Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World.

• Author: Fried, Lisbeth S.
• Position: Book review

Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World. Edited by STEPHANIE LYNN BUDIN and JEAN MACINTOSH TURFA. Rewriting Antiquity. London: ROUTLEDGE, 2016. Pp. xxxvi + 1074, illus. $240.

This volume sets out to correct two biases in recent scholarship about women in antiquity. First, its subject is real women, rather than ideology or the representations of women; thus, it is not about goddesses or male perceptions. Second, it avoids making Greece (especially Athens) and Rome the center of interest. "Antiquity" in the title extends chronologically from the third millennium BCE through late antiquity, with occasional references back to Neolithic and forward to the early Middle Ages. The book is organized ethno-geographically, mostly moving from east to west, with a final segment on the periphery, with sections entitled Mesopotamia (eleven chapters), Egypt (nine chapters, one on Nubia), Hittites (three chapters), Cyprus (five chapters), the Levant and Carthage (nine chapters), the Aegean, Bronze Age, and historical (fourteen chapters, seven wholly or mostly on prehistory, six on archaic and classical, one Hellenistic), Etruria and the Italian archipelago (one on Sardinia, eight on Etruria, one on Daunians, and one on Faliscans), seven on Rome, four on the periphery (Iberia, Britain, Scandinavia, and the warrior-women of Scythia and Sarmatia). A coda, by Kathy Gaca, compares ancient and modern martial rape. A helpful index completes the volume.

Each section has its own introduction, with a succinct historical survey, and is then organized by a mixture of chronology, while putting physical evidence (osteological analysis, for example) before more abstract topics like economics. There are very helpful maps, and most of the many illustrations are very valuable, though a few are not sharp enough to enable the reader to judge the relevant issue. While there are cross-references, there is no sustained effort at comparative analysis. Most of the contributions, whether by senior or junior scholars, are of excellent scholarly quality, and the bibliographies are very good.

The range is wide, but Nabateans and Numidians are never mentioned (inevitably, collections like this must depend on who can be recruited). A discussion of women in Punic religion with no mention of the debate about infant sacrifice seems odd. The worst omission is probably Greco-Roman Egypt, since the papyri offer so much more evidence about the lives of non-elite woman than we...