Women’s Agency in the Cults of the Greco-Egyptian Deities in Hellenistic Athens

Abstract

Cults for Greco-Egyptian gods such as Isis, Sarapis, Anubis, and Harpocrates enjoyed great interest in the Greek world of the Hellenistic period. This article analyses the agency of women in these cults in Hellenistic Athens and Delos. It poses the question whether the agency of women can be directly compared to the agency of men. It identifies, first, reservations in modern scholarship about women in positions of religious power, and, second, institutional boundaries that excluded women from official priestly positions. It demonstrates the ways in which women nonetheless held agency within family networks, and, third, possessed ritual competencies beyond formal offices and a relationship to deities on a personal level.