Table Of ContentWOMEN IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
Inthisbook,GuyD.Middletonexploresthefascinatinglivesofthirtyreal
women of the ancient Mediterranean from the Palaeolithic to the
Byzantine era. They include queens and aristocrats, such as the Pharoah
Hatshepsut and the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti; Eritha and Karpathia,
Bronze Age priestesses from the Aegean; a Pompeiian prostitute called
Eutychis; the pagan philosopher Hypatia and the Christian saint Perpetua,
fromNorthAfrica,aswellaswomenfromsmallercommunities.Middleton
uses a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence, including
burials and funerary practices, graffiti, inscriptions, painted pottery, hand-
prints,humanremains, and avarietyof historical texts, aswellas the latest
modern research. His volume weaves together the stories of real women,
placing them firmly in the spotlight of history. Engagingly written and up
todateinitsscholarship,Middleton’sbookoffersnewinsightsforstudents
and researchers in Ancient History, Archaeology and Mediterranean
Studies, aswell as inWomen’sHistory.
Guy D. Middleton completed his PhD in the Department of Classics and
Ancient History at Durham University. He is the author of Understanding
Collapse: Ancient History and Modern Myths (Cambridge University Press,
2017)andisVisitingFellow atNewcastleUniversity aswellasaFellowof
the Royal Historical Society.
Published online by Cambridge University Press
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WOMEN IN THE ANCIENT
MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
FROM THE PALAEOLITHIC TO THE
BYZANTINES
GUY D. MIDDLETON
University of NewcastleuponTyne
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names:Middleton,GuyD.,author.
title:WomenintheancientMediterraneanworld:fromthePalaeolithictotheByzantines/
GuyD.Middleton,UniversityofNewcastleuponTyne.
description:Cambridge,UnitedKingdom;NewYork,NY:CambridgeUniversityPress,
2023.|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
identifiers:lccn2022044117(print)|lccn2022044118(ebook)|isbn9781108481137
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subjects:lcsh:Women–MediterraneanRegion–History.|Women–Mediterranean
Region–Socialconditions.|Women–MediterraneanRegion–Biography.
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For Ellie and Charlotte
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that which half emerges from the dim background of time is
strangely stirring
D.H.Lawrence,SketchesofEtruscanPlaces
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CONTENTS
Preface page ix
Acknowledgements xiv
Timeline xvi
Historical Contexts xviii
INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING WOMEN
IN PREHISTORY AND HISTORY 1
part i the deep past 23
1 WOMEN IN CAVES 27
2 A WOMAN OF ÇATALHÖYÜK 34
3 A WOMAN OF GOZO 42
part ii the bronze age 49
4 MERNEITH 55
5 ŠIMATUM AND KIRUM 62
6 THE WOMAN OF LA ALMOLOYA 68
7 THE PRIESTESS OF ANEMOSPILIA 75
8 HATSHEPSUT 82
9 PUDUHEPA 89
10 ERITHA AND KARPATHIA 95
11 HATIBA 102
vii
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viii CONTENTS
part iii the iron age 109
12 NAUNAKHTE 113
13 HERSE 119
14 PKPUPES 125
15 ATOSSA 132
16 THE PRINCESS OF VIX 138
17 ARISTONICE 143
18 NEAIRA 149
19 PHANOSTRATE 155
part iv the hellenistic worlds 161
20 OLYMPIAS 165
21 SEIANTI HANUNIA TLESNASA 172
22 TERENTIA 179
23 MARIAMNE 188
part v the age of empire 195
24 CLEOPATRA SELENE 199
25 EUTYCHIS 206
26 ACHILLIA AND AMAZON 212
27 PERPETUA 219
28 ZENOBIA 227
29 HYPATIA 236
30 THEODORA 243
Notes 251
Select Bibliography 284
Index 289
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PREFACE
In 1361–1362, the Italian writer Boccaccio wrote his De Mulieribus Claris, or
Famous Women – a book, he explained in the dedication to Lady Andrea
Acciauoli of Florence, ‘in praise of women’.1 This was the first book in the
Western tradition to exclusively compile women’s biographies – to save a
recordoftheirlivesandinparticulartheirgreatdeedsforposterity.Thebook,
whichisstillinprint,consistsof106livesofwomen,mythicalandreal,mostly
drawn from the ‘pagan’ Graeco-Roman tradition. Arranged in chronological
order, Boccaccio starts with the biblical Eve and ends with Joanna, queen of
Sicily. Giving details of their origins and describing why each woman became
famous, the lives are not simple factual biographies; they identify virtue and
2
vice, assign praise and blame, and draw moral judgements. Praiseworthy
women are often called ‘manly’, whilst weak men are ‘womanly’. The book
provides examples for how women ought and ought not to behave, written
from a male perspective.
Four decadeslater, in 1405,an Italian émigré to France, Christine dePizan,
also published a book of women’s lives – The Book of the City of Ladies.3
Although much of the material appears to derive from Boccaccio, de Pizan’s
work is somewhat more complex than Boccaccio’s and we read in it a
woman’s own reaction to ‘all manner of philosophers, poets and orators too
numerous to mention, who all seem to speak with one voice and are unani-
mous in their view that female nature is wholly given up to vice’.4 Perhaps
with some irony, she explains how, through reading the works on women of
so many ‘learned men, who seemed to be endowed with such great intelli-
gence’ and not listening to her own judgement, knowledge, and experience,
she fell into despair about herself and women in general. So many wise men
could not be wrong. De Pizan prayed and three women appeared to her:
Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. They persuaded her that she and the learned
men were wrong, that women had lacked a true defender, and they bid her
create, in ‘the field of Letters’, a City of Ladies – ‘a walled city, sturdy and
impregnable’.5
Christine de Pizan is perhaps the first female ‘defender’ of women; she
argued that men had got it wrong, and she used the lives she wrote to show
this. But like Boccaccio, and many more ancient authors, she is very much
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