thorough, and informative if a bit dry, An idealised version of women appears everywhere in the art of ancient Egypt, but the true nature of these women's lives has long remained hidden, Robins' book, gracefully written and copiously illustrated, cuts through the obscurity of the ages to show us what the archaeological riches of Egypt really say about how these women lived, both in the public eye and within the family.
The art and written records of the time present a fascinating puzzle, But how often has the evidence been interpreted, consciously or otherwise, from a male viewpoint Robins conducts us through these sources with an archaeologist's relish, stripping away layer after interpretive layer to expose the reality beneath.
Here we see the everyday lives of women in the economic, legal, or domestic sphere, from the Early Dynastic Period almost,years ago to the conquest of Alexander inB.
C. Within this kingdom ruled and run by men, women could still wield influence indirectlyand in some cases directly, when a woman took the position of king, The exceptional few who assumed real power appear here in colorful detail, alongside their more traditional counterparts, Robins examines the queens' reputed divinity and takes a frank look at the practice of incest within Egypt's dynasties, She shows us the special role of women in religious rites and offices, and assesses their depiction in Egyptian art as it portrays their position in society,
By drawing women back into the picture we have of ancient Egypt, this book opens a whole new perspective on one of world history's most exotic and familiar cultures.
This book provides a good overview of women in ancient Egypt, but wasn't always as indepth as I wanted, Many of the images are also scattered across the book, so I'd find stuff from chapter three in, say, chapter nine, It was still informative, though, An objective and interesting indepth look at what we suppose life for women in Ancient Egypt was like, At times, it read like a textbook because the author was truly striving for objectivity, I did miss the conjecture and speculation that spices up a lot of pophistory books, This was by far the best book on Egyptian history I've read so far, Robins set out in the beginning stating exactly why she was looking at the subject, why it was important and what the evidence stated, It definitely was written more as a social history, with Robins paying particular attention to changes over time, and made sure to include when the sources that she was talking about were found.
One small complaint about this was that rather than including the dates in brackets after the dynasties as is done in Chinese histories the reader was left to flip to the chart at the front of the book to check the dates for what was being discussed.
Overall Robins gave a great sense of caution to interpreting the different evidence of the position of women, At times this sense of doubt seemed to be taken a bit too far, for instance when she said that just because there was a word for women scribes, and women were seen with scribal tablets and writing equipment under the seats, shouldn't be interpreted that they were actually women scribes, or that they were even literate.
She suggests how women writing letters to each other could easily have been written by a male in the household and read out to the women recipients, Which seems to be trying to stretch the evidence a little further than necessary in the opposite direction but all told I'd rather read a cautious writer to one who took the flimsiest evidence and ran with it.
The book looked at royal women, the working lives of women, their legal status and their role in religion, The legal status and the role in religion I think were the most interesting, It was good to see how much control and independence, and how much legal protection women actually had, I felt that I learned quite a bit even if not much is known for sure, This is definitely a crucial book for anyone studying gender in ancient Egyptian society, Dr. Robins does an excellent job at compiling primary sources and including relevant black and white illustrations
and other resources, and she certainly does the best she can with what's available there are many significant gaps in modern knowledge of women's lives in ancient Egyptian society, resulting in an often "unfinished" feel at times, something that is an unfortunate likelihood of any academic publication, but the sparsity is no less frustrating to encounter even with that knowledge at hand.
Still, the book is as comprehensive as possible in its account of domestic, economic, legal, religious, and social lives of ancient Egyptian women Dr, Robins covers the relevant topics of marriage, childbirth, family, religion, death, literature, art, politics, rulership of the country, and more,
This book was published in, and the intervening nearlyyears have revealed plenty of new information in the field of Egyptology we know the actual location of Punt now, for examplethis of course doesn't mean Dr.
Robins's work is moot, or even inaccurate for the most part, I did feel as though Dr, Robins focused too literally on the role of ma'at in ancient Egyptian society as depicted in "official" recordsancient Egyptian beliefs were strongly dualistic in nature, but that does not necessarily mean that the more visible or "flashy" roles of men were considered any more inherently important than those of women, as evidenced by the fact that we do have evidence of women taking on traditionally "male" roles periodically throughout recorded ancient Egyptian history, and that's only what survived the test of millennia.
Dr. Robins doesn't cut corners when discussing the challenges faced by scholars studying women in ancient Egypt, thankfully, noting that the time period commonly known as "ancient Egypt" spanned aroundyears but a book entitled "Women inth Dynasty Ancient Egypt" wouldn't be as marketable to a layperson audience, and thus any genuine historical discussion requires acknowledgement of the pace of vast societal changes Ptolemaic Egypt, which has been embedded in the popular consciousness as representative of all of ancient Egypt, didn't even lastyears, meaning it represents less thanof the entirety of ancient Egyptian history.
Dr. Robins notes as well the difficulties inherent in backformation of a society based on idealised tomb paintings and papyri, which followed an incredibly strict set of rules as did all ancient Egyptian art throughout the vast majority of its history, meaning that depictions of women in historical record are often not representative of the actual lived experiences of women at that time.
Dr. Robins acknowledges where ambiguity is prevalent i, e. , everywhere, such as when discussing literacy amidst women: on average, ancient Egypt had around an estimatedliteracy rate, with literacy primarily regulated to the priesthood there are female scribes, but at the time no recorded evidence of female lector priests ẖryḥb.
t existed. Dr. Robins points out that this could mean that women in this area were all illiterate, or that their literacy was never officially recorded, This would have been, in my opinion, an excellent point to delve into the gendered nature of ancient Egyptian, and the difficulties which have arisen as a result thereof for example, the fact that most popculture famous female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, referred to herself as "king" because the Middle Egyptian word for the role, nswtbjtj,is grammatically masculine and does not have a feminine equivalent or the ability to take feminine markers.
Hatshepsut, like every other female ancient Egyptian king or pharaoh, was depicted as a woman in ancient Egyptian art as per the rules of contemporary iconography, but she adopted a masculine title because of how the language functioned.
One minor issue I had with Dr, Robins's writing is the fact that her transliteration of hieroglyphs does not follow the Manuel de Codage obviously this is a book accessible to a layperson, but I would personally have preferred her to use the MdC and then perhaps explained it in a note or parenthetical.
However, this is a minor detail, and I still consider this book to be an incredible achievement,
sitelinkAgenetic test of mummified baboons found in Egypt, which were said by the Egyptians to have come from Punt, showed that the baboons lived in the Sudan/Eritrea area, as their isotope profiles matched those of modern baboons in the same area.
sitelinkAfollowup study confirmed the hypothesis, suggesting that Punt was situated in the Somalia/Eritrea/Ethiopia area, More recent studies, sitelinkincluding one from, also reinforce this location, sitelinkAstudy of Punt reliefs at Dayr alBahri noted that the people of Punt were shown to bring with them the secretary bird, endemic to the Somalia/Eritrea/Ethiopia area its habitat is grasslands and savannah.
The theory that Punt was somewhere along the coastline of the Horn of Africa has been an established theory for quite a while, but was only solidly confirmed in,
Gardiner's sign list Lbjt, Msw, Xt, I adored this book,
Gay Robins has produced an excellent resource on Ancient Egyptian women, Most of the book deals with the everyday life of nonroyal women, and Robins admits that this mostly deals with women of the elite, as little evidence of the lives of lower class women has survived.
The first two chapters, however, are dedicated to the royal women of Ancient Egypt, The first provides a general overview, while the second profiles notable queens, My one criticism of the book is that this second chapter, bar one exception, is focused entirely on eighteenth dynasty queens, bypassing some fascinating women,
The rest of the book deals with nonroyal women, with chapters dedicated to marriage, pregnancy, the roles women played in and out of the household, the economic and legal rights women had, the religious functions women performed, and, finally, the image of a woman pictured in Ancient Egyptian literature and art.
Robins appears to be very reliable, mainly because she does come out and admit to the gaps in the evidence and what this means for our knowledge of Ancient Egyptian women when discussing a topic, such as literacy.
Robins is also honest when her theories lack solid historical data, which is refreshing to see, However, this honesty doesn't prevent valuable insights into women's lives, or everyday life in Ancient Egypt, being made,
I loved that each chapter ended with a few suggested books or articles for further reading, Thus, if you were interested in the chapter topic, you had about four references you could go and look up straight away, What's more, though Women in Ancient Egypt was first published in, Robins has gone back at a later stage and provided references to more recent articles and books.
Robins is perhaps more realistic, certainly more pessimistic, in her take on Ancient Egyptian women than other writers, It becomes clear that though Ancient Egyptian women did have it better than women from other cultures, entry to Egypt's ruling bureaucracy was only open to men, and the Egyptian society was that of a patriarchy.
To finish this review, I want to quote a line from the blurb, because it sums up why this book is so awesome, so here we go:
without glossing over the tantalising gaps which exist in the evidence, she Robins offers fresh and revealing insights into women's lives and therefore into ancient Egyptian society as a whole..