Powerful Bronze Age Women in Spain
When someone says they’ve found new archaeological evidence of powerful women in the Bronze Age, I certainly perk up. Iberian women, it turns out. With crowns.
Home »
Bronze Age Women
Archaeology: Women’s Voices from Mesopotamia
Understandably, contemporary historians often bemoan the lack of women’s voices from the past amidst the male-centered records of events. Fortunately, the clay tablets containing letters from Assyrian women (about 1860 BCE) provide a refreshing exception. They are full of business savvy, a range of concerns for the well-being of their households and, unlike the male business correspondence of this place and time, strong emotions.
Hittite Midwifery: Magic or Medicine
Midwifery: Magic or Medicine, my panel talk at the Historical Novel Society Convention in Denver 2015
A Suitable Job for a Woman: Powerful Ancient Women Where You Don’t Expect Them
How the evidence shows surprisingly powerful ancient women to portray in my novel. Thought women were marginalized until the modern period? Think again!
Dressing a Trojan or Hittite Queen
Find out how I dress my royal characters from the Trojan and Hittite world–the evidence is a bit unusual!
Mycenaean Kingship, Matrilineal Succession & Female Power by Laura Gill
In a guest post Laura Gill argues against the matrilineal tradition of kingship among the Mycenaeans. “In the absence of solid documentary evidence, proponents of the matrilineal tradition of kingship turn to the legends themselves to support their theory, and point to royal heiresses such as Helen of Sparta and Penelope, wife of Odysseus, as kingmakers. Let us look at the same legends, as well as further examples where Mycenaean royal women seem to hand power to men, to demonstrate that those women were the instruments rather than the wielders of political power.”
Hittite Mythology on the Subject of Women
“You are a woman and think like one. You know nothing at all.” So, in a Hittite myth, says a very grouchy husband to his wife when she has asked yet again about his inability to get her pregnant. Does this show that Hittite men had a decidedly low view of women?
Hittite Women as Reflected in the Laws of Marriage, Adultery and Rape
In the Hittite law codes a woman could both initiate a divorce and keep her inheritance and half her husband’s estate if she divorced. On the other hand, the expressions used in Hittite for marriage—there is no one abstract word for “to marry”—reflect the control men exercised over women, “to take a wife” “to take as his own wife” “to make her your wife.” The laws of adultery and rape present a similarly mixed bag.
Hittite hasawa: priestess, therapist, healer, diviner, and midwife
In the Hittite world the hasawa served many essential roles. Using the sacred stories of myth, she brought the human and divine worlds back into harmony. She performed rites to “cure” family quarrels, disease, and injury. She made divinations to read the will of the gods and she delivered babies.
Hittite and Mycenaean Queens: A Woman’s View from the Top
One way to see how a society views women is to examine its leaders. Are women included and, if they are, to what extent? Both the Hittite and Mycenaean world had powerful queens, in particular: Queen Puduhepa and Queen Helen of Sparta