Terence DuQuesne

POWER ON THEIR OWN: Gender and social role in provincial New Kingdom Egypt

ABSTRACT

Current research by the author has led him to raise questions about gender, class, status,and religious devotion, and the relationships between them, in provincial Egypt of the New Kingdom. The starting-point for this presentation is an unparallelled cache of votive objects from the Salakhana tomb at Asyut. This trove includes about 500 stelae and constitutes by far the largest surviving collection of Egyptian votive objects, which have been the subject of study by the author for nearly a decade. It would seem that personal religious devotion in Asyut cut across divisions of class and gender. The author discusses some of the implications of his research for our understanding of social and religious life in a Middle Egyptian community during the Ramesside era.  The Salakhana stelae show a range of groupings, including husbands and wives with or without children, individual female and male donors, and two men together. A significant number of these objects were offered by women, including chantresses of Upwawet, who are depicted alone. The stelae contain information about the marital and social status of these women, but, irrespective of such factors, the donors were clearly acting on their own initiative in dedicating stelae to the local god Upwawet and to other divinities.

The author considers broader issues about the role of women and particularly the concept of the independent woman in ancient Egypt

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