The woman, her role, and her place in the ancient Egyptian life..2.
The woman is the queen on the throne of Egypt…
According to Manetho, who classified the history and kings of Egypt, eighteen queens sat on the throne of Egypt, starting with Mertnet, the king’s daughter, and Wadji, the fourth king of the First Dynasty (3250 BC) until Queen Cleopatra (57 BC).
Among the most famous of these queens, Hetep Haras, mother of King Khufu and wife of King Sneferu, and had a major role in consolidating the state’s bonds during the period of its first renaissance during the ancient Egyptian state.
There, Sobeknefer, the daughter of King Amenemhat III during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom.
In the modern Egyptian state (15th century BC), the wife and mother, Ahhotep, and her prominent role was the war of liberation and the expulsion of the Hyksos, the wife of Seqenen Ra, and the mother of King Ahmose and Kamose.
Then Ahmose Nefertari, the wife of Thutmose I and the mother of Queen Hatshepsut, and King Hatshepsut herself, who ruled Egypt for nearly 22 years..and do not forget the role of Queen T., the mother of Akhenaten and the wife of Amenhotep III. The Nile and the Nuba River in the south. As well as her diplomatic role after her husband’s death and her son Akhenaten’s assumption of power, and his approval of the new religion, and the harmonizing role that she played as she was the link between her son and the people for the sake of stabilizing the country’s conditions.
He also does not forget the role of the wife, Nefertiti, and her role in consolidating the new religion by standing with her husband, Akhenaten.
He does not deny the role of the queen of the beautiful royal wife, Nefertari, as her husband called her, the wife of Ramses II.
Then, at the end of this family (the Nineteenth Dynasty), the queen, Tausert, the guardian of the king, Siptah, ruled after him alone and was called the sun’s daughter.
And the woman had an important role in taking over the kings of Egypt through it, as happened with the priest, that is, Ay, who ruled Egypt after his marriage to his widow Tutankhamun, and with this marriage, he has the right to the throne of Egypt at the end (family 18).
The wife and mother…
Marriage contracts stipulated granting the husband the authority over her husband, and husbands pledged to obey their wives. Still, the archaeologist believes, in your opinion, that this condition may be in favour of the wife in a specific case. Opposition from the husband’s family.
The first wife had dominance and control if her husband married another because most marriages are Catholic, i.e. one wife. This is because civil laws have restricted it to the point of prohibition, or at least it is legally recognized marriage. The wife has the right to ask for divorce if the husband marries another woman, and she has not erred in his rights or the rights of his children.
The law stipulated that she be accommodated in a separate house and that the new wife should be a second-degree wife, and her children would not inherit from their father. The marriage law gave the Egyptian woman the greater right if her husband married a foreigner, and this was an accident in the modern Egyptian state in the era of foreign conquests. A foreigner is treated as a second wife even if she is the first wife. The woman inherited her children.
Marriage contracts were recorded on goatskin or papyrus and were written inside the temples after the temple priests. To guarantee him honesty and continuity, as this gave them a religious and ideological character. Three witnesses testified to the contract. According to what was reported to archaeologists of marriage contracts, each spouse was given a copy of the contract from the Pharaonic era until the Ptolemaic era.
Thus, the woman
An Egyptian that was distinguished from others in the kingdoms of the ancient world. When the wife separated from her husband in other kingdoms, she had to remarry. Divorce was a right that belonged to the man, and the woman did not demand it, unlike the Egyptian woman, as it was permissible for her to divorce her husband if it was impossible to live or marry someone else.
As for the incestuous marriage, the brother from his sister or the father from his daughter, he used to sleep only among the kings for reasons related to the ruling, and the royal blood did not flow away from the royal family. In most cases, physical intercourse between them did not take place.
And the archaeologist, Noblecourt, says that the Egyptians did not have fanaticism even in marriage, as one of the texts in the Louvre Museum dating back to the era of Thutmose III mentioned that a free woman married a prisoner of war. In another papyrus that a woman loved a prisoner of war and married him. And remember a papyrus called the Adoption Papyrus,
The story of betrayal married a young man from a wealthy family, and that the young man’s sister blessed the marriage.
It is worth saying in recognition of this civilization in upholding the value of women at a time when other societies did not count them in their population censuses, and men were preferred over them. Even European women did not obtain this honour and place of legal rights until the nineteenth century when European women appeared for the first time as a lady of society.