Entry 11-Women at the Time of the Pharaohs

So a few days ago I picked up Nawal El Saadawi's book The Hidden Face of Eve since she is a very active Egyptian feminist and I had found her in a few articles. What I was interested in was that in a few other titles of hers she makes active reference to Ancient Egyptian women or goddesses.

I flipped to the table of contents in order to see if there were chapters that pertained more to my topic than others. And of course there was. Entitled "Women at the Time of the Pharaohs" it seemed to condense her discussion on that point particularly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this chapter touches a little bit on Ancient Egypt but more as a history of Patriarchy and how women lost their rights. This she links very easily up to an economic argument and the increase in Patriarchy. She uses dates and dynastic falls in order to craft her discussion but there is very little detail in what she brings to the Ancient "table". Her use of history, or to perhaps gender it or incorporate feminist discourse to it, falls upon old methods that don't really complicate or historicize the issues of how Ancient Egypt relates to modern values. She suggests that women were instantaneously relegated after a certain point in the Ancient world to domestic slaves. However, she seems to ignore many culturally Egyptian, or Islamic instances, where that is just untrue. There is quite a large body of historical information that suggests that women had a significant role in nomadic cultures.

Overall, it was an interesting chapter and definitely something that I can historicize and explore in my essay. I think her work is particularly important in looking at an extreme branch of feminism that takes precedence from the muslim world but uses western ideas.