I
visited above website to learn more about women in the Ramesside Period and
learned some interesting things. I found it most interesting that all texts
concerning women were written and procured by men. This raises the question:
how accurate is their portrayal? Sweeney mentions that women were often more
aggressive and socially unacceptable in court because of their lack of
practice. This article, also written by Sweeney, mentions that “It is likely
that the repetitions and hesitations of spoken utterances were weeded out when
the written record was compiled, and it is uncertain how accurately the written
record represents spoken utterances.” A good question to consider then is did
women adapt their speech to fit the men’s conventions? Or did the male scribe
writing all this down change it to something more familiar to him?
Outside
of legal texts, Sweeney talks about mourning traditions (women were more apt to
express doubt about the afterlife and lament the loss of their loved ones more
than men). That’s just an aside, and pretty irrelevant, but I found it
interesting.
On further
reading about the actual roles of women in society, I discovered that women mostly occupied the position of mistress of the house, in charge of day to day
operations and the servants. It isn’t surprising then, that essentially every
example of a woman appearing in court had something to do with her slaves (the
adoption of them etc.). It was also common for a husband to beat his wife, but
she had the right to ask for protection before court. Whether or not that was
actually taken advantage of is doubtful, but if one exists I’d love to read
about that trial and the rhetorical moves the woman makes. Considering the
Egyptian hesitancy to slander others, it might be difficult to navigate that
territory to say the least.
This
text was interesting, helpful, and I’m happy I did more research as it deepened
my understanding of Egypt during the Ramesside Period and why such rhetorical
devices were used.
Further sources:
After reading over the blog posts from Monday, I was particularly struck by your discussion of a scribe’s portrayal of women. Annie also brings this up in her post. You both make a valid point that through summary and authorial perception, scribes (who were typically male) may not have portrayed women in court accurately. This made me start to wonder who exactly these scribes may have been, in order to think about their portrayals of women. Were they older or younger, had families? Surely their background might shape their portrayal of a woman. I found a source on Google Books, The Esoteric Codex, by Christopher Welde (the web address is long, so its at the end of my comment).
ReplyDeleteOn pages 7 through 8 he talks about dating texts as well as attributing authorship. Typically, he says, texts were either anonymous, or were pseudonymous and falsely attributed to an important male figure, going on to say, “The real authors of some Ramesside Period teaching texts were acknowledged, but these cases are rare, localized, and do not typify mainstream works” (7-8). And so the study becomes even more complicated! If a text is written under a pseudonym, or is credited to a particular king for example, we might form conclusions about the author and how his background affects his work, only to find out that he wasn’t the author! While being able to name a particular author might not be so important (does it matter that the author of X text was named Y?), it may be useful to know about the author’s background, which begins by knowing who he or she is.
https://books.google.com/books?id=kWLxCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=authorship+in+ancient+egyptian+texts&source=bl&ots=szh0mY5oAi&sig=RQ8sb5cQ8aVMZMyhXUJqy1_t2TQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAWoVChMI4cum85ivyAIVwjWICh1tAQLf#v=onepage&q=authorship%20in%20ancient%20egyptian%20texts&f=false
Good stuff! Ok, that's it....
ReplyDeleteAnyway... when you say: "whether or not that [women going to court for being beaten] was taken advantage of is doubtful" are you saying that women were probably unlikely to go to court for being beaten? Why do you think?
Patrick Kane (a NHL player for the Chicago Blackhawks) was recently accused of rape. He's high profile, and many would often say that the only reason he was accused is because of his money, and that the girl is obviously after it. Just because we're oft to think that a high-profile player such as him (he's really good) would never put himself in a situation where he could be accused of such an atrocious crime.
However, I've been paying very close attention to this case, and it's very interesting how a lot of it has gone down. First, it's been very publicized so both attorneys have used the public spectrum to slander their opposition. Second, there has been an apparent tampering with the evidence of the rape kit. In lieu of these developments, the female's attorney dropped the case saying: "this is why women rarely come forward in rape cases."
However, it was later discovered that the rape kit tampering was a hoax; regardless, the girl's attorney still dropped out.
There's obviously a few questions. The rape kit was reportedly opened and placed at the doorstep of the mother of the victim. Who placed this false evidence there? Did the mother try and do some apparent tampering to give the impression of a breach of protocol? Did the mother lie? Did Kane's group perhaps drop the fake evidence there in an attempt to show how unprepared their opposition was?
Either way, the public nature of the case through every form of private investigation out, and many in-depth details were released to the public.
I suppose how I am trying to relate this is a question wondering whether or not the treatment of women in court is a systemic issue. It would be interesting to see if there is any record of women bringing to court their abuse during this era, how would their treatment relate to the present day treatment of a similar issue.
If you're interested in reading a synopsis of the ongoing Kane case, here's a link to how it was handled:
http://depauliaonline.com/opinions/2015/10/04/no-true-winners-patrick-kane-investigation/
By the way, he's got a girlfriend and the girl who accused him was definitely not his girlfriend, and his girlfriend is still with him. It's just strange to me the treatment of women in the public spectrum and in court, and I figured I'd bring in a relevant issue.
Good stuff! Ok, that's it....
ReplyDeleteAnyway... when you say: "whether or not that [women going to court for being beaten] was taken advantage of is doubtful" are you saying that women were probably unlikely to go to court for being beaten? Why do you think?
Patrick Kane (a NHL player for the Chicago Blackhawks) was recently accused of rape. He's high profile, and many would often say that the only reason he was accused is because of his money, and that the girl is obviously after it. Just because we're oft to think that a high-profile player such as him (he's really good) would never put himself in a situation where he could be accused of such an atrocious crime.
However, I've been paying very close attention to this case, and it's very interesting how a lot of it has gone down. First, it's been very publicized so both attorneys have used the public spectrum to slander their opposition. Second, there has been an apparent tampering with the evidence of the rape kit. In lieu of these developments, the female's attorney dropped the case saying: "this is why women rarely come forward in rape cases."
However, it was later discovered that the rape kit tampering was a hoax; regardless, the girl's attorney still dropped out.
There's obviously a few questions. The rape kit was reportedly opened and placed at the doorstep of the mother of the victim. Who placed this false evidence there? Did the mother try and do some apparent tampering to give the impression of a breach of protocol? Did the mother lie? Did Kane's group perhaps drop the fake evidence there in an attempt to show how unprepared their opposition was?
Either way, the public nature of the case through every form of private investigation out, and many in-depth details were released to the public.
I suppose how I am trying to relate this is a question wondering whether or not the treatment of women in court is a systemic issue. It would be interesting to see if there is any record of women bringing to court their abuse during this era, how would their treatment relate to the present day treatment of a similar issue.
If you're interested in reading a synopsis of the ongoing Kane case, here's a link to how it was handled:
http://depauliaonline.com/opinions/2015/10/04/no-true-winners-patrick-kane-investigation/
By the way, he's got a girlfriend and the girl who accused him was definitely not his girlfriend, and his girlfriend is still with him. It's just strange to me the treatment of women in the public spectrum and in court, and I figured I'd bring in a relevant issue.
I particularly enjoyed your post, as I too have been wondering how much the scribe's voice overcomes the actually speaker. Being that scribes only made up about 1% of the population they are likely to be a certain class of people with biases that will effect the way they recorded various situations. Throughout the semester I have wondered if this is a common occurrence in most of the ancient societies we have been looking into. As I'm going to guess that Egypt was not the only society that a very small portion of the society was literate. Therefore many ancient societies' written histories have likely suffered for the bias of the scribes.
ReplyDeleteThe way women are portrayed by men is something that I also find very interesting, because like you said, it raises questions about how accurately they were portrayed and why,which frustrates me because as was mentioned in class, these aren't questions that we can ever have answers to.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you mentioned that women were more likely to mourn their loved ones and express doubt about the afterlife. I wonder if that was actually more common with women, or if they just had more freedom to express that doubt.Since men tended to be in more positions of power, they might have had to hide their own feelings because of their position, leaving the women to be the ones to talk about their doubts and feelings instead.
The way women are portrayed by men is something that I also find very interesting, because like you said, it raises questions about how accurately they were portrayed and why,which frustrates me because as was mentioned in class, these aren't questions that we can ever have answers to.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you mentioned that women were more likely to mourn their loved ones and express doubt about the afterlife. I wonder if that was actually more common with women, or if they just had more freedom to express that doubt.Since men tended to be in more positions of power, they might have had to hide their own feelings because of their position, leaving the women to be the ones to talk about their doubts and feelings instead.