Get Started On Women In Antiquity: Real Women Across The Ancient World Crafted By Stephanie Lynn Budin Compiled As Printable Format

review to come.
Veredict: stay far, far away, Stick with Sarah Pomeroy and Rivka Harris, More "what to read instead" recommendations at the bottom,
The authors seem to think that women who were neither whores, nor abuse victims, nor diaperwhipped mothers, nor vapid floozies who were obsessed with their appearance either don't exist or don't matter so they shouldn't be written about hence the obsessive, narrow focus of this book.
Fortunately for those of us who would like to know what actually happened in history and what the position of women actually was in different ancient societies, there are several talented writers who've written about that.
Hence my recommendations at the bottom of this review,

This terrible book has a single redeeming quality: it disproves identity politics nonsense, Female authors can be as idiotic, immune to logic, insane, condescending, and sexist as male authors and they can do it in a very similar style too.
Case in point: this trainwreck of a book, Plenty of female authors, and the nonsense they write is very similar in content the to sloppy, sexismladen bad scholarship you can find in archaeology and history books/papers from theth century most of those were written by men.


Next, there is the false advertising, The book claims to be broad/vast in scope "women in the ancient world", In reality, it's extremely narrow in its focus more on that in a minute, It claims to be about the ancient world, but it's thoroughly modern/contemporary, This is tied into the previous "too narrow in its focus" point, and brings us to another point: the authors don't know their audience, Whether they like it or not, their audience are people who are interested in both the ancient world and women's history, It's a tiny readership, and as a rule said readership isn't interested in chick lit, bodice rippers, celebrity gossip, or minutiae about fashion and beauty.
The people who are interested in those things likewise as a rule have little to no interest in ancient history, Well, our enterprising authors have inexplicably decided to market their book at the first/former group while filling its contents with nonsense that will appeal exclusively to the other/latter group.
Hence the narrow focus on "lowest common denominator" things that won't be offensive or too alien/unrelatable to that group: sex, being a mother, and insipid and trivial feminine hobbies and affectations cosmetics and the like.
Which brings us to the "thoroughly modern" point, In order to appeal to that audience and avoid offending their sensibilities, the ancient evidence has to be butchered, then twisted into a pretzel or Moebius strip, and then distorted even further.
In a sense, this book reads like bad fanfiction,

Beyond that, the book is also an utter snoozefest,
Why bother showing your readers an utterly alien or, when not utterly alien, still very different ancient culture in detail Why bother presenting an overview of the position of women legal, economic, political in a culture to your readers in a scholarly yet engaging and readable way Writing dumb shit that wouldn't be out of place in most popular women's magazines is easier, and so much more fun! The authors must have thought along those lines.


Hence why they take so many liberties with facts, and why they filter their sources with a very distorting lens,
I'll give you a few examples of the "taking liberties with facts" I speak of, . .
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Mesopotamia
In Babylonian, Assyrian, and Syrian society, mothers were powerful authority figures in their families, They had considerable control and decisionmaking power over the lives of their children, even when said children/descendants were adults, A lot of Babylonian families especially among the lower classes were headed by widowed mothers, You wouldn't know it from reading this book, however, The authors have instead preferred to present a morest century picture, by focusing mainly on cherrypicked ancient literary texts,

Even if we ignore all of the issues raised so far, the book still has other flaws, A lot of the information in it isn't even a new discovery, in fact most of it fits the "same old, same old" category the same old Babylonian legal codes, the same old Egyptian love poems, the same old NeoAssyrian reliefs, etc.
Several of the essays also have a pompous holierthanthou posturing "oh, I'm not like those sexist, chauvinist pigs who've written about ancient women before me! I'm so much more sensitive and enlightened!" when in reality a lot of those older authors were/are much more talented and less condescending and sexist than most of the authors in this book.

I'm starting to think that women's history is a great refuge/hiding place for all the hacks out there,

What to read instead
I've already mentioned Sarah Pomeroy classical antiquity and Rivka Harris ancient Mesopotamia, but there are many other authors and books.
. .
"Studies of women at Mari", Women in an Old Babylonian citystate, It's one of the best works about women's history ever written, and it has aged incredibly well,
"Beyond hearth and home" by Sherry Lou MacGregor, It's about NeoAssyrian women in politics and public life,
Viktor Marx. Back inhe published an overview of the position of women in NeoBabylonian society,
Christian Jacq's nonfiction book that deals exclusively with Egyptian women,
"The reign of the phallus" an important corrective about women in ancient Athens
"The myths of Avalon" by Kari Sperring, It's an essay and corrective about early medieval Celtic women,
"When god was a woman" by Merlin Stone, It isn't history or archaeology, but it's full of useful information, and it will make you think, There were a handful of interesting essays in this incredibly long collection, but the majority was honestly disappointing, There was basically no new scholarship presented I'm somewhat confused as to the intended audience, as the academic value of the book is dubious and the accessibility to laypersons is similarly dubious.
To some extent I do feel for the authors, who were surely given a bit of a double bind situation: the book claims to discuss "real" women as opposed to the many notorious examples of imaginary women, I guess! rather than the handful of flashier household namesthose who seldom make history, to paraphrase Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in the actual context in which that quote was conceivedbut information about the average woman throughout most of history, prerecorded or recorded, is scant to say the least.
Ergo, much of the book is spent on things that could probably apply to most stereotypes of most women throughout most of history: details about fashion and cooking and childrearing and marriage and textiles and gossiping at this point it was beginning to dawn on me that this sort of mentality is not actually any better when applied to women in history than it is when applied to women today.
Even setting aside that the "ancient world" is disappointingly underrepresented in this book probably because we don't actually know a lot about the lives and circumstances of the "real" women in those eras! in favour of more modern perspectives it's fine to interrogate ancient sources from a modern perspective but you could at least be upfront about it, everything kind of bled together.
The lowest common denominator approach turned the book into functionally as teen movie: cosmetics and relationships and babies and clothes and bedroom activities.
. . but no real discussion of how these sorts of things played into the social, political, economic, legal, religious, etc, roles of women in broader society, for example, I wasn't surprised by the presentism, but I was disappointed, especially because some of the names editor included have good reputations, To top it off I found that quite a few of the essays had this offputtingly smug tone that made it difficult to enjoy any of the information being presented, because the author was so clearly dedicated to disproving the work of previous usually male, usually misogynistic scholars.
I have no issue with academic responses I've written my fair share myself, But I don't really think this book benefited from that aspect either, You're not magically less misogynistic just because you happened to be born at a later date and are living in a different century, Try harder. i actually read this for fun, everyone gasp and shake their heads now, i was pleasantly surprised by this, i learned a lot and it didnt bore me to death, yay! This is unique in that the majority of the primary sources were created for and/or by women, There are references to literature written by men, but ultimately it is a book about women through the eyes of women,

The final chapter links antiquity to modern times, showing that despite all that has changed and all the progress that has happened, very little has changed.
This volume gathers brand new essays from some of the most respected scholars of ancient history, archaeology, and physical anthropology to create an engaging overview of the lives of women in antiquity.
The book is divided into ten sections, nine focusing on a particular area, and also includes almostimages, maps, and charts, The sections cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, the Aegean, Italy, and Western Europe, and include many lesserknown cultures such as the Celts, Iberia, Carthage, the Black Sea region, and Scandinavia.
Women's experiences are explored, from ordinary daily life to religious ritual and practice, to motherhood, childbirth, sex, and building a career, Forensic evidence is also treated for the actual bodies of ancient women,


Women in Antiquity is edited by two experts in the field, and is an invaluable resource to students of the ancient world, gender studies, and women's roles throughout history.
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