While conducting research before and after a journey to view the wonders of ancient Egypt, I was astounded to discover that for 3000 years, ancient Egyptian women had enjoyed a level of equality similar to that of 21st-century Western women. Thus began a journey to better understand the age-old dynamic between the feminine and the masculine—specifically, the history behind the fall of the feminine.

​

Conditioned to believe that the dynamic of the strong male dominating the weak female has existed since the dawn of human evolution, I discovered that it’s perhaps more accurate to say that this dynamic has existed since the dawn of human civilization: a subtle but important distinction that I will explore through a four-part series of essays. Topics will include the shift from egalitarian to patriarchal societies, the creation of marriage rites, and a challenge to the age-old notion that monogamy is hard-wired into Homo sapiens. I would also like to clarify that when I refer to the feminine and the masculine, I am not referring to the male and female genders, but to human traits that are better described using the Chinese terminology of yin and yang. While yin represents passivity, receptiveness, and retraction (being), yang is active, repelling and expansive (doing). Since women have been conditioned to emphasize yin and men to emphasize yang, people associate the expression of yin with femininity and the expression of yang with masculinity. In short, a matter of semantics that muddies the waters when discussing the balance between states of being and doing that has nothing to do with gender.   

​

Surviving Egyptian papyri indicate that in ancient Egypt, c. 3150-30 BCE (Before Common Era),  women had equal standing to men in the eyes of the law. Don’t get me wrong, there was a division of labour, and men usually held the reins of power with titles of pharaoh, governor, general, etc. However, as legal entities, women had legal control over their property and freedom. They not only helped run family businesses but also regularly worked as weavers, bakers, brewers, sandal-makers, cooks, servers, or as a “Mistress of the House,” which today would be an estate manager. They were also scribes and high priestesses, although usually associated with a cult of a feminine deity. Female doctors enjoyed high respect, and female students from many countries were admitted to the medical school in Alexandria. Though a handful of women reigned as pharaohs, more ruled as pharaohs’ wives, powerful queens who influenced their husbands, the court, and the country. In effect, the extent of a woman’s rights in ancient Egypt depended more on her social class than her gender. 

​

Property in ancient Egypt descended along the female line, perhaps on the assumption that, unlike paternity, maternity is assured. Women had the power to purchase and dispose of property as they wished. They could be a partner in legal contracts, an executor in wills, a witness to legal documents, bring an action to court, and adopt children in their name. This stood in stark contrast to other ancient civilizations, like Greece, where the concept of separate spheres of influence emerged. Greek society confined women to the home, limiting them to household tasks and requiring them to be veiled and escorted by a male guardian whenever they left the house. Ancient Egyptian women, on the other hand, could marry whom they wanted, divorce those who no longer suited them, hold a wide variety of jobs, and enjoy complete freedom of movement.

​

To understand why ancient Egyptian culture was more egalitarian than its concurrent and later civilizations, I had to travel further back in time. Most anthropologists agree that humankind existed as small groups of hunter-gatherers for most of its existence. A study of ancient sites suggests that this changed around 10,000 BCE with the development of agriculture. Based on current examples and historical accounts, hunter-gatherer societies operate on a more egalitarian, cooperative structure, where land ownership is nonexistent and gender roles, while distinct, hold no biases of value. Decision-making is either consensual, or separate groups of female and male elders can influence the rules and laws that define the tribe. Dissent within the collective is strongly discouraged, and anyone who feels otherwise is free to leave and find another tribe willing to take them. 

​

All that changed as humans began to till the land and grow food. While this likely started as a cooperative among a few individuals, a secure food supply enabled the group’s numbers to grow. Soon, what was once a small nomadic tribe evolved into a permanent settlement, such as a hamlet, which eventually became a village, then a town, until the agrarian lifestyle shifted to an urban one, leading to the birth of civilization.

​

The radical concept of land ownership and the growing need to protect their turf were instrumental in creating a monumental shift in how humans governed themselves. While ownership likely began as a collective of one community against another, the increasing size of settlements would have meant that groups within a community began to divide land ownership among themselves, eventually leading to individual ownership. This set the stage for greed and envy to flourish in developing civilizations, leading to the need for formalized rules of civility and eventually to the creation of laws to uphold peace. 

​

The region of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, flourished from 4100 to 1750 BCE and is widely recognized as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. The Sumerians are said to have “invented” time by dividing the day into hours, minutes, and seconds; developed the first known written language, established the first schools and created governmental bureaucracy; built monumental architecture and engineering irrigation techniques; and waged what is considered the first war in history, c. 2700 BCE. Interestingly, as in Egypt, which developed 1000 years later, the women of Sumer had more rights than those in later Mesopotamian cultures. Sumerian women could own property, run businesses alongside their husbands, become priestesses, scribes, and physicians, and act as court judges and witnesses. Some anthropologists suggest that the equality of Sumerian goddesses and gods reflected the equal standing of Sumerian women in society.

​

Around 1750 BCE, a neighbouring Mesopotamian society with a strong patriarchal structure conquered the Sumerians, whose culture underwent swift changes. Not only did men enjoy more rights than women, but the conquerors also reversed the Sumerian theological model by elevating a supreme male god above all others. Temples previously dedicated to goddesses were marginalized or replaced by temples to gods. During this period of power shift, women’s rights declined along with the great Sumerian cities, which disappeared from historical records until the mid-19th century CE (Common Era). Some argue that the decline in the status of female deities and women’s rights in Sumer was a significant factor in the decline of Sumerian culture.

​

Historians credit the Sumerian civilization for influencing not only the Egyptian social structure but also their visual arts, architecture, weaponry, and the development of their hieroglyphic writing system. What’s interesting, though, is that while other civilizations in the region grew more patriarchal, Egypt preserved a culture of equal respect for men and women for 3,000 years.

​

 

I’m Just a Girl

The discovery of the long-forgotten existence of gender equality in ancient civilizations is enlightening. Only since the second Industrial Revolution, about 150 years ago, did patriarchy’s iron fist loosen its grip, especially in Europe, North America, Britain, and its colonies. The division between liberal Western ideals and traditional Eastern practices, where patriarchy is still entrenched, emerged.

​

Lest we forget, as recently as the 1870s, when an English woman (and by extension, a woman in any country governed by British law) married, she ceased to be recognized as a legal entity, forced by marriage into a position of almost total dependence on her husband. Marriage contracts, known as coverture, bound husbands and wives as one, compelling women to surrender control of their property and money to their husbands, subsuming their legal identity under their husbands, under whose “wing, protection, and cover” they lived.

​

The vast majority of women, conditioned by society to exchange their freedom for protection and begetting legal children, opted for marriage, giving up the legal rights of an unmarried or widowed woman, known as the “femmes sole” or “women alone.” These femmes sole had a legal right to live where they pleased and to support themselves in any occupation that did not require a license or a college degree (the exclusive domain of men). They could also enter into contracts, accumulate personal property by buying and selling real estate, sue and be sued, write wills, serve as guardians, and act as executors of estates. That being said, single women were rarely viewed favourably. While a bachelor is portrayed as a sophisticated, attractive, eligible man, an unmarried woman, referred to as a spinster, was a person to be pitied, shunned, and ridiculed.

​

The term spinster in medieval times referred to a woman who spun thread and yarn for a living—the male counterpart was a spinner. Then a shift occurred between 1500 and 1700, when unmarried women seeking financial independence found themselves relegated to spinning yarn, while married women had access to higher-status trade work. By the 1800s, the meaning of “spinster” had again changed, and now referred to a woman who had never married and was past the usual marrying age. In essence, the meaning of spinster had shifted from that of a profession to a stigmatized state of being.

 

The colonization of America, driven by the need for population growth, is thought to have reinforced the negative perception of being a spinster. The word “spinster” became twisted into a symbol of female willfulness and was used to ridicule women who chose not to marry and bear children, shaming them into conforming to the societal norm of marriage. This villainization reached new heights during the 1950s, when the need for population growth following World War II again became imperative. Women, who had found freedom while filling in on the job front for men fighting overseas, not only saw jobs revert to their male counterparts but also found themselves conditioned, through cultural propaganda, to stay home and repopulate, ensuring some of the lowest recorded rates of unwed women in recent history. 

​

The status of widows had also declined by the 1800s. When her husband died, a woman now had no rights to home or land ownership. The dower, however, partially shielded her, legally securing her life interest in one-third of her husband’s real property in England, regardless of whether they had children, whereas in the US, the allowance was one-third with children and up to half without. As this referred to land or use of the land, a widow still had to rely on family or trustees to convert that entitlement into a usable income, further reinforcing her position of dependency within the family. In contrast, if a woman in ancient Egypt lost her husband or they divorced, she was able to keep the house, manage her estate, and generate income as she wished.

​

By the late 1800s, the UK and the US had abolished the dower, granting women more rights over the ownership and control of property.

​

In the next post, I will explore in more detail the reasons for the shift from egalitarian to patriarchal societies and the role marriage played in the enslavement of the feminine.