Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Author:Elizabeth Wayland Barber [Barber, Elizabeth Wayland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1995-09-16T22:00:00+00:00

1The exact readings of these early cuneiform signs are uncertain but need not concern us here. Many of the splendid artifacts described below are on display in the University Museum in Philadelphia and the British Museum in London.

8

Land of Linen

The Egyptians do practically everything backwards from other people, in their customs and laws—among which the women go to market and make deals, whereas the men stay at home and weave; and other folk weave by pushing the weft upwards, but the Egyptians push it down. Men carry burdens on their heads, whereas women do so on their shoulders. The women piss standing up, and the men sitting down.

—Herodotus, Histories, 2.35–36

Herodotus, who lived in Greece in the fifth century B.C., invented the notion of history as an independent form of study, using the word historia—literally “research, a seeking out”—at the start of his book on the Greco-Persian Wars of 490–480 B.C.: “This is the laying out of the historia [research] of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. . . .” Other Greek authors soon copied the new genre. Thus began “history” as we know it. Of course, to reconstruct the details of ancient life for periods after people began to write “history” is much easier than to mine the earlier periods we deal with here. And Herodotus’ book provides an especially rich mine of information, for he was curious about everything. Throughout his extensive travels to research the Persian Wars he inquired about anything that caught his attention—and threw it all into his book. Thus his visit to the land of the Nile (fig. 8.1) yielded a lengthy description of Egypt and its people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.