Women in Antiquity: From Marginalization to Prominence

Abstract

Despite the fact that royal women in Antiquity played a major dynastic role, historical accounts either ignored them or mentioned them merely as appendages to kings. Beginning in the 1970s, a major change transpired due to the impact of women’s and gender studies. Numerous studies on the role of royal women in Antiquity were published, shedding light upon previously unknown women. This new understanding of royal women in Antiquity has implications for historical scholarship and its methodologies as well as for attitudes towards contemporary female leaders, who can be viewed as a continuation of an ancient tradition. The escalating interest in royal women in Antiquity from the 1970s onwards has launched a plethora of studies bringing to light the varied roles and actions of royal women that were previously obscured.1 This new knowledge has not only contributed to a better understanding of the role of women in Antiquity but also of the events and processes in which these women played a major role. June Hannam points out another effect of these historical studies: The writing of women’s history has always been closely linked with contemporary feminist politics as well as with changes in the discipline of history itself. When women sought to question inequalities in their own lives they turned to history to understand the roots of their oppression and to see what they could learn from challenges that had been made in the past. 2 Looking back upon the past two centuries of scholarship , this article will examine the impact of women’s and gender studies upon the scholarly evaluation of the role of royal women in Antiquity in general, and of Jewish aristocratic women in the Second Temple Period in particular.3 Such an investigation has implications for historical scholarship and its methodologies as well as for attitudes towards contemporary female leaders. Although one may claim that aristocratic women do not represent the majority of women, one must remember that the ordinary woman (and even man) was seldom mentioned in ancient texts. Therefore royal women lend themselves well to such an analysis due to their presence, even if minor, in ancient writings. I would like to preface this analysis with an examination of the difference between women’s and gender studies as they relate to the field of history. Women’s studies commenced in force in the 1970s, focusing upon women as active agents in the historical narrative.4 This new field involved reading * Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Israel. Email: etka.liebowitz@mail.huji.ac.il 1 For example, the Macedonian queen Arsinoë II (ca. 316-270/268 BCE), who played a major role in affaires d’État and was even viewed as a deity (see Elizabeth Carney, Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013]); the Seleucid queen Laodike II (240-190) who obtained political authority through euergetism (see Gillian Ramsey, “The Queen and the City: Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities,” Gender and History 23 [November 2011]: 510-27); Cleopatra I who ruled Egypt as a regent for her minor son, Ptolemy VI, for four years (from 180 BCE) until her death in 176 BCE (see Grace Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt [Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1932], 145-7, and the later study by Sarah Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra [New York: Schocken, 1984], 23); Cleopatra II who ruled jointly with her siblings and then her daughter (see John Whitehorne, Cleopatras [London: Routledge, 1994], 89-102; 103-20); Cleopatra III who reigned from 116-101 BCE and even obtained the position of priest in the royal cult in 105 BCE, which was usually only held by a king (see Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens, 161-70; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 24; Whitehorne, Cleopatras, 121-31; 132-48); Cleopatra Berenice III who inherited the Ptolemaic throne in 80 BCE (Whitehorne, Cleopatras, 176-7); and Cleopatra VII who succeeded her father in 51 BCE, initially reigned alone, then jointly with her siblings (Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens, 184-223, Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 24-8, Jane Rowlandson, ed., Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt; A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37). 2 See June Hannam, “Women’s History, Feminist History” in http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/womens_history.html 3 This article will only discuss Jewish women in the Second Temple Period, from 586 BCE 70 CE, and not later rabbinic sources, which is a separate topic in and of itself. 4 For a discussion of this topic see Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 17-20; Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds its Path: Placing Women in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 14580; Gisela Bock, “Women’s History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate,” Gender and History 1/1 (Spring 1989). 104 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 13 (2019) between the lines, against the grain, and looking for what is not written since ancient texts were edited and copied throughout the centuries, and women often were “lost” in this process.5 Gender studies started in the 1970s and became established by the 1990s. Using the concept of gender as a tool of historical analysis, it investigates representations of women in male-authored texts as well as gender identities and the difference between the categories of male and female in history .6 Both women’s and gender studies involve feminist research which “...has brought new perspectives, discovered new data, opened up valuable new areas for enquiry, generated new debates, and simultaneously established itself as an essential component of all forms of holistic analysis.”7 I posit that the fact that such studies in the discipline of Antiquity were undertaken by serious scholars (the majority women), who studied sources in-depth in their original language and drew conclusions based on tested scholarly methods, facilitated the acceptance of these studies by the broader scholarly