Women in Egypt — how the status of women in Egypt changed during the Ptolemaic Period

In chapter 18 of  Hellenistic Egypt (2007, pp. 240-253), Jean Bingen discusses the cultural interactions between the native population of Egypt and its ruling minority of Greek-Macedonians and come to the conclusion that there is not much mutual acculturation between the two. The specific aspect of society and this proposed cultural dualism of Ptolemaic Egypt that will be investigated in this dissertation is that of women and their socio-economical and legal status in society. If one briefly examines the status of women in the individual cultures in pre-Hellenistic dates, a striking difference between them stands out.

As Joyce Tyldesley explains in Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt  (2006, p. 12),“in Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law.” If one compares this the situation inAthens, as Sue Blundell describes inWomen in Ancient Greece (1995p.114), “In law an Athenian woman had no independent existence”, the contrast is quite clear.