So it’s the women who are the greatest successes in the story who are the most successfully erased. It’s the same as being a successful female in a meeting or a successful female who shares a great idea with her boss and her boss takes that idea into the meeting while she sits there meekly, letting the boss take it for his or her own because it’s a successful, great idea. Whereas success is doing what everyone did before you and what everyone will do after you. When you are a failure, it’s aberrant, strange and it spins a good tale. Cleopatra failed in her efforts to hold on to power and hold onto native rule in Egypt. Why is she the one? Do we just have more materials related to her?Ī: No, it’s because when you are successful, you can very easily be erased. Q: People who have been to Egypt probably know the name Hatshepsut and maybe Nefertiti, but clearly the most pervasive female cultural Egyptian reference is Cleopatra. What matters is how people rule and whose agendas are served. It doesn’t matter if we have a female president. I want to look at our world the same way. In the end, did women rule the world? Yes, they did rule the world but did it change anything? No. Women work for the patriarchy without thinking about it, all the time. It’s not about anything but protecting the status quo, the rich staying rich, the patriarchy staying in charge and the system continuing. It’s not about feminists moving forward, it’s not about the feminist agenda. This is the most interesting part to me because then the whole tragedy of the study, of the book, is that this is not about feminism at all. That story also always includes examples of how women are used as tools to make sure the authoritarian regime flourishes. Their attempts to rule was really about keeping the set structure in place.Ī: Studying Egypt is a study of power, and specifically of how to maintain the power of the one over the many. Q: Your book illustrates that Egyptian society valued and embraced women’s rule when it was deemed necessary, but these are not instances of feminism. presidential primary campaign that includes more women candidates than ever before, we asked Cooney about themes of female power and what Egypt can illuminate for us. In her latest National Geographic book, “When Women Ruled the World” Kara Cooney, professor of Egyptian art and architecture and chair of the UCLA Department of Near East Languages and Cultures tells the stories of these six women: Merneith (some time between 3000–2890 B.C.), Neferusobek (1777–1773 B.C.), Hatshepshut (1473–1458 B.C.), Nefertiti (1338–1336 B.C.), Tawroset (1188–1186 B.C.) and Cleopatra (51–30 B.C.).Īs we ponder Women’s History Month, and look forward toward a U.S. With the exception of Cleopatra, most remain a mystery to the world at large, their names unpronounceable, their personal thoughts and inner lives unrecorded, their deeds and images often erased by the male kings that followed, especially if the women were successful. They inherited famines and economic disasters. ![]() ![]() Their tenures prevented civil wars among the widely interbred families of social elites. Nearly all of them achieved power under the auspices of attempting to protect the throne for the next male in line. Several ruled only briefly, and only as the last option in their respective failing family line. ![]() Over the course of 3,000 years of Egypt’s history, six women ascended to become female kings of the fertile land and sit atop its authoritarian power structure.
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