Womens Studies and Ancient History

1
Womens Studies and Ancient History

• Most of us, as products of a patriarchy-created
  educational system, believe that women have
  always had less status than and been dominated by
  men.

2

• Most anthropological writings indicate that the
  general egalitarianism in these societies did not
  fully apply to women.
• These writings recognize that matrilineality
  existed argue that it just substituted the
  authority of a womans male relatives for that
  her father and husband.
• They suggest that women, even in foraging
  societies, were basically equal to men but had
  slightly lower status.
• They suggest that womens role is always
  private, while mens is public.

3

• Theories of early humans or their predecessors
  have long believed that men were hunting, while
  women gathered seeds and plants and took care of
  the children.

4

• Thomas Hobbes, a famous historian and
  philosopher, theorized that aggressiveness and
  competitiveness were what enabled people to
  overcome their environment and create great
  civilizations.

http//www.skuola.net/filosofia/pensiero_politico.
asp
A study of available data, however, suggests that
these statements are not true, that probably some
bias caused assumptions to be made about data
that were not necessarily true.
5

• We now believe that
• 1) that a stage of primitive communism,
  preceded the emergence of social stratification
• and
• 2) that women in certain ancient societies,
  did hold a relatively equal position to that of
  men, even where stratification existed, but
  gradually lost that status as patriarchal
  societies gained power and used it to
  institutionalize changes

6

• Eleanor Leacock believes that studying data from
  social and physical anthropology, archeology, and
  primatology in their entirety, rather than
  selectively, suggests that sociality, curiosity,
  and playfulness--not aggressiveness or
  competitiveness as Thomas Hobbes once
  theorized--made it possible for a fairly small
  and defenseless creature to evolve into the human
  being that created many different ways of life
  around the world.

7

• Sociality is the abounding desire to be close to
  others of the same species and an overriding
  interest in them.
• Rather than competition among individuals for an
  elevated status, some historians now believe that
  a rich group life led to cooperation, which
  itself led to and depended upon the development
  of tools, utensils, and language.

8

• Private property,
• Social stratification,
• Political subjugation, and
• Institutionalized warfare with standing armies
• That these exist do not automatically express
  some innate human nature or some necessary linear
  progression of human history.

9

• The institutionalized inequalities so familiar
  and natural to us, the dominance hierarchies,
  arose in the fourth millennium B.C.E., during the
  urban revolution.

10

• Prior to that, data suggests, that at different
  times, various egalitarian gathering and hunting,
  and later, horticultural (or hoe-agricultural)
  societies existed.
• They elaborated ritually on various forms of
  social and ceremonial rank but still maintained,
  as far as can be determined, the equal right of
  all to basic sources of livelihood.

• http//www.museums.org.za/sam/resource/arch/linton
  3.htm

11

• The theory of urban revolution goes like this
• As a result of human inventiveness and
  ingenuity (agriculture and its tools)
  specialization of work developed, moving
  some out of direct contact with food
  production. Barter became commerce, supplies
  began to be stored for the future for the first
  time, and Priest-chiefs gradually began assuming
  control of the stores, transferring ritual rank
  to elitism. Equal access to land became
  restricted, and class systems were created--not
  always without resistance. (Leacock 18)

12
The Ancients

• Study of the Ancients is difficult for several
  reasons
• Source Material
• Competition
• Bias

13
Exam StatsMultiple Choice Portion

• Class Average 17.1
• Back Row 15.1
• Third Row 17.6
• Second Row 18
• First Row 19.2
• Women 17.2
• Men 16.8

14

• Source Material, itself
• Material about ancient cultures, produced by
  these ancient cultures is not always readily
  available or easy to come by. Most of it must be
  literally un-earthed and can be damaged or
  destroyed in the reclaiming process. Materials
  usually consist of burial or ceremonial sites, or
  in the case of more advanced or civilized
  societies--like Egypt or Sumer--written
  texts of economic accounts, laws or codes, or
  personal seals. Much data from the past has not
  survived or is currently unavailable.

15

• Disciplinary Priority
• The very people involved in reclaiming and
  studying these artifacts can hinder the study of
  those artifacts.
• Archeologists tend to concentrate on excavating
  palaces, temples, and royal tombs rather than on
  town sites which could potentially tell us more
  about the lives of ordinary people in antiquity.
  
• Philologists, who translate texts, often give
  higher priority to figuring out lexicographical
  and grammatical problems, seldom analyzing the
  content as thoroughly as a social historian.

16

• Ethnocentric Bias Ethno- meaning Race, from the
  Greek for People
• Societies with histories outside of the
  traditions of Europe or the Orient are commonly
  all lumped together and labeled Primitive.
• This has two effects.
• 1) Statements made about women in primitive
  societies do not usually take into account the
  diversity of all those societies.

17

• 2) Scholars can misinterpret data based on their
  own assumptions, such as assuming either that
  male-female dyads exist in all societies
  social-economic and child care organization, as
  they do in Western civilization, or that social
  action is always divided into public, formal,
  political (Male) spheres and private, familial,
  informal (Female) spheres.
• This has historically been a difficult bias
  to overcome. Many of the Greek and Roman
  historians found other societies, either ones
  which dominated and conquered or ones which they
  were dominated and conquered by, strange and less
  civilized--just based on different customs and,
  in some cases, different gender relations.

18

• Androcentric Bias Andro- meaning Male,
  masculine, from the Greek for Man
• Anthropologists and scientists, on the whole,
  have been men who interview other men and assume
  that the data collected is sufficient for
  understanding a society.
• Women scholars have accepted this, because
  they, too, are products of the same culture and
  institutions. They are trained to think like
  men. Only recently have men and women become
  conscious of the distortions created by male or
  patriarchal bias. (Kimmels invisibility)

19

• A recent re-analysis of the data suggests,
  again, that patriarchal traditions were preceded
  by egalitarian horticultural societies, as can be
  discerned from what little we know about the
  early hunting peoples of Europe.

20
Neanderthal Society

• The few hints left about the life of the
  Neanderthals, the theorized ancestors of modern
  humans who lived until 40 or 50,000 years ago
  confirm the essentially social nature of human
  evolution.
• Several families shared single large dwellings,
  and evidence suggests that the infirm were cared
  for. Burial sites give the evidence of this
• A Skeleton of relatively old arthritic cripple
  in one site
• One of an older man whose right arm had been
  amputated when young
• Older skeletons buried with flowers

21
Cro-Magnon Society

• This social nature is reaffirmed by studies of
  the Cro-Magnons, (35,00-10,000 years ago) the
  theorized successors of the Neanderthals and
  precursors to modern humans.
• Cave paintings of the Cro-Magnons indicate a
  respect for hunted animals (as opposed to an
  aggressive desire to kill a weaker creature) and
  an appreciation of their beauty.
• These paintings also suggest a ceremonial life in
  which both men and women participated.
• Additionally, numerous female figurines, ranging
  from very fat to almost stick-like but always
  very stylized indicate the importance of women to
  ritual.

22
Women in the Stone Age

• Venus of Willendorf
• c. 24,000-22,000 BCE
• Limestone
• 43/8 inches (11.1 cm) high
• (Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna)

1966 Movie Poster
23
Theory of Creation of Patriarchy

• The urban revolution (economic and political
  changes) coincided with territorial challenges
  and disputes, which necessitated the creation of
  standing armies, which, in turn, further divided
  labor between and thought about the sexes. Women
  were likely to be seen as objects or property
  that needed protection.

24
Two different strands of social development occur

• That of the Mediterranean world, where the
  classical patriarchy of the ancient Middle East
  finally succeeded in submerging what had been the
  formal public participation of women in social,
  political, and religious matters and
• That of the northern European periphery where
  women, though far from equal to men, nonetheless
  retained a relatively higher status than in
  Mediterranean cultures--a status that persisted
  long enough to effect early medieval society.

25
A Comparison between Ancient Egypt and Assyria

• By analyzing the data we can see that women had a
  higher relative status in ancient Egypt than in
  Assyria.

Queen Hatsheput
26
Egypt

• Egypt survived for 3,000 years until the
  Greco-Roman civilization, led by the Roman war
  machine under Caesar, finally conquered it in the
  era of Cleopatra.
• In ancient Egypt men and women were treated
  relatively equally to each other, although they
  experienced differences in treatment based on
  class.
• For instance, a wealthy Egyptian man and a
  wealthy Egyptian woman were seen as equals under
  their laws, as were a poor man or a poor woman
  however, the wealthy citizens had more rights and
  more advantages under their law than did the poor.

27
Egypt

• Although it was not always practiced
  consistently, the right to succeed to the throne
  passed through the women of the royal family.
  Thus the king, who was considered to be an
  incarnation of the sky-god Horus, had to marry a
  princess of the royal blood known as the Daughter
  of the God because of her kingly fathers
  acknowledged divinity.

28

• Often in the royal family, brother married sister
  to keep the throne within the family. This
  corresponds to their mythological accounts of
  Isis and Osiris, sibling deities who marry to
  maintain power.

29
Royal Women

• Lists of kings often record their mothers names
  as well because of their role in the succession.
• Splendid tombs provide evidence of this high
  respect of kings mothers, as well. One queen
  (Hetepheres) was buried with golden furniture.
• Royal women did not dwell secluded in harems but
  took an active role in court life, assuming the
  duties of regents if their husbands died before
  the heir apparent came of age.

30
Common Women

• Murals show unveiled women selling products in
  marketplace and working in harvest scenes
  alongside men. Women winnowed wheat, handpicked
  flax, spun it into thread, wove it into linen
  cloth, ground wheat, and brewed beer.
• Household accounts of an Egyptian farm in 2000 B.
  C. Shows that all members of one family received
  wages for the work they performed adult men and
  women receiving equal amounts, youths less.

31
Assyria

• In ancient Assyria, where Amorite peoples
  displace Sumerians, misogyny borne out of a
  patriarchy in the extreme seems to be the rule
  of gender relations. Assyrians, unlike
  Egyptians, expressed little or no faith in an
  afterlife.
• Their law code then is extremely harsh as all
  penalties for improper behavior cannot be left
  for the next life.

32
Assyrian Law

• Private property was extremely important, and
  women had no right to property. Their fathers or
  their husbands controlled everything.
• A husband could give property his wife brought
  into their marriage to anyone at anytime.
• However, a woman could still be held responsible
  for her husbands debts, and daughters could
  actually be enslaved for their fathers debts.

33
Assyrian Justice

• Women who were victims of crime usually suffered
  at the hands of justice.
• A virgin who was raped by a man would be made to
  marry him, perhaps because he had claimed her
  only asset or perhaps because the rape was seen
  as being her fault.
• A rapist was punished by having his own wife
  raped by the victims father the rapist of a
  married woman was put to death.
• Many offenses under the law code could result in
  a womans death, such as abortion, adultery, or
  suspicious activities outside the home.

34
Assyrian Sexuality

• Female sexuality was intensely regulated. As the
  descent was patrilineal, legitimacy was
  guaranteed by restricting women. Virginity was
  prized for brides.
• Women needed to be veiled when in public.
• Even queens were highly restricted, guarded by
  eunuchs along with their husbands concubines in
  the kings harems.

35
Patriarchal Patterns Cross-Culturally

• As we will see with our study of the earliest
  creation myths across several societies, a
  pattern seems to emerge in ancient history that
  of a creative mother goddess or a creative
  male/female deity pair that, over time and
  corresponding to the development and entrenchment
  of patriarchy, gets replaced with a male creative
  deity/deities.