Women, Pharaonic Egypt LISA SABBAHY There is abundant evidence, both written and pictorial, for women in ancient Egypt. We can glimpse the lives of royal, noble, as well as peasant women, although there are limita- tions on how clearly we can comprehend their actual status and role in ancient Egyptian soci- ety. Most of the pictorial evidence we have is from tombs, which only royalty or nobility could afford to build, and the reliefs and statuary in them show a perfect world meant for the eternal afterlife, not a truly realistic depiction of everyday life. Royal woman had their own tombs, but non-royal women shared the tomb of their husband and are shown according to an elite male perspective, produced by male artists and craftsmen. Written evidence is more balanced, in the sense that we have letters and documents from everyday life, but the people doing the writing appear always to have been male. Although we assume “pockets” of female literacy (see LITERACY, PHARAONIC EGYPT) among royalty and nobility, and in particular among women in the workmen’s village of DEIR EL-MEDINA (see Toivari-Viitala 2001: 187–9), there is no direct proof for female literacy in ancient Egypt. Only male children attended school and, once trained as scribes, went on to work in the government. From the king down, the power structure of ancient Egypt was all male. We can reconstruct a view of the lives of women in ancient Egypt, but it is filtered through a masculine lens (see GENDER, PHARA- ONIC EGYPT). Royal women, by virtue of their family rela- tionship with the king, were placed at the pinnacle of status and power (see QUEENS, PHAR- AONIC EGYPT). An important difference between the queen and the king, however, was that the king was divine, and filled a divine role, while the queen was not, but could consort with divinity. She passed divinity and legitimacy onto her son, and could also rule for him, if he took the throne as a minor. This type of regency by the king’s mother is known from as early as the 1st Dynasty (see MERNEITH). The queen was also in a position to be able to assume power in unusual circumstances, at the death of her husband, the king. Queen SOBEKNEFRU has a well-documented but short reign of about four years at the end of the 12th Dynasty. It would appear that there were no more males in the royal line, and therefore she took the throne. In the 18th Dynasty, HATSHEPSUT started as a king’s daugh- ter, and then married her half-brother, becom- ing king’s wife. Then, after the death of her husband, she served as regent for her minor stepson, Thutmose III (see THUTMOSE I–IV). She ultimately assumed power as king with him in a co-regency and ruled for twenty-two years until her death. The king of ancient Egypt ruled by virtue of the fact that he was the god HORUS, son of OSIRIS, and he inherited the throne from his father (see KINGSHIP, PHARAONIC EGYPT). Sobekneferu “circumvented” the prob- lems created by her gender by proclaiming herself a “female Horus,” wearing the garb of the male king over her own female clothing. Hatshepsut took this one step further when she became king and for state purposes simply had herself portrayed as a man. Women in ancient Egypt held many different types of jobs, and these changed over time. From the period of the Old Kingdom (2650–2150 BCE) we have women given titles as weaver, overseer of weavers, singer, overseer of singers, dancer, grinder of grain, food ven- dor, winnower, domestic servant, stewardess of the queen’s household, as well as overseer of ornaments, overseer of cloth, and seal- bearer. Women of higher status, because of their husband’s position, could be part of the royal court and carry a title such as “Noble- woman of the King,” or “Ornament of the King.” In terms of religious positions, a woman could serve as a mourner at funerals, maintain tomb offerings as a “Servant of the Ka,” or be a priestess of the goddess HATHOR or the goddess NEITH. The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 7126–7128. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah15420 1