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Essay on Women in Egypt

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Women in the Hellenistic world

Women in the Hellenistic World Women’s lives were improved and expanded in the Hellenistic age more so than at any other time prior Greek history. Papyri from Egypt and Coele-Syria have led to the discovery of documents on marriage contracts, inscriptions of philanthropy, and the daily lives of the women in that period. The Hellenistic woman changed in many ways. She became more educated, more cultured, and she received domestic freedom and her new legal and occupational advancements and a whole other myriad of news liberations. The ideal of the Classical obedient Greek wife was turned upside down. She no longer had to be escorted to places outside her home and to issue legal documents. She also could now …show more content…

On an epitaph there is inscribed: “This dust hides Archedice, daughter of Hippias, the most important man in Greece in his day. But though her father, husband, brothers, and children were tyrants, her mind was never carried away into arrogance.” (Lefkowitz and Fant, 16) This inscription from the 5th century BCE shows how some women were remembered for good deeds done – and not just their duties as homemakers. It also recognized the humane side of the Classical Greek woman. Philosophers and philosophies were developed in the Hellenistic period that allowed women to join schools of thought that expanded their freedom. Education became available for an array of Greek women in this time. A little before the Hellenistic age came to be, the ideas of the loosening of social constructs for women were taking place that led to the foundation of other schools of thought such as that of Epicureanism and Cynicism. But these ideas came from a couple of the Classical philosophers. One example of this is a discussion between Plato and Glaucon. The topic of interest to these men was that of the education of women. The point that was made was that since there are only a couple of distinctions between men and women, i.e. physical attributes and things like pot making and bread making – although really only social constructs that forced women to be engaged in these services day in and day out that would have made them better then men at those

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