AYAD “Women in Ancient Egypt provides an indispensable collection of the There has been considerable scholarship freshest and most creative research on women in ancient Egypt from in the last fifty years on the role of the dawn of the state to Late Antiquity, exploring the lives of women ancient Egyptian women in society. at various levels of society as well as ancient Egyptian perceptions of With their ability to work outside the the female body. This volume aims to be a counter to previous studies home, inherit and dispose of property, W which have downplayed, dismissed, or oversexualized the evidence initiate divorce, testify in court, and WOMEN IN of women in the archaeological record, and it hits the mark.” serve in local government, Egyptian O MARIAM F. AYAD is an associate —Kara Cooney, UCLA ANCIENT women exercised more legal rights professor of Egyptology at the M and economic independence than American University in Cairo. In 2020– “This book is the first comprehensive treatment of women in ancient EGYPT their counterparts throughout antiquity. E Egypt in general, both royal and non-royal, from the Early Dynastic Yet their agency and autonomy are 21 she was a visiting associate professor Period to Late Antiquity. The brilliant in-depth studies covering N often downplayed, undermined, or of Women’s Studies and Near Eastern diverse sources—texts, pictures, and material culture—provide outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Religions and a research associate of excellent insight into very different aspects of the lives of women, I REVISITING Egypt twenty-four international scholars Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s thus illuminating a broad thematic framework. The inclusion N offer a corrective to this view by Studies in Religion Program. She is the POWER, of considerations of power, economy, law, and health and the presenting the latest cutting-edge author of God’s Wife, God’s Servant: A body is a welcome extension to the focus on the feminine world AGENCY, AND research on women and gender in The God’s Wife of Amun (c. 740–525 in ancient Egypt.” ancient Egypt. BC), and the editor of three volumes N AUTONOMY —Angelika Lohwasser, University of Münster, Germany Covering the entirety of Egyptian on Coptic culture, including Studies C history, from earliest times to Late in Coptic Culture: Transmission and “If women are absent from the scholarship on ancient Egypt, I Antiquity, this volume commences Interaction (AUC Press, 2016). E it is not because they are absent from the sources. The stunning with a thorough study of the earliest Edited by new research gathered here by Mariam Ayad demonstrates not N written evidence of Egyptian women, Mariam F. Ayad only women’s presence, but their power, diversity, and importance. both royal and non-royal, before T Egyptology takes a huge step forward with topics ranging from moving on to chapters that deal with the authority of royal women to incantations to stop bleeding various aspects of Egyptian queens, E after miscarriage.” followed by studies on the legal status G —Ann Braude, Harvard Divinity School and economic roles of non-royal Y women and, finally, on women’s health and body adornment. Within this P sweeping chronological range, each T study is intensely focused on the evidence recovered from a particular ISBN: 978-164-903-180-8 site or a specific time period. Front cover image from Book of the Dead of Anhay, sheet 5, Spell 110. Twentieth Dynasty. © The Trustees of the British Museum. The American University in Cairo Press 9 781649 031808 Jacket design by studio medlikova www.aucpress.com LLSSII__AAyyaadd,, WWoommeenn iinn AAnncciieenntt EEggyypptt HHBBKK ssppiinnee 11..112255 iinn DDJJ DDHH 0088--0055--22002222 RREEVV__11..iinndddd 44,,66--77 1.125 in 0088//0055//22002222 11::4466 PPMM WOMEN IN ANCIENT EGYPT WOMEN IN ANCIENT EGYPT REVISITING POWER, AGENCY, AND AUTONOMY Edited by Mariam F. Ayad The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York First published in 2022 by The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt One Rockefeller Plaza, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10020 www.aucpress.com Copyright © 2022 by the American University in Cairo Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978 1 649 03180 8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ayad, Mariam F., editor. Title: Women in ancient Egypt : revisiting power, agency, and autonomy / edited by Mariam Ayad. Identifiers: LCCN 2021055858 | ISBN 9781649031808 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Women--Egypt--History--To 1500. | Egypt--History--To 640 a.d. Classification: LCC HQ1137.E3 W67 2022 | DDC 305.40962--dc23/eng/20211201 1 2 3 4 5 26 25 24 23 22 Designed by Jon W. Stoy Printed in The United States of America Contents Illustrations ix Contributors xvii Foreword: Women in Ancient Egypt: Current Research and Historical Trends Fayza Haikal xxvii 1. Moving Beyond Gender Bias Mariam F. Ayad 1 THE EARLIEST EVIDENCE 2. Early Dynastic Women: The Written Evidence Eva-Maria Engel 27 ROYAL WOMEN: EXPRESSIONS OF POWER AND INFLUENCE 3. The Funerary Domains of Setibhor and Other Old Kingdom Queens Hana Vymazalová 39 4. Elevated or Diminished? Questions Regarding Middle Kingdom Royal Women Isabel Stünkel 59 v 5. Egyptianizing Female Sphinxes in Anatolia and the Levant during the Middle Bronze Age 71 Yasmin El Shazly 6. An Intriguing Feminine Figure in the Royal Cachette Wadi: New Findings from the C2 Project 87 José Ramón Pérez-Accino Picatoste and Inmaculada Vivas Sainz 7. The Role of Amunet during the Reign of Hatshepsut 101 Katarzyna Kapiec 8. Power, Piety, and Gender in Context: Hatshepsut and 121 Nefertiti Jacquelyn Williamson 9. Arsinoë II and Berenike II: Ptolemaic Vanguards of Queenly Political Power 147 Tara Sewell-Lasater NONROYAL WOMEN: LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS 10. Women in the Economic Domain: First to Sixth Dynasties 165 Susan Anne Kelly 11. Ostentation in Old Kingdom Female Tombs: Between Iconographical Conventions and Gendered Adaptations 187 Romane Betbeze 12. The xnrwt: A Reassessment of Their Religious Roles 205 Izold Guegan 13. Family Contracts in New Kingdom Egypt 227 Reinert Skumsnes 14. The Women of Deir al-Medina in the Ramesside Period: Current State of Research and Future Perspectives on the Community of Workers 243 Kathrin Gabler vi CONTENTS 15. Some Remarks on the Shabti Corpus of Iyneferty 263 Rahel Glanzmann 16. Some Notes on the Question of Feminine Identity at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Dynasty in the Funerary Literature 277 Annik Wüthrich 17. The Role and Status of Women in Elite Family Networks of Late Period Thebes: The Wives of Montuemhat 291 Anke Ilona Blöbaum 18. Women’s Participation as Contracting Parties as Recorded in Demotic Documents for Money from Ptolemaic Upper Egypt: A Case Study of Change? 311 Renate Fellinger 19. Women in Demotic (Documentary) Texts 331 Janet H. Johnson 20. Shoes, Sickness, and Sisters: The (In)visibility of Christian Women from Late Antique Oxyrhynchus 351 AnneMarie Luijendijk THE FEMALE BODY 21. Women’s Intimacy: Blood, Milk, and Women’s Conditions in the Gynecological Papyri of Ancient Egypt 381 Clémentine Audouit 22. Women’s Health Issues as Seen in Theban Tomb 16 Suzanne Onstine, Jesús Herrerín López, Nataša Šarkić, Miguel 395 Sanchez, and Rosa Dinarès Solà 23. Shifting Perceptions of Tattooed Women in Ancient Egypt 401 Anne Austin List of Abbreviations 423 Bibliography 429 CONTENTS vii Illustrations Figures 1.1. Nebet standing on the left, her titles inscribed in the three columns just above her figure. Stela GC 1578 from Abydos (after Fischer, Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom, fig. 27. Line drawing by Peter Der Manuelian. Used with permission). 1.2. Idut standing, a scribal box behind her, Hall B, West Wall (= PM III2, 617 and plan LXIII (7). Line drawing after Macramallah, Le Mastaba d’Idout, pl. 7) 1.3. Henuttawy and Menna seated, a scribal kit under her seat, Tomb of Menna (TT 69), Broad Hall, right (after Hartwig, The Tomb Chapel of Menna, fig. 2.8b. Reproduced with permission). 1.4. Tomb of Amenemope (TT 148), Broad Hall, southern Statue Room, West Wall (after Ockinga et al., Tomb of Amenemope at Thebes (TT 148), pl. 73. Reproduced with permission). 2.1. Stela of sTi (Cairo JE 99602, Stela 286). (Eva-Maria Engel, Umm el-Qa’ab VI, Das Grab des Qa’a. Architektur und Inventar. AV 100 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017), 88, fig. 66 [2].) 2.2. Stela of sHb.f (Cairo JE 34416, Stela 48). (Eva-Maria Engel, Umm el-Qa’ab VI, Das Grab des Qa’a, 89, fig. 67.) 2.3. Cylinder seal of Htp-nb(.i) (New York 26-2-48, Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit 3, fig 415. Drawing by the author after the photograph of the cast, published in https://www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547402.) 2.4. Cylinder seal of Hmst/msHt (Berlin 20333, Kaplony, Die Inschriften der ägyptischen Frühzeit 3, fig. 516. Drawing by the author after the ix