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McKelvey School of Engineering

Brown School

CANCELED: 'A picture is worth 1,000 words: Evidence of Female Literacy in Ancient Egypt'

Monday, April 13, 2020 | 6:00 PM

CANCELED

Egyptian women, particularly those of the Old Kingdom, enjoyed a wide-range of religious and administrative titles. While these may reflect actual employment outside the home, which provided some economic independence to the women who bore them, all too often the significance of such titles is downplayed and the titles dismissed as “honorific.” Evidence for women’s literacy, their employment and/or their economic independence has thus been systematically ignored, dismissed, or misinterpreted. Attitudes dismissive of women’s literacy not only run against modern feminist sensibilities, but also risk ignoring Egyptian evidence, refusing to assess it on its own merits and to understand the culture on its own terms. To date, only one study (Bryan 1985) attempted to systematically present evidence of female literacy, as presented in iconographic scenes preserved on the walls of New Kingdom tombs. Expanding on Bryan’s work, this paper will outline and synthesize iconographic evidence for female literacy dating to the Old Kingdom through the Third Intermediate Period and will argue that women may have been more literate than had hitherto been assumed.

Event Type

Lectures & Presentations

Schools

Arts & Sciences

Topic

Humanities & Society

Website

https://artsci.wustl.edu/events/pictu...

Department
Art History and Archaeology, Classics, Religious Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Event Contact

artarch@wustl.edu

Speaker Information

Mariam Ayad, associate professor of Egyptology, American University in Cairo

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