INTRODUCTION
A
basic level of food, clothing and shelter was all anyone even dreamed of
achieving in a stone-age hunting and gathering society.
The best hunter might have earned the right to the choicest cut of meat,
but otherwise everyone was more or less equal.
The switch to an agricultural economy changed that by creating the
opportunity for surplus food that could be used to pay specialists to produce
something beyond mere necessities.
An
agricultural society was a wealthier one, but a new set of problems emerged.
Communities without wealth were tempted to declare war on those that were
rich. People who had accumulated a
little extra feared those with less would steal it.
Food reserves were needed for the inevitable periods of famine.
The trade that increased wealth for everyone was possible only in an
orderly society.
The state
was the invention that was created to solve these problems.
There can be no doubt that the state, with its system of government and
law, did increase the total wealth of a community, but a new set of problems
emerged that humanity is still struggling to resolve thousands of years later:
uneven distribution of wealth, rigid class barriers, and unequal gender status.
We
tend to think of “women’s liberation” and feminism as a late Twentieth
Century phenomenon, but even in the ancient world there were a few women who
carved out significant roles for themselves, and the status of women varied
considerably from one civilization to another.
This web site will look at the lives of these women and at the lives of
their more ordinary sisters.
Every
society has its own way of looking at the world and any attempt to examine one
age through the eyes of another is bound to result in misunderstanding.
The ancient and modern worlds are different in many ways, but four have
an impact on our study of the place and role of women in the past.
1.
Jobs
Parents
in a modern industrialized country expect their children to grow up, get a
job, and move out to live on their own. Most
people in the ancient world made their living through agriculture.
Since farming requires ownership of, or at least, access to land,
agriculture was of necessity a family business.
There
was a small middle class. Depending
on the society, it consisted of priests, scribes, bureaucrats and craftsmen.
These pursuits did provide jobs in our sense of the word, but more
often than not the jobs went to the sons of previous workers.
The family then was still necessary to find work.
Rome
and New Kingdom Egypt had standing armies, but most of the soldiers were
single men and therefore outside the scope of this web site.
Jobs
for women were largely limited to work as household servants. Gender
bias is a part, but only a part, of the reason unattached women had such a
difficult time in the ancient world. Marriage was an important component
of the economic as well as the social system of the ancient world, and men
also had a difficult time outside of the army if they were beyond the support
of a family.
2.
Marriage
Marriage
was the normal state in the ancient world. Athenian men put it off until
the age of 30 or so, but most everyone else, male or female, married soon
after puberty.
A
single women might find employment in a temple or as a household servant, but
otherwise she would have trouble supporting herself. A single man could
provide food, but might not have the time to prepare it or make his clothes,
etc.
Life
was harsh and death lurked around every corner. A high birth rate was
essential if society was to survive, and a man or woman lucky enough to reach
old age would need a son to provide support.
3.
Family
Access
to land for farming (the dominant occupation) was only available through the
family.
In
the absence of government sponsored social services it was the family that
cared for the sick and the old.
4.
Individual and society
The
modern world tends to stress the individual. A particular cultural or
ethnic group may want to enforce its traditions on all members of the group,
but developed economies tend to emphasize individual freedoms in some sort of
charter or bill of rights. The ancient world, however, stressed the
needs of the group over the rights of the individual.
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