Women and Power in Ancient Egypt

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2021

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kara Cooney has been studying 6 of the remarkable female pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. In this episode she explains why many of them have been forgotten, and others regularly misrepresented. Professor of Egytian Art and Archaeology at UCLA, Kara introduces us to the lives and rules of Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret and Cleopatra, and explains how their reigns were used as tools of control in a patriarchal society.

Kara is the author of: 'When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt'.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Ancient's on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast
0:08.2	we are talking about women and power in Ancient Egypt. This is an incredible topic. We're
0:14.2	covering hundreds of years of history because we're going from the first dynasty of Egypt
0:19.7	all the way down to the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC. Now joining me to talk through this
0:26.0	incredible history I was delighted to get on the show Professor Cara Cooney from UCLA.
0:32.6	Cara has done a lot of work about women and power in Ancient Egypt. She's written books such as
0:36.8	Hatchepsearch, She Who Would Be King, and she's also written a book entitled When Women
0:42.1	Ruleed the World, which focuses on six key women from Ancient Egyptian history,
0:48.0	five of which became kings. That's right, not queens, kings in their own right. So in this podcast
0:54.9	we're going to go through those six figures without further ado. Here's Cara.
1:03.7	Cara, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Now Ancient Egypt,
1:10.5	when women ruled the world, this book that you've written, is Ancient Egypt one of the only places
1:14.9	in the ancient world that consistently allowed female rule. It is. It's the only place in the ancient
1:21.2	world I've found that allowed consistent formal rule in which women not only ruled behind the
1:26.9	scenes, behind the throne, through other men, but formally as nothing less than king, which is why I
1:33.9	use the phrase female king rather than queen because for the ancient Egyptians queen can
1:38.8	noted no political power. King did and when a woman rose to that position, which I would count
1:45.4	as five times, that would be Nephryssobec, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, potentially Tawasret, and then Cleopatra,
1:53.7	depending on how one defines a king, though I don't think Nesut is there in relation to Cleopatra's
1:59.5	name, but many other monarchers have masculineized kingship are. And so that's the unusual thing. You
2:05.2	could compare Ancient Egypt to a place like Ancient China where you also see very regular systematic
2:12.1	use of women to protect a family group of family dynasty in an authoritarian, in their case,
	...

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