Roles, Reverence, and Rejection
Gender in the Ancient World
In order to be considered part of society, one would assume that the minimum requirement must at least be to have been born. When it comes to societal roles, however, one would assume wrong. Gender roles, in particular, limit themselves to absolutely nothing. Countless languages use gendered terms to refer to inanimate objects — a boat, for instance, is masculine in French and feminine in Hindi. Parents-to-be prepare lists of names for boys and girls immediately after learning that a child has been conceived — a zygote barely embeds itself in the uterus before it finds itself staring down the eventuality of its gender.
The concepts of sex and gender date back to the palaeolithic era. When we think of hunter-gatherers, our minds — and possibly our education systems — delightedly offer us an image of a man hunting and a woman gathering, or perhaps a man both hunting and gathering while a woman kneels on a cave floor tending to her children. This notion is absolutely baseless. As far as archaeological studies after the 19th century can deduce, the Stone Age recognized gender but had no defined gender roles. A woman did everything a man did, besides the additional responsibility of occasionally giving birth. Providing for and taking care of the family were equally divided among men and women.
Moving on to the Bronze Age, the Mesopotamian Civilization — which flourished about 6,000 years ago — took gender a step further and decided that the job of governing a group of people must fall to a man, along with the roles of soldier, scribe, and priest. The contemporary Indus Valley Civilization, on the other hand, quite possibly lacked the concept of gender entirely.
The following sections discuss the understanding of sex and gender that prevailed in various parts of the world following the dawn of the iron age in 1,200 BCE until the decline of the Ancient Era in the 6th century CE.
Case Study 1: The Achaemenid Empire
Also known as the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire reigned over most of Central and West Asia, Egypt, and the Balkans from 550 BCE to 330 BCE. Like most other empires of its time, and of after its time as well, it followed a patriarchal system where heredity and ascension were specific to male members of society, but this system was almost entirely confined to the act of governance. In fact, it is safe to say that this empire conferred rights and responsibilities to women more than almost any other empire in recorded history, except the possible exception of Ancient Egypt.
Women were not only allowed but also expected to own land, contribute to business, and work as both employers and employees, receiving a wage equal to that of any man in the same position. The only difference in wages was that pregnant women received higher salaries than their counterparts, as did new mothers after the first few months of childbirth. Highly-paid female supervisors were known as arashshara or ‘great chief’ and received a larger amount of wine and grain for overseeing the work of often large groups of subordinates. Women also served expansively in the military. Although marriages were most often arranged by fathers for the political advantages they offered, a married woman retained the right to own and manage estates and assets, and had a financial and political identity separate from her husband’s.
Royal women, especially the mothers and wives of kings, held nearly unchallengeable power over the court. They were responsible for supervising major policy decisions, maintaining political relations within the nobility, and ensuring the stability of the empire’s socio-political affairs. They were expected to hold their own council meetings for policy, as well as attending to “audiences” and acting as mediators. Noble and high-ranking women both had the power to directly intervene in the Achaemenid court.
Thus far, we have discussed differences in the gender binary, but what about deviations from this binary itself? While there is no official documentation of a third gender, archaeological evidence indicates that at least one was probably recognized. For example, almost all Achaemenid graves contain items that are considered symbolic of the cadaver’s gender, and several of these graves have been found to contain items pertaining to both men and women. Additionally, one well-known Achaemenid artefact is a golden bowl that depicts a bearded figure in feminine clothes performing traditionally feminine roles.
Case Study 2: Ancient Greece
The history of Ancient Greece is long and complex, involving wildly fluctuating territories, fathoms of tradition, and internal dissolution. Greece was founded in 1200 BCE as a relatively small group of city-states flourishing at the confluence of present-day Europe and Central Asia. Over the next few centuries, it gradually swelled, before bursting forth into the continent and taking over the Achaemenid Empire in the 300 BCEs under the leadership of Alexander the Great. For the sake of simplicity, this case study reflects the traditions practised popularly in the major cities of Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Macedon contemporary to the Achaemenid Empire and after its annexation.
The understanding of gender and gender roles in Ancient Greece diverged sharply from that in the Achaemenid Empire. While both were patriarchal, this system was far more thoroughly entrenched in the lives of the Greeks than it was the Achaemenids. Here, women were not allowed to vote, own land, or inherit property. That is not to say their role was entirely limited to the household — women acted as priestesses, governesses, and physicians, and royal-born women held the responsibility of supervising matters related to diplomacy. Young girls were educated much the same as their male counterparts — in reading, writing, athletics, mathematics, and history — but with a greater emphasis on dancing, gymnastics, and musical accomplishment. Still, the role of women in society was, to say the least, limited.
Girls were supposed to marry at 13 or 14 following their first period, which was supposed to signify the advent of their maturity. A girl’s marriage was traditionally organised by her father, who chose the husband and accepted a dowry. Under the eyes of the law, a married woman was under the complete and absolute authority of her husband. There was no provision in society for an unmarried woman, and writers such as Aristotle had no doubt that women lacked the intellectual capacity to think and act for themselves and to their own purposes. Despite this, history is filled with examples of prominent Greek women, and unmarried ones in particular. A notable example is Sappho of Lesbos, a lyrical poet known for her uniquely beautiful writing style and the fact that her poetry was written exclusively for other women.
Considering that a woman’s role in society was very limited, there is a surprising abundance of female figures in Greek religion and mythology. For instance, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war and the patron of Athens, was worshipped extensively across the continent and was representative of courage, prudence, and honour. Demeter and Persephone were worshipped as goddesses of agricultural abundance, and were particularly important to the Greeks given the dependence of their economy on agriculture. Artemis, the goddess of wild animals and the hunt, was notably fierce and independent, and led a hunt consisting only of women; additionally, her name is Greek for ‘butcher’. Aside from these examples, there is no dearth of female characters in the Greek pantheon, from goddesses like Aphrodite and Nemesis to the Muses and the Furies.
Outside of the gender binary, the Greeks recognized both transgenderism and a third gender, at the very least. Hermaphroditus, for example, was a Greek deity seen as both male and female; in fact, this is where the term ‘hermaphrodite’ originates from. The moon, Sin, was considered male except when it was full, when it became female for a night and was worshipped. One myth stated that when humans were being created by Prometheus, he once drank too much wine and accidentally attached the wrong genitalia to the humans he created that day, thereby leading to transgenderism. Another myth revolved around Siproites, a young man who wanted to join Artemis’ hunt and was converted into a woman by the goddess since men were not allowed to join said hunt. Additionally, in Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes describes how originally, humans were created with three genders in mind: male, female, and androgynous.
Case Study 3: Ancient India
Just as it is difficult to pin down the history of Ancient Greece to a particular time period and region, so too is it difficult in the case of Ancient India. This case study will look at the overreaching traditions that were largely accepted throughout the subcontinent from 1200 BCE to the first century CE. During this time, most Indian cultures were patriarchal, with little to no information about cultures that followed a different medium of heredition.
In the mainstream culture, sons were greatly preferred over daughters. They were trained in accordance with the customs of their caste, while daughters of all castes were generally taught to manage work around the house and aid the men in their family with their work. While sons were seen as important for the continuity of a lineage, daughters had no claim on the household and, according to Brahminical texts, did not have the right to own property. Brahmin and Kshatriya girls were usually educated in the teachings of the Vedas, while Vaishya and Shudra girls were not. Girls were supposed to be married to someone from outside their kin and their lives were carefully regulated by their mothers to ensure that they were married at the right time and to the right person — while Brahminical texts recognize eight types of marriage, only four were considered desirable, one of the “undesirable” types including “that in which a woman and her lover marry by their own will for their own pleasure.”
The role of the mother in society was more significant. Many dynastic lineages, like the Shakas and the Satavahanas, followed the system of metronymy, wherein children were named for their mother. Children were expected to defer to their mothers well into adulthood — this is illustrated by two examples from the Mahabharata in particular, the first of which involves a woman asking Kunti for permission to marry her son, and the second of which talks about how Kunti’s sons could not refute the orders of their mother even when these orders were revealed to be implausible. Additionally, the role of women was not limited to raising children: many women were classified as “non-procreative”, a classification that included everybody from courtesans to ascetics. In terms of the latter, the Brahminical mainstream did not allow women to become priests, but the several other widespread religions originating at this time did, including Buddhism and Jainism.
Historical evidence indicates that Ancient India was not only cognisant of but also reverent toward a third gender. In the Ramayana, for instance, Lord Rama was exiled to a forest for fourteen years, and as he prepared to begin his exile, his disciples followed him to the forest’s edge. There, he asked “all the men and women” to return to the city, which they did, leaving those who identified as neither still with Lord Rama. Moved by their loyalty, he conferred upon them an auspiciousness that allowed them to sanction blessings, ordain marriages, and be present at childbirth to ensure good fortune in the child’s future. Another example of androgyny in Indian mythology is Ardhanarishvara, who was considered the fusion of the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati. Aside from mythology, the language of Sanskrit itself employs three genders in its grammar: male, female, and neutral. The concept of ‘Hijras’ or people who are intersex has been a predominant part of Indian culture since the 1200 BCEs and continues to be so to this day.
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Our understanding of gender in the ancient world draws from a variety of sources, from Plato’s Symposium to the Brahminical Manusmriti. Even then, however, our knowledge thereof is limited by the credibility of these sources. For instance, the rules laid down in official Greek texts regarding the fact that women had no choice but to marry are at odds with Greek mythology as well as historical evidence of prominent unmarried women like Sappho and the Pythia Oracle at Delphi. SImilarly, the Manusmriti emphasise the fact that women were not allowed access to property, but historians have found evidence that indicates that some women not only owned but also lent and distributed land.
Sex and gender are fluid, subjective terms that are difficult to trace in history — time, translation, and social changes make the historical understanding and actualisation of these terms elusive to the modern reader. This issue is compounded by the fact that historians can only judge historical occurrences to the extent that they themselves can understand them, as well as the fact that the sources available to us may not be entirely accurate. Therefore, it is imperative to keep in mind that our knowledge hereof is both biased and incomplete, and what we see as gender today may be entirely different from what was considered ‘gender’ a few thousand years ago.
About the Author
Gia is a writer who daydreams more than she writes. She is often found drinking coffee, surrounded by several copies of the same book and listening to one song on loop for two weeks in a row.
