets egyptiens conserves dans le monde, ou tous les rapprochements, toutes les associations, toutes les analyses comparatives deviendraient possibles. Revenons a la realite d'aujourd'hui. Le catalogue de Leipzig se presente donc comme des fiches de CAA reliees: fiche technique, suivie d'une 'Beschreibung', puis d'un 'Kommentar', ensuite d'une 'Geschichte' de l'objet, enfin d'une bibliographie. Chaque objet ou fragment, si minime soit-il, est illustre par une et souvent plusieurs photos en noir et blanc d'une qualite generalement excellente. La description materielle et iconographique des statues se veut, comme il se doit, parfaitement objective et systematique, tandis que le commentaire represente le premier niveau d'interpretation sur diff6rents plans, qu'il s'agisse, selon les cas, d'iconographie, de datation ou de style. Une riche bibliographie soutient, en notes, la discussion. Si les figurines nubiennes et celles de serviteurs ou de servantes ne posent guere de probleme d'interpretation-du moins au premier degre-il n'en est pas de meme pour les statues privees et royales de l'Ancien Empire qui constituent l'essentiel de la collection. Dans le cas des statues privees, c'est la question de la datation qui retient surtout l'auteur, dont la preference va generalement aux dates hautes This content downloaded from 2.223.144.93 on Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:42:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms