Were ancient Egyptians the first feminists?

When Herodotus explored Egypt, he was startled by the contradictory gender roles -- women were doing tasks the Greeks restricted to males. Does this mean the Egyptians were the first feminists? Learn more in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor kandas Keener time by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey,
they're Candice. Hey Jane. You know it's funny. I feel
like we keep rehashing the same theme over and over,

(00:22):
but it's just so interesting. The formula is someone Greek
comes over to Egypter Africa and sees that things are different,
and then goes back home and tells people about it. Yeah,
are you getting a sense? Yeah, definitely. And we're talking
about Herodotus and he is a Greek who came over
about the fifth century to Egypt, and uh, he knowed

(00:45):
something really interesting, and that was that the women were
in the market place trading and dulling all that market stuff,
while the men's at home and did all the weaving.
And he thought this was really up, especially compared to
how gender issues were going on in in Greece at
that time. Yeah, and so he went back home and
he actually uh told people. Whether he wrote it or

(01:07):
said it, I don't know, but apparently he mentioned that
the Egyptians have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind and
that's a pretty loaded statement if you think about it.
If Herodotis seemed to think that, um, we were God
ordained for women to sit at home and we even
and do the wash, and men were the ones who
were supposed to go out into the marketplace and trade

(01:28):
and barter and make the world go around with money.
But what's interesting is that his observations weren't entirely accurate.
And we see this all the time. Someone looks at
a very small slice of life and a society and
sort of generates opinions and thoughts about how the entire
society must work. And while he propound that this notion

(01:50):
that Egyptians must be these very forward thinking or to him,
backward thinking people who had an entirely different type of
society that was really a matriarchy than a patriarch archy,
was incorrect, actually, And we asked ourselves a question at
how stuff works, and that was we're ancient Egyptians, the
first feminists. And our colleague Christian Conger wrote an article

(02:13):
by that very same title, and after reading her research
and conducting a little bit on our own, we were
hoping to come to you guys and tell you something
really exciting about how feminism was not a brand new
thing back in the twentieth century. The ancient Egyptians had
discovered a long time ago, and they already started a
society by those rules and precedents that that wasn't exactly

(02:34):
the case. Yeah, I mean, it's true that the they
were sharing sort of gender equalities that were really ahead
of their time, and certain things that we're still struggling
with today they achieved back then. But there's a lot
of caveats to that statement. But one interesting point is
one expert in this field, actor Joanne Fletcher, talks about

(02:54):
the duality of male and female in in ancient Egypt,
and you can see this in the gods and goddesses
that they had in their religion, but also obviously even
political power. You can see in the list of God
or a list of kings and pharaohs that women held
the position at least six times. I believe it is.

(03:15):
We all know Cleopatra obviously from the first century BC,
but there were also women who won each in the
twenty second century BC, as well as the eight and
the twelve. And I think something that these female rulers
struggled with was the idea of being a powerful woman
and still preserving their femininity. And we know that a

(03:36):
couple of those rulers were forced, uh not unlike Joan
of Arc who we discussed in an earlier podcast, to
put on men's clothing or take on more masculine mannerisms
in order to be assertive and respected. Yes, this is
one of the most fascinating um female pharaohs of ancient Egypt,
and her name is Hut Sheepsut, and she was the

(03:57):
daughter of a king the Most the first also noticed
the mosis, but have heard of both ways. So had
Chapsa was married to her half brother that Most the second,
who inherited the throne. And so, although she didn't have
a lot of power at this time, her husband died
and she didn't have a son to take the throne,
so the power went to her husband's son by another marriage.

(04:20):
And at this time pharaoh's were very well known for
having what's known as lesser or minor wives, and so
he had a son by one of these wives, and
he became thought Most the third. So when her husband
had Chops husband died, thought Most the third was still
a baby, and so had Chops decided to take over
as regent in the meantime until the baby grew up,

(04:42):
and by about the seventh year into her role as regent,
she was officially crowned king. It's interesting that it took
that long. Also was especially fascinating about this period is
that she started gradually more and more wearing men's clothes,
like you were saying, Candice, and she actually put on
a false bear heard, which I find the most curious
of all. And there are different theories about why she

(05:04):
did this, Perhaps like she had herself portrayed at least
this way in the in the pictures of the records
that we have, and maybe um the significance of these
pictures and their culture meant that if it was portrayed
that way, then that's what she would become. She would
become as powerful as a male king, which I found interesting.
And but I think it should be noted that she
was no man hater by any means, because she allowed

(05:24):
her stepson thought most, to share power once he got
old enough. After she died a few decades later, her
stepson was still ruling. Near the end of his role,
there was a movement to destroy the remnants of head
Chepstot's rule and there's a lot of different theories about that.
One is um that it was an act of vengeance perhaps,

(05:45):
but another is that because her name was actually removed
from documents that said the lists of the kings, it's
believed that maybe the almost the third wanted history to
remember the list of kings in order, like almost one, two,
and three without interruption, to actually female interruption. What had
steps that did for her stepson is actually pretty magnanimous.
If you look at the history of Egyptian minor wives

(06:09):
a k. A concubine, because they were known sometimes actually
off their husbands to put their sons on the throne.
So there was a real power play at court where
women could get an upper hand just as easily by
being you know, good strategists. And if you hearken back
in your memory to a podcast Jane and I did

(06:30):
many many months ago about the First Lady of the
United States. If you look at different women who sat
at court with their husbands, whether they were queens or
whether they held some sort of lesser power like a
regent or even a priest, and a priest was considered
pretty powerful. Actually, it's almost like this first Lady idea
where you come into power by virtue of being married

(06:52):
to someone who is the most powerful man in the country.
So even powerful women actually owed their power to a
my own they did. They still o their power to man,
and they could choose to wield it in whatever way
they wanted. I think that there were some women a
court who took on more traditional what we can see
a love as traditional roles of being a wife and
a mother. Some certainly use their wealth to leverage leisure

(07:15):
for themselves, you know, NonStop manicures and hairstyling, and you know,
tours around the grounds and their own chariots. And there
were others like never t d who I'm really interested in,
who took advantage of her power alongside her husband to
help them and sort of a in a Hillary Bill
Billary sort of way, she helped him come up with

(07:35):
new policies for the nation, different types of rules, and
reformed their system of government. And in addition to that,
she took a major part in helping to execute different prisoners.
And when her husband died, there are some historians who
suggest that she very quietly just assumed role as king
or queen really but stepped into his shoes. And then

(07:58):
others think that some somewhere along the marriage she offended
him somehow and he got very upset, and so he
elevated a daughter to her place. But you look back
at Nefer t d and especially just to look at
that very famous bust of hers, you know, do you
know that what I'm talking about. It's a portrait really
and and three dimensions, and we see that she has

(08:20):
a very serene look on her face. And I guess
that's how I've always imagined ancient Egyptian women with the
coal lined eyes and the very elaborate, you know, hairstyles
and just being a part of society but not really
being leaders. But that wasn't the case unless you're from
a lower class. Yeah, we should make a distinction that

(08:42):
even though there was a very remarkable forward thinking equality
of the genders at this time, there wasn't the same
thing when it came to class. Upper class women had
a lot more power than lower class women. They did,
and most women in Egyptian society enjoyed some type of freedom,
or what we would think of as freedom. I think

(09:03):
that even if you are poor, there were still some
sort of choice and what vocation you had, you could
choose to be a farmer. You could choose to be
a weaver, a servant, or even a construction worker. And
if you are very very poor, you could be an
entertainer at court. And whether you danced or you played
some sort of instrument, the king even occasionally recognize these

(09:24):
people as important to his kingdom and would allow them
to participate in different governmental events or uh state ceremonies.
And so they played an important role too. But what
our you know, our Greek friend may have been referring
to as far as the progressiveness of Egyptian society was
the legal system. Because even if women in ancient Egypt

(09:48):
were considered wives and mothers first and foremost, they had
some pretty interesting legal rights. Yeah, they could own their
own property. Interestingly, they could make wills like deciding who
which of their children would um receive whatever their wealth.
In court, they could represent themselves, they could sue people.
They could also get divorces and divorce. I think is

(10:10):
an interesting case because it brings up the idea of
marriage and the legal idea of marriage in ancient Egypt,
which is curious because when you got married, you didn't
necessarily need to get the course involved the law wasn't
involved at all. You could just have a party, you know,
and celebrate the fact that you're getting married, but divorce
was certainly illegal issue. It says there's a similar rule

(10:31):
I think, if I remember from my research on the
Code of Hamar Robbie about women could get actually some
of their dowry back and property as well, and a divorce,
and the same thing happened in ancient Egypt. And one
point that I find really funny is that Emanuel, dating
back to about the twenty fifth century BC, I think,
advised men to not take women to court. And I'm

(10:51):
not quite sure whether this had to do because it
was indelicate to do so, or because women were really
good when they represented themselves in court. I don't know.
I'm in a gab they were really good and then
represented themselves in court. So, as Jane mentioned, marriage wasn't
even really regarded as an institution. It wasn't ordained by
the church, it wasn't ordained by government. But if you
did not have a lot of money, it was pretty

(11:12):
necessary because if you're pretty poor, you needed to get
married to have a lot of children to help with
all the different you know, types of of labor and
tours that you had to carry out in order to
really succeed and pull ahead in the society. And like
Jane was saying, as far as women leaving a marriage,
it was pretty easy and you could take your money
with you. And it seems like they looked at a

(11:33):
marriage and union between a man and woman is a
pretty casual thing. Because premarital sex wasn't even frowned upon.
I found that really interesting. I had no idea. I'd
like to know about more civilizations that had the same
kind of rules about premarital sex. I guess it would
have to do with the fact that if marriage was
a social pact and it didn't have any reference back

(11:54):
to the church or back to religion. I mean, who
was there to condemn it? I don't know one in
interesting role that a woman could choose. I didn't have
to go into marriage. You could also enter the priesthood. Interestingly,
they could become uh, God's wife, is sort of This
offered women a lot of political power, interestingly, but I
think she had to have a little bit of money

(12:15):
to accomplish that. The same way she could be on
a jury, but she had to have a little bit
of money to do that too. Yeah, And speaking of religion,
we were talking about Neffortidi earlier. One major thing that
she did was that she and her husband were Monotheists,
and this was really unusual at the time. Um the
culture was in general worshiping many gods. Nefertidi and her
husband at Kenneton worship the Sun god alone. They actually

(12:39):
outlawed worship of other gods of polytheism. And it's believed
that Nefertidi herself was the driving force behind this, uh
this rule, and it actually caused gave her a lot
of enemies. Let's say she took this idea very very seriously,
and she worshiped him with great fervor. And then we
see a little bit later on Cleopatra was really the
last great is matriarch of ancient Egypt before the tide

(13:02):
turned in. Ancient Egypt became the very very early stages
of modern Egypt what it is today, as we see
Egyptian culture sort of ebbing and more Christian culture coming
in and up until a certain time in ancient Egypt,
much of the population was illiterate, and I think maybe

(13:23):
only two percent of Egyptian society could actually read and
write and an even smaller fraction of that were women
who could read and write. But when Cleopatrick came along,
she was very interested in making sure that women were
educated and that the people of Egypt had a role
to play in intellectual circles. And so her reign marked
the emersions of the Great Library at Alexandria, and so

(13:46):
as that became more of a part of Egyptian culture,
women i think found new careers for themselves as philosophers
or scribes or or learned people or academics at the
very least. And then when Chris and monks came in,
I think in for four a d they actually killed
a woman who they saw philosophizing and writing and that

(14:08):
was the end of that. So that's interesting, yeah, And
so you know, to wrap it all up, they the
ancient Egyptians can't be really said to be feminists, Like
they didn't have marches for women's votes and stuff like that.
There's nothing that's exactly analogous to what we think is
feminism today. But at the same time, historians note that
women were actually paid the same amount, like uh, the

(14:32):
for the same job. Women would get the same amount
of wages as a man, and that's something that historians note,
like we're still struggling with today. So in that in
that sense, you know, even though ancient Egypt was a
very patriarchal society, uh, it was really curious and have
its time in terms of gender issues. And if you
want to learn even more about ancient Egyptian society, be

(14:54):
sure to check out this article and others pertaining to
the Furrows and Clipatra, etcetera on how stuff works dot com.
And while you're there, be sure to check out our blog.
So if you missed in history class, Candice and I
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(15:19):
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