The University of Worcester: Student Conference. Barbara O’Neill, May – June 2017 1 Barbara O’Neill Title: Aspects of gender in Ancient Egypt from c. 2686 BC Venue #2: Worcester University: Seeds of Knowledge Post Graduate Conference June 29 th 2017 Oral Presentation with slides Slide 1/2 My research is focussed upon the ways in which ancient Egyptians created and constructed concepts, images and perceptions of gender, in particular, gender related to the ‘divine feminine’ over four significant periods of Egyptian history from the Predynastic era around 3,500 BC: into the Pharaonic period, (around 3100 BC); on into the Graeco-Roman or Byzantine era (332 BC) SLIDE 3 and finally into the earliest stages of Christianity in Egypt, which began to appear in the archaeological record around 300 AD. My research explores the ways in which goddesses and other feminised aspects of divinity, were represented in image and through ideological expectations during these key periods. For reasons of time today, I will focus on aspects of gender within Dynastic concepts of religion, that is, during the period of the Pharaohs, and specifically, I’m going to focus predominantly upon the Old Kingdom–a significantly formative period for Egyptian ideology and related iconography. Most of us are familiar with the term ‘gender’. Slide 4 This usually refers to an individual’s identity as male or female. Up until recently, gender has not been understood as a category we choose for ourselves - particularly in modern western contexts where gender is considered as something assigned to us – something biological, adopted at birth and adhered to culturally throughout life. However, notions concerning gender have changed significantly over the past few decades. In a growing number of Western countries, in places where data related to individual status is gathered, a range of ‘other’ gendered identities may be presented as choices, alongside that of male or female. Indeed, there are sometimes a bewildering range of classifications regarding ways in which individuals are legally entitled to describe their own gender.