Egypt Overview

Ancient Egypt was not an egalitarian society. Legal distinctions, however, were based more on differences in social class, rather than differences in gender.

The Egyptian woman's rights extended to all the legally defined areas of society. Women could:

-- Manage and dispose of private property (land, portable goods, servants, slaves, livestock, money, and financial instruments like endowments and annuities)

-- Administer all her property independently and according to her free will

-- Conclude any kind of legal settlement

-- Appear as a contracting partner in a marriage or divorce contract

-- Execute testaments

-- Free slaves

-- Make adoptions

-- Sue at law

-- Initiate litigation in court freely without the need of a male representative

-- Literacy depended largely on the Egyptian woman’s socliial class. Illiteracy was highly prevalent in the lower class, but rose slightly in the middle and upper classes. Many royal princesses at court had private tutors, and most likely, these tutors taught them to read and write. Since royal princesses would have been educated, it then seems likely that the daughters of the royal courtiers were similarly educated.

--Ramesses III boasts, “I enabled the woman of Egypt to go her own way, her journeys being extended where she wanted, without any person assaulting her on the road.”

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