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Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt

May 2021

May 2021

DOI:10.4324/9780429340666

ISBN: 9780429340666

Authors:

Uroš Matić

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

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VIOLENCE AND GENDER IN

ANCIENT EGYPT

Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt shifts the focus of gender studies in Egyptology

to social phenomena rarely addressed through the lens of gender – war and

violence, exploring the complex intersections of violence and gender in ancient

Egypt.

Building on current discussions in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology,

and on analysis of relevant historic texts, iconography, and archaeological remains

by looking at possible gender patterns behind evidence of trauma, the book

bridges the gap between modern understandings of gendered violence and its

functioning in ancient Egypt. Areas explored include the following: dierences in

gendered aggression and violent acts between people and deities; sexual violence;

the taking of men, women, and children as prisoners of war; and feminization of

enemies. By examining ancient Egyptian texts and images with evidence for

violence from dierent periods and contexts – private tombs, divine temples, royal

stelae, papyri, and ostraca, ranging over 3,000 years of cultural history – Violence

and Gender in Ancient Egypt highlights the complex intersection between gender

and violence in ancient Egyptian culture.

The book will appeal to scholars and students working in Egyptology,

archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

Uroš Matić is a research fellow of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (Cairo

Branch), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria. He received his PhD

from the Institute for Egyptology and Coptic Studies of the University in

Muenster (Germany) in 2017. Since 2012, he has been a team member of several

archaeological missions in Egypt (Tell el-Dab

a, Aswan, and Kom Ombo). He was

a Co-Chair of the Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) community of the

European Association of Archaeologists from 2016 to 2019.

Archaeology of Gender and Sexuality

Series editor: Pamela L. Geller

Contributions in this series approach gender and sexuality not as “traits” or “things” but as

distinct processes, separate though often related, and crucial for materializing how past peoples

coupled, birthed, became, labored, oppressed, or mourned within a given cultural-historic

context. To this end, the series’ single-authored books and edited volumes engage with

innovative social theorizing about gender and sexuality, namely feminist and queer per-

spectives that address the complexities of socio-sexual lives–their intersectionality, dynamism,

and politicization. Authors also ground theorizing with concrete archaeological or bioarch-

aeological case studies. Through contextualized and evidence-based examples, readers

identify universally shared and culturally specic aspects of gender and sexuality. Timely (or

timeless) topics are highlighted, such as copulation, childbirth, space and its segregation, and

violence, amongst other concerns. Finally, contributions to the book series critically assess

archaeology’s contemporary practices and their socio-political impacts. To do so is a lesson in

the historic and prescient; authors tease out generational shifts in archaeologists’ studies of

gender and sexuality, as well as propose future directions for research.

Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt

Uroš Matić

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/

Archaeology-of-Gender-and-Sexuality/book-series/AGS

VIOLENCE AND

GENDER IN ANCIENT

EGYPT

Uroš Matić

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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The right of Uroš Matić to be identied as author of this work has been

asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988.

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now

known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in

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from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

registered trademarks, and are used only for identication and explanation

without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-35621-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-35620-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-34066-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by MPS Limited, Dehradun

To all the tomboys and sissies of this and past worlds

CONTENTS

Figures viii

Chronological Table of Periods and Kings Mentioned in the Text xi

Preface xiv

Abbreviations xvi

Foreword 1

1 Introduction 4

2 Gender of aggression: violent men, women, and deities in

ancient Egypt 26

3 Masculine domination: evidence of sexual violence 66

4 Objects of desire: men, women, and children as spoils

of war 87

5 “He is looking at bowmen like women”: gender as a frame

of war 113

6 Conclusion 137

Bibliography 145

Index 172

FIGURES

2.1 Ostracon Cairo CG 25125, height 25 cm, width 38 cm, line

drawing by the author based on a photograph, detail, no scale

(after Daressy, Ostraca, Pl. XXIV). 41

2.2 Ithyphallic leonine goddess from the temple of Khonsu in Karnak,

west wall, room 12, photo, no scale (courtesy of Asavaa, CC BY-

SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/

wikipedia/commons/9/97/KhonsuTemple-Karnak-

Sekhmet_like.jpg). 47

2.3 Mut the Great from the temple of Hibis in Kharga oasis depicted

as an ithyphallic lioness, reign of Darius I (550-486 BC), line

drawing, no scale (digitally redrawn by Astrid Hassler, Austrian

Archaeological Insistute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, after

Davies, The Temple of Hibis in El-Khargeh Oasis III, Pl. 2. II). 49

2.4 Ithyphallic Mut with three heads from the vignette of Ptolemaic

Papyrus Turin 1791 from complementary Chapter 164 of the

Book of the Dead, line drawing, no scale (digitally redrawn by

Astrid Hassler, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian

Academy of Sciences, after Lepsius, Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter

nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin, LXXVIII with the

phallus added based on the photo of the vignette from Das

Altägyptische Totenbuch. Ein Digitales Textzeugenarchiv). 50

2.5 Neith suckling two crocodiles, 664–30 BC, no scale (https://

www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/570322). 51

2.6 Anat, line drawing by the author based on stela of Qeh (British

Museum EA 191), 19th dynasty, detail, no scale (https://

research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collec-

tion_object_details.aspx?objectId=177464&partId=1). 52

4.1 Siege of an Asiatic town, tomb of Inti, 5th dynasty, Desheshah,

line drawing (after Petrie, Deshasheh, Pl. IV). 92

4.2 Siege of an Asiatic town, tomb of Intef, 11th dynasty, line

drawing, courtesy of Brigitte Jaroš-Deckert (after Jaroš-Deckert,

Das Grab des Jnj-jtj.f, Pl. 17). 94

4.3 Fifth register of the tribute scene from the tomb of Rekhmire

(TT 100), Thutmose III-Amenhotep II, line drawing of the

author, detail, no scale (Davies, The Tomb of Rekh-mi-rē‛ at

Thebes. Volume II, Pls. XXI, XXII and XXIII). 96

4.4 Hatshepsut as a male sphinx trampling enemies, south wall of

southern lower portico, mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir

el-Bahari, line drawing of the author, no scale (after Naville, The

temple of Deir El Bahari VI, Pl. CLX). 98

4.5 Throne of queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III, decorated with

female captives bound to a sm3 t3.wy sign of “Union of the Two

Lands” and the queen depicted trampling female captives in the

form of a female sphinx, tomb of Kheruef, line drawing of the

author, detail, no scale, courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the

University of Chicago (Nims, Habachi, Wente and Larkin, The

Tomb of Kheruef, Pls. 47 and 49). 99

4.6 Throne of Amenhotep III decorated with the motif of the king

trampling enemies in the form of a male sphinx, the tomb of

Amenemhat Surer (TT 48), line drawing of the author, detail,

no scale (after Säve-Söderbergh, Four Eighteenth Dynasty Tombs,

Pl. XXX). 100

4.7 Scene depicting king Akhenaten and queen Nefertiti smiting

enemies in kiosks on royal barques, Hermopolis, line drawing of

the author, no scale (redrawn after Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from

Hermopolis, Fig. 51α). 102

4.8 Queen Nefertiti smiting and trampling female captives on a

barque, talatat block from Luxor, line drawing with the last

kiosk from the left reconstructed by the author, no scale

(redrawn after Tawk, “Aton Studies”, 163, Fig. 1). 103

4.9 Queen Nefertiti smiting enemies, talatat block from Abydos,

Berlin no. 23719, line drawing of the author, no scale (after

Petrie, Abydos II, Pl. XXXIX). 104

5.1 Nubian campaign of Ramesses II, the eastern half of the

southern wall of the forecourt of the temple at Beit el-Wali/

South, line drawing of the author, no scale (after Wreszinski,

Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, Pl. 165). 120

5.2 Nubian campaign of Ramesses II, the temple of Derr, line

drawing of the author, no scale (Wreszinski, Atlas zur

altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, Pl. 168a). 121

Figures ix

5.3 Papyrus British Museum EA74100, originally from Amarna, line

drawing of the author, detail, no scale, courtesy of British

Museum in London (after Parkinson and Schoeld,

“Akhenaten’s Army” 35). 122

5.4 Libyans with accid phalli, the second scene from the west end

of the north exterior wall of the Medinet Habu temple, line

drawing of the author, detail, no scale, courtesy of the Oriental

Institute of the University of Chicago (after Nelson, Medinet

Habu I, Pl. 18). 123

5.5 The counting of cut o phalli of the Libyans, aftermath of the

First Libyan War, the lowest register of the rst scene from the

east on the south wall of the second court Medinet Habu, line

drawing of the author, detail, no scale, courtesy of the Oriental

Institute of the University of Chicago (after Nelson, Medinet

Habu I, Pl. 23). 125

x Figures

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF

PERIODS AND KINGS MENTIONED

IN THE TEXT

Early Dynastic (Dynasties 1–3) ca. 2900–2545

+25

Old Kingdom (Dynasties 4–8) ca. 2543–2120

+25

Dyn. 4 ca. 2543–2436

+25

Snofru 2543–2510

+25

Dyn. 5 ca. 2435–2306

+25

Userkaf 2435–2429

+25

Djedkare Izezi 2365–2322

+25

Dyn. 6 ca. 2305–2118

+25

Pepi I 2276–2228

+25

Pepi II 2216–2153

+25

First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 7–11) ca. 2118–1980

+25

Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11–13) ca. 1980

+16

–1760 BC

Dyn. 11 ca. 2080–1940

+16

Mentuhotep II Nebhepetre 2009–1959

+16

Dyn. 12 ca. 1939

+16

–1760 BC

Amenemhat I 1939–1910

+16

Senwosret I 1920–1875

Amenemhat II 1878–1843

Senwosret II 1845–1837 BC

Senwosret III 1837–1819 BC

Second Intermediate Period

(Dynasties 13–17)

1759–ca. 1539 BC

Dyn. 13 1759–ca. 1630 BC

Dyn. 17 ca.?–1540 BC

Kamose ca.?–1540 BC

New Kingdom (Dynasties 18–20)

Dyn. 18 ca. 1539–1292

Ahmose 1539–1515 BC

Hatshepsut 1479–1458 BC

Thutmose III 1479–1425 BC

Amenhotep II 1425–1400 BC

Thutmose IV 1400–1390 BC

Amenhotep III 1390–1353 BC

Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) 1353–1336 BC

Tutankhamun ?–1324 BC

Dyn. 19 1292–1191 BC

Seti I 1290–1279 BC

Ramesses II 1279–1213 BC

Merenptah 1213–1203 BC

Seti II 1202–1198 BC

Amenmese 1202–1200 BC

Tausret 1192–1191 BC

Dyn. 20 1190–1077 BC

Setnakht 1190–1188 BC

Ramesses III 1187–1157 BC

Ramesses V 1149–1146 BC

Ramesses VI 1145–1139 BC

Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21–24)

ca. 1076–723 BC

Late Period (Dynasties 25–31)

Dyn. 25 ca. 722–ca. 655 BC

Piye ca. 753–723 BC

Dyn. 26 664–525 BC

Psammethicus II 595–589 BC

Ptolemaic Period 305–30 BC

Roman Period 30 BC–641 AD (Arab

conquest)

Note

1 Based on Erik Hornung, Raulf Krauss, and David A. Warburton, Ancient

Egyptian Chronology. Handbook of Oriental Studies 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2006),

490–495.

xii Chronological Table of Periods and Kings Mentioned in the Text

Sites in Egypt and Nubia mentioned in the text.

PREFACE

One of the very rst books on gender archaeology that I read was Reader in Gender

Archaeology edited by Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley (London and New

York: Routledge, 1998), which was kindly lent to me by Staša Babić, professor of

archaeology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. The excitement I experienced at

that time was comparable to that of reading my rst serious archaeological

publication, the Serbian translation of Bjornar Olsen’s Fra ting til tekst. Teoretiske

perspektiv i arkeologisk forskning from 1997. My interest in gender in the past has not

diminished since then.

In 2009, I joined, at that time, the recently formed working group “Archaeology

and Gender in Europe” (AGE) of the European Association of Archaeologists

(EAA). During my BA studies in 2008–2009, I enrolled in courses in Women’s and

Gender Studies at the Center for Women Studies of the Faculty of Political

Sciences, University of Belgrade. There, under the mentorship of Daša Duhaček,

Jelisaveta Blagojević and Biljana Dojčinović, I deepened my knowledge of gender

studies, feminist, and queer theory. I am grateful to them for all the questions they

made me ask. Being a member of the AGE community and being able to research

on gender slowly but surely developed my questions on how gender identities are

formed and maintained, and on what happens to those of us who fail society’s

normative expectations. In 2012, I began working on my doctoral dissertation at the

Institute for Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Muenster,

Germany. Under the supervision of Angelika Lohwasser, professor in Egyptology

at the institute, I studied violent treatments of enemies and prisoners of war in New

Kingdom Egypt. Professor Lohwasser continued to encourage my gendered take on

violence and this is how part of my dissertation was formed. In 2013, Bo Jensen and

I organized a session on the archaeologies of gender and violence, and in 2017, we

co-edited and published a collection of papers from this session in the volume

Archaeologies of Gender and Violence (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017). I soon realized

that there is much more to be said about gender and violence in ancient Egypt, and

that I was just scratching the surface. In 2018, I was contacted by Pamela Geller,

professor of anthropology at the University of Miami and encouraged to write

this book.

Some parts of this book were written in my head years ago, parts are based on

the research I conducted for my doctoral dissertation, and other parts are based on

research that I continued after my doctoral studies. This book was written in buses,

trains, planes, cafés, in breaks from other work, during my “spare” time and in the

solitude of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. I determinedly found

time for this book, because I realized that it is very important to initiate some

discussions within Egyptology and hopefully in the broader eld of humanities.

I am grateful to several colleagues particularly because they supported my

interest in gender archaeology: Staša Babić, who introduced me to the eld; Will

Meyer, Sandra Montón Subías, and Nona Palincas for encouraging me to join

AGE and to do research on gender; Marie Louise Sørensen and Joanna Sofaer who

were kind enough to discuss gender themes with me in the breaks from work at

the excavation at Százhalombatta (Hungary); Angelika Lohwasser for encouraging

me to follow this path in Egyptology; Bo Jensen for always making me re-think

what I think I know on gender and theory; and Anthony J. Spalinger for

supporting my slightly dierent take on war and violence in ancient Egypt and

Nubia. I am grateful to Filip Taterka and Andrzej Ćwiek for sending me photos of

the representation of Hatshepsut in the form of a sphinx from Deir el-Bahari and

discussing with me the scenes in which she tramples or smites enemies, to Terry

G. Wilfong for promptly answering my emails and sending me copies of his

papers, to Adriana Zaharijević for reading parts of the manuscript, useful directions

in feminist theory, and sharing some of her unpublished work with me, to Andrea

Sinclair for proofreading my English and her useful comments on my text, to

Annik Wüthrich and Danijela Stefanović for help with references, useful

discussions and continous support, to Vladimir Jovanović for help with

references on biological studies on testosterone and aggression, to Astrid Hassler

for her help with the illustrations, to Pamela L. Geller for thorough proofreading

of the manuscript and kind invitation to write this book, and two anonymous

reviewers whose useful comments helped me to improve the text.

Last, but not the least, I thank my family and friends for being my continuous

support, despite their statement that sometimes they do not really understand what

I do: Gordana Matić, Dušan Matić, and Nikola Matić – my family; and Dijana

Simić, Tamara Bubalo, Nenad Marković, Ana Đuričić, Tim Eggert, Uroš Belegić,

Filip Franković, Annik Wüthrich, Peter Lauermann – my extended family.

Preface xv

ABBREVIATIONS

BARE Breasted, James Henry. Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from

the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest I–V. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1906.

FHN Eide, Tormod, Tomas Hægg, Richard Holton Pierce, and László

Török. Fontes historiae Nubiorum. Textual Sources for the History of the

Middle Nile Region between the Eighth Century BC and the Sixth Century

AD. Volumes I-II. Bergen: University of Bregen, 1994.

KRI Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson, Ramesside Inscriptions. Historical and

Biographical I–VI. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975–1983.

KRITA Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson, Ramesside Inscriptions. Translated and

Annotated: Translations I-VI. Oxford: Blackwell. 1993–2012.

LGG Leitz, Christian (Hrsg). Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und

Götterbezeichnungen I-VII. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 110–116.

Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002.

Urk I Sethe, Kurt. Urkunden des Alten Reiches. Erster Band. Leipzig: J. C.

Hinrichssche Buchhandlung, 1933.

Urk IV Sethe, Kurth. Urkunden des agyptischen Altertums, Abteilung IV. Urkunden

der 18. Dynastie: Historisch-biographische Urkunden. Berlin: J.C.

Hinrichs, 1906.

Urk VI Schott, Siegfried. Urkunden mythologischen Inhalts. Abteilung VI, Heft 2.

Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichssche Buchhandlung, 1939.

Wb Erman, Adolf and Hermann Grapow. 1971. Wörterbuch der aegyptischen

Sprache. I-V. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1971.

FOREWORD

Pamela L. Geller

“Archaeologies that look to feminist ideas”, I explained to the reporter on the

other end of the phone, “can help us understand how history is turned into human

nature”. The impetus for our conversation was the publication of a study in Science

Advances describing the discovery of a 9,000-year-old burial from Peru’s Andean

highlands. Artifacts interred within the grave comprised a hunter’s toolkit.

Amelogenin protein analysis estimated the individual’s sex as female. In other

words, a female hunter, not a gatherer or a drudge-on-the-hide or a care-

giver; a hunter not-of-male body. And this made her special, or special enough for an

entire publication in a premier science journal followed up by reporting in many

respectable news outlets (this was the third journalist I had spoken with that day).

My initial reaction to the burial … duh. Of course, there were female hunters in

the past. (I also thought that if there is a heaven, Joan Gero is looking down on us

and rolling her eyes.) But, in the interest of cultivating professional authority, I did

not voice this sentiment aloud. Instead, I discussed with the reporter the historic

machinations – the social, political, economic, and religious factors – that gave rise

to an ideology of separate spheres starting in the late 18th century. And, with the

passing decades, much intellectual work made the ideological appear natural, uni-

versal, rigid, and species-dening. For that, we have Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin,

Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, George Murdock, Richard Lee, and Irven

DeVore to thank. Collectively, their scientic eorts developed and reied

heteronormative ideas about sexual relations, subsistence activities, and family

structures and responsibilities. Subsequent archaeologists have taken this received

wisdom in hand. The separate spheres ideology provides a commonsensical starting

point that elides entirely its modern, Western origins. Accordingly, we learn little

about sex, gender, and sexuality as understood in the ancient communities studied

by archaeologists. Men are always killers (of animals or other people) and women are

burdened by their biology.

Of course, feminist and queer anthropologists have recognized, for at least four

decades now, that the culture-historical specicities of their case studies substantiate

other stories about sex, gender, and sexuality. We come to recognize caregiving as

communal; the multiple, complementary roles involved in subsistence activities and

craft productions; sexual couplings as procreative, pleasurable, commercialized, or

violent; the gender variance that denes some lives or briey situates others. The

incontrovertibility of heteronorms falls apart in the face of empirical evidence.

Lived realities have always been messy not categorically dichotomous, as this

book series aims to demonstrate. Its contributors engage with innovative social

theorizing from feminist and queer perspectives to address the complexities of

socio-sexual lives – their intersectionality, dynamism, and politicization. But not

for theory’s sake. Rather, because the data uncovered in archaeological case studies

demands new ways of thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality. In so doing,

authors materialize how past peoples coupled, birthed, became, labored, mur-

dered, assaulted, oppressed, or mourned in any given cultural-historic context.

In the series’ inaugural book, Uroš Matić does just that. His is a provocative and

important examination of ancient Egypt, mostly from the Old to the New

Kingdom. Despite the long history of Egyptology, few archaeologists have ex-

amined gender, and even fewer have ruminated on sexuality. Women did garner

attention starting in the 1990s. Yet, all too often, the conation of gender and

women presented an understanding of the past incomplete by half. In contrast,

Matić is not concerned with dichotomy but with the “relational dynamic” be-

tween women and men. For his part, he zones in on the intersection of gender and

violence. How is violence gendered in ancient Egypt – in domestic residences,

juridical spheres, battleelds, the realms of goddesses and gods?

To answer his query, Matić looks mainly to iconography and texts inscribed on

stelae, temple walls and reliefs, papyri, and private tombs. These sources oer

information about how ancient Egyptians documented, reported, responded to,

and sanctioned gendered violence. Though bioarchaeological data are less fre-

quently cited, he lays important groundwork for future analyses of skeletal and

mortuary remains. Matić reminds us that while a window into the past may be

obscured by cracks, dust, and smudges of time, some light does get in. “We work

with what we have”, he writes in Chapter 1, “and as this study will show, even

with limited sources interesting patterns can be observed”.

Beyond evidentiary constraints, a study of gender and sexuality in ancient

Egypt comes with its own set of challenges, as Matić acknowledges. Considerable

intellectual labor is needed to make feminist and queer theorizing applicable,

seeing that it was developed with a critique of contemporary Western hetero-

normativity in mind. Modern concepts and words may not travel easily, or should

not travel at all, to the past. Aside from presentism, Matić also assesses the work of

prior Egyptologists for tacit or obvious biases about gender, sexuality, and vio-

lence. Finally, his analysis of ancient iconography and texts is an excellent example

of how to parse out the agendas of their creators, as well as intended audiences.

2 Foreword

There is much in Matić’s discussion of gendered violence in ancient Egypt that

lends itself to the voyeuristic gaze or the sensationalized account. His considera-

tions range from sexual assault (among mortals and deities) to domestic violence to

warrior women to penile mutilation of captured enemies. Yet, his treatment is a

careful and contextualized one, which seeks to discern nuance. As a result, readers

will gain a better understanding of the social relations that frame violent actions

and their change over time. The cultural and historical specicity of his case study

does much to dispel the persistent notion (or sociobiological fantasy) that males’

sexual aggression is innate and inevitable – is human nature.

We learn that ancient Egyptian gender norms idealized women as passive and

subordinate. Texts do attest to men’s sexual assault of women, emphasizing dis-

honor incurred by the former and not the latter’s well-being. Some women ap-

pealed to juridical authorities when their husbands acted violently. Others

committed adultery despite the punitive consequences. Iconographic representa-

tions of Egyptian men committing violent acts against Egyptian women, sexual or

otherwise, are absent. But, the same representational norms did not apply to

conquered foreigners. Men, women, and children are frequently depicted as spoils

of war – their feminization and the towns from which they came proved an ef-

fective military strategy for the Egyptian state. To legitimate their power over

these foreign enemies, queens like Tiye and Nefertiti appropriated the trappings of

kingship. “Far from being ancient feminists”, he writes, “they reinforced tradi-

tional Egyptian gender hierarchies”. They may have smitten their enemies but

only the female ones, and, despite these displays of aggression, they remained

subordinate to their husbands. In this regard, they oer a pointed contrast to the

female king Hatshepsut. Which is all to say that gender ideals aside, readers will

learn much about the lived experiences of men and women – immortal, royal,

commoner, and foreigner – as they navigated pharaonic Egypt.

Matić’s book is not just important for what it can tell us about the past.

Reassessment of texts and iconography reveals presentism at work in

Egyptologists’ reconstructions. His discussion of the word h

․m in Chapter 5 is an

especially telling example. Investigators have translated the term as “coward”,

“wimp”, “fag”, “pansy”, and “sissy”. This pejorative language signals how con-

temporary common sense about gender and sexuality – the subtle homophobic,

heteronormative, and orientalist ideas advanced in earlier scholarship – works in

analyses of ancient Egypt. Matić, on the other hand, suggests that “back turner”,

an allusion to one who is sexually penetrated or a eeing enemy, is a more ap-

propriate translation for h

․m. Such a reframing invites discussion about feminization

in ancient Egypt, how it conveyed passivity or defeat, and the violent events or

processes that produced it. This example is just one of many in Matić’s book that

demonstrates the necessity and signicance of revisiting the past with new eyes.

Foreword 3

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Violence and gender revealed

“Nefertiti revealed” (2003) is a Discovery Channel docu-drama that oers a re-

construction of the life and supposed tragic death of queen Nefertiti, wife of king

Akhenaten, the 18th dynasty ruler who resided in Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten in

ancient Egyptian). As with all such popular documentaries, this one also combines

narration, reenactments based on interpretations of ancient texts and material

culture, and interview-like comments from scholars. Without going into the

details of this docu-drama, I will concentrate on one scene that particularly caught

my attention at the time, and which eectively reveals the complex intersection of

violence and gender.

It is a scene in which Nefertiti is executing a kneeling man using a sickle-

shaped sword. This scene is followed by scholars’ comments; they state that artisans

often depicted Nefertiti smiting enemies in state representations. However, the

enemies Nefertiti is represented smiting in the original iconography are not the

same as those in the documentary. The enemies she is depicted smiting are

women, whereas in the documentary, they are men. Such a small dierence might

seem irrelevant. Yet, this small detail demonstrates both the subtle frame of gender

in ancient Egyptian representations of violence and its neglect in popular

reconstructions.

Why is this detail so important? The obvious answer is that it is inaccurate. In

fact, no Egyptian woman is thus far known to have been depicted by artisans

smiting male enemies. The female king Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty, for in-

stance, is depicted as the king in the form of a male sphinx trampling male enemies

(Chapter 4). All other queens known from trampling or smiting scenes, such as

Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s father), and Nefertiti, are shown

trampling or smiting female enemies. Therefore, we are clearly dealing with a

gendered structure behind such images.

Egyptian kings are depicted trampling or

smiting men and Egyptian queens are conversely shown trampling or smiting

women. I will expand upon the background of this structure in Chapter 4, but for

now, it is important to stress that historical reenactments based on an erroneous

interpretation of the data can produce equally erroneous ideas about specic

queens like Nefertiti, as well as the gendered aspects of ancient Egyptian kingship

and violence more generally.

Studies of war and violence in the past often risk reproducing the fallacies as

exemplied by the docu-drama “Nefertiti revealed”. There is an assumption that

acts of violence are inherently interesting in and of themselves, with no need for

an understanding of their social context.

This modern reenactment is only one in

a series of elements that add up to an orientalist image of queen Nefertiti as a

vicious female ruler. Such images are found both in scholarly writings and popular

culture,

and orientalist ideas of the ferocity of female rule are also echoed in

popular fantasy.

This example demonstrates the necessity of taking the intersec-

tion of gender and violence and its complexity in ancient Egypt seriously.

1.2 Violence and gender in theory

The complexity of violence–gender intersection cannot be properly grasped

without rst discussing these very concepts. There is a vast list of studies devoted

specically to each of these concepts and summarizing them fully and properly

would be a task in and of itself. In this section, I will present inuential writings,

highlighting the theories and methods I found most useful while conducting re-

search for this book. References to specic topics, such as rape, or feminization of

enemies, are explored more fully in this book’s chapters. I am well aware that the

choice of my theoretical and methodological approach determines not only the

data I choose to analyze but also the way I analyze and interpret them. In my

opinion, there is no way out of this. Data and theory are hopelessly entangled. I

will let others disentangle them after reading this book, if they are so inclined.

Violence is often understood in everyday language as the use of physical force

to damage, injure, abuse, or destroy completely. From a sociological point of

view, violence encompasses much more than mere physical force. Some indeed

restrict the understanding of violence to physical moment of violence. Others

would consider wounding acts of speech, but also economic and legal structures

which act upon bodies, to be violent.

While most scholars acknowledge some

evolutionary basis for violent behavior in humans, violence cannot be isolated

from its social context. Torture and killing are as cultural as nursing the sick and

burying the dead. Violence is not senseless, there is always a cultural logic behind

it.

It is always interpreted.

Violence is not only physical.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu dened symbolic violence as “gentle vio-

lence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims, exerted for the most part

through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition (more

precisely, misrecognition), recognition, or even feeling”.

It is sometimes assumed

Introduction 5

that emphasizing symbolic violence means minimizing the role of physical vio-

lence, as though symbolic violence does not have a real eect.

According to

Bourdieu, gender is one form of symbolic violence.

Yet, contrary to the de-

nition of Bourdieu, those oppressed on account of their gender are not entirely

unaware of their oppression and they don’t become aware of it only after they

experience physical violence. A simple example from our own patriarchal het-

eronormative society can serve to illustrate this. A woman does not become aware

of her oppression only when she becomes the victim of domestic violence or

when she is not given employment because of an employer’s fear of her potential

pregnancy. A gay man or a lesbian woman does not only suer from outbursts of

homophobia when they are beaten up for looking, acting, or speaking “dier-

ently”. Women can also be oppressed through “mansplaining” – a condescending

or patronizing manner of explanation by a man, straight or gay. Some of them

notice this, others not. Queer people are often reminded that they are not

“normal”. Gay men are also much more likely to have body image issues than

straight men.

Some are aware of this, others not.

The eects of such symbolic violence are therefore psychological and ulti-

mately physical. It seems that what Bourdieu understands as symbolic violence is

much more subtle, in the sense that it makes people unable to recognize the nest

facets of oppression, hierarchy, injustice, and dierence. This is close to the notion

of “unknown knowns”, things we do not know that we know, the horizon of

meaning of which we are unaware, but which is always-already here, structuring

our reality.

Where gender is concerned, Bourdieu argued that its understanding

as symbolic violence can be exemplied by the dominated’s assumption that the

categories of the dominant are natural. This leads to self-deprecation and self-

denigration, as, for example, when the women in Kabyle society of north Algeria

studied by Bourdieu view their genitals as decient and ugly, or when women or

men in our society suer from pursuit of ideals of beauty.

The same case applies

to women laughing along with men over sexist jokes.

Also, for some women

today, or better said for majority of women in traditional patriarchal societies,

reproduction and unpaid domestic work are natural although there is nothing

natural about such work division and reproduction is governed and

controlled.

Another example is lesbians and gays in Western society who seek

equality by referencing the heteronormative power structures which led to their

inequality in the rst place.

One example might be same-sex marriages as as-

similation of heterosexual values (i.e., homonormativity).

This is a proper

Foucauldian reverse discourse. French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault

used this term to describe the phenomenon in which groups constructed by a set

of discources start speaking for themselves using the same categories through

which they were disqualied in the rst place. His examples are homosexuals

demanding that their naturality is acknowledged,

as if heterosexuals are

somehow more natural.

The distinction between physical and symbolic violence, as explained by

Bourdieu, is discussed somewhat dierently by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj

6 Introduction

Žižek, who distinguished between subjective and objective violence. According to

him, physical violence is a form of subjective violence, where the subject acting

violently is easily recognizable (e.g., a criminal, drunken husband, child molester,

rapist, and so on). Most people and indeed most archaeologists understand vio-

lence like this. This subjective violence is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. In

the background is objective violence, which Žižek divides into symbolic and

structural. Symbolic violence is embodied in language that imposes a certain

universe of meaning, whereas structural violence is the consequence of the smooth

function of political and economic systems. According to Žižek, these forms of

violence are in complex interaction and should be analyzed as such.

This is why

in this book I often work from evidence for gendered physical violence to build

up arguments for the ancient Egyptian sex/gender system as historically dened by

symbolic violence.

We have seen that for Bourdieu gender is a form of symbolic violence.

However, gender is more often than not dened as the socio-cultural under-

standing or interpretation of sexual dierence. These socio-culturally interpreted

dierences determine the conditions of maleness and femaleness. People often use

them to make statements about various areas of social life, some of which are

related to the behavior of men and women, and some are only indirectly related to

them.

The sex/gender system is, according to the American anthropologist

Gayle Rubin, a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological

sexuality (sex) into products of human activity (gender), and in which these

transformed sexual needs are satised.

Therefore, gender is not only an identity

or a role but also a system of social practices, which allocate people into dierent

gender categories and organize inequal social relations based on that dierence.

Gender systems rely on hegemonic cultural beliefs and expectations that are often

dened by a narrow set of features.

If we understand that being any gender in any possible way is not simply having

one sex or the other, but dressing, talking, walking, and acting in a certain way,

then no one is born a man or woman, but rather becomes a man or a woman, as

argued by French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal work The

Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949).

This implies that there are dierent ways of

being a man or a woman in a given society.

The dierence is dependent on

many other factors and additional facets of identity, a notion known as inter-

sectionality.

Gender can be cross-cut by race (understood as a social construct

and not a biological given), ethnicity, age, status, and so on. What is appropriate

for dierent men and women in one society does not have to be appropriate for

others, both within this and in other societies. This also implies that the positions

of men and women and their relations in one society do not have to be the same as

in another. Understood like this, gender is violent, because it implies an unequal

relation of power between dierent genders and in dierent domains. Gender is a

mode of relation. It is not a possession but a mode of being dispossessed, being for

another or by virtue of another.

Introduction 7

However, the dierences in power between genders should not be understood

as absolute. A lack of power or less power in one domain of social life does not

mean a lack of power or less power in all other domains. For example, in our

modern capitalist, patriarchal, heteronormative society, some men are subordinate

in their working environment and dominant in their household environment. In

contrast, some women can be dominant in their working environment, but are

subordinate in their households. This phenomenon has led some archaeologists to

argue that the ultimate aim of feminist archaeology is to study power relations

between past genders, to analyze and disrupt them, rather than simply name

them.

The process of becoming one gender, also means, not becoming the other. As

such the gendering process is a violent process, because it is based on exclusion.

We do our best to conform to one gender by avoiding physical gestures or per-

formative practices associated with the other gender. When dened as a socio-

cultural interpretation of sexual dierence, gender becomes something more uid

and the body something more determined, unchangeable, and xed. However,

this primacy of the body in determination of gender has been challenged over the

last three decades. Bourdieu has argued that biological appearances and the real

eects are produced in the bodies and minds by a long collective labor of socia-

lization of the biological and “biologicization” of the social. This is why Bourdieu

describes gender as sexually characterized habitus.

One is, in this context, re-

minded of the words of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who wrote that there

is no nature, there are only its eects, naturalization, and denaturalization.

Naturalized social construction appears as grounded in nature. Habitus in the work

of Bourdieu signies:

systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predis-

posed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which

generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively

adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends

or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.

The biological dierence, particularly the anatomical dierence between the sex

organs, can function as natural justication for the socially constructed dierence

between genders, particularly where the division of labor is concerned.

Rubin

argued that in modern society, women are a reserve labor force for capitalism, as

their lower wages provide surplus money to a capitalist employer.

According to

Bourdieu, in the matrimonial market, women can appear only as objects of ex-

change, symbols whose meanings are constituted outside of them and whose

function is to contribute to the perpetuation or expansion of the symbolic capital

held by men.

Bourdieu argues that what makes gender symbolic violence is its eect through the

schemes of perception, appreciation, and action that are constitutive of habitus. As an

example, he gives the case of French women in the second half of the 20th century

8 Introduction

who in the majority of cases said they wanted an older and taller husband than

themselves. Were she to marry someone shorter, the woman would appear as the one

who dominates, thereby paradoxically lowering her position socially; she would feel

diminished by a diminished man, as her status is dened through him.

Bourdieu’s theory of gender as a form of symbolic violence, however, was

criticized on account that it does not leave much room for individual agency.

People are bound by habitus.

The solution for this problem was subsequently

suggested by American philosopher Judith Butler. Bourdieu argued that masculine

sociodicy “legitimates a relationship of domination by embedding it in a biological

nature that is itself a naturalized social construction”.

The notion of stability of

the body was also questioned by Butler. She argued that sex is already gender,

although it is constructed as natural and pre-discursive

in order to legitimate

heteronormative binary gender. Normative sexuality forties normative gender.

According to Butler, sexual dierence is naturalized over time through a set of

stylized repetitive acts that dene gender performativity.

In this, she argues there

is no free choice much in the sense of theatrical performance. The choice is al-

ready made for us by society at birth. Throughout our lives, we try to conform to

established norms. In fact, Butler herself relates her concept of performativity to

the habitus of Bourdieu.

She argues that in our eort to conform to gender

norms, we performatively act out what is expected for a normative gender and

thus we naturalize and empower the gender norms with each act. However, in this

process, failures and unpredictable, deliberate, or undeliberate deviations from the

norms, sometimes only slight, can challenge its establishment and open ways for

other possible ways of being.

Although performativity implies slips and drags that

undermine the stability of the heteronormative matrix, this matrix has its ways of

putting people back in order, of correcting the slips and eliminating drag. These

ways are violent, always symbolic, and very often physical. As has been put by

Pamela L. Geller “gender then is reinforced and policed throughout an in-

dividual’s life course”.

As a consequence, its structure is dicult to change,

although changing socioeconomic conditions and personal and collective re-

sistance can gradually modify beliefs about gender.

Feminist critics, gender studies, and men’s movements have already recognized

that violence is an urgent problem in modern gender relations. The issue is urgent

enough to have its own dedicated, academic journal (Violence and Gender, Mary

Ann Liebert, Inc.), and receives extensive coverage in the less specialized Gender

and Society (Sage Publications, New York). The recent Sage Handbook of Feminist

Theory devotes no less than one-fth of its content to violence, and even over-

views of feminist literary theory devote articles to war and violence.

The questions which have occupied the attention of scientists are whether men

are by nature mentally more aggressive than women. Are they more predisposed

to violence? Rates of violence are disproportionally higher in men,

which re-

searchers have attributed to various biological, psychological, and sociocultural

variables. Observations of biological sex dierences do not resolve the question of

whether these are the cause of dierences in violent behavior or the consequence

Introduction 9

of behaving violently, however. There has been a tendency in neuroscience to

oversimplify and overinterpret. Scientists merge results to create composite pic-

tures of male and female brains and their wiring for violence. Yet, such re-

presentations are best avoided.

Human studies showed an overall weak

correlation between testosterone and aggression. There is little evidence for in-

creased aggression as a function of testosterone at puberty in boys. Young men

showed increased testosterone in response to competition with other young men,

however, these results are based on studies involving laboratory tasks or sport-

based competitions. There is an association of fatherhood and lower testosterone

levels. High testosterone men show more antisocial behaviour, take more risks,

and have less stable sexual relationships. However, women also respond with

increased testosterone levels to competitive situations. Association between tes-

tosterone and both aggression and dominance among women is even higher than

among men.

Also, a positive correlation between testosterone level and degrees

of aggression does not necessarily mean that testosterone causes aggression as

elevated testosterone levels can be triggered by aggression. Studies of correlation

between testosterone and aggression often lack nuanced understanding of ag-

gression. Additional problem is the reduction of behaviour to single hormone

state.

Most recent studies stress the complex nature of testosterone and aggres-

sion relationship, as testosterone does not increase aggressive behaviour in ev-

eryone. The increase is related to specic behavioral parameters, and acute

testosterone increases aggressive responding in those high on dominance and/or

low on self-control.

Individual dierences and contextual variables play an

important role and testosterone can inuence both aggressive and pro-social be-

haviour.

Thus, sociobiological statements, such as the one that reproduction has

been a frequent cause and reward of violence motivated by male sexual compe-

tition,

do not really bring us far. Evolutionary perspectives on violence em-

phasize its role in solving adaptation problems or serving as a strategy for obtaining

resources, but they neither oer us a set of methods nor a general theoretical frame

for studying violence beyond quite simplied notions of adaptive strategies and

reproductive competition.

Furthermore, we have to dierentiate between ag-

gression and violence as they are not the same.

Rubin claimed that the analysis of women’s oppression and its causes forms the

basis for assessing what has to be changed to achieve a society without gender

hierarchy.

In contrast, Butler argued that ideal morphologies of gender in het-

eronormative society imply normative violence.

That is, we are at least partially

formed through violence. We are given genders or social categories against our

will and these categories confer intelligibility or recognizability, which means that

they also communicate what the social risks of unintelligibility or partial in-

telligibility might be.

She distinguishes between violence that forms us and

violence that then informs our conduct.

Both of these two forms of violence are

close to what Bourdieu and Žižek termed symbolic violence. The main task in

investigating gender as a form of symbolic violence can be summarized with the

words of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein who argued that we should

10 Introduction

develop the concepts, modes of description, and types of analyses that enable us to

perceive phenomena. The latter may initially present themselves as neutral or

acceptable but are revealed as a form of violence.

Butler oers an example.

As a consequence of post 9/11 conicts, Butler began critically thinking about

the way the United States’s government dealt with its own victims and those

aected by its aggression. In her book Precarious Lives (2004), she starts from the

observation that some lives are deemed grievable and others not, which engenders

conceptions of who is normatively human.

One of the examples she provides is

the victims of AIDS who were erased from public spaces during their lives and

after their deaths. In Frames of War (2009), Butler focused on cultural modes of

regulating aective and ethical dispositions through a selective and dierential

framing of violence. She argued that the frames through which we apprehend or

fail to apprehend the lives of others as lost or injured are politically saturated. They

are operations of power.

These frames do not only organize visual experience

but also generate specic ontologies.

They seek to contain, convey, and de-

termine what is seen and what is real.

Frames of war are the ways of selectively

carving up experience as essential to the conduct of war.

War sustains its

practices through acting on the senses, crafting them to apprehend the world

selectively, deadening aect in response to certain images and sounds, and en-

livening aective responses to others.

Butler argues that mandating what can be

seen and a concern for regulating content was supplemented by control over the

perspective according to which action and destruction of war could be viewed at

all. By regulating the content, state authorities were clearly interested in regulating

the visual modes of participation in the war.

These two studies of Butler are

essential for our understanding of how the media create the experience of war, if

and where they nd place for noncombatants and how victory and defeat are

presented. Her theories on frames of war are utilized in my discussion on fem-

inization of enemies in ancient Egypt (Chapter 5).

Some of the ideas presented in this overview of theoretical works on violence

and gender have also occupied the attention of a small number of archaeologists

and historians. Other ideas presented here have recently garnered the attention of

an even smaller number of scholars. In order to properly link this book’s core

concerns with the aforementioned theories of violence and gender, I rst present a

short history of historiographic and archaeological research.

1.3 Archaeologies of gender and violence

Violence and gender are both contingent historical phenomena. They take dif-

ferent forms and assume dierent meanings over time. Consequently, the same is

true for their intersection. As we have seen, the intersection between violence and

gender has attracted the attention of scholars in other disciplines, such as philo-

sophy, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies. However, these concepts

have received little attention in historical disciplines. Archaeology/historiography,

gender, and violence have an extensive research literature, each on their own, and

Introduction 11

each two-subject intersection has generated signicant scholarship, but the three-

subject intersection has until most recently remained largely unaddressed in

research.

With an understanding of the complex relationship between violence and

gender in hand – gender can represent a form of symbolic violence, for instance –

it is paramount that archaeologists and historians consider violence to understand

past gender, and vice versa.

Furthermore, pursuing such a project could enrich

other elds, including gender studies. While archaeology is often overlooked, it is

uniquely situated to illustrate gender relations that have long histories.

For ex-

ample, Rubin claimed that the kinds of relationships of sexuality that were es-

tablished in the human past still dominate our sexual lives, our ideas about men

and women, and the ways we raise our children.

However, she does not trace

the genealogy, in the Foucauldian sense, of the relationships that dominate our

sexual lives. She, too, presents our gender system as universal and timeless, ne-

glecting that past societies were quite diverse. The historical contingency and

diversity of gender need to be taken into account.

Another example of an assumption raised at the level of theory is an idea ad-

vanced by Bourdieu: that a “phallonarcissistic” vision and androcentric cosmology

are common to all Mediterranean societies.

This representation attens the

dierences, specics, and changes at work in Mediterranean societies over time.

Such a generalized labeling neglects temporal, spatial, and situational dierences.

Similarly, Lynn M. Meskell and Rosemary A. Joyce labeled ancient Egypt as

“phallic culture”. As such, they argue that the phallus assumed iconic status in

ancient Egypt; it is central in creation myths and the worship of certain male

deities, such as Osiris and Min.

Bourdieu argued that historical research cannot limit itself to a description of

the transformations over time of the conditions of women, or to the relationship

between the sexes in dierent periods. According to him, it must aim to establish

for each period under investigation “the state of the system of agents and in-

stitutions, structural mechanisms and strategies which have perpetuated the

structure of the relations of domination between the sexes”.

This is indeed not

an easy task even for historians and even less an easy task for archaeologists re-

searching prehistoric societies or societies that did not utilize any form of a script.

It should also be stressed that most introductions to gender archaeology leave

violence unaddressed.

Early and important contributions to the archaeological

study of warrior masculinity, for instance, tend to focus on status and identity and

to ignore the actual violence of war.

Missed opportunities for studying violence

and gender abound, and even studies focused on people other than men in conict

may marginalize gender to focus on ethnicity.

Nevertheless, there are studies of dierent forms of gendered violence or the

intersection of gender and violence in archaeology and historiography, and they

have utilized dierent approaches to the problem. Many studies have dealt with

the subordination of women through analyses of iconography. June Nash argued

that Aztec imperial pursuits resulted in the subordination of Aztec women.

12 Introduction

Because warfare was men’s work, they could accumulate wealth and gain prestige

while women could not. Changes in the pantheon oer support. With time, older

deities with balanced masculine and feminine features lost prominence to male

warrior deities. This shift was resisted by Aztec women, commoners, and people in

the hinterland. Militarism and male dominance were the strongest among the

ruling elite.

As I discuss in Chapter 5, the same prominent ideology of militarism

and male dominance is found among the ruling elite in ancient Egypt, especially

during the New Kingdom. The ocial image of Aztec women (mutilated or

androgynous) is, according to Elizabeth M. Brumel, contrasted by the popular

image of women (reproductive). She interprets this as a sign that Aztec male elite

ideology was not present at all levels.

In earlier studies, it has been demonstrated that violence has to be approached

in its social context. Eleanor Scott, for example, critiqued evolutionist apologies

for rape as rational primate behavior.

Nancy Wicker has investigated the role of

female infanticide in Scandinavian prehistory.

Sheila Dillon has argued that

shifting Roman choices in depicting or omitting war-time violence against foreign

women in war, including rape, may reect shifting needs to maintain civilian

Roman trust in the army.

Barbara Voss has suggested the archaeology of spatial

organization in early colonial California supports historical accounts of the rape of

Native American women by Spanish soldiers.

David O’Connor has analyzed

Egyptian monumental art for sexualized metaphors for violence.

Before em-

barking on the project of writing this book, I explored the gender structure of the

smiting of the enemy motif, and the relationship between the lack of re-

presentations of violence against foreign women and children in New Kingdom

Egypt and the ideals of the king as protector, destroyer of chaos, and peace-

maker.

Bo Jensen analyzed textual and iconographic evidence from 750 to 1100

AD “Viking world” with revenge as their theme and argued that society cele-

brated the clever use of violence by men and condemned the emotional reactions

of women that did not benet the society. Women were supposed to demand

violence to be conducted for them after their requests were ltered through men’s

rational, legal, and strategic experience. Independently violent women were

dangerous both for themselves and for society.

This is symbolic violence par

excellence. Susanne Moraw analyzed late antique images of nubile females and

argued that they are more frequently attested as victims than as actors of violence.

Victimization of girls was the norm and their agency needed strong legitimation.

In contrast, actors committing violence against girls are of higher status, which

made the violence acceptable. These depictions of violence were highly sexualized

and some have rape or attempted rape as their motif.

From this overview, it is clear that there is much more work to be done and

that certain topics have received more attention than others. Largely unaddressed

is gender and violence’s link to displacement, dispossession, and migration, as well

as their eect on familial, status, and social relations.

Studies based on texts,

iconography, and material culture in general still seem to be more prominent than

studies based on bioarchaeology. Bearing in mind that the materiality of the body

Introduction 13

is shaped by society in various ways,

osteoarchaeological studies of violence and

gender have great potential. This has already been demonstrated by several case

studies, including the ethnobioarchaeological study of the Turkana community in

northwestern Kenya. This study demonstrated that women are more likely to have

accidental or occupational trauma than men, but that there is no statistically sig-

nicant dierence in the occurrence of injuries to the body where gender is

concerned.

Similarly, Julie Farnum argued that Moche mainly sacriced the men

and Sicán the women. Moche sacriced their best warriors who were treated well

in life, much better than lower class women. Sicán sacriced young women and

children who were mostly healthy during life. In both societies men were privi-

leged at nearly every social level. They were healthier, lived longer and were

healed better from wounds and illnesses. Commoner women had the worst health

in both socities, clearly showing intersectionality of gender and class.

However,

already, Sandra E. Hollimon in her study of the Arikara aliated groups of the

upper Missouri River, warned against double standards in interpreting evidence of

violence. Whereas traces of violence on skeletons of men are interpreted as proof

of their active participation in conicts, skeletons of women with the same injuries

are interpreted as proof of them being victims of violence.

Additionally, John Robb has examined changing perceptions of gender in

prehistoric Italy. He argues that while ideas about binary gender appear in artistic

representations that trace back to the Neolithic, from the Copper Age onward

men are increasingly associated with weapons and women with jewelry and or-

naments. Therefore, he postulates an opposition between male violence and fe-

male beauty in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

He also analyzed osteological trauma

patterns in early Iron Age Italy to understand gender division and document emic

gender concepts.

Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Misty Fields have argued that there is a

dierence in patterns of trauma among over 60 individuals from La Plata Valley in

New Mexico, USA. Local women lacked cranial trauma, received appropriate

burials, and showed little evidence of muscular stress markers. In comparison,

women considered to be obtained from raids had cranial trauma, were thrown into

abandoned pits, and showed clear signs of hard labor throughout their lives. Based

on this evidence, they suggested that local women could have encouraged the

raids and subordination of raided women in order to reduce their own morbidity

risks.

Here, one should recall the central idea of contemporary feminism that

stresses multivalent and intersectional experiences of womanhood. Socially, some

women are more privileged than others and they use their priviliges actively.

Rebecca C. Redfern argued that in Dorset, Southwest England, antemortem

injuries conrm that women rarely participated in or were exposed to violence,

but perimortem trauma suggests that some women died in conict, perhaps during

the Claudian conquest of Britain in 43 AD.

Anne L. Grauer and Andrew G.

Miller argued that in Medieval England, based on 13% of skeletons with bone

fractures from archaeological sites, men showed twice the number of fractures in

comparison to women. At the same time textual sources, such as the Calendar of

14 Introduction

Patent Rolls indicate that women were the actors of violence as well, but far less

than men.

Greater emphasis on women and children in war, through a

bioarchaeological perspective, can be found only in the most recent publications.

This short overview of studies of violence and gender in archaeology de-

monstrates that the ideas of Rubin, Bourdieu, Žižek and Butler, I discussed

previously in this introduction did not really nd their way to archaeology.

However, archaeologists and historians have the data necessary to explore them

and possibly to develop novel concepts based on their own studies.

1.4 The outline of this book

Egyptologists have stressed from quite early in the discipline that the image of

women in ancient Egypt is distorted by the fact that men wrote most ancient

Egyptian texts and commissioned or executed most monuments. As a result, the

dominant point of view is a masculine one.

In this case, very often, we are

actually dealing with a double distortion, both an ancient and a modern andro-

centric one.

In Egyptology, women seem to occupy the main focus of related

research, rather than gender.

Masculinity has emerged as a research focus only

recently and remains an endeavor for only a few male authors.

100

A very small

number of these have explored men and women in ancient Egypt with reference

to women’s studies, feminist, and queer theory.

101

However, what Egyptology as a

discipline needs is to go beyond the “female-male in ancient Egypt” dichotomy.

Gender encompasses a relational dynamic and the cultural processes that have

produced women have also produced men. To use gender as a useful category for

historical analysis, we have to acknowledge its relational notion, as genders are

inevitably dened in terms of one another.

102

At the same time, some other Egyptologists both male and female, have dealt

with war, the military, and violence outside and inside Egypt.

103

However, the

complex intersection between these two phenomena, violence and gender in

ancient Egypt, has not been explored thoroughly.

104

There are many ways in

which this could be achieved, Egyptologists could be investigating power relations

between genders within the domestic sphere and within dierent occupations

(including, but not limited to overwork

105

), jurisdiction and legal rights from a

gendered perspective, war and the military as a masculine sphere of action, and so

on. The possibilities are vast and not all possible topics can be adequately explored

in this book. Rather, my aim is to address themes – gendered violence and the

violence–gender intersection – largely unexplored by Egyptologists. I hope that

such a focus will promote more discussion and inspire new studies in this

direction.

This book is not focused on sources but is rather problem-oriented. My aim is

not to provide a catalog of textual and visual evidence of violence with a gendered

background or violence that can be viewed from a gendered perspective. My

concern is to see how these representations can be used to understand at least some

aspects of violence in ancient Egypt from a gendered perspective. One might ask

Introduction 15

which evidence I base my discussion and on which criteria I selected the sources

relevant for this study? The evidence discussed here comes primarily from textual

sources of dierent genres and from iconography. This is because bioarchaeolo-

gical data on violence and trauma in ancient Egypt are still insucient for any

comparative or generalizing study. From this, the question naturally emerges as to

how much and what kind of data are sucient (and I am fully aware that due to

the nature of the archaeological record, we will always have only a small per-

centage of evidence to deal with and never the total record).

106

Nevertheless, we

work with what we have, and as this study will show, even with limited sources,

interesting patterns can be observed. I follow Bernstein, who bases his assertions

on the work of German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, that we should

think about “violence without banisters”, to make “sense of the world in which

we nd ourselves”.

107

The task before me was to make sense of the sources in

which I found myself.

The rst problem we encounter is that most contemporary theories on gender

and violence were developed through the investigation of modern hetero-

normative society. This means that in addition to the double androcentric dis-

tortion already discussed, we also have to be aware of another distortion, the one

of modern heteronormativity. In the words of Valerie Traub, “as sexual categories

travel across borders, all eorts at cross-cultural translation and comparison are

imbued with politically loaded signications of tradition and modernity”.

108

Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová also argue that there is a danger in

projecting fairly modern terms onto ancient Egypt. Yet, in contrast, there is a

danger of not categorizing evidence at all. They nicely summarize the problem by

stating that “whenever we try to describe a social or a sociocultural construct, we

inevitably do so within our own social construct”.

109

Bearing in mind that most of

the evidence I present in this book can be safely argued to have been commis-

sioned and produced by men, I follow Gay Robins in her assertion that it is

important to understand why particular types of material were created in the rst

place.

110

With a theoretical and historical background in hand, Chapter 2 presents and

analyzes dierent textual and iconographic evidence for violent acts committed by

men, women, and deities. As in all other chapters, due to the scope of this book,

the limited number of sources, the theoretical nature of this book, and my

Egyptological focus on the periods bracketed by the Old and New Kingdom, most

of the presented data come from these periods of ancient Egyptian history. My aim

in this chapter is to explore how violence committed by and toward dierent

genders is documented, reported, responded to, and possibly sanctioned. In my

analysis, I also compare gendered violence with the violence conducted by and to

deities of dierent genders and I discuss the problem of “warrior women”.

Furthermore, I emphasize that bioarchaeological evidence for trauma and violence

in ancient Egypt has been insuciently studied from a gendered perspective. This

poses a big challenge for attempts to reconcile discourse with lived experience.

16 Introduction

In Chapter 3, I will explore textual evidence for sexual violence (rape and

assault) in ancient Egypt. I argue that there are no explicit representations of such

acts, which is in itself interesting and demands explanation. I suggest that the lack

of representations of such acts is related both to the general lack of explicit re-

presentations of sexual intercourse in ancient Egypt and violent acts committed by

men against women. Such acts cannot be gleaned from human skeletal remains.

This chapter will also deal with social solutions to acts of rape.

In Chapter 4, noncombatants are the main focus. The textual and iconographic

sources oer evidence that foreign men, women, and children were taken as spoils

of war over several millennia from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period. As

evidence, there are numerous lists of spoils of war from both private and royal

documents (stelae, temple walls, or papyri), as well as representations of women as

spoils of war in foreigners’ procession scenes in private tombs or on temple reliefs

that date to the New Kingdom. A number of representations of foreign women as

bound prisoners will also be discussed, such as the tomb of Kheruef and talatat

blocks from Luxor and Hermopolis. Evidence indicates, as I argue, that re-

presentations of the smiting of the enemy were also gendered. Namely, kings

smote and trampled male captives, whereas queens (Tiye and Nefertiti) did the

same to female enemies. I will also discuss the examples of foreign women who

experienced physical violence at the hands of ancient Egyptian men (e.g., the

tomb of Intef, 11th dynasty). Concluding remarks will identify dierences through

time with regard to the violent treatment of foreign women.

Chapter 5 discusses the textual and iconographic evidence for the feminization

of foreign enemies. Butler’s idea of gender as a “frame of war”, discussed earlier in

this introductory chapter, proved to be useful for understanding the phenomenon,

because it provides a theoretical key for understanding how gender ideology in-

forms texts and images with violent content. The cutting o enemy phalli de-

picted on the palette of Narmer and later during the reigns of Merenptah and

Ramesses III are cited as examples of mutilation with gendered backgrounds. The

results will be discussed in comparison to studies of feminization of enemies in war

in other cultures.

Chapter 6 will attempt to connect the various cases of violence (e.g., domestic

and war) using a gendered perspective. I will also discuss these cases within the

context of an ancient Egyptian sex/gender system. Current theoretical debates in

contemporary feminist and queer theory pertaining to patriarchy and masculine

oppression oer a useful frame.

Notes

1 This is thoroughly covered in Uroš Matić, “Her Striking but Cold Beauty: Gender

and Violence in Depictions of Queen Nefertiti Smiting the Enemies,” in Archaeologies

of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books,

2017), 103–121; Uroš Matić, Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt: Violent

Treatment of Enemies and Prisoners. Philippika 134 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,

2019), 139–149.

Introduction 17

2 Many authors limit themselves to studying warriors, weapons, and bioarchaeological

evidence for violence on skeletal remains. Not many place this evidence in a social

context, informed by gender or other variables, Bo Jensen and Uroš Matić,

“Introduction. Why Do We Need Archaeologies of Gender and Violence and Why

Now?” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen

(Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 6.

3 Several scholars have argued that images of Nefertiti smiting enemies indicate that she

was of equal power to her husband Akhenaten, or that “Atenism” (new Amarna

period theological concept centered on god Aten) distorted her. I have already ana-

lyzed the exact passages from these works elsewhere and will not repeat this here; see

Matić, “Her Striking but Cold Beauty,” 111.

4 Just like queen Nefertiti of the 18th dynasty Egypt, the ctional queen Daenerys

Targaryen is depicted in the nal episode of popular HBO ecranization of George R. R.

Martin´s The Song of Ice and Fire as a cruel female ruler with no mercy. Philosopher

Slavoj Žižek oered a reading of this nal episode. According to Žižek, Daenerys is

depicted in the series as “a new type of a strong leader, a kind of progressive bonapartist

acting on behalf of the underprivileged”. After burning King’s Landing to the ground,

the enemy city she wanted to conquer and rule from, queen Daenerys is killed by her

nephew and lover Aegon Targaryen (Jon Snow). Žižek claims that the background

message of such a characterization of Daenerys is that all attempts of social revolution,

which she inspired either peacefully or violently, are destined to fail, and that female

rulership is destined to fail too. According to Žižek, the lowest point in the dialogue of

Game of Thrones, when Daenerys tells Jon that if he cannot love her as a queen then fear

should reign, is “the embarrassing, vulgar motif of a sexually unsatised woman who

explodes into destructive fury”. He adds that “the view of Daenerys with mad-furious

expression ying on a dragon and burning houses and people expresses patriarchal

ideology with its fear of a strong political woman” (https://www.independent.co.uk/

voices/game-thrones-season-8-nale-bran-daenerys-cersei-jon-snow-zizek-revolution-

a8923371.html).

5 Judith Butler, The Force of Non-Violence. An Ethico-Political Bind (London and New

York: Verso, 2020), 1.

6 Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, “Introduction: Making Sense of

Violence,” in Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Scheper-

Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 3. Exactly this aspect of

violence has been misunderstood by Stefan Bojowald in his review of my book Body

and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt (2019). He writes that I come to an “odd”

(merkwürdig) conclusion that torture and killing are on the same cultural level as care

for the sick and burial of the dead. In this he not only misunderstands that I was aiming

at cultural background of violence, but also misrepresents my words since I never

wrote that torturing and killing are on the same cultural level as care, Stefan Bojowald

“Rezension. Matić, Uroš: Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt. Violent

Treatment of Enemies and Prisoners,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 145. 6 (2020): 514.

7 Butler, The Force of Non-Violence, 14.

8 Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, translated from French by Richard Nice

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–2.

9 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 34.

10 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “Symbolic Violence,” in Violence in War and

Peace: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois

(Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 272–274.

11 John Farnill Morgan and Jon Arcelus, “Body Image in Gay and Straight Men: A

Qualitative Study,” European Eating Disorders Review 17. 6 (2009): 435–443. It has also

been argued that gay men’s body image issues are overstated, Graeme D. Kan,

“Revisiting Gay Men’s Body Image Issues: Exposing the Fault Lines,” Review of

General Psychology 14.4 (2010): 311–317.

18 Introduction

12 Slavoj Žižek, ‘‘Philosophy, the ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ and the public use of

reason,’’ Topoi 25 (2006): 137.

13 Bourdieu and Wacquant, “Symbolic Violence,” 272.

14 Beate Krais and Jennifer Marston William, “The Gender Relationship in Bourdieu’s

Sociology,” SubStance 29.3 (2000): 59.

15 Monique Wittig, “The Category of Sex,” Feminist Issues 2 (1982): 67. See also her

essay “One is Not Born a Woman” from 1981, Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and

Other Essays (Boston: Beeacon Press, 1992), 9–11.

16 Pamela L. Geller, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives. Queering Common Sense about

Sex, Gender and Sexuality (New York: Springer, 2017), 73.

17 Jerey Weeks, What is Sexual History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016).

18 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Translated from

French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978 [1976]), 101.

According to Monique Witting the oppressive power of heterosexual discourses is in

preventing people to speak in terms other than heterosexual, Monique Wittig, “The

Straight Mind,” Feminist Issues 1 (1980): 105.

19 Slavoj Žižek, Violence. Six Sideways Reections (New York: Picador, 2008), 1–2; un-

derstanding how these types of violence relate to each other has been recognized as a

challenge also by Richard J. Bernstein, Violence: Thinking without Banisters (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 2013), 1. The question is also how much of his ideas Žižek owes to other

authors. For example, Randall Collins also writes about wars and revolutions as only

the tip of the iceberg in the base of which are relations between dominant and sub-

ordinated social groups, Randall Collins, Four Sociological Traditions (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1994), 47.

20 Marilyn Strathern, Before and after Gender: Sexual Mythologies of Everyday Life (Chicago:

HAU Books, 2016), 6.

21 Gayle Rubin, “The Trac in Women, Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex,” in

Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter (New York and

London: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 159.

22 Cecilia L. Ridgeway and Shelley J. Correll, “Unpacking the Gender System: A

Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations,” Gender and Society

18.4 (2004): 510–513.

23 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated and edited by H. M. Parshley

(London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), 273.

24 Margarita Díaz-Andreu, “Gender identity,” in The Archaeology of Identity. Approaches to

Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion, edited by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Sam

Lucy, Staša Babić, and David Edwards (London: Routledge, 2005), 15; Adriana

Zaharijević, Postajanje Ženom (Beograd: Rekonstrukcija ženski fond, 2010).

25 The concept is one of the central tenets of black feminist theory. It stresses that op-

pression is not monocausal, for example in the USA it is not based either on race or on

gender. Rather, intersection of race and gender make some more oppressed or op-

pressed in a derent way than others, Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the

Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination

Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum

1.8 (1989): 139–167.

26 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 19.

27 Roberta Gilchrist, “Women’s Archaeology? Political Feminism, Gender Theory and

Historical Revision,” in Reader in Gender Archaeology, edited by Kelley Hays-Gilpin

and David S. Whitley (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 52.

28 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 3.

29 Jacques Derrida, Donner le Temps: 1. La Fausse Monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1991), 216.

30 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, translated by R. Nice (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1990), 53.

31 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 11.

Introduction 19

32 Rubin, “The Trac in Women,” 160.

33 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 43.

34 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 35–36

35 Dejan Petrović, “O pojmu habitusa – feministička kritika teorije o društvu Pjera

Burdijea,” Filozoja i Društvo XXIV.2 (2013): 174–192.

36 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 23.

37 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New

York: Routledge, 1990), 11.

38 Butler, Gender Trouble, xi.

39 Butler, Gender Trouble, 43–44. This idea is continously erroneously understood even

by those who jump to use Butler´s work to criticize the works of others. For example,

Katherine M. Harell demonstrates this in her review of Archaeologies of Gender and

Violence (2017) edited by myself and Bo Jensen. She argues that the authors of the

papers in this volume are “blithely unaware of the growing corpus of queer scholarship

on the performance of gender in patriarchal societies. Instead, the chapters in this

volume adopt a binary viewpoint of gender, treating gender as ascribed rather than

achieved status.” Katherine M. Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of Gender and

Violence,” American Journal of Archaeology 124. 4 (2020). Butler argued several times

that there is a big dierence between performance and performativity, the former

being free and theatrical, and the latter being dictated by already existing norms of

heterosexuality which people aspire to and naturalize through stylized acts. That the

authors do not utilize this idea of Butler is one thing, accusing them that they are not

familiar with it is speculative, especially coming from a position which basically

misunderstands the idea in the rst place. Furthermore, binary gender systems are

attested in many socities, among else in the socities studied by the authors in the

volume and by myself in this book. A priori made assumptions on the existence of

multiple recognized genders in ancient socities have also met criticism, Stephanie Lynn

Budin, “Sex and Gender and Sex,” Mare Nostrum – Estudos Sobre o Mediterrâneo Antigo

11. 1 (2020): 1–59.

40 Butler, Gender Trouble, 192.

41 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York and

London: Routledge, 1993).

42 Geller, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives, 5.

43 Ridgeway and Correll, “Unpacking the gender system,” 528.

44 Mary Evans et al. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory (London: SAGE,

2014); Mia E. Carter, “Violence,” in Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, edited by

Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 414;

Jennifer Clarke, “War,” in Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, edited by Elizabeth

Kowaleski Wallance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 421.

45 Robert Eme, “Is Serious Physical Violence almost Exclusively Male?” Violence and

Gender 1.2 (2014): 90–93.

46 Debra Nieho, “Not Hardwired: The Complex Neurobiology of Sex Dierences in

Violence,” Violence and Gender 1.1 (2014), 19–24.

47 John Archer, “Testosterone and human aggression: an evaluation of the challenge

hypothesis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30.3 (2006): 319–345.

48 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender. Biological Theories about Women and Men.

Second Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 127–130. There is also evidence of

great variability of primate behaviour from non-aggressive to aggressive. Female pri-

mates, including humans, engage in aggression and violence in a variety of contexts,

Jennifer Bengtson and Jodie O’Gorman, “War at the Door: Evolutionary

Considerations of Warfare and Female Fighters,” in Bioarchaeology of Women and

Children in Times of War Case Studies from the Americas, edited by Debra L. Martin and

Caryn E. Tegtmeyer (New York: Springer, 2017), 28–29.

20 Introduction

49 Emil F. Coccaro, “Testosterone and Aggression: More Than Just Biology?” Biological

Psychiatry 82. 4 (2017): 234.

50 Justin M. Carré and John Archer, “Testosterone and Human Behavior: The role of

individual and contextual variables,” Current Opinions in Psychology 19 (2018):

149–153.

51 Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (London: Penguin,

1993), 202.

52 James R. Liddle, Todd K. Shackelford, and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford,

“Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War,” in The Oxford

Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War, edited by Todd K.

Shackelford and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2012), 11–19.

53 Butler, The Force of Non-Violence, 28.

54 Rubin, “The Trac in Women,” 156.

55 She gave some examples of the violence of gender norms. Her uncle was incarcerated

for his anatomically anomalous body, deprived of family and friends, living out his days

in an “institute” in the Kansas prairies; gay cousins were forced to leave their homes

because of their sexuality, real and imagined; her own coming out at the age of 16; and

subsequent adult landscape of lost jobs, lovers and homes, Butler, Gender Trouble,

xix–xx.

56 Judith Butler. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso,

2009) 167. In a documentary on her life and work, Butler expressed her concerns

about situations in which gender as a norm is exercised coercively. She tells a story of a

young man from Maine (US) who walked down the street of his small town where he

had lived his entire life, and he walked with a swish in a feminine way. As he grew

older, around 14, his swish became more pronounced and more feminine. As a result,

he was harassed by other boys who fought with him. They ended up throwing him

from a bridge and killing him. Butler asks why someone would be killed for the way

they walk? Why would that walk be so upsetting to those other boys that they would

feel that they must stop it, that they must eradicate the possibility of that person ever

walking again? This is according to Butler an extremely deep panic or fear, an anxiety

that pertains to gender norms.

57 Butler, Frames of War, 167.

58 Bernstein, Violence, 179.

59 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New

York: Verso, 2004), xiv–xv.

60 Butler, Frames of War, 1.

61 Butler, Frames of War, 3.

62 Butler, Frames of War, 10.

63 Butler, Frames of War, 26.

64 Butler, Frames of War, 51–52.

65 Butler, Frames of War, 65.

66 Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (eds.) Archaeologies of Gender and Violence (Oxford: Oxbow

Books, 2017).

67 Jensen and Matić, “Introduction. Why Do We Need Archaeologies of Gender and

Violence and Why Now?” 1.

68 Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley, “Introduction: Gendering the Past,” in

Reader in Gender Archaeology, edited by Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley

(London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 3.

69 Rubin, “The Trac in Women,” 199.

70 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 6.

71 Lynn M. Meskell and Rosemary A. Joyce, Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and

Egyptian Experience (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 95–103.

Introduction 21

72 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 83–84. Bourdieu also stressed the necessity of a cri-

tical approach to ancient sources, Masculine Domination, 6.

73 For example, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen. Gender Archaeology (Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2000). A notable exception is Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Archaeology:

Contesting the Past (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

74 For example, Paul Treherne, “The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-

Identity in Bronze-Age Europe,” Journal of European Archaeology 3.1 (1995): 105–144.

75 Deborah Sweeney and Assaf Yasur-Landau, “Following the Path of the Sea Persons.

The Women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs,” Tel Aviv 26.1 (1999): 116–145.

76 June Nash, “Aztec Women: The Transition from Status to Class in Empire and

Colony,” in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Mona

Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), 134–148.

77 Elizabeth M. Brumel, “Figurines and the Aztec State: Testing the Eectiveness of

Ideological Domination,” in Gender and Archaeology, edited by Rita P. Wright

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 160. Some have criticized these

ideas, as representations of ayed men and accounts of dismembered male captives are

much more common. Violence against women was interpreted as degradation of

womanhood, but violence against men was not interpreted as degradation of man-

hood, Scott R. Hutson, Bryan K. Hanks, and K. Anne Pyburn, “Gender, Complexity,

and Power in Prehistory,” in A Companion to Gender Prehistory, edited by Diane Bolger

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 51.

78 Eleanor Scott, “Killing the Female? Archaeological Narratives of Infanticide,” in

Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited by Betinna Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker

(Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2001), 1–21; Eleanor Scott, “The Use and Misuse of

Rape in Prehistory,” in Indecent Exposure: Sexuality, Society and the Archaeological Record,

edited by Lynn Bevan (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 2001), 1–18.

79 Nancy L. Wicker, “Selective Female Infanticide as Partial Explanation for the Dearth

of Women in Viking Age Scandinavia,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval

West, edited by Guy Hallsall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 205–221.

80 Sheila Dillon, “Women on the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and the Visual

Language of Roman Victory,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, edited by

Sheila Dillon and Katherine E. Welch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2006), 244–271. For imperial Roman battleeld also see Stephan Faust, Schlachtenbilder

der römischen Keiserzeit. Erzählerische Darstellungskonzepte in der Reliefkunst von Traian bis

Septimius Severus. Tübinger Archäologische Forschungen 8 (Rahden: Verlag Marie

Leidorf GmbH, 2012)

81 Barbara L. Voss, “Colonial Sex: Archaeology, Structured Space, and Sexuality in Alta

California’s Spanish Colonial Missions,” in Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by Barbara

L. Voss and Robert A. Schmidt (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 41.

82 David O’Connor, “The Eastern High Gate. Sexualized Architecture at Medinet

Habu?” in Structure and Signicance: Thoughts on Ancient Egyptian Architecture.

Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen

Institutes XXV, edited by Peter Jánosi (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie

der Wissenschaften, 2005), 439–454.

83 Uroš Matić, “Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes,”

in Tradition and Transformation: Proceedings of the 5th International Congress for Young

Egyptologists, Vienna, 15–19 September 2015. Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie 84.

Contributions to the archaeology of Egypt, Nubia and the Levant 6, edited by Andrea

Kahlbacher and Elisa Priglinger (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften, 2018), 267–282.

84 Bo Jensen, “Skull-Cups and Snake-Pits: Men’s Revenge and Women’s Revenge in

Viking Age Scandinavia,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić

and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 218–219.

22 Introduction

85 Susanne Moraw, “Death and the Maiden: Late Antique Images of Nubile Females as

Agents and Victims of Violence,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš

Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 174–175. Moraw’s take on these

imagery from the perspective of a comparison with modern pornography and studies

of pornography was criticized by Harell who insists that Moraw should have been

explicit by stating in the introduction of her paper that she will compare the Late

Antique imagery with bodies in Playboy. Furthremore, Harell states that Moraw misses

the point that the Late Antique images were consumed both by men and women.

Harell’s criticism is not fair since Moraw explicitly points out the historical back-

ground of separation between art and pornography. This separation was made in order

to devoid art of desire. Furthermore, in her introduction Moraw writes that the images

she studied are found on various media which could have been consumed by various

people. Also, Harell herself misses the point that modern pornography is not con-

sumed only by adult heterosexual men. Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of

Gender and Violence”.

86 Louise Hitchcock, “Gender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary,” in

Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford:

Oxbow Books, 2017), 271.

87 Joanna R. Sofaer, The Body as Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006).

88 Ryan P. Harrod, Pierre Liénard, and Debra L. Martin, “Deciphering Violence in Past

Societies. Ethnography and Interpretation of Archaeological Populations,” in The

Bioarchaeology of Violence, edited by Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Ventura P.

Pérez (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 68–74.

89 Julie Farnum, “Gender and Structural Violence in Prehistoric Peru,” in Archaeologies of

Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books,

2017), 259.

90 Sandra E. Hollimon, “Warfare and Gender in the Northern Plains: Osteological

Evidence of Trauma Reconsidered,” In Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited

by Bettina Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2001),

179–194.

91 John Robb, “Female Beauty and Male Violence in Early Italian Society,” in Naked

Truths: Women, Sexuality, and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology, edited by Ann

Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Claire L. Lyons (London and New York: Routledge,

1997), 43–65.

92 John Robb, “Violence and Gender in Early Italy,” in Troubled Times: Violence and

Warfare in the Past. War and Society 3, edited by Debra L. Martin and D. W. Frayer

(Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1997), 137–138.

93 Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Misty Fields, “Beaten Down and Worked to

the Bone: Bioarchaeological Investigations of Women and Violence in the Ancient

Southwest,” Landscapes of Violence 1.1 (2010): 1–19.

94 Rebecca C. Redfern, “Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course,”

in The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Sarah Ralph (New

York: State University of New York Press, 2012), 63–97.

95 Anne L. Grauer and Andrew G. Miller, “Flesh on the Bones: A Historical and

Bioarchaeological Exploration of Violence, Trauma, Sex, and Gender in Medieval

England,” Fragments 6 (2017): 38–79.

96 Debra L. Martin and Caryn Tegtmeyer (eds.), Bioarchaeology of Women and Children in

Times of War: Case Studies from the Americas (New York: Springer, 2017).

Noncombatants can possibly even be identied in prehistoric socities as demonstrated

by the study of a 3rd millennium BC sanctuary of Pömmelte-Zackmünde in central

Germany where two contrasting groups of graves were found, at graves and deviant

burials. The latter contained evidence of trauma directed at infants, adolescents, and

women whose bodies were impiously thrown into shafts, André Spatzier, “The

Introduction 23

honoured and the sacriced? Gender and violence at a sanctuary of the late 3rd

millennium BC in Central Germany,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by

Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 66–67.

97 Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1993), 176.

98 Androcentrism in Egyptology is strong. This is among else demonstrated by the simple

fact that women Egyptologists are excluded from even the most recent histories of

Egyptology. For example although there are many pioneer women Egyptologists, only

Nina de Garis Davies is mentioned together with her husband Norman de Garis

Davies. Other women in Egyptology are not mentioned, Thomas L. Gertzen.

Einführung in die Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Ägyptologie. Einführungen und Quellentexte

zur Ägyptologie 10 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2017).

99 There are several seminal studies on women in ancient Egypt, none on men who are

omnipresent in Egyptological works, and only some on gender. Key studies of women

in ancient Egypt were written by Barbara Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt (New

York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt; Jean Li, Women,

Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period (London and New York: Routledge,

2017). Some have criticized this women-centered understanding of gender studies in

Egyptology, Lynn M. Meskell, “Engendering Egypt,” Gender and History 9. 3 (1997):

597; Hana Navrátilová, “Gender and Historiography (in Deir el-Medina),” in

Sozialisationen: Individuum-Gruppe-Gesellschaft. Beiträge des ersten Münchner

Arbeitskreises Junge Ägyptologie (MAJA 1), Göttinger Orientforschungen 51, edited

by Gregor Neunert, Kathrin Gabler, and Alexandra Verbovsek (Wiesbaden:

Harrassowitz, 2012), 151.

100 Ludwig D. Morenz, “Anchti gegen andere: zur Prolierung eines Übermenschen

durch Kontrastgur,” in Feinde und Aufruhrer: Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in Ägyptischen

Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches. Abhandlungen der Sachsischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 78, 5, edited by Heinz

Felber (Leipzig: Verlag der Sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,

2005), 189–197; Richard B. Parkinson, “Boasting about Hardness: Constructions of

Middle Kingdom Masculinity,” in Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt: ‘Don your wig for a

joyful hour,’ edited by Carolyn Graves-Brown (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales,

2008), 115–142.

101 Among others, Lynn M. Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in

Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999); Meskell and Joyce, Embodied Lives;

Terry G. Wilfong, “Gender in Ancient Egypt,” in Egyptian Archaeology, edited by

Willeke Wendrich (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 164–179; D. Sweeney, “Sex

and Gender,” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles, edited by E. Frood and

W. Wendrich (2011). http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/

zz0027fc04.

102 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American

Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1054; Jeanne Boydston, “Gender as a Question of

Historical Analysis,” Gender and History 20.3 (2008): 558.

103 Most notably: Anthony J. Spalinger, War in Ancient Egypt. The New Kingdom (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing, 2005); Anthony J. Spalinger. Icons of Power. A Strategy of

Reinterpretation (Prague: The Charles University, 2011); Anthony J. Spalinger,

Leadership under re: the pressures of warfare in Ancient Egypt. Four leçons at the Collège de

France, Paris, June 2019 (Paris: Soleb, 2020); See also Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the

Service of Order. The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt. British

Archaeological Reports International Series 2299 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011);

There are also women in Egyptology who research on war, military and violence, see

Laurel Bestock, Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt: Image and Ideology before the New

Kingdom (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). Numerous prosopographic

24 Introduction

studies focusing on the bearers of military titles and the meanings of these titles have

been written by Andrea Gnirs and Danijela Stefanović.

104 Andrea Gnirs asserts that gender studies are almost absent from the military history of

ancient Egypt, Andrea Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur- und

Sozialgeschichte,” in Militärgeschichte des pharaonischen Ägypten. Altägypten und seine

Nachbarkulturen im Spiegel aktueller Forschung. Krieg in der Geschichte 34, edited by

Rolf Gundlach and Carola Vogel (Paderborn: Ferdidand Schöningh, 2009), 99. Since

her assertion, the situation remained unchanged until only recently, Matić, Body and

Frames of War, 139–149.

105 Hitchcock, “Gender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary,” 271.

106 This is the crucial problem of epistemological limits of archaeology and historio-

graphy, Staša Babić, Metaarheologija. Ogled o Uslovima Znanja o Prošlosti (Beograd: Clio,

2018), 15, 106.

107 Bernstein, Violence, vii.

108 Valerie Traub, “The Past is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate

Sexuality Studies,” in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of

Desire. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs XXXIX, edited by Kathryn Babayan and

Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 9.

109 Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess I. Ancient

Egyptian Love Songs in Context (Prague: Agama, 2009), 23–24. This is somewhat a

standard caution expressed in studies of gender and sexuality in the past. Jerey Weeks

also warns that our current prejudices and perceptions mediate our analyses of the past,

although the past lives on in the present, Weeks, What is Sexual History? However,

there are also those who argue that modern anthropology, gender studies and queer

theory can inform us on the dierences between 21st century understanding of gender

and the understanding of gender in past socities. This is one of the supposed aws

Harell recognized in the papers from the volume Archaeologies of Gender and Violence

(2017), together with the idea that modern understandiing of violence is dierent than

those of past socities, Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of Gender and Violence”.

Harell misses that modern anthropology, gender studies and queer theory did not

develop dierent concepts of gender by studying ancient societies too and that some

attempts of philosophers to dene ancient experiences of sex, such as Michel

Foucault’s, met signicant criticism. Only archaeologists and historians can inform us

on the dierences Harell argues in favor of, also when violence is concerned. This is

exactly what the papers in the book she reviewed did.

110 Gay Robins, “Women in New Kingdom Art,” in Women’s Earliest Records. From

Ancient Egypt and Western Asia. Brown Judaic Studies 166, edited by Barbara S. Lesko

(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 116.

Introduction 25

GENDER OF AGGRESSION: VIOLENT

MEN, WOMEN, AND DEITIES IN

ANCIENT EGYPT

2.1 Violent men and women in ancient Egypt

2.1.1 Textual evidence

Numerous textual sources attest to violent encounters of men in ancient Egypt,

whether between locals or Egyptians and foreigners. These interactions have re-

ceived much scholarly attention.

In contrast, evidence of violence committed by

men against women, women against men, and women against other women do

not appear as frequently in the historical record. Such is especially the case during

the earlier periods of ancient Egyptian history, specically the Early Dynastic

Period and the Old Kingdom. Textual sources seem to be more numerous, but

still not abundant, in the following Middle and New Kingdoms. This distribution

should not be taken as in any way indicative of actual number of occurrences of

such violent encounters. One has to bear in mind that the reason most evidence

dates to the New Kingdom is that most of it comes from the exceptionally well-

preserved workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina and the sources originating from

this community. As Christine Hue-Arcé has stressed, however, some forms of

violence, such as domestic violence, were often not deemed worthy of being

reported since ancient Egyptians attached no economic value to them.

In this part

of the chapter, I discuss only textual attestations of nonsexual violence. Textual

attestations for sexual violence in both the human and divine world are discussed

in Chapter 3.

Before venturing into the sources in which we nd explicit evidence for

violence committed by men toward women, women toward men, or women

toward women, we should rst understand how Egyptian society perceived

violence and normative gender behavior. Hegemonic cultural beliefs about gender

make perceptions of genders and gender-related behaviors persist. According to

Cecilia L. Ridgeway and Shelley J. Correll, hegemonic gender beliefs are in-

stitutionalized in the norms and structures of public settings and in established

private institutions, such as the nuclear family.

Of course, the ancient Egyptian

concept of the family was not the same as the one of the modern heteropatriarchal

nuclear family, but there are some basic similarities. For instance, ancient

Egyptians’ and modern Westerners’ ideas about family are informed by hetero-

normativity – that a family is formed by a man and a woman who are contractually

bound (i.e., married) and whose aim is to have children.

One specic genre of ancient Egyptian literature, known as the Wisdom Texts,

is especially important because it provides a hegemonic, androcentric under-

standing of appropriate and inappropriate masculine and feminine behavior.

Furthermore, these texts were copied over and over to develop scribal skills and to

disseminate the content.

For this reason, they present an especially important

window into the longue durée of gender dispositions. Yet, Fredrik Hagen has ex-

pressed doubts. He suggests that the dearth of surviving material inhibits under-

standing the place of such texts in this tradition or the tracing of their transmission

and reception in ancient Egypt.

On the former point, he is correct. Nevertheless,

the fact that some motifs have a long history indicates that whatever the me-

chanism of transmission was behind them, certain ideas lived on. According to

Gay Robins, the androcentric view articulated by ancient Egyptian society and

reected in the literature divides women into two factions: honorable and dis-

honorable.

Annette Depla also interpreted the Wisdom Texts along these lines

and argued that they disseminate the general view that women were not suitable

for positions of authority outside of the home because of their unpredictability and

intransigence.

I concur with Robins and Depla, and several examples from the

Wisdom Texts will be used here to support their arguments. After that, I discuss

the possibility that the dispositions in these texts can be said to have been socially

ingrained and were transmitted further from generation to generation.

One of the longest texts ascribed to the genre of Wisdom Texts is the Maxims

of Ptahhotep. There are two versions from early to late Middle Kingdom (Papyrus

Prisse, Bibliothèque Nationale Paris Nr. 183–194 and Papyrus British Museum

10371 and Papyrus British Museum 10435). Two versions are known from the

Second Intermediate Period and early 18th dynasty (Carnavon Tablet 1, Egyptian

Museum in Cairo CG 41790, and Papyrus British Museum 10509), as well as

several Ramesside copies (Ostracon Deir el-Medina 1232–1234; Papyrus Turin

54014).

Papyrus Prisse has the complete and the oldest text. The other versions

are later and contain only parts of the text. Their fragmentary nature and choice of

the writing material indicates that they were used in schooling.

This actually

indicates that the norms from these maxims were communicated to young people,

mostly men, from early age. According to Joachim Friedrich Quack, it seems that

ancient Egyptians preferred other versions of the text than that of Papyrus Prisse,

bearing in mind the number of copies and the quotations.

This is the longest

Wisdom Text sometimes even attributed to the Old Kingdom, as the teaching is

set during the old age of vizier Ptahhotep in the reign of Djedkare-Isesi, ruler of

Gender of aggression 27

the 5th dynasty. However, this dating of the text is not universally accepted and

most scholars see Middle Kingdom as the time of its composition.

The texts

consist of 37 maxims, of which only several deal exclusively with women. Maxim

18 is preserved on several manuscripts, and in the version of Papyrus Prisse

(9, 7–13), where a man is advised to beware of approaching the women in a house

he enters if he wants his friendship with the man of the house to endure. Women are

dangerous because one can fall into lust for them and death comes from knowing

them.

Lana Troy discusses the metaphor used in the version of this maxim pre-

served in the text of Papyrus British Museum 10509 to illustrate the duality of a

woman. The blue-green faïence color of a woman’s limbs is said to transform into

ery orange or carnelian red color after she entraps a man.

This observation in-

dicates that the authors of this text present us with the idea of the dual and un-

predictable nature of women, since blue-green color was associated to pacication

and red to rage. In Maxim 21, a man is instructed not to contend with a woman in

court, to keep her from power, restrain her, and make her stay in the house.

One

should also mention an Old Kingdom text from the 6th dynasty tomb of Idu Seneni

at Qasr es/sayyad in which he praises his wife by stating that she did not utter a

statement that repelled his heart.

The maxims and this Old Kingdom text seem to

agree on the point that men expected women to be under their control.

Particularly informative about ancient Egyptian attitudes on violence, aggres-

sion, and gender relations is a text known as the Instructions of Ani. This text is

known from ve papyri, one scribe tablet, and at least nine ostraca dating from the

19th dynasty of the New Kingdom into the Late Period (a span of more than 600

years). While the text has been translated by several scholars and is well studied and

frequently commented upon, it is rarely discussed in the context of violence and

gender. And when reading the Instructions, one has to bear in mind the rank or

status of Ani’s audience and their gender. It is clear from the text that “he”, like

the author of the Maxims of Ptahhotep, addresses a masculine audience, parti-

cularly the scribal elite.

According to the Instructions of Ani, it is an abomination

or taboo (bw.t) to attack in anger (m

d.w) and Ani advises one to beware and not do

this.

This is an indication that certain forms of violence were viewed as un-

justied. Ani also advises a man to teach his wife how to act like a human (rmṯ).

Here, one should add another saying of Ani, namely the one in which he states

that a man should be asked about his occupation but a woman about the occu-

pation of her husband.

Hence, the status of a woman was dened in relation to

the status of her husband.

According to Depla, this passage from the Instructions

of Ani reects the career structure and social mobility in ancient Egyptian

society.

Ani also instructs a man to beware of a female stranger not known in her town.

More specically, he should not look or wink

at her behind the back of her

husband. He describes the woman who is away from her husband as deep water

that one cannot circle around. He uses direct speech to describe the words this

woman says to a man on a daily basis when there are no other witnesses: “I am

tender” ( jnk n

One is warned that this could lead to a deadly crime if it is

28 Gender of aggression

overheard, even if a man is not aware. Supposedly, a man can be saved from every

crime, except from this one.

Ani is clearly referring to adultery, of which more

will be said in Chapter 3. For now, it is important to mention that central to the

ancient Egyptian concept of identity was an individual’s relation to the town in

which one resided or was born.

A woman not known in her town does not

belong to the community and should not be desired. Being away from her husband,

she attempts to seduce others with no witnesses around, probably to avoid prying or

accusatory eyes. This representation indicates that there was social stigma attached to

adulterous women. The reasons for this will be discussed more thoroughly in

Chapter 3. Using this passage from the Instructions of Ani, Depla stressed the image

of the disreputable nature of the women with no ties to a place.

The avoidance of female strangers is explained even later in the Demotic

Instructions of Ankhsheshonq from the 1st century BC. A father is advised not to

let his son marry a woman from another town (XV, 15).

The same text expresses

distrust toward women where property is concerned, they should see it, but

should not be trusted with it (XII, 13–14), and the saved goods of a woman are

considered to be the product of theft (XIII, 21).

In Demotic Papyrus Louvre

2414 II 8–9, from 2nd century BC, the author advises the reader to beat his wife if

she insults him.

In Papyrus Insigner VIII, 4, from the 2nd century AD, it is stated

that a woman is beautiful when a man reveals her authority in her.

In a story

from Papyrus Petese II D7 II-D8, from 2nd century AD, a man tries to bury his

wife alive in order to marry another woman.

The image of a woman as potentially problematic is also found in other genres

of literature. In the Story of Cheops and the Magicians (Papyrus Westcar-Papyrus

Berlin 3033), written during the 13th dynasty,

the wife of the chief lector priest

Webaoner is described as adulterous. Her gardener reports these transgressions to

Webaoner who in turn retaliates. Webaoner asks the gardener to throw a wax

crocodile in the water behind his wife’s lover, a man of lower status (nḏs). The

wax model then turns into a seven-cubit (12 feet) long crocodile and takes hold of

the lover and pulls him down in the water. The priest also uses this opportunity to

demonstrate his magic to the king, calling the crocodile to bring the drowned

lover out of the water. The king repays Webaoner in kind by burning the latter’s

adulterous wife (rdj ḫt m -“place re on”)

and throwing her body into the

river.

As an additional punitive measure, Leonard H. Lesko has remarked that

the names of the wife and her lover were omitted from the story so as not to

preserve them in any way.

In fact, Hanna Jenni nicely pointed out that other

women mentioned in dierent episodes in the story are 20 young women en-

tertaining the king and a woman who will be the mother of the future kings. Only

this woman is named and her name is Ruddjedet.

Another account of adultery, in which the women involved are also unnamed,

appears in the Tale of Two Brothers (Papyrus D’Orbiney).

This tale dates to the

reign of Seti II, sixth king of the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom, and involves

the unnamed wife of a man called Anubis who tries to seduce his younger un-

married brother, Bata. Bata decides not to tell anyone. But, Anubis’s wife, out of

Gender of aggression 29

fear that her adulterous intentions will be exposed, collects fat and bandages to

supposedly attend her injuries and pretends to have been assaulted by Bata.

According to José das Candeias Sales, the author of the story purposely resorted to

a motif of domestic violence which would be easily recognized by his audience.

She then reports the assault to her husband, urging him to kill his brother. To

realize his brother’s end, Anubis chooses a spear. (As I discuss in Chapter 3, this

weapon is also used to punish Geb for the rape of Tefnut, an account discussed in

Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84 (12, 6–9), or the Mythological Manual of the Delta,

which dates to the 7th century BC, or more than 500 years later). Bata, however,

is saved by the god Re. He then tells his older brother about his wife’s attempts of

seduction, cuts o his own penis, and throws it into the water where it is promptly

swallowed by a catsh (also see Chapter 5 where mutilation of enemies is dis-

cussed). The act of severing weakens Bata. In the meantime, Anubis returns home,

slays his wife, and throws her remains to the dogs.

Later in the story, Bata marries

and one day he warns his wife not to go out in order not to be taken by the sea.

He states that in that case he cannot protect her, saying: “because I am a woman

like you” (p3-wn tw=j s.t-ḥm.t mj-ḳd=t).

This clearly evokes his emasculation

through self-mutilation. As the story progresses, the adulterous wife of Bata plots

with the king of Egypt to kill him, but Bata kills her instead.

It seems that women not belonging to the community were not the most

dangerous women which men could have imagined. Some classes of women were

considered to be potentially life threatening for men. New Kingdom Papyrus Turin

PR (121, 10) mentions potential death causes, and among them death through a

ḫnm.t. The word ḫnm.t (plural ḫnm.wt) is often translated as “prostitute”.

Gay Robins rightfully emphasized that the public domain in ancient Egyptian

society was dominated by men and that most of the representational evidence was

commissioned by male members of the scribal elite and executed by male artists.

The images of women produced by them are likely the images men had of

women, showing us the masculine ideal and not reality for all.

According to

Marc Orriols-Llonch, the dierence between the Wisdom and literary texts is that

the latter could have also communicated with women, and thus they could have

served their pedagogical purpose of showing women the dangers and con-

sequences of adultery.

What is just discourse for some is oppression for others.

One could develop this argument further in thinking about these texts in

Foucauldian terms, functioning as disciplinary mechanisms for the production of

women as loyal subjects to men. As such, these texts reinforce hegemonic gender

dispositions and symbolic violence; they suggested to both male and female readers

and recipients of the narratives that women are ultimately to blame for adultery.

Of course, the cultivation of symbolic violence in this manner is only possible if

women consumed such texts in whatever form their discourse was disseminated

(oral dissemination of narratives should not be neglected, as well). We have also

seen from the Instructions of Ani that men are advised not to give way to anger.

However, the expectations are one thing and may contrast with reality, which is

nicely illustrated by texts pertaining to juridical concerns.

30 Gender of aggression

In her analysis of primary texts about the juridical treatments of violence, Hue-

Arcé has dealt extensively with evidence of interpersonal violence from a gendered

perspective.

In her study of Deir el-Medina, a workmen’s village of the New

Kingdom, she identies cases of domestic violence involving husbands beating their

wives (Ostracon British Museum EA 65938, recto; Ostracon Deir el-Medina 919).

In both cases, the verb used is ḳnḳn.

This verb is also used to describe the beating

of criminals and enemy prisoners in war with a stick.

Grafton Elliot Smith and F.

Wood Jones mention that both Egyptian and Nubian locals at the time when they

conducted their survey of Nubia in 1910 used a sta called the naboot, both for

interpersonal violence and domestic aairs. Considering that the skeletal remains of

women in their sample show a high proportion of fractured forearms, they imply

that the naboot could have been used to inict these injuries.

In the Turin Indictment Papyrus, dating to the 4th regnal year of Ramesses

fourth king of the 20th dynasty of the New Kingdom, a man is charged with

cutting o the ear of Sekhatuemnefer, son of Baksetit, without the knowledge of

the Pharaoh.

He was also charged with setting re to the house of Mutnefret, as

well as blinding her and her daughter after the former came to speak with him.

In the text of the same papyrus, there is also a charge of causing the abortion of a

woman named Tarepit.

Unfortunately, we are left without the background

information, so we do not know under which circumstances this occurred.

Ostracon CGC 25521 (recto 12) informs us that a workman was absent from work

because he was beating his wife.

He was probably reported and had to answer for

this, and thus he did not appear at work. The fact that the reason for his absence

was registered indicates that others knew about the accusations. In Ostracon Nash

5 Recto, a woman accuses her husband of beating her.

It is possible that a man

named Amenemepet is the individual representing this woman, but the text is so

damaged that it is dicult to say who is speaking.

If indeed the woman made the

accusation then we would have evidence that women at least in some cases went

to the authorities to complain about the violent behaviors of their husbands.

Papyrus Deir el-Medina 26 B informs us that a woman was beaten, which made all

her limbs ache. The perpetrator was required to take an oath not to speak to her

again. This indicates the severity of the violence involved. Violent acts committed

by men against women could have caused abortions and serious physical injuries.

Missing from all these accounts are the outcomes. We often do not know if the

accused were found guilty and/or punished.

Evidence of possible sexual oences committed by the chief workman Paneb

from Deir el-Medina will be discussed in the next chapter. For now, it is im-

portant to mention that one of the accusations against him was that he took the

garment from a woman, and performed an act that is expressed in the text with the

verb ḏ3j (Papyrus Salt 124, recto 1, 19).

The said act likely involved bodily

violation. The word ḏ3jt in Late New Kingdom oracular decrees, as Jaana Toivari-

Viitala explains, signies some part of the abdomen. In the case of Paneb, such

accusations may refer to sexual abuse or rape.

As I detail in the next chapter,

Egyptian scribes seem to have preferred other verbs for dierent accusations of

Gender of aggression 31

inappropriate sexual intercourse, like adultery or rape. Furthermore, the word in

question is very badly preserved on the papyrus, in fact only the rst two signs (ḏ3)

are clear and the rest is not. The possible use of the determinative in the form of a

pustule ( ) indicates something bad, ḏ3 with the same determinative may also

mean an aiction of the eye.

Papyrus Lansing (British Museum 9994) from the 20th dynasty informs us that

the violence of the state did not impact only men. After not providing the grain

requested, a peasant is beaten, his wife is bound, and his children were put in

fetters.

A Moscow literary letter (Papyrus Pushkin 127, Col. 2, 7–8) of the 21st

dynasty of the Third Intermediate Period informs us that thieves robbed a man,

the women in his vicinity were killed, and her children were scattered.

There seem to be many more attestations for violence against women and

committed by women from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. In Papyrus Leiden

101 = SB VI 9068 from 3rd century BC, an Egyptian peasent named Petosiris

complains that while he was in the temple at night, men entered his house and

stole himations from his wife, his mother and his daughter in total value of 700

drachmas. They also wounded the women with swords, but no sexual violence is

reported and Petosiris does not claim that the stealing of clothes aected the

modesty of the women.

The attackers were clearly counting on weakness of

women in the absence of the men. In Papyrus Hibeh II 200, dated 246 or 241 BC,

we nd a description of a violent dispute between two women in a house, also

seen by a curious witness who was passing by.

In Papyrus Enteux 79 from 218

BC, Greek man named Herakleides accuses an Egyptian woman Psenobastis living

in Psya in Arsinoite nome of pouring urine on him while he was passing by. When

he confronted her and after they exchanged insults, she tore of a piece of his

himation making his chest bare in public and she spat in his face. He describes her

acts as hybris (ύβρις) and stresses that she took initiative in aggression.

In Papyrus

Enteux 82 from 221 BC, a Greek woman Philistia accuses Egyptian bath boy

Petekhon for injuring her in the bathhouse. He poured hot water over her,

burning her stomach and left thigh up to the knee. She complains that her life was

endangered and that the injuries on her hands impeded her from work. The focus

is on burns and consequences and not on the intentions of Petekhon.

In Papyrus

Enteux 83, dated to 221 BC, a woman named Thamounis complains to have be

assaulted by woman named Thothortaïs in the bathhouse. Thothortaïs wanted

Thamounis to leave the bath and when she refused, Thothortaïs hit her all over

the body and tore of her necklace. Thamounis also complains that she was de-

tained. It is important to stress that Thamounis was not a local.

We have already

seen that women foreign to the community were distrusted. Thothortaïs maybe

used this distrust to her benet. In Papyrus Enteux 80 from 217 BC, we nd

reports on violence in a chapel dedicated to Isis. The instigator is an Egyptian

woman Tnephérôs and the victims are Amenneus and his wife Stotoêtis. They

were hit by numerous blows in the chapel, and Stotoêtis is even pursued by the

sons of a certain Aximama, Hermippos and Poseidônios, and she locks herself in

one of the rooms of the chapel. But Tnephérôs then threw the two children of

32 Gender of aggression

Stotoêtis in a chest. Amenneus took refuge on the altar and called for help. People,

no doubt other villagers, came to their aid. They condemned the aggressors who

move away and leave the family in peace.

In Papyrus Sorbonne inv. 2304,

Fragment A = SB × 10271, dated to 206 BC, a woman named Thaêsis accuses

another woman named Hermionê, for throwing her to the ground, for hitting her

with both hands all over her body, for biting her left shoulder and for tearing a

piece of her esh. This was seen by ve witnesses.

In Demotic Papyrus Siut

10591 B II 1–2, dated to 170 BC, a woman named Chered-Ankh complains that

one Difopis had her husband Totoes, who was his half-brother, as they shared the

same father, taken and perhaps imprisoned. He forced him to divide the property

Totoes inherited from their father and Chered-Ankh was forced to conrm this

division. In Demotic Papyrus Siut 10591 verso IV 9–10, dated to 170–169 BC, we

nd out not only that judges decided that Difopis should get his share of the

inheritance, but that Chered-Ankh complained that she was put in prison and later

taken to a temple by a man by force who beat her and threatened her.

In Papyrus

Tebtunis III, 1, 800 from 153 or 142 BC, a Jewish man named Sabbataios

complains that his preganant wife was injured by a Jewish woman named Iôanna.

The husband requests that the accused be detained until his wife’s state of health

improved.

In Papyrus Berlin BGU VII 1855, which dates from the 2nd or 1st

century BC, a man complains about two men who entered the house of his

mother and endangered her life. However, he does not emphasize the gender of

the victim.

A woman named Apollonia and her sisters complain that their uncle

stole wheat from their house as reported in Papyrus Dryton 33 (1, 19) from around

140 BC and took possession of their vineyard as reported in Papyrus Dryton 34 (1,

18). A woman named Makaria accuses her husband of throwing her out of the

house, as reported in Papyrus Berlin BGU VIII 1820, a text which dates to at least

55 BC.

A woman named Taarmiusis who lived in the rst half of the 1st century

BC submitted a petition on behalf of her mother who was hit so badly by an

attacker “at a late hour” that she was in mortal danger (Papyrus Tebtunis 2, 283).

In 89 BC, a woman named Tereus argued in the street of Hermopolis with a

woman named Tetearmais when the former was ve-month pregnant. The ar-

gument escalated and Tetearmais hit Tereus everywhere she could on her body

which led to mortal danger (Papyrus Rylands 2, 68).

The evidence from Roman Egypt informs us that violence was status-

dependent. In Demotic Ostracon Tempeleide 224 from 8 BC, a man named

Pachnumis had to swear to Lulus that he did not beat his wife Taesis because she

grasped his cloth.

In Papyrus Michigan VI 425 from 198 AD, a cheiristes (one of

the ancient Greek terms for managers or administrators) is accused of beating the

petitioner’s mother and demolishing the doors of their house, even though they

owed nothing to the scus.

In the text of Papyrus Oxyrhynchos VIII 1120 from

early 3rd century AD, a widow complains that she cannot defend herself.

The

woman complains of an attack on several people at her home; she describes the

attack on her son in law as hybris and an attack against her servant girl as bia (βία-

violence against property).

The text of a fragmentary parchment book (Papyrus

Gender of aggression 33

Berlin BGU IV 1024) found in Hermopolis and copied in the 4th century AD

mentions various cases of violence, such as the murder of three women by men

with whom they had sexual relationships, the murder of an adulterous woman,

and the murder of an unmarried woman and her lover. Also, worth mentioning is

the case of a prostitute who was murdered by Diodemus of the senatorial order.

Her mother Theodora complains that she handed her daughter to the brothel

keeper because they were poor and asks for a portion to be paid to her; with the

loss of her daughter, she has lost a source of income. Diodemus was executed by

decapitation for this oence.

From Hermopolis Magna in the 4th century AD,

the Papyrus Chrest.Mitt. 126 (= Papyrus Amherst 2 141) documents a petition

from Aurelia Thaesis who was attacked by her brother and his wife Ria.

According to her testimony, they knocked her to the ground, tore her clothes,

nearly killed her, and bruised her face. In her account, she insisted that she was a

weak and widowed woman who seeks justice.

The texts with juridical background indicate that at least until the Ptolemaic

and Roman periods in Egypt, men’s violence toward women was reported in only

select cases, mostly domestic violence in the form of wife beating. Women’s

violence toward men or other women, on the other hand, does not seem to have

been on the agenda, at least based on available sources. That violence against

women was a matter of concern is also attested in the Papyrus Harris I (78, 8–9) in

which Ramesses III, the second king of the 20th dynasty of the New Kingdom,

boasts that under his rule a woman could travel safely throughout Egypt.

Both

the literary texts and texts with juridical background that spanned from pharaonic

Egypt until the Ptolemaic and Roman period indicate that women could be

victims of domestic and public violence, and that they are less frequently perpe-

trators of violence. One wonders whether this is to reinforce the notion of women

as passive and restrained, or because women let men feud for them (in order to

comply with an idealized image of femininity), like Bo Jensen has argued is the

case for the Vikings.

Hue-Arcé argues that the number of texts reporting on violence at Deir el-

Medina is rather small (not more than 20) and considers the possibility that legal

authorities may not have been the rst choice of the inhabitants of the village.

Rather, it may be that the family played a signicant role in the regulation of

conicts.

Indeed, we have seen this in the in The Tale of Two Brothers and more

evidence for this will be discussed based on the The Contendings of Horus and Seth.

Cases of domestic violence may not have reached the authorities. Perhaps the state

intervened only in cases where a conict could not be resolved by the community.

The justice provided was according to the logic of kinship.

Clearly, while aggression in ancient Egypt seems to have been understood as an

aspect of masculinity, women could also behave aggressively. This is especially

clear from evidence from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. However, which women

were depicted as aggressive and in which contexts seems to have been quite strictly

regulated by decorum (Chapter 4). Hue-Arcé stressed that in many of the cases of

violence in Ptolemaic Egypt the focus was not on gender, but rather on the

34 Gender of aggression

dierences in ethnic identity and status of the actors and victims. She does not

argue that gender should be excluded from the discussion, but that it should be put

into an intersectional context, where it is crossed by other facets of personal

identity.

Indeed, the same can be argued for cases of violence in Roman Egypt.

Only assaults committed against pregnant women clearly stress the gender of the

victim.

2.1.2 Bioarchaeological evidence

The reality of past violence is perhaps best reected in actual physical remains of

the victims. A comprehensive study of trauma as gleaned from bodies, in com-

parison with textual attestations, could provide us with a deeper understanding.

However, physical anthropological evidence of trauma and its gender distribution

is still an emerging question within the archaeology of Egypt and studies are

available from only a selection of sites. The reasons for this are multiple. Beyond

the estimation of sex and age of the buried individual, bioarchaeological data are

still lacking in most publications. Additionally, evidence of trauma or interpersonal

violence is still sensationalized. Many cases appear in specialized journals. They are

treated as singular phenomenon – rarely discussed in their broader socio-cultural

contexts or compared to other source materials like texts and iconography.

Gendered approaches to bioarchaeological data are even rarer with regard to

trauma.

Finally, the main problem one faces is not only a small number of

published studies, but their broad spatial and chronological distributions.

There is evidence for deliberate decapitation from Predynastic Hierakonpolis of

mid 4th millennium BC or Naqada IIA-C. Out of over 500 excavated individuals

from cemetery HK43 21 (11 men, 2 women and 8 indetermined) had lacerations

of vertebrae. Most of the burials with these individuals were disturbed, but seven

received a common burial treatment for the period. Several possible interpreta-

tions have been suggested, with the most favored one being that these people were

social deviants.

Although the sample is small, women are clearly not as many as

men among theem. There is good evidence that the torture of commoners oc-

curred in Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. We see such evidence –

30% of individuals; 37% adults and 8% subadults – in the late 5th Dynasty of the

Old Kingdtom to First Intermediate Period community of Elephantine island, on

the First Cataract. Where gender distribution is concerned not much dierence

could be discerned, as 47% of men and 44% of women were aected by vio-

lence.

It has also been reported, based on the study of 271 skeletons from Old

Kingdom Giza workers, that the highest incidence of bone fractures occurred in

male workers (43.75%), while it was 20.73% in high ocial males. It was 26.41%

in female workers and 16.66% in female elite. Therefore, gender dierence was

found mainly between the workers. The most aected bone was the right ulna.

Head injuries were also higher among the workers.

Clearly, being a lower class

woman meant being exposed to more injuries during lifetime. Here we see an

intersection of class and gender in the eects of structural violence. There is also

Gender of aggression 35

some evidence for trauma on skeletal remains of Old Kingdom and First

Intermediate Period at Mendes in the Delta, however not sucient to argue in

favour of a gendered pattern.

Evidence from the analysis of 257 skeletons from Tell el-Dab

a (ancient Avaris,

capital of the Hyksos kingdom) indicates that during the Second Intermediate

Period women had lower life expectancy (30 years) than men (34,4 years).

canot be excluded that this is the consequence of structural violence on gender

level. It is also still not possible to compare the situation in Avaris with other towns

under its domain as the available samples are still small.

Another case from Tell

el-Dab

a is worth mentioning. It is a number of late Second Intermediate Period

burials dug into the remains of what was previously a palace. Although anthro-

pological report was never published, it was suggested that these are the burials of

Nubian soldiers who died during the taking of Avaris by Theban king Ahmose.

Elsewhere I pointed to the problems behind racial and ethnic attributions of these

bodies. The dating into the time of the conquest of Avaris by king Ahmose is also

not supported by evidence. I also stressed that some of these burials contained

adult individuals together with children.

Without anthropological studies of the

skeletons we cannot say if these individuals were indeed all men. It would be

interesting to investigate if there is evidence of trauma which can be related to

violence. In that case the challenge would be to argue if these people were

combatants or noncombatants.

We also see evidence of violence committed against commoners at Amarna

during the 18th dynasty reign of Akhenaten. Adults interred in the North Tombs

cemetery display common injuries, such as spinal fractures (25.8%), Schmorl’s

nodes (12.9%), and limb fractures in areas other than the spine (9.8%). Also

common was arthritis with 6.5% individuals exhibiting spinal degeneration and

12.9% showing degeneration of arms and/or legs. Subadults on the other hand

show high rates of spinal fractures (15.4%), fractures in areas other than the spine

(13%), and Schmorl’s nodes (4.3%).

Some 102 individuals from the North

Tombs cemetery were predominately 7–24 years old at the time of death. That

same trend has been recorded in an additional 81 individuals excavated in 2017.

This is why the authors carefully suggested that these individuals could be the

labor force involved in building and maintaining the city, possibly consisting also

of young prisoners of war

(see also Chapter 4). The studied individuals from

Amarna show a very low frequency of injuries suggestive of interpersonal vio-

lence. Just four adult individuals (2.1%) exhibit traumatic injuries consistent with

weapon wounds.

Anthropological analyses of skeletal remains from tombs TT

84-Amunedjeh or Mery from the time of Thutmose III-Amenhotep II, TT 85-

Amenemheb, also called Mahu from the same period and TT 95-Mery from the

time of Amenhotep II, from the necropolis of Sheikh Abd el Gurna in Thebes

West in Upper Egypt showed presence of trauma caused by violence. These tombs

were built in the New Kingdom but were used until the end of Late Period

around 330 BC. All trauma residues were observed in a considerable number of

individuals (12,3% to 22,6% depending on the tomb, mean being 15,8%). Healed

36 Gender of aggression

radial fractures are frequently observed, but cases of oval osseous defects at

occipito-paretial transition zone are also known on a female skull. In most cases,

healed fractures of the fore arm bones, the claviculae and the skulls (pyramideal

fractures) were recorded. Several lesions of the fore arms are typical lesions seen

when the arms are raised to defend from a blow. In one case, there is evidence on a

skull for a possible homicide (round paretial osseous defect with infundibular

widening of the tabula interna). No gender patterns were argued.

There are also studies which dealt with the evidence from later period of an-

cient Egyptian history. A man from a Third Intermediate Period shaft tomb

(chamber C, individual T45) found under the temple of Amenhotep II at Luxor

had depressed fracture of the skull on the right parietal bone caused by a blunt

instrument such as a stone, or even a mace or a club. He also suered from a

trauma on the distal part of the left tibia, inicted transversely and resulting in an

open fracture which led to osteomyelitis. He also showed work related stress

markers on both cervical vertebrae and lower limbs.

100

Joyce M. Filer analyzed

1726 skulls from Giza known as the E series and dating to 26th until 30th dynasty.

Only 21 (1,2%) skulls showed head injuries and majority were mature to old

individuals. 12 were men or probably men, four were women or probably women

and for ve sex could not be determined. Severe gashes and incomplete and

complete slice injuries consistent with attacks from swords, axes and crushing

weapons were detected. These are suggestive of militaristic behaviour and seem to

have aected men in this group more than women.

101

The results of bioarch-

aeological investigations of cranial trauma from Bahriyah Oasis during the

Ptolemaic and Roman period showed that 31 (19.4%) of 160 crania showed traces

of trauma, with the rate in men being 18.6% and 20.6% in women. The highest

prevalence being on the parietal bone (65.9%), followed by frontal bone (27.3%)

and occipital bone (6.8%). Depression fractures were present in 88.6% of trauma

events and blade injuries in up to 11.7%. The authors of the study argued that

Roman rule in Egypt contributed to violence as the population experienced social

stress which morphed into interpersonal violence.

102

Slightly higher number of

women with traces of trauma on skulls should not be left unnoticed. From Roman

Egypt, there is also a possible case of child abuse.

103

Burial 519 from the Kellis 2

cemetery at Dakhleh Oasis is a 2–3 years old child with evidence of multiple

trauma and healing events. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope evidence also points

to metabolic disturbances and diet changes that correlate with these traumatic

events. Nothing in the burial itself indicates that this interment was in any manner

exceptional compared to others. Yet, the presence of high-level trauma indicates

that this individual was a victim of ongoing violence. The authors of the pub-

lication of this burial interpret it as a case of child abuse in a domestic context and

stress that it is an exceptional case from this cemetery. As such, it should not be

taken as evidence of a wide-distributed practice among the inhabitants of Roman

Dakhleh. Recent analysis of the skull of the Roman period 25–35 year old woman

from Thebes held in the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art Luxembourg (in-

ventory number 2012- 025/0021) using computed tomography revealed a lethal

Gender of aggression 37

blunt force trauma aecting the dorsal parts of the parietal bones and being the

cause of death. Localized shaving of the hair on the aected area indicates that

eorts were made to keep this woman alive.

104

In the roughly contemporary

Meroitic sample of 592 individuals from Semna South in Nubia, almost 21% of

individuals exhibited at least one healed fracture. Craniofacial fractures were found

both in men and women and point to interpersonal violence. There was a sta-

tistically signicant connection betweeen men and occurance of injuries on frontal

cranial bones. It is inconclusive if women were injured in interpersonal violence or

through raids. Some of the bone fractures could have been accidental, con-

sequence of moving in the rocky landscape of the river bank and doing various

activities such as fetching water. Using ethnographic paralells it was argued that

these activities were more undertaken by women.

105

Some interesting evidence of gendered violence comes from Nubia, Egypt’s

southern neighboring culture. Joyce M. Filer analyzed 309 skulls from Eastern

Cemetery at Kerma out of which 34 (11%) showed head injuries. The majority of

these individuals were mature to old and had mainly oval and depressed head

lesions, consistent with attack from stones, sticks, maces and clubs. According to

Filer these types of injuries indicate domestic disputes. Out of 34 individuals with

such injuries 44,1% were women, which in Filer’s opinion has to be explained

with non-military disputes because she assumes that women in Nubia were not

military active.

106

Margaret A. Judd showed that there was no statistical sig-

nicance behind the gender distribution of injuries for her sample of individuals

from the Kerma period (ca. 2,500–1,500 BC) in Sudan. Multiple injuries present

on crania and long bones were traced on female individuals from both rural and

urban Kerma communities, which led her to the conclusion that women of dif-

ferent social standing were equally exposed to interpersonal violence.

107

The bioarchaeological evidence cited above is based on traces of trauma.

However, not all violence leaves traces on human bones and many violent acts

aect only the soft tissue, meaning that through bioarchaeology we are mostly

only able to observe either extreme forms of violence or continuous violence. For

example, only 16.6% of assault injuries in the USA are classied as muscular/

skeletal and many would not be observable in archaeological records. Also, a

person’s skeleton occupies about 60% of the target area of a body, meaning that

the frequency of injuries detected on skeletal remains represents only the tip of the

iceberg.

108

In none of the above-discussed cases, do we note a great discrepancy in

the occurrence of trauma between genders. However, shorter life expectancy and

slightly higher exposure to head injuries have been argued for women from some

sites. However, we have to consider that some episodes of violence escape de-

tection, and as we have seen from the discussion on textual evidence for violence,

most of the violent acts in everyday life were not only rarely reported but also

were of such a background that they probably did not leave traces on the skele-

tons. Systematic studies of frequency of trauma on human remains from dierent

periods of ancient Egyptian history are lacking because bioarchaeological studies of

human remains are not numerous in Egyptian archaeology. Comparative studies

38 Gender of aggression

cannot be conducted using the existing results because we would be comparing

evidence from only few sites per period. There is clearly room for more research

in this direction.

2.1.3 Iconography

As in the case of textual attestations, there are numerous visual representations of

various violent encounters between men. However, instances of violence of men

against women, women against men, and women against women are even smaller

than those found in texts. Most of these attestations have militaristic overtones.

Depictions of men violating women illustrate battles and their aftermath. In such

cases, female victims are not Egyptian women. Visual representations of women

perpetrating violence against men include rare representations of foreign women

possibly acting violently either against men from their own society or against

Egyptian soldiers. Where representations of violence of women against women are

concerned, we are again dealing with representations from the military sphere in

the broadest sense, or more closely to the even more narrowly dened royal

sphere. Namely, representations of violence of women against women are found

in the example of the famous smiting of the enemy motif. Queens Tiye and

Nefertiti are depicted trampling and vanquishing foreign women. I discuss the

details and background of all these representations in Chapter 4.

In the case of non-royal elite and commoners, there are no known re-

presentations of violence committed by women against men and women against

women. This dearth of information could be related to women’s association with

passivity in ancient Egyptian funerary iconography from elite tombs. In the Old

Kingdom, nonroyal women normally shared their husband’s tomb chapel. There

are also chapels entombing men with their children, but which make no mention

of their wives. In contrast, cases where a woman does not mention her husband

are rare. When a woman shared a tomb with her husband, she was a secondary

gure. She is, for example, shown sitting on the subordinate (right) side of the

oering table.

109

This pattern continues in periods after the Old Kingdom,

however one has to stress that we are dealing with the elite. Less elaborate burials

of women of lower status are known throughout Egyptian history. In the New

Kingdom, women also did not usually own their own tombs, and in the tombs of

men, the decoration revolves around the owner. A man occupies the more

prestigious position being depicted in front of the woman. Elite women parti-

cularly are more often than not shown in a passive pose, especially when depicted

next to men. Their feet are close together and their arms embrace their husbands

or are placed at their sides, folded to grasp the opposite shoulder, or holding lotus

owers to their noses. Poses of men are more active and occupy more space. Men,

for instance, are shown actively carrying out the ritual in oering scenes.

110

As far

as their body positions, one of their feet is usually shown striding forward and one

hand reaches out and holds a sta or an oering, while the other could hold an

Gender of aggression 39

emblem of ocial power. As Ann Macy Roth nicely summarized “Men’s gestures

reached out to the world, while women’s turned inward”.

111

There is an exceptional case in which an Egyptian woman is depicted in a

violent act against presumably an Egyptian man. Evidence for the violent acts of

foreign women depicted in ancient Egyptian art will be discussed in Chapter 4.

Egyptian woman or a goddess ghting with, presumably, an Egyptian man is

found on the Ostracon Cairo CG 25125 (painted limestone, height 25 cm, width

38 cm).

112

The ostracon was found in KV 9, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Ramesses V originally constructed this tomb and was interred there after his death.

His uncle, Ramesses VI, later reused the tomb as his own. Ostraca are media often

used by Egyptians of the New Kingdom for the expression of satirical ideas and a

topsy-turvy world.

113

This should at least indicate that what we see in this scene is

not a normative view of war or women’s passivity.

There are two registers depicted on the ostracon. In the upper register, there is

a depiction of a woman in a chariot pulled by mares (Figure 2.1). She is shooting

an arrow from a bow. Next to her is a chariot driver who is a small male gure.

The woman wears a crown and has a uraeus on her forehead (the stylized, upright

form of a cobra, used as a symbol of sovereign and divine authority). She has

already red numerous arrows, which y toward her opponent, a male gure in a

chariot pulled by horses. While the gure on the right is damaged, a kilt suggests

he is a man. He too has red numerous arrows to fend o those of his opponent

on the left. The latter, a woman, has been identied as a queen,

114

queen Tausret

being the most likely contender,

115

or the goddess Astarte (see below).

116

argue the latter, Heidi Köpp-Junk has pointed to a later depiction of the goddess

Astarte from the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu where she is represented in a chariot.

117

The reason some Egyptologists interpreted the gure as Tausret is that she was the

last known ruler of the 19th Dynasty. Her rule ended in a civil war which is

documented on the Elephantine stela of her successor Setnakhte, founder of the

20th dynasty. According to Friedhelm Homann, the Ramesside clothing of the

gure does not indicate a goddess. Her horses have also been hit by arrows,

whereas her opponents’ are unscathed. Homan also noted that in the lower

being hit.

118

He is however reluctant to interpret this scene. Patrick F. Houlihan

understands the image as humorous, possibly making fun of the political turmoil,

regardless of the woman’s status as queen or goddess.

119

Cristina Gil Paneque also

concurs that the scene could depict a legend or a parody.

120

Most recently, Michael Bányai suggests that the warring individuals could be

Tausret and Amenmese during her attempt for legitimization.

121

Such an inter-

pretation, however, seems improbable, because she would hardly express her le-

gitimacy with a defeat in battle. Additionally, the context of this depiction is an

ostracon, hardly a medium for the visual expression of kings’ ideological state-

ments, whether male or female. I would also like to highlight an additional

gendered aspect of this scene, the gender of the horses. Namely, the woman is

riding a chariot pulled by mares, whereas her opponents are stallions. Bearing in

40 Gender of aggression

mind the unusual motif of a woman or a goddess ghting against a man or a god,

the dierence in animals’ gender was surely intentional. Looking at the scene on

the ostracon, one is reminded of the question posed by Amenemhat I (New

Kingdom Papyrus Millingen II.7), the rst ruler of the 12th dynasty of the Middle

Kingdom: “Have women ever led armies?”

122

2.1.4 Warrior women

Amenemhat I posed this question to express shock that someone had rebelled

against him. He found the rebellion against him as strange as the idea of women

leading armies. War and the military where almost entirely masculine spheres of

social life in ancient Egypt. Military parades as part of religious festivals, although

being witnessed by both men and women, presented ancient Egyptian masculine

power.

123

However, as I will discuss in Chapter 4, some women, such as female

kings and queens (chief royal wives of the pharaohs), could have employed the

discourse of power restricted to men. Despite evidence of women’s power,

scholars have either overinterpreted or neglected their active roles.

Warrior women have long been agenda topic of concern in gender archae-

ology. Burials of females with weaponry and ancient textual sources describing the

activities of women in war provide cross-cultural evidence of warrior women.

124

Of course, critical reection is necessary when engaging with the latter. Ancient

reports about warrior women were often authored by individuals who were not

members of society. Greeks’ and Romans’ reports about Amazons are one well

known example, and archaeologists have since used these ancient writings to

interpret Scythian and Sarmatian female burials with weaponry.

125

The problem

here is not whether Amazons really existed for the Greeks and Romans and if

there was ever a woman who wielded a weapon in the steppes and beyond.

Rather, when used uncritically, such accounts neglect the plethora of meanings

attributed to Amazons

126

and the social contexts which led some women to wield

weapons.

FIGURE 2.1 Ostracon Cairo CG 25125, height 25 cm, width 38 cm, line drawing by

the author based on a photograph, detail, no scale (after Daressy, Ostraca, Pl. XXIV).

Gender of aggression 41

In Egypt, Demotic literature also attests to Amazons’ military prowess although

they are not named as such.

127

An ancient Egyptian hero Petekhons in the story

preserved on Demotic papyri – Papyrus Vindob. D 6165 and Papyrus Vindob. D

6165A, from the 1st century AD – organized a military campaign with the

Assyrians in “the land of the women in the east”. Their battle was a tie and

Petekhons fell in love with their queen Sarpot. An alliance born of passion was

formed between the two, which in turn enabled them to defeat invading Indian

troops.

128

Alexandra von Lieven has speculated whether, because of the presence

of Assyrian troops in Petekhons’ army, the background of the story could not be

an account of 1–2nd century AD Greek historian Arrian (V, 7) in which

Semiramis, the Assyrian queen, wanted to conquer India, but died before ac-

complishing her goal.

129

The warrior women phenomenon has also been discussed in Egyptian ar-

chaeology. This is nicely exemplied by queen Ahhotep I of the 18th dynasty.

Ahhotep I was buried in Dra Abu el–Naga in western Thebes. Her tomb con-

tained two axes, two daggers, and jewelry including precious metal y pendants.

The state authorities usually gave these pendants as a reward for bravery in battle

and they have been interpreted by some as evidence for her participation in war.

In addition to these grave goods, the text of her son’s Ahmose stela from Karnak

(CG 34001, lines 24–27) recounts that Ahhotep recruited infantry, protected

refugees, pacied Upper Egypt, and expelled the rebels.

130

Collectively, such

evidence has led some Egyptologists to argue in favor of her leading the Egyptian

army

131

or of “her active role during the Hyksos war”.

132

Eduard Meyer has even

suggested that she could have been a Minoan princess married to an Egyptian king

through a diplomatic arrangement after the Cretan rulers helped Egyptians in their

war against the Hyksos.

133

His suggestion is based on the depiction of a grin on

one of the axes and an epithet that attests to her as “mistress of the banks of ḥ3w

nb.wt”, a vague term that probably signied the north and the sea. His hypothesis is

rejected today. However, there is no agreement among Egyptologists on the

identication of Ahhotep I as mother of king Ahmose mentioned in his stela from

Karnak. This is because the con (CG 61006) of another woman, Ahhotep II,

found in the cache from Deir el-Bahari (DB 320) was suggested as the candidate

for the mother of Ahmose as she carries the title mw.t nswt “king’s mother” and

Ahhotep I does not.

134

Kim S. B. Ryholt argued that no object with the name of

Seqenre was found in the burial of Ahhotep I and this would be unusual if she

would have been the wife of Seqenre and mother of Ahmose.

135

Marianne Eaton-

Krauss suggested that the reason the title “king’s mother” is missing on the Dra

Abu el-Naga con of Ahhotep I is because it was produced before she acquired

this title.

136

Andrea Gnirs has argued that Ahhotep I’s interred weapons are not unusual,

given the burials and grave goods of elite women who died in the Second

Intermediate Period; this period is chronologically close to the one in which

Ahhotep I lived.

137

There does seem to be evidence, however, that her burial was

a reinternment.

138

Furthermore, the text of the stela of Ahmose in Karnak, often

42 Gender of aggression

quoted in support of her military activities, was actually composed by Ahmose.

Gnirs argued that the use of past forms in the text of the Karnak stela of Ahmose

indicates that the text relies on actual political events.

139

However, Ahhotep’s

military activities could have been attributed to her by her son, not necessarily

reecting reality. One must take care, then, not to confuse the prominent role

ancient Egyptian queens and female kings could have had in organizing or sup-

porting military campaigns with their actual presence on the battleeld or during

military campaigns. Filip Taterka provides extensive evidence that contrasts the

often encountered image of the female king Hatshepsut as a pacist. Like other

rulers of the 18th dynasty, Hatshepsut also organized military campaigns.

140

Therefore, until contrasting evidence appears, there is nothing to suggest that

queen Ahhotep was more involved in military aairs beyond organization and

support, like Hatshepsut. This argument could also be applied to some male kings

who claimed to have led armies into battle, e.g., Tutankhamun. Androcentric

positions often engender skepticism about female rulers’ participation or in-

volvement in war, whereas for male rulers, the male military trope is often as-

sumed and not questioned. Yet, in the absence of corroborating evidence, we

have to be cautious with both.

There are some intriguing sources that document the participation in war of

Libyan women who engaged in conicts with Egyptians instigated during Year 5

of Merenptah’s reign.

141

The text of unnumbered stela from the Egyptian

Museum in Cairo describes the campaign of Psammethicus I against the chief of

the land of Libu (Libya), and there it is stated that Tehenu Libyans consisted of

both men and women (m ṯ3y.w ḥm.wt).

142

Much later Herodotus (History IV, 193)

reiterates: “Next to the Maxyes of Libya are the Zauekes, whose women drive

their chariots to war”.

143

Similar masculinizations of foreign women in the

compositions of Greek and Roman authors have been interpreted as deliberate

ideological gender inversions used as indicators of barbarism.

144

Strabo (Geography

17. I. 54), for example, describes the kandake of Meroe as a masculine one-eyed

woman and her troops as not keen for ghting.

145

Here, he is clearly de-

feminizing the kandake and de-masculinizing her troops. In Diodorus Siculus (1st

century BC), Agatharchides reports how the Ethiopians employed women in war:

“They also arm their women, dening for them a military age. It is customary for

most of these women to have a bronze ring through one of their lips”.

146

This is

repeated by Strabo in rst century AD.

147

We always have to be careful not to take

these outsider perspectives either too seriously or to entirely neglect them.

It is indeed intriguing that both Merenptah and Psammethicus I report on the

participation of Libyan women in war, a case that is later mentioned by Herodotus. If

true, this detail did not escape the Egyptians, bearing in mind that female participation

in war was something hardly imaginable for them. In Chapter 4, I consider other cases

of foreign women engaged in combat, as represented by the ancient Egyptians.

Pamela L. Geller emphasized that evidence for warrior women is important because it

provides a powerful response to our western heteropatriarchal sex/gender system.

148

In ancient Egypt, however, warrior women were considered alien, a gender

Gender of aggression 43

transgression. In Chapter 5, I will argue that when ancient Egyptian female rulers and

queens are depicted acting violently against enemies, this is not so much a response to

the ancient Egyptian sex/gender system privileging men, but rather a conrmation of

this privilege tying masculinity to power.

2.2 A gendered view of violence in the divine world

Like violence in the human world, there is abundant evidence of violent en-

counters between male deities that varies in degree of severity. Textual evidence of

violent acts committed by female against male deities occurs, but are not nu-

merous. For those instances in which male deities perpetrate violence against fe-

male deities, these are predominantly cases of sexual violence (Chapter 3). Acts of

violence committed by female deities against other female deities are, as far as I am

aware, nonexistent. Because these presentations parallel strikingly with the textual

attestations of gender and violence in the human world, they deserve attention.

The complexity of violence and divine reactions are nicely illustrated by The

Contendings of Horus and Seth (Papyrus Chester Beatty I) from the time of Ramesses

V. This account satirizes the lawsuit between the god Horus, rightful heir to the

crown of Egypt, and the god Seth, his uncle who usurped the crown by murdering

Horus’s father Osiris. In several episodes of the story, dierent deities act violently.

As they vie for the throne, Seth and Horus transform into hippopotami. Isis, the

mother of Horus and wife of Osiris, fearing for her son, throws a harpoon into the

water but accidentally hits Horus in his hippo form. He then begs her to remove

the weapon by revealing himself as her son. She throws the harpoon again and this

time hits Seth who also begs her to remove the weapon on the account that he is

her brother. When she does this out of pity for him, an enraged Horus cuts her

head o and wonders o with it somewhere. This is reported to the nine deities of

the Ennead and its head Re, who conclude that Horus should be punished. Seth

nds him and removes his eyes without the permission of Re. After his eyes have

been healed by Hathor, they go to the Ennead and make a truce.

149

Said truce,

however, is broken by Seth when he attempts to sexually penetrating Horus as

proof of his dominance (Chapter 3).

In her analysis of The Contending of Horus and Seth, Deborah Sweeney deals with

gender and conversational tactics, showing that such tactics cannot be grouped

binarily. Although some male gods, such as Re and Seth, use insults, stalling, and

stress their own importance, other male and female deities, in general, exert more

exibility. The goddess Neith, for instance, makes her requests in a very assertive

way. Isis adopts a position of a low status and helpless old woman. Male gods, such

as Thoth and Shu, provide a balanced and alternative image of masculinity in

comparison to Seth and Re.

150

Sweeney argues that the text’s author draws on the

following presumptions: his own and his audience’s experience and expectations

of how people argued, litigated, and negotiated; notions about how men and

women were thought to speak in public and in private; and negative and positive

views of types of speech and interactions. She uses this text cautiously to argue

44 Gender of aggression

how men and women verbally interacted in the Ramesside period (19th and 20th

dynasties). In fact, her observations about Isis and her restrained, less direct, and

more cunning tactics in resolving issues, ts well with the idealized image of a

family woman in ancient Egypt as passive and subordinate to men. Indeed, we

have seen that this is the desired behavior of women in Wisdom Texts. This

characterization is especially true if one bears in mind that Isis is the eternal mother

and widow, whose husbandless status epitomized weakness.

151

In Chapter 5, I will

discuss the widow metaphor as it applies to the feminization of enemies. In fact,

Isis’s cunning, strategic in its avoidance of violence and aggression, is also implied

in a myth describing how she tricks Re into telling her his full name.

152

In contrast, to Isis, there are goddesses whose aggressive, violent, and warlike

features function as major assets. In the story of The Destruction of Mankind – rst part

of the longer The Book of the Heavenly Cow known from ve royal tombs of the New

Kingdom (Tutankhamun, Seti I, Ramesses II, Ramesses III, and Ramesses VI) – the

goddess Sekhmet, whose name means the mighty one, plays the role of a destroyer.

In this story, humankind plots against an aged Re. When he discovered this betrayal,

he summoned his Eye and fellow deities. The gods advised him to send his Eye in

the form of Hathor to destroy humanity, who had ed into the desert. This is how

Sekhmet came into being, an Egyptian goddess usually depicted as a woman with

the head of a lioness. Re, however, realized that Sekhmet would destroy all people.

To prevent this slaughter from occurring, he ordered the preparation of 7,000 jars of

beer. When mixed with ocher, the beer looked like blood. As people sought safety

in the south, Re ordered the red-colored beer to be carried to the place where

Sekhmet planned to slay them. When the goddess came, she was pleased by the sight

and drank the beer thinking it was blood, and she returned drunk from the south as

a beautiful woman.

153

In later versions of the story, like the Myth of the Sun Eye, the

goddess is eeing to the south for an unknown reason and a small monkey is sent to

bring her back. After several discussions with the goddess, the monkey manages to

persuade her to come back to Egypt. In one episode of the story, the enraged

goddess turns into a giant lioness.

154

Sekhmet is often represented in royal texts in the context of conict with

enemies. Along with her martial aspects, she also appears as the Eye of Re and

Horus, as punisher in the Underworld, and as a protective goddess in magico-

medical texts.

155

The actions and features of the king were often compared to

those of this goddess. Already in the turbulent First Intermediate Period, when

Egypt was divided between Herakleopolitan kingdom in the north and Theban

kingdom in the south, we nd a textual attestation of Sekhmet’s war aspect

mentioned by a local warlord. In a grato from the quarries of Hatnub, Kay, son

of Nehri, speaks about replacing the troops who have been disbanded as a result of

a rebellion. He states that people feared him as from Sekhmet during battle.

156

This would indicate that powerful individuals in this period could associate

themselves with some features of the goddess, a practice which is soon to be

restricted to kings.

Gender of aggression 45

In the text of Papyrus London UC 32157 (Papyrus Kahun LV.1, Recto, II,20),

which includes a hymn of Senwosret III, the king of the 12th dynasty of the

Middle Kingdom, his reaction to the enemies who cross his border is like that of

Sekhmet when shooting an arrow.

157

In the New Kingdom, her war aspects are

even more pronounced; for example, she receives the attribute of arrows and an

individual may pray to her not to use her weapons against him.

158

The text of

the stela of Thutmose IV from his 8th regnal year from Konosso states: “Re caused

the fear from him in all lands like that of Sekhmet in the years of her plague”.

159

the text of his Memphis stela, Amenhotep II says that “his Majesty, life, prosperity

and health, was powerful like the might of Sekhmet”.

160

In his triumphal wel-

coming speech from Karnak (Triumph Scene and topographical list, Eastern Side),

the god Amun addresses Seti I with the words (line 23): “I cause them to see your

Majesty as a blast of re, like the form of Sekhmet in her pestilence”.

161

Ramesses

III is described in the Great Inscription of Year 8 (Sea People Campaign, Medinet

Habu temple, pylon I, east façade, north wing) as “Great of splendor, the one who

rages when he has seen the battle, like Sekhmet raging at the moment of her

fury”.

162

The ery blast of ame against the bodies of his enemies is “like Sekhmet

when she is angry” as described in the record of the Second Libyan War of

Ramesses III (Karnak temple, Mut precinct, second series, forecourt).

163

However, there are also descriptions of the features of the goddess when acting

independently on the battleeld. In the Poem on the Battle of Kadesh of Ramesses

II, it is stated that Sekhmet is with the king on his horse and her hand is with him

and whoever goes to approach him, a breath of re comes to burn up his body.

164

Her great re blast is described as taking hold in their hearts, so that their bones

burned up within their bodies, as described in the Great Inscription of Year 11 of

Ramesses III (Medinet Habu, Pylon I, north face) and Second Lybian War

Triumphal Poem of Year 11 (Medinet Habu, Pylon I, east facade).

165

The king

also appears to the enemies as a blast of re, described as taking the form of

Sekhmet, as evidenced in the text of the triumphal scene of Ramesses III on the

western tower of the Karnak temple.

166

Elsewhere, I have already pointed to the

parallels between the actions of the king and goddesses, such as Sekhmet, and

female demons from the Underworld who possess ery powers. The actions of the

king are described in this manner because his violence is framed as divine.

167

later periods, in contrast to the New Kingdom, the king is not associated with

violent aspects of the goddess, which may reect the diminished power of

Egypt.

168

The description of Sekhmet “acting like a man” is known in some 30

inscriptions from the Ptolemaic and Roman temples of Edfu and Denderah and

which serve to protect dierent spaces of the temples. These texts were recited

during the New Year liturgies and coronations and it was expected for the goddess

to protect the king.

169

This curious description of Sekhmet from Ptolemaic and

Roman temples matches an earlier depiction of the ithyphallic goddess in leonine

form and with a sun disc and uraeus on her head in the temple of Khonsu at

Karnak (Figure 2.2). Ramesses IV is depicted before her censing with an incense

burner.

170

However, one should be cautious in interpreting her as Sekhmet since

46 Gender of aggression

goddess Mut is also depicted in this manner. The choice of Sekhmet as the goddess

at the side of the king is also related to her role of punisher of rebellious hu-

mankind. Royal ideology in ancient Egypt framed military campaigns as the king’s

answer to rebellious foreign lands. This juxtaposition parallels the response of Re

to rebellious humankind in the previously mentioned story of The Destruction of

Mankind. Therefore, the choice of Sekhmet on the side of the earthly manifes-

tation of Re (the king) battling rebellious foreigners should come as no surprise.

The goddess Bastet is also associated with war. The king is described in the

following way: “His face was powerful like (the one of) Bastet and like (the one of)

Seth in his moment of rage” (Memphis stela of Amenhotep II, line 3).

171

Seti I is

described in the text of his First Beth Shan stela (line 6, Palestine Archaeological

Museum S. 884), which occurred in his 1st regnal year, as a “strong leader of his

FIGURE 2.2 Ithyphallic leonine goddess from the temple of Khonsu in Karnak, west

wall, room 12, photo, no scale.

Source: Courtesy of Asavaa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/KhonsuTemple-Karnak-

Sekhmet_like.jpg.

Gender of aggression 47

army, strong warrior in the midst of the battle, a Bastet brave as a warrior”.

172

In the

text accompanying the undated war scenes of Ramesses II at Karnak (on the west

side, bottom register), the king is also described in the following way: “His bow is in

his hand like (the bow is in the hand of) Bastet” (line 8).

173

The choice of Bastet is

unusual because she is usually interpreted as a pacied manifestation of the goddess

Hathor.

174

We should, however, bear in mind that in later texts, Bastet is re-

presented as the Eye of Re and even as the one to whom the entrails of Seth are

given, possibly to use as a headband.

175

In his Second Beth Shan Stela (lines 6–7,

Palestine Archaeological Museum S. 885 A/B), Seti I is described as son of Sekhmet

and beloved of Bastet.

176

Bronze gurine with a head of a cat, female wig, and

wings of a bird, from Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.80.203.168), is also

ithyphallic like previously mentioned representations of Sekhmet.

177

Mut is also documented in royal texts in the context of conict with enemies.

In her speech to Ramesses III (Medinet Habu, Pylon II, south wing, presentation

scene), she states: “I place my arms as protection around you, and my ery blast is

against your foes. I grant you millions of jubilees and myriads of years, forever and

ever”.

178

Mut the Great (Mw.t

3.t) is depicted as an ithyphallic lioness goddess

together with other ithyphallic male deities on the west wall of the sanctuary of the

Hibis temple in Kharga oasis (Figure 2.3), decorated during the rule of Persian

king Darius I in 5th century BC.

179

In a vignette of Ptolemaic Papyrus Turin 1791

from complementary Chapter 164 of the Book of the Dead, she is depicted as an

ithyphallic goddess with three heads (Figure 2.4). This representation is not an

expression of her change in gender, but rather emphasizes her power and her

representation as an omnipotent goddess.

180

Conversely, the association of the

king with Sekhmet and Bastet should not be interpreted as a sign of his gender

transformation or ambiguity. It seems that the gender of the goddesses plays a little

role here. Rather, what seems to be stressed is their strength and ferocity, their

ery aspects. In the case of Mut, we do not have any attestations of kings asso-

ciating themselves with her violent aspects. Instead, this potentially aggressive

goddess grants them protection and her re against their enemies.

Neith is also identied as a goddess with war attributes.

181

This goddess is

symbolized by two end-to-end ovals and crossed arrows, and she is known as

Mistress of Bow and Ruler of Arrows.

182

Neith is described in the following way

“You are Tenen. Two parts [of you] are male and one part is female” (temple of

Esna 252, 25). The same description is found in other late contexts at temple of

Esna (255, A; 331, 9; 507) and temple of Denderah (III, 38, 12).

183

According to

Jochen Hallof, this conrms that the Temple of Esna was dedicated to one om-

nipotent creator god.

184

The litany of Neith at Esna, engraved during the reign of

Roman emperor Domitian, is built on inversion, as the goddess is for example

both a man who created a woman and a woman who created a man, or a man who

acts like a woman and a woman who acts like a man, depending on the under-

standing of the verb jri in this context.

185

Granted, there are authors who interpret

this as an indication of her gender peculiarity. Yet, one should also consider that at

Esna, the goddess is shown as the mother of the two gods Sobek and Shemanefer,

48 Gender of aggression

both depicted with heads of crocodiles. We see other depictions of Neith

(Figure 2.5) suckling two crocodiles.

186

Maybe this is what is meant with her two

male parts. However, the goddess is also described as “manly Neith” (Nt-ṯ3yt).

187

Anat (Figure 2.6)

188

and Astarte, goddesses of Near Eastern origin, also appear

with warrior features. Anat is described as “a mighty goddess, a woman acting as a

man/a warrior, clad as men, girdled like women” (Papyrus Chester Beatty VII

v.1.9–v.2.1).

189

Astarte was associated with horses, which, according to icono-

graphic representations, were often used for driving chariots in Egypt more so than

riding. The king is described as brave on a chariot like Astarte.

190

The story of the

ght of Astarte with the Sea is attested on Papyrus Paris Bibliotheque National 202

from the reign of Amenhotep II where she is described as a daughter of Ptah.

191

FIGURE 2.3 Mut the Great from the temple of Hibis in Kharga oasis depicted as an

ithyphallic lioness, reign of Darius I, line drawing, no scale.

Source: Digitally redrawn by Astrid Hassler, Austrian Archaeological Insistute, Austrian

Academy of Sciences, after Davies, The Temple of Hibis in El-Khargeh Oasis III, Pl. 2. II.

Gender of aggression 49

Memphis, she is identied with Sekhmet and even appears with the head of

Sekhmet.

192

According to Orriols-Llonch, the aggressive nature of some goddesses, such as

Sekhmet, ts well with the binary opposition between the hegemonic image of a

woman in ancient Egypt being desirable when passive and homebound, and dan-

gerous and undesirable when outside of the home.

193

However, one should con-

sider other explanations. We have seen here that goddesses that express ferocity are

Hathor, Sekhmet, and Bastet, all three of whom are attested as the Eye of the Sun.

Jens Blach Jørgensen has presented compelling arguments that the Myth of the Sun’s

Eye can be viewed as the coming of age of a young nubile goddess, who travels into

exile at the onset of her menarche and returns as a marriageable woman ready to

couple with her brother or husband. She is transformed from a goddess in her

menstrual rage into the pacied bringer of life.

194

Therefore, goddesses expressing

warrior attributes may represent enraged nubile women prior to pacication (ḥtp) or

even marriage.

195

Their warrior attributes are thus not a transformation of their

gender through the addition of masculine attributes, but the essential part of their

nubile character. They bleed and they make others bleed, just like Sekhmet did to

rebellious humans. Alternatively, as pointed out by Adrien Louarn, the goddesses

Isis, Sekhmet, Wadjet and Neith, are at least in texts dating back to 4th century BC

described as acting like men due to them causing fear and giving protection to the

king. He argues that their breaches in norrmativity put them in state of otherness

FIGURE 2.4 Ithyphallic Mut with three heads from the vignette of Ptolemaic Papyrus

Turin 1791 from complementary Chapter 164 of the Book of the Dead, line drawing,

no scale.

Source: Digitally redrawn by Astrid Hassler, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian

Academy of Sciences, after Lepsius, Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen

Papyrus in Turin, LXXVIII with the phallus added based on the photo of the vignette

from Papyrus Turin 1791 from Das Altägyptische Totenbuch. Ein Digitales

Textzeugenarchiv.

50 Gender of aggression

and strangeness.

196

The pharaohs associated themselves with these goddesses’ pro-

tection and the power of their rage in ghting rebellious foreigners.

2.3 Concluding remarks

Most pioneer research on violence against women outside the disciplines of

Egyptology, history, and archaeology was conducted under the umbrella term of

partner violence, or more specically violence against women within emotional

partnership or marriage. Following this tradition of recognizing violence against

women as an urgent problem in contemporary society, I wanted to explore if such

FIGURE 2.5 Neith suckling two crocodiles, 664–30 BC, no scale.

Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/570322.

Gender of aggression 51

a frame is useful for interpreting the gendered aspects of domestic violence in

ancient Egypt.

There are two groups of theories explaining partner violence in our society,

psychological and sociological. When applying these theories to other societies,

like ancient Egypt, for example, researchers should proceed with caution. This is

because little reection can lead to interpreting the past through a presentist frame

even prior to analyses. According to the learned helplessness theory of Leonore

Walker, beaten women become victims and the process of victimization results in

psychological paralysis that prevents them from leaving the relationship. This

FIGURE 2.6 Anat, line drawing by the author based on stela of Qeh (British Museum

EA 191), 19th dynasty, detail, no scale.

Source: https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_

details.aspx?objectId=177464&partId=1.

52 Gender of aggression

theory has three basic components: information on what will occur (possibility), a

cognitive idea about the possibility for something to happen (learning, expecta-

tion, belief, and perception), and behavior.

197

According to Walker, women

become victims through socialization. Namely, they are taught traditional roles

informed by certain ideals – that they have little direct control over their lives and

should make their marriages successful no matter the cost. One wonders if this the

reason why the number of ancient Egyptian sources in which women accuse men

for violence against them is small.

Given the hegemonic image of a woman expressed in ancient Egyptian

Wisdom Texts and the fates of adulterous or otherwise inappropriately behaving

women, one could argue that these genres informed women about the dangers of

transgressing gender norms. The same message is conveyed in texts that describe

men lusting after married women. We have seen that Wisdom Texts (Maxims of

Ptahhotep) instruct men to have their wives under their control and teach them to

act like humans (Instructions of Ani). Although the same genre advises men not to

attack in anger, we have seen from juridical texts that some men beat their wives

(sometimes possibly with sticks). Victims of violence may have also experienced

blinding or abortion. From later evidence, we learn about violent acts perpetrated

by women themselves. Though few in number, bioarchaeological studies of

physical trauma indicate that in some communities, women and men were equally

exposed to violence, at least to its extreme forms or when it occurred repeatedly.

We should bear in mind, however, that not all trauma leaves traces on the bones,

and that esh is preserved only in exceptional cases in Egypt (e.g., mummied

bodies of the elite or very dry conditions). Several bioarchaeological studies I

mentioned indicate lower life expectancy for commoner women in comparison to

men, and their higher exposure to injuries in comparison to elite women.

Evidence for actual warrior women is absent from ancient Egypt. Weapons in

females’ burials do not necessarily indicate their participation in war. The motif is

restricted to descriptions of foreign women in royal texts narrating on conict

(e.g., Libyan women) and in literature (Egyptians and Amazons). In fact, the idea

of women leading armies was, as expressed by Amenemhat I, a strange and sur-

prising thought for ancient Egyptian men. An entirely dierent image is to be

found in the divine world where certain goddesses have clear bellicose attributes.

Here, one sees a marked contrast to ancient Greek goddesses, for example. Unlike

ancient Egyptian goddesses with bellicose attributes who are married (Sekhmet to

Ptah; Mut to Amun; Anat and Astarte to Seth), ancient Greek goddesses with

bellicose attributes, such as Athena or Artemis, are parthenoi (social virgins). In the

1st millennium, Anat is even identied with Athena in Greek-Phoenician bilin-

gual texts.

198

One should also stress that the description of Anat – a woman acting

as a man and warrior, clad as a man, girdled like a woman – matches the ap-

propriation of male gender roles by Athena. Such appropriation is especially

evident in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Athena helps Achilles in defeating Hector.

She helps Diomedes wound Aphrodite and Ares. She even joins him dressed for

battle on his chariot. When she intervenes, she is disguised as a man.

199

Gender of aggression 53

Other ancient Greek goddesses who appear in war contexts, such as Hera and

Aphrodite, step outside the sphere of oikos, ancient Greek concept which refers to

the family, the family’s property, and the house. In so doing, they become exposed

to the dangers of other men. Ancient Egyptian goddesses with bellicose attributes

are not necessarily all virgins and they are not all outside the zone of married life.

As we have seen for Sekhmet, their violence has the danger of being a total an-

nihilation. Re has to stop her by trickery. Again, like in the human world, it is a

male god who must “domesticate” or tame a female member of his household.

Adultery, which threatens the marriages of others and therefore poses a threat

to the entire community, typies the destructive power of women – those who

are beyond the control of their husbands or fathers. Far from suggesting that there

is a parallel between the motif of seductress and a goddess with warrior attributes, I

believe that both have comparable destructive power. For this reason, pharaohs

associated themselves with these powerful goddesses in royal texts. Such re-

presentations, however, evoked dramatic responses. In the next chapter, I discuss

how women’s power and status were contested in brutal and carnal ways.

Notes

1 Spalinger, War in Ancient Egypt; Spalinger, Icons of Power; Muhlestein, Violence in the

Service of Order; Bestock, Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt.

2 Christine Hue-Arcé, “Violence against Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: The

Contribution of Demotic Documents,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited

by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 146.

3 Ridgeway and Correll, “Unpacking the Gender System,” 517–527.

4 That this was the normative social unit is indicated by Maxims of Ptahhotep which

instruct men to make sons if they are accomplished. Establishing one’s own home was

desirable, James P. Allen, Middle Egyptian Literature. Eight Literary Works of the Middle

Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 185–195. The instruction

to take a woman as soon as one is mature, in order for her to give him a son, is also

found in Instructions of Ani, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Die Lehren des Ani: Ein

neuägyptischer Weisheitstext in seinem kulturellen Umfeld. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 141

(Freiburg and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

1994), 89.

5 Annette Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” Women in Ancient

Societies. ‘An Illusion of the Night’, edited by Leonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler and Maria

Wyke (London: MacMillan, 1994), 26.

6 Fredrik Hagen, An Ancient Egyptian Literary Text in Context. The Instruction of Ptahhotep.

Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 218 (Leuven and Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters en

Departement Oosterse Studies, 2012), 4.

7 Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt, 177.

8 Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 33.

9 Friedrich Junge, Die Lehre Ptahhoteps und die Tugenden der ägyptischen Welt. Orbis

Biblicus et Orientalis 193 (Freiburg and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag and

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 11; Hagen, An Ancient Egyptian Literary Text in

Context, 247.

10 Junge, Die Lehre Ptahhoteps, 12.

11 Joachim Friedrich Quack, “Ein neuer Zugang zur Lehre des Ptahhotep?” Die Welt des

Orients 35 (2005): 8.

54 Gender of aggression

12 For example, some Old Kingdom forms have been recognized, Quack, “Ein neuer

Zugang zur Lehre des Ptahhotep?,” 16.

13 James P. Allen refers to it as Maxim 17-Lust not 18, Allen, Middle Egyptian Literature, 192;

Junge, Die Lehre Ptahhoteps, 195–196; Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature.

Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 1973), 68; Richard B. Parkinson, “‘Homosexual’ Desire and Middle Kingdom

Literature,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 81 (1995): 68–69; Richard B. Parkinson, The

Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940–1640 BC (Oxford and New York:

Clarendon and Oxford University Press, 1997), 256. Zbyněk Žába, Les Maximes de

Ptaḥḥotep (Praha: Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Vĕd, 1956), 83–84.

14 Lana Troy, “Good and Bad Women. Maxim 18/284–288 of the Instructions of

Ptahhotep,” Göttinger Miszellen 80 (1984): 77–79; Žába, Les Maximes de Ptaḥḥotep, 84.

15 Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I, 69; Parkinson, Tale of Sinuhe, 257.

16 Elmar Edel, Hieroglyphische Inschriften des Alten Reiches (Opladen: Westdeutscher

Verlag, 1981), Abb 4-line 9, 20 Henry George Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,”

in Women’s Earliest Records. From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia. Brown Judaic Studies

166, edited by Barbara S. Lesko (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 7.

17 This is a common feature of ancient Egyptian wisdom literature; Patricia A. Bochi,

“Gender and Genre in Ancient Egyptian Poetry: The Rhetoric of Performance in the

Harpers’ Songs,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 35 (1998): 90–91.

18 Quack, Die Lehren des Ani , 88–89.

19 Quack. Die Lehren des Ani, 88–89. On the meaning of rmṯ as human, see Gerald

Moers, “Auch der Feind war nur ein Mensch. Kursorisches zu einer Teilansicht

pharaonischer Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungsoperationen,” in Feinde und Aufrührer.

Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in ägyptischen Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches.

Abhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 78,5, edited

by Heinz Felber (Stuttgart/Leipzig: Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 2005), 223–282.

20 Quack, Die Lehren des Ani, 105. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I, 140.

21 Li, Women, Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period, 23.

22 Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 44.

23 Joachim Friedrich Quack translates the verb ṯnḥ as “zwinkern” (German for “to wink

at”) as he argues that the meaning here indicates the making of a sign with an eye;

Quack, Die Lehren des Ani, 92–93.

24 Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I, 137; Quack, Die Lehren des Ani, 92–93.

25 Quack, Die Lehren des Ani, 95.

26 Jan Assmann, “Zum Konzept der Fremdheit im alten Ägypten, in Die Begegnung mit

dem Fremden: Wertungen und Wirkungen in Hochkulturen vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart.

Colloquium Rauricum 4, edited by Meinhard Schuster (Stuttgart & Leipzig: Teubner,

1996), 77–99; Gerald Moers, “Egyptian Identity? Unlikely, and Never Rational,” in

Fuzzy Boundaries: Festschrift fu

r Antonio Loprieno II, edited by Hans Amstutz et al.

(Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag, 2016), 693–704.

27 Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 45.

28 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature III: The Late Period (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 171.

29 Jacco Dieleman, “Fear of Women? Representations of Women in Demotic Wisdom

Texts,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 25 (1998): 15.

30 Hue-Arcé, “Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contribution of Demotic

Documents,” 137.

31 Dieleman, “Fear of Women? Representations of Women in Demotic Wisdom Texts,” 13.

32 Hue-Arcé, “Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contribution of Demotic

Documents,” 138.

33 Verena M. Lepper, Untersuchungen zu pWestcar. Eine philologische und literaturwissenschaftliche

(Neu-)Analyse. Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 70 (Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 2008).

Gender of aggression 55

34 David Lorton does not interpret the act as burning, but as branding, arguing that

killing a lover was the prerogative of the husband; David Lorton, “The Treatment of

Criminals in Ancient Egypt: Through the New Kingdom,” Journal of the Economic and

Social History of the Orient 20.1 (1974): 15. His interpretation is not supported by other

evidence, as the phrase found in Papyrus Westcar is also found in other cases of

burning of criminals and enemies. Ancient Egyptian used entirely dierent lexemes for

branding, 3b and mnš. Furthermore, his observation that the killing of the lover was

the prerogative of the husband is probably correct, but we should not forget the

context and the genre of the story. That the adulterous woman in the story was

punished by the king by burning surely had a discoursing eect. In ancient Egypt,

individuals who committed crimes against the temple or the king were usually burned

to death, see Anthony Leahy, “Death by Fire in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of the Economic

and Social History of the Orient 27.2 (1984): 199–206; Christoer Theis, “Methods of

Death Penalty in Ancient Near Eastern Cultures,” in They Called Me to Destroy the

Wicked and the Evil. Selected Essays on Crime and Punishment in Antiquity. Karum-

Emporion-Forum 1, edited by Stefan Nowicki (Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 2016),

249–251. There are also cases of burning enemies, which have numerous parallels with

burning of the damned in the Underworld, Matić, Body and Frames of War, 100–116.

That the king arranges for the woman to be burned ts well with my observations that

the punitive act was usually a royal prerogative.

35 Parkinson, Tale of Sinuhe, 106–109; William Kelly Simpson, The Literature of Ancient

Egypt. An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies and Poetry. Third

Edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 14–16.

36 Leonard H. Lesko, “Women and Priests in Two Egyptian Stories,” in Hesed ve-Emet.

Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, edited by Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin (Atlanta:

Brown Univerisity, 1998), 218–219.

37 Hanna Jenni, “Der Papyrus Westcar,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 25 (1998): 127.

38 Alan H. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories. Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca I (Bruxelles: Fondation

Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1932).

39 José das Candeias Sales, “Strike, Smite and Terrify: Reections on Physical, Ritual and

Psychological Violence in Ancient Egypt,” In Violence in the Ancient and Medieval

Worlds. Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 19, edited by Maria

Cristina Pimentel and Nuno Simões Rodrigues (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 304.

40 According to the translation of Edward F. Wenter in Simpson, The Literature of Ancient

Egypt, 82–85.

41 Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, 19. 15.

42 Wb 3, 292.16. For a thorough discussion of sources in which the word is found see,

Joachim Friedrich Quack, “Herodot, Strabo und die Pallakide von Theben,” in

Tempelprostitution im Altertum. Fakten und Fiktionen. Oikumene 6, edited by Tanja

Scheer and Martin Lindner (Berlin: Verlag Antike, 2009), 154–182.

43 Robins, “Women in New Kingdom Art,” 106.

44 Marc Orriols-Llonch, “Mujer ideal, mujer infractora. La transgresión feminina en el

antigue Egipto,” Lectora: revista de dones i textualitat 18 (2012): 33; Marc Orriols-

Llonch, “Women’s Role in Sexual Intercourse in Ancient Egypt,” Women in

Antiquity. Real Women Across the Ancient World, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and

Jean MacIntosh Turfa (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 196.

45 Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” 106.

46 Christine Hue-Arcé, La Violence Interpersonnelle en Égypte au Nouvel Empire et à l’époque

Gréco-Romaine (Wallasey, Abercromby Press, 2020).

47 Wb 5, 55.4–56.9.

48 Matić, Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt, 25–30.

49 Grafton Elliot Smith and F. Wood-Jones, The Archaeological Survey of Nubia. Report for

1907–1908. Volume 2: Report on the Human Remains (Cairo: National Printing

Department, 1910), 297.

56 Gender of aggression

50 Thomas Eric Peet, “A Historical Document of Ramesside Age,” Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 10 (1924): 118.

51 Günter Vittmann, “Charges Against Several Ocials (ca. 1150 BCE)-Papyrus Turin

1887,” in The Elephantine Papyri in English. Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity

and Change, edited by Bezalel Porten (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1996), 48.

52 Vittmann, “Charges Against Several Ocials (ca. 1150 BCE)-Papyrus Turin 1887,”

50; Renate Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen. Zur Sanktionirung Abweichenden

Verhaltens im Alten Ägypten. Probleme der Ägyptologie 21 (Leiden and Boston: Brill,

2004), 77.

53 Vittmann, “Charges Against Several Ocials (ca. 1150 BCE)-Papyrus Turin 1887,”

55; Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, 79.

54 Jaroslav Černý, “Quelques ostraca hiératiques inédits de Thèbes au Musée du Caire,”

Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 27 (1927): 184–190. According to Christine

Hue-Arcé “wife beating” description could rather designate a physical dispute be-

tween the two spouses (which may have hidden, in fact, a wife beating), and the

absence of the man from the work could be the sanction for this dispute, Hue-Arcé,

La Violence Interpersonnelle en Égypte au Nouvel Empire et à l’époque Gréco-Romaine,

148–151.

55 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, 77.

56 Andrea G. McDowell, Jurisdiction in the Workmen’s Community of Deir el-Medina.

Egyptologische Uitgaven V (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten,

1990), 152; Jaana Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina. A Study of the Status and

Roles of the Female Inhabitants in the Workmen’s Community during the Ramesside Period

(Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2001), 216; Deborah Sweeney,

“Gender in the Contendings of Horus and Seth,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 88

(2002): 146. f. 37.

57 Leonard H. Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian IV (Berkeley: B.C. Scribe

Publications, 1989), 148.

58 Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina, 217. f. 121. Marc Orriols-Llonch also

cautiously accepts this interpretation. “La Traición a la Maat. La Violencia contra las

Mujeres en el Antiguo Egipto,” in Violencia Deliberada. Las Raíces de la Violencia

Patriarcal, edited by Marta Segarra, (Barcelona: Icaria, 2007), 66.

59 Wb 5, 517.9

60 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II: New Kingdom (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 170.

61 James Hoch and Sara E. Orel, “Murder in Ancient Egypt,” in Death and Taxes in the

Ancient Near East, edited by Sara E. Orel (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 106;

Müller-Wollermann. Vergehen und Strafen, 71

62 Bernard Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la

documentation papyrologique,” Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 10 (1999), 228.

63 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 232.

64 Christine Hue-Arcé, “Grec(que)s contre Égyptien(ne)s dans les enteuxeis

ptolémaïques: la question du genre dans les P. Enteux. 79 et P. Enteux.

82,” Archimède. Archéologie et histoire ancienne 5 (2018), 166–167.

65 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 229; Hue-Arcé, “Grec(que)s contre Égyptien(ne)s dans

les enteuxeis ptolémaïques: la question du genre dans les P. Enteux. 79 et P. Enteux.

82,” 167.

66 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 232.

67 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 231.

Gender of aggression 57

68 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 232.

69 Hue-Arcé, “Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contribution of Demotic

Documents,” 135.

70 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 230.

71 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 227.

72 Eline Scheerlinck, “Inheritance Disputes and Violence in Women’s Petitions from

Ptolemaic Egypt,” Papyrologica Lupiensia 20/21 (2011/2012), 172.

73 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 231; Scheerlinck, “Inheritance Disputes and Violence in

Women’s Petitions from Ptolemaic Egypt,” 173–174.

74 Hue-Arcé, “Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contribution of Demotic

Documents,” 135.

75 Roger S. Bagnall, “Ocial and Private Violence in Roman Egypt,” The Bulletin of the

American Society of Papyrologists 26.¾ (1989): 211.

76 Bagnall, “Ocial and Private Violence in Roman Egypt,” 213.

77 Ari Z. Bryen, “Visibility and Violence in Petitions from Roman Egypt,” Greek,

Roman, and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008): 192.

78 Dominic Montserrat, Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London and New York:

Routledge, 2011 [1996]), 132–134.

79 Bryen, “Visibility and Violence in Petitions from Roman Egypt,” 189–190.

80 Christopher J. Eyre, “Crime and Adultery in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 70 (1984): 101.

81 Jensen, “Skull-cups and snake-pits,” 197–222.

82 Christine Hue-Arcé, “The Legal Treatment of Interpersonal Violence in Deir el-

Medina,” in Outside the Box. Selected Papers from the Conference “Deir el-Medina and the

Theban Necropolis in Contact,” Liège, 27–29 October 2014. Collection Ægyptiaca

Leodiensia 11, edited by Andreas Dorn and Stéphane Polis (Liège: Presses

Universitaires de Liège, 2018), 265–279.

83 Marcelo Campagno, “Two Observations on the Tales of the Contendings of Horus

and Seth and Truth and Falsehood,” Trabajos de Egiptología (2005): 19–30; Marcelo

Campagno, “Juridical Practices, Kinship and the State,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache

und Altertumskunde 133 (2006): 33.

84 Hue-Arcé, “Grec(que)s contre Égyptien(ne)s dans les enteuxeis ptolémaïques : la

question du genre dans les P. Enteux. 79 et P. Enteux. 82,” 167–173.

85 Legras, “Le corps violenté des femmes dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque d’après la doc-

umentation papyrologique,” 233.

86 For an excellent collection of studies of pathology and trauma on human remains from

dierent periods of ancient Egyptian history see Lisa K. Sabbahy, Paleopathology of the

Ancient Egyptians: Annotated Bibliography 1995–2016. Updated edition (Cairo: American

University in Cairo Press, 2018).

87 Recent overview of bioarchaeological approach to lives of women does not include

evidence of trauma and generally does take gender dierences into account, Rosalie

David, “Understanding the Lives of Ancient Egyptian Women. The Contribution of

Physical Anthropology,” in Women in Antiquity. Real women across the Ancient World,

edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean MacIntosh Turfa (London and New York:

Routledge, 2016), 181–193.

88 Sean P. Dougherty and Renée F. Friedman, Sacred or Mundane: Scalping and

Decapitation at Predynastic Hierakonpolis, In Egypt and Its Origins 2. Proceedings of the

International Conference Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, Toulouse

(France), 5th–8th September 2005. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 172, edited by

Béatrix Midant-Reyes and Yann Tristant (Leuven and Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2008),

58 Gender of aggression

311–338; Anna Pieri, Renée Friedman, and Sean Dougherty, “Ritual violence in

Early Egypt: A view from Hierakonpolis,” In Ritual Violence – Rituals of Violence. 12.

Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 10. bis 12. Oktober 2019 in Halle (Saale). Tagungen

des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 22/I, edited bz Harald Meller et al.

(Halle-Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, 2020),

497–514.

89 Julia Gresky, Nikolaos Roumelis, Alexandra Kozak, and Michael Schulz, “Folter” im

Alten Reich? Untersuchungen zu den Ursachen und der Häugkeit von Traumata bei

der altägyptischen Population von Elephantine,” in The First Cataract on the Nile. One

Region-Diverse Perspectives. Sonderschriften des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts,

Abteilung Kairo 36, edited by Dietrich Raue, Stephan J. Seidlmayer, and Philipp

Speiser (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 87.

90 A. M. El Din Sarry, “Bone fractures in ancient Egyptians from Giza, Old Kingdom,”

Egyptian Medical Journal of National Research Center 2. 2 (2003): 1–13.

91 Madeleine Mant, “Palaeopathology of human remains at ancient Mendes (Tell er-

Rub’a), Egypt,” Bioarchaeology of the Near East 8.1 (2014): 1–27.

92 Eike-Meinrad Winkler and Harald Wilng, Tell el-Dab´a VI. Anthropologische

Untersuchungen an den Skelettresten der Kampagnen 1966–69, 1975–80, 1985. Denkschriften

der Gesamtakademie 10. Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen

Archäologischen Instituts 9 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften, 1991).

93 Alena Šefčáková, “Anthropological observations from Tell el-Retaba,” Ägypten und

Levante XXVII (2017): 99–106.

94 Manfred Bietak, Josef Dorner and Peter Jánosi. “Ausgrabungen in dem Palastbezirk

von Avaris. Vorbericht Tell el-Dabca/

Ezbet Helmi 1993–2000,” Ägypten und Levante

XXI (2001): 27–119.

95 Uroš Matić, “Nubian archers in Avaris: A study of culture-historical reasoning in

archaeology of Egypt,” Etnoantropološki problemi (Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology)

9.3 (2014): 697–721; Uroš Matić, “Execration of Nubians in Avaris: A case of mis-

taken ethnic identity and hidden archaeological theory,” Journal of Egyptian History 11

(2018): 87–112; For the problems with chronology see Felix Hömayer. “An Early

Date for Khyan and Its Implications for Eastern Mediterranean Chronologies,” In The

Hyksos Ruler Khyan and the Early Second Intermediate Period in Egypt: Problems and

Priorities of Current Research. Proceedings of the Workshop of the Austrian Archaeological

Institute and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Vienna, July 4–5, 2014,

edited by Irene Forstner-Muller and Nadine Moeller (Wien: Holzhausen, 2018),

143–171.

96 See the anthropological report by Gretchen R. Dabbs and Jerome C. Rose in Barry

Kemp et al., “Tell el-Amarna, 2016,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 102 (2016): 7–9.

97 See the contribution by Anna Stevens and Gretchen R. Dabbs in Barry Kemp et al.,

“Tell el-Amarna, Spring 2017,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 103.2 (2018): 147–148.

98 Gretchen R. Dabbs, Jerome C. Rose and Melissa Zabecki, “The Bioarchaeology of

Akhetaten: Unexpected Results from a Capital City,” in Egyptian Bioarchaeology hu-

mans, animals, and the environment, edited by Salima Ikram, Jessica Kaiser and Roxie

Walker (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015), 50. See also Jerome C. Rose, “Paleopathology of

the commoners at Tell Amarna, Egypt, Akhenaten´s capital city,” Memórias do Instituto

Oswaldo Cruz 101 (2006): 73–76.

99 Andreas Nerlich et al. “Anthropological and palaeopathological analysis of the human

remains from three “Tombs of the Nobles” of the necropolis of Thebes-West, Upper

Egypt.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 58.4 (2000): 321–343.

100 Giovanna Bellandi, Roberta De Marzo, Stefano Benazzi and Angelo Sesana, “Burials

under the Temple of Millions of Years of Amenhotep II – Luxor, West Thebes,”

in Egyptian Bioarchaeology humans, animals, and the environment, edited by Salima Ikram,

Jessica Kaiser and Roxie Walker (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015), 28–30.

Gender of aggression 59

101 Joyce M. Filer, “Head Injuries in Egypt and Nubia: A Comparison of Skulls from Giza

and Kerma,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78 (1992): 281–-285.

102 Moushira Erfan et al., “Cranial Trauma in Ancient Egyptians from the Bahriyah Oasis,

Greco-Roman Period,” Research Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences 4.1

(2009): 78–84.

103 Sandra M. Wheeler, Lana Williams, Patrick Beauchesne, and Tosha L. Dupras,

“Shattered Lives and Broken Childhoods: Evidence of Physical Child Abuse in

Ancient Egypt,” International Journal of Paleopathology 3.2 (2013): 71–82.

104 Stephanie Zesch et al. “Blunt force trauma: an exceptional example of an ancient

Egyptian mummy head.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 77.1 (2020): 75–82.

105 Annalisa Alvrus, “Fracture Patterns Among the Nubians of Semna South, Sudanese

Nubia,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 9 (1999): 417–429.

106 Filer, “Head Injuries in Egypt and Nubia: A Comparison of Skulls from Giza and

Kerma,” 281–285.

107 Margaret A. Judd, “Continuity of Interpersonal Violence Between Nubian

Communities,” American Journal of Anthropology 131 (2006): 324–333.

108 Phillip L. Walker, “A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence,”

Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 584.

109 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 6–7. Exceptions are not numerous and seem to

be limited to women of royal background, Vera Vasiljević, “Der Grabherr und seine

Frau. Zur Ikonographie der Status- und Machtverhältnisse in den Privatgräbern des

Alten Reiches,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 36 (2007): 333–345.

110 Robins, “Women in New Kingdom Art,” 106–107.

111 Ann Macy Roth, “Gender Roles in Ancient Egypt,” in A Companion to the Ancient

Near East, edited by Daniel C. Snell (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 88.

112 Dietrich Wildung and Sylvia Schoske, Nofret-die Schöne. Die Frau im Alten Ägypten.

Haus der Kunst München 15. Dezembe 1984–10. Februar 1985, Ägyptisches Museum

Berlin 23. März 1985–2. Juni 1985, Roemer-und Pelizaues-Museum Hildesheim 15. Juli

1985–4. November 1985 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1984), 181.

113 Diane Flores, “Topsy-Turvy World,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean

World. Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford. Probleme der Ägyptologie 20, edited by

Gary N. Knopper and Antoine Hirsch (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 232–255.

114 Georges Daressy, Ostraca. Catalogue Général des Antiquités du Musée du Caire No.

25001–25385 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1901), Pl. 24;

William H. Peck and John G. Ross. Ägyptische Zeichnungen aus dre Jahrtausenden

(Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe, 1979), 158.

115 Vivienne Gae Callender, “Queen Tausret at the End of Dynasty 19,” Studien zur

Altägyptischen Kultur 32 (2004): 103–104; Callender even asks if Tausret was seen by

the anonymous artist of the ostracon as an Egyptian version of Jeanne d’Arc; that is,

trying to save her country from the invader: Vivienne Gae Callender, “Female Horus:

The Life and Reign of Tausret” In Female Horus: The Life and Reign of Tausret, edited

by Richard H. Wilkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 46; also, Gnirs,

“Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und Sozialgeschichte,” 107.

116 Wildung and Schoske, Nofret-die Schöne, 1984, 181; Patrick F. Houlihan, Wit and

Humour in Ancient Egypt (London: Rubicon Press, 2001), 120; Natalia Pmerantseva,

“The Sketches on Ostraca or ‘The Sheets of Sketch-Book’ of Ancient Egyptian

Masters,” in Sesto Congresso Internazionale Di Egittologia Torino-Italia September 1st–8th

1991. Atti I, edited by G.M. Zaccone and T.R. di Netro (Turin: Società Italiana per il

Gas, 1992), 514.

117 Heidi Köpp-Junk, “The Chariot as a Mode of Locomotion in Civil Contexts,” in

Chasing Chariots. Proceedings of the First International Chariot Conference (Cairo 2012),

edited by André J. Veldmeijer and Salima Ikram (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2013), 134.

118 Friedhelm Homann, “Warlike Women in Ancient Egypt,” Cahiers de Recherches de

l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Egyptologie de Lille 27 (2008): 52.

60 Gender of aggression

119 Houlihan, Wit & Humour in Ancient Egypt, 120.

120 Cristina Gil Paneque, “Simbolos de Guerra en la Iconograa de las Reinas del Reino

Nuevo,” in La Guerra en Oriente Próximo y Egipto: Evidencias, Historia y Tendencias en la

Investigacin: Actas del Segundo Seminario Monogrco de Primavera, edited Miguel Alonso

Baquer et al. (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2003), 338; for the depiction

as a satire, Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und Sozialgeschichte,” 107.

121 Michael Bányai, “Merenptah und Amenmesse: Entwurf einer Alternativen

Chronologie,” Journal of Egyptian History 12 (2019): 76.

122 There are many New Kingdom copies of this work, but the most complete ones are in

now lost Papyrus Millingen and in Papyrus Sallier II (Papyrus British Museum 10182),

Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II, 8; Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe, 207; Depla,

“Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 39.

123 Uroš Matić, “They Were Like Lions Roaring upon the Mountain-Crests’:

Soundscapes of War in New Kingdom Egypt,” in Current Research in Egyptology

2017. Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Symposium, edited by Ilaria Incordino et al.

(Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 104–112.

124 Sarah M. Nelson, Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige (Oxford: Altamira

Press, 2004), 113; Bettina Arnold, “Gender and Archaeological Mortuary Analysis,” in

Handbook of Gender in Archaeology, edited by Sarah M. Nelson, Rowman, and

Littleeld (Oxford: Altamira Press, 2006), 145. An entire volume was devoted to

warrior women in ancient Eurasian steppe: Katheryn M. Lindu and Karen S.

Rubinson (eds.), Are All Warriors Male?: Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe

(Oxford: Altamira Press, 2008). The existence of warrior women in the past is often

exemplied with Viking burials of women with weaponry, Neil Price at al. “Viking

warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581,” Antiquity 93 (2019):

181–198.

125 Valerii I. Guliaev, “Amazons in the Scythia: New Finds at the Middle Don, Southern

Russia,” World Archaeology 35.1 (2003): 112–125.

126 Andrew Stewart, “Imag(in)ing the Other: Amazons and Ethnicity in Fifth-Century

Athens,” Poetics Today 16. 4 (1995): 571–597.

127 Friedhelm Homann, Ägypter und Amazonen: Neubearbeitung zweier demotischer Papyri:

Papyrus Vindob. D 6165 und Papyrus Vindob. D 6165A. Mittheilungen aus der

Sammlung derPapyrus Erzherzog Rainer NS XXIV (Wien: Bruder Hollinek in

Kommission, 1995).

128 Friedhelm Homann, Ägypter und Amazonen. Neubearbeitungzweier demotischer Papyri P.

Vindob. D 6165 und P. Vindob D 6165A; Friedhelm Homann and Joachim Friedrich

Quack, Anthologie der demotischen Literatur. 2., neubearb. u. erweitertee Au.

Einführungen und Queellentexte zur Ägyptologie 4 (Berlin: LIT Verlag,

2018), 62–71.

129 Alexandra von Lieven, “Trade Contacts and Cultural Exchange between Egypt and

India in the Ptolemaic and Roman Period,” in Entre mers - Outre-mer: Spaces, Modes

and Agents of Indo-Mediterranean Connectivity, edited by Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian

Kolditz (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018), 68.

130 Karnak stela of Ahmose, lines 25–27. Peter Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte

vom Beginn der 18. Dynastie bis zur Amarnazeit. Teil 1. Transkription und Übersetzung der

Texte. Ägypten und Altes Testament 54 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002),

324–325.

131 Elizabeth D. Carney, “Women and Military Leadership in Pharaonic Egypt,” Greek,

Roman, and Byzantine Studies 42 (2001): 26.

132 Graciela N. Gestoso Singer, “Queen Ahhotep and the Golden Fly,” Cahiers Caribéens

d’Egyptologie 12 (2009): 84; also Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und

Sozialgeschichte,” 99.

133 For the most complete criticism with contra-arguments, see Uroš Matić, “Was There

Ever a “Minoan” Princess on the Egyptian court?” in A History of Research into Ancient

Gender of aggression 61

Egyptian Culture Conducted in Southeast Europe, edited by Mladen Tomorad (Oxford:

Archaeopress, 2015), 145–156. The same narrative was later transferred from Ahhotep

to the Minoan frescoes from Tell el-Dab

a, also argued to be evidence for a diplomatic

marriage with a Minoan princess.

134 According to Claude Vandersleyen, the fact that the name of Ahhotep I is written on

her Dra Abu el-Naga con (CG 28501) using an older form for the moon hieroglyph,

not attested later in the reign of Ahmose, indicates that she died during his reign and

thus excludes the possibility that she is the mother of Ahmose, as she lived on. Since

she also did not have the title mw.t nswt “king’s mother” on her con. Vandersleyen

argues that she cannot be the mother of Ahmose, but probably another royal wife,

possibly the wife of Kamose. He suggests that the mother of Ahmose should be

identied with Ahhotep II who is the owner of the con (CG 61006) from the Deir

el Bahari cache (DB 320), Claude Vandersleyen, “Les deux Ahhotep,” Studien zur

Altägyptischen Kultur 8 (1980): 237–241.

135 Kim S. B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt During the Second Intermediate Period, c.

1800–1550 B. C. Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies 20 (Copenhagen:

Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 276.

136 Marianne Eaton-Krauss, “Encore: the cons of Ahhotep, wife of Seqeni-en-Re tao and

mother of Ahmose,” in Ägypten-Münster: Kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zu Ägypten, dem

Vorderen Orient und verwandten Gebieten. Donum natalicum viro doctissimo Erharto Graefe

sexagenario ab amicis collegis discipulis ex aedibus Schlaunstraße 2/Rosenstraße 9 oblatum, edited

by Anke Blöbaum, Jochem Kahl, and Simon D. Schweitzer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,

2003), 75–89.

137 She refers to the tomb of Senebtisi from 13th dynasty’ interred within was a woman

buried with a whip, stone mace-heads, ceremonial rods, and bows. She also discusses

Second Intermediate Period warrior burials from Tell el-Dab

a with parallels in the

Near East; Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und Sozialgeschichte,”

105. A dagger was also found in the tomb of Ita in Dahshur, the daughter of one of the

12th dynasty kings, Jacques de Morgan et al., Fouilles a Dahchour 1894–1895. Volume II

(Vienne: Adolphe Holzhausen 1903), Pl. VI.

138 Peter Lacovara, “The Burial of Queen Ahhotep,” in Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and

Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C., edited by Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, and Jean

M. Evans (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), 119; see also the

summary in Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und Sozialgeschichte,”

104. f. 198.

139 Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur-und Sozialgeschichte,” 100.

140 Filip Taterka, “Military Expeditions of King Hatshepsut,” in Current Research in

Egyptology 2016. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium. Jagiellonian University,

Krakow 2016, edited by Julia M. Chyla, Joanna Dębowska-Ludwin, Karolina

Rosińska-Balik, and Carl Walsh (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 90–106.

141 Column from Egyptian Museum in Cairo with no number, KRI IV. 23, 5–6; also

victory column from Heliopolis with the same text, KRI IV.38, 3.

142 Robert K. Ritner, The Libyan Anarchy. Inscriptions from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period.

Society of Biblical Literature 21 (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2009), 586.

143 Alfred Denis Godley, Herodotus. Volume II. Books III and IV (New York: G. P.

Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 397.

144 Denise Eileen McCoskey, “Gender at the Crossroads of Empire: Locating Women in

Strabo’s Geography,” in Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia,

edited by Daniela Dueck, Hugh Lindsay, and Sarah Pothecary (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press 2005), 61–68.

145 Horace Leonard Jones (trans.), The Geography Vol. VIII (London: William Heinemann

Ltd., 1957), 139.

146 FHN II, 653.

147 FHN III, 816.

62 Gender of aggression

148 Geller, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives, 5.

149 Alan H. Gardiner, The Library of A. Chester Beatty. Description of A Hieratic Papyrus with

a Mythological Story, Love-Songs, and Other Miscellaneous Texts (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1931), 13–26. For translation of Edward F. Wente see Simpson, The

Literature of Ancient Egypt, 92–103.

150 Sweeney, “Gender in the Contendings of Horus and Seth,” 161–162.

151 Orriols-Llonch, “Mujer Ideal, Mujer Infractora. La transgresión feminina en el antigue

Egipto,” 27.

152 The tale of Isis and the name of god Re is preserved in several late New Kingdom

texts: Papyrus Turin 1993, Papyrus Chester Beatty 11, Ostracon Petrie 7 (UC 39610),

Ostracon Deir el-Medina 1263, Ostracon Queen’s College Oxford 1116, Andrea G.

McDowell, Village Life in Ancient Egypt. Laundry Lists and Love Songs (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1999), 118–120.

153 Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II, 197–199.

154 The story is preserved on twelve Demotic papyri, see Homann and Quack,

Anthologie der demotischen Literatur, 226.

155 Sigrid-Eike Hoenes, Untersuchungen zu Wesen und Kult der Göttin Sachmet (Bonn:

Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1976), 1; Martin von Falck, “Kriegerische Götter,” in Pharao

siegt immer. Krieg und Frieden im Alten Ägypten, edited by Susanne Petschel und Martin

von Falck (Bönen: Kettler, 2004), 15.

156 The grato is from Nehri’s 7th year and the conict is interpreted as a conict of the

Hare nome nomarchs with Heracleopolitan kings. In another grato from Nehri’s 5th

year, Kai states that the army he fought against consisted of troops from both Lower

and Upper Egypt. If he had been ghting against the Theban rulers we would not

expect him to mention Lower Egyptian troops, as Theban rulers in this period did not

have control over Lower Egypt, Raymond O. Faulkner, “The Rebellion in the Hare

Nome,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 30 (1944): 62–63.

157 Translation of William Kelly Simpson in Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt,

302–303.

158 Hoenes, Untersuchungen zu Wesen und Kult der Göttin Sachmet, 70.

159 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 36–37.

160 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 136–137.

161 KRI I, 27.8

162 KRI V 37, 14.

163 KRI V, 57. 7.

164 KRI II, 87.11–88.5.

165 Great Inscription of Year 11 of Ramesses III (Medinet Habu, Pylon I, north face),

KRI V, 62. 12; Second Lybian War Triumphal Poem of Year 11 (Medinet Habu,

Pylon I, east facade), KRI V, 69.9.

166 KRI V, 109. 3.

167 Matić, Body and Frames of War, 149–160.

168 Hoenes, Untersuchungen zu Wesen und Kult der Göttin Sachmet, 75.

169 Adrien Louarn, “Agir en mâle, étant une femme,” Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne

13 (2020): 315.

170 This depiction is found on the west wall of room 12 in the temple of Khonsu at

Karnak, Bertha Porter and Rosalind L. B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient

Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts. Reliefs, and Paintings. II. Theban Temples. Second Edition

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 242. Ithyphallic Sekhmet with a sun disc and an

uraeus is supposedly depicted in the second register from below on the back of a

cippus Turin 3031 from very late Late Period, LGG III, 348; László Kákosy, Egyptian

Healing Statues in Three Museums in Italy: Turin, Florence, Naples. Serie prima - mon-

umenti e testi 9. Torino: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Soprintendenza al

Museo delle antichità egizie, 1999), 100, Pl. XXXIII, g. 24. The accompanying text

indeed identies the gure as Sekhmet the Great, beloved of Ptah, however, the

Gender of aggression 63

phallus is depicted lower on her body than on other representations of ithyphallic

goddesses and she is not holding it with her hand like in other examples.

171 Urk. IV, 1301.17.

172 KRI I 12, 2–3.

173 KRI II, 154.4. The same description is found in line 5 of the rhetorical text over

horses in the bottom register of the east side of the south wall of the great hall at

Karnak, KRI II, 158.14.

174 Anne K. Capel and Glenn Markoe (eds.), Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven:

Women in Ancient Egypt (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996), 140; Vanessa Davies,

Peace in Ancient Egypt. Harvard Egyptological Studies 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 47–48.

175 Papyrus Louvre 3129, 5; see the discussion in Jens Blach Jørgensen, “Myths, Menarche

and the Return of the Goddess,” in Lotus and Laurel: Studies on Egyptian Language and

Religion, edited by Rune Nyord and Kim Ryholt (Copenhagen: University of

Copenhagen and Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015), 157.

176 KRI I, 16.5–6.

177 Kathlyn M. Cooney, “Androgynous Bronze Figurines in Storage at the Los Angeles

County Museum of Art,” in Servant of Mut. Studies in Honor of Richard A. Fazzini.

Probleme der Ägyptologie 28, edited by Sue H,. D’ Auria (Leiden and Boston: Brill,

2008), 67–71, g. 4.

178 KRI V, 35.16.

179 Norman de Garis Davies, The Temple of Hibis in El-Khargeh Oasis III. Publications of

the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 17 (New York: The

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1953), Pl. 2, II; Eugene Cruz-Uribe, Hibis Temple

Project I: Translations, Commentary, Discussions and Sign List (San Antonio: Van Siclen

Books, 1988), 2.

180 Annik Wüthrich, Eléments de Théologie Thébaine: Les Chapitres Supplémentaires du Livre

des Morts. Studien zum Altägyptischen Totenbuch 16 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz

Verlag, 2010), 153–154. It is important to mention that the penis is not reproduced in

the depiction of goddess Mut but penises are not left out in the depictions of two male

deities anking her in the vignete in the publication of Karl Richard Lepsius, Das

Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin (Leipzig: Wigand,

1842), LXXVIII; For other censorships of erotica see Philippe Collombert and Youri

Volokhine, “De Aegyptiacis Rebus Doctorum Verecundia ou “‘Let’s Talk About

Sex!’”, Egypte, Afrique et Orient 40 (2005): 45–56.

181 Ramadan el-Sayed, La Déesse Neith de SaÏs. Importance et Rayonnement de son Culte.

Bibliothèque d’Étude LXXXVI/1 (Le Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale

du Caire, 1982), 72–76; LGG III, 510; Homann, “Warlike Women in Ancient

Egypt,” 49.

182 el-Sayed, La Déesse Neith de SaÏs, 1–12; Barbara S. Lesko, The Great Goddesses of Egypt

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 45–46.

183 Serge Sauneron, “Remarques de philologie et d’étymologie (en marge des textes

d’Esna),” in Mélanges Mariette, Bibliothèque d’Étude 32 (Cairo: Institut français

d’archéologie orientale, 1961), 243–244; Jochen Hallof, “Der Tempel von Esna: Ein

Tempel fur zwei Götter,” in Ägyptologische Tempeltagung: Funktion und Gebrauch

altägyptischer Tempelräume. Königtum, Staat und Gesellschaft fruher Hochkulturen 3.1,

edited by Ben Haring and Andrea Klug (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 130.

184 Jochen Hallof, “Esna,” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles, edited by

Willeke Wendrich (2011): 5. http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=

21198/zz002b2xv3.

185 Louarn, “Agir en mâle, étant une femme,” 316.

186 Torso from Naples 258, el-Sayed, La Déesse Neith de SaÏs, Doc. 644, 469–470; https://

www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/570322.

187 LGG III, 516.

188 LGG II, 174.

64 Gender of aggression

189 Alan H. Gardiner, Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Third Series. Chester Beatty

Gift (London: British Museum, 1935), 62–63.

190 Urk. IV, 1559.6.

191 Philippe Collombert and Laurent Coulon, “Les dieux contre la mer. Le débutt du

papyrus d’Astarté (pBN 202),” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 100

(2000): 193–242.

192 lzak Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess. The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian

Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500–1 000 BCE. Orbis Biblicus et

Orientalis 204 (Fribourg and Göttingen: Academic Press and Vandenhoeck &

Ruprecht, 2004), 93.

193 Orriols-Llonch, “Mujer Ideal, Mujer Infractora. La Transgresión Feminina en el an-

tigue Egipto,” 30.

194 Jørgensen, “Myths, Menarche and the Return of the Goddess,” 163.

195 On the concept of ḥtp and its pacication aspect, also in connection to war and peace

in ancient Egypt see Davies, Peace in Ancient Egypt.

196 Louarn, “Agir en mâle, étant une femme,” 317–318.

197 Leonore E. A. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome. Fourth edition (New York:

Springer 2017).

198 Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess, 92.

199 Lucy Corcoran, “Athena: Goddess of War,” PaGes 6 (1999): 1–11.

Gender of aggression 65

MASCULINE DOMINATION:

EVIDENCE OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

In the previous chapter, we have seen that some forms of physical violence do not

leave traces on the human bones and are thus undetectable in the archaeological

record. Maybe the least discussed such form of physical and psychological violence

in ancient Egypt is rape. The English word “rape” is derived from Latin rapio,

rapere “seize”; the term has circulated since the 15th century, though may have had

linguistic currency in Anglo-Latin as early as the 13th century.

There are nu-

merous scholarly studies dedicated to this topic. Feminist writers and scholars of

gender, especially, have had much to say about this type of gendered violence.

In her much-discussed book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975),

Susan Brownmiller dened rape as “a conscious process of intimidation by which

all men keep all women in a state of fear”.

Rape during war, she writes, is a form

of increased and prolonged oppression that women already experience under a

state of peace. Because women symbolize family, a basic social unit, enemy men

regard them as property and their rape is a sign of total victory. While her de-

nition is a good starting point, it has some shortcomings. Namely, not all men are

rapists, rape is not a standard gender practice of men nor a standard expression of

masculinity, rapists are not only male, and the victims of rape are not only female.

Brownmiller’s early and important work indicates how dening rape in past

societies (or present-day ones) is challenging.

Estelle B. Freedman demonstrates that

denitions of rape, rapists and victims are historically contigent and embedded in

racial politics in the USA.

Acts of sexual violence regarded as rape today were not

necessarily seen as such in antiquity. The Hittites, for example, believed that if a man

raped a woman in the mountains, he is at fault and should die. If the rape occurs in

the house of the woman, however, then she is guilty and should die. Moreover, if

the husband of the woman catches them in the act – whether forced or consensual

– and kills them, he committed no oence. If the husband spares his wife, he has to

spare the man who raped her.

In this case, the act perpetrated in the victim’s house

was regarded as adultery and not rape. In explanation, Trevor Bryce has argued that

the woman would have been expected to call for help. This understanding of sexual

violence among the Hittites underscored the precarity of a woman’s position.

A striking parallel is found in ancient Greece. In the polis of Athens during the

5th century BC, acts that occurred within the woman’s home were considered to

be adultery while those outside were rape.

Rape in ancient Greece ultimately

threatened the men’s authority over oikos. Rape or seduction without parental

consent, for instance, undermined the authority of the father and deprived him of

the possibility of ekdosis, the act of giving his daughter to another man.

Rubin

would probably say that rape interfered in “the trac in women”. Curses ar-

ticulated in ancient texts oer additional evidence of sexual assault in ancient

Greece. The Iliad of Homer (Book 3, 297–301), for instance, curses violators of

oaths by proclaiming that their wives will be mastered by strangers.

However,

according to Solon, Athenian statesman and poet from 7th–6th century BC,

prostitutes could not accuse someone of rape and according to Roman jurist

Ulpian from 2nd–3rd century AD, even the theft of their property in the course of

their abducting and breaking into their houses, was not considered to be theft.

Old Testament curses also inform us about the rape of women. Several books

contain passages that describe violence directed against the female body that in

turn aected social relations between men.

A curse in Deuteronomy 28:30, for

instance, decries that a man shall marry a woman who is then raped by another. In

2 Samuel 12:11, Yahweh threatens to give the wives of one man to his compa-

nions who shall then lie with them in broad daylight.

This passage implies a

public act, visible to anyone and thus a greater humiliation for the man cursed.

The Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 13:7–14) also describes the tribulations of Tamar, a

princess in the palace of David. The rape of Tamar by her brother Amnon is

recounted in three phases. First, he does not listen to her voice. He then rapes her.

Finally, he lies with Tamar.

In Jeremiah 8:10, a man threatens to give another

man’s wives to others. Job 31:10 contains a passage in which a man swears that his

wife should grind grain for another and others should bow down over her. While

the Old Testament may oer a distinction between forced and consensual sexual

intercourse, as Bruce Wells has argued, a woman’s guilt was certain. Men, on the

other hand, were punished in the same way whether rape or adultery was at

issue.

In this chapter, I will discuss similar circumstances in ancient Egypt.

We also see this linking of force to consent in ancient Rome. Giulia Sissa writes

that the Roman lover counted on young women being taken by force. Seduction was

considered a feigned misunderstanding. A young woman made a show of her modesty

and an expert lover had to limit his force to an appropriate level. These social attitudes

were longstanding; a founding myth of Rome is one of collective rape when soldiers

kidnapped the daughters of their neighbors, the Sabines. In “memory” of this event,

the Roman groom lifts his bride in his arms to carry her to the bedroom.

Sexual violence is not solely a “problem of women”, however.

Men are also

the victims of sexual violence,

as are children. One should consider the nuances

concerning social concepts behind the rape of men, women and children of both

Masculine domination 67

sexes. Namely, if the crucial issue behind rape is a threat to the family unit or

bloodline through illegitimate ospring, then this surely does not include raped

men or children who cannot give birth. Rape of men threatens their honor and

their bodies in a dierent way because they are forcely put into a passive position

which they themselves attribute to women. Simultaneously, their rape threatens

the honor of their families because they come forth as weak and incapable of

acting as protectors. As aforementioned, this question of honor was important for

the ancient Greeks. In more contemporary settings and circumstances, civil wars in

Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda demonstrate how the raping of women and

girls aimed to demoralize them, as well as question male family members’ mas-

culinity and self-presentations. Men raped to demonstrate how enemies were

incapable of protecting their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters. Often men

themselves were victims of sexual violence or were forced to mistreat their female

family members, even committing incestual acts under the threat of death.

These cross-cultural examples illustrate how past societies’ juridical answers to

sexual violence, such as rape, diered from contemporary ones. Rape should be

explored as a socially constructed crime. That is, we should explore how the act,

depending on the identity of the perpetrators and its social consequences, can be

dened as a crime or not. In the case of ancient Egypt, as I discuss in this chapter,

textual sources contain descriptions of forced sexual acts that contemporary au-

diences may recognize as rape. Ancient Egyptians may not have categorized them

as such, however. According to Renate Müller-Wollermann, the textual sources

do not dierentiate between adultery and rape based on terminology or

context.

Answering the question of whether ancient Egyptians did identify

certain sexual acts as punishable crimes has the potential to shed much light on

gender relations and ideology.

Alexandra von Lieven argues that where the divine world is concerned, we are

safe to interpret certain acts as rapes. Sources use either unambiguous terms, which

indicate physical violence, or the reaction of the victim is defensive or frantic.

Writings about humans, however, do not have descriptions of victims’ perspec-

tives or reactions. Instead, we are left with terms that indicate physical sexual

violence. According to Müller-Wollermann, in all cases of adultery and rape, the

verb used is nk.

Jac J. Janssen and Jaana Toivari-Viitala, however, warn against

translating this verb as rape. Rather, they have pointed to its ambiguous meaning,

which depends on the context in which it is used.

Contrary to ancient Egyptian,

the Akkadian verb naqabu, translated by Marten Stol as “to pierce”, is argued to

have exclusively been used to describe rape.

Here, I discuss another ancient

Egyptian verb (ẖ

) for physical acts of a sexual nature. The verb, I argue, likely

involved some form of forced sexual violence.

In this chapter, I use Bourdieu’s understanding of sexual relations (Chapter 1) –

as a type of social domination in which active men and passive women are the

norms – to frame evidence from ancient Egypt. This normative division creates,

organizes, expresses, and directs desire as men’s “desire for possession”.

In this

chapter, I rely heavily on textual sources for the simple reason that until now there

68 Masculine domination

are no depictions of sexual violence that can be clearly identied as such. In other

cultural contexts, like ancient Greece and Rome, representations that connote

sexual violence are abundant.

There also seems to be evidence for the re-

presentation of rape in Neo-Assyrian art. The rape of Arab women supposedly is

depicted on a relief from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (669-631/627 BC)

from Nineveh, for instance.

In ancient Egypt, however, actual depictions of

sexual intercourse are rare and restricted to media such as ostraca and papyri.

Depictions are not found in state-sponsored monumental art or private, elite

expressions. Sexual activities were mostly alluded to in visual culture through a set

of symbols.

This dearth of imagery contrasts greatly with textual sources; lit-

erature and love poems have an explicit vocabulary.

I nd the absence of re-

presentations that could even remotely be related to sexual violence in ancient

Egypt important to stress, especially in comparison with other ancient cultures. So,

this chapter oers an important starting point.

3.1. Sexual violence in the human world

In the previous chapter, we read how Wisdom Texts advised men to avoid

women who are strangers and even to avoid women from other households.

Adultery was highly condemned and seductive women endangered the social

order. Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead and its negative confessions demon-

strates this. These negative confessions are formulaic. In the rst person singular,

the owner of the media source (papyrus or otherwise) denies the undesirable

conduct. “I have not had sex with a wife of (another) man” (ḥm.t-ṯ3y), so goes one

negative confession in the rst person singular.

Such condemnation of adultery and sexual violence does not mean that these

acts never occurred in ancient Egypt. We have already seen in Chapter 2 that

adultery was thematized in the Wisdom Texts for several centuries. In this section,

I present textual evidence for sexual violence committed by men against women

and men. My treatment is organized chronologically, and I oer a comparative

analysis when appropriate. When texts do not explicitly detail the violent nature of

the act, we are left to ll in some blanks.

Thus, treasurer Iti from the early First Intermediate Period boasts in his auto-

biographical text on stela Cairo 20001 that he did not seize a daughter of another

man.

Here no sexual violence is explicitly mentioned but we can safely argue that

such an action would have been violent and that the woman’s consent would be

missing. We can only assume that some women were forced into relations, in-

cluding sexual ones. One later illustrative example is found in Papyrus Anastasi I, a

late 19th dynasty letter of the scribe Hori to a scribe of the army. Hori writes about

the encounter of the Egyptian army scribe and a foreign maiden (t3 šry.t “young

girl”) taking care of a wineyard/garden in Joppa. She is said to allure him to herself.

He is caught and has to give a confession after which he is charged and in order to

pay he has to sell a ne shirt.

The sexual connotations of this encounter are

indicated by the word choice. The scribe is said “to make a drill” because of the call

Masculine domination 69

of the maiden who is in the garden, a place of sexual encounters in contemporary

love poems.

Clearly, the encounter was not legal as the scribe had to pay a ne.

The choice of the word for the girl indicates that she was not married. Ellen Morris

has suggested that this encounter could have been rape. According to Morris,

spontaneous sexual acts between unacquainted men and women rarely occurred in

“traditional societies” except in fantasy. She argues that any such encounter in real

life would have been preceded by a nancial transaction or involved violent,

physical assault.

One should be cautious, however. While many ancient Egyptian

love poems were passionate fantasies, pre-marital sex is often a principal topic. It is

hard to say whether this is because of unfullled fantasies or genuine encounters.

Therefore, unlike Morris, I do not see good evidence to support the interpretation

of the encounter between the army scribe and maiden from Joppa as rape. There are

also no other textual sources mentioning sexual violence or rape committed by

ancient Egyptian soldiers in war. However, the silence on this matter should not be

over interpreted. The absence of textual evidence on rape in war is not necessarily

also evidence of absence of rape.

The most often quoted textual source on rape in ancient Egypt is the text of

Papyrus Salt 124 (British Museum 10055) related to the crimes of Paneb in Deir el-

Medina during the 20th dynasty.

Paneb stole property from a royal burial and

temple. He urinated in a tomb. And, he was accused of having sex (nk) with three

married women: Tuy, wife of Qena, Hunro, wife of Pendua, and Hesisenebef

(recto 2, 2–3). While Paneb’s marital status is not stated in this text, other sources

indicate that he was married, as well.

Thus, he was surely commiting adultery but

it is less clear if the women he encountered were raped. Paneb also slept with

Webkhet, the small young girl and likely unmarried daughter (šry.t) of Hunro, who

seems to have been living with her mother at the time (Webkhet also slept with

Paneb’s son, Aapahte (recto 2, 4)). The text remains silent on the issue of consent in

these cases. There is no rm evidence, argues Morris Bierbrier, that the accusations

against Paneb were true; accusations of adultery could have been stock accusations.

It is possible that Paneb abused his position as the chief workman to blackmail the

women, and his son may have proted from his father’s status. It is nevertheless clear

that the problem behind these acts was not the fact that married men cheated on

their own wives, but that they had sex with the wives of other men or daughters of

other men or women. As Müller-Wollermann stresses, the fact that criminal charges

were pressed against Paneb and his son indicates that their acts were considered

inappropriate.

Yet, Papyrus Salt 124 has nothing to say about the nature of vio-

lence. Nor does the text says anything about punishments administered for the acts.

We do learn that later one of the women’s husbands divorced his wife, but it is

unclear if the incident involving Paneb was the catalyst.

Another often quoted text is the Turin Indictment Papyrus (Papyrus Turin

1887, recto 1,6), ca. 1150 BC. The wab priest Penanuqet of the House of Khnum,

who is also called Sed, stands accused of having sex with Mutnemeeh, the

daughter of Pasekhti. At the time, Mutnemeeh was married to the sherman

Thotemheb, the son of Pentawer. The papyrus also documents charges against

70 Masculine domination

Penanuqet for having sex with Tabs, the daughter of Shuy. Tabs is identied as

ḥm.t-

ḥwty. Several scholars have assessed this designator. Pascal Vernus under-

stands

ḥwty as a personal name,

whereas Günter Vittmann translates ḥm.t-

ḥwty

as “married woman”.

The verb used in both the cases of Mutnemeeh and Tab is

nk. Similar to the case of Paneb from the Papyrus Salt 124, it is not clear if the

relations of these women with Penanuqet were consensual. In another case from

the Turin Indictment Papyrus (Papyrus Turin 1887, verso 3. 4–5; section C,

column III), we see another possible accusation of rape: “charge concerning the

rape (?) (ẖ

) done by this sailor Panakhtta […to(?)…], a eld worker

of the estate

of Khnum, lord of Elephantine, as he (Panakhtta) was in the place of [NN]”

(sḫ3

r p3 ẖ

j-jr P3-nḫt-t p3y ṯ3w w

ḥwty n pr ẖnmw nb 3bw jw=f m dmj n p3).

There are of course more explicit examples where we can be sure that the act in

question was sexual violence and not adultery with possible consent. In a passage

from an inscription in his funerary temple, Amenhotep, son of Hapu, (lines 9–10)

states that, among other curses and punishments, the perpetrators of various crimes

should be punished so that their “wives will be raped while their eyes see it” (ẖ

(.w) ḥm.wt=sn

jn.wy.w ḥr nw3).

I rst draw your attention to the lexeme ẖ

This verb is not frequently en-

countered, judging by only two cases given by the Thesaurus Linguae Aegiptiae

(online dictionary of ancient Egyptian language). The second case appears in the

Turin Indictment Papyrus already discussed above. The verb is written with a penis

determinative from which liquid drops, . The same word written with a

dierent determinative (an arm holding a stick), means “to empty, to steal”.

Leonard Lesko oers other translations, namely “to drain, to exhaust” and “to

debauch”.

Of course, I recognize that wives were also punished for crimes they

did not commit. But, from the ancient Egyptian perspective, the violent sexual act

serves to punish the perpetrators more so than their wives. The text’s insistence that

the men must serve as witnesses implies that the women’s bodies could in some

contexts serve as arenas where displays of power play out and conicts between men

were realized. Although the number of attestations of the verb ẖ

with a sexual

connotation is small for a lexicographic study, one can suggest a sexual act which

also meant stealing, for example, the honor of the owner (i.e., husband or father). If

the marital status of the victims is brought to the fore, this meaning of the verb

makes sense for the text pertaining to Amenhotep, son of Hapu but not for the

Turin Indictment Papyrus. Various authors have oered dierent interpretations for

the act implied by the verb ẖ

, as used in Turin Indictment Papyrus and the in-

scription of Amenhotep, son of Hapu. Thomars Eric Peet and Alexander J. Peden

translate it as debauching,

a euphemism for rape. But, others are more explicit,

translating the verb as rape. According to Richard B. Parkinson, later parallels for the

rape of men raise the possibility that such acts were carried out to inict public

shame.

According to Ulrike Fauerbach, the victim of the act in the Turin

Indictment Papyrus was not necessarily a man; it could have been his wife.

The

outcome of the charge is not recorded, so we do not know if the perpetrator has

been punished, and, if so, in what manner. If we understand the verb ẖ

here as a

Masculine domination 71

sexual act which also meant stealing the honor of the owner, and if we understand

the case here as rape of a man and not his wife, for example, then we have to ask

ourselves how was male-male rape socially understood? Was it regarded as the theft

of one’s honor? And, whose honor was at stake? The sexual assault of a man, in

comparison to a woman, does not produce the same consequences for the family of

the victim. Hence, what was probably at stake is the degradation of the male victim,

the presentation of him as a passive object of penetration.

Pertinent to the rape of women as public punishment is a passage from the

Instructions of Ankhsheshonq (XXI, 18–19): “Do not copulate with a married

woman. He who copulates with a married woman on her bed, his wife will be

copulated with on the ground”.

Christopher J. Eyre suggests that revenge would

take the form of rape. He sees it as reasonable to assume that the wife, once

scorned in this way, would take to a low form of sexual dissipation.

Alternatively, the violation of one’s wife works to punish a man by calling his

dignity into question. Of course, one could also argue that the wife of the per-

petrator is punished instead of him. A parallel is found in the text of the Ritual for

Repulsing the Angry One (TM 56940, Papyrus Louvre N 312) from 4th to 3rd

century BC. Rape is counted among the crimes committed by Seth (who here

stands for Geb, as I discuss later) in the town Sebennytos. As a result, his wife is

forced to have sexual intercourse in front of him, and he does not have the power

to save her. He is impaled with a spear by Shu and two sisters (Isis and Nephthys)

spit on him.

We have seen in Chapter 2, that Anubis intended to kill his brother

Bata with a spear for supposedly commiting adultery with his wife. That the victim

of the rape is herself blamed is also found in another example in the divine world,

in the case of the rape of the goddess Tefnut by Geb.

Married women in such a

context, whether real or divine, function as property. One can also recognize here

the law of retaliation, “an eye for an eye”. Whether the married woman who had

sex with the perpetrator consented does not change the fact that the wife of the

latter will be sexually violated as punishment. Further evidence for rape is found in

Papyrus Petese II D1 from the 2nd century AD. Hatmehit, wife of Psemmut, was

desired by Prophet of Horus (of Pe). He had brought her to his home by force and

he slept with her. In Papyrus Petese II C1 II-III we read about the rape of a

combatant´s mother by an enemy.

To summarize insights gained from papyri, in those cases when the verb nk is

used, we cannot be sure if the actors used physical force and if the victims gave

consent and thus were not victims after all. Where the poorly attested verb ẖ

concerned, we could be very well dealing with forced sexual intercourse. The

contexts of its use and other meanings of the verb oer support. The idea that

forced sex was related to stealing, emptying, and exhausting in Egypt brings us full

circle to the ancient Latin term rapio or rapere, meaning “to seize and carry o”.

What we immediately notice is that we do not have surviving ancient Egyptian

evidence indicating what the punishment for rape could have been. It seems that

the rape of women is used as a punishment for men who have committed adultery

with married women.

72 Masculine domination

The only indication that punishment occurred for rape in Egypt comes from a

late, non-Egyptian source. As the ancient Greek historian Diodorus recollects in

the rst century BC (Bibliotheca historica I. 78.4–5):

Severe also were their laws touching women. For if a man had violated a

free married woman, they stipulated that he be emasculated, considering

that such a person by a single unlawful act had been guilty of the three

greatest crimes, assault, abduction, and confusion of ospring; but if a man

committed adultery with the woman’s consent, the laws ordered that the

man should receive a thousand blows with the rod, and that the woman

should have her nose cut o, on the ground that a woman who tricks herself

out with an eye to forbidden license should be deprived of that which

contributes most to a woman’s comeliness.

This statement indicates that rapes did occur, although we might have trouble

recognizing the cases in textual sources due to the reasons I already discussed. But a

hundred years later, by the Roman period, textual documents seem to be silent on

the subject of sexual violence altogether. In his extensive study of violence in

Roman Egypt, Ari Z. Bryen uncovered only few statements.

Based on a cross-

cultural comparison, he argues that rape is usually under-reported and some rapes

might have resulted in marriages. As an example of potential sexual violence from

the 2nd century AD Oxyrhynchos, Bryen discusses the case of Heraklas, the son of

Pauseirion. Heraklas’s wife Taamois was attacked by Apollos, the son of

Herakleides. According to this source, Apollos was drunk and verbally abused

Taamois. He then stripped her “in the presence of many worthy men”. Heraklas

asks the court for revenge. Bryen stresses that such acts were also directed at men,

which lead him to assume that they are not gendered.

The presumption mis-

construes gender. That is, violent sexual acts can be gendered dierently con-

tingent on one’s identity as a man or woman. Stripping a man in public, for

instance, could compromise his honor and masculinity.

What we learn from Diodorus is that the problem with the rape of a free

married woman is not so much the crime committed against the woman. Rather,

assault, abduction (of property), and confusion of ospring present a serious

problem in a society centered on household and patrilineal descent. As the case of

Ankhsheshonq demonstrates, the concern is for men’s honor and not women’s

well-being.

As Diodorus relates, if adultery was committed and the woman

consented, she has her nose cut o,

while the man was beaten, both long-

standing standard punishments for criminals in ancient Egypt.

The logic behind

the former’s punishment is to deter future adulterous acts by making her un-

attractive. Though the victim’s perspective is missing, von Lieven has deliberated

about the appropriate reaction of an ancient Egyptian raped woman, suicide before

or at least after the act.

Although we do not know much about the reactions of

women, we know that the raped man (supposedly) from the Turin Indictment

Papyrus led complaints.

Masculine domination 73

3.2. Sexual violence in the divine world

When compared to the human world, there is far more evidence for sexual

violence in the divine world. Some cases are explicit and clear, whereas others are

more ambiguous.

The Contending of Horus and Seth is perhaps the best known and certainly most

frequently quoted case of male to male sexual violence in the ancient Egyptian

divine world. There are, however, multiple versions of this story that span from

the 6th dynasty of the Old Kingdom until the Ptolemaic and Roman period. For

this reason, one should be careful not to overinterpret the older and less clear

descriptions by using knowledge from later ones, which are richer in content and

details. In the Pyramid Texts on the eastern wall of the fore room of the pyramid

of Pepi I, king of the 6th dynasty of the Old Kingdom, in Saqqara South, there is

the earliest attestation of the story (Pyramid Text 1036). In this example, the

sexual activity of Horus and Seth is described as reciprocal.

In the text of Papyrus Kahun VI. 12 from the 12th dynasty, Seth addresses

Horus and states that his buttocks are beautiful. Horus reports this to his mother

Isis, stating that Seth wants to have sex with him. She advises Horus not to ap-

proach Seth for sex. She tells him to say to Seth that he is too heavy for him. Seth

then imparts Horus with sucient strength; the latter is advised by Isis to place his

ngers between his buttocks and catch Seth’s semen. In contrast to other narra-

tives, Horus seems to have given consent to Seth after his mother oers advice

about how to trick him.

In the text of Papyrus Chester Beatty I, a document found at Deir el-Medina

that dates to the reign of Ramesses V, the story describes a dierent scenario. After

being advised by the gods to stop quarrelling, Seth invites Horus to feast in his

house. Horus agrees. A made bed awaits them in which they lay down together. In

the night, Seth places his erect penis between the thighs of Horus. Horus, in turn,

places his hands between his thighs and catches his brother’s semen. Horus then

shows the outcome of Seth’s actions to Isis. His mother cries aloud, cuts o his

hand with a knife, throws it into the water, and creates a new hand for Horus.

Following these events, she rubs ointment on his penis, which becomes sti. Isis

then collects Horus’s semen in a pot. The next day she goes to Seth’s garden and

places Horus’s semen on lettuce. Seth eats the lettuce and so consumes the semen.

Seth again takes Horus to the court of gods and argues that he should be the ruler

because he did a man’s deed to Horus. The gods spit before Horus who laughs at

them and argues that Seth’s semen should be summoned. The spitting of the gods

before Horus is usually interpreted as condemnation of the supposed passive role

of Horus.

Thoth then summons the semen of Seth, which answers from the

waters in which Horus’s severed hand was thrown. Thoth summons the semen of

Horus and instructs it to come out of his ear. The seed asks if it should come out

of his ear as divine seed, and Thoth answers that it should come out from the

top of his head.

The seed comes out as a golden sun disk on the head of Seth.

Thoth takes this disk from Seth and crowns Horus with it. That Seth attempts to

74 Masculine domination

commit an act of sexual violence against Horus is clear. Nevertheless, at the end of

the story, Seth refers to his act as a man’s deed, indicating that the act is manly (i.e.,

penetrative) no matter the targeted body part. According to Lynn Meskell and

Rosemary Joyce, the conict between Seth and Horus involves violence in which

masculinity is threatened.

Continuing with this theme of violation, divinity, and incest, Horus’s rape of

Isis is discussed in the Magical Papyrus Harris (7, 10–11), which dates to the 20th

dynasty. The text states: “See, Horus has sex (nk) with his mother Isis and her tears

fall in the water”.

Additionally, another case of son-mother rape is possibly

attested in the text from the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu, describing Khnum as

detaching from his father after he jumped (bnbn) his mother (Edfu VI 147,5).

In the text of Papyrus Chester Beatty VII (verso, 1, 6) from the 19th dynasty, a

spell against scorpions and illnesses may attest to Seth’s rape of Anat. The text

states: “… by jumping (p3y) her as a ram, by mating with her as a …”

The

goddess Anat was one of Seth’s wives. Along with Astarte, another goddess, Anat

had been gifted to Seth by the gods following their decision to give the earthly

throne of Osiris to Horus.

As Anat bathed, Seth jumped on her from behind.

Several authors have rightfully identied the incident as coitus a tergo.

Beate

Schukraft point out that in the same text Anat is described as “a mighty goddess,

a woman acting as a man/a warrior, clad as men, girdled like women” (see

Chapter 2). As such, her relationship with Seth might parallel Seth’s relationship to

Horus. She even suggests that this story may be evidence that Seth not only uses

coitus a tergo to degrade, but that he prefers sex with men or with women who look

like men.

There is, however, little evidence to support these arguments.

Nevertheless, one should be careful to draw denitive conclusions from the

limited evidence at hand. Coitus a tergo is not uncommon in ancient Egyptian

representations. British Museum Ostracon EA50714, which dates to the 19–20th

dynasty, shows a man having sexual intercourse (coitus a tergo) with a woman. In

front of the woman is a text in a single vertical line of black paint: hr jmn hr jm3

“gentle of skin, gentle of charm”.

According to Carolyn Graves-Brown such

ostraca were painted by the men of Deir el-Medina and presumably show the male

view point. It is not clear if the intention was to depict vaginal or anal sex.

The

Turin Erotic Papyrus from the late New Kingdom also depicts coitus a tergo

(Papyrus Turin 5501). According to Marc Orriols-Llonch, verbs such as

mḳ and

p3y refer to coitus a tergo, possibly even verbs nk and nh. He argues that although

this position is most frequently depicted in representations of sexual intercourse, it

does not necessarily reect reality. That is, the images could reect satire or

fantasy.

This view contrasts with Bourdieu’s assertion that many societies con-

demn a woman for mounting a man during sexual intercourse.

In fact, in ancient

Egyptian art, there are only few depictions of a woman or a goddess mounting a

man or a god.

There are also authors who argue that the goddess in Papyrus Chester Beatty

VII is not Anat but the “Seed” (t3 Mtwt). The idea that Anat is the one bathing in

the text comes to us from a reconstruction by Alan Gardiner. In contrast,

Masculine domination 75

Alessandro Roccati argues that the seed is bathing and interacts with Seth, based

on his analysis of an unnumbered 19th dynasty papyrus from Turin. Jacobus van

Dijk oers additional support for this interpretation – it is the personied seed that

encounters Seth – based on his translation. He also argues that no rape occurs.

Rather, the goddess seduces Seth. As a consequence, Anat becomes an inter-

mediary in the story. According to the version gleaned from a late New Kingdom

papyrus housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology (CG2006-4-1A-F), someone, presumably Seth in the form of a

storm, runs after Anat with sweat before his lips. She is found by her father Pre-

Horakhty who warns her of danger. She seems to be delivering a message that

semen has stung Seth.

In explanation, ancient Egyptians conceptualized mis-

placed semen as poison, like when being stung by a scorpion.

Other cases of Seth’s rapes are known too. Most recently, a series of rapes are

argued to be repeatedly mentioned in the text of Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84

from the 26th dynasty (also known as the Mythological Manual of the Delta). Von

Lieven argues that these sexual encounters result in abortion, as “normally the

birth of a child was considered desirable”.

In this text, Seth has raped a goddess

called Horit, or female Horus (x + 11-3-5). She aborts the fetus and gives it away

or disposes of it to the water. The aborted fetus takes the shape of “Thoth who

exits the crest”. A black ibis nds it in the water as a not fully formed monkey. von

Lieven contends that the fetus is born as a god related to Thoth, and the moon sees

parallels with this occurrence and the Horus’s encounter with Seth, which resulted

in its birth.

As an additional example of divine sexual assault, we may look to Osiris’ rape of

his daughter, goddess Horit. This story is mentioned three times in the same

Mythological Manual of the Delta. From these acts of sexual violence, three

dierent male Horus gods were born. In the rst instance (X, 2–3) Horit laments

her pregnancy at the hands of Osiris.

Her decision to abort is compared to the

decision of Tefnut who seems to have done the same. Horit’s abortion, a child

named Hu-mehen, was given to the Western Delta. The word used for the

abortion is s

3, which is translated by Thesaurus Linguae Aegiptiae as Fruchtblase

(German for amniotic sac) and by Dimitri Meeks as oeuf (French for egg).

Meeks

also stressed the relatedness of this word to the verb s

y, “to be in travail, to

shake”.

It is notable that the determinative is in the form of a woman giving

birth , and von Lieven has pointed out that the use of the wicked bird de-

terminative indicates something negative.

She also suggests that the crimes

Seth allegedly committed – eavesdropping in Bubastis and slandering the Great

One in Heliopolis – could be allusions to the rape of Horit-Bastet by Osiris.

The possibility of Geb’s rape of Tefnut is much discussed by Egyptologists.

Ursula Verhoeven

and Orell Witthuhn,

for example, argue that there is no

evidence for it, at least not in the text on the naos of El-Arish, which is often

quoted to support the rape interpretation. Yet, other authors who have dealt with

the text argue that the evidence is there. More recently, von Lieven and Jen Blach

Jørgensen contend that indications are found in other texts and the act is only

76 Masculine domination

implied in the text of the naos.

Often quoted support comes from the afore-

mentioned text on the naos of El-Arish (Ismailia Museum Nr. 2248, backside, text

part C), which dates to the 30th dynasty. First, the good reign of god Shu occurs.

Then, the children of Apophis rebel against him, which is followed by a large

lacuna. Afterward, a second rebellion occurs. According to von Lieven, the rape of

Tefnut is not explicitly mentioned but can be inferred from the context.

The

sentence usually interpreted as evidence for the rape of Tefnut by Geb is, as

Verhoeven demonstrates, dicult to translate.

However, that Geb raped Tefnut

is corroborated by the Mythological Manual Florence PSI inv. I 72 x+4, 12–18,

dated from 100 to 199 AD. This text mentions the home of the god who punished

another god guilty of perpetrating a crime against his own father in Hermopolis.

This perpetrator settled down with his mother Tefnut, and thus they sinned

against his father Shu.

The reference to Horit’s rst abortion with Osiris and the

description that “she (Horit) did as Tefnut did”, is taken by von Lieven as another

indication that Geb raped Tefnut.

Also, the spear as punishment for rapists and

adulterous men, as attested in the Tale of Two Brothers and Ritual for Repulsing the

Angry One is said to pierce the thigh of Geb who had sex with his mother Tefnut,

as described in Mythological Manual of the Delta (12, 7-12,8).

The symbolic

background of the spear is throughly discussed by Jen Blach Jørgensen.

Previously known only from Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride (late 1st early 2nd

century AD), the adulterous relationship between Osiris and his sister Nephthys,

who was also the wife of Seth, is possibly related in several Egyptian texts, such as

Old Coptic passages in Greek magical papyri (e.g., Paris, Bibliotheque National

suppl. 574), which date to around 300 AD, and Papyrus MMA 35.9.21 from the

Ptolemaic period.

Adultery is also attested on a stela from the 22nd dynasty as the

taboo of Osiris.

It is also tempting to assume that Seth killed Osiris in revenge,

though we have no evidence for such a response. In Papyrus MMA 35.9.21

(14.9), Nephthys fears that she could be killed by Seth, and according to

Mythological Manual of the Delta, she hides on a riverbank where Seth seeks her

out. It is also not clear if in relation with Osiris Nephthys gave her consent or not.

3.3. Concluding remarks

Comparing mythology to real-life experiences seems to be standard when studying

sexual violence in the ancient Greek and Roman world. When done critically,

such comparisons have proven fruitful in Graeco-Roman studies. In the case of

ancient Egypt, when we compare stories of rape from the human world to that of

the divine one, several interesting observations can also be made. As von Lieven

warned, however, one should be careful not to apply mythic patterns one-on-one

to the society that produced them.

In the words of Monique Wittig myths

should not be over-mythifed.

First, in both the human and divine world, male-female rape occurs more

frequently than male-male rape. Female-male sexual violence is never represented,

which may be explained by the hegemonic image of women as passive. If such

Masculine domination 77

cases did occur, victimized men probably did not turn to the authorities for fear of

social stigma. Second, although in the divine world, we are dealing with incestual

rape (e.g., uncle-nephew, father-daughter, and son-mother), known descriptions

for rape in the human world are not incestual. We should not exclude the pos-

sibility that these could have happened, but we simply have not uncovered

documented reports at this juncture. One should also stress, as von Lieven does,

that incest is not at issue in the divine world. Rather, it is the act of violence and

the context in which it occurs.

100

In the divine world, acts of rape are a method to

prove domination and claim rights to property (for example Seth and Horus). As

Bourdieu has argued, penetration performed on a man is in many societies an

armation of libido dominandi, a manifestation of power, an act of domination.

101

According to von Lieven, violating one’s mother is not a problem in the divine

world provided there is no living father whose rights are questioned, like the case

of Horus raping Isis whose husband Osiris was killed by Seth. She adds that in the

divine world, the violation of a daughter by a father was not punished because a

daughter is her father’s property, like in the case of Osiris raping Horit. If we

compare this to evidence from the human world, we notice again the same

concern with rights and property and not the victims themselves. Similarly,

Mesopotamian law books are primarily interested in whether the raped woman

was betrothed or married. Only secondary was the question, if she was raped.

102

As was also the case in ancient Egypt, importance was given to the eect of rape

on those men (father, husband) to whom the woman potentially belonged. We see

that a wider Near Eastern pattern takes shape. Negative confessions from the Book

of the Dead indicate that having sex with another man’s wife or assaulting his

daughter is sinful behavior. In the Instructions of Ankhsheshonq, we nd that one

is advised not to take for himself a woman whose husband is still living if he does

not want to make him his enemy.

103

The same text states that the one who desires

a married woman will be killed on her doorstep.

104

The punishment for men who

commit adultery, in some exceptionional cases, was that their wives were raped

before their eyes. Retaliation is aimed at the property of the perpetrators, their

women.

Adultery can result in pregnancy. Illustrative is the case of the prophet of

Nebethetepet’s wife who was impregnated by the prophet of Atum (Papyrus Carlsberg

165, “x + 1”, 1–9). Another story recounts how a man makes his son climb a persea tree

in order to check upon his wife. The son observes through the window how his

mother is having sex with a warrior, thereby committing adultery (Papyrus Carlsberg

165, x + 6, 22–30).

105

These illicit relations were a problem given the impossibility of

determining the father of a child. The crucial issue seems to be that of kinship, property,

and inheritance.

106

For example, in the Old Kingdom, children are usually called “his

son/daughter” and less commonly when they are isolated with the mother, “her son/

daughter”, but never “their son/daughter”.

107

Furthermore, during the Middle

Kingdom, as in the later New Kingdom, individual decision determined the status of

children born out of wedlock.

108

In the story Blinding of Truth by Falsehood (Papyrus

Chester Beatty II, 19th dynasty), we read how embarrassing it could have been for

78 Masculine domination

children without fathers; children mock the son of Truth (the name of one of the

characters) for being fatherless.

109

The Amarna letters, which date to the reign of

Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, oer additional evidence of father-daughter relations

and inheritance. Amenhotep III is reluctant to have his daughter marry a foreign ruler

although foreign princesses were very welcome at the Egyptian court and diplomatic

marriages between Egyptian kings and foreign princesses were frequent.

110

One thinks

of the rights potential sons of Egyptian princesses married to foreign rulers would have

in Egypt.

While adultery was problematic, the notion that a woman’s rape caused war, a

common motif in ancient Mediterranean cultures,

111

is entirely absent in ancient

Egypt. The evidence from Egypt ts well with the result of a cross-cultural study

of rape prone “tribal” societies where sexual assault by men of women is a cultural

norm or overlooked altogether. A common feature in rape prone societies is the

idea of women as property and men as those who engage in the exchange of

women.

112

Raping and adultery disturb the laws of exchange and thus impact the

entire society. That adultery is understood from men’s perspectives and com-

promises their honor also occurred in the divine world of ancient Egypt.

We may also use stories about the divine world to draw other conclusions

about ancient Egyptian attitudes toward rape. Although textual sources dealing

with sexual violence and rape in the human world do not mention it, the sources

mentioning rape in the divine world indicate that marital rape was imagined,

however the victims are daughters or mothers. The absence of the mentions of

sexual violence or rape of the wife by the husband could indicate that although

such acts could have happened, they were not considered as crimes. Furthermore,

as per von Lieven, if abortion in the divine world occurs in the aftermath of a rape,

then we can surmise that in the human world, women terminated pregnancies

resulting from rape and gave aborted fetuses to the water. Their ability to do so

indicates that women were not entirely passive; their termination of pregnancies

thus makes the eects of the rape irrelevant for the family’s inheritance and

property plans. Nevertheless, this power still is tied to their status as victims (or

survivors) of sexual violence. The problem we face is the one already recognized

by Catherine A. MacKinnon, how do we analyze the absence of a trace of

something? How do we do justice to victims who took their testimonies to their

graves?

113

According to Andrea G. McDowell, women’s adultery was not a punishable

oence in ancient Egypt, since the charges indicate that the wrongdoing was

ascribed to the men who had sex with married women.

114

This contrasts to the

warning given to adulterous women in literary texts where they are presented as

initiators of adultery. Evidence of adulterous women discussed in Wisdom and

literary texts, as treated in the previous chapter, and the evidence discussed in this

chapter indicate that ancient Egyptian understanding of sexual violence was not

centered on the victim. Rather, the focus remains on the man whose honor came

into question after committing an act of sexual violence. This is in line with other

research on so-called “honor cultures”

115

where men threaten the honor of other

Masculine domination 79

men through by their women, whether their wives or daughters. Furthermore,

ancient Egyptian evidence indicates that the sexual background of the act of rape

was also explicit in the choice of words (verb ẖ

), but the act itself was not re-

cognized as having a specic status.

In conclusion, it is important to consider the argument of Michel Foucault that

punishing rape should mean punishing physical violence and nothing more. His

claim takes away sexual organs’ status of preponderant place.

116

This does not

mean that his intention was to diminish the gravity of sexual violence. Instead he

wanted to diminish the power relations based on sexual dierence and to eliminate

the power relations which produce the idea that a victim of sexual violence is of a

shattered selfhood. Foucault wanted to free us from the burden of sexuality as

some inherent truth about ourselves.

117

Ancient Egyptian evidence indicates that

although the sexual background of the act of violence, such as rape, was clear, it

was nevertheless treated as any other form of physical violence. However, the

problem for ancient Egyptians was that it threatened the honor and lineage of the

victim’s husband through the possibility of impregnation. Contrary to Foucault,

while we do not have evidence that the ancient Egyptians elevated rape to the

status of a special crime against the purity of the victim’s soul, the way they treated

it still indicates that reproductive sexuality was a means of social control. Foucault

failed to recognize that what already ancient Egyptians recognized, namely that

rape can result in pregnancy and that the children born out of rape threaten the

patriarchy. In this we should not forget that although we are left without testi-

monies of victims we can at least consider that then, just as now, rape can restrict

movement and actions of women, helping to maintain masculine domination.

118

Rape is not illegal, it is regulated.

119

Notes

1 Paul A. Kruger, “Women and War Brutalities in the Minor Prophets: The Case of

Rape,” Old Testament Essays 27.1 (2014): 159.

2 Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce, “Preface,” in Rape in Antiquity. Sexual Violence in the

Greek and Roman Worlds, edited by Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (Bristol: Bristol

Classical Press, 2002), vii; Estelle B. Freedman, Redening Rape. Sexual Violence in the

Era of Surage and Segregation (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press,

2013); Sheila Jereys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930

(London: Pandora Press, 1985); Catherine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodied.

Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Catherine A.

MacKinnon, “Does Sexuality have a History?,” in Discourses of Sexuality from Aristotle to

AIDS, edited by Domna C. Stanton (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,

1992), 117–137.

3 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and

Schuster,1975), 15.

4 Deacy and Pierce, “Preface,” vii.

5 Freedman, Redening Rape.

6 Trevor R. Bryce, “The Role and Status of Women in Hittite Society,” in Women in

Antiquity. Real Women across the Ancient World, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and

Jean Macintosh Turfa (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 314.

80 Masculine domination

7 Susan Guettel Cole, “Greek Sanctions against Sexual Assault,” Classical Philology 79.2

(1984): 101.

8 Lin Foxhall, “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault´s History of

Sexuality,” in Sex and Dierence in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden

and Peter Toohey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 177; Giulia Sissa,

Greek Virginity, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1990), 88.

9 Kruger, “Women and War Brutalities in the Minor Prophets,” 159.

10 Hans Herter, “The Sociology of Prostitution in Antiquity in the Context of Pagan and

Christian Writings,” in Sex and Dierence in Ancient Greece and Rome (Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 106–107.

11 Kruger, “Women and War Brutalities in the Minor Prophets,” 161.

12 Kruger, “Women and War Brutalities in the Minor Prophets,” 158.

13 Marten Stol, Women in the Ancient Near East (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 255.

14 Bruce Wells, “Sex Crimes in the Laws of the Hebrew Bible,” Near Eastern Archaeology

78.4 (2015): 295

15 Giulia Sissa, Sex and Sensuality in the Ancient World (New Haven and London: Yale

University Press, 2008), 140.

16 Rita Schäfer, “Sexualisierte Kriegsgewalt: eine Bürde für Nachkriegsgesellschaften in

Afrika,” Africa Spectrum 43.2 (2008), 271.

17 Sandesh Sivakumaran, “Sexual Violence against Men in Armed Conict,” The

European Journal of International Law 18.2 (2007): 253–276; Amalendu Misra, The

Landscape of Silence. Sexual Violence against Men in War (London: Hurst &

Company, 2015).

18 Schäfer, “Sexualisierte Kriegsgewalt: eine Bürde für Nachkriegsgesellschaften in

Afrika,” 270.

19 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, 108.

20 Alexandra von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods? On the Transgression of Norms in Ancient

Egyptian Mythology,” in Lotus and Laurel: Studies on Egyptian Language and Religion in

Honour of Paul John Frandsen. The Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 39, edited by

Rune Nyord and Kim Ryholt (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015), 184.

21 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, 108.

22 Jac J. Janssen, “Two Egyptian Commandments,” in Funerary Symbols and Religion.

Essays Dedicated to Professor M. S. H. G. Heerma van Voss, edited by Jacques H.

Kamstra, Hendrikus Milde, and Kees Wagtendonk (Kampen: Jacques Hendrikus Kok,

1988), 55; Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina, 153–154.

23 Stol, Women in the Ancient Near East, 255.

24 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 21.

25 Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (eds.), Rape in Antiquity. Sexual Violence in the Greek

and Roman World (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2002).

26 Peggy L. Day, “Until I Come and Take You Away to a Land Like Your Own:

A Gendered Look at Siege Warfare and Mass Deportation,” in Women in Antiquity.

Real Women Across the Ancient World, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean

Macintosh Turfa (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 525.

27 There are around 15 depictions of male-female couples having sex in dierent posi-

tions. Most of these are from late New Kingdom ostraca, grati and the famous

Papyrus Turin 55001. Next to these there is, now lost, depiction of a sexual inter-

course from the Middle Kingdom tomb 140 of Khety at Beni Hasan. All of these come

from non-state sponsored contexts and are in majority of cases the depictions made by

commoners. Apart from depictions of sexual intercourse in the human world, there are

also several depictions of sexual intercourse of deities such as Isis and Osiris or Geb and

Nut. However, here, unlike in the case of sexual intercourse of humans, the pene-

tration is actually not depicted Orriols-Llonch, “Women’s Role in Sexual Intercourse

in Ancient Egypt,” 199.

Masculine domination 81

28 Robins, “Women in New Kingdom Art,” 110.

29 For one of the most recent studies of ancient Egyptian love songs, see John

Coleman Darnell, “The Rituals of Love in Ancient Egypt: Festival Songs oft he

Eighteenth Dynasty and the Ramesside Love Poetry,” Die Welt des Orients 46 (2016):

22–61; Landgráfová and Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess I; Alexandra von

Lieven, “Papyrus Harris 500 Recto 4,1–6,2?” in Pérégrinations avec Erhart Graefe.

Festschfrift zu seinem 75. Geburtstag. Ägypten und Altes Testament 87, edited by Anke

Ilona Blöbaum, Marianne Eaton-Krauss, and Annik Wüthrich (Münster: Zaphon,

2018), 318–321. One has to stress, however, that when we nd the language de-

scribing sexual intercourse less or not explicit at all, this comes from us not sharing the

same vocabulary and discourse of sex with the ancient Egyptians. Metaphors, symbols,

and gurative language are abundant. For an example of seemingly less, but an actually

quite explicit description of a sexual encounter, see my discussion on the divine birth

legend of Hatshepsut and Amenhotep III, Uroš Matić, “The Sap of Life: Materiality

and Sex in the Divine Birth Legend of Hatshepsut and Amenhotep III,” in Perspectives

on Materiality in Ancient Egypt-Agency, Cultural Reproduction and Change, edited by Érica

Meynart, Carolina Velloza, and Renan Lemos (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 35–54.

For explicit sexual language in rst millennium BC texts see, Joachim Friedrich

Quack, “Where Once Was Love, Love Is No More? What Happens to Expressions of

Love in Late Period Egypt?” Die Welt des Orients 46 (2016): 62–89.

30 Book of the Dead, Chapter 125, confession 19, Eyre, “Crime and Adultery in Ancient

Egypt,” 95. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II, 127; One should also bear in

mind that there is no agreement among Egyptologists on the meaning of the com-

posite ḥm.t-ṯ3y, Hans Goedicke, “Unrecognized Sportings,” Journal of the American

Research Center in Egypt 6 (1967): 97-102. See also the discussion in Depauw,

“Transgressing gender Boundaries in Ancient Egypt,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache

und Altertumskunde 130 (2003): 53.

31 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiey of the Middle Kingdom: A

Study and an Anthology. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 84 (Freiburg and Göttingen:

Universitätsverlag and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 31.

32 Papyrus Anastasi I, 25. 2–6, Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Die Satirische Streitschrift des

Papyrus Anastasi I. 2., Erweiterte Auage (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992),

144–147; Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Die Satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi I.

Übersetzung und Kommentar. Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 44 (Wiesbaden: Otto

Harrassowitz, 1986), 212–222; Edward F. Wente, Letters from Ancient Egypt. Writings

from the Ancient World 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990). 108.

33 For a detailed discussion see Fischer-Elfert, Die Satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi

I. Übersetzung und Kommentar, 213–222. For gardens as places of erotic encounters in

love poems see Darnell, “The Rituals of Love in Ancient Egypt”, 22–61; Landgráfová

and Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess I.

34 Ellen Morris, Ancient Egyptian Imperialism (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2018),

208–209.

35 Jaroslav Černý, “Papyrus Salt 124 (Brit. Mus. 10055),” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

15 (1929): 243–258.

36 For an overview of Paneb’s family history see Černý, “Papyrus Salt 124 (Brit. Mus.

10055),” 251–254; Morris L. Bierbrier, “Paneb Rehabilitated?” in Deir el-Medina in the

Third Millennium AD. A Tribute to Jac J. Jannsen, edited by Robert J. Demarée and

Arne Egberts (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2000), 51–54.

37 Bierbrier, “Paneb Rehabilitated?” 53.

38 Müller-Wollermann, Vergehen und Strafen, 109. Andrea G. McDowell points out that

the formal denunciation of Paneb would be pointless if his behavior was only unethical

and not also illegal, Andrea G. McDowell, Jurisdiction in the Workmen’s Community of

Deir el-Medina, 210.

39 Pascal Vernus, Aaires et Scandales sous les Ramsès (Paris: Pygmalion, 1993), 126

82 Masculine domination

40 Vittmann, “Charges Against Several Ocials (ca. 1150 BCE)-Papyrus Turin

1887,” 46.

41 One should bear in mind that a new study of the lexeme

ḥwty indicates that we are

not so much dealing with a description of the actual work, but an indication of the

juridical status.

ḥwty was not simply a eld-worker or a peasant. The word does not

describe the occupation, but the responsibilities to manage a piece of land as tasked by

an institution, such as a temple. Whether or not the person worked on the land or

others worked for the person does not have signicance, Benjamin Wortmann, “Der

ḥwty -nur ein einfacher Feldarbeiter?” in Anke Ilona Blöbaum, Marianne Eaton-

Krauss, and Annik Wüthrich (eds.) Pérégrinations avec Erhart Graefe. Festschfrift zu seinem

75. Geburtstag. Ägypten und Altes Testament 87 (Münster: Zaphon, 2018), 579.

42 Vittmann, “Charges Against Several Ocials (ca. 1150 BCE)-Papyrus Turin 1887,” 55.

43 Transliteration after the transcription of Alan H. Gardiner, Ramesside Administrative

Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), 81. For a hieratic facsimile,

see Willem Pleyte and Francisco Rossi, Papyrus de Turin. Planches (Leiden: Brill,

1869–1876), Pl. LV, 4–5.

44 For the hieroglyphic transcription see Georg Möller, “Das Dekret des Amenophis, des

Sohnes des Hapu,” Sitzungsberichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

XLVII (1910): 934, Taf. VI; Möller translates the verb in question as gäschendet

(German for desecrated); Clément Robichon and Alexandre Varille, Le Temple du

Scribe Royal Amenhotep Fils de Hapou (Le Caire: L’Institut Français d’Archéologie

Orientale, 1936), 3; Robichon and Varille translate the passage as “Leurs femmes

seront violées sous leurs yeux,” 5–6.

45 Wb 3, 364.4–5.

46 Wb 3, 364.5.

47 Leonard H. Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian II (Berkeley: B.C. Scribe Publications,

1984), 202.

48 Peet, “A Historical Document of Ramesside Age,” 124; Alexander J. Peden, The

Reign of Ramesses IV (Warminster, Aris & Phillips, 1994), 116.

49 He refers to an incident in Sesebi in 1936–1937 discussed by Griths, as well as to an

incident at the Mulid el Far annual festival in Cairo, which was reported in 1895 by

George Davis Hornblower, Parkinson, “‘Homosexual’ Desire,” 66. That the act in

question could have aimed at humiliation is also argued by Marc Orriols Llonch, “La

Violencia contra las Mujeres en el Anntiguo Egipto,” 67.

50 Ulrike Fauerbach, Der Elephantine-‘Skandal’. Neubearbeitung und Kommentierung des

Papyrus Turin 1887. Magisterarbeit an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu

Köln (1995/1996), 76.

51 Jan Assmann, “When Justice Fails: Jurisdiction and Imprecation in Ancient Egypt and

the Near East,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78 (1992), 156; Simpson, The

Literature of Ancient Egypt, 521.

52 Eyre, “Crime and Adultery in Ancient Egypt,” 97.

53 Urk. VI, 131. 9–18; see also Jens Blach Jørgensen, Egyptian Mythological Manuals.

Mythological Structures and Interpretative Techniques in the Tebtunis Mythological Manual, the

Manual of the Delta and Related Texts. Doctoral Dissertation (Copenhagen: University

of Copenhagen, 2013–2014), 108.

54 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 194.

55 Kim S. B. Ryholt, The Story of Petese, Son of Petetum and Seventy Other Good and Bad

Stories. The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies Publications 23. The

Carlsberg Papyri 4 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1999), 101–107; See

also the discussion in Hue-Arcé, “Women in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contribution of

Demotic Documents,” 137–138.

56 Diodorus, Library of History I, 78, 4–5, Charles Henry Oldfather. Diodorus Siculus.

Library of History, Volume I: Books 1-2.34. Loeb Classical Library 279 (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1933).

Masculine domination 83

57 However, a case of rape is attested in Papyrus Oxy XXXVI 2738 which dates to 110-

112 AD, Sandra Luisa Lippert. Einführung in die altägyptische Rechtsgeschichte.

Einführungen und Quellentexte zur Ägyptologie 5 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 131.

58 Ari Z. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press), 113.

59 See also Eyre, “Crime and Adultery,” 101.

60 Matić, Body and Frames of War, 35–36.

61 Matić, Body and Frames of War, 25–30.

62 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 184.

63 James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Writings from the ancient world

23 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature), 146.

64 Beate Schukraft, “Homosexualität im Alten Ägypten,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur

36 (2007), 308–310.

65 Roth, “Gender Roles in Ancient Egypt,” 90. For spiting in front of someone as an

action against things or persons who are bwt “taboo”, see Rune Nyord, “Spittle, Lies

and Regeneration. Some Religious Expressions on a Stela from the First Intermediate

Period,” Göttinger Miszellen 197 (2003): 73–91.

66 Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 100.

67 Meskell and Joyce, Embodied Lives, xvii.

68 Hans Ostenfeldt Lange, Der magische Papyrus Harris (København: Bianco Lunos

Bogtrykkeri, 1927), 62; Christian Leitz, Magical and Medical Papyri of the New Kingdom

(London: British Museum, 1999), 42, Pl. 18.

69 Dimitri Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta d’après le papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84.

Mémoires publiés par les membres de l'Institut français d’archéologie orientale du

Caire 125 (Le Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2006), 269.

70 For the connotations of the verb p3y, see Silke Schreiber, “Keusch wie kaum ein

anderes Volk? Einige Anmerkungeen zum Sexual-Vokabular der alten Ägypter,” in

Ägypten im afro-orientalischen Kontext. Aufsätze zur Archäologie, Geschichte und Sprache

eines unbegrenzten Raumes. Gedenkschfrift Peter Behrens. Afrikanische Arbeitspapiere

Sondernummer 1991 (Köln: Institut fur Afrikanistik, Universitat zu Koln, 1991), 322.

71 Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 94.

72 Schukraft, “Homosexualität im Alten Ägypten,” 315.

73 Schukraft, “Homosexualität im Alten Ägypten,” 315.

74 https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_

details.aspx?objectId=156237&partId=1.

75 Carolyn Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt (London:

Continuum, 2010), 107.

76 Marc Orriols-Llonch, “Léxico e iconografía erótica del antiguo Egipto: la cópula a

tergo,” Trabajos de Egiptología 5.2 (2009), 123–137.

77 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 18

78 Karol Myśliwiec, Eros on the Nile. Translated from Polish by Georey L. Packer

(London: Duchworth, 2004 [1998]).

79 David P. Silverman and Jennifer Houser Wegner, “A Late Egyptian Story in the Penn

Museum,” in The Archaeology and Art of Ancient Egypt. Essays in Honor of David B.

O’Connor. Volume II. Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte Cahier No. 36,

edited by Zahi A. Hawas and Janet Richards (Le Caire: Conseil Supréme des

Antiquités de l’Égypte, 2007), 412–420.

80 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 187.

81 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 187.

82 Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta, 22.

83 Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta, 22, 106–108, 247.

84 Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta, 22; Wb 4, 43.5–6; Leonard H. Lesko, A Dictionary

of Late Egyptian III (Berkeley: B.C. Scribe Publications, 1987), 15.

85 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 186.

84 Masculine domination

86 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 189.

87 Ursula Verhoeven, “Eine Vergewaltigung? Vom Umgang mit einer Textstelle des

Naos von El Arish (Tefnut-Studien I),” in Religion und Philosophie im Alten Ägypten.

Festgabe für Philippe Derchain. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 39, edited by Ursula

Verhoeven and Erhart Graefe (Leuven: Peeters, 1991), 330.

88 Orell Witthuhn, “Zur Deutung einer Textpassage aus dem “Mythos von den

Götterkönigen” im Kontext der Hermopolisstele Nektanebos’ I (Kairo, Ägyptisches

Museum JE 72 130),” Göttinger Miszellen 251 (2017): 148.

89 See also the summary of the myth of the rape of Tefnut by Geb in several

versions: Jørgensen, Egyptian Mythological Manuals, 73.

90 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 191.

91 Verhoeven, “Eine Vergewaltigung? Vom Umgang mit einer Textstelle des Naos von

El Arish (Tefnut-Studien I),” 323.

92 Jürgen Osing and Gloria Rosati, Papiri geroglici e ieratici da Tebtynis (Florence: Istituto

Papirologico Italiano, 1998), 160, pl. 20A-B.

93 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 187.

94 Meeks, Mythes et légendes du Delta, 26–27.

95 Jørgensen, Egyptian Mythological Manuals.

96 Frank Feder, “Nephthys-Die Gefährin im Unrecht. Die spät(zeitlich)e Enthüllung

einer göttlichen Sünde,” Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 37 (2008), 69–83. It must be

stressed that this understanding of the related texts is met criticism, Amr Gabr “A Case

of Divine Adultery Investigated,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 51

(2015): 303–328.

97 Alexandra von Lieven, “Seth ist im Recht, Osiris ist im Unrecht. Sethkultorte und

ihre Version des Osiris-Mythos,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 133

(2006): 147.

98 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 182.

99 Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” 109.

100 von Lieven, “Antisocial Gods?” 184, f. 7.

101 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 21.

102 Stol, Women in the Ancient Near East, 255.

103 Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 507.

104 Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 523.

105 This cycle is constituted by a framed narrative as well as the stories which Petese had

collected for his wife after his death. Despite poor preservation, it can still be re-

cognized that there were originally 70 dierent tales, 35 about the virtues and 35 about

the vices of women, Ryholt, The Story of Petese; Kim S. B. Ryholt, The Petese Stories II

(P. Petese II). The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies Publication 29

(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006).

106 According to Marc Orriols-Llonch, this is a way of controlling female

sexuality. Orriols-Llonch, “Mujer ideal, mujer infractora. La transgresión feminina en

el antigue Egipto,” 23. That the crucial problem behind adultery was attack on a

property of a man has been argued for many other ancient Near Eastern cultures,

Walter Kornfeld, “L’adultère dans l’Orient antique,” Revue Biblique 57. 1 (1950):

92–109.

107 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 8.

108 Danijela Stefanović, “When are Children called her Children?” Chronique d’Égypte

LXXXVI (2011), 30.

109 Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 105–106.

110 EA 4; William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins

University Press, 1992), 8–9; William Schniedewind and Zipora Cochavi-Rainey, The

El-Amarna Correspondence. A New Editon of the Cuneiform Letters from the Site of El-

Amarna based on Collations of all Extant Tablets. Collated, Transcribed and Translated by

Anson F. Rainey Z″L. Handbook of Orieental Studes 110 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 73–74.

Masculine domination 85

111 One thinks of classical examples such as the taking of Helen to Troy, the snatching of

Chryseis and Briseis. But other victims are also known: Iole, Antiope, Hippodamia,

the Danaids, Atalanta, Iole of Oechalia, Mabel L. Lang, “War and the Rape-Motif, or

Why Did Cambyses Invade Egypt?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

116.5 (1972): 410–411.

112 Peggy Reeves Sanday, “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape: A Cross-Cultural

Study,” Journal of Social Issues 37.4 (1981): 15.

113 MacKinnon, “Does Sexuality have a History?,” 122.

114 McDowell, Village Life in Ancient Egypt. Laundry Lists and Love Songs, 46.

115 Ryan P. Brown, Kiersten Baughman, and Mauricio Carvallo, “Culture, Masculine

Honor, and Violence Toward Women,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 44.4

(2018), 538–549.

116 For a detailed discussion and arguments against desexualization of rape, see Ann J.

Cahill, “Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body,” Hypatia 15.1

(2000): 43–63.

117 Holly Henderson, “Feminism, Foucault, and Rape: A Theory and Politics of Rape

Prevention,” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice 22.1 (2007): 225–253.

118 Jereys, The Spinster and Her Enemies, 3.

119 MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodied, 26.

86 Masculine domination

OBJECTS OF DESIRE: MEN, WOMEN,

AND CHILDREN AS SPOILS OF WAR

In this chapter, I consider noncombatants during wartime.

Textual and iconographic

sources oer evidence that foreign men, women, and children were taken as spoils of

war to Egypt over several millennia. Numerous lists from private and royal docu-

ments (stelae, temple walls, or papyri) identify these individuals as spoils of war. In

addition, representations of men taken as prisoners of war appear both in private

tombs and on temple reliefs. Similarly, private tombs dating to the Old Kingdom,

First Intermediate Period, and Middle Kingdom contain representations of women

and children as the spoils of war. During the New Kingdom, foreigners’ procession

(tribute) scenes, sometimes with women and children as prisoners of war, are dis-

played in private tombs and on temple reliefs. In this chapter, I also discuss images of

foreign women who are bound prisoners, such as those from the tomb of Kheruef

(TT 192) from the time of Amenhotep III and on Amarna period talatat blocks from

Luxor and Hermopolis. Talatat blocks of standardized size (c. 27 by 27 by 54 cm)

were used as a building material during the reign of Akhenaten. Evidence from these

blocks indicates, as I argue, that royal representations of smiting of the enemy were

gendered. Namely, kings smote and trampled male captives, whereas queens, namely

Tiye and Nefertiti, did the same to their female enemies. In Chapters 2 and 3, we

have seen that physical violence, such as rape, committed by Egyptian men against

Egyptian women, is documented in texts but not in visual art. In this chapter, I will

discuss textual and visual examples of foreign women who experienced physical

violence at the hands of Egyptian men. Contrary to Egyptian women, foreign

women were sometimes depicted as victims of violence and we need to understand

the context and background frame (sensu Butler) of such representations. However,

unlike in many ancient and modern societies where war-time rape is well docu-

mented,

ancient Egyptian sources are silent on this matter.

4.1 Women and children as prisoners of war – textual

evidence

Textual evidence of noncombatants conveys much information about gender. A

biographical inscription from the tomb of Kaiemtjenenet in Saqqara (tomb D 7),

which is associated with the reign of Djedkare-Isesi, 5th dynasty king of the Old

Kingdom, for instance, mentions a royal decree supposedly commanding him to

accompany prisoners (?) because there were many women among them.

We can

only wonder why this information had to be specied, as the presence of women

among captives is otherwise attested but not specied as important, especially not

as a reason for someone to accompany the prisoners. In fact, the text is in this place

heavily reconstructed by translators and the idea that Kaiemtjenenet had to ac-

company the prisoners of war himself, because there were women among them, is

not explicit in text. It is an interpretation of the translators. Line 8 on block

fragment E indeed mentions a royal decree (wḏ) and line 9 begins with a damaged

text whose part can be tentatively reconstructed as “many women among them”

(ḥm.wt

š3 jm=sn). That Kaiemtjenenet should accompany prisoners is not men-

tioned here. Prisoners (sḳr.w) are mentioned earllier in the text on this block (line

5). Although it cannot be excluded that women are mentioned as being numerous

among prisoners of war, this still does not mean that the text indicates that the

presence of Kaimtjenenet was necessary.

Another example, the Second Stela of

Kamose, Theban king of the 17th dynasty of the Second Intermediate Period

addresses the eects that the sound of an approaching army had on women living

in the capital city of the rival Hyksos kingdom of the 15th Dynasty in the eastern

Delta. “The women of Avaris will not conceive”, so goes the text, “for their hearts

will not open in their bodies when the battle cry of my army will be heard”.

fact, the available texts describing soundscapes of war during the New Kingdom

not surprisingly show that these sounds were also gendered. Only men are de-

picted playing musical instruments in the context of war. The war-cry of the king

is described as supersonic, god-like (being compared to the war cries of Seth and

Baal) or like the roaring of the lion. The war cries of the army are described as

roars of lions too.

One is reminded here of the comment of Emma Brunner-

Traut who relates the war cries of the thunder god Seth to loud voices of men and

contrasts this to women who are not loud as men and cannot be imagined to issue

a loud command in the army.

Although a generalisation on her behalf, one

cannot deny the fact that women were not military ocials (see also Chapter 2)

and are usually attested in ancient Egyptian texts as issuing loud cries of dierent

nature, such as for example mourning.

Another biographical inscription, this time about a dignitary named Iny, ties

gender to ethnicity (or region). This inscription discusses an expedition to Khenetesh

in Canaan under Pepi II Neferkare, 6th dynasty king of the Old Kingdom. “Asiatic

men and women”,

3m.w

3m.wt (line 2 on front surface), were among the spoils of

war.

The term Asiatic is an unfortunate Egyptological convention loosely referring to

the inhabitant of Syria-Palestine.

The Mit Rahina (Memphis) inscription of

88 Objects of desire

Amenemhat II, 12th dynasty king of the Middle Kingdom, describes the capture of

1,554 Asiatics from the lands of Jw3i and I3sii (Cyprus) but it does not specify their

gender. Among the goods brought from the expedition to Lebanon, the inscription

lists 65 Asiatics, which includes men and women.

In several other sources, Nubian prisoners of war are documented. The

Palermo Stone (recto, line 6), for instance, mentions Snofru’s (4th dynasty, Old

Kingdom) taking of 7,000 men and women.

And, as conveyed in the Khor el-

Aquiba (north and across of the temple of Karanog close to Qasr Ibrim in Lower

Nubia) inscription from the 4th dynasty, Nubian prisoners of war included 17,000

individuals, as described in inscription 1 of Sauib.

The Great Semna and

Uronarti stelae of Senwosret III, 12th dynasty king of the Middle Kingdom are

interesting because they contain the text of the words of the king. There he claims

to have captured Nubian women.

The verb used to describe the acting of taking

of these women was ḥ3ḳ “to plunder”.

Once captured, what were the fates of prisoners? The royal annals of the Old

Kingdom describe an expedition by Userkaf, the rst king of the 5th dynasty of

the Old Kingdom, in his second regnal year.

According to this text, his mortuary

temple received 70 inhabitants from a foreign land as jn.w, or “tribute”.

Though

we do not have additional information about these people, their allocation to a

mortuary temple may indicate the later practice of assigning foreign captives to

temple estates and workshops as workforce.

Enslavement was also an outcome.

As an example, I cite the early 18th dynasty autobiographies of Ahmose son of

Ebana and Ahmose-Pennekhbet found in their tombs in El Kab. These sources

date to the reign of Thutmose III but report on the life and service of the two men

under the earlier kings Ahmose and Amenhotep I. In his autobiography, Ahmose,

son of Ebana, claims to have taken or to have received as a reward male and female

slaves on several occasions and from dierent kings. During the siege of Sharuhen

under Ahmose, he captured two women who were given to him as slaves. After

the campaigns of this king and king Amenhotep I in Nubia, Ahmose, son of

Ebana, similarly received two female slaves in each campaign.

From the reign of Thutmose III onward, royal texts and not autobiographies

become a useful source of information about the taking of prisoners during

wartime. In the Annals of Thutmose III from the Karnak temple, we nd in-

formation about 1,795 slaves and their children during the rst campaign, 65 male

and female slaves of his tribute during the second campaign, male and female slaves

of unspecied number during the fth campaign, and 51 male and female slaves

captured in Arvad during the same campaign. During his sixth campaign, 181 male

and female slaves were captured. While the number of slaves is unspecied for his

seventh campaign, the booty from Naharin (also known as Mitanni, a state gov-

erned by the Hurrian-speaking elite in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia)

during the eighth campaign consisted of 30 wives (from three princes), as well as

606 slaves, both men and women, and their children. These numbers are especially

interesting if we divide them by three, which breaks down to 10 wives and 202

slaves per prince of Naharin. Numbers for the ninth campaign are not recorded,

Objects of desire 89

but the annals do note that wives, male and female slaves, and children were

received as tribute from Retjenu after the surrender of Djahi.

Additional evi-

dence comes from the Gebel Barkal stela (lines 21–22) of Thutmose III not far

from the fourth cataract of the Nile in Nubia. Its text states that the chiefs of

Megiddo after their defeat had to hand over all of their children along with

copious amounts of tribute.

The Karnak temple stela of Amenhotep II also goes into great detail about

defeated peoples’ fate: 18 living Asiatic men taken from Shemash-Edom (line 4); 1

mariannu (war class) from Qatna (line 9); chiefs of Chashab and their children (line

21); 550 mariannu, 240 of their women, 640 Canaanites and their children – all

during his seventh regnal year (line 28); and 550 mariannu, 40 of their women,

and a number of Canaanites during his ninth regnal year campaign (line 34).

The Memphis stela of Amenhotep II supposedly has a text which is a version of

the Karnak temple stela. It gives slightly dierent numbers for prisoners, however.

For Shemash-Edom (line 4), 35 living Asiatics, 2 chiefs, and 6 mariannu were

taken after crossing the river Orontes (line 7), as well as 16 living mariannu from

Chashab. His seventh regnal year lists 550 mariannu, 240 of their women, 640

Canaanites, 232 children of the chiefs, 323 daughters of the chiefs, 270 women,

and singers of “the chiefs of all foreign lands”, which totals 2,214 people (lines

15–16). In his ninth regnal year, he took chiefs and their children as captives in the

cities Mapasin and Chatasin (line 20). From the cities Adoren and Migdol, he took

34 women, 57 mariannu, and 231 living Asiatics along with their women and

children (lines 22–23); these people he burned in two ditches (lines 24–25).

From Anaharath, he took 17 living mariannu, 6 children of the chiefs, and 68

living Asiatics (lines 26–27). In Gaba-semen, he captured a chief named Qeq and

took his women and children (line 28). As a total, the text gives 127 Syrian chiefs,

179 brothers of chiefs, 3,600 Aper (

pr) people, 15,200 Shasu, 36,300 Syrians,

15,700 living Nugashe people, and 30,652 of their followers for a total of 89,600

men (lines 29–31).

Amenhotep III may also have took 3,000 prisoners of war

from Kush (Nubia), as noted in the text of the stela from rst cataract (line 7).

In the list of spoils of war from the Second Libyan War of Ramesses III of the

19th dynasty in Medinet Habu temple, we nd a total of 558 women (ḥm.wt), a

total that included 342 adult women (z.wt), 65 nubile girls (nfr.wt), and 151 young

girls (šry.wt).

The word nfr.t, placed between mature women and children, is

usually translated as a “beautiful woman”. The term designates a young nubile girl

who is not the mistress of a household and has not yet given birth.

After the New Kingdom, the number of texts dealing with military campaigns

of the pharaohs decreases. One exception is the text of the Shellal stela of

Psammethicus II (line 8; 26th dynasty), which is currently housed at Kalabsha

Island’s open-air museum. This stela mentions how he captured 4,200 men as

prisoners of war after his successful Nubian campaign. The events described on

text of this stela are also described on two (possibly three) more stelae, one from

the temple of Amun in Tanis in eastern Delta, one from Karnak temple, and a

lunette of another one is also known from Shellal.

90 Objects of desire

In summary, in ancient Egypt, lists of spoils of war tended to specify the

ethnicity, gender, and age of prisoners of war.

Dierent groups of foreign men

and women were organized according to Egyptian social categories. Evidence

from the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom, however, does not allow us to

compare the number of captured men and women, as the surviving texts are vague

when it comes to gender. Both men and women were taken as prisoners of war.

Yet, limited sources and a dearth of details make it dicult to evaluate the ratio.

New Kingdom texts are much more specic and seem to indicate a proportionally

larger number of male to female captives. Nevertheless it can be observed that

almost all the lists of spoils of war have the same order. Humans come before

animals and animals come before things. When humans are concerned, rulers of

foreign lands and cities come before warrior class and warrior class comes before

members of dierent groups of foreigners. Men come before women, and children

come after men and before women only if they are the children of foreign rulers.

Otherwise, if they are not, children come after women. Women come before

other men only if they belong to men of high status such as the rulers of foreign

lands or members of warrior class. Male children come before female children.

Interestingly, ordering according to gender is observable when animals are con-

cerned too. Male animals come before female animals, for example bulls are listed

before cows. Therefore, lists of spoils of war were ordered according to the status,

gender and age of the captives intersectionally, indicating hierarchy among the

captives and dierent importance and value ascribed to them. Foreign rulers were

most valued, then come their children and their women come directly after. After

them come other men, women and children in that very order.

Captives were carefully registered in the lists of spoils of war from the time of

Narmer to rst millennium BC in both ancient Egypt and Nubia. As I argue, their

registration in the lists was based on hiearchy and value. Therefore, the ancient

Egyptian and Nubian practice of recording spoils of war questions the assumption of

Judith Butler that “to be the subject to a calculation is already to have entered the

gray zone of the ungrievable”.

Rather, ancient Egyptian and Nubian evidence

indicates that we have to dissasociate grivability from value. Some lives are valued

dierently than others, but that does not mean that they are not valued at all.

4.2 Violence against foreign women and children in

war – visual attestations

Representations of violence in ancient Egypt outside the context of war are few in

number. These images are dominated by men; they are the main protagonists,

whether as actors or as victims of violence. For this reason, representations of

women and children are intriguing. How do scenes depicting women doing

violence compare to those depicting men doing violence?

The earliest appearance of women involved in warfare, a scene depicting the

siege of an Asiatic town, is located in a tomb at Desheshah, about 130 km south of

modern Cairo, on the west side of the Nile. The tomb’s occupant, Inti, was an

Objects of desire 91

ocial during the 5th dynasty (Figure 4.1).

The scene has four main registers

(on the left) and a depiction of the sieged town (on the right). Starting from the

top, the rst three registers depict the conict between Egyptian and Asiatic

soldiers. The last register depicts the outcome of the battle with Egyptian soldiers

shown capturing Asiatics. Here, we nd captive Asiatic men, women, and

children.

To the right, the depiction of the Asiatic town is divided into ve sub-registers.

They are lled with scenes of the town’s occupants. The rst of the ve sub-

registers are particularly pertinent. A foreign woman appears to be stabbing either

an Egyptian soldier or an Asiatic man. William M. F. Petrie argues that the stabbed

gure is a member of Bedawi auxiliary forces storming the town and Henry

Fischer argues that he is an Egyptian bowman.

To the woman's right, a second

individual holds her right hand over the head of a child while her left arm is raised

in the air. This arm gesture and bent elbow could indicate grief, as is known from

later depictions of mourning. The child is holding a knife or a dagger in his right

hand. He approaches an Asiatic man who is bent on the ground performing an

activity that involves his right leg. The man seems to press his leg against a cord or

a band. This positioning could indicate an injury or the preparation of a weapon or

a piece of equipment. Petrie interprets the gure as a member of Bedawi auxiliary

forces breaking his bow and Fischer interprets the gure as an Asiatic breaking the

bow of an Egyptian assailant.

If the woman’s gesture signals grief or sorrow, then

it is likely that the man to her right was injured or perhaps preparing for battle.

In the second sub-register of the fort, we see two gures on the left; one is an

Asiatic man in a peculiar body posture and the other is a badly preserved gure of a

FIGURE 4.1 Siege of an Asiatic town, tomb of Inti, 5th dynasty, Desheshah, line

drawing (after Petrie, Deshasheh, Pl. IV)

92 Objects of desire

woman on his right. To the right of both, we see several gures in front of a seated

man. The seated man seems to be holding his left arm high in the air. He makes a

gesture that involves him holding a strip of his hair or a band connected to his

forehead. To his left, we see a woman holding a strip of her hair with her left hand

raised and bent at the elbow. This gesture of grief could indicate that she is pulling

her hair from her head. Behind her is a man with a bent back holding a sta,

indicating that he is an elderly gure. He is located behind the grieving woman

and holds his right hand on the head of a child just to his right.

The other three registers are lled with gures in various activities that are

dicult to interpret. According to Fischer, they show women overpowering

invaders.

The third is damaged but three women and two men are visible. The

fourth is also poorly preserved though there are faint images of two women, two

men, and one child. The nal sub-register is better preserved. It contains depic-

tions of three men and one woman. It is not easy to interpret the gender of the

children though they have more masculine attributes than feminine ones.

The last main register on the left has a depiction of an Egyptian soldier with three

Asiatic captives in front of him. The rst gure, located on the left, is an Asiatic man

with his arms tied behind his back. A rope goes around his waist, behind his back,

and meets up with a rope tied around the waist of an Asiatic woman who is po-

sitioned behind him. Between the two of them, possibly also tied to the rope, is a

gure of a child with its left hand raised in the air. The woman has placed one of her

hands on the head of the child while her other hand holds a bag that falls behind her

back. In the right hand of an Egyptian soldier is held the rope to which the captives

are tied; he is situated behind them. In his other hand, he clutches an axe. Behind

him is another group of three Asiatic captive men; they are tied to a similar rope,

which an Egyptian soldier holds in his left hand. The soldier has a gure, possibly an

Asiatic child on his shoulder, who grabs his left arm and his head. Behind that soldier

is a ladder used to besiege the fort.

Several observations can be made about the siege scene from the tomb of Inti.

Noncombatants (women, children, elderly men) are not depicted on the battleeld.

They are only found in the last main register and inside the fort. In the fort, foreign

women express grief and possibly violent behavior toward either their own or

Egyptian soldiers who have breached the fort.

Elderly men are also depicted.

Among the gures in the fort, there seems to be a representative of the ruling class;

he is seated and shown making a gesture that mirrors the grieving women in front of

him. The contrast between the activities outside and inside the fort is replicated in

the depiction of Egyptians’ victory and the defeat of the Asiatics. The lack of injured

Egyptian men and the abundance of injured or killed Asiatic men is evidence of the

former, while the latter is expressed through images of domestic turmoil, possibly

even violence, gestures of grief, loss, and mourning. According to Fischer, the point

is less to extol the bravery of foreign women in the fort, than to deprecate the futile

eorts of the foreign men who ght against Egyptians outside the walls of the fort.

The captives include women and children, yet, no Egyptian soldiers are depicted

Objects of desire 93

acting violently against noncombatants. Foreign women are depicted active just not

on the battleeld.

This situation somewhat changes in the next example of noncombatants, a battle

scene from late First Intermediate Period or early Middle Kingdom. In the Theban

tomb of Intef from the 11th dynasty under Mentuhotep II, uniter of the previously

divided Egypt of the First Intermediate Period, we nd a scene divided into ve

main registers. Starting from the top, the rst two registers show the siege of an

Asiatic town, which is represented on the far right (Figure 4.2).

Unlike the siege

scene from the tomb of Inti, there are no women, children, or elderly individuals

depicted in the fort. Already in the third register from above, we see Egyptian

soldiers interacting violently with captive men. On the far left, there are three nude

men tied together with a rope. An Egyptian soldier holds the rope in his right hand

and an axe in his left arm, which is raised in the air. The rst captive (on the far left)

has his penis clearly depicted in a accid state. Such a representation contrasts with

ancient Egyptian notions of masculinity. It indicates weakness and passivity, as I

FIGURE 4.2 Siege of an Asiatic town, tomb of Intef, 11th dynasty, line drawing, no

scale

Source: Courtesy of Brigitte Jaroš-Deckert (after Jaroš-Deckert, Das Grab des Jnj-jtj.f,

Pl. 17).

94 Objects of desire

already mention in Chapter 2 and I detail in Chapter 5. The rest of the captives in

this register are being beaten or dragged. The last two registers are particularly in-

teresting because they depict Egyptian soldiers engaging with captured foreign

women and children. At the very left of the fourth register, an Egyptian soldier holds

a child with his right hand. Adjacent to him is another soldier who grabs a woman

by her hair with his left hand. In his right hand, there is an axe. This woman grips his

upper arm with her right hand as if trying to stop him from pulling her by the hair.

Between them is a child; he gazes at the woman and raises his left arm in the air

toward her. On their right, facing opposite them is another group of captive men,

women, and children who are oriented toward the right. In the last register on the

left, an Egyptian soldier is pulling a nude male captive by his hair. The captive is

bound to another captive on his right and the rope is being held by an Egyptian

soldier behind him. Between them, there is a child. Behind the soldier and captive

are two women with their right hands on their foreheads in the gesture of grief. A

soldier behind the second woman is placing his right hand on her head and holds an

axe in his left hand. A group of Egyptian soldiers on the far right of the register are

beating captive men. A marked dierence between the tomb of Inti and the tomb of

Intef is that foreign women and children are no longer depicted taking action.

Instead, Egyptian soldiers act violently toward foreign women.

The depiction of an Egyptian soldier holding a foreign woman by her hair

iconographically parallels that of the king smiting his enemies.

The “smiting of

the enemy” is one of the most enduring scenes in Egyptian imagery.

In this

scene, the king of Egypt is depicted holding one or more enemies by their hair

with one of his hands and a weapon (e.g., mace, sickle sword, javelin, or an axe),

which is positioned in a striking movement, in his other hand. The scene is found

in royal tombs, on temple walls (interior and exterior), and on both private and

royal stelae, but it can also be found on rock carvings, palettes, ivory labels, stone

markers, rings, scarabs, pectorals, and weapons.

The earliest known smiting

enemy scene can be found in Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis and dates to Naqada

IIC.

The latest shows the Roman emperors Domitian, Titus, and Trajan smiting

enemies on temple walls. The motif indicates domination over one’s enemy. Yet,

given the importance of hair for feminine identity in ancient Egypt,

the motif

also evokes gender associations. Holding a woman by her hair means having

power over her. Holding a male enemy by his hair means the same, but it

additionally genders him as feminine and passive.

This approach to representation changes drastically in the New Kingdom. First of

all, battle scenes are not placed in private nonroyal tombs. In fact, they are taken out of

the funerary sphere and we nd them exclusively on temple walls or objects belonging

to the king himself.

The only war-related scenes found in private nonroyal tombs

are the so-called tribute scenes or foreigners´ procession scenes. These scenes depict

the bringing of people, animals, and objects by representatives of foreign countries

with a dierent status vis-à-vis Egypt.

Texts accompany these registers that describe

information about their images. Through these texts, we know where the

representatives come from and how the resources they brought were registered in

Objects of desire 95

Egypt, as either jn.w “tribute/gift”, b3k.w “tax”, or ḥ3ḳ.w “spoils of war”. There are

also registers where the representatives are the resources, or spoils, brought by

Egyptian soldiers; the texts describe them as ḥ3ḳ.w.

Captive women and children are usually not among the prisoners or spoils of

war depicted on the temple reliefs. I know of only two examples where women

and children are pictured with prisoners of war in a temple context: Armant of

Thutmose III and Beit el-Wali of Ramesses II.

When women and children are

depicted in war-related temple iconography, we nd them in battle scenes.

Battle scenes that occur in Syro-Palestinian cities show women and children in

forts under siege. The same can be said for battle scenes with Nubians; women and

children appear in Nubian villages. No New Kingdom battle scenes on temple

reliefs represent an Egyptian soldier acting violently against foreign women and

children. The only soldiers who do so are Sea Peoples in Egyptian service.

Images of violence against women and children were avoided, whereas their

representations as prisoners of war were not particularly evident in temple ico-

nography. Such violence, does, however, appear in tribute scenes from private

nonroyal tombs.

I have already suggested that the lack of violence against

women and children in the New Kingdom’s war iconography contrasts with

previous periods, though it does not mean they no longer interacted violently.

fact, there is textual evidence that indicates women and children were also injured,

sometimes in a most gruesome manner. For example, the Memphis stela of

Amenhotep II discusses the burning of captives (men, women and children).

Rather, what we are observing here is a change in decorum. It was probably no

longer appropriate to represent violence against women and children, a phenomenon

that parallels the texts describing the king as husband to a widow and father to an

orphan.

This shift is further supported by captive women’s and children’s almost

complete absence from temple iconography. An argument that exclusion is due to

their cultural insignicance is contradicted by the fact that women and children were

regarded as prized spoils of war. For example, the tribute scene from the tomb of

Rekhmire (TT 100) from the time of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II – specically,

in its last, fth register – describes captive children as the best of the ḥ3ḳ.w brought to

his majesty (Figure 4.3). These women and children were distributed to temple

workshops where they undertook a wide variety of occupations, such as weaving or

processing of cereals and meat.

Nubian women depicted in the fth register of the

tribute scene from the tomb of Rekhmire are represented dierently. The ones on the

FIGURE 4.3 Fifth register of the tribute scene from the tomb of Rekhmire (TT 100),

Thutmose III-Amenhotep II, line drawing of the author, detail, no scale (Davies, The

Tomb of Rekh-mi-rē‛ at Thebes. Volume II, Pls. XXI, XXII, and XXIII)

96 Objects of desire

left seem to be young girls; they have longer hair and some wear long skirts while

others do not. Those on the right are adult women. These gures either hold children

in their arms or in baskets on their backs that they carry with a tumpline. And some

adult women have additional children standing beside them.

Therefore, in New Kingdom imagery, imprisoned women are organized ac-

cording to a specic understanding of age and gender. More specically, this

organization may be related to a question of women’s fertility – were they capable

of giving birth and were they already mothers. Nubian women (ḥm.wt) in the

tribute scene from the tomb of Rekhmire, for instance, correspond to small girls

(šry.wt) and nubile girls (nfr.wt), while adult women on the right had already given

birth (z.wt), as in the above mentioned list of spoils of war from the Second Libyan

War of Ramesses III. Such a categorization, however, does not necessarily have to

match those of the society from which these women came. The possibility of a

specic “coloniality of gender” is important to consider here.

María Lugones’s insights about European colonialism and gender are useful for

framing an understanding of “colonization” in ancient Egypt. She writes,

“Colonialism did not impose precolonial, European gender arrangements on the

colonized. It imposed a new gender system that created very dierent arrange-

ments for colonized males and females than for white bourgeois colonizers”.

Lugones argues that colonial/modern European capitalism imposed changes to the

social structure so that colonized women were often made inferior through vio-

lence.

Although primarily dealing with early modern colonialism, the work of

Lugones shows how gender categories can be violently recongured. We should

consider the same in the enforced deportation of populations to Egypt in the

aftermath of war. Being a man or a woman at a certain stage of sexual maturity or

age may not have meant the same to ancient Egyptians and their neighbors.

Coming to Egypt, forced individuals into a dependent relation with the Egyptian

state through obligatory work on temple estates or in temple workshops, and it

meant being perceived in a certain way, which could have led to changes in

gender expression and behavior.

After the 18th dynasty, tribute scenes become rare in private nonroyal con-

texts.

New Kingdom war-related scenes also started disappearing from temple

iconography. This decrease may have occurred because of the general lack of

Egyptian military activity and the country’s political fragmentation in the fol-

lowing Third Intermediate Period. Battle scenes during this period are found in

Nubia. After successfully defeating Egyptian polities, Nubian rulers established

themselves as kings of Egypt and Nubia. In these battle scenes, there are no

surviving representations of women and children.

During the Late Period in

Egypt, when the Egyptians managed to gain independence and unify the country

again, there is also a lack of war-related iconography.

The same applies to Ptolemaic and Roman rules in Egypt. Ptolemaic rulers

did not seem interested in using temples as media for representation of their

military activities. The smiting of the enemy scene with all of its cosmological

signicance nevertheless still formed part of a temple program. This change is also

Objects of desire 97

understandable in light of temples’ changing roles. One of the reasons New

Kingdom temple iconographies are so abundant with war-related scenes is related

to the importance of temples in the redistributive economy. Spoils of war were

given by the king to Amun as gratitude for his oracle of victory, which he issued

before the beginning of a campaign, as well as for his companionship on the

battleeld.

These spoils of war were registered in lists inscribed on temple walls

and on stelae in temples. It is also likely that versions written on papyri or leather

existed and were kept in temple archives. The resources obtained in the campaigns

were given to the temples and their workshops. In a society, which functioned

dierently – temples did not have the same power as before – the necessity of

decorating them with war-related scenes probably diminished. Roman emperors

ruled over Egypt as they did over other provinces, and their own scenes of tri-

umph are not found in Egypt.

4.3 Egyptian queens trampling and smiting foreign

women

The age-old motif of the smiting of an enemy was also found during the early 18th

dynasty reign of the female king Hatshepsut. Thus far, she is the rst known woman

to be depicted in the form of a male sphinx trampling over enemies or as a king

(male) smiting enemies in her temple at Deir el-Bahari (Figure 4.4).

The enemies

in question are men. Her own female identity in these representations is indicated by

FIGURE 4.4 Hatshepsut as a male sphinx trampling enemies, south wall of southern

lower portico, mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, line drawing of the

author, no scale (after Naville, The temple of Deir El Bahari VI, Pl. CLX)

98 Objects of desire

the writing of her name. Currently, there are no representations of Hatshepsut as a

woman acting violently against captive enemies. Yet, as we have seen in Chapter 2,

there is evidence that she, like other rulers, organized military campaigns.

Queen Tiye, on the other hand, is shown sitting behind her enthroned husband

Amenhotep III; this depiction appears in a kiosk in the tomb of Kheruef (TT

192).

Her golden throne has richly decorated sides and ebony legs in the shape of

a lion’s legs. A head of this crowned queen is also visible on the right side of the

throne. Taken together, these attributes of the throne can be interpreted as the

body of a sphinx. Directly under the throne and between the legs one can

FIGURE 4.5 Throne of queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III decorated with female

captives bound to a sm3 t3.wy sign of “Union of the Two Lands” and the queen

depicted trampling female captives in the form of a female sphinx, tomb of

Kheruef, line drawing of the author, detail, no scale

Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Nims,

Habachi, Wente, and Larkin, The Tomb of Kheruef, Pls. 47 and 49).

Objects of desire 99

recognize a sm3 t3.wy symbol of “Union of the Two Lands”. Two female pris-

oners, standing back to back, are bound to this symbol (Figure 4.5).

The bound woman on the left is a Nubian prisoner with short hair, a nude torso,

and a long skirt. Her body is colored dark red. She wears a necklace and her gown is

decorated with strings of blue beads. She is bound with a lily, the symbol of Upper

Egypt. On the right, there is a female Syrian prisoner with long hair and two long

pleated gowns. She is bound with a lotus, the symbol of Lower Egypt. The side of

the throne on which the queen is sitting has a winged cobra on the left. It wears the

white crown of Upper Egypt, and the cobra’s wings frame a šn ring. The cobra

emerges from a bouquet of lilies, which, as aforementioned, evokes Upper Egypt.

Just to the right is an inscription ptpt ḫ3s.(w)t nb.(w)t, which translates as “trampling

all the foreign lands”. To the right of the inscription is a depiction of the queen in

the form of a sphinx. Her head is decorated with a crown and a uraeus, which sports

a horned disc on its head. With her back paws, the “sphinxied” Tiye tramples the

legs and the head of a female Syrian gure. With her front paws, she does the same

to the stomach and head of a female Nubian gure.

To the right of the trampling

sphinx queen is the inscription “great beloved king’s wife Tiye, may she live, be

enduring and youthful every day”.

The throne of Tiye in the tomb of Kheruef is a feminized parallel of the throne

of Amenhotep III from the tomb of Amenemhat Surer (TT 48). In the case of the

latter, the throne takes the form of a lion instead of a sphinx, and the sm3 t3.wy

sign is depicted without female prisoners bound to it. The side of the throne is,

however, a direct iconographic analogy to the one at Tiye (Figure 4.6). The

dierence is that the role of the cobra goddess is here played by the goddess Maat.

The sphinx has the head of the king with a uraeus and false beard, a signier of

masculinity. The king in the form of a sphinx, also a marker of masculinity in

ancient Egypt, is trampling male Syrian and Nubian enemies.

A depiction of the

FIGURE 4.6 Throne of Amenhotep III decorated with the motif of the king trampling

enemies in the form of a male sphinx, the tomb of Amenemhat Surer (TT 48), line

drawing of the author, detail (after Säve-Söderbergh, Four Eighteenth Dynasty Tombs,

Pl. XXX)

100 Objects of desire

statue of the queen standing on a bound captive is among the objects oered to the

royal couple.

The gender of the captive cannot be determined.

Queen Tiye depicted in sphinx form on her throne dominates the female

representatives of the South and North. At the time, this regional extent re-

presented the whole known world. Nevertheless, the king’s dominance remains

clear; he is shown proportionally larger and frontally positioned to the queen’s

right.

He is seated in his throne wearing a blue crown, holding a w3s scepter in

his left hand, and a agellum and

nḫ sign in his right.

One may wonder why Tiye is depicted in sphinx form trampling the northern

and southern enemies of Egypt. Indeed, how is it, in this scene, that she sits atop a

throne with a sm3 t3.wy symbol ? These depictions’ context provides an answer.

The scene in its entirety actually shows the tomb’s owner presenting the royal pair

with a decorated vase and four gold necklaces.

The tomb owner was apparently

indebted to the queen for his status and prestige, demonstrated by his titles and

epithets, like “steward of the queen”.

The traditional motifs representing

kingship, such as bound prisoners on the sm3 t3.wy and the sphinx trampling

enemies, are feminized here. This tweak was made to accommodate for the

queen’s gender, reiterate social norms, and prevent creating a status imbalance

between the king and queen.

Queen Nefertiti is similarly depicted smiting and/or trampling enemies on

talatat blocks from Hermopolis, Luxor, and Abydos. Disappointingly, none of

these blocks with Nefertiti’s image come from a known archaeological context.

Nevertheless, it is certain that they were originally part of compositions decorating

temples during the reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

There are two (possibly three) known examples in which Nefertiti is re-

presented smiting enemies. The rst example which will be discussed here is from

two adjacent limestone talatat blocks originally from Hermopolis and now in the

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Figure 4.7).

They are part of a larger composition that shows a procession of royal barques

along the Nile. Suzanne Chapman has oered an illustrated reconstruction of these

blocks. In her drawing, the scene, which is oriented toward the right, depicts at

least three royal barques. There are two in the upper register, and the one on the

right presents Nefertiti smiting an enemy. The queen appears in a kiosk that is

decorated with uraei. These uraei, which are on the left (rear) of her royal barque,

have sun disks on their heads. She is wearing her well-known at-topped crown.

Her left hand is holding the hair of an enemy, while her right hand raises a sickle

sword high in the air. In the middle of the kiosk’s cornice is the Aten, its rays

shining onto the queen. Behind Nefertiti’s barque is the frontal part of a second

barque. The latter’s lower part presents another smiting scene in a kiosk. Here,

however, only the lower part of the smiting gure and the gure of the enemy are

preserved. The gure in this barque can also safely be identied as Nefertiti.

According to Chapman’s reconstruction, there is at least one more barque iden-

tiable in the lower second register of the composition. A kiosk with uraei appears

and the Aten shines its rays onto Akhenaten. The king holds an enemy by the hair

Objects of desire 101

FIGURE 4.7 Scene depicting king Akhenaten and queen Nefertiti smiting enemies in kiosks on royal barques, Hermopolis, line drawing of the author,

no scale

Source: Redrawn after Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from Hermopolis, Fig. 51α.

102 Objects of desire

with his left hand. With his right hand, he holds a sickle sword high in the air,

mirroring the smiting pose of his queen.

The other known example of Nefertiti smiting enemies is a talatat block from

Luxor (Figure 4.8). The block has four preserved kiosks, all with uraei bearing sun

disks on their heads. Each kiosk also has the Aten discs shining rays upon Nefertiti,

as she takes dierent forms and kills an enemy.

The rst kiosk from the left depicts Nefertiti wearing her at-topped crown.

She is holding the enemy by the hair with her left hand. A sickle sword is held

high in the air with her right hand. The second kiosk from the left depicts

Nefertiti in the form of a sphinx with the head of the queen. She wears a plumed

crown surmounted by a sun disk. The queen sphinx tramples the back of an

enemy with her right paw and her head with her left. The third kiosk from the left

also depicts Nefertiti with a crown surmounted by the sun disk and plumes, but

she does not take the form of a sphinx. Rather, she holds an enemy by the hair

with her left hand and a sickle sword is again held high in her right hand. The

fourth kiosk is poorly preserved, but part of the back and the back, left thigh of a

sphinx are recognizable; the queen tramples an enemy while in the form of a

sphinx.

The last talatat block comprising the representational corpus of Nefertiti as the

smiter of enemies is from Abydos (Figure 4.9). Here, we also see a kiosk on the

right side of a barque, which is oriented toward the right.

FIGURE 4.8 Queen Nefertiti smiting and trampling female captives on a barque, talatat

block from Luxor, line drawing with the last kiosk from the left reconstructed by the

author, no scale

Source: Redrawn after Tawk, “Aton Studies”, 163, Fig. 1.

Objects of desire 103

Unfortunately, only the lower part of the kiosk is preserved. From the images

present, we can recognize the bottom half of a gure in smiting pose. Behind this

individual are two standing gures with their hands down, wearing long dresses

that touch the ground. The smiting gure seems to be wearing a long skirt, and is

identiable indirectly as Nefertiti.

As evidence of the latter, this individual’s skirt

does not touch the ground and is transparent, as suggested by the left leg’s visi-

bility.

Comparing the Abydos talatat block with those from Hermopolis and

Luxor makes for a stronger case of Nefertiti’s presence. The gure’s dress does not

touch the ground because the body is in smiting motion and the dress rises with

the arm being raised.

Scholars have suggested that earlier depictions of Tiye trampling her enemies inspired

these dynamic depictions of Nefertiti smiting hers.

Many have also pointed out that

the enemies in both cases (trampled by Tiye and smitten by Nefertiti) are women.

Yet, it is the gender of the smiting gures that has provoked the majority of scholarly

attention. The fact that trampled and smitten enemies are women in both cases has not

been discussed at length. As a consequence, scholars have failed to realize these re-

presentations’ potential, interpretative signicance. Their analysis has information to

convey about the queens’ trampling/smiting poses, as well as the larger context for these

compositions. Rather than mark Nefertiti’s and Tiye’s unprecedented high status, these

representations indicate their subordination in visual and gender hierarchy since they do

not trample or smite male enemies. Such enemies are only associated with kings. When

Hatshepsut is depicted trampling male enemies, she is a female depicted as a king.

The depictions of Tiye and Nefertiti violating female enemies do not

necessarily indicate woman’s agency or personal choice. These queens are still

presented as subordinate to their husbands. Their assigned roles express concepts of

FIGURE 4.9 Queen Nefertiti smiting enemies, talatat block from Abydos, Berlin no.

23719, line drawing of the author, no scale (after Petrie, Abydos II, Pl. XXXIX)

104 Objects of desire

kingship that privilege the male gure of the king. Other examples of Nefertiti as

an individual actor, such as those in which she worships the Aten, actually indicate

her lower status than those in which she is depicted with Akhenaten.

Her in-

clusion in the composite scenes, in which she and Akhenaten smite enemies, may

indicate the elevation of her ideological importance. Whether or not the talatat

blocks from Luxor and Abydos present her as an individual performer of violent

acts cannot be stated with condence, because the rest of these blocks’ scenes are

missing. Following Jacquelyn Williamson, the visual identity of Tiye and Nefertiti

was carefully controlled to reinforce the reigns of their husbands. They supported

their kings by providing the Hathoric component. Far from being ancient fem-

inists, they reinforced traditional Egyptian gender hierarchies. They had limited,

or no, choice in the matter.

In Chapter 2 we have seen that some goddesses such

as Sekhmet, Bastet, Mut and Neith can act violently and oer protection to the

king being aspects of the dangerous goddess of the Sun Eye. Maybe the re-

presentations of Tiye and Nefertiti embodied this protective power of the po-

tentially dangerous goddesses.

4.4 Concluding remarks

As evidenced by the textual and iconographic evidence from the New Kingdom, we

see a dierence in the plunder economy prior to Thutmose III’s reign, during, and

after it. The sources predating Thutmose III indicate that free foreigners were im-

prisoned by the army and taken as ḥ3ḳ.w spoils of war. The king then gifted these

prisoners to his soldiers, who had them serve in private households. Thus far, there is

no evidence that imprisoned women were taken in marriage, but the possibility

cannot be excluded. Hence, for now, there is little we can say about raiding for

women in ancient Egypt.

At the start of his reign, Thutmose III imprisoned for-

eigners and the army as ḥ3ḳ.w spoils of war, who were then given as jn.w to temples.

This change over time, however, may not be related to dierent plunder economies

but to dierent available source materials. Autobiographies are the bulk of these

sources. Their purpose is to, among other things, demonstrate the successes of the

deceased and his proximity to the king. The primary function of sources about the

taking of foreign captives who are then donated to temples was to demonstrate a close

connection to god Amun. Specically, the crucial aspect of New Kingdom textual

and iconographic sources is a sequence of actions during military campaigns and wars.

Before going to war, the king went to the temple where he received his oracle of

victory and a weapon from his father Amun. After a successful campaign the jn.w in

the form of foreign captives is given to the temple, its estates and workshops as part of

the gratitude expressed by the king to the god and his priests. He expresses gratitude

for the oracle of his victory and companionship during wartime. Yet, it is still sig-

nicant that individual soldiers were rewarded by the king with captive men and

women.

In addition, the inherent masculine elements of the smiting of the enemy scene

are rarely discussed. The victory over male enemies is also the triumph of the

Objects of desire 105

Egyptian man (king) over foreign men.

There are no images of the Egyptian

king smiting female enemies or hurting them in any way. A clear, active deli-

mitation of these representations existed. Certain content and perspectives are

never shown, perhaps because it was not acceptable to do so.

The idea of

decorum oers a justication – “a set of rules and practices, dening what may be

represented, pictorially with captions, displayed and possibly written down, in

which context and in what form … and was probably based ultimately on rules

and practices of conduct and etiquette, of spatial separation and religious avoid-

ance”.

War and violence are mediated through frames that seek to contain,

convey, and determine what audiences view. The frames of war function not only

as boundaries, but also structure the images themselves, and through these frames

of war other social norms can also be structured.

This is what Jean Baudrillard

called “the cosmetic treatment of war”. That is, when war is turned into in-

formation it stops being realistic and starts being virtual.

For this reason, it is

important to critically examine the manner in which violence is framed, mediated,

and regulated through visual representations. As Whitney Davis recommends, may

“we learn to see the world as others see it by learning to understand their pictorial

worlds”.

In the next chapter, I explore gender as a frame of war.

Notes

1 Amélie Kuhrt pointed out that the reason women are often left out of historiographies

of war is because they are noncombatants. Amélie Kuhrt, “Women and War,” NIN:

Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity 2 (2001): 3. Other noncombatants who are rarely

taken into account include children, the elderly, and noncombatant men, Caryn E.

Tegtmeyer and Debra L. Martin, “The Bioarchaeology of Women, Children, and

Other Vulnerable Groups in Times of War, in Bioarchaeology of Women and Children in

Times of War Case Studies from the Americas, edited by Debra L. Martin and Caryn E.

Tegtmeyer (New York: Springer, 2017), 3.

2 Kathy L. Gaca, “Continuities in Rape and Tyranny in Martial Societies from Antiquity

Onward,” in Women in Antiquity. Real Women Across the Ancient World, edited by

Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean MacIntosh Turfa (London and New York: Routledge,

2016), 1041–1056.

3 Nicole Kloth, Die (auto-) biographischen Inschrifte des ägyptischen Alten Reiches:

Untersuchungen zu Phraseologie und Entwicklung. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur

Beihefte 8 (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 2002), 35–36; Erika Schott, “Die

Biographie des Ka-em-tenenet,” in Fragen an die altägyptische Literatur: Studien zum

Gedenken an Eberhard Otto. Band I, edited by Jan Assmann, Erika Feucht and Reinhard

Grieshammer (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1977), 446; Nigel C. Strudwick,

Texts from the Pyramid Age. Writings from the Ancient World 16 (Atlanta: Society of

Biblical Literature, 2005), 283.

4 Urk. I, 185.16-186. 4; Schott, “Die Biographie des Ka-em-tenenet,” 461b, Abb. 2.

5 Labib Habachi, The Second Stela of Kamose. Abhandlungen des Deutschen

Archäologischen Instituts Kairo. Ägyptologische Reihe. Band 8 (Gluckstadt: Verlag J. J.

Augustin, 1972), 32–33.

6 Matić, “They were like lions roaring upon the mountain-crests”, 110–112. Alexandra

von Lieven, “Music and Political Space in Ancient Egypt,” In Music and Politics in the

Ancient World. Exploring Identity, Agency, Stability and Change through the Records of Music

106 Objects of desire

Archaeology, edited by Ricardo Eichmann, Mark Howell and Graeme Lawson (Berlin:

Edition Topoi, 2019), 201–220.

7 Emma Brunner-Traut, “Die Stellung der Frau im Alten Ägypten”, Saeculum 38.4

(1987), 334.

8 Michele Marcolin, “Iny, a Much-traveled Ocial of the Sixth Dynasty: Unpublished

Reliefs in Japan,” in Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2005. Proceedings of the Conference Held

in Prague (June 27–July 5, 2005), edited by Miroslav Bárta, Filip Coppens, and Jaromír

Krejčí (Prague: Czech Institute for Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, 2006), 300.

9 The exact meaning of the word

3m is still under discussion. According to the most

recent study by Roman Gundacker on this problem, the original ethnonym was less

generic during the Old Kingdom, as often claimed by Egyptologists. It was used for a

Semitic tribe originating in the Negev. Later the word was used in other regions of

Syria-Palestine and Egypt. Roman Gundacker, “The Signicance of Foreign

Toponyms and Ethnonyms in Old Kingdom Text Sources,” in The Late Third

Millennium in the Ancient Near East. Chronology, C14, and Climate Change. The Oriental

Institute of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminars 11, edited by Felix

Hömayer (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2017), 333–428.

10 Ezra S. Marcus, “Amenemhet II and the Sea: Maritime Aspects of the Mit Rahina

(Memphis) Inscription,” Ägypten und Levante XVII (2007): 140–141.

11 Urk. I, 263. 10. According to Andrés Diego Espinel, this part of the text can also be

read as 4,000 Nubian men and 3,000 Nubian women. Andrés Diego Espinel, Etnicidad y

Territorio en el Egipto del Reino Antiguo. Avla Aegyptiaca-Stvdia 6 (Barcelona: Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona, 2006), 148.

12 Wolfgang Helck “Die Bedeutung der Felsinschriften J. Lopez, Inscripciones rupestres

Nr. 27 und 28,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 1 (1974), 215; Jesus Lopez dates it to

5th or 6th dynasty, Jesus Lopez, “Inscriptions de l’Ancien Empire a Khor el-Aquiba,”

Revue d’Égyptologie 19 (1967): 51–52; Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 150.

13 Uronarti Stela, line 11, Jozef M. A. Janssen, “The Stela (Khartoum Museum No. 3)

from Uronarti,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12, no. 1 (1953): 53, Fig. 2. According to

the reconstruction of Stephan Johannes Seidlmayer the Semna stela was originally

placed in a cult chapel of the king Senwosret III, Stephan Johannes Seidlmayer, “Zu

Fundort und Aufstellungskontext der großen Semna-Stele Sesostris' III,” Studien zur

Altägyptischen Kultur 28 (2000), 233–242.

14 Wb 3, 32.14-33.5.

15 For an overview of Old Kingdom military activities, see Juan Carlos Moreno García,

“War in Old Kingdom Egypt (2686-2125 BCE),” in Studies on War in the Ancient Near

East. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 372, edited by Jordi Vidal (Munster: Ugarit

Verlag, 2010), 5–41.

16 Urk. IV. 240, 3–4. It is usually assumed that these are 70 foreign women, however the

determinative in question is arguably similar to the one used for Asiatics in the Mit

Rahina inscription of Amenemhat II. For the detailed discussion of this problematic

text, see Hartwig Altenmüller, “Die Abgaben aus dem 2. Jahr des Userkaf,” in

Gedenkschrift für Winfried Barta. Münchner Ägyptologische Untersuchungen 4, edited by

Dieter Kessler und Regine Schulz (München: Peter Lang, 1995), 46.

17 For enforced labor on prisoners of war, see Richard Bussmann, “Krieg und Zwangsarbeit

im pharaonischen Ägypten,” in Zwangsarbeit als Kriegsressource in Europa und Asien. Krieg in

der Geschichte 77, edited by Kerstin von Lingen und Klaus Gestwa (Paderborn: Ferdinand

Schönigh, 2014), 57–72; Uroš Matić, “The Best of the Booty of His Majesty. Evidence for

Foreign Child Labour in New Kingdom Egypt,” in Global Egyptology. Negotiations in the

Production of Knowledges of Ancient Egypt in Global Contexts. Golden House Publications

Egyptology 26, edited by Christian Langer (London: Golden House Publications, 2017),

53–63. For the most recent study of ancient Egyptian deportations see Christian Langer,

Egyptian Deportations of the Late Bronze AgeA Study in Political Economy. Zeitschrift für

ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde – Beiheft 13 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).

Objects of desire 107

18 Urk. IV, 4.14–5.2.

19 Donald B. Redford, The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III. Culture and History

of the Ancient Near East 16 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

20 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 190–191; Andrea Klug, Königlichen Stelen in

der Zeit von Ahmose bis Amenophis III. Monumenta Aegyptiaca VIII (Turnhout: Brepols

Publishing, 2002), 199.

21 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 106–117; Klug, Königliche Stelen, 265

22 For an extensive discussion, see Matić, Body and Frames of War, 100–116.

23 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 127–139; Klug, Königliche Stelen, 247–250

24 Beylage, Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte, 154–155.

25 KRI V, 53. 5.

26 Lyn Green, “In Search of Ancient Egyptian Virgins: A Study in Comparative Values,”

The Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities XXVIII (2001): 95;

Alexandra von Lieven, “Jungfräuliche Mütter? Eine ägyptologische Perspektive,” in Zu

Bethlehem geboren? Das Jesus-Buch Benedikts XVI. und die Wissenschaft. Theologie

kontrovers, edited by Thomas Söding (Freiburg: Herder, 2013), 156–170

27 For translation of the Shellal stela now on Kalabsha island see Bakry S. Hassan,

“Psammētichus II and his Newly Fund Stela at Shellâl”, Oriens Antiquus 6 (1967), 241;

Francis A. K. Breyer. “Psammetik II., der alte Haudegen–Zu einer soldatensprachlichen

Wendung in der Shellal-Inschrift”, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 30 (2002), 54; Karl

Jansen-Winkeln, “Der Nubienfeldzug Psametiks II. und die Stele von Schellal,” in

Sapientia Felicitas. Festschrift für Günter Vittmann zum 29. Februar 2016. Cahiers de l’

Égypte Nilotique et Méditérranéenne 14, edited by Lippert et al. (Montpellier: CNRS

– Univ. Paul Valéry, 2016), 274; Peter der Manuelian, Living in the Past. Studies in

Archaism of the Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty (London: Kegan Paul International, 1994),

349. For the Tanis stela see Pierre Montet, “Inscriptions de Basse Époque trouvées à

Tanis,” Kemi 8 (1946), 39–40, 76–82. For the Karnak stela see Wilhelm Max Müller,

Egyptological Researches. Results of a Journey in 1904, vol. I (Washington: Carnegie

Institution, 1906), 22–23. For the fragment of another Shellal stela see Arthur E. P. B.

Weigall. “Report on Some Objects Recently found in Seback and Other Diggings,”

Annales du Service des antiquités de l’Egypte 8 (1907), 39.

28 Ancient Nubian evidence will be covered elsewhere, Uroš Matić, “Gender as a Frame

of War in Ancient Nubia,” Dotawo (2021), forthcoming.

29 I am currently studying ancient Egyptian and Nubian lists of spoils of war and plan to

edit a corpus of these lists in the near future. Since there are so far around 30 such lists,

the reader is advised to consult some examples of 18th dynasty date, Beylage, Aufbau der

königlichen Stelentexte; Klug, Königliche Stelen.

30 Butler, The Force of Non-Violence, 107.

31 William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Deshasheh. Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund 15

(London: 1898), pl. IV; Naguib Kanawati and Ann McFarlane, Deshasha. The Tombs of

Inti, Shedu and Others. The Australian Centre for Egyptology Reports 5 (Sydney: The

Australian Centre for Egyptology, 1993), Pls. 26 and 27. I have recently discussed this

scene from a gendered perspective, Uroš Matić, “Begehrte Beute. Fremde Frauen als

Raubgut im Alten Ägypten,” Antike Welt. Zeitchrift für Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 4.19

(2019): 15–16. For Old Kingdom siege scenes, see Anna-Latifa Mourad, “Siege Scenes of

the Old Kingdom,” Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 22 (2011): 135–158.

32 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 23; Petrie, Deshasheh, 6.

33 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 23; Petrie, Deshasheh, 6

34 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 23.

35 This is maybe a rare glance into the reality of war when women also can be aggressors,

for example by protecting infants, or responding to the outside threats. We should avoid

assuming that women are always passive, even if the society maybe expects them to be

so in other situations, Tegtmeyer and Martin, “The Bioarchaeology of Women,

Children, and Other Vulnerable Groups in Times of War,” 8.

108 Objects of desire

36 Fischer, “Women in Old Kingdom,” 23.

37 Brigitte Jaroš-Deckert, Das Grab des Jnj-jtj.f. Die Wandmalereien der XI. Dynastie.

Archäologische Veröentlichungen 12 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1984), Pl.

17. I have already discussed the gendered dimensions of this scene. Due to errors in

formatting, however, the published gure, which is correct, is erroneously referred to as

a scene from the tomb of Ankhti and not, as it should be, the tomb of Intef, Matić,

“Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes,” 276.

38 This is a point I have already made elsewhere, Matić, “Traditionally Unharmed?

Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes,” 279–280; Matić, “Body and Frames of

War in New Kingdom Egypt,” 139–148.

39 There are two main works to be consulted for this motif, each with an extensive

catalog and discussion of individual scenes; Sylvia Schoske, Das Erschlagen der Feinde.

Ikonographie und Stilistik der Feindvernichtung im alten Ägypten. Inagurialdissertation zur

Erlangung des Doktorgrades (Heidelberg: Universität Heidelberg, 1982); Emma Swan

Hall, The Pharaoh Smites His Enemy. A Comparative Study. Münchner Ägyptologische

Studien 44 (Munchen: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1986).

40 Various scholars have discussed the meaning and purpose of this iconic image in ancient

Egypt. Some point to the ctional reuse of the scene as related to “conservatism of

expression without parallel elsewhere in the world.” Such an understanding has en-

gendered the falsication that every Egyptian king was represented as a conqueror, Alan

H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction (Oxford and New York: Oxford

University Press, 1961), 56–57. Several scholars have proposed that the smiting of the

enemy scene functioned not to commemorate, but to perpetuate victory over one’s

foes. The image, then, did not simply reect reality but created it through “sympathetic

magic.” Thus, when found in temple contexts, it serves as a protection for both the

temple and the cosmos that it represented, Robert Kriech Ritner, The Mechanics of

Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 54 (Chicago:

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1993), 115–116; David O’Connor,

“Egypt’s View of ‘Others’,” in Never Had the Like Occurred: Egypt’s View of its Past,

edited by John Tait (London: University College of London Press, 2003), 174,

155–185. The smiting scene is seen as a prophylactic, intended to prevent potential

rebellion, Lynn M. Meskell, Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and

Present (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), 121; Ludwig Morenz, “Fremde als

Potentielle Feinde. Die prophylaktische Szene der Erschlagung der Fremden in

Altägypten,” in Annäherung an das Fremde. XXVI. Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 25. bis

29.9.1995 in Leipzig. Vorträge, edited by Holger Preissler and Heidi Stein (Stuttgart:

Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 101. Recently this scene was studied as a visualization of

cultural memory, Maria Michela Luiselli, “The Ancient Egyptian Scene of ‘Pharaoh

Smiting His Enemies’: An Attempt to Visualize Cultural Memory?” in Cultural Memory

and Identity in Ancient Societies, edited by Martin Bommas (London and New York:

Continuum, 2011), 10–25. Others, however, argue that the scenes are commemora-

tions of real historical events, ceremonial executions, and perhaps even public holidays,

Alan Richard Schulman, Ceremonial Execution and Public Rewards: Some Historical Scenes

on New Kingdom Private Stelae. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 75 (Freiburg und Göttingen:

Universitätsverlag und Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 46; Alan Richard Schulman,

“Take for Yourself the Sword,” in Essays in Egyptology in Honor of Hans Goedicke, edited

by Betsy M. Bryan and David Lorton (San Antonio: Van Siclen Books, 1994), 264–267.

This interpretation has been vigorously criticized and dismissed with strong arguments,

Didier Devauchelle, “Un Archétype de Relief Cultuel en Égypte Ancienne,” Bulletin de

la Société Française d’Égyptologie 131 (1994): 38–60; Renate Muller-Wollermann, “Der

Mythos vom Ritus Erschlagen der Feinde,” Göttinger Miszellen 105 (1988): 69–76.

41 Hall, The Pharaoh Smites his Enemy; Schoske, Das Erschlagen der Feinde.

42 David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East

Africa, C.10,000 to 2,650 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),

Objects of desire 109

109. For the most complete overview of early attestations of this motif, see Bestock,

Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt.

43 For the signicance of hair for femininity in ancient Egypt see Philippe Derchain, “La

Perruque et le Cristal,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 2 (1975): 55–74; Saphinaz-

Amal Naguib, “Hair in Ancient Egypt,” Acta Orientalia LI (1990): 7–26; Gay Robins,

“Hair and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Egypt, c. 1480-1350 B.C.,” Journal of

the American Research Center in Egypt XXXVI (1999): 55–69; for meanings of hair in

other cultures, see Christopher Robert Hallpike, “Social Hair,” Man 4.2 (1969):

256–264; Edmund R Leach, “Magical Hair,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological

Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 88.2 (1958): 147–164.

44 Spalinger, Icons of Power.

45 For the most comprehensive study of tribute scenes in the 18th dynasty, see Silke

Hallmann, Die Tributszenen des Neuen Reiches. Ägypten und Altes Testament 66

(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006).

46 Uroš Matić, “Children on the Move: ms.w wr.w in the New Kingdom Procession

Scenes,” in There and Back Again–the Crossroads II Proceedings of an International Conference

Held in Prague, September 15–18, 2014, edited by Jana Mynářová, Pavel Onderka, and

Peter Pavuk (Prague, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, 2015), 377.

47 For an overview of evidence of women and children in the context of battle, see Matić,

“Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes”; Matić, Body

and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt, 139–148.

48 Matić, “Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes,” 272;

Matić, Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt, 139–148.

49 Erika Feucht, “Kinder fremder Völker in Ägypten,” in Festschrift Jurgen von Beckerath:

zum 70. Geburtstag am 19. Februar 1990. Hildesheimer Ägyptologische Beitrage 30,

edited by Bettina Schmitz and Arne Eggebrecht (Hildesheim: Pelizaeus Museum,

1990), 29–48; Erika Feucht, “Kinder fremder Völker in Ägypten II,” Studien zur

Altägyptischen Kultur 17 (1990): 177–204.

50 Matić, “Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes;” Matić,

Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt, 139–148.

51 Matić, Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt, 100–116.

52 Beth Shan stela of Ramesses II, KRI II, 151, 6–7; Matić, Body and Frames of War, 148.

53 Matić, “The Best of the Booty of His Majesty,” 53–63.

54 This was rst suggested by Norman de Garis Davies who did not relate this to later

division of women in the list of spoils of war of Ramesses III, Norman de Garis Davies,

The Tomb of Rekh-mi-rē‛ at Thebes. Volume I. Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian

Expedition Publications 11. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1943), 29–30.

55 María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,” Hypatia

22.1 (2007), 186.

56 Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,” 201.

57 Tamás A Bács, “Remarks on a Nubian Tribute Scene,” in Across Mediterranean-Along the

Nile. Studies in Egyptology, Nubiology and Late Antiquity dedicated to László Török on the

Occasion of His 75th Birthday, Volume I, edited by Tamás A. Bács, Ádám Bollók, and

Tivadar Vida (Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 2018), 361–378.

58 Anthony J. Spalinger, The Persistence of Memory in Kush: Pianchy and his Temple (Prague:

Charles University in Prague, 2019).

59 Susanne Constanze Heinz, Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches. Eine Bildanalyse.

Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts

17 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Archäologischen Akademie der Wissenschaften),

2001; Spalinger, Icons of Power.

60 She is depicted as a male king smiting male enemies on the north wall of the lower

columned hall. Franciszek Pawlicki, “Polnische Arbeiten im Tempel der Königin

Hatschepsut in Deir el-Bahari,” in Geheimnisvolle Königin Hatschepsut. Ägyptische Kunst

des 15. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., edited by Jadwiga Lipińska, Monika Dolińska, and Joanna

110 Objects of desire

Aksamit (Warschau: Nationalmuseum in Warschau, 1997), 50. She is also depicted smiting

enemies on the north wall of the northern lower portico. As a male sphinx trampling

enemies, she is depicted on the south wall of southern lower portico, Harold H. Nelson,

Key Plans Showing Locations of Theban Temple Decorations, Oriental Institute Publications 56

(Chicago: The University in Chicago Press, 1941), Pl. XXXIV; see also Taterka, “Military

expeditions of King Hatshepsut”. The problem is that the scenes are not properly published

or even reconstructed. I would like to thank Filip Taterka for useful insights into the

representations of Hatshepsut in scenes of smiting and trampling of enemies.

61 Ahmed Fakhry, “A Note on the Tomb of Kheruef at Thebes,” Annales du Service des

Antiquités de l’Égypte 42 (1943): 469–472.

62 Thus, the enemies trampled by Tiye can be clearly recognized as being foreign women

contra Katharina Zinn, “Women in Amarna. Legendary Royals, Forgotten Elite,

Unknown Populace?” in Women in Antiquity. Real Women Across the Ancient World,

edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean MacIntosh Turfa (London and New York:

Routledge, 2016), 257

63 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, Four Eighteenth Dynasty Tombs. Private Tombs at Thebes I

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), Pl. XXX.

64 Säve-Söderbergh, Four Eighteenth Dynasty Tombs, Pl. XXXVI.

65 Gay Robins, “Some Principles of Compositional Dominance and Gender Hierarchy in

Egyptian Art,” The Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt XXXI (1994): 35.

66 Charles F. Nims, Habachi Labib, Edward F. Wente, and David B. Larkin, The Tomb of

Kheruef. Theban Tomb 192. Oriental Institute Publications 102 (Chicago: The Oriental

Institute of the University of Chicago, 1980), Pl. 47; Fakhry, “A Note on the Tomb of

Kheruef at Thebes,” 473.

67 David B. Larkin, “Titles and Epithets of Kheruef,” in The Tomb of Kheruef. Theban

Tomb 192. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications 102, edited by

Ch. F. Nims et al. (Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Press,

1980), 78–80; Christian Bayer, Die den Herrn Beider Länder mit ihrer Schönheit erfreut. Teje.

Eine ikonographische Studie (Ruhpolding: Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen), 2014. 271.

68 John D. Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from Hermopolis in American Collections (Mainz am

Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1965), Fig. 51α.

69 Sayed Tawk, “Aton Studies,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts,

Abteilung Kairo 31 (1975): 85.

70 Tawk, “Aton Studies,” 163, Fig. 1.

71 Hall, The Pharaoh Smites his Enemy, 25.

72 Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from Hermopolis, 85.

73 Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (New York: The Brooklyn Museum in association

with The Viking Press, 1973), 135; Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor, 153; Darnell and

Manassa, Tutankhamun’s Armies (New Jersey, John Wiley & Son. 2007), 34; Charles F.

Nims, “Amarna Reliefs from Hermopolis in American Collections by John. D. Cooney.

Review,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 88.3 (1968): 546; Schoske, Das Erschlagen

der Feinde, 170; Joyce A. Tyldesley, Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt. From Early Dynastic

Times to the Death of Cleopatra (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 132.

74 Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, 135; Dorothea Arnold, “Aspects of the Royal Female

Image during the Amarna Period,” in The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from

Ancient Egypt, edited by Dorothea Arnold, James Peter Allen, and Lynn Green (New

York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), 85; Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from

Hermopolis, 85; Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor, 156; Darnell and Manassa,

Tutankhamun’s Armies: Battle and Conquest during Ancient Egypt’s Late Eighteenth Dynasty,

34; Robert Morkot, “Violent Images of Queenship and the Royal Cult,” Wepwawet.

Research Papers in Egyptology 2 (1986): 1–9; Schoske, Das Erschlagen der Feinde, 70;

Tyldesley, Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt, 132.

75 For gender, family, and status hierarchies in Amarna iconography, especially in con-

nection to the status of Nefertiti, see Jacquelyn Williamson, “Alone before the God:

Objects of desire 111

Gender, Status, and Nefertiti’s Image,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 51

(2015), 179–192.

76 Williamson, “Alone before the God: Gender, Status, and Nefertiti’s Image,” 190–192.

77 For ethnographic evidence for marriage by capture and raiding for women, see Robert

H. Barnes, “Marriage by Capture,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5.1

(1999), 57–73.

78 O’Connor, “The Eastern High Gate. Sexualized Architecture at Medinet Habu?”

439–454.

79 According to Butler, we cannot understand the eld of representability simply by

examining its explicit contents. Rather, it is fundamentally constituted by what is not

represented, Butler, Frames of War, 73.

80 John Baines, “Restricted Knowledge, Hierarchy, and Decorum: Modern Perceptions

and Ancient Institutions,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt XXVII (1990):

20. Decorum is distinguished through iconographic patterns and the reasons behind

them, John Baines, Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2007), 16–17.

81 Cf. Butler, Frames of War.

82 Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, translated from French by Paul

Patton (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 28–41.

83 Whitney Davis, Queer Beauty. Sexuality and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Freud and

Beyond (New York Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2010), 1.

112 Objects of desire

“HE IS LOOKING AT BOWMEN LIKE

WOMEN”: GENDER AS A FRAME

OF WAR

5.1 Cross-cultural feminization in warfare

Military occupation zones are very often sites of intensied violence where soldiers

practice militarized masculinities against enemies who are perceived as feminized

and inferior.

As Marilyn Strathern argued “relations between political enemies

stand for relation between men and women”.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, if

one understands penetration as an act of domination in which sex and power are

linked, the worst humiliation for a man is to be turned into a woman.

Of course,

Bourdieu writes this from a heteronormative perspective and we should be careful

not to generalize. Still, there are cross-cultural examples that support Bourdieu’s

theorizing, at least for those socities in which desire of men to women was

normative. Hittite texts, for example, contain prayers to Ishtar besieging the

goddess to emasculate enemies by taking away their weapons, and endowing them

with feminine attributes such as mirrors and gender-appropriate clothes. In one

text, a Hittite soldier curses an oath breaker and his troops to change into women;

their weapons are broken, and they receive feminine attributes.

As another example, Cynthia Chapman has examined the gendered language

used during the conict between Israelites and Assyrians (9th to 7th century BC).

She understands “gendered language” as an ideological expression that justies and

maintains asymmetrical relationships of power. Assyrians refer to defeated soldiers

as women-like, whereas defeated kings are called prostitutes. Israelite and Judean

writers invoked similar language. In explanation, both cultures shared a common

set of gender metaphors, which they used in battle narratives.

Additionally, we

see that in Assyria, cutting o an enemy’s beard was an act of shaming; cultural

norms related to masculinity dictated that men have beards.

Claudia Bergmann

has developed this discussion further by focusing on the metaphor of birthing

woman, which Assyrians and Israelites evoked to represent their enemies as weak.

As I discuss later, there is much earlier evidence for the use of this metaphor in

ancient Egypt. Its appearance in this context could be an indication of a more

widespread and widely understood metaphoric language of warfare in the Late

Bronze Age that survived into the Iron Age.

Turning to ancient Greece, iconographic evidence for the emasculation of

enemies possibly appears on the Eurymedon vase (an Attic red-gure oinochoe

housed at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 1981, 173). Depicted on

this wine jug, which is attributed to the Triptolemos Painter and dates to c. 460 BC,

is a bearded man advancing toward an archer. The former holds his erect penis in his

right hand while the latter is bent at the hip and raises his arms. Between them is a

text in Greek stating, “I am Eurymedon, I stand bent forward”. Some scholars have

interpreted this scene as a sexual metaphor for the Greeks’ victory over the Persians.

The victorious Greek man will penetrate a helpless and defeated enemy.

Other

researchers call this interpretation into question. While it was not taboo for Greek

artists to depict the act of penetration, it is not displayed on the wine jug. Nor does

the Greek man possess the attributes of a soldier. More pronounced ethnic features

are missing, as well.

The Eurymedon vase does teach us to take care with inter-

pretation of ancient imagery. Our contemporary understandings may not necessarily

t with or be close to ancient ones under study. With this valuable lesson in hand,

we may now turn to images of feminization in ancient Egypt.

5.2 Feminization of foreigners and enemies in

Egyptian texts

While not numerous, there are several important examples of foreigners’ and

enemies’ feminization in ancient Egyptian texts. Some examples are more am-

biguous; at rst glance, they do not seem to be related to the rhetorical femini-

zation of enemies. Next to these, I also treat explicit cases. Comparing these

images to acts of feminizations in enemies’ cultures can be analytically productive.

This is why I will also include some examples of Nubian feminizations of their

enemies, including Egyptians.

We begin with a striking example from Lower Nubia. On boundary stelae of

Senwosret III at Semna (Berlin ÄM 1157, lines 10–11) and Uronarti (Khartum Nr.

3 = Inv. 451, lines 7–8), I mentioned in Chapter 4, we nd a curious designation

of cowardly behavior: “Aggression is bravery. Retreat is vile. He who is driven

from his boundary is a true ḥm” (ḳn.t pw 3d ẖs.t pw ḥmi ḫti ḥm pw m3

3r.w ḥr

t3š=f). The word ḥm is derived from the verb ḥmi “to drive back; to repel”.

Scholars have oered varied translations for this word, some of which signal tacit

homophobia and presentism. In the Wörterbuch der ägyptische Sprache, it means

“coward”.

Marc Brose translates it for Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae as

Schlappschwanz,

a German word which means wimp. We may also understand

the word as a composite, consisting of the adjective schlapp, or weak, and Schwanz,

a colloquial German term for penis. Brose takes his translation from Detlef

Franke.

The phallus determinative in ḥm underscores the term’s sexual

114 Gender as a frame of war

attributes, a point also made by Kurth Sethe. He translates the word as entmannt

(German for emasculated) or unmänlich (German for unmanly),

which Torgny

Säve-Söderbergh echoes.

Robert Delia’s translation, “fag”, should give us pause

about contemporary frames of reference.

Claude Obsomer translated ḥm as

couard (French for coward) and ties the word to ḥm.t, or “woman” and eéminé

(French for eeminate).

Christopher Eyre translates the word as “pansy”,

which designates a cultivated variety of viola with brightly colored owers, though

colloquially refers to a coward, a wimp, or a gay man. Finally, Mark Depaw

translates ḥm as a “sissy”. He argues that in the Teaching of King Amenemhat I, it can

also refer to eunuchs and castrates.

For his part, Richard Parkinson translates the word ḥm as “back turner”. He

argues that together with nkkw, a “fucked man”, this term evokes sexual activity

but not erotic orientation.

In his earlier work on the subject of “homosexual”

desire in ancient Egypt, he argued that the term ḥm characterizes an individual as a

type who might end up in a passive role, but not necessarily as a result of his

conscious orientation or desire. Parkinson places it in a constellation of ideas

linking weakness, defeat, and sexual passivity.

In the Old Kingdom, Parkinson

argues, the word contrasts with ṯ3j, or “male”. In tomb scenes from this period, for

example, harvesters refer to their rivals as ḥm.

Bearing in mind that the word ḥm

derives from the verb ḥmi, Parkinson’s translation “back turner” acknowledges

etymological background, as well as the gender connotation of passivity and ef-

feminacy. Put into the context of the Semna and Uronarti stelae of Senwosret III

we can observe a binary opposition between ideal masculinity of the pharaoh and

failed masculinity of his Nubian enemies. This is achieved by their feminization in

the text, but also by putting an emphasis on their cowardness, their defeat, their

loss of land and resources, and the fact that the pharaoh plunders their women

(Chapter 4).

The same designation for enemies also appears some six centuries later in the

text of the Battle of Qadesh poem, which dates to the reign of Ramesses II. The

pertinent passage is preserved at Karnak and Luxor temples: “What are these back-

turners to you, for millions of whom, I care nothing?”

(jḫ tr ḥr jb=k n3j ḥm.w n.tj

bw ḥḏ.n ḥr=j n ḥḥ.w jm=sn).

Apart from the above discussed sexually connoted description of enemies, there

are also some more ambiguous examples. A stela of Usersatet, viceroy of Kush

(Boston Museum of Fine Arts No. 25.632), with praise to Amenhotep II, describes

the king in the following way: “The lord of a female servant from Babylon, a

female servant from Byblos, a little girl from Alalakh, and an old woman from

Arrapkhra” (p3 [nb ḥm.t] m Sngr sḏm.t-

š m Kbn msw.t šrj.t n.t Irrḫ j3(y).t n.t Irpḫ).

In Donald Redford’s estimation, these lines indicate that the pharaoh had raped

these women.

David O’Connor does not translate the passage so literally. He

suggests that the women symbolically stood in for these countries’ defeated kings

who were metaphorically raped.

The matter is more complex. At the very beginning of the sentence, however, a

lacuna appears after the denite article p3-“the”, which ends with a seated woman

Gender as a frame of war 115

determinative . Wolfgang Helck and John Colleman Darnell reconstruct the la-

cuna in the text as nb ḥm.t, “lord of a female servant”.

The word before m Sngr,

“of Babylon”, to which the determinative belongs, can only be a feminine word in

singular given what follows it. We see dierent feminine words in singular assigned

to dierent toponyms: sḏm.t-

š “female servant” is assigned to Kbn “Byblos”, msw.t

šrj.t “little girl” to Irrḫ “Alalakh”, and j3(y).t “old woman” to Irpḫ “Arrapkhra”.

Since words in the feminine singular are assigned to dierent toponyms (Kbn, Irrḫ,

and Irpḫ), we may surmise that the missing word after p3 is a verb, which translates

as rape. At least one of the words after p3 has to be a feminine singular, and based on

the rest of the text, it must be a woman of a particular age or status. For these

reasons, Helck and Darnell’s reconstruction is a convincing one. The text of the stela

does speak about the pharaoh’s domination over foreign lands, but nothing indicates

that he rapes the mentioned women. While the words sḏm.t-

š, msw.t šrj.t, and j3(y).t

have the feminine ending –t, the scribe did not add a determinative for a woman

next to masculine determinatives , , and . While the scribe(s) may have used

masculine determinatives due to the lack of feminine determinatives of analogous

forms, one would expect another determinative to be added at the end, such as – a

seated woman. This amendment would clarify the gender of the noun next to the

feminine ending –t. The lack of determinative could also be a subtle hint that the

women metaphorically stand in for the men from Byblos, Alalakh, and Arrapkhra, as

O’Connor suggested. Yet, if this was the case, further explanation is necessary. Why

is the metaphor used for the men from Byblos, Alalakh, and Arrapkhra but not for

those from Babylon where, judging by the determinative, the missing word is a

feminine singular? If indeed we are dealing with the use of a metaphor for fem-

inization of foreign rulers, this case would be unique, as I am unaware of others.

Usually, the textual evidence for the feminization of foreigners and enemies are

more explicit. The Kom el-Ahmar (west Delta) stela of Merenptah, also known as

the Athribis stela, is one such example. The stela, originally placed at Kom el-

Ahmar and now located in the courtyard of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, describes

the king and the Nine Bows, a traditional metaphor for enemies of Egypt, in the

following way: “Nine Bows are before him like women of the harem” (pḏ.wt psḏ.t

ẖr- ḥ3.t=f mj ḫnr.yt).

The meaning of the preposition ẖr-ḥ3.t is more precisely to

be understood as something like “under the front”.

Such a description suggests

that the enemies and women of the harem are in front of the king, though it may

also mean they are under him, as in prostrate or on lower ground.

The comparison of the Nine Bows, the traditional symbolic representation of

enemies of Egypt, with ḫnr.yt, “women of the harem”, is worth further con-

sideration. The word ḫnr.t derives from the word ḫnr meaning “to conne”

and

is usually translated as harem. Egyptologists' conventional understanding of this

ancient Egyptian institution, however, is far dierent from the orientalist idea of a

harem.

In ancient Egypt, the harem rst constituted the private quarters in the

king’s palace. During the New Kingdom and the rule of Merenptah, it char-

acterized an institution spatially separate from the pharaoh’s residence, but still

integrated into the larger palace complex. The harem as an institution and

116 Gender as a frame of war

architectural phenomenon experienced considerable growth in the New

Kingdom.

Yet, the word harem itself is loaded with orientalist associations.

Perhaps, the culturally and historically contingent nuances to glean from com-

paring enemies with women of the harem eludes contemporary researchers. But,

clearly, the metaphor places enemies in a subordinate status vis-à-vis the Egyptian

pharaoh.

Feminization also invoked widowhood. One description of enemies from the

Triumph-Hymn of Merenptah on his Israel stela (CG 34025) uses the metaphor of a

widow for enemy land: “Syria became a widow because of Egypt” (ḫ3r ḫpr.w m ḫ3rt

n t3-mrj).

The Wisdom Texts also advised men to take care of widows and do them

no harm. Widows in ancient Egypt were understood as women in need of pro-

tection, their weakness being expressed through the absence of their referent

men.

We also have to bear in mind the implication of this metaphor. Many foreign

women lost their husbands due to Egyptian military campaigns in their lands, and

although we do not have information directly testifying about their fates in the

aftermath, carefully drawn parallels from other historical wars indicate a precarious

state in which war widows found themselves.

Unlike, Egyptian women who lost

their husbands in Egyptian military campaigns abroad, foreign women had to deal

with war losses and Egyptian occupation.

There are other cases of feminization of enemies in later New Kingdom texts.

A scene on the Medinet Habu temple that depicts a battle with Nubians relates key

information about the king: “He is looking at bowmen like women” (m33=f

pḏ.tj.w mj ḥm.wt).

In this passage, the bowmen (or Nubians) are compared to

women. As in the case of Merenptah’s Kom el-Ahmar stela, we are dealing with a

metaphorical expression. We can also only make assumptions about the meta-

phor’s nuances. Nevertheless, it is clear that the king’s gaze signals women’s

subordinate status, both as his subjects and given their gender (Chapter 2).

Feminization of enemies also involved comparison with women giving birth,

which emphasized these men’s weakness. During the Second Libyan War, Libyans

are described in the 11th regnal year of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu as jry.w ḥdy,

or “being made limp”.

The text’s authors describe the Libyan leader Meshesher

as pḳ ḥr t3, or “spread out on the ground”.

In both cases, the determinative to

the verbs ḥdy

and pḳ is a woman giving birth, . As aforementioned, Bergmann

has deliberated about this metaphor, comparing enemies with women giving

birth. While her examples are later than the ones presented here, they provide a

useful frame of reference if applied critically. O’Connor related these expressions

of feminized Libyan enemies to depictions of the king with the women of his

court and ghting foes. From this contrast, he identied sexualized overtones.

More specically, O’Connor argued that the king had consensual sex with court

women but non-consensual or forced relations with his enemies. He links the

raping of men with the god Seth and his supposed predilection for same-sex in-

tercourse.

Whether or not the parallels that O’Connor draws are correct, the fact

that war and rape are violent acts remains a constant. In ancient Egypt, penetrative

sex between an active man and passive woman positions the latter in a subordinate

Gender as a frame of war 117

position (see Chapter 3). That is, framing enemies as women represents them as

passive and subordinate vis-à-vis the Egyptian king. His masculinity is, therefore,

hypermasculinity par excellence.

One example of enemies’ feminization is found on the Triumphal Stela of Piye, a

Kushite king, and founder of the 25th dynasty (Cairo JE 48862, 47086–47089, lines

149–150). To the best of my knowledge, it has no parallels. The pertinent passage

reads as: “Now these kings and counts of North-land came to behold His Majesty’s

beauty, their legs being the legs of women” (js gr nn <n> nswt ḥ3(tj)w-

nw t3 mḥw jj r

m33 nfrw ḥm=f rdwj=sn m rdwj ḥm.wt).

In his translation of the text, Nicolas-

Christophe Grimal suggests that the legs of the kings and counts of the North-land

trembled like those of women.

It is important to note, however, that the adjective

tremblant (French trembling) does not appear in the text, but is assumed by Grimal.

In contrast, Hans Goedicke’s translation describes the trembling of knees instead of

legs.

The implication, as Robert Ritner explains, is that kings and counts trembled

in fear.

Similarly, Amr el Hawary asserts that the enemies of Piye had their legs

bent at the knees from fear.

O’Connor and Stephen Quirke go as far to argue that

the text presents a metaphor for the femininity of Piye’s enemies, presuming that the

legs of all women are smooth skinned.

Yet, their argument is not particularly

convincing since hair removal was not restricted to women in ancient Egypt. Later,

the text states that three of these kings and counts remained outside “because of their

legs” (r rdwj=sn) while only one entered the palace. As to why, el Hawary suggests

that these men’s legs appear feminine.

At a dierent junction in the Triumphal Stela of Piye, the text oers an additional

example of feminization: “You return having conquered North-land; making bulls

into women” (jw=k jy.tw ḥ3q.n=k t3-Mḥw jr=k k3.w m ḥm.wt).

In this instance,

bulls appear to symbolize men, a notion supported by the Instructions of

Ankhsheshonq (X, 20). In this text, bulls are contrasted with the vulvas that should

receive them.

For both cases, then, it is arguable that bulls stand for men, or at least

masculinity, in the human and animal world. We have also seen that this gender

notion even organized the ancient Egyptian lists of spoils of war (Chapter 4). At

another place in the Triumphal stela of Piye women of the palace of king Nimlot did

homage to Piye “after the manner of women” (m ḫt ḥmwt).

Recently, Mattias

Karlsson analysed gender dierences in both text and the iconography of the

Triumphal Stela of Piye. He argued that Piye represents ideal masculinity and his

enemy Nimlot failed masculinity. In the lunette of the stela Nimlot and his wife

Nestjenet are depicted approaching Piye, however, the frontal gure is Nestjenet and

Nimlot is behind her holding a sistrum with his one hand and the horse for a rope

with his other hand. Sistra were musical instruments in ancient Egypt and Nubia

associated with goddess Hathor and were usually depicted in hands of women, such as

priestesses. Nestjenet here is the frontal gure and she addresses Piye. This is a reversal

to ancient Egyptian patterns in iconography where women are usually not the frontal

gures.

It seems that in order to present himself as victorious, Piye uses the same

gender rhetoric as Senwosret III in his Semna and Uronarti stelae.

118 Gender as a frame of war

Evidence for the feminization of enemies also appears in texts composed for other

Kushite kings. In the Annals of Harsiyotef ( JE 48864), lines 89–90, for example, we

learn about a conict between the Mededet people and a Meroitic king, who likely

ruled in the rst third of the 4th century BC. A Mededet chief, reduced to a spoil of

war, remarks: “You are my god. I am your servant. I am a woman. Come to me” (ntk

p(t)=j nṯr jnk p)=k b3k jnk s-ḥm my j-r=j).

While the text’s composer most likely put

these words in his mouth, the enemy directly identies himself as a woman.

Interestingly, no such attestations, as far as I am aware, are known from Egyptian

sources. el Hawary has already made a connection between the passage from the

Annals of Harsiyotef and the passage from the Triumphal stela of Piye, describing the

feminine manner of the homage of king Nimlot.

In ancient Egypt, feminization was also spatialized. That is, we see the fem-

inization of Egyptian towns and foreign ones. Based on his analysis of various

textual sources, Jochem Kahl argues that from at least the Old Kingdom, the

ancient Egyptians conceptualized their towns as anthropomorphic females.

for foreign towns, their anthropomorphizing and gendering also occurs in ancient

Egyptian texts and iconography depicting warfare. Here, I follow the suggestion of

Louise Hitchcock that even violent destruction can be viewed through a gender

perspective and must have been a traumatic experience for eeing people.

Representations of sieged cities may be understandable through the metaphor of

violent sexual encounters. The Egyptian king or his army penetrates or ploughs a

feminized enemy town. We are reminded of the army scribe entering Joppa as

mentioned in the previous chapter. Representations of Egyptians signal masculi-

nity, while conquered foreigners are aligned with the feminine. Iconographic

evidence from before the Old Kingdom, for example, shows the king in the form

of a bull storming enemy towns (Narmer Palette; Bull Palette).

The king has also

been depicted as a falcon, a standard, a scorpion, or as a lion penetrating enemy

towns. Contingents of his army using ploughs to this end (Town Palette). Later

evidence from the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period shows soldiers

using siege devices, such as ladders on wheels, to penetrate enemy towns. These

soldiers are equipped with axes and ploughs. In the New Kingdom, Egyptian

soldiers sometimes appear in front of the gates of besieged forts holding axes.

addition to iconography suggestive of penetrative masculinity, ancient Egyptian

love poems and narrative literature represent a house/door/room as an erotic

cultural metaphor for the vagina.

So far, we have seen several examples from textual sources of enemies’ fem-

inizations. I also have suggested that the gendering of enemy towns as feminine in

the context of war could be interpreted as their symbolic rape. In all of these cases,

feminization occurs in a royal context, meaning that foreigners and enemies are

feminized vis-à-vis the king and not just by any man. I now turn to ancient

Egyptian iconography to further develop this argument about feminization.

Gender as a frame of war 119

5.3 Feminization of enemies in iconography

In contrast to evidence from textual sources, iconographic representations of

foreign enemies’ feminization are not numerous, and, in some cases, their

meanings are ambiguous. In this section, I try and surmount these interpretive

challenges. First, I deal with two representations of returning injured soldiers and

then with the mutilation of enemies through severing their phalli.

On a wall of Beit el-Wali/South’s temple (Figure 5.1) from the reign of

Ramesses II, Nubian soldiers ee from the pharaoh.

(More precisely, they are

depicted on the eastern half of the southern wall, which is located in the temple’s

forecourt.) One of them enters a landscape with tall fruit trees. In front of him,

another is carried by two companions. He rests his arms on their shoulders, and,

together, the three men walk toward a male child. This child touches one of the

companions’ legs. He lays his left hand atop his own head. Behind the child is a

woman, her arms stretched out toward the incoming Nubian soldiers. Possibly,

she has come from a hut; its entrance is depicted in the background. Behind this

woman, we see a second male child. He runs past a fruit tree toward another

woman who crouches with her back turned. She is preparing or processing food;

we see her holding a vessel with her left hand while stirring its contents with the

other one.

These tropes are replicated elsewhere. From the temple of Derr, we have a

scene depicting a Nubian campaign carried out by Ramesses II.

On the upper

soldiers are carrying a third soldier, who appears to be injured. Between them

though just under the body of the injured soldier is a male child running in the

same direction. The child has his right hand on his head. In front of this group is a

Nubian bowman and in front of him a woman with one of her hands in front of

her face. Behind them are two more women who welcome the injured soldiers.

One kneels while the other stands. Behind them are herds of cattle and a tree. On

the far left, a man stands, leaning on his walking stick for support. He is turned

toward the incoming soldiers. Behind him is a Nubian soldier, who is turned

FIGURE 5.1 Nubian campaign of Ramesses II, the eastern half of the southern wall of

the forecourt of the temple at Beit el-Wali/South, line drawing of the author, no scale

(after Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, Pl. 165).

120 Gender as a frame of war

toward the left. A woman leads him to a child. The child is holding the soldier’s

leg with its left hand and is pointing toward the woman with the right one. The

woman kneels and is turned to the right toward them. She has a basket on her back

with a child inside.

Granted, the sample is not large. But, interestingly, in both scenes, a child rst

spots the injured soldier and holds his head with his right hand. This gesture is

known from mourning scenes

and clearly expresses grief in decorum. It usually is

associated with Egyptian women and children in funeral scenes, and so its transfer

to another context requires deliberation. In fact we have already seen the same

motif in the representation of Asiatics in the siege of an Asiatic town in the tomb

of Inti from Desheshah (Chapter 4). Gender plays an important role here. Nubian

boys gesture as in mourning and injured Nubian soldiers have ed home to their

wives and children. When taken together, the scenes emphasize the stereotype of

Nubians as defeated cowards. The term ḥm, “back turner”, discussed earlier in this

chapter, with its connotations of turning one’s back to an attacker is germane here.

The FRONT–BACK position is well attested as a gurative expression in ancient

Egypt. In these examples, this position places the king behind eeing enemies.

Enemies’ weakness is also indicated by depicting their penises as accid. A

papyrus from Amarna now kept in the British Museum in London (EA74100)

depicts two Libyan soldiers beating an Egyptian (?) who kneels on the ground

(Figure 5.3).

Traces of a third Libyan gure, to their right, are also present. The

two better preserved Libyan gures are dressed like the Libyan enemies on the

reliefs of Medinet Habu temple, to which I return. On the Amarna papyrus, they

are depicted with their phalli clearly visible. The phalli of the Libyans are outlined

in a darker red color and lled in with yellowish shade. The former color also

delineates their body parts and clothes, while the latter one lls in the rest of their

bodies. Their robes are colored white. Did the Egyptian artists intentionally use a

dierent color for the Libyans’ phallus sheaths and skin? In answer, their skin color

from abdomen to scrota and phalli appears continuous, which suggests their phalli

are exposed. If the Libyans’ phalli were sheathed, one would expect a line of

FIGURE 5.2 Nubian campaign of Ramesses II, the temple of Derr, line drawing of the

author, no scale (Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, Pl. 168a).

Gender as a frame of war 121

division between these body parts and their white robes. Instead, these individuals

appear nude and exposed.

That the Libyans may have fought with their phalli exposed, while an intriguing

possibility, is not my larger concern, although I nd it highly unlikely. What we are

seeing is the Egyptians’ understanding and depiction of the Libyan enemy. According

to O’Connor, Libyans’ nakedness may have suggested their animality, an idea re-

inforced by the ancient Egyptian association between animals and nomads. Though

the accid state of their phalli presents a softness that contrasts starkly with their violent

actions; they are beating an Egyptian (?). As I argued in Chapter 2, papyri and ostraca

were media often used to satirically represent the world, reimagine it as topsy-turvy.

The accid penis of these Libyans contrasts with the hardness of the member, pri-

marily a signier of masculine power, but, depending on the context, also fertility,

youth, and potency.

As O’Connor and Quirke have argued, ancient Egyptian re-

presentations of Libyans from the Old Kingdom already depict them as gender am-

biguous; in these images, they have slight beards and long, owing hair. In the New

Kingdom, their hair is shorter, but they are more elaborately dressed, which

O’Connor and Quirke also see as reinforcing their femininity.

As argued in Chapter

2, some contemporary texts mention the participation of Libyan women in war,

indicating the masculinization of Libyan women as a parallel to the feminization of

Libyan men.

Like the Amarna papyrus, the reliefs of the Medinet Habu temple contain

numerous images of Libyan enemies in their long robes. These articles of clothing

FIGURE 5.3 Papyrus British Museum EA74100, originally from Amarna, line drawing

of the author, detail, no scale.

Source: Courtesy of British Museum in London (after Parkinson and Schoeld, “Akhenaten’s

Army,” 35).

122 Gender as a frame of war

are also slightly open to reveal protruding and accid phalli (Figure 5.4). For

example, Libyan enemies appear in such a fashion on the second scene from the

west end of the temple’s north exterior wall.

As in the case of the Amarna

papyrus, this representation of accid penises is deliberate, it ts with an Egyptian

understanding of softness and weakness as an attribute of one’s enemies.

5.4 Gender background of body mutilation

Do feminizations of enemies, be they textual or iconographic, actually reect real

sexual violence against male enemies?

The earliest evidence for cutting o the phalli of enemies is found on the

Narmer Palette (CG 14716, Egyptian Museum in Cairo). James Edward Quibell

and Frederick William Green discovered this ceremonial engraving at

Hierakonpolis, in the main deposit of a temple dedicated to Horus. At the

time, Hierakonpolis was the religious and political capital.

On the palette’s

obverse side, a scene on its right edge shows a group of ten decapitated enemies.

Their waists are bound. At their feet, we see their decapitated heads. With one

exception, atop nine heads are nine phallus shafts, which have been severed from

FIGURE 5.4 Libyans with accid phalli, the second scene from the west end of the

north exterior wall of the Medinet Habu temple, line drawing of the author, detail, no

scale.

Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (after Nelson, Medinet Habu I,

Pl. 18).

Gender as a frame of war 123

these men’s bodies.

The shaftless head belongs to the only enemy who still has a

phallus attached to his body. Though we do not have textual sources from this

period that show the feminization of enemies, it is highly likely that such bodily

mutilation or castration served to feminize these enemies.

From the reign of Narmer until Ramesses III, there are no known depictions of

or narratives about enemies’ castration. The next evidence for mutilating enemies’

phalli is found in the text of the Athribis stela (Kom el-Ahmar) of Merenptah. In

the much-damaged list of war spoils, next to the children and brothers of the chiefs

of Libu (Rbw

), the text mentions the families of Libu. Egyptologists have as-

sociated the term Libu with Libyans based on these words’ phonetic similarity

with the Greek λιβυες-Libues (Egyptians did not make a distinction of r and l).

According to the Athribis stela, Merenptah fought against the Libyans and “their

phalli were brought” ( jnj=tw n3y=sn ḥnn.w).

Similar to the Athribis stela, the Great War inscription from the Medinet Habu

temple of Ramesses III describes a campaign during his 5th regnal year that in-

volved the severing of enemies’ phalli. According to the text, “hands and phalli

with foreskin beyond numbering” (kp.w ḳrn.t nn r-

=sn) were next to the pris-

oners.

The walls of Medinet Habu temple were also decorated with scenes of

soldiers presenting cut o hands and phalli to the king following the First Libyan

War. The lowest register of the rst scene from the east on the south wall of the

second court depicts this presentation (Figure 5.5).

On the right side of the scene, the king sits backward in his chariot. He is facing

toward the left and gazes at four registers of incoming soldiers. They bring pris-

oners of war who are identiable as Libyans. To the right of the Egyptian soldiers

and closer to the king, there are two ocials counting the severed body parts in

each register. The man on the left is holding a papyrus roll and writes down the

count. The second ocial, situated on the right, handles and counts the cut o

body parts. In each of his hands, he holds a hand by its thumb. None of the soldiers

carry severed body parts. Instead, they are piled before the sitting king who is at

the very end of the register. On the far right of the fourth register, viewed from

above, there is a pile of severed hands and phalli. Two cut o hands and around 16

phalli are visible in the pile. The phalli are depicted with scrotum but without

foreskin. They resemble the sign in hieroglyphic script used to write phallus; in

Alan Gardiner’s sign list, it has the designation D52 . Every register is fol-

lowed by the same inscription, which states that these are spoils of war brought to

the king. Additional information lists “1,000 men, 3,000 hands, 3,000 phalli with

foreskin” (jr.n 1,000 s jr.n 3,000 kp jr.n 3,000 ḳrn.t).

Another presentation of spoils of war in the aftermath of the First Libyan War

comes from the temple’s outer, north wall.

In the third scene from the west, the

king leans on a parapet with a cushion on top – the main elements of the so-called

Window of Appearance, a special palace window at which the king is represented

interacting with his chosen subjects. Behind the king is his chariot; his back is

turned to it. Above the chariot, a fortress appears. The accompanying text states

that the fallen ones of Libya are in front of the town called “Usermaatre-Meriamun

124 Gender as a frame of war

FIGURE 5.5 The counting of cut o phalli of the Libyans, aftermath of the First Libyan War, the lowest register of the rst scene from the east on

the south wall of the second court Medinet Habu, line drawing of the author, detail, no scale.

Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (after Nelson, Medinet Habu I, Pl. 23).

Gender as a frame of war 125

is the Repeller of the Temeh”. Temeh was another group of foreigners that

Egyptologists as also identify as Libyan. Taken together, image and text suggest

that the scene’s events do not occur in an enclosed space. The presence of the

parapet with a cushion, a signier of the Window of Appearance, is not sucient

proof of the king’s location inside the temple or palace. He is clearly outside the

town. The king reaches out to the soldiers, in front of him. They are smaller in

size, slightly bowed, and extend their arms toward the king. Behind them, there

are ve registers of incoming soldiers. Each register has similar imagery. The

soldiers bring prisoners of war, and in front of them, closer to the king, ocials

count severed hands and phalli with foreskin. Similar to other scenes on the

Medinet Habu temple, the man on the right records numbers on a papyrus roll

while the one on the left counts. To do so, he leans down and holds a hand by its

thumb in one of his own hands and a penis shaft in the other. A pile of severed

hands and phalli is just to this ocial’s left. Among the defeated and castrated

enemies are Tmḥ Špd M

šwš,

or “Temeh, Seped, and Meshwesh”. Egyptologists

refer to these groups, as well as the aforementioned Libu, as Libyan.

On the far left of the rst register, we can see one of these piles comprised of

approximately 54 severed and foreskinned phalli. Accompanying the depiction is

an inscription that quanties the “total phalli with foreskin [as] 12,535” (dmḏ ḳrn.t

12,535).

On the far left of the third register, there is another pile with ap-

proximately 49 cut o phallus shafts with foreskin and the text “total phalli with

foreskin 12,860” (dmḏ ḳrn.t 12,860).

These high numbers of body parts re-

present the total collection during the entirety of the war; although, it is possible

that the Egyptians exaggerated this number.

Another example comes from accounts of Ramesses III’s Great War with the

Libyans, which occurred in the 5th regnal year of his reign.

Severed phalli are

mentioned during descriptions of his army’s triumphal return. After a long

lacuna, the text mentions “donkeys before them, laden with phalli with foreskins

of the land of Libu, together with the hands of all the foreign lands which had

accompanied them” ([

]3.w ẖr.j- ḥ3.t=sn 3tp(.w) m-

ḥnn.w <m> ḳrn.t ḫ3s.t Rbw

ḥn

kp.w n ḫ3s.t [nb] wn.w ḥn

=w).

The text’s reference to ḥnn.w <m> ḳrn.t

“phalli with/as ḳrn.t” oers evidence of their severed status. Severed phalli are

also included on the list as spoils of war. They are designated by ḥnn.w m ḳrn.t

“phalli with ḳrn.t”,

a phrase that allows for insertion of a preposition m be-

tween the two words. Them of predication is a closer designation of a severed

phallus.

War spoils listed in the Great War Inscription of Ramesses III are fairly nu-

merous and similar in composition to those recorded on the Athribis stela of

Merenptah. It claims that a total of 6,359 phalli with foreskins were taken from the

Libu. The text also mentions “[Sh]erden, Shekelesh, Aqaywasha, of the foreign

countries of the sea, who had no f [oreskin]” ([Š]rdn.w Škrš.w Jqwš.w n n3 ḫ3sw.t n

p3 ym n.tj bn n=w ḳ[rn.t]) and “Aqaywasha, who had no foreskin, slain, whose

hands were brought, [because they had no foreskin?]” ( [Jq]wš.w n.tj mn m-dj=w

ḳrn.t ẖdb.w jny=t(w) n3j=sn kp.w […]).

126 Gender as a frame of war

Phalli were also cut from Libyan enemies during the Second Libyan War. The

reliefs of Ramesses III in the Medinet Habu temple are insightful. The east wall of

the rst court, which is north of the entrance, depicts the presentation of the spoils

of war. The scene consists of three registers.

In the third register, six Egyptian

soldiers are just to the left and beneath the king. They are oriented toward the

right and are approaching a pile of around 92 severed phallus shafts. To the right of

the pile is an Egyptian ocial leaning forward toward the pile. He holds one

phallus shaft in each of his hands. There is another Egyptian ocial to his right

recording the information on a papyrus roll. The depiction is followed by an

inscription that states “total ḳrn.t 2,175” (dmḏ ḳrn.t 2,175).

These passages contain the term ḳrn.t, which I have referred to as foreskin.

This translation is the most common understanding of this word in texts as-

sociated with the reigns of Merenptah and Ramesses III. The traditional un-

derstanding of the word is based on two pieces of evidence. First, piles of phalli

with foreskin that scribes diligently count are informative. Second, the word

ḳrn.t is a Semitic loan word meaning foreskin or phallus with foreskin.

nd it as urullu in Akkadian, oral in Hebrew, urlā in Syrian, and gurlat in

Arabic.

Additionally, the Athribis stela’s text refers to the Libyan enemies that

Merenptah fought against, saying that “their phalli were brought” ( jnj=tw

n3y=sn ḥnn.w). Although the text is not accompanied by an image of phalli

counting, there is no doubt that the word ḥnn (singular) means phallus.

The

Great War Inscription of Ramesses III from Karnak also includes a reference to

donkeys being loaded with ḥnn.w m ḳrn.t “phalli with/as ḳrn.t (foreskin)”. In

this case, it is clear that phalli (ḥnn.w) were removed from the Libyans and that

ḳrn.t is either part or a form of these phalli. From this text alone, it is arguable

that regardless of one’s understanding of the word ḳrn.t, ḥnn.w (phalli) were cut

from Libyan enemies during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramesses III. In the

representation of the aftermath of the First Libyan war in the lowest register of

the rst scene from the east on the south wall of the second court of Medinet

Habu temple, there is a representation of a pile of cut o hands and phalli. The

phalli are depicted as sign D52 with visible penile glans and scrotum attached

and labeled in the text as ḳrn.t.

On the other hand, Édouard Naville and Friedrich von Bissing have disputed

the translation of ḳrn.t as foreskin or phallus with foreskin.

They interpreted the

depicted piles of “objects”, not as piles of phalli, but as piles of phallus sheaths, or

coverings. Most recently, Alexander Safronov has also questioned the under-

standing of ḳrn.t as foreskin or phallus with foreskin. He attempted to provide

philological, iconographic, culture-historical, and ethnographic arguments to

support his interpretation of ḳrn.t as phallus sheath. Here, I outline the weaknesses

in their alternative translation.

Safronov sees the connection between ḳrn.t and Semitic words that have the

root grl, or “foreskin”, as misinformed. According to his interpretation, the reading

of the grapheme group n3 / , which is found in dierent written forms of

the lexeme ḳrn.t, as a Semitic phoneme l cannot be sustained because this group is

Gender as a frame of war 127

read as n in Late Egyptian. Late Egyptian prefers the graphemes or , or

the groups or for the Semitic phoneme l.

In fact, the word ḳrn.t is

written in Egyptian texts in syllabic orthography, which means that weak con-

sonants such as 3, j, or w are written, too (Table 5.1).

In all of the varying writings of the word grapheme, ḳ(3) is followed by an r,

then a n(3), and next a tj (or ṯ in one case). In all examples except one, the word is

determined with a sign for esh, F51 in Gardiner’s list. When the feminine ending

tj is removed, one is left with ḳ(3)-r-n(3). The sign or the group of signs r, which

can be read as l,

are not in the nal position where one would expect them if the

root reads as grl. This sequence would be possible in the case of metathesis (re-

arranging of sounds or syllables) of radicals (one of the three consonants in a

Semitic root). As argued by James Hoch, two-thirds of the examples of metathesis

in Egyptian contain r, and in 76% of the cases, the metathesis occurs for the second

and third radicals.

According to Hoch, there is a low percentage of cases in

which the sign or group of signs n(3) stands for r.

Therefore, it is possible that

ḳrn.t derives from the Semitic root grl meaning foreskin.

Arguments about the appropriate reading of certain grapheme groups aside,

one must bear in mind that if the word ḳrn.t has Semitic origins, it is used in

these cases to label a Libyan body part. In explanation, there is a predominance

of Semitic words within the military language of the New Kingdom.

We do

not know much about the language of those Late Bronze Age populations that

Egyptologists designate Libyan. But, we should not confuse these Libyans with

those peoples described by Greek and Roman authors or with modern Libyans.

Thus, research on Libyan loanwords in Late Egyptian would be highly welcome

and could illuminate the New Kingdom military practice of severing Libyan

enemies’ phalli.

TABLE 5.1 The word ḳrn.t as attested in inscriptions from the temples of Karnak and

Medinet Habu during the reign of Ramesses III.

Great War Inscription of

Ramesses III, Karnak

Presentation of the spoils of

war, First Libyan War of

Ramesses III,

Medinet Habu

Presentation of the spoils of

war, Second Libyan War

of Ramesses III,

Medinet Habu

128 Gender as a frame of war

Safronov’s iconographic and ethnographic evidence is based on a comparison

between ancient Egyptian representations of severed phallus shafts in piles and the

phallus sheaths worn by Bantu peoples in Cameroon.

Naville and Frans

Jonckheere have also cited ethnographic analogies,

which von Bissing accepted,

as well.

Their analogical reasoning is not without problems. Naville, Jonckheere,

von Bissing, and Safronov did not take into account that severed, piled body parts

bear little resemblance to Libyan phallus sheaths. Indeed, both Naville and von

Bissing explicitly refer to these in their interpretation of ḳrn.t. They also mention

that the Aegeans are known to have carried them in Egyptian representations.

100

Naville, Jonckheere, von Bissing, and Safronov did not consider that the word

ḳrn.t is written with Gardiner’s F51 esh determinative, which is a further in-

dication that ḳrn.t is a body part.

What Egyptologists usually interpret as a Libyan phallus sheath is a long piece

of dress worn on the front of a kilt. It is attached to a belt and narrows at its

bottom where it is bound with an even narrower band. William Cooney argues

that, based on associated captions, there are approximately 80 individuals who

may be Libu, and none of these enemies wear a phallus sheath.

101

That, of

course, does not mean that the enemies labeled by Egyptologists as Libyans did

not wear a type of sheath. What Egyptologists usually interpret as a Libyan

phallus sheath might very well have been a frontally depicted loop of their

dress.

102

There is also no agreement about the presence or absence of foreskins as an

ethnic marker. Both von Bissing and Safronov identify the Aqaywasha with

Ahhiyawa who are discussed in Hittite texts. They also identify the Ahhiyawa as

the Homeric Achaeans, ancestors of classical Greeks

103

who did not practice

circumcision. The problematic line of argumentation, one that leads from

Aqaywasha to the Classic Greeks and their Indo-European background, is be-

yond the scope of this book, however.

104

Suce to say that even if the iden-

tication of the Aqaywasha as Ahhiyawa is correct, this still does not mean that

identication of the Ahhiyawa with the Homeric Achaeans is correct too.

Additionally, such a link implies that ethnic identity was unchanging for over a

millennium. If for the sake of argument, we accept that Aqaywasha has a

connection to mainland Greece and the Mycenaeans, there remains a dearth of

nude mature males represented in Aegean art that allows us to conrm the

presence or absence of circumcision practices. Ultimately, early and recent

scholarship concerned with ḳrn.t that suggests that New Kingdom Egyptians

collected phallus sheaths and not the severed, foreskinned phalli of enemies are

unconvincing.

As an alternative interpretation, iconographic evidence supports the idea that

ḳrn.t designated a phallus with foreskin, or more precisely the shaft of an un-

circumcised phallus in New Kingdom Egypt. Severed phallus shafts comprising

piles of war spoils take the same form as the shafts still attached to the scrotum of

Libyan enemies on the battle reliefs of Medinet Habu. If we, therefore, compare

the de facto depicted phalli of the Libyans, when these are still attached to bodies in

Gender as a frame of war 129

ancient Egyptian representations, with the cut o body parts (phallus shafts) in

piles, we have a striking match. Granted, the paint on reliefs from the Medinet

Habu temple is poorly preserved, making some conclusions dicult to draw. For

instance, we do not know if artists originally painted over the phalli of Libyan

enemies, perhaps with the representational image of a phallus sheath. Earlier re-

presentation of Libyan enemies that date to the reign of Akhenaten hold clues to

these conundrums.

5.5 Concluding remarks

Laura Sjoberg argues that if feminized images of an enemy are rare and rely on

subordinate masculinities, rather than an association with feminine characteristics,

then one should expect the state, which is making these images, to use the tactics

of restraint. Limited feminizing rhetoric should be understood as a proxy for re-

spect and perceived membership in a peer class. Yet, Sjoberg argues, if feminized

images are constant and vicious in a period leading up to war, then one is to expect

bolder tactical choices that reect a perception of the enemy as non-

threatening.

105

In this chapter, I have demonstrated that the texts and images of

feminized enemies in ancient Egypt come both after one conict ends and before a

new one begins. For this reason, it is not clear if the degree of feminization in

ancient Egypt depended on the perceived danger posed by certain enemies. In

fact, other studies have shown that feminization of the enemy is sometimes used

more for reassuring the local noncombatant population than for inspiring an

army’s soldiers. For example, feminization and infantilization of male slaves, re-

garded as “domestic enemies”, long functioned to assuage the fears of whites in the

American South.

106

In ancient Egypt, there seems to have been a long tradition of feminization

rhetoric with early examples dating to the Middle Kingdom. Similar expressions

are found in Nubian texts, too.

107

Pharaoh is the representative of ideal mascu-

linity and his enemies of failed masculinity associated to femininity. With regard to

iconography, we have seen that feminization could have been achieved by

transferring aspects of the mourning gesture to representations of foreign military

campaigns already in the Old Kingdom (tomb of Inti, Desheshah) and later in the

reliefs of Beit el-Wali and Derr temples of Ramesses II.

108

Furthermore, accid

state of the penises of enemies also indicates their weakness and failed masculinity.

We have seen that it was depicted in the First Intermediate Period tomb of Intef

and later on the Amarna period Papyrus British Museum EA74100 and on the

reliefs of Medinet Habu temple of Ramesses III.

109

Furthermore, enemies were

also mutilated through cutting o the shafts of their penises in the time of Narmer

and later in the times of Merenptah and Ramesses III.

110,111

This was emasculation

through a direct intervention on their dead bodies.

The evidence presented here matches that from other Near Eastern cultures in

which notions about women’s weakness and disinclination to ght are used to

inform metaphoric representations of feminization. In Ancient Egypt, such a

130 Gender as a frame of war

notion aligns with gender norms that idealize women as passive and subordinate

(Chapter 2).

Notes

1 Michelle Moyd, “Gender and Violence,” in Gender & the Great War, edited by Susan

R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 189.

2 Strathern, Before and After Gender, 21.

3 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 22.

4 Claudia D. Bergmann, “We Have Seen the Enemy, and He Is Only a She. The

Portrayal of Warriors as Women,” in Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and

Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle and Frank Ritchel Ames

(Atlanta: Atlanta Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 135.

5 Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian

Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs 62 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,

2004), 1–3.

6 Mattias Karlsson, Relations of Power in Early Neo-Assyrian State Ideology. Studies in

Ancient Near Eastern Record 10 (Boston and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 236.

7 For a detailed study, see Claudia D. Bergmann, Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis:

Evidence from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and 1QH XI, 1–18. Beihefte zur

Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 382 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008).

8 Kennet James Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1978), 105.

9 Thomas Harrison, “Introduction to Part I,” in Greeks and Barbarians, edited by Thomas

Harrison (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 22.

10 Wb 3, 79.1-21.

11 Wb 3, 80.7.

12 http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnDetails?u=guest&f=0&l=0&wn=104630&db=0

13 Detlef Franke, “Schlagworte: Übder den Umgang mit Gegnern in Memorialtexten

des Mittleren Reiches,” in Feinde und Aufrührer. Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in ägyptischen

Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches. Abhandlungen der Sachsischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philologisch-Historische Klasse 78,5, edited by Heinz

Felber (Stuttgart/Leipzig: Verlag der Sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu

Leipzig, 2005), 97.

14 Kurth Sethe, Erläuterungen zu den ägyptischen Lesestücken (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche

Buchhandlung, 1927), 137–138.

15 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, Ägypten und Nubien. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Altägyptischer

Aussenpolitik (Lund: Häkan Ohlssons Boktryckeri, 1941), 77.

16 Robert D. Delia, A Study of the Reign of Senwosret III (Ann Arbor: Univ. Microlms

International, 1980), 53.

17 Claude Obsomer, Les Campagnes de Sésostris dans Hérodote (Bruxelles: Connaissance de

l’Egypte ancienne, 1989), 66–69.

18 Christopher Eyre, “The Semna Stelae: Quotation, Genre and Functions of

Literature,” in Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim. Volume I, edited by

Sarah Israelit-Groll (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1990), 135.

19 Mark Depauw, “Notes on Transgressing Gender Boundaries,” 50.

20 Parkinson, “Boasting about Hardness,” 117.

21 Parkinson, “Homosexual Desire,” 66–67.

22 Parkinson, “Homosexual Desire,” 67.

23 This is the translation of Kenneth A. Kitchen, KRITA II, 10.

24 KRI II, 70.1-10.

25 Wolfgang Helck, “Eine Stelle des Vizekönigs Wsr-St.t,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies

XIV.1 (1955): Pl. II, lines 6–8.

Gender as a frame of war 131

26 Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1992), 230.

27 O’Connor, “Egypt’s View of ‘Others’,” 156.

28 Helck, “Eine Stelle des Vizekönigs Wsr-St.t”, 27; John Coleman Darnell, “The Stela of

the Viceroy Usersatet (Boston MFA 25.632), his Shrine at Qasr Ibrim, and the Festival of

Nubian Tribute under Amenhotep II,” Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 7 (2014): 252.

29 KRI IV, 21. 13.

30 Wb 3, 23.25–24.8; Rune Nyord, Breathing Flesh: Conceptions of the Body in the Ancient

Egyptian Con Texts (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009), 172.

31 Wb 3, 295–296.7.

32 Egyptologists have stressed this from very early on; William A. Ward, “Non-Royal

Women and their Occupations in the Middle Kingdom,” in Women’s Earliest Records.

From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia. Brown Judaic Studies 166, edited by Barbara S.

Lesko (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 40.

33 Several studies examine the harem as an institution in ancient Egyptian. The most

recent one is a doctoral dissertation by Marine Yoyotte-Husson who investigates

deeply the institution and the prosopography of those related to it, Le “Harem” Royal

dans l’Égypte Ancienne: Enquête Philologique, Archéologique et Prosopographique 2012. See

also Elfriede Reiser-Haslauer, Der Königliche Harim im alten Ägypten und Seine

Verwaltung (Wien: Verlag Notring, 1972).

34 Wb 3, 297.15-298.1. Del Nord and William Ward have shown that at least from the

Old to the Middle Kingdom the ḫnr.wt were not concubines but rather male and

female singers and dancers, Del Nord, “The Term xnr: Harem or Musical

Performers?” in Studies in Ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Sudan. Essay in Honor of

Dows Dunham on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday, June 1, 1980, edited by William

Kelly Simpson and Whitney M. Davis (Boston: Department of Egyptian and Ancient

Near Eastern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, 1981), 145; William A. Ward, “Reections

on Some Egyptian Terms Presumed to Mean Harem, Harem-Woman, Concubine,”

Berytus, Archaeological Studies 31 (1983): 74.

35 KRI IV, 19. 7–8.

36 Orriols-Llonch, “Mujer Ideal, Mujer Infractora. La transgresión feminina en el antigue

Egipto,” 24.

37 H. Patricia Hynes, “On the Battleeld of Women’s Bodies: An Overview of the

Harm of War to Women,” Women’s Studies International Forum 27. 5-6 (2004), 440.

38 KRI V, 8. 7.

39 KRI V, 63. 5–6.

40 KRI V, 61. 11–12.

41 Wb 3, 205.2–6.

42 O’Connor, “The Eastern High Gate. Sexualized Architecture at Medinet Habu?”.

43 Nicolas-Christophe Grimal, La Stèle Triomphale de Pi(cankh)y au Musée du Caire (Le

Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1981), 177; FHN I, 111.

44 Grimal, La Stèle Triomphale, 176.

45 Hans Goedicke, Pi(ankhy) in Egypt. A Study of the Pi(ankhy) Stela (Baltimore: Halgo,

Inc., 1998), 172.

46 Ritner, The Libyan Anarchy, 492.

47 Amr el Hawary, Wortschöpfung, Die Memphitische Theologie und die Siegesstele des Pije-

zwei Zeugen kultureller Repäsentation in der 25. Dynastie. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 243

(Fribourg and Göttingen: Academic Press Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 243.

48 David O’Connor and Stephen Quirke, “Introduction: Mapping the Unknown in

Ancient Egypt,” in Mysterious Lands. Encounters with Ancient Egypt, edited by David

O’Connor and Stephen Quirke (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 18.

49 el Hawary, Wortschöpfung, 281.

50 Ritner, The Libyan Anarchy, 477, 490.

51 Dieleman, “Fear of Women?” 14.

132 Gender as a frame of war

52 FHN I, 84.

53 Mattias Karlsson. “Gender and Kushite State Ideology: The Failed Masculinity of

Nimlot, Ruler of Hermopolis” Der Antike Sudan. Mitteilungen der Sudanarchäologischen

Gessellschaft zu Berlin 31 (2020): 99–108.

54 FHN II, 450; Cara Lia Sargent, The Napatan Royal Inscriptions; Egyptian in Nubia. A

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in

Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Yale, 2004), 328.

55 Jochem Kahl, “Frauen aus Nilschlamm-ein Beitrag zur Anthropologie der Stadt,” in

Cities and Urbanism in Ancient Egypt. Papers from a Workshop in November 2006 at the

Austrian Academy of Sciences, Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des

Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes XXXV. Denkschriften der

Gesamtakademie XXIV, edited by Manfred Bietak, Ernst Czerny, and Irene Forstner-

Müller (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschafen, 2010),

323–328.

56 Hitchcock, “Gender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary,” 270.

57 For representations of the siege of enemy towns before the New Kingdom, see Regine

Schulz, “Der Sturm auf die Festung. Gedanken zu einigen Aspekten des Kampfbildes im

Alten Ägypten vor dem Neuen Reich,” In Krieg und Sieg. Narrative Wanddarstellungen

von Altägypten bis ins Mittelalter. Internationales Kolloquim 29.-30. Juli 1997 im Schloß

Haindorf, Langenlois. Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen

Archäologischen Institutes XX, edited by Manfred Bietak and Mario Schwarz (Wien:

Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002), 19–41.

58 Heinz, Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches.

59 Steve Vinson, “Behind Closed Doors: Architectural and Spatial Images and Metaphors

in Ancient Egyptian Erotic Poetic and Narrative Literature,” in Sex and the Golden

Goddess II. World of Love Song, edited by Hana Návrátilova and Renata Landgráfová

(Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague 2015), 140.

60 Walter Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte. Teil II (Leipzig: J.C.

Hinrichs, 1935), Pls. 165, 166.

61 Wreszinski, Atlas zur Altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte. Teil II, Pl. 168a.

62 Emily Millward, “Visual and Written Evidence for Mourning in New Kingdom

Egypt,” in Current Research in Egyptology 2011. Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual

Symposium Durham University 2011, edited by Heba Abd El Gawad et al. (Oxford and

Oakville: Oxbow Books), 141–146, 2012; Christina Riggs, “Mourning Women and

Decorum in Ancient Egyptian Art,” in Decorum and Experience: Essays in Ancient

Culture for John Baines, edited by Elizabeth Frood and Angela McDonald (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2013), 156–162.

63 Shih-Wei Hsu, Bilder für den Pharao. Untersuchungen zu den Bildlichen Ausdrücken des

Ägyptischen in den Königsinschriften und Anderen Textgattungen. Probleme der

Ägyptologie 36 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 39.

64 Richard Parkinson and Louise Schoeld, “Akhenaten’s Army,” Egyptian Archaeology 3

(1993): 35.

65 For the meanings of nudity in ancient Egypt and the Near East, including icono-

graphic representations of enemies, see Julia Asher-Greve and Deborah Sweeney, “On

Nakedness, Nudity, and Gender in Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art,” in Images of

Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art. Orbis Biblicus et

Orientalis 220, edited by Silvia Schroer (Fribourg and Göttingen: University Press and

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 111–162.

66 The Story of Sinuhe and The Teaching of Ptahhotep relate how sexual impotence was

related to old age; Parkinson, “Boasting about Hardness,” 129; Ogden Goelet.

“Nudity in Ancient Egypt,” Notes in the History of Art 12.2 (1993): 20–31.

67 David O’Connor and Stephen Quirke, “Introduction: Mapping the Unknown in

Ancient Egypt,” 17.

Gender as a frame of war 133

68 Harold H. Nelson, Medinet Habu-Volume I. Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1930), Pl. 18.

69 King Narmer is placed at the end of Dynasty 0 or at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty

(ca. 3000 BC); Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt (London and New York:

Routledge, 1999), 56–57; the old drawing published by James Edward Quibell is not

accurate and many of the details, such as the phallus depicted still attached to one of

the defeated enemy gures on the obverse of the palette, are missing. James Edward

Quibell, “Slate Palette from Hieraconpolis,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und

Altertumskunde 36 (1898): Tf. XII. The reader is advised to consult new drawings of

the palette that show previously missed through important details. William Vivian

Davies and Renée Friedman, “The Narmer Palette: An Overlooked Detail,” in

Egyptian Museum Collections Around the World. Studies for the Centennial of the Egyptian

Museum, Cairo. Volume One, edited by Mamdouh Eldamaty and Mai Trad (Cairo: The

Supreme Council of Antiquities, 2002), 245–246; Stan Hendrickx, Frank Förster, and

Merel Eyckerman, “The Narmer Palette-A New Recording,” in Egypt at Its Origins 4.

Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early

Dynastic Egypt. New York, 26th–30th July 2011. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 252,

edited by Béatrix Midant-Reynes, Ellen M. Ryan, and Yann Tristant (Leuven-Paris-

Bristol: Peeters, 2016), 535, 542–543, Figs. 4a and 4b.

70 Davies and Friedman, “The Narmer Palette: An Overlooked Detail,” 245–246.

71 Wb 2, 414. 2.

72 This convention should not be taken as an argument for ethnic relationship or cultural

continuation between the Late Bronze population that Egyptologists call Libyans and

ancient Libues or modern Libyans; William A. Cooney, “Egypt’s Encounter with the

West,” in Current Research in Egyptology 2009. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual

Symposium University of Liverpool 2009, edited by J. Corbelli, D. Boatright, and C.

Malleson (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011), 43.

73 KRI IV, 22.7.

74 KRI V, 23.12–23.13.

75 Nelson, Medinet Habu I, Pl. 23.

76 KRI V, 18.8–18.15.

77 Nelson, Medinet Habu I, Pl. 22.

78 KRI V, 14.16–15.1.

79 Kitchen gives the number of 22,535, KRITA V, 14; other authors give the number of

12,535 as I do here, BARE IV, 52; William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson, Historical

records of Ramses III, the Texts in Medinet Habu. Volumes I and II. Studies in Ancient

Oriental Civilization 12 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1936), 14.

80 Kitchen gives the number of 22,860, KRITA V, 14; A.V. Safronov gives the same

number 12,535, as for the previously described register; Александр В. Сафронов,

“Несуществующий Обычай Обрезания у Греков-Ахеяйцев (Значение Египетской

Лексемы Ḳrnt),” Вестник Московского Государственного Областного

Университета (2010) 1, 109; other authors give the number of 12,860 as I do here,

BARE IV, 52; Edgerton and J. A. Wilson, Historical records of Ramses III, 14.

81 Inside (west) of the eastern wall connecting the main Karnak temple with Pylon VII,

the northernmost of the southern pylons, BARE III, 572.

82 KRI IV, 7.12–7.13.

83 KRI IV, 8.4–5.

84 KRI IV, 8.4–8.16.

85 Harold H. Nelson, Medinet Habu-Volume II. Later Historical Records of Ramses III

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1932), Pl. 75.

86 KRI V, 53.14.

87 Wb 5, 60.15–61.4; Lesko, A Dictionary of Late Egyptian IV, 20; James E. Hoch, Semitic

Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1994), 302; Thomas Schneider, “Fremdwörter in der

134 Gender as a frame of war

ägyptischen Militärsprache des Neuen Reiches und ein Bravourstück des Elitesoldaten

(Papyrus Anastasi I 23, 2–7),” Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 35

(2008): 197.

88 Sina Tezel, “The Comparative Method as Applied to the Semitic Cognate Sets with

Phonological Correspondences,” in From Tur Abdin to Hadramawt Semitic Studies.

Festschrift in Honour of Bo Isaksson on the occasion of his retirement, edited by Tal

Davidovich, Ablahad Lahdo, and Torkel Lindquist (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,

2014): 201.

89 Wb 3, 115.1-2.

90 One should be careful not to misunderstand the comparison between the sign D52

from Gardiner’s list and the phalli depicted with scrotum and penile glans in this

context. The sign D52 from Gardiner’s list is a convention used for the transcription of

ancient Egyptian texts whereas the details of depiction of the sign may vary from

context to context. There is a certain parallelism to this “realism” in writing the sign

for hand in texts mentioning cut o hands. The sign D46 for hand, as included in

Gardiner’s sign list, is usually written like this in contexts where the texts refer to

severed hands. There are some interesting exceptions from the autobiography of

Ahmose son of Ebana, which dates to the early 18th Dynasty. The sign is depicted as

realistic. More specically, the ngers are outstretched. To this example, one can add

the writing of the word hands (kp.w in Late Egyptian) to the list war spoils from the

First Libyan War. Here the sign is also depicted more realistically. When compared to

the cut o hands in pile counted by scribes, to which the inscription indeed refers, one

can observe a striking resemblance, Nelson, Medinet Habu I, Pl. 23. The hands in pile

are depicted in the same way as the sign used in writing the word hands to which they

refer iconographically. In the case of the use of D52 in the pile of cut o hands and

phalli, one can argue that the opposite was done. Instead of using a realistic depiction,

like in the case of a cut o hand in writing the word hands in the text referring to the

cut o hands, the generic sign for a phallus was used to depict these severed parts in

piles.

91 Friedrich von Bissing, “Die Angeblich Beschnittenen Aqaiuascha,” Zeitschrift für

ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 72 (1936): 75–76.

92 Сафронов, “Несуществующий Обычай Обрезания у Греков-Ахеяйцев,” 108; cf.

Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian. A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press,1995), 13; Thomas Schneider found l only in nal position of a

personal name; Thomas Schneider, Asiatische Personennamen in Ägyptischen Quellen des

Neuen Reiches (Freiburg and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Freiburg und Vandenhoeck

& Ruprecht, 1992), 378–379.

93 Its function as a nal syllable in personal names is clear; see Schneider, Asiatische

Personennamen, 381–382.

94 Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 420.

95 Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 432.

96 Schneider, “Fremdwörter in der ägyptischen Militärsprache.”

97 Сафронов, “Несуществующий Обычай Обрезания у Греков-Ахеяйцев,” 113.

98 Édouard Naville, “Le Mot (hiero.),” Sphinx: Revue Critique XIII (1910): 227–237;

Frans Jonckheere, La Médecine Égyptienne No 1. Une Maladie Égyptienne. L’Hématurie

Parasitaire (Bruxelles: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1944), 60–61.

99 von Bissing, “Die Angeblich Beschnittenen Aqaiuascha,” 75.

100 von Bissing, “Die Angeblich Beschnittenen Aqaiuascha,” 75.

101 Cooney, “Egypt’s Encounter with the West,” 47.

102 Shelley Wachsmann, Aegeans in Theban Tombs. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 20

(Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters. 1987), 43.

103 von Bissing, “Die Angeblich Beschnittenen Aqaiuascha,” 74‒76; Сафронов,

“Несуществующий Обычай Обрезания у Греков-Ахеяйцев,” 107–108.

Gender as a frame of war 135

104 For problems with this identication, see Donald B. Redford, The Medinet Habu

Records of the Foreign Wars of Ramesses III (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 115‒116.

105 Laura Sjoberg, Gendering Global Conict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War (New York:

Columbia University Press, 2013), 242–243.

106 David Brion Davis, “Introduction,” in Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern

Age, edited by Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan (London and New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 1–5.

107 Matić, “Gender as a Frame of War in Ancient Nubia”.

108 Kuhrt, “Women and War,” 5.

109 KRI IV, 8.4–16.

110 KRI IV, 8.4–16.

111 KRI V, 18.8–18.15.

136 Gender as a frame of war

CONCLUSION

Decades after French philosopher Luce Irigaray stated that sexual dierence is one

of the main questions of our time, her assertion remains valid.

Yet, as I argued in

Chapter 1, power relations and violence are not the central focus of gender studies

within Egyptology. In this book, I have sought to remedy this oversight by

examining gendered violence in ancient Egypt. My argument throughout has

been that we cannot understand one without accounting for the other; gender and

violence are distinct concepts though interrelated.

On a theoretical level, one signicant challenge as it pertains to asymmetrical

gender relations is the inherent male bias in both the ancient sources and scholarly

literature. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her seminal work Can the Subaltern Speak?

analyzed historical and ideological factors that eradicate marginalized peoples’ ability

to be heard.

Although her work focuses on modern postcolonial states, specically

India, the question she asks and the pessimistic answer she gives is relevant to an

ancient Egyptian case study. As I discussed in Chapter 2, men primarily created texts

and monuments in ancient Egypt, and in most cases, they privileged a male per-

spective. Reports of violence where women are concerned, whether as perpetrators

or victims, were also, more often than not, framed by men. Thus, in ancient Egypt,

the discourse about violence centers on men and expressions of masculinity,

a point

I highlighted in Chapter 5. It is even taken over and “modied for” or “modied

by” queens or female rulers (Chapter 4). These instances do not necessarily indicate

female agency. Rather, they could very well be an armation of the existing gender

structure. As Spivak reminds us, the voice may be a woman’s but “the song” is still

written by men.

If we assume that they had input in the development of this

imagery, powerful women utilized the masculine vocabulary of violence. The re-

presentations depict them in manners usually reserved for ancient Egyptian men.

The ancient Egyptian evidence signals societal complexity. Although the discourse

of violence has been centered on masculinity, it is in certain contexts also utilized by

or for women. The reason for centering this discourse on masculinity is because

violence ultimately revolved around power. Therefore, it is arguable that ancient

Egyptian women are neither excluded nor entirely silenced. Rather, because of

hegemonic gender norms, they did not have the necessary means or vocabulary to

express their concerns. We cannot hear the voices of these women because they do

not represent themselves and their experiences. This is the working of gender as a

form of symbolic and structural violence, as I discussed in Chapter 1. One way out of

this is, as I attempted in this book, to consider those who were surely there but are

not thematized, the vulnerable and the victims. Another way is to turn to analyses of

trauma on actual human bodies, to compare life conditions and life expectances of

dierent people paying attention to intersectionality of oppression. There is much

work to be done here.

Gendered forms of violence in ancient Egypt have cross-cultural parallels:

household oppression of women in patriarchal cultures; adultery as a problem for

kinship, lineage, and property; rape as an ultimate demonstration of masculine

domination; feminization of male sexual passivity in penetrative sex; and a frame of

war that feminizes enemies. There are, of course, other cultural forms of gender

oppression that I have not dealt with here but are deserving of deeper study. To not

do so, according to Judith Butler, runs the risk of falling into the trap of episte-

mological imperialism. In searching for examples of “phallogocentrism” in other

cultures, we actually colonize dierence.

In the words of Joan W. Scott, “History

becomes, in a sense, epiphenomenal, providing endless variations on the unchanging

theme of a xed gender inequality”.

As much as I agree with this critique and as

much as I am interested in exploring other forms of gender violence and oppression

in ancient Egypt, and encourage others to do so, the ones I discussed in this book

may be construed as “patriarchy,” which is often understood as a prime example of

xed gender roles.

However, in each of the chapters, I have tried to stress how “the

same” phenomena in other cultures contrast with their occurrence in ancient Egypt.

In Chapter 2, I showed how available textual and iconographic evidence that

represents gendered violence in ancient Egypt – violence conducted by men

against women, by women against men, and women against women – shows an

interesting pattern. Men violating women are avoided, except in military spheres,

as discussed in Chapter 4. Indeed, until the Ptolemaic and Roman period, women

are largely absent as actors of violence, whether against men or other women.

Exceptions are found in royal contexts. The cases of queens Nefertiti and Tiye

smiting foreign women are illustrative, as discussed in Chapter 4. Women’s pas-

sivity was propagated as a virtue, as were their roles as loyal wives. Gendered

violence in the human sphere also found parallels in the divine sphere. Goddesses

are usually not involved in violent encounters with other goddesses. They rarely

perform violent acts. Instead, they are often the victims of violence, mostly of a

sexual variety, as I discussed in Chapter 3. The only case of their violence is found

when the king in war associates himself with their powers.

Chapter 3 detailed the evidence for sexual violence. As I demonstrated, reports

on sexual violence in the human world privileged men. In the instances of rape

138 Conclusion

and adultery, there was a general concern for the eects these acts could have on

men’s honor, lineage, and property with little regard for women’s victimization.

In both human and divine spheres, when rape was concerned, women were re-

garded as property. For this reason, the mytheme of rape in the divine world is not

seen as problematic, as long as sexual relations occur within the gender-kinship-

household hierarchy. Husband-wife and father-daughter rapes were not punished

because the goddess is the property of the perpetrator. They were not considered

as rape. In contrast, son-mother rape was censured if the father or husband was still

alive since it disturbed the family order and existing hierarchy. Although, one

notable exception was Horus’s rape Isis, who was a widow. In fact, in case of son-

mother rape, the victim is held equally responsible (e.g., Tefnut). The rapist son is

viewed like a stranger who has sex with a married woman. In the human world,

this act was categorized as adultery and condemned by society, as juridical texts

make clear. Thus, gendered violence positions goddesses and women as sub-

ordinate to their fathers and husbands. One could stretch the argument and suggest

that only cases of adultery and rape were reported where the woman in question

was married or otherwise bound to a male member of the society. Striking parallels

for this occurrence have been found in ancient Greek society, as I argued in

Chapter 3. The evidence for sexual violence in the divine and human worlds

allows us to go beyond discussions about subjective violence (per Slavoj Žižek’s

explanation in my introductory chapter) to consider gender as a form of symbolic

and structural violence. Sexual violence allows us to see the underlying power

imbalance, gender as structural violence, which allows sexual violence to be

regulated by privileging men and not considering the perspectives of women as

victims.

In Chapter 4, I have dealt mostly with noncombatants – women, children, and

men without the accoutrements of war. As I demonstrated, the number of at-

testations of violence against noncombatants is very low throughout ancient

Egyptian history. While present in the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate

Period, violence against women and children during warfare was not part of

Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom decorum. The dearth of such representa-

tions directed against foreign women mirrors the textual evidence for gendered

violence in ancient Egypt; that is, violence against local women was avoided and

inadvisable. The few examples of foreign women’s violations may be read as a sign

of their otherness, or of foreign men’s weakness. However, we have to bear in

mind that this is a perspective based on the Egyptian sources. We do not have rst

hand experiences of victims of war in the lands which suered from Egyptian

military campaigns or occupations. Modern warfare reminds us that impacts of

wars do not start with marching of the army into the war and they do not seize

after the declaration of victory for some and defeat for others. War machines have

to be maintained by investment and training, defeat has serious consequences for

the people who lost a war. In the aftermaths of war existing inequalities can

emerge as even more threatening for those who already suered before the war.

Noncombatants, including women, children, elderly, and disabled people suer

Conclusion 139

the most. If class dierences are present too, various degrees of poverty and in-

security have to be taken into account, but also dierent ways of coping with

them, like dependence or prostitution.

In Chapter 5, I tackled the feminization of enemies during wartime, demon-

strating that such gendered expressions aim to subordinate. These masculine

centered metaphors privilege men in ancient Egyptian society, whether in re-

lationship to subordinate, foreign enemies, or women regardless of their ethnic

background. Therefore, gender as a frame of war is never simply a symbolical or

metaphorical system reserved for conict with foreigners. It is embedded in a

society’s own gender system and structured accordingly.

What this book demonstrated in Chapters 4 and 5 is that women and femi-

ninity are central to war and violence. War and the military were almost entirely

masculine spheres of social life, except when they of course have, as they often did

and do, direct or indirect eect on noncombatants (women, children, elderly men,

disabled men, and others). The centrality of women and femininity for ancient

Egyptian frames of war is their use as metaphors for passivity, weakness, and

subordination. These associations are not random, as we have seen in Chapters 2

and 3. They are rooted in an understanding of idealized gender norms in ancient

Egypt. Following Cecilia L. Ridgeway’s and Shelley J. Correll’s insight that

gender relations are a part of daily experience, “unlike many other social dier-

ences, gender goes home with you”, they remark,

we may also recognize that

when soldiers go to war, Egypt is a home from which they leave and to which

they return. Traveling with an Egyptian preconceived notion of gender hierarchy,

which positions them as dominant, leads Egyptian soldiers to gender enemies as

subordinate and feminine, to realize “the natural state of things” at home in Egypt.

Those who were lucky enough to come back strengthened these notions of su-

premacy. Ridgeway and Correll’s theory is applicable here. As gender beliefs shape

hierarchical, interpersonal relations, people’s new social practices in eect can

conserve gender hierarchy.

Therefore, I suggest a series of actor–victim-related

binary oppositions that underpin violent acts in ancient Egypt.

Actor Victim

Active Passive

Behind of passive In front of active

Penetrating Penetrated

Strong Weak

Egyptian men

Egyptian women (queens)

Egyptian women and foreigners (men and women)

Foreign women

We are reminded here of the claim of Catherine A. MacKinnon that “if violation

of the powerless is part of what is sexy about sex, as well as central in the meaning

of male and female, the place of sexuality in gender and the place of gender in

sexuality need to be looked at together.”

However, as the series of binary

140 Conclusion

oppositions above demonstrates, being passive and powerless as victim of violence

or being passive in sexual intercourse is not something restricted to women but

can be enforced on women and men. Also, being active and powerfull in violence

is not restricted to men, as Egyptian queens can be this too, however only when

their victims are foreign women. We have to consider the structural reasons for

this. Why are foreign, passive and powerless men as victims not the opposite to

Egyptian active women as actors of violence? It seems that passivity of women

during the sexual intercourse was considered to be the norm or the expectation of

ancient Egyptian men.

Of course, this Foucauldian active-passive dichotomy has

been criticized by some as overly simplistic.

In Graeco-Roman studies, for in-

stance, scholars have contested this framing.

It also presents an occidental model

of sexuality that is not without shortcomings. Hence, a few words of reection are

necessary. By not critically explaining the use of such a dichotomy, homo-

normative ideas may circulate (the active-passive vocabulary is incidentally also a

feature of contemporary gay vocabulary). Rather, my intention is neither to

propose a formula for the ancient Egyptian sex/gender system nor provide a total

explanation. This is simply not possible when based solely on the evidence I have

presented in this book. In fact, such a task implies studying all available related

sources. Even then one has to ask a critical question: When we talk about an

ancient Egyptian sex/gender system, what periods are we spotlighting? The

Predynastic, Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, Middle

Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, New Kingdom, Third Intermediate

Period, Late Period, Ptolemaic Period, or Roman Period and later? And, of

course, this question presumes that these temporal periods have epistemological

value. As Monique Wittig reminds us, even the terms such as men and women

make sense only in a heterosexual discourse.

Men and women are results of

relationships.

With this she argues that what heteronormative society expects

from men and women is not what some men and women are and are for one

another in some dierent, for example queer, relationships. Dierent relationships

make dierent men and women. One question worth exploring further is the

origin of ancient Egyptian sex/gender system we see fully developed in Early

Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom.

Furthermore, are we talking about the sex/gender system of the centers, such as

capitals and large cities, or those of small towns and villages? What about the

impact of diasporic conditions in the Levant and Nubia? Is the sex/gender system

we talk about pertinent to elites and/or commoners? Will we ever know how

people who did not leave behind texts and images about their bodily experience

understood their gender or sexuality? All of these questions should underscore that

the dichotomy I present here emphasizes a concept of sex/gender system of direct,

and limited, salience to elite men. It appears to have a long history, but this is

dicult to argue conclusively given the available number of sources. While I am

not proposing a monolithic binary system, I do see the hegemonic idea of sex/

gender, at least where violence was concerned, as framed by binary opposition.

Conclusion 141

Ultimately, one is either perpetrator or victim of violence, winner or loser, active

or passive.

But, do we stop there, or do we add a male-female binary opposition to the list,

as I did in the formula mentioned previously? It seems that an active role was not

reserved for men and could be appropriated by powerful high-status women, such as

queens, female rulers, and goddesses. This appropriation should not be interpreted as

gender bending. As we have seen in Chapter 4, when these women act violently,

their actions are directed at other women (with exception of goddesses). What

allows them to be dominant in this interaction and what diminishes the status of

their victims is their foreignness. Where goddesses are concerned, we have seen that

the pharaohs are often compared to them, or their actions are compared to the war-

like features of these goddesses. This association again does not indicate gender

bending. Rather, it should be understood contextually. Goddesses’ violence is not

gendered as masculine. We have seen that, at least where mythology is concerned,

goddesses’ violent acts, like those performed by Sekhmet, may lead to total anni-

hilation. The goddess has to be appeased with alcoholic beverages and during fes-

tivals additionally with music, dance, and sex.

This is similar to the idea of female

violence (revenge) among the Vikings, which, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, tended

to be framed as emotional rather than rational, strategic, and measured.

Perhaps,

this is why the pharaohs are associated with dangerous goddesses such as Sekhmet,

Bastet, and Mut in texts with war themes. Like Sekhmet who is supposed to defeat

the rebels against Re (humanity), the pharaohs are supposed to defeat and totally

annihilate their rebellious enemies.

We have also seen the feminization of the enemy to the extent that mutilation

violently transforms a man’s body into a non-male though not fully female. In the

second chapter, we have seen that violent action, a normatively masculine trait,

can also be appropriated by goddesses. Furthermore, the pharaohs can then as-

sociate themselves with these goddesses no matter their gender. In the third

chapter, we have seen that sexual acts of penetration were considered to be active

and masculine, whereas penetrated individuals were passive and feminine. In the

fourth chapter, cases of Egyptian queens were presented in which they also per-

formed violent actions, a normatively masculine trait. Yet, they maintained their

position within the gender system by targeting female enemies and not disrupting

the image of their husbands. All of this is in line with Butler’s idea that the

constructive status of gender as radically independent of sex means that gender

becomes a free-oating artice so that masculinity can signify a male or female

body while femininity can be associated with a female or male body.

This leads

us to a Foucauldian reading of gender as a frame of war because bodies (of ene-

mies) gain meaning within discourse only in the context of power relations.

Finally, a study of violence with a gendered lens in place should not be un-

derstood as distinct from a study of gender through the perspective of violence.

My attempt in this book was not to “add women or gender to violence and stir”

but to stress their complex intersections with clear and source-based examples.

I hope that the reader will now view one particular scene of the docu-drama

142 Conclusion

“Nefertiti Revealed” with dierent eyes. It is also my intent that the discussions in

this book will make us rethink not only how and why ancient Egyptians from

dierent gendered background enacted violence but also be more aware of how

our own gendered backgrounds inform contemporary representations of violence.

Notes

1 Luce Irigaray, Éthique de la Diérence Sexuelle (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1984).

2 Jensen and Matić, “Introduction,” 1.

3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the

Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence (Urbana and Chicago:

University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.

4 Contra Anita Taylor and M. J. Hardman, “War, Language and Gender, What New

Can be Said? Framing the Issues,” Women and Language 27.2 (2004): 5. These authors

argue that violence and masculinity should be disassociated from one another. How do

we then explain those cases in which they are clearly entangled?

5 As I have already argued in the introduction, this is also the position of Monique Wittig

in her analysis of the oppression of heterosexual discourse, Monique Wittig, “The

Straight Mind,” 106.

6 Butler, Gender Trouble, 18.

7 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1059.

8 For a comprehensive discussion on the problems with the concept of patriarchy in

anthropology and sociology, see Patricia Uberoi, “Problems with Patriarchy:

Conceptual Issues in Anthropology and Feminism,” Sociological Bulletin 44.2 (1995):

195–221.

9 Hynes, “On the Battleeld of Women’s Bodies: An Overview of the Harm of War to

Women,” 431–445.

10 Ridgeway and Correll, “Unpacking the Gender System,” 512.

11 Ridgeway and Correll, “Unpacking the Gender System,” 523.

12 MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodied, 6.

13 Most of the depictions of sexual intercourses put women in passive positions. Of course,

there are some exceptions such as the Papyrus Turin 55001 where women are even in

some scenes depicted on top of men or the grato from Wadi Hamamat where a

woman looks back at the man and places his penis into her vagina, Orriols-Llonch,

“Women’s Role in Sexual Intercourse in Ancient Egypt,” 200. See also Lise Manniche,

Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1987);

Myśliwiec, Eros on the Nile.

14 Dina Al-Kassim, “Epilogue: Sexual Epistemologies, East in West,” in Islamicate

Sexualities. Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire. Harvard Middle Eastern

Monographs XXXIX, edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 2008), 302.

15 Ruth Mazo Karras, “Active/Passive, Acts/Passions: Greek and Roman Sexualities,”

The American Historical Review 105.4 (2000): 1250–1265.

16 Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” 110. This and other feminist ideas are often misunder-

stood. By arguing that men and women are actually heterogenous categories which

only make sense relationally, feminist scholars do not argue that there are no bodies or

bodily dierences. Therefore, they are not opting for getting rid of categeroies such as

man and woman altogether, but make us consider what do we mean when we say man

or woman, contra Budin, “Sex and Gender and Sex,” 10.

17 Wittig, “The Category of Sex,” 66.

18 According to Stephen H. Savage the emergence of patriarchy in ancient Egypt is related to

the state formation rather than to the emergence of agricultural society, Stephen H.

Savage, “The Status of Women in Predynastic Egypt as Revealed through Mortuary

Conclusion 143

Analysis,” in Reading the Body Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record, edited

by Alison E. Rautman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 77–92. The

problem with his study is that it relies entirely on status reconstructed based on burial

assemblages. These results should be tested using bioarchaeological evidence.

19 Betsy M. Bryan, “Hatshepsut and Cultic Revelries in the New Kingdom,” in Creativity

and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut. Papers from the Theban Workshop 2010.

Occasional Proceedings of the Theban Workshop. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization

69, edited by Jose M. Galán, Betsy M. Bryan, and Peter. F. Dorman (Chicago: Oriental

Institute in Chicago, 2014), 93–124; Alexandra von Lieven, “Wein, Weib und Gesang –

Rituale für die Gefährliche Göttin,” in Rituale in der Vorgeschichte, Antike in Gegenwart.

Studien zur Vorderasiatischen, Prähistorischen und Klassischen Archäologie, Ägyptologie, Alten

Geschichte, Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Interdisziplinäre Tagung vom 1.–2. Februar 2002

an der Freien Universität Berlin. Internationale Archäologie 4, edited by Carola Metzner-

Nebelsick (Rahden: Verlag Leidorf, 2003), 47–55.

20 Jensen, “Skull-cups and snake-pits,” 197–222.

21 Butler, Gender Trouble, 10.

22 Butler, Gender Trouble, 117. For cultural specicity of violent acts directed to the body

of the enemy, see Christopher C. Taylor, Sacrice as Terror. The Rwandan Genocide of

1994 (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999).

23 In current feminist debates, this understanding of gender is closely associated with the

works of Judith Butler, but it has roots in the works of French feminist Monique

Wittig, see Sanna Karhu “Judith Butler’s Critique of Violence and the Legacy of

Monique Wittig,” Hypatia 31.4 (2016): 827–843.

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INDEX

abortion 31, 53, 76

Abydos 101, 103–105

adultery 29, 30, 32, 67–71, 73, 78, 79,

138, 139

aggression (aggressive) 9–11, 20, 21

Ahhotep I 42, 62

Ahhotep II 42, 62

Ahmose (king) 36, 42, 89

Ahmose-Pennekhbet 89

Ahmose son of Ebana 89, 135

Akhenaten 4, 18, 36, 79, 87, 101, 105, 129

Akkadian 68, 127

Alalakh 115, 116

Amazons 41, 53

Amenemhat Surer (TT 48) 100

Amenemhat I 41, 53

Amenemhat II 89, 107

Amenhotep I 89

Amenhotep II 36, 37, 46, 47, 50, 90,

96, 115

Amenhotep III 4, 79, 87, 90, 99, 100

Amenhotep, son of Hapu 71

Amun 46, 53, 98, 105

Anat 50, 52, 53, 75, 76

Anatolia 89

androcentrism (androcentric) 12, 15, 16,

24, 27, 43

Annals of Harsiyotef ( JE 48864) 118, 119

Annals of Thutmose III 89

Anubis 29, 30, 72

Apophis 77

Arab 69

Arendt, Hannah 16

Armant 96

Arrian 42

Arvad 89

Ashurbanipal 69

Asiatic/Asiatics 88–90, 92, 93, 121

Assyria (Assyrian, Assyrians) 42, 113

Astarte 40, 50, 53, 75

Aten 103, 105

Athens 67

Avaris (Tell el-Dab

a) 36, 62, 88

Baal 88

Babylon 115, 116

Bahriyah Oasis 37

Bastet 47, 49, 50, 105, 142

Bata 29, 30, 72

bathhouse 32

Battle of Qadesh 115

Baudrillard, Jean 106

Beit el-Wali 96, 120, 130

Bernstein, Richard J. 10, 16, 19, 21, 25

The Book of the Heavenly Cow (The

Destruction of Mankind) 45, 47

Book of Samuel 67

Book of the Dead 48, 49, 69, 78

Bourdieu, Pierre 5–10, 12, 15, 18–22, 68,

75, 78, 113

Bowmen 117

Brownmiller, Susan 66

Bull Palette 119

Butler, Judith 9–11, 15, 17–21, 87, 91, 112,

138, 142, 144

Byblos 115, 116

Carnavon Tablet 1 (Cairo CG 41790) 27

coitus a tergo 75

coloniality of gender 97

consent (consensual) 66, 67, 69, 117

Dakhleh Oasis 37

Darius I 48

de Beauvoir, Simone 7, 19

decorum 106, 112, 139

Deir el-Bahari 98

Deir el-Medina 26, 31, 34, 70, 74, 75

Denderah 46, 50

Derr 120, 121, 130

Derrida, Jacques 8, 19

Desheshah 91, 92, 121, 130

Deuteronomy 67

Diodorus 73

Djahi 90

Djedkare-Isesi 27, 88

domestic violence 26, 30, 34, 52

Domitian 50, 95

Dra Abu el–Naga 42, 62

dynasty 4th 89

dynasty 5th 28, 35, 88, 89, 92

dynasty 6th 28, 88, 74

dynasty 11th 17, 94

dynasty 12th 41, 46, 74, 89

dynasty 13th 29, 62

dynasty 15th 88

dynasty 17th 88

dynasty 18th 4, 18, 27, 43, 89, 97, 98, 108,

110, 135

dynasty 19th 28, 29, 40, 45, 69, 75, 76,

78, 90

dynasty 20th 31, 32, 34, 40, 45, 70, 75

dynasty 21th 32

dynasty 22nd 77

dynasty 25th 118

dynasty 26th 37, 76, 90

dynasty 30th 37, 77

Early Dynastic Period 26, 141

Edfu 40, 46, 75

ekdosis 67

El-Arish (Ismailia Museum Nr. 2248)

76, 77

Elephantine 35, 40

El Kab 89

Esna, temple of 50

Eurymedon vase 114

femininity 110

feminist theory (feminism) 8, 9, 15, 17, 19,

66, 143, 144

First Beth Shan stela of Seti I 47

First cataract stela of Amenhotep III 90

First Intermediate Period 35, 36, 45, 69, 87,

94, 119, 130, 139, 141

Foucault, Michel (Foucauldian) 6, 19, 30,

80, 141, 142

frame(s) of war 11, 17, 18, 106, 140, 142

Geb 72, 76, 77, 81

Gebel Barkal stela 90

gendered language 113

gendered violence 66, 138, 139

Giza 35, 37

Greece 67, 69, 114, 129, 139

grief 92, 93, 95, 121

ẖ

68, 71, 72, 80

harem 116, 132

Hathor (Hathoric) 44, 45, 47, 50, 105, 118

Hatshepsut 4, 43, 98, 99, 104, 111

Heliopolis 76

Hermopolis 17, 34, 77, 101, 104

Herodotus 43

heteronormative society, matrix, power

structures (heteronormativity) 6, 8–10,

16, 113

Hibis (temple) 48

Hierakonpolis 35, 95, 123

Hittites 66, 113

ḥm 114, 115, 121

ḥm.t-

ḥwty 70

ḥm.t-ṯ3y 69

ḥnn 127

ḫnr.t 116

ḫnr.yt 116

Homer 53

honor 68, 79

Hori 69

Horit 76–78

Horus 44, 45, 74–76, 78, 123, 139

Hyksos 36, 42, 88

Idu Seneni 28

Illiad 67

Instructions of Ani 28–30, 53, 54

Instructions of Ankhsheshonq 29, 72, 73,

78, 118

Intef 17, 94, 95, 109, 130

intersectionality (intersectional) 7, 14, 36,

138, 142

Inti 91, 92, 94, 95, 121, 130

Iny 88

Irigaray, Luce 137

Ishtar 113

Isis 44, 45, 63, 72, 74, 81, 139

Israel (Israelites) 113

Index 173

Israel stela (CG 34025) 117

Iti 69

Jeremiah 67

Job 67

Joppa 69, 70, 119

Kaiemtjenenet 88

Kalabsha 90

Kamose 62

Karnak 42, 46, 47, 89, 90, 115, 127, 128

Karnak stela of Ahmose (CG 34001) 42

Karnak stela of Amenhotep II 90

Kellis 37

Kerma 38

Kharga oasis 48

Kheruef (TT 192) 17, 87, 99, 100

Khnum 75

Khor el-Aquiba 89

Kom el-Ahmar (Athribis) stela 116, 117,

123, 124, 126, 127

Konosso stela of Thutmose IV 46

ḳrn.t 126–129

Late Period 17, 28, 36, 97, 141

Lower Nubia 89

Lugones, María 97

Luxor 17, 37, 87, 101, 103–105, 115

Maat 100

masculinity 12, 15, 24, 34, 44, 66, 75, 94, 100,

113, 115, 118, 119, 130, 137, 138, 142, 143

Maxims of Ptahhotep 27, 28, 53–55

Medinet Habu 46, 48, 90, 117, 121–126,

128–130

Megiddo 90

Mendes 36

Memphis stela of Amenhotep II 46, 47,

90, 96

Mentuhotep II 94

Merenptah 17, 43, 116, 117, 123, 124, 126,

127, 130

Meshesher 117

Middle Kingdom 26–28, 41, 46, 78, 81, 87,

89, 91, 94, 130, 139, 141

Mit Rahina (Memphis) 88, 107

Mittani (Naharin) 89

mourning 88, 92, 93, 121

Mut 47–50, 53, 64, 105, 142

Myth of the Sun Eye 45, 50

Naqada 95

Narmer 17, 91, 123, 130, 133

Narmer Palette (CG 14716) 119, 123

Nefertiti 4, 5, 17, 18, 39, 87, 101–105,

111, 138

“Nefertiti revealed” 4, 5, 143

Neith 50, 51, 105

Neo-Assyrian 69

Nephthys 72, 77

New Kingdom 13, 16–18, 24–31, 34, 36,

39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 61, 75, 78, 81, 87, 88,

95–98, 105, 116, 117, 119, 122, 128,

129, 133, 139, 141

Nimlot 118, 119

Niniveh 69

nk 68, 70, 72, 75

nkkw 115

noncombatants 11, 17, 23, 36, 87, 93, 94,

106, 130, 139, 140

nude (nudity) 94, 100, 121, 122, 133

Nut 81

ospring 68

oikos 67

Old Kingdom 17, 26, 27, 35, 36, 39, 74,

78, 87–89, 91, 107, 108, 119, 122, 130,

139, 141

Old Testament 67

Orontes 90

Osiris 44, 75–78

Ostracon British Museum EA 50714 75

Ostracon British Museum EA 65938 31

Ostracon Cairo CG 25125 40, 41

Ostracon CGC 25521 31

Ostracon Deir el-Medina 919 31

Ostracon Deir el-Medina 1232-1234 27

Ostracon Nash 5 31

Ostracon Tempeleide 224 33

Palermo Stone 89

Paneb 31, 70

Papyrus Anastasi I 69

Papyrus Berlin BGU IV 1024 34

Papyrus Berlin BGU VII 1855 33

Papyrus Berlin BGU VIII 1820 33

Papyrus Berlin 3033-Papyrus Westcar 29

Papyrus British Museum 9994-Papyrus

Lansing 32

Papyrus British Museum 10371 27

Papyrus British Museum 10435 27

Papyrus British Museum 10509 27, 28

Papyrus British Museum EA74100 121, 130

Papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84 (Mythological

Manual of the Delta) 30, 76, 77

Papyrus Carlsberg 165 78

Papyrus Chester Beatty I (The Contendings

of Horus and Seth) 34, 44

174 Index

Papyrus Chester Beatty II 78

Papyrus Chester Beatty VII 50, 75

Papyrus Chrest.Mitt. 126 = Papyrus

Amherst 2 141 34

Papyrus Deir el-Medina 26 B 31

Papyrus D’Orbiney (Tale of Two Brothers)

29, 34, 77

Papyrus Dryton 33 33

Papyrus Dryton 34 33

Papyrus Enteux 79 32

Papyrus Enteux 82 32

Papyrus Enteux 83 32

Papyrus Florence PSI inv. I 72 x+4 77

Papyrus Harris I 34

Papyrus Harris (Magical) 75

Papyrus Hibeh II 200 32

Papyrus Insigner VIII 29

Papyrus Kahun VI. 12 74

Papyrus Leiden 101 = SB VI 9068 32

Papyrus London UC 32157 (Papyrus

Kahun LV.1 46

Papyrus Louvre 2414 29

Papyrus Louvre N 312 (TM 56940) 72

Papyrus Michigan VI 425 33

Papyrus Millingen 61

Papyrus Millingen II.7 41

Papyrus MMA 35.9.21 77

Papyrus Oxyrhynchos VIII 1120 33

Papyrus Paris, Bibliotheque National

202 50

Papyrus Paris, Bibliotheque National suppl.

574 77

Papyrus Petese II C1 II-III 72

Papyrus Petese II D1 72

Papyrus Petese II D7-II D8 29

Papyrus Prisse 27, 28

Papyrus Pushkin 127 32

Papyrus Rylands 2 33

Papyrus Sallier II 61

Papyrus Salt 124 (British Museum 10055)

31, 70, 71

Papyrus Siut 10591 33

Papyrus Siut 10591 B II 1–2 33

Papyrus Sorbonne inv. 2304, Fragment A =

SB × 10271 33

Papyrus Tebtunis 2 33

Papyrus Tebtunis III 33

Papyrus Turin 1791 48, 49

Papyrus Turin 1887 (Turin Indictment

Papyrus) 31, 70, 71, 73

Papyrus Turin 54014 27

Papyrus Turin 55001 (Turin Erotic

Papyrus) 75, 81, 143

Papyrus Turin PR 30

Papyrus University of Pennsylvania

Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology (CG2006-4-1A-F) 76

Papyrus Vindob. D 6165 42

Papyrus Vindob. D 6165A 42

passive (passivity) 34, 39, 40, 45, 68, 72, 74,

77, 79, 95, 108, 115, 118, 130, 138,

140–142

patriarchy 80, 138, 143

penetration 72, 75, 78, 113, 114, 117, 119,

138, 140, 142

Pepi I 74

Pepi II Nefrkare 88

Persians 114

phallus, phalli (penis) 12, 17, 30, 64, 74, 94,

114, 120–127, 133, 143

phallus sheath(s) 127–129

physical violence 6, 7, 17, 66, 68, 80, 87

Plutarch 77

precarity (precarious) 67

Predynastic period 141

prostitute/prostitutes/prostitution 30,

67, 113

Psammethicus I 43

Psammethicus II 90

psychological violence 66

Ptah 50, 53, 64

Ptolemaic period 32, 34, 35, 37, 74, 77,

138, 141

Pyramid Texts 74

Qasr es/sayyad 28

Qasr Ibrim 89

Qatna 90

queer (queer theory) 6, 15, 17, 20, 25

Ramesses II 45–47, 96, 115, 120, 130

Ramesses III 17, 34, 45, 46, 48, 90, 97, 110,

123, 124, 126–128, 130

Ramesses IV 46

Ramesses V 31, 40, 44, 74

Ramesses VI 40, 45

rape 5, 13, 17, 22, 31, 32, 66–80, 87,

115–117, 119, 138

Re 30, 44, 45, 47, 54, 63, 142

Rekhmire (TT 100) 96, 97

Retjenu 90

Rome 67, 69

Roman period 32, 34, 37, 74, 138, 141

Rubin, Gayle 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19–21

Sabines 67

Saqqara 74, 88

Sauib 89

Index 175

Sea Peoples 96

Sebennytos 72

Second Beth Shan Stela of Seti I 47

Seqenre 42

Second Intermediate Period 27, 36, 42,

62, 141

Second Stela of Kamose 88

Sekhmet 45–51, 53, 54, 63, 64, 105, 142

semen (seed) 74–76

Semiramis 42

Semna South 38

Semna stela (Berlin ÄM 1157) 89, 107, 114,

115, 118

Senebtisi 62

Senwosret III 46, 89, 107, 114, 115, 118

Seth 44, 47, 72, 74–78, 88, 117

Seti I 45–47

Seti II 29

sex/gender system 7, 12, 17, 43, 44, 140, 141

sexuality 7, 9, 12, 19, 21–23, 25

sexual violence 17, 26, 44, 67–69, 71,

74–76, 79, 80, 138, 139

Sharuhen 89

Sheikh Abd el Gurna 36

Shellal stela of Psammethicus II 90, 108

Shemanefer 50

Shemash-Edom 90

Shu 44

Snofru 89

Sobek 50

Solon 67

spear 30

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 137

spoils of war 88

Stela Cairo 20001 69

Stela of Usersatet (Boston Museum of Fine

Arts No. 25.632) 115

Stela Qeh (British Museum EA 191) 52

Stol, Marten 68

Strabo 43

stranger(s)/stranger woman 28, 69, 139

Strathern, Marilyn 113

structural violence 7, 36, 138, 139

subjective violence 139

Sun Eye (Eye of Re) 45, 47, 105

symbolic violence 5–10, 12, 13, 18, 19, 30,

138, 139

Syria-Palestine 88, 89, 96, 107, 117

t3 šry.t (šry.t) 69, 70, 90, 97

ṯ3j 115

Tausret 40, 60

Tefnut 72, 76, 77, 139

Tell el-Amarna (Amarna, Akhetaten) 4, 18,

36, 79, 87, 111, 130

testosterone 10, 20, 21

Third Intermediate Period 32, 37, 97, 141

Thoth 44, 74, 76

Thutmose III 36, 89, 90, 96, 105

Thutmose IV 46

Titus 95

Tiye 4, 17, 39, 87, 99–101, 104, 105,

111, 138

Town Palette 119

Trajan 95

Triumphal Stela of Piye (Cairo JE 48862,

47086–47089) 118, 119

Tutankhamun 43, 45

Ulpian 67

Uronarti stela (Khartum Nr. 3=Inv. 451)

89, 107, 114, 115, 118

Userkaf 89

Usertatet 115

vagina (vulva) 118, 119, 143

Wadi Hamamat 143

Wadjet 51

warrior women 16

Webaoner 29

widow 45, 96, 117, 139

Wisdom Texts 27, 30, 45, 53, 69, 79, 117

Wittig, Monique 77, 143, 144

Yahweh 67

Žižek, Slavoj 6, 7, 10, 15, 18, 19, 139

176 Index

Egyptomania, Sex and Ontology in Enki Bilal's The Nikopol Trilogy (1980-1992) and Immortel, ad vitam (2004)

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2023

Uroš Matić

This paper argues that what advocates of the ontological turn refer to as the question of ontology cannot be understood without taking ideology into account. Enki Bilal's comic book The Nikopol Trilogy (1980-1992) and the movie Immortel, ad vitam (2004), juxtaposed with ancient Egyptian sources, are used as a demonstration. The issue of appropriate sexual partners for ancient Egyptian deities in the fictional world of Bilal is not only one of ontology, but more importantly one of politics and racial purity, characteristic of racism and totalitarian regimes. Approaching this question solely through the lens of ontology misses the mark. Taking this as a starting point, I will demonstrate that the question of appropriate sexual partners for deities in ancient Egyptian written sources also cannot be reduced to ontological differences. In fact, since Egyptian gods procreate only with some human women, the question of appropriate sexual partners becomes more of a class question.

Queering Serbian Archaeology: Androcentrism, Heteronormativity, Gender and the Writing of (Pre)history. Ex Novo. Journal of Archaeology 8: 53-75.

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2023

Uroš Matić

In scholarly backroom discussions, archaeologies of the Balkans are often labelled as conservative and ignorant of gender studies, their impact on archaeology, and how it deals with gender in the past. Indeed, androcentrism and heteronormativity are commonly found in archaeological interpretations throughout the Balkans, but not there alone. In this paper I will analyse how gender and sexuality in the past have been approached by some archaeologists in Serbia, a west-central Balkan country, and argue that, although some positive changes can be detected more critical gender and queer archaeologies are direly needed for two reasons. First and foremost, theoretically informed approaches to gender, in contrast to approaches based on gender stereotypes and heteronormativity, can lead to better thought-through and more informed reconstructions of the past. I illustrate this with several examples from mortuary and settlement archaeology. Secondly, and no less importantly, self-reflexive and theoretically informed approaches to gender and sexuality should have an activist component, helping to build a more just and democratic society. Therefore, we are never really done with gender archaeology. The latter is particularly needed in the Balkans, including Serbia, where there is an ongoing struggle against patriarchal ideologies and homophobia. In this respect, a dialogue is needed between archaeologists and the marginalized and oppressed communities and organisations fighting for basic human rights in the region.

Fulvia and Octavia: the female warrior's and the matron's coins

Article

Dec 2022

Taís Pagoto Bélo

This paper aims to discuss the representation of two Roman women, Fulvia and Octavia, who were very different characters: the former was a model not to be followed; and the latter, a real matron. To work with this theme, written and material sources such as coins were used. It is known that Roman written sources were used to build hierarchies linked to an idealized discourse related to male domination. However, coins of these women were analysed in terms of what they wanted to communicate, especially the gender strategies built in their coinage, which suggested questioning how Fulvia and Octavia were presented to the public. To introduce the context in which these women lived, it should be borne in mind that, theoretically, the family remained under the power of the paterfamilias (patria potestas) at the period of the Republic and beginning of Empire. It was concluded that Fulvia and Octavia showed a female diversity in different sources, which were multiple constituted and took up multiple positions within a range of social discourses and practices.

The Representation of Emotions and Time in Ancient Egyptian Smiting Scenes

Article

Apr 2024

Tara Prakash

Binary or Non-binary? Binary and Non-binary? None? Looking at Gender Expressions in the Egyptian Divine World

Chapter

Mar 2024

Guilherme Borges Pires

The present paper constitutes a preliminary attempt to (re)address gender issues in the Egyptian divine world, revisiting some Egyptological assumptions in this regard. After a brief overview of the different ways Egyptology has been receiving and applying Gender Studies’ methodology and theory, the Egyptian pantheon will be considered as a device that embodies (en)gender(ed) ideas and reflects a given gender order. Firstly, it will be argued that instances suggested as a challenge to the Egyptian binary gender system shall be revisited, as they are either somehow dubious or a reinforcement of a particular gender order. Then, the cosmogonical moment (‘First Time’, sp tpy) is analyzed as the gender-duality’s origin. Next, two of the main arguments often utilized to argue in favor of the Creator’s ‘androgyny’ or ‘gender-ambiguity’ are discussed and (re-)considered: the demiurgic masturbatory act and the binomial ‘father/mother’. It will be suggested that the former is indeed a male act/feature rather than an ‘androgynous’ one, while the latter can be envisaged as a religious phraseological tool employed to convey an all-encompassing and primordial figure who is mostly thought of as a male (except for Neith). Finally, some other deities – such as Hapy, Anat, Seth, Osiris, and Isis – are briefly considered regarding their (non)-binary gender expressions, characters, and performances. Hence, it will be argued that the Egyptian pantheon reflects and promotes a particular gender order.

On lustful deities and the ontological turn in the archaeology of ancient Egypt

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2024

Uroš Matić

Building on the ongoing debates surrounding the archaeological application of New Materialism, posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and the anthropological ontological turn, this paper examines sexual interactions between deities and humans, as well as among deities represented as statues in ancient Egypt. Acknowledging the existence of such sexual encounters and providing detailed descriptions of the involved entities alone does not fully recognize the underlying gender and class structures. This paper argues that these analysed sexual encounters were shaped by gender and class-based power asymmetries, revealing that the ancient Egyptians and contemporary perspectives are not as distinct as they might seem.

Bibliography

Chapter

Feb 2024

Richard Bussmann

Gender Violence and Sexual Harassment Against Women Within Academic Spaces: Challenges and Constraints

Article

Jan 2024

Fortresses as Ideological Images of Power

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2023

Anthony Spalinger

This paper is a discussion of the essential, indeed the key, element of New Kingdom pictorial representations of warfare in Asia surrounding the depiction of the enemy citadel-fortress. We appear to find this depiction from the early stages of the 18th Dynasty onwards, but its inclusion as well as absence needs further specification, and that is the aim of this study. Based on earlier analyses of images of warfare, the following contribution carries the vector of imagery and historical development. The contrast of these urban scenes with Libyan and Nubian combat depictions, frequently touched upon in scholarship, will be partially limned in this paper. [Formula: see text]

Judith Muñoz Sogas. Thirsty Seafarers at Temple B of Kommos: Commercial Districts and the Role of Crete in Phoenician Trading Networks in the Aegean (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing, 2022, 170pp, 173 colour & b/w figs, 2 tables, pbk, ISBN: 9781803273228)

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Jul 2023

Eirini Paizi

Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation

Book

Sep 2013

Estelle B. Freedman

The Topsy-Turvy World

Chapter

Jan 2004

Diane Flores

Visual and written culture in ancient Egypt

Book

Oct 2023

John Baines

A generously illustrated selection of John Baines’s influential writings on two core areas of ancient Egyptian civilization: the role of writing, which was very different in antiquity from what is familiar in the modern world, and the importance of visual culture. These questions are explored through a number of case studies. The volume assembles articles that were scattered in publications in a variety of disciplines, making available key contributions on core problems of theory, comparison, and analysis in the study of many civilizations and offering important points of departure for further research. Three wholly new essays are included, and the overall approach is an interdisciplinary one, synthesizing insights from archaeology, anthropology, and art history as well as Egyptology.

The Logic of Practice

Book