Book Review: Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt

Carolyn Graves-Brown (ed.), Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt: 'Don your wig for a joyful hour'. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2008.

This collection contains essays presented at a conference organized by the Egypt Centre and the University of Wales, the Institute of Classics and Ancient History (19th-20th December 2005, University of Wales Swansea).

After the introductory chapter by Carolyn Graves-Brown with an overview of the state of the art concerning sex and gender studies in Egyptology and an informative report about the conference--the papers, the main discussion topics, debates (with a stress on a debate about the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep)--the volume under review continues with the following studies:

Kathlyn M. Cooney, "The Problem of Female Rebirth in New Kingdom Egypt: The Fragmentation of the Female Individual in Her Funerary Equipment" (pp. 1-25): analyses the problem of female rebirth using the funerary equipment from the New Kingdom to the Third Intermediate Period. In ancient Egypt, male sexual activity was one of the main avenues to rebirth in the afterlife. Since the creation and rebirth were a male prerogative, the deceased Egyptian females were subject to the gender adaptations, including the fragmentation of their identity. As the sexualised rebirth was necessary, the deceased female, as well as the male, was associated with the creator gods Atum, Osiris, and Re, so that he or she can initialise the rebirth process. Cooney convincingly points out that the tomb equipment makes it clear that gender transformation, in order to manage rebirth, included various sets of mechanisms: magical, liturgical, physical, grammatical--the masculine singular personal pronoun =f is retained on many of the female funerary texts. Among other things, a deceased woman was named Osiris, being intimately associated with a masculine sexualised rebirth. Furthermore, Cooney stresses the importance of the fragmentation and regeneration of the body. By fragmentation, gender was preserved and the female deceased retained her feminine nature as an akh.