دانلود کتاب Women in Antiquity: Real Women Across the Ancient World

(With a cordial greeting from Buenos Aires, let me also say that the effort of making the uploaded version is offered as a humble homage to the founder of Library Genesis, who --er..., without waiting more millennia- ought to find her own place in this book.)

This 1111-page volume gathers brand new essays from some of the most respected scholars of ancient history, archaeology, and physical anthropology to create an engaging overview of the lives of women in antiquity. The book is divided into ten sections, nine focusing on a particular area, and also includes almost 200 images, maps, and charts. The sections cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, the Aegean, Italy, and Western Europe, and include many lesser-known cultures such as the Celts, Iberia, Carthage, the Black Sea region, and Scandinavia. Women's experiences are explored, from ordinary daily life to religious ritual and practice, to motherhood, childbirth, sex, and building a career. Forensic evidence is also treated for the actual bodies of ancient women.

Women in Antiquity is edited by two experts in the field, and is an invaluable resource to students of the ancient world, gender studies, and women's roles throughout history.

From the Intro:
"This book was born from insomnia. Specifically, I was up as usual one morning at around
3 a.m. and started thinking about the latest book on “women” in “Antiquity” that had recently
come out, and why I was dissatisfied with it. For one thing, “Antiquity” consisted primarily
of Greece and Rome, giving exceptionally short shrift to the rest of the ancient world—places
like Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Etruria, and the Celts. For another thing, most of the
“women” covered in the book were not actually women: they were literary characters, fictional
constructs invented by men mostly for other men.
The situation was not simply frustrating for an ancient historian who is generally trying to
avoid fiction in research and writing, it was almost insulting. So many books on the supposed
topic of the female sex in the ancient world slighted real women in preference for myth and
literature, as though real women simply could not be as interesting as Homer’s Andromakhê or
Vergil’s Dido. And so, as it was 3 in the morning and all common sense was, unlike the present
editor, fast asleep, I came up with the idea of this book, a book about real women—their
bodies, names, occupations, interests, sex lives, religious functions, and legal capacities. The
following day, the adrenaline still coursing through my system, I went out to lunch with Jean,
plied her with beer, and asked her to co-edit the present volume. Jean said “Yes,” probably
because she thought I would eventually come to my senses and get over it. Instead, we created
the volume you are reading presently.
The “Antiquity” this book covers is that which is relevant to Jean’s and my areas of study:
the ancient Near East, Egypt and Nubia, the Aegean, Italia, northern Africa, the Mediterranean
Sea, and Europe. The book is very roughly chronological and geographically organized,
starting with Mesopotamia and Egypt and working its way west from there. The individual
sections are arranged from the physical to the more economic, with chronological considerations
as well. In some cases, chapters are overviews of general topics, such as maternity or
economic roles. In other instances, we included chapters on topics specific to a region, such
as Mesopotamian tavern-keepers and Daunian women’s tattoos and female gladiators. Some
chapters deal with women in specific locales, such as Urkesh and Gurob, and several focus on
the notion of “Daily Life.” The “coda” deals with a topic that crosses all boundaries and is still
relevant in modern times. All in all, we wanted to present a survey that allows the reader to see
several different aspects of women in the ancient world. All those women being real, down to
their bones and teeth. Our catchword was “useful”; we want this book to be useful.

At no point in this book is the matter of “woman” problematized. Women are human beings
with two X chromosomes, X/0 chromosomes, or occasionally a human with a Y chromosome
but resistant to testosterone. Both editors accept that biological sex exists, and that gender is a
mutable social overlay associated, but not co-terminus, with biological sex. Anyone who has a
problem with this should probably just put down the book right now.
I am still somewhat amazed that we were able to get as many of the authors as we did to
contribute to this project (there were originally supposed to be more—the present book has
only 74 of the original 86 chapters). And the authors are simply amazing. Some are scholars I
have personally revered for ages1 and who have achieved virtual divinity in their own fields,
such as Rosalie David, Trevor Bryce, Gary Beckman, Jennifer Webb, Marguerite Yon, Carol
Meyers, Peggy Day, John Younger, Cynthia Shelmerdine, Ed Cohen, Jean MacIntosh Turfa,
and Miranda Aldhouse-Green. I am still stunned that these people were actually willing to
work with me. Other authors are new scholars fresh from their dissertations, such as Josué
J. Justel, Anne-Isabelle Langlois, Saana Svärd, Page Selinsky, Marc Orriols-Llonch, Jacopo
Tabolli, Linnea Åshede. Their work here is simply extraordinary, and I am so pleased to have
had the chance to meet and work with them. Please note: I mean to slight no one—ALL of our
authors have been phenomenal to work with, and I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed, and
how much I learned, working with them on this book. And I am truly grateful that they took
my editorial micro-managing with such grace and patience. I truly thank, and love, every last
one of our authors.
A few other people deserve a world of thanks for their help bringing this volume to light.
Amy Davis-Poynter and Elizabeth Thomasson at Routledge were amazingly optimistic and
patient about this book, and will hopefully remain so when I tell them that they really need
additional volumes to cover Asia, Africa, and the New World as well. I am grateful to Agnès
Garcia-Ventura for editing and feedback, and just generally for being such an excellent person
with whom to discuss gender things. I thank Jean for putting up with me during this project,
even when I did my editorial best to alienate all of her friends (sorry about that!). Most of
all, I thank and bless my husband, Paul Butler, who is responsible for most of the drawings
in this book, most of the maps, far too much technical support, and any tiny scraps of sanity
I have left (although he would probably point out that I didn’t start with many to begin with).
He has with patience and humor provided me with illustrations of full-frontal naked women,
group orgies, masturbating Egyptian gods, and Neolithic genitalia. I literally could not survive
without him.
Stephanie Lynn Budin
Many basic topics relating to the Near East and eastern Mediterranean have been made
accessible here for general readers, such as daily life and economy (Ebeling, Meyers, Burke,
Shelmerdine), the position of elite or royal women (Suter, Zinn, Tyldesley, Bryce, Svärd),
the role of religion in female lives (Gadotti, Onstine, Collins, Michel, Meyers, Boëlle-Weber,
Dillon), female sexuality (Budin, Orriols-Llonch), prostitution (Glazebrook Åshede), and
motherhood (Couto-Ferreira, Feucht, Beckman, Budin, Hong). Additional topics cover the
Neo-Elamite and Persian era (Brosius), the Philistine Levant (Yasur-Landau), Minoan culture
(Younger), siege warfare and deportation (Day), and women in Cypriot art (Serwint).
Many more books could (and some should) be written to include topics that had to be
omitted here: the gender-related and familial aspects of Punic infant sacrifice/burial traditions
(touched on by Lafrenz Samuels and Ferrer Martin), the sociological implications of domestic
abuse (as at Iranian Hasanlu, see Monge and Selinsky), the reconstruction of physical
appearance and ancient concepts of beauty and health (Prag, Swaddling), the divide between
women rulers and ruled (cf. Joyce Tyldesley on Egypt to appreciate how much we are missing
for other groups). We are indeed fortunate to have chapters on the interpretation of human
remains from Egypt (David), Nubia (Phillips), Cyprus (Lorentz), Greece (Fox, Whitley),
Sardinia (Lo Schiavo and Milletti), the Ager Faliscus (De Lucia Brolli and Tabolli), and
the Black Sea (Mayor). Fresh discoveries and special projects prevented Estelle Lazer and
Marshall Becker from providing chapters here on Pompeian and Etruscan human remains:
another field for future publications.
In addition to the women of the Near East and Classical Civilization, we cannot overlook
their contemporaries in North Africa, Iberia, Gaul, and Europe, whether through synthetic
analyses or the latest data from excavations and technical studies. Even on topics such as
“Etruscan Women,” there is much yet to be researched and written, and the chapters here on the
lives of women in Italic tribes (Faliscans, Daunians—De Lucia Brolli and Tabolli, Norman),
and in Nuragic Sardinia (Lo Schiavo and Milletti) are some of the first to address these fields,
with surprising additions or corrections to make to the received opinions of past scholarship.
New finds of artistic representations, and recent research and excavation in Etruria have
yielded startling insights into the lives, childhoods (Bonfante) and death of women of both the
ruling (Bartoloni and Pitzalis) and the servile classes (Benelli), as well as the cult opportunities
open to Etruscan worshippers and priestesses (Edlund-Berry). The everyday activities
of queens and commoners have become dramatically visible to us through new research into
textile production, which touched every woman and girl in the Italian Mediterranean (Gleba).
Through bodies (such as Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, Swaddling) and circumstantial evidence
(false teeth, votive models betraying surgical section, Turfa), we must reconstruct a picture at
times similar to modern life, at others puzzlingly alien. The Roman successors of Italic and
Etruscan civilization continued in this variegated situation, as seen in daily life (Hemelrijk),
motherhood and family traditions (Larsson Lovén, Dolansky) and economic activities ranging
from business administration (Becker) to prostitution (Åshede). (Contrast the findings for the
Bronze Age Levant, Egypt, Cyprus and Aegean: Yon, McGeough, Meyers, Kelly-Buccellati,
Justel, McCarthy, Langlois, Picton, Sweeney, Webb, Steel, Smith) or historical Greece
(Cohen, Ramsey). The Roman system also elicits discussion of the effects of the military on
women (Greene) and the tradition of female fighters (McCullough) . . . to be considered along
with the earlier, Greek traditions of “Amazons” (Mayor).)
Even the prejudiced Roman literary sources pointed us to the importance of women’s activities
and social power among the horsewomen of the Black Sea and adjacent regions (Mayor),
the Iberian cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages (Prados Torreira, Ferrer Martin), the wives
and female rulers of the Celtic groups of Europe (Aldhouse-Green), and, setting the stage for
the medieval period, the women of Scandinavia (Wicker), just now beginning to emerge as
their burials are being excavated.
Our scholars have shared the results of their own unique research projects or excavated discoveries,
and/or their fresh surveys of the real evidence for women’s experience across a wide
swathe of the ancient Old World. We are sure these realistic studies will interest you, and hope
that our approach will provoke yet more investigation of the real ancient world.
Jean MacIntosh Turfa