Downloading Material Is Agreeing to Abide by the Terms of the Repository Licence
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Cronfa - Swansea University Open Access Repository _____________________________________________________________ This is an author produced version of a paper published in: A Companion to Women in the Ancient World Cronfa URL for this paper: http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa11760 _____________________________________________________________ Book chapter : Szpakowska, K. (2012). Hidden Voices: Unveiling Women in Ancient Egypt. James, Sharon L. and Dillon, Sheila (Ed.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, (pp. 25-38). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. _____________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence. Copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ 2 Hidden Voices: Unveiling Women in Ancient Egypt Kasia Szpakowska The problems encountered when attempting to reconstruct life in Ancient Egypt in a way that includes all members of society, rather than focusing on the most prominent or obvious actors, are much the same as for other cultures. The loudest voices tend to be heard, while those in the background are muted and stilled. To an extent, when looking to the past, we find what we are looking for, and investigations focusing on previously marginalized groups, such as women, children, the elderly, and foreigners, are allowing hidden lives to be revealed. In all cases, a nuanced view is required—one that avoids hasty generalizations. Work on gender studies emphasizes that there is no monolithic category of “women,” a fact that has been well-discussed in relation to Egyptological studies (Meskell 1999). Temporal and geographical contexts must be borne in mind, as well as the status, ethnicity, class, wealth, and age of the individuals under study. There would be little in common between the experiences of an adolescent girl living in a small house in a planned settlement near the Fayum in Egypt of 1800 BCE and those of a royal wife of a Ramesside pharaoh living in the city of Memphis 1200 BCE. In all cases, the interpretations are based on the data that has survived the millennia. It is this evidence, specifically from Ancient Egypt prior to the Ptolemaic period, and the methods of approaching it that are the focus of this essay. The aim is to call attention to some of the specific complications that can be encountered, as well as to highlight some of the recent innovative approaches now underway in current studies on women in Ancient Egypt. 1 Textual Evidence The range and number of surviving texts remain both helpful and hindering when trying to understand Ancient Egyptian women. They are indispensable for learning about aspects of life that are less visible in the archaeological record, particularly those that pertain to emotions or psychology such as dreams, fears, ambitions, and even love. However, our comprehension of the texts is hampered by their variable survival rate and incomplete state A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, First Edition. Edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon. Ó 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 26 Women Outside Athens and Rome of preservation, as well as our limited understanding of the languages and scripts in which they were written. The grammar may be understood, but metaphors, figures of speech, idioms, and humor are always culturally bound, their meaning opaque to the outsider. Monumental texts have a better chance of survival over a wide area, but the bulk of the papyri and ostraka come from a handful of specialized sites that cannot necessarily be considered as typical. These pockets of evidence provide only snapshots of life in a particular place and time. In addition, those with a high level of literacy (able to compose and write) and those responsible for most written record-keeping formed a small segment of society: elite educated males, many of whom were members of the court or in the priesthood. The texts are inherently biased in terms of what they reveal about women of all classes and thus cannot be read at face value. Textual evidence can be divided into two categories: literary and documentary. Pre-Ptolemaic literary genres include tales; didactic texts; hymns; poems (including love poetry); biographies; and royal, ritual, divinatory, and religious texts, while the docu- mentary genres include decrees; lists; legal texts; spells; labels; correspondence; titles; and scientific, administrative, and medical texts, with of course much overlap. In all cases, the texts are formulaic, and they fit within the decorum of the time. Problems of interpretation are compounded by the fact that there are few known examples of biographies, didactic texts, or literary compositions written by women. Broadly speaking, the literary texts tend to present a more idealized view of the world— their goal is not to reproduce reality but to present a model of society that is sanctioned by the state. When women are mentioned they conform to the conventional ideals of the time and in a capacity to further the aim of the author. When contemporary documentary texts are examined, however, a very different picture may emerge. For example, Middle Kingdom didactic (teaching) texts present themes that emphasize that the main place of women is in the home, as mothers, wives, and providers of pleasure, and men are advised to keep them from power, as the following text from the Instructions of Ptahhotep illustrates: “If you prosper, found your household, love your wife with ardor, fill her belly, clothe her back, ointment soothes her limbs. Gladden her heart as long as you live! She is a field, good for her lord ... keep her from power, restrain her.” But documentary evidence from letters, administrative texts, and scene captions reveals that in reality women held important positions outside the home as priestesses, temple workers, managers, and producers of linen—one of the most important commodities of the time. For example, in a letter from the Middle Kingdom town of Lahun, a woman writes (or dictates a letter) to the lord of the estate about weaving women who refuse to work, and offers an excuse that “there aren’t any clothes, because my responsibility is directed to the temple—the threads have been set up, but cannot be woven!” The text here reveals a woman who does hold power, who supervises weaving women (who themselves have the confidence to refuse to work), and who holds a position of responsibility in the local temple. For the study of women, the most useful texts thus may be the administrative texts, titles, and letters. The surviving letters, whether or not they were actually scribed by women, are usually concerned with administrative matters. A number are written from women who are—at least temporarily and perhaps permanently— in charge of managing an estate or an aspect of production. Administrative texts such as attendance rolls and inventories can show where women worked, and in what capacity. New work on textual evidence applying linguistic methodologies is beginning to shed light on the previously hidden voice of women by reading between the lines. Deborah Sweeney, in particular, has Hidden Voices: Unveiling Women in Ancient Egypt 27 been using discourse analysis to uncover the gender of the speaker in mourner’s laments, correspondence, love poems, legal texts, and requests (Sweeney 2006). Titles are important as well, for they are perhaps the most abundant source for the various positions women might have held. They are also found throughout the entire range of textual sources. It is particularly important, however, to keep both the date of the source and where it comes from in mind when analyzing the meaning or historical significance of any title. For example, a study of titles from the New Kingdom based on those found only in Theban tombs should not, without corroborating evidence, be over- generalized as indicative of titles that would have been held in the Delta or elsewhere in the land of Egypt. In addition, the decorated tombs generally belonged to elite men, or at least those employed in skilled crafts and labor. The titles included would be ones that they considered important or advantageous in the afterlife. Titles in general are the subject of debate, and it is often difficult to tell which were held simultaneously, which were held consecutively, which were honorific (ones awarded as a mark of esteem, status, or distinction), and which were earned. Nevertheless, these titles, which have been the subject of a number of careful analyses, have revealed the complexity and range of roles played by women in Ancient Egypt. 2 Representational Evidence The art of Ancient Egypt has been the subject of so many museum exhibitions, books, and television documentaries, and has been reproduced so frequently, that most people, even young children, can easily recognize it. This recognizability, however, is problematic, for it makes the art of Egypt seem familiar and easily accessible, the images seemingly straightforward to interpret. Geographic, temporal, and social dimensions are often ignored, and Egyptian art is thought of as static and unchanging. Indeed, representations of a very small segment of the Ancient Egyptian populace tend to stand for Egyptian society as a whole. Representations of gender, however, must be interpreted within the larger context of Egyptian art: it is critical to why the art was produced and for whom.