women in the civilizations of Mesopotamia

In another of the elevated references to women in this chapter, we read that a "bawdy tale tells of a lustful woman who says to the hero, 'Come, let us spend an minute lying together, it will be good for you!'" (61). The authors---all men---write condescendingly that "compared to women in most other superannuated societies, Egyptian women were not simply subordinated to men. Wives were not secluded; women could own and inherit keeping and quest after in business" (66). Two queens are also briefly mentioned (66).

In the Hebraical and early Greek civilizations, we hazard the same general pattern, both cultures being heavily patriarchal. The married woman and queen of King Tut is shown in a gold and ash gray relief, serving her husband (illustration between 76 and 77). In the Hebrew "Song of Songs," we find this mention: "The bridegroom praises his bride as his 'dove,' and she regards him as her 'king'" (82). Woman are loved by men, but ever so they play a subordinate, submissive and passive piece in these male-dominated societies. We do find one exception in the fountain of the Minoans: "Women seemed to have enjoyed equality with men. . . . In this the Minoans were the exception in the ancient world" (89). Even in this civilization, however, only fastness class women---who had gained their status through their husbands---could be said to be anything approach "equals" to men, but even that status was meaningful only in relation to lower-class women with even less status.

One was the introduction of so-called 'free marriage,' whereby the wife's share of her father's property remained her own instead of passing to her husband. . . . Together with that came new rules for divorce, whereby each side, instead of just the man, could initiate proceedings. . . . Both changes resulted in bad the wife greater legal independence (172).

As the Greeks saw it, biology made women weaker than men.

Under the Roman Empire, upper-class women who had enjoyed close to measure of status and improved roles during the Republic began to better their haul even more, although their status was still minimal compared to today's women. For example

However, in such(prenominal) passages, the male authors expose their blatant gender bias.

The fact that women were open to write poetry, keep their own names, and preside over literary salons does not separate them much from recently freed slaves in the American South of the 19th Century. The fact that women had their faces carved on sculpture, " telling their cultivation of physical elegance" (185), makes them little more than sweetie queens of an earlier era. It hardly means that the women in the upper class in the Roman Empire can be considered liberate by any meaningful standard, except compared to lower-class women and slaves.

The Early Middle Ages was lacking in artistic production, and this is an recitation that it was not a liberal era, compared to, say, the Roman Empire. It was no happening that in the latter era women enjoyed one of the most liberated checks of all ancient civilizations. In the increasingly religious period of the Early Middle Ages, women were seen as fit for either of dickens roles---the religious woman or the irreligious woman---the latter role being undesirable, of course.

The authors have virtually nothing to say nigh the role and status of women in the Early Middle Ages, indicating at once again that women were not considered significant cultural, political, economic or historical charact
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