Graves-Brown Carolyn. Dancing For Hathor. Women in Ancient Egypt

New York: Continuum, 2010. — xii+241 p. — ISBN: 978-1-8472-5054-4.This book is about women in ancient Egypt, and is mainly concerned with the Predynastic and Pharaonic periods, from 5000 bc to 300 bc. The later periods are only briefl y included as Egypt was increasingly subject to infl uence from Greece and Rome. There have been many fi ne books on women in ancient Egypt but those purporting to be for a general readership often gloss over controversy and those written for scholars can appear dull. The aim of this book is to appeal to the general reader but also to introduce contemporary scholarly research in Egyptology. The book is intended to make people think; it is a book for the educated lay person and the student of Egyptology or women in history, a book which makes an understanding of the past relevant to the present.IllustrationsChronologyRich women, poor women
Changing worlds
The Golden Age
The Great Mother Goddess
The status and role of Predynastic women
Inequality and the rise of the state
Women’s status and the growth of agriculture
Women’s status from the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom
Queens of the Old Kingdom
Administrative titles
Priestesses of Hathor
Women textile workers
Women in trade
Did women’s status decline from the Old to the Middle Kingdoms?
Later periods
Reversing the ordinary practices of mankind
The dangerous temptress and the passive wife
Women, weapons and warfare
Domestic violence
Women, the law and property
Adultery and divorce
Crime and punishment
Housewife
Was ancient Egypt a matrilineal society?
Were women considered to be sex objects?
Birth, life and death
Education, literacy and scribes
Age and sexuality
Menarche and menstruation
Coming of age and marriage
Polygamy
Contraceptives and abortion
Phallic votives and fertility ? gurines
Pregnancy and childbirth
Motherhood
Widows and old age
Women’s work
Women serving women
Conscripted labour
Agriculture
Textile production
Women and trade
The ‘wise women’
Prostitution
Doctors and midwives
Nurses and tutors
Hairdressers and perfumers
Treasurers
Vizier
Women and the court
Women deputizing for their husbands
Women and the temple
Servants of the God
Henut
God’s Wife of Amun and Divine Adoratrice
Priestess singers and Meret
The Chantress
Singers in the ‘interior’
Khener and dancing
Women and funerals
The role of music and dance
Impersonating Hathor
Sexuality, art and religion
Sexuality and the erotic
Sexual identity
The creative power of the male
Homosexuality
Androgyny
Were the Egyptians prudes?
Ostraca and the Turin Papyrus
High art and coded messages
Tattoos, sex and dancing girls
Day beds and public celebration of sexuality
The erotic body
Love poetry
Women and rebirth
The power of the erotic
Queens and harems
Queenship
Symbols of queenship
The queen as Hathor
Divine birth
Incest and the heiress theory
Royal polygamy
The ‘harem’ of Mentuhotep II
Institutions of women in the New Kingdom: ipet-nesw and per-khener
Medinet-Gurob (Mi-wer)
Royal children
Diplomatic marriages
‘Harem plots’
The harem plot of Rameses III
Female kings
Ahmes Nefertari (Ahmes/Ahmose Nefertari) (c.1570–1506 bc)
Hatshepsut (c.1470–1458 bc)
Nefertiti (c.1390–1340 bc)
Cleopatra VII (c.69–31 bc)
Egyptian attitudes to women in power
Goddesses
Nut
Neith
Isis and Nephthys
Hathor
Drunkenness
The Return of the Distant OneNotes