Ancient Egypt: Gender roles and relationships, gender in art
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GenderGender rolesIn theory the roles of men and women were different but largely equal [1]. The reality was somewhat different. Women bore and raised children and were responsible for the familiar, domestic relationships, while men related to society at large. At least during the first dynasties women belonging to the elite at least received post-mortem treatment similar to that of men: they were buried in individual tombs, with statues of themselves alone. As the civil administration grew stronger and men became more involved in its hierarchy, their wives' economic and social dependence grew, weakening their position. From the 5th dynasty onwards women are frequently shown as part of group statues only.Women took care of the daily needs of their families; men interpreted this as women serving them. In grave scenes of the Old and Middle Kingdoms wives are often depicted in subservient roles, baking bread, making beer and generally looking after their husbands. Still, they enjoyed quite a bit of independence in this male-dominated society, and even among the Greeks who began settling in Egypt during the first millennium BCE and restricted the freedom of their women severely, men did not have it all their own way: Paniskos to Ploutogenia, his wife, greeting. |
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Gender and literatureIn literary works female voices are rare. They are possibly heard in the love poetry which flourished above all during the New Kingdom - but the vast majority of authors was probably male. Most of the writings such as the Instructions were composed by men for men expressing widely diverging views of womanhood [2].If you take a wife, do not . . . Let her be more contented than any of her fellow-citizens. She will be attached to you doubly, if her chain is pleasant. Do not repel her; grant that which pleases her; it is to her contentment that she appreciates your work. |
The chief of scribes Raherka and his wife Mersankh 5th Dynasty, painted limestone, found in a mastaba at Gizeh Adapted from a photograph scanned from Les Merveilles du Louvre |
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Gender relationship in art |
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Akhenaten and Nefertiti 18th Dynasty, painted limestone, 22 cm tall Adapted from a photograph scanned from Les Merveilles du Louvre |
Various features of statues of couples have been interpreted as pointing to the wives' subordination:
the (inferior left) side of the men they stand on, their position slightly behind their husbands, their smaller size or
the woman touching the man without any reciprocal movement on his behalf.
This may all be true, but the important point is that the men chose to be depicted in the company of their wives. The artists may have fudged the truth a bit, women (and men for that matter) are rarely shown as ugly, fat (the Egyptians seem to have invented our 20th century yearn for thinness), old or bad-tempered. It seems that they thought that if you had to live an eternity with somebody, then why not in his or her most attractive guise. Moreover, features can generally be interpreted in more than one way. If a man was shown seated with his wife standing by his side, it may have been in order to offset the larger physical size of the man or, conversely, to stress his greater importance. During the New Kingdom the representations became less rigid with husband and wife embracing each other, sitting side by side or holding hands. |
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Footnotes: [2] The Late Period demotic Instructions of Ankhsheshonq are replete with sayings which may well have been proverbial. The 9th Instruction deals mostly with women: (20) THE NINTH INSTRUCTION. | |||
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 | The people of ancient Egypt | |
| Man and woman | |
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| Index of Topics | |
| Main Index and Search Page | |
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| Offsite links | (Opening in a new window) | |
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 | Egyptian Women in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt | |
| [1] Die ägyptische Frau | |
| [4] The Egyptian Economy and Non-royal Women: Their Status in Public Life | |
| Phallic Representations | |
| Women and gender in ancient Egypt | |
| From warrior women to female pharaohs: careers for women in Ancient Egypt by Dr Joann Fletcher, July 2001 | |
| The Status of Women in Ancient Egyptian Society by Dr. Peter Piccione | |
| Women in Ancient Egypt | |
| Geschlechterforschung in der Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie | |
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