Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt by Uroš Matić

Author:Uroš Matić [Matić, Uroš]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367356200
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

4

Objects of desire: men, women, and children as spoils of war

In this chapter, I consider noncombatants during wartime.1 Textual and iconographic sources offer evidence that foreign men, women, and children were taken as spoils of war to Egypt over several millennia. Numerous lists from private and royal documents (stelae, temple walls, or papyri) identify these individuals as spoils of war. In addition, representations of men taken as prisoners of war appear both in private tombs and on temple reliefs. Similarly, private tombs dating to the Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, and Middle Kingdom contain representations of women and children as the spoils of war. During the New Kingdom, foreigners’ procession (tribute) scenes, sometimes with women and children as prisoners of war, are displayed in private tombs and on temple reliefs. In this chapter, I also discuss images of foreign women who are bound prisoners, such as those from the tomb of Kheruef (TT 192) from the time of Amenhotep III and on Amarna period talatat blocks from Luxor and Hermopolis. Talatat blocks of standardized size (c. 27 by 27 by 54 cm) were used as a building material during the reign of Akhenaten. Evidence from these blocks indicates, as I argue, that royal representations of smiting of the enemy were gendered. Namely, kings smote and trampled male captives, whereas queens, namely Tiye and Nefertiti, did the same to their female enemies. In Chapters 2 and 3, we have seen that physical violence, such as rape, committed by Egyptian men against Egyptian women, is documented in texts but not in visual art. In this chapter, I will discuss textual and visual examples of foreign women who experienced physical violence at the hands of Egyptian men. Contrary to Egyptian women, foreign women were sometimes depicted as victims of violence and we need to understand the context and background frame (sensu Butler) of such representations. However, unlike in many ancient and modern societies where war-time rape is well documented,2 ancient Egyptian sources are silent on this matter.

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.