Wow @Ante you’re all over the place with your whataboutism.
1. Clearly you haven’t listened to Afterlives of Ancient Egypt or read much of Kara’s writings if you think she only cares about the elites+
2. You cannot divorce Hatshepsut from her gender for argument’s sake! Will we ever know for sure that her image, her titles, etc. were removed simply because she was a woman who dared to be a king? Of course not. But it doesn’t change the fact that she was a female king co-ruling with a male king and that this was quite rare in Egyptian history. Ignoring that fact is akin to erasing her yet again.
Jeesh. Read again. I fail to see where Kara argued that matriarchal societies were peaceful utopias with rainbows and unicorns. What are you even talking about?
Know what is also interesting? The workers' graves st Amarna. Unlike the elite workers who had built the Pyramids at Giza, these were some of the sickest, most broken people in all of Egypt's history. Extremely extractive towards own population. But this is unimportant to you, because Nefertiti, Meritaten, Matriarchy Good! Who cares about those workers, they were not actual people and serves them right for being Patriarchal...!
Excuse me, but that is just silly.
Far as what matriarchy really looked like: the Neolithic people of Catalhöyük were matrilocal and probably matriarchal. Some 25% of remains show healed skull fractures
Sure looks like that Matriarchy thingy was just as violent as the Patriarchy thingy.
Celts were also matrilocal. They also seem to show traces of matriarchy, although this got flipped at some point in history. But traces remained. The way Celts showed submission to a chieftain was by sucking on his breast nipples. Makes zero partiarchal sense, but seems to be the nastiest thing a woman could envision doing to another woman she hated. Celts also practiced human sacrifice. So where did all that peaceful Matriarchy go?
Was never that peaceful in the first place.
Also, turns out even deepest Patriarchy regularly made use of matriarchal-type violence: in a lot of "primitive" tribes, killing of captives was considered women's work. But they were all nice, gentle and matriarchal when doing it, those captives barely felt they were even being slaughtered and peacefully fell asleep, unilke what would have happened had they been slaughtered by toxic men instead... /s
Patriarchy and Matriarchy are both restrictive bullshit by definition; only complementarity makes a lick of sense there. And pardon my French, you seem to be the best proof there is for that.
My mistake, Wong was actually correct. Unlike the rest of this article. Lot of feeling, very little thought. Typical blinding by ideology. Hatshepsut herself would have been very disappointed had she been able to read this.
Not to even mention one secret fact that I am almost afraid to state out loud: male pharaohs damned the memory of other male pharaohs all the time, Hatshepsut may not even have been singled out for being a woman. After all, we do know a LOT about her era, unlike some eras for whom the damnatio memoriae was do thorough that hardly any trace remains (say the Hyksos pharaohs, or the exact sequence of events leading from Akhenaten to Horemheb...)
I am really sorry, but this is COMPLETELY wrong. Wong's conjecture is just a pipe dream. It is quite simply wrong.
See, it turns out that the Ancient Egyptians ALWAYS magically "inactivated" the statues once thise were no longer in active religious use, specifically by *carefully* breaking them in the exact places quoted above. This was no damnatio memoriae: it was respectful inactivation of the presumedagical properties of the intact statue. It is literally as different from deliberate destruction of statues as possible. Wong's conjecture is simply silly and only shows ignorance, frankly. Blinded by ideology, and consequently superficial. Really ought to have done the basic homework a little better.
This does NOT mean that Hatshepsut did not suffer a "damnatio memoriae" under Tuthmosis III. (Btw, Hatshepsut is my favorite Pharaoh of them all, male or female, in case you wondered.) However, the damnatio (chiseled-out names and faces, and NOT 'inactivation' of statue so thoroughly misunderstood by Wong) was not nearly as thorough: visible public images were the ones delberately damaged, while those hidden away in temple nooks and crannies largely survived. So it seems it was more a question of so-called "public respectability" (yuck, apparently some things never change...) than genuine hatred on the part of Tuthmosis III. After all, Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III functioned together okay for decades under her rule, as evidenced by the fact he spent a lot of those years as her army commander, a key role never given to people of dubious loyalty.
Far as the public opinion during Hatshepsut's life: sarcastic pornographic graffiti done by the stonemasons at Deir el-Bahri depict a "hermaphroditic" Pharaoh in the middle of a sexual act with her grand steward Senenmut. Those things also seldom change...
Far as Hatshepsut herself, the story of her mummy illustrates the sheer weight of stereotype. Her mummy was initially misidentified as "wet nurse", chiefly because the mummy was quite portly, while Hatshepsut was always imagined as beautiful. Which she probably was - but not by the time she died. She was middle-aged then. Finally, it turned out that what killed her appears to have been some awful type of cancer induced by some scarily toxic and carcinogenous makeup.
Wow @Ante you’re all over the place with your whataboutism.
1. Clearly you haven’t listened to Afterlives of Ancient Egypt or read much of Kara’s writings if you think she only cares about the elites+
2. You cannot divorce Hatshepsut from her gender for argument’s sake! Will we ever know for sure that her image, her titles, etc. were removed simply because she was a woman who dared to be a king? Of course not. But it doesn’t change the fact that she was a female king co-ruling with a male king and that this was quite rare in Egyptian history. Ignoring that fact is akin to erasing her yet again.
Jeesh. Read again. I fail to see where Kara argued that matriarchal societies were peaceful utopias with rainbows and unicorns. What are you even talking about?
Thank you Isabelle. Lots of mansplaining and ranting going on below. Too much to read and most of it wrong so I shan’t read it. :)
Smart! It didn’t make much sense any way :)
Know what is also interesting? The workers' graves st Amarna. Unlike the elite workers who had built the Pyramids at Giza, these were some of the sickest, most broken people in all of Egypt's history. Extremely extractive towards own population. But this is unimportant to you, because Nefertiti, Meritaten, Matriarchy Good! Who cares about those workers, they were not actual people and serves them right for being Patriarchal...!
Excuse me, but that is just silly.
Far as what matriarchy really looked like: the Neolithic people of Catalhöyük were matrilocal and probably matriarchal. Some 25% of remains show healed skull fractures
Sure looks like that Matriarchy thingy was just as violent as the Patriarchy thingy.
Celts were also matrilocal. They also seem to show traces of matriarchy, although this got flipped at some point in history. But traces remained. The way Celts showed submission to a chieftain was by sucking on his breast nipples. Makes zero partiarchal sense, but seems to be the nastiest thing a woman could envision doing to another woman she hated. Celts also practiced human sacrifice. So where did all that peaceful Matriarchy go?
Was never that peaceful in the first place.
Also, turns out even deepest Patriarchy regularly made use of matriarchal-type violence: in a lot of "primitive" tribes, killing of captives was considered women's work. But they were all nice, gentle and matriarchal when doing it, those captives barely felt they were even being slaughtered and peacefully fell asleep, unilke what would have happened had they been slaughtered by toxic men instead... /s
Patriarchy and Matriarchy are both restrictive bullshit by definition; only complementarity makes a lick of sense there. And pardon my French, you seem to be the best proof there is for that.
My mistake, Wong was actually correct. Unlike the rest of this article. Lot of feeling, very little thought. Typical blinding by ideology. Hatshepsut herself would have been very disappointed had she been able to read this.
Not to even mention one secret fact that I am almost afraid to state out loud: male pharaohs damned the memory of other male pharaohs all the time, Hatshepsut may not even have been singled out for being a woman. After all, we do know a LOT about her era, unlike some eras for whom the damnatio memoriae was do thorough that hardly any trace remains (say the Hyksos pharaohs, or the exact sequence of events leading from Akhenaten to Horemheb...)
I am really sorry, but this is COMPLETELY wrong. Wong's conjecture is just a pipe dream. It is quite simply wrong.
See, it turns out that the Ancient Egyptians ALWAYS magically "inactivated" the statues once thise were no longer in active religious use, specifically by *carefully* breaking them in the exact places quoted above. This was no damnatio memoriae: it was respectful inactivation of the presumedagical properties of the intact statue. It is literally as different from deliberate destruction of statues as possible. Wong's conjecture is simply silly and only shows ignorance, frankly. Blinded by ideology, and consequently superficial. Really ought to have done the basic homework a little better.
This does NOT mean that Hatshepsut did not suffer a "damnatio memoriae" under Tuthmosis III. (Btw, Hatshepsut is my favorite Pharaoh of them all, male or female, in case you wondered.) However, the damnatio (chiseled-out names and faces, and NOT 'inactivation' of statue so thoroughly misunderstood by Wong) was not nearly as thorough: visible public images were the ones delberately damaged, while those hidden away in temple nooks and crannies largely survived. So it seems it was more a question of so-called "public respectability" (yuck, apparently some things never change...) than genuine hatred on the part of Tuthmosis III. After all, Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III functioned together okay for decades under her rule, as evidenced by the fact he spent a lot of those years as her army commander, a key role never given to people of dubious loyalty.
Far as the public opinion during Hatshepsut's life: sarcastic pornographic graffiti done by the stonemasons at Deir el-Bahri depict a "hermaphroditic" Pharaoh in the middle of a sexual act with her grand steward Senenmut. Those things also seldom change...
Far as Hatshepsut herself, the story of her mummy illustrates the sheer weight of stereotype. Her mummy was initially misidentified as "wet nurse", chiefly because the mummy was quite portly, while Hatshepsut was always imagined as beautiful. Which she probably was - but not by the time she died. She was middle-aged then. Finally, it turned out that what killed her appears to have been some awful type of cancer induced by some scarily toxic and carcinogenous makeup.