Gender and the Religion of Ancient Egypt Suzanne Onstine* University of Memphis Abstract This article will address the issue of gender within the framework of ancient Egyptian religion. Two primary areas of importance will be explored; the role of gender in the divine world, and the role of gender for the practitioners of the religion. The religion of ancient Egypt was espe- cially concerned with aspects of gender because of their focus on fertility and spiritual rebirth, concepts which were often expressed using gendered language and visual metaphors. The second part of the article explores the ways in which women negotiated the primarily male dominated religious hierarchy. The practice of Egyptian religion was also affected because of the gender roles that men and women played in their society. The temple was not simply a religious edifice, but also had administrative aspects that women were normally excluded from. This did not mean women were excluded from meaningful participation in the cult, but rather they forged an iden- tity based on providing music for the cult in various ways. Introduction and Historiography Gender was at the very core of Egyptian religious beliefs, both spiritually and in more practical ways. Gods and goddesses have been studied and described since the beginnings of Egyptology. 1 However, the study of the practical manifestations of gender – particu- larly those issues pertaining to human women as opposed to the deities – has been slow to develop and is much more affected by the modern biases of Egyptologists. One of the main problems we face when doing an historiography of gender issues is the entangle- ment of female sexual behavior with the idea of gender roles. For generations of male Egyptologists, the position of women seemed only explicable by reference to her marital or sexual status expressed in sets of dualities: married / not yet married, virgin / whore, and prostitute / respectable housewife. The vision of ancient Egypt they created was a replica- tion of 19th and 20th century western conceptions of gender roles where men were the ‘default’ and women were the second gender. In terms of behavior, men did the heavy lifting and the thinking, while women tended the children or the brothels. This tendency to sexualize women’s behavior is noticeable in early works on ancient Egypt, 2 but has been remarkably slow to leave modern scholarship. 3 We are not helped by the nature of the ancient evidence left to us. Women’s roles in Egyptian culture are poorly understood because they are underrepresented in textual sources, and because the nature of visual sources is largely to portray an idealized version of both men and women. Additionally, much of what we know about gender in general and with respect to religion specifically, comes from a male point of view. Religious texts and images that survive are largely a product of male elite culture; carvings on temples and papyri with spells can both be thought of as expressions of an androcentric Religon Compass 4/1 (2010): 1–11, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00178.x ª 2010 The Author Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd