WOMEN'S LEGAL RIGHTS
Egyptian women had legal rights to all defined areas of society. From
the remains of the legal documents, we know that women could manage and sell
private property, including: land, portable goods, servants, slaves, livestock,
and money. She could appear as an equal in a marriage contract or a divorce
contract; she could execute testaments; she could free slaves; she could make
adoptions. She was entitled to sue someone by law. It is highly significant
that a woman in Egypt could do all of the above and go to court freely without
the need of a male representative.
WOMEN'S OCCUPATIONS
The work of the upper and middle class woman was limited to the home
and the family. This was not because of an inferior legal status, but was probably
a consequence of her role as mother and bearer of children. As far as occupations
go, in sources upper class woman are occasionally described as holding an office,
and thus they might have executed real jobs. Clearly, though, this phenomenon
was more prevalent in the Old Kingdom than in later periods (perhaps due to
the lower population at that time). In Wente's publication of Egyptian letters,
he notes that of 353 letters known from Egypt, only 13 provide evidence of
women functioning with varying degrees of administrative authority.
FEMALE LITERACY
It
is uncertain how literate the Egyptian woman was in any period. Resources suggest
very low figures for the percentage of the literate in the Egypt population,
i.e., only about 1% in the Old Kingdom (i.e., 1 in 20 or 30 males). Other Egyptologists
would dispute these estimates, seeing instead an amount at about 5-10% of the
population. In any event, it is certain that the rate of literacy of Egyptian
women was well behind that of men from the Old Kingdom through the Late Period.
Lower class women, certainly were illiterate; middle class women and the wives
of professional men, perhaps less so. The upper class probably had a higher
rate of literate women. In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, middle and upper class
women are occasionally found in the textual and archaeological record with administrative
titles that are indicative of a literate ability.
WOMEN IN PUBLIC
The Egyptian woman was free to move about in public; she worked out in the fields
and in estate workshops. However, it was perhaps unsafe for an Egyptian woman
to venture far from her town alone. Ramesses III boasts in one inscription,
"I enabled the woman of Egypt to go her own way, her journeys being extended
where she wanted, without any person assaulting her on the road."
CONCLUSION
The position of women in Egyptian society was unique in the ancient
world. The Egyptian female enjoyed much of the same legal and economic rights
as the Egyptian male--within the same social class. However, how their legal
freedoms related to their status as defined by custom and folk tradition is
more difficult to ascertain. In general, social position in Egypt was based,
not on gender, but on social rank. On the other hand, the ability to move through
the social classes did exist for the Egyptians. Ideally, the same would have
been true for women. However, one private letter of the New Kingdom from a husband
to his wife shows us that while a man could take his wife with him, as he moved
up in rank, it would not have been unusual for such a man to divorce her and
take a new wife more in keeping with his new and higher social status. Still,
self-made women certainly did exist in Egypt.
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