the status of ancient egyptian women :: essays research papers

The Status of Women in Ancient Egyptian SocietyUnlike the gear up of women in most other antediluvian patriarch civilizations, including that of Greece, the Egyptian woman seems to eat up enjoyed the same sub judice and economic rights as the Egyptian man-- at to the lowest degree in theory. This notion is reflected in Egyptian art and historical inscriptions. It is incertain why these rights existed for the woman in Egypt but no where else in the ancient world. It may well be that such rights were ultimately related to the hypothetic role of the king in Egyptian society. If the pharaoh was the personification of Egypt, and he equal the corporate personality of the Egyptian state, then men and women might not have been seen in their familiar relationships, but rather, only in necessitate to this royal center of society. Since Egyptian national identity would have derived from every last(predicate) people sharing a common relationship with the king, then in this relationsh ip, which all men and women shared equally, they were--in a sense--equal to each other. This is not to narrate that Egypt was an egalitarian society. It was not. Legal distinctions in Egypt were apparently based much more(prenominal) upon differences in the kind classes, rather than differences in gender. Rights and privileges were not uniform from whizz class to another, but within the given classes, it seems that equal economic and legal rights were, for the most part, accorded to both men and women. Most of the textual and archaeological express for the role of women that survives from prior to the New Kingdom pertains to the elite, not the common folk. At this time, it is the elite, for the most part, who leave written records or who can afford tombs that discipline such records. However, from the New Kingdom onward, and certainly by the Ptolemaic Period, such cause pertains more and more to the non-elite, i.e., to women of the middle and lower classes. Actually, the bulk of the evidence for the economic freedom of Egyptian women derives from the Ptolemaic Period. The Greek domination of Egypt, which began with the success of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., did not sweep away Egyptian social and political institutions. Both Egyptian and Greek systems of law and social traditions existed side-by-side in Egypt at that time. Greeks functioned within their system and Egyptians within theirs. Mixed parties of Greeks and Egyptians devising contractual agreements or who were forced into court over legal disputes would contract which of the two legal systems in which they would base their settlements.