Ancient Egyptian women owned land, signed contracts and took their spouses to court, millennia before modern feminism emerged.
Legal records show women not only as mothers and wives, but also as property owners, parties to contracts, litigants and economic partners.
They could also end a marriage.
Egyptologists call for paying attention to this history as the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child on October 11. The rights ancient Egyptian women held as adults, they say,helped shape the society where they grew up.
Egyptologist Magdy Shaker quoted French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt (1913-2011): “Egyptian women led happy lives in a country where equality between the sexes seemed natural”.
“The ancient Egyptian civilisation produced some of the first laws on women’s role, most notably marriage laws,” Shaker told The Egyptian Gazette.
These laws, he added, were based on mutual respect between spouses and gave wives authority over the household.
“Women had inheritance rights equal to those of men,” he noted.
A wife was entitled to a third of her husband’s wealth if he divorced her without cause. Husbands also sought burial beside their wives, whom they regarded as life partners.
Legal documents show women could manage and dispose of private property, including land, goods and livestock, according to Shaker.
They could also sign contracts covering marriage, divorce and purchases, and bring lawsuits. Papyri and wall paintings indicate that women’s testimony was accepted in court.
A prenuptial agreement on display at the University of Chicago offers one example. The papyrus, about 2.4 metres long, was signed in 365 BC and written in Demotic, a cursive script used in ancient Egypt.
It stipulated that, if the marriage broke down, the wife would receive 1.2 silver coins and 36 sacks of grain a year in compensation.
The document also points to women’s rights to own, manage and sell property, and to sign marriage and divorce agreements.
“Women’s standing extended into religion,” Shaker said.
Goddesses stood alongside gods: Maat was associated with justice, Hathor with love and Sekhmet with power. Women served as high priestesses, and Queen Hatshepsut held the title ‘God’s Hand’.
Egyptologist Hussein Bassir, meanwhile, urged caution when it comes to the issue of the age of marriage.
As far as he knows, there is no known law in ancient Egypt that set a uniform age at which a girl would marry.
“Evidence about brides’ ages is scarce and practices varied by period and social class,” Bassir told The Gazette.
He ruled out information about ancient Egyptian women being deprived of inheritance as “incorrect”.
Children, he said, received their rightful shares of their parents’ estates.
Bassir cited the will of Naunakhte, a woman from the New Kingdom workers’ village of Deir el-Medina, who decided to receive her property.
“She was not a mere recipient of inheritance but an owner of wealth who could legally decide her fate,” he said of the woman.
Women could also buy and sell, make contracts and go to court, Bassir said. Some of them managed their children’s money.
“It is more accurate to say that ancient Egyptian women enjoyed a significant degree of legal and economic independence,” Bassir, also the director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, said.
“Rights varied, however, across periods and social classes,” he added.
Ancient Egypt also had women who rose to positions of power, including Hatshepsut. Peseshet is often described as the earliest known woman physician, while Nebet is identified as the first recorded female vizier.
“History does not move in a straight line from darkness to light,” Bassir said.
“Rights present in one era may diminish in another, only to be demanded again centuries later,” he added.
