You are reading this because as a child you were taught the magic of words. Reading widely accumulates knowledge and develops wisdom. Writing builds opinion, and combined with experience, exudes power..
Built in the seventh century BCE, Ashurbanipal’s private, scholarly library in ancient Nineveh is one of the most important archaeological discoveries, filled with Assyrian history, court intrigues, secret intelligence, hymns, rituals, and prayers. It may have been the model of the great libraries of the West, the historic competing libraries at Alexandria, Pergamum, and Ephesus, which held the treasures of early literacy. Science, philosophy, poetry, and math filled the scrolls and informed scholars––those who could read––or perhaps those who could pay a scribe to read for them.
Literate Women
Few elite women could read and write. Even fewer––if any––walked the halls of the great libraries, spread out the scrolls before them, and absorbed the knowledge locked up against ignorance.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut, fifteenth century BCE, spoke the native languages of the neighboring countries. Like her, centuries later, Pharaoh Cleopatra VII, first century BCE, also honed the gift of several languages. She was the only Ptolemy who ruled Egypt to speak Egyptian, the actual language of the people they governed. Most spoke only Greek. Neither Hatshepsut nor Cleopatra relied on others to negotiate with viziers and emissaries to carry on diplomatic relations, trade agreements, and treaties. They trusted only themselves to communicate accurately what the crown required.
The famous metic from Miletus, Aspasia, consort and confidante of Pericles, fifth century BCE, was famed for her literacy and influence over Pericles, general and respected leader of Athens’ Golden Age. Unlike Greek women, shut up in their houses with no education and no influence, metics, migrants from Aegean neighboring land, were educated. Pericles’ enemies sneeringly accused Aspasia, a foreign woman, of encouraging him to enter into the Peloponnesian War against Sparta. Further, scholars have credited her with writing his famous Funeral Oration of 431 BCE, honoring the war dead.
Fifteen centuries later, British Queen Elizabeth I conducted diplomacy through her first-hand knowledge of language. Intrinsically, these monarchs knew what Shakespeare’s witches would warn, “There’s daggers in men’s smiles.” [1] Those three sovereigns could look beyond the fawning subterfuge, listen to what the advisors and lackeys whispered confidentially to each other, and reply to foreign dignitaries in their own language.
Reading the Universe
Literacy—reading and writing—has power. Yet another kind of literacy also had power. Those ancients who “read” the stars could predict an eclipse and touted the power of that knowledge to control the populace by warning the people if they didn’t obey, the ruler or overlord or magical conjurer would “bring down darkness across the entire land.” Natural phenomena— thunder, lightning, eclipses, and other terrors— fed peoples’ fear that the gods were angry and would destroy them. The literacy of ancient science held the people in thrall.
Strongholds of Knowledge
Science, math, religion, philosophy, history, even surgery––all were secreted in the scrolls. Anyone diligent enough, determined enough, and privileged enough could read for themselves the wisdom gained in the past. Perhaps the scholar Hypatia, 355 CE–415 CE, had entered the library of her home in Alexandria. At least she had access to her father’s library, discussions with his learned friends, and eventually communication with scholars from all over the Mediterranean who gathered in crowds to hear the brilliant mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer speak.
In the nineteenth century CE, British author, Virginia Woolf, also studied in her father’s library because, as a woman and a Catholic, she was denied entry to the university at Cambridge. Time seemed to slide backward. Woolf was one of the foremost writers of England’s Bloomsbury Group, famous for its campaign for woman’s suffrage. Her body of work is Britain’s treasure.
However, Woolf, like Hypatia, and even Enheduanna, twenty-third century BCE writer, priestess, and the world’s first historian, reached the pinnacle of intellectual excellence.
Through the magic of words, native and foreign, women gained power, established their place of greatness in history, and are remembered.
Points to Ponder:
Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s grandeur was desecrated by a disgruntled usurper. Egypt: 1507–1458 BCE. The scholar Hypatia was cut into pieces by radical Christians. Alexandria: 355–415 BCE. Pharaoh Cleopatra VII died in the wake of Rome after the Battle of Actium. Alexandria: 69–30 BCE. Queen Elizabeth I reigned victorious for forty-five years. England: 1558–1603 CE, and author, Virginia Woolf, ended her tragic life when with her coat weighted with stones, she walked into the River Ouse in despair. England: 1882-1941 CE.
From a fifteenth century BCE pharaoh to a twentieth century CE writer, each made her mark. Each was a power woman of her time, and each story deserves to be read.
[1]Shakespeare, William, Macbeth, Act III.
Please see the series Power Women: Lessons from the Ancient World. © P.D. Sargent 3.21.16.
Dear Fellow History Lover,
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Grātiās tibi !
Dr. P. D. Sargent,
Ancient Scribe sharing new ideas twice a month