Re: how do modern day egyptians feel about the ancient egyptians?

From: Katherine Griffis-Greenberg (egylist_at_deadspamgriffis-consulting.com)
Date: 09/24/04 

Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:45:31 +0100

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 23:14:09 -0500, Tom McDonald
<tmcdonald2672@nohormelcharter.net> in sci.archaeology, wrote the
following:

>Now, what is your specific evidence that '... in ancient
>societies people understood that a 9 year old is unlikely to be
>fully cognisent of what she is getting into and hence counted it
>as rape.'
>
> Do you mean all ancient societies, or only some. If the
>former, you've a job of work cut out for you to prove it. If
>the latter, then you have no case except for those specific
>cultures.

It really depends upon two factors as to when a female is ready for
sexual relations/marriage (one was not always equivalent with the other,
but for purposes of this argument, let's suppose they are). So, we're
talking about the onset of nubility [of a marriageable age or
condition].

The first is the onset of fertility: this varies by age because of
biology, which in turn is often governed by the regions of the world.
So, for example, "nubility" in ancient Egypt could be possibly the onset
of menarche, but we have no text which confirms this.

However, menarche is not always in the teen years: in regions close to
the Equator, menarche can start as early as 7 years of age (still does
today). So, in the case of say, Maketaten, the second daughter of
Akhenaten, who dies in year 12 of her father's reign (ostensibly in
childbirth, according to the scenes in Room Gamma of the Royal Tomb at
Amarna), she was likely no older than 10 years of age at her death
(being shown in royal imagery as a toddling infant in Year 3 of his
reign (Smith and Redford 1976: 83).

The second factor is the social definition and acceptance of marriage as
a state separated from fertility. This appears to be known in the ANE,
as laid out in the Code of Hammurabi where it says

"If a man violate the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who
has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep
with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife
is blameless." (No. 100)

So, one could be a "wife/child-wife" of a man without having sexual
relations, and yet be afforded all the legal recourses of a full wife.
It was a matter of who cared for the wife in a legal sense which defined
her status.

So, for example, legally speaking a temple virgin of a deity could only
take a child's portion of an inheritance from her own father, primarily
since it was considered that she was adequate "cared for" by the god's
temple as the "wife" of the deity (No. 181 and 182).

References:

Smith, R. W. and D. B. Redford 1976. _The Akhenaten Temple Project. Vol.
I: Initial Discoveries_. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.

Code of Hammurabi: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM

HTH.

Regards -- 

--
Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, MA (Lon)
Member, International Association of Egyptologists
       American Research Center in Egypt, ASOR, EES, SSEA
Oriental Institute
Oriental Studies Doctoral Program [Egyptology]
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
http://www.griffis-consulting.com

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