Rights Of Egyptian Women Essay Research Paper

Rights Of Egyptian Women Essay, Research Paper

Rights of Egyptian Women

Throughout written history, women have experienced status subservient to

the men they lived with. Generally, most cultures known to modern historians

followed a standard pattern of males assigned the role of protector and provider

while women were assigned roles of domestic servitude. Scholars speculate

endlessly at the cause: biology, religion, social custom. Nevertheless, the

women were always subordinated to the men in their culture. Through their

artwork, tomb inscriptions, and papyrus and leather scrolls, preserved in the

dry, desert air, Ancient Egyptians left evidence for scholars suggesting that

Egypt was once a peculiar exception to this pattern. Anthropological evidence

suggests that unusual circumstances in Ancient Egyptian culture provided for

women to be given equal status to their male counterparts: notably, matrilineal

inheritance and emphasis on the joy of family life over maintaining ethnic

purity.

Legally, women in Ancient Egypt held the same legal rights as men. A

woman could own property and manage it as she saw fit. One example of this, the

Inscription of Mes, provided scholars with proof that women could manage

property, institute litigation, and could act as a witness before a court of law.

Surviving court documents not only showed that women were free to take action

with the court, but the documents also show that they frequently won their cases.

They could also enter contracts and travel freely, unescorted, throughout the

state. This is a great contrast to women in Greece, who were required to act

through a male representative. Interestingly, property and its administration

was passed from mother to daughter, matrilineally. The Egyptians relied on

matrilineal heritage, based on the assumption that maternal ancestors are less

disputable than paternal ones. The effect of legal equality in writing and

practice coupled with the ownership and administration of property led to an

ensured equality.

The rights and egalitarian conditions enjoyed by Egyptian women shocked

the conquering Greeks. In 450 BC, Greek historian Herodotus noted:

They Egyptians, in their manners and customs, seem to have reversed the

ordinary practices of mankind. For instance, women attend market and are

employed in trade, while men stay at home and do the weaving. Athenian Democracy

mandated that the female’s role in the domestic economy was the production of

heirs and service of the family. The Egyptian state took no direct part in

either marriage nor divorce and made no efforts to regulate the family. The

purpose of the Egyptian family was apparently not the production of heirs for

the patriarchal head of household, but the shared life and the pleasures and

comfort it had to offer.

The legal subjugation of women in other societies seems to have been

designed to ensure that women were denied sexual freedom to prevent them from

indiscriminate breeding. Often, this was a direct result of the need to provide

a pure ruling elite and to restrict the dispersal of family assets within a

caste. The unique position of the god-king and the absence of a strictly

defined “citizen” class made similar considerations irrelevant in Egypt. Modern

Scholars are thoroughly aware that Egypt was greatly mixed, racially, and that

no written evidence exists of racial tensions or bias. This was most likely the

cause of lax sexual restrictions. The Egyptians simply did not care about

maintaining racial purity.

With the exception of the Pharaoh, all marriages were monogamous and

women had the right to arrange the terms of the marriage contract.

Realistically, marriages were not polygamous. Many records survive of men

raising children born to them of the household servants. Social stigma against

married men having affairs was mild, yet married women were socially obligated

to be faithful to their husbands. Unlike most societies, however, men having

sex with married women were persecuted more severely than their partners.

Egyptian Art tells us the primarily of the women in the upper castes.

Grave murals and reliefs depict wives standing next to their husbands.

Archaeologist have yet to discover any evidence of domestic constriction.

Daughters and Wives were free to live independently of male dominance of

influence. It is believed from various murals, however, that women were also

“put on a pedestal” by their culture. Egyptian art was reflective of their

conservative culture where art was Artistic convention of Egyptian and Aegean

art depicts women as fairer skinned than their male companions. Generally, art

historians have concluded that this was a both and artistic convention

expressing the social ideals of the vigorous male with a more refined female and

representation of the fact that women were ofte

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