1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Violence and gender revealed

“Nefertiti revealed” (2003) is a Discovery Channel docu-drama that offers a re-
construction of the life and supposed tragic death of queen Nefertiti, wife of king
Akhenaten, the 18th dynasty ruler who resided in Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten in
ancient Egyptian). As with all such popular documentaries, this one also combines
narration, reenactments based on interpretations of ancient texts and material
culture, and interview-like comments from scholars. Without going into the
details of this docu-drama, I will concentrate on one scene that particularly caught
my attention at the time, and which effectively reveals the complex intersection of
violence and gender.
It is a scene in which Nefertiti is executing a kneeling man using a sickle-
shaped sword. This scene is followed by scholars’ comments; they state that artisans
often depicted Nefertiti smiting enemies in state representations. However, the
enemies Nefertiti is represented smiting in the original iconography are not the
same as those in the documentary. The enemies she is depicted smiting are
women, whereas in the documentary, they are men. Such a small difference might
seem irrelevant. Yet, this small detail demonstrates both the subtle frame of gender
in ancient Egyptian representations of violence and its neglect in popular
reconstructions.
Why is this detail so important? The obvious answer is that it is inaccurate. In
fact, no Egyptian woman is thus far known to have been depicted by artisans
smiting male enemies. The female king Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty, for in-
stance, is depicted as the king in the form of a male sphinx trampling male enemies
(Chapter 4). All other queens known from trampling or smiting scenes, such as
Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s father), and Nefertiti, are shown
trampling or smiting female enemies. Therefore, we are clearly dealing with a
 Introduction 5

gendered structure behind such images.1 Egyptian kings are depicted trampling or
smiting men and Egyptian queens are conversely shown trampling or smiting
women. I will expand upon the background of this structure in Chapter 4, but for
now, it is important to stress that historical reenactments based on an erroneous
interpretation of the data can produce equally erroneous ideas about specific
queens like Nefertiti, as well as the gendered aspects of ancient Egyptian kingship
and violence more generally.
Studies of war and violence in the past often risk reproducing the fallacies as
exemplified by the docu-drama “Nefertiti revealed”. There is an assumption that
acts of violence are inherently interesting in and of themselves, with no need for
an understanding of their social context.2 This modern reenactment is only one in
a series of elements that add up to an orientalist image of queen Nefertiti as a
vicious female ruler. Such images are found both in scholarly writings and popular
culture,3 and orientalist ideas of the ferocity of female rule are also echoed in
popular fantasy.4 This example demonstrates the necessity of taking the intersec-
tion of gender and violence and its complexity in ancient Egypt seriously.

1.2 Violence and gender in theory

The complexity of violence–gender intersection cannot be properly grasped
without first discussing these very concepts. There is a vast list of studies devoted
specifically to each of these concepts and summarizing them fully and properly
would be a task in and of itself. In this section, I will present influential writings,
highlighting the theories and methods I found most useful while conducting re-
search for this book. References to specific topics, such as rape, or feminization of
enemies, are explored more fully in this book’s chapters. I am well aware that the
choice of my theoretical and methodological approach determines not only the
data I choose to analyze but also the way I analyze and interpret them. In my
opinion, there is no way out of this. Data and theory are hopelessly entangled. I
will let others disentangle them after reading this book, if they are so inclined.
Violence is often understood in everyday language as the use of physical force
to damage, injure, abuse, or destroy completely. From a sociological point of
view, violence encompasses much more than mere physical force. Some indeed
restrict the understanding of violence to physical moment of violence. Others
would consider wounding acts of speech, but also economic and legal structures
which act upon bodies, to be violent.5 While most scholars acknowledge some
evolutionary basis for violent behavior in humans, violence cannot be isolated
from its social context. Torture and killing are as cultural as nursing the sick and
burying the dead. Violence is not senseless, there is always a cultural logic behind
it.6 It is always interpreted.7 Violence is not only physical.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defined symbolic violence as “gentle vio-
lence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims, exerted for the most part
through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition (more
precisely, misrecognition), recognition, or even feeling”.8 It is sometimes assumed
6 Introduction

that emphasizing symbolic violence means minimizing the role of physical vio-
lence, as though symbolic violence does not have a real effect.9 According to
Bourdieu, gender is one form of symbolic violence.10 Yet, contrary to the defi-
nition of Bourdieu, those oppressed on account of their gender are not entirely
unaware of their oppression and they don’t become aware of it only after they
experience physical violence. A simple example from our own patriarchal het-
eronormative society can serve to illustrate this. A woman does not become aware
of her oppression only when she becomes the victim of domestic violence or
when she is not given employment because of an employer’s fear of her potential
pregnancy. A gay man or a lesbian woman does not only suffer from outbursts of
homophobia when they are beaten up for looking, acting, or speaking “differ-
ently”. Women can also be oppressed through “mansplaining” – a condescending
or patronizing manner of explanation by a man, straight or gay. Some of them
notice this, others not. Queer people are often reminded that they are not
“normal”. Gay men are also much more likely to have body image issues than
straight men.11 Some are aware of this, others not.
The effects of such symbolic violence are therefore psychological and ulti-
mately physical. It seems that what Bourdieu understands as symbolic violence is
much more subtle, in the sense that it makes people unable to recognize the finest
facets of oppression, hierarchy, injustice, and difference. This is close to the notion
of “unknown knowns”, things we do not know that we know, the horizon of
meaning of which we are unaware, but which is always-already here, structuring
our reality.12 Where gender is concerned, Bourdieu argued that its understanding
as symbolic violence can be exemplified by the dominated’s assumption that the
categories of the dominant are natural. This leads to self-deprecation and self-
denigration, as, for example, when the women in Kabyle society of north Algeria
studied by Bourdieu view their genitals as deficient and ugly, or when women or
men in our society suffer from pursuit of ideals of beauty.13 The same case applies
to women laughing along with men over sexist jokes.14 Also, for some women
today, or better said for majority of women in traditional patriarchal societies,
reproduction and unpaid domestic work are natural although there is nothing
natural about such work division and reproduction is governed and
controlled.15 Another example is lesbians and gays in Western society who seek
equality by referencing the heteronormative power structures which led to their
inequality in the first place.16 One example might be same-sex marriages as as-
similation of heterosexual values (i.e., homonormativity).17 This is a proper
Foucauldian reverse discourse. French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault
used this term to describe the phenomenon in which groups constructed by a set
of discources start speaking for themselves using the same categories through
which they were disqualified in the first place. His examples are homosexuals
demanding that their naturality is acknowledged,18 as if heterosexuals are
somehow more natural.
The distinction between physical and symbolic violence, as explained by
Bourdieu, is discussed somewhat differently by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj
 Introduction 7

Žižek, who distinguished between subjective and objective violence. According to

him, physical violence is a form of subjective violence, where the subject acting
violently is easily recognizable (e.g., a criminal, drunken husband, child molester,
rapist, and so on). Most people and indeed most archaeologists understand vio-
lence like this. This subjective violence is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. In
the background is objective violence, which Žižek divides into symbolic and
structural. Symbolic violence is embodied in language that imposes a certain
universe of meaning, whereas structural violence is the consequence of the smooth
function of political and economic systems. According to Žižek, these forms of
violence are in complex interaction and should be analyzed as such.19 This is why
in this book I often work from evidence for gendered physical violence to build
up arguments for the ancient Egyptian sex/gender system as historically defined by
symbolic violence.
We have seen that for Bourdieu gender is a form of symbolic violence.
However, gender is more often than not defined as the socio-cultural under-
standing or interpretation of sexual difference. These socio-culturally interpreted
differences determine the conditions of maleness and femaleness. People often use
them to make statements about various areas of social life, some of which are
related to the behavior of men and women, and some are only indirectly related to
them.20 The sex/gender system is, according to the American anthropologist
Gayle Rubin, a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological
sexuality (sex) into products of human activity (gender), and in which these
transformed sexual needs are satisfied.21 Therefore, gender is not only an identity
or a role but also a system of social practices, which allocate people into different
gender categories and organize inequal social relations based on that difference.
Gender systems rely on hegemonic cultural beliefs and expectations that are often
defined by a narrow set of features.22
If we understand that being any gender in any possible way is not simply having
one sex or the other, but dressing, talking, walking, and acting in a certain way,
then no one is born a man or woman, but rather becomes a man or a woman, as
argued by French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal work The
Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949).23 This implies that there are different ways of
being a man or a woman in a given society.24 The difference is dependent on
many other factors and additional facets of identity, a notion known as inter-
sectionality.25 Gender can be cross-cut by race (understood as a social construct
and not a biological given), ethnicity, age, status, and so on. What is appropriate
for different men and women in one society does not have to be appropriate for
others, both within this and in other societies. This also implies that the positions
of men and women and their relations in one society do not have to be the same as
in another. Understood like this, gender is violent, because it implies an unequal
relation of power between different genders and in different domains. Gender is a
mode of relation. It is not a possession but a mode of being dispossessed, being for
another or by virtue of another.26
8 Introduction

However, the differences in power between genders should not be understood

as absolute. A lack of power or less power in one domain of social life does not
mean a lack of power or less power in all other domains. For example, in our
modern capitalist, patriarchal, heteronormative society, some men are subordinate
in their working environment and dominant in their household environment. In
contrast, some women can be dominant in their working environment, but are
subordinate in their households. This phenomenon has led some archaeologists to
argue that the ultimate aim of feminist archaeology is to study power relations
between past genders, to analyze and disrupt them, rather than simply name
them.27
The process of becoming one gender, also means, not becoming the other. As
such the gendering process is a violent process, because it is based on exclusion.
We do our best to conform to one gender by avoiding physical gestures or per-
formative practices associated with the other gender. When defined as a socio-
cultural interpretation of sexual difference, gender becomes something more fluid
and the body something more determined, unchangeable, and fixed. However,
this primacy of the body in determination of gender has been challenged over the
last three decades. Bourdieu has argued that biological appearances and the real
effects are produced in the bodies and minds by a long collective labor of socia-
lization of the biological and “biologicization” of the social. This is why Bourdieu
describes gender as sexually characterized habitus.28 One is, in this context, re-
minded of the words of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who wrote that there
is no nature, there are only its effects, naturalization, and denaturalization.29
Naturalized social construction appears as grounded in nature. Habitus in the work
of Bourdieu signifies:

systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predis-

posed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which
generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively
adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends
or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.30

The biological difference, particularly the anatomical difference between the sex
organs, can function as natural justification for the socially constructed difference
between genders, particularly where the division of labor is concerned.31 Rubin
argued that in modern society, women are a reserve labor force for capitalism, as
their lower wages provide surplus money to a capitalist employer.32 According to
Bourdieu, in the matrimonial market, women can appear only as objects of ex-
change, symbols whose meanings are constituted outside of them and whose
function is to contribute to the perpetuation or expansion of the symbolic capital
held by men.33
Bourdieu argues that what makes gender symbolic violence is its effect through the
schemes of perception, appreciation, and action that are constitutive of habitus. As an
example, he gives the case of French women in the second half of the 20th century
 Introduction 9

who in the majority of cases said they wanted an older and taller husband than
themselves. Were she to marry someone shorter, the woman would appear as the one
who dominates, thereby paradoxically lowering her position socially; she would feel
diminished by a diminished man, as her status is defined through him.34
Bourdieu’s theory of gender as a form of symbolic violence, however, was
criticized on account that it does not leave much room for individual agency.
People are bound by habitus.35 The solution for this problem was subsequently
suggested by American philosopher Judith Butler. Bourdieu argued that masculine
sociodicy “legitimates a relationship of domination by embedding it in a biological
nature that is itself a naturalized social construction”.36 The notion of stability of
the body was also questioned by Butler. She argued that sex is already gender,
although it is constructed as natural and pre-discursive37 in order to legitimate
heteronormative binary gender. Normative sexuality fortifies normative gender.38
According to Butler, sexual difference is naturalized over time through a set of
stylized repetitive acts that define gender performativity.39 In this, she argues there
is no free choice much in the sense of theatrical performance. The choice is al-
ready made for us by society at birth. Throughout our lives, we try to conform to
established norms. In fact, Butler herself relates her concept of performativity to
the habitus of Bourdieu.40 She argues that in our effort to conform to gender
norms, we performatively act out what is expected for a normative gender and
thus we naturalize and empower the gender norms with each act. However, in this
process, failures and unpredictable, deliberate, or undeliberate deviations from the
norms, sometimes only slight, can challenge its establishment and open ways for
other possible ways of being.41 Although performativity implies slips and drags that
undermine the stability of the heteronormative matrix, this matrix has its ways of
putting people back in order, of correcting the slips and eliminating drag. These
ways are violent, always symbolic, and very often physical. As has been put by
Pamela L. Geller “gender then is reinforced and policed throughout an in-
dividual’s life course”.42 As a consequence, its structure is difficult to change,
although changing socioeconomic conditions and personal and collective re-
sistance can gradually modify beliefs about gender.43
Feminist critics, gender studies, and men’s movements have already recognized
that violence is an urgent problem in modern gender relations. The issue is urgent
enough to have its own dedicated, academic journal (Violence and Gender, Mary
Ann Liebert, Inc.), and receives extensive coverage in the less specialized Gender
and Society (Sage Publications, New York). The recent Sage Handbook of Feminist
Theory devotes no less than one-fifth of its content to violence, and even over-
views of feminist literary theory devote articles to war and violence.44
The questions which have occupied the attention of scientists are whether men
are by nature mentally more aggressive than women. Are they more predisposed
to violence? Rates of violence are disproportionally higher in men,45 which re-
searchers have attributed to various biological, psychological, and sociocultural
variables. Observations of biological sex differences do not resolve the question of
whether these are the cause of differences in violent behavior or the consequence
10 Introduction

of behaving violently, however. There has been a tendency in neuroscience to

oversimplify and overinterpret. Scientists merge results to create composite pic-
tures of male and female brains and their wiring for violence. Yet, such re-
presentations are best avoided.46 Human studies showed an overall weak
correlation between testosterone and aggression. There is little evidence for in-
creased aggression as a function of testosterone at puberty in boys. Young men
showed increased testosterone in response to competition with other young men,
however, these results are based on studies involving laboratory tasks or sport-
based competitions. There is an association of fatherhood and lower testosterone
levels. High testosterone men show more antisocial behaviour, take more risks,
and have less stable sexual relationships. However, women also respond with
increased testosterone levels to competitive situations. Association between tes-
tosterone and both aggression and dominance among women is even higher than
among men.47 Also, a positive correlation between testosterone level and degrees
of aggression does not necessarily mean that testosterone causes aggression as
elevated testosterone levels can be triggered by aggression. Studies of correlation
between testosterone and aggression often lack nuanced understanding of ag-
gression. Additional problem is the reduction of behaviour to single hormone
state.48 Most recent studies stress the complex nature of testosterone and aggres-
sion relationship, as testosterone does not increase aggressive behaviour in ev-
eryone. The increase is related to specific behavioral parameters, and acute
testosterone increases aggressive responding in those high on dominance and/or
low on self-control.49 Individual differences and contextual variables play an
important role and testosterone can influence both aggressive and pro-social be-
haviour.50 Thus, sociobiological statements, such as the one that reproduction has
been a frequent cause and reward of violence motivated by male sexual compe-
tition,51 do not really bring us far. Evolutionary perspectives on violence em-
phasize its role in solving adaptation problems or serving as a strategy for obtaining
resources, but they neither offer us a set of methods nor a general theoretical frame
for studying violence beyond quite simplified notions of adaptive strategies and
reproductive competition.52 Furthermore, we have to differentiate between ag-
gression and violence as they are not the same.53
Rubin claimed that the analysis of women’s oppression and its causes forms the
basis for assessing what has to be changed to achieve a society without gender
hierarchy.54 In contrast, Butler argued that ideal morphologies of gender in het-
eronormative society imply normative violence.55 That is, we are at least partially
formed through violence. We are given genders or social categories against our
will and these categories confer intelligibility or recognizability, which means that
they also communicate what the social risks of unintelligibility or partial in-
telligibility might be.56 She distinguishes between violence that forms us and
violence that then informs our conduct.57 Both of these two forms of violence are
close to what Bourdieu and Žižek termed symbolic violence. The main task in
investigating gender as a form of symbolic violence can be summarized with the
words of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein who argued that we should
 Introduction 11

develop the concepts, modes of description, and types of analyses that enable us to
perceive phenomena. The latter may initially present themselves as neutral or
acceptable but are revealed as a form of violence.58 Butler offers an example.
As a consequence of post 9/11 conflicts, Butler began critically thinking about
the way the United States’s government dealt with its own victims and those
affected by its aggression. In her book Precarious Lives (2004), she starts from the
observation that some lives are deemed grievable and others not, which engenders
conceptions of who is normatively human.59 One of the examples she provides is
the victims of AIDS who were erased from public spaces during their lives and
after their deaths. In Frames of War (2009), Butler focused on cultural modes of
regulating affective and ethical dispositions through a selective and differential
framing of violence. She argued that the frames through which we apprehend or
fail to apprehend the lives of others as lost or injured are politically saturated. They
are operations of power.60 These frames do not only organize visual experience
but also generate specific ontologies.61 They seek to contain, convey, and de-
termine what is seen and what is real.62 Frames of war are the ways of selectively
carving up experience as essential to the conduct of war.63 War sustains its
practices through acting on the senses, crafting them to apprehend the world
selectively, deadening affect in response to certain images and sounds, and en-
livening affective responses to others.64 Butler argues that mandating what can be
seen and a concern for regulating content was supplemented by control over the
perspective according to which action and destruction of war could be viewed at
all. By regulating the content, state authorities were clearly interested in regulating
the visual modes of participation in the war.65 These two studies of Butler are
essential for our understanding of how the media create the experience of war, if
and where they find place for noncombatants and how victory and defeat are
presented. Her theories on frames of war are utilized in my discussion on fem-
inization of enemies in ancient Egypt (Chapter 5).
Some of the ideas presented in this overview of theoretical works on violence
and gender have also occupied the attention of a small number of archaeologists
and historians. Other ideas presented here have recently garnered the attention of
an even smaller number of scholars. In order to properly link this book’s core
concerns with the aforementioned theories of violence and gender, I first present a
short history of historiographic and archaeological research.

1.3 Archaeologies of gender and violence

Violence and gender are both contingent historical phenomena. They take dif-
ferent forms and assume different meanings over time. Consequently, the same is
true for their intersection. As we have seen, the intersection between violence and
gender has attracted the attention of scholars in other disciplines, such as philo-
sophy, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies. However, these concepts
have received little attention in historical disciplines. Archaeology/historiography,
gender, and violence have an extensive research literature, each on their own, and
12 Introduction

each two-subject intersection has generated significant scholarship, but the three-
subject intersection has until most recently remained largely unaddressed in
research.66
With an understanding of the complex relationship between violence and
gender in hand – gender can represent a form of symbolic violence, for instance –
it is paramount that archaeologists and historians consider violence to understand
past gender, and vice versa.67 Furthermore, pursuing such a project could enrich
other fields, including gender studies. While archaeology is often overlooked, it is
uniquely situated to illustrate gender relations that have long histories.68 For ex-
ample, Rubin claimed that the kinds of relationships of sexuality that were es-
tablished in the human past still dominate our sexual lives, our ideas about men
and women, and the ways we raise our children.69 However, she does not trace
the genealogy, in the Foucauldian sense, of the relationships that dominate our
sexual lives. She, too, presents our gender system as universal and timeless, ne-
glecting that past societies were quite diverse. The historical contingency and
diversity of gender need to be taken into account.
Another example of an assumption raised at the level of theory is an idea ad-
vanced by Bourdieu: that a “phallonarcissistic” vision and androcentric cosmology
are common to all Mediterranean societies.70 This representation flattens the
differences, specifics, and changes at work in Mediterranean societies over time.
Such a generalized labeling neglects temporal, spatial, and situational differences.
Similarly, Lynn M. Meskell and Rosemary A. Joyce labeled ancient Egypt as
“phallic culture”. As such, they argue that the phallus assumed iconic status in
ancient Egypt; it is central in creation myths and the worship of certain male
deities, such as Osiris and Min.71
Bourdieu argued that historical research cannot limit itself to a description of
the transformations over time of the conditions of women, or to the relationship
between the sexes in different periods. According to him, it must aim to establish
for each period under investigation “the state of the system of agents and in-
stitutions, structural mechanisms and strategies which have perpetuated the
structure of the relations of domination between the sexes”.72 This is indeed not
an easy task even for historians and even less an easy task for archaeologists re-
searching prehistoric societies or societies that did not utilize any form of a script.
It should also be stressed that most introductions to gender archaeology leave
violence unaddressed.73 Early and important contributions to the archaeological
study of warrior masculinity, for instance, tend to focus on status and identity and
to ignore the actual violence of war.74 Missed opportunities for studying violence
and gender abound, and even studies focused on people other than men in conflict
may marginalize gender to focus on ethnicity.75
Nevertheless, there are studies of different forms of gendered violence or the
intersection of gender and violence in archaeology and historiography, and they
have utilized different approaches to the problem. Many studies have dealt with
the subordination of women through analyses of iconography. June Nash argued
that Aztec imperial pursuits resulted in the subordination of Aztec women.
 Introduction 13

Because warfare was men’s work, they could accumulate wealth and gain prestige
while women could not. Changes in the pantheon offer support. With time, older
deities with balanced masculine and feminine features lost prominence to male
warrior deities. This shift was resisted by Aztec women, commoners, and people in
the hinterland. Militarism and male dominance were the strongest among the
ruling elite.76 As I discuss in Chapter 5, the same prominent ideology of militarism
and male dominance is found among the ruling elite in ancient Egypt, especially
during the New Kingdom. The official image of Aztec women (mutilated or
androgynous) is, according to Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, contrasted by the popular
image of women (reproductive). She interprets this as a sign that Aztec male elite
ideology was not present at all levels.77
In earlier studies, it has been demonstrated that violence has to be approached
in its social context. Eleanor Scott, for example, critiqued evolutionist apologies
for rape as rational primate behavior.78 Nancy Wicker has investigated the role of
female infanticide in Scandinavian prehistory.79 Sheila Dillon has argued that
shifting Roman choices in depicting or omitting war-time violence against foreign
women in war, including rape, may reflect shifting needs to maintain civilian
Roman trust in the army.80 Barbara Voss has suggested the archaeology of spatial
organization in early colonial California supports historical accounts of the rape of
Native American women by Spanish soldiers.81 David O’Connor has analyzed
Egyptian monumental art for sexualized metaphors for violence.82 Before em-
barking on the project of writing this book, I explored the gender structure of the
smiting of the enemy motif, and the relationship between the lack of re-
presentations of violence against foreign women and children in New Kingdom
Egypt and the ideals of the king as protector, destroyer of chaos, and peace-
maker.83 Bo Jensen analyzed textual and iconographic evidence from 750 to 1100
AD “Viking world” with revenge as their theme and argued that society cele-
brated the clever use of violence by men and condemned the emotional reactions
of women that did not benefit the society. Women were supposed to demand
violence to be conducted for them after their requests were filtered through men’s
rational, legal, and strategic experience. Independently violent women were
dangerous both for themselves and for society.84 This is symbolic violence par
excellence. Susanne Moraw analyzed late antique images of nubile females and
argued that they are more frequently attested as victims than as actors of violence.
Victimization of girls was the norm and their agency needed strong legitimation.
In contrast, actors committing violence against girls are of higher status, which
made the violence acceptable. These depictions of violence were highly sexualized
and some have rape or attempted rape as their motif.85
From this overview, it is clear that there is much more work to be done and
that certain topics have received more attention than others. Largely unaddressed
is gender and violence’s link to displacement, dispossession, and migration, as well
as their effect on familial, status, and social relations.86 Studies based on texts,
iconography, and material culture in general still seem to be more prominent than
studies based on bioarchaeology. Bearing in mind that the materiality of the body
14 Introduction

is shaped by society in various ways,87 osteoarchaeological studies of violence and

gender have great potential. This has already been demonstrated by several case
studies, including the ethnobioarchaeological study of the Turkana community in
northwestern Kenya. This study demonstrated that women are more likely to have
accidental or occupational trauma than men, but that there is no statistically sig-
nificant difference in the occurrence of injuries to the body where gender is
concerned.88 Similarly, Julie Farnum argued that Moche mainly sacrificed the men
and Sicán the women. Moche sacrificed their best warriors who were treated well
in life, much better than lower class women. Sicán sacrificed young women and
children who were mostly healthy during life. In both societies men were privi-
leged at nearly every social level. They were healthier, lived longer and were
healed better from wounds and illnesses. Commoner women had the worst health
in both socities, clearly showing intersectionality of gender and class.89 However,
already, Sandra E. Hollimon in her study of the Arikara affiliated groups of the
upper Missouri River, warned against double standards in interpreting evidence of
violence. Whereas traces of violence on skeletons of men are interpreted as proof
of their active participation in conflicts, skeletons of women with the same injuries
are interpreted as proof of them being victims of violence.90
Additionally, John Robb has examined changing perceptions of gender in
prehistoric Italy. He argues that while ideas about binary gender appear in artistic
representations that trace back to the Neolithic, from the Copper Age onward
men are increasingly associated with weapons and women with jewelry and or-
naments. Therefore, he postulates an opposition between male violence and fe-
male beauty in the Bronze and Iron Ages.91 He also analyzed osteological trauma
patterns in early Iron Age Italy to understand gender division and document emic
gender concepts.92
Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Misty Fields have argued that there is a
difference in patterns of trauma among over 60 individuals from La Plata Valley in
New Mexico, USA. Local women lacked cranial trauma, received appropriate
burials, and showed little evidence of muscular stress markers. In comparison,
women considered to be obtained from raids had cranial trauma, were thrown into
abandoned pits, and showed clear signs of hard labor throughout their lives. Based
on this evidence, they suggested that local women could have encouraged the
raids and subordination of raided women in order to reduce their own morbidity
risks.93 Here, one should recall the central idea of contemporary feminism that
stresses multivalent and intersectional experiences of womanhood. Socially, some
women are more privileged than others and they use their priviliges actively.
Rebecca C. Redfern argued that in Dorset, Southwest England, antemortem
injuries confirm that women rarely participated in or were exposed to violence,
but perimortem trauma suggests that some women died in conflict, perhaps during
the Claudian conquest of Britain in 43 AD.94 Anne L. Grauer and Andrew G.
Miller argued that in Medieval England, based on 13% of skeletons with bone
fractures from archaeological sites, men showed twice the number of fractures in
comparison to women. At the same time textual sources, such as the Calendar of
 Introduction 15

Patent Rolls indicate that women were the actors of violence as well, but far less
than men.95 Greater emphasis on women and children in war, through a
bioarchaeological perspective, can be found only in the most recent publications.96
This short overview of studies of violence and gender in archaeology de-
monstrates that the ideas of Rubin, Bourdieu, Žižek and Butler, I discussed
previously in this introduction did not really find their way to archaeology.
However, archaeologists and historians have the data necessary to explore them
and possibly to develop novel concepts based on their own studies.

1.4 The outline of this book

Egyptologists have stressed from quite early in the discipline that the image of
women in ancient Egypt is distorted by the fact that men wrote most ancient
Egyptian texts and commissioned or executed most monuments. As a result, the
dominant point of view is a masculine one.97 In this case, very often, we are
actually dealing with a double distortion, both an ancient and a modern andro-
centric one.98 In Egyptology, women seem to occupy the main focus of related
research, rather than gender.99 Masculinity has emerged as a research focus only
recently and remains an endeavor for only a few male authors.100 A very small
number of these have explored men and women in ancient Egypt with reference
to women’s studies, feminist, and queer theory.101 However, what Egyptology as a
discipline needs is to go beyond the “female-male in ancient Egypt” dichotomy.
Gender encompasses a relational dynamic and the cultural processes that have
produced women have also produced men. To use gender as a useful category for
historical analysis, we have to acknowledge its relational notion, as genders are
inevitably defined in terms of one another.102
At the same time, some other Egyptologists both male and female, have dealt
with war, the military, and violence outside and inside Egypt.103 However, the
complex intersection between these two phenomena, violence and gender in
ancient Egypt, has not been explored thoroughly.104 There are many ways in
which this could be achieved, Egyptologists could be investigating power relations
between genders within the domestic sphere and within different occupations
(including, but not limited to overwork105), jurisdiction and legal rights from a
gendered perspective, war and the military as a masculine sphere of action, and so
on. The possibilities are vast and not all possible topics can be adequately explored
in this book. Rather, my aim is to address themes – gendered violence and the
violence–gender intersection – largely unexplored by Egyptologists. I hope that
such a focus will promote more discussion and inspire new studies in this
direction.
This book is not focused on sources but is rather problem-oriented. My aim is
not to provide a catalog of textual and visual evidence of violence with a gendered
background or violence that can be viewed from a gendered perspective. My
concern is to see how these representations can be used to understand at least some
aspects of violence in ancient Egypt from a gendered perspective. One might ask
16 Introduction

which evidence I base my discussion and on which criteria I selected the sources
relevant for this study? The evidence discussed here comes primarily from textual
sources of different genres and from iconography. This is because bioarchaeolo-
gical data on violence and trauma in ancient Egypt are still insufficient for any
comparative or generalizing study. From this, the question naturally emerges as to
how much and what kind of data are sufficient (and I am fully aware that due to
the nature of the archaeological record, we will always have only a small per-
centage of evidence to deal with and never the total record).106 Nevertheless, we
work with what we have, and as this study will show, even with limited sources,
interesting patterns can be observed. I follow Bernstein, who bases his assertions
on the work of German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, that we should
think about “violence without banisters”, to make “sense of the world in which
we find ourselves”.107 The task before me was to make sense of the sources in
which I found myself.
The first problem we encounter is that most contemporary theories on gender
and violence were developed through the investigation of modern hetero-
normative society. This means that in addition to the double androcentric dis-
tortion already discussed, we also have to be aware of another distortion, the one
of modern heteronormativity. In the words of Valerie Traub, “as sexual categories
travel across borders, all efforts at cross-cultural translation and comparison are
imbued with politically loaded significations of tradition and modernity”.108
Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová also argue that there is a danger in
projecting fairly modern terms onto ancient Egypt. Yet, in contrast, there is a
danger of not categorizing evidence at all. They nicely summarize the problem by
stating that “whenever we try to describe a social or a sociocultural construct, we
inevitably do so within our own social construct”.109 Bearing in mind that most of
the evidence I present in this book can be safely argued to have been commis-
sioned and produced by men, I follow Gay Robins in her assertion that it is
important to understand why particular types of material were created in the first
place.110
With a theoretical and historical background in hand, Chapter 2 presents and
analyzes different textual and iconographic evidence for violent acts committed by
men, women, and deities. As in all other chapters, due to the scope of this book,
the limited number of sources, the theoretical nature of this book, and my
Egyptological focus on the periods bracketed by the Old and New Kingdom, most
of the presented data come from these periods of ancient Egyptian history. My aim
in this chapter is to explore how violence committed by and toward different
genders is documented, reported, responded to, and possibly sanctioned. In my
analysis, I also compare gendered violence with the violence conducted by and to
deities of different genders and I discuss the problem of “warrior women”.
Furthermore, I emphasize that bioarchaeological evidence for trauma and violence
in ancient Egypt has been insufficiently studied from a gendered perspective. This
poses a big challenge for attempts to reconcile discourse with lived experience.
 Introduction 17

In Chapter 3, I will explore textual evidence for sexual violence (rape and
assault) in ancient Egypt. I argue that there are no explicit representations of such
acts, which is in itself interesting and demands explanation. I suggest that the lack
of representations of such acts is related both to the general lack of explicit re-
presentations of sexual intercourse in ancient Egypt and violent acts committed by
men against women. Such acts cannot be gleaned from human skeletal remains.
This chapter will also deal with social solutions to acts of rape.
In Chapter 4, noncombatants are the main focus. The textual and iconographic
sources offer evidence that foreign men, women, and children were taken as spoils
of war over several millennia from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period. As
evidence, there are numerous lists of spoils of war from both private and royal
documents (stelae, temple walls, or papyri), as well as representations of women as
spoils of war in foreigners’ procession scenes in private tombs or on temple reliefs
that date to the New Kingdom. A number of representations of foreign women as
bound prisoners will also be discussed, such as the tomb of Kheruef and talatat
blocks from Luxor and Hermopolis. Evidence indicates, as I argue, that re-
presentations of the smiting of the enemy were also gendered. Namely, kings
smote and trampled male captives, whereas queens (Tiye and Nefertiti) did the
same to female enemies. I will also discuss the examples of foreign women who
experienced physical violence at the hands of ancient Egyptian men (e.g., the
tomb of Intef, 11th dynasty). Concluding remarks will identify differences through
time with regard to the violent treatment of foreign women.
Chapter 5 discusses the textual and iconographic evidence for the feminization
of foreign enemies. Butler’s idea of gender as a “frame of war”, discussed earlier in
this introductory chapter, proved to be useful for understanding the phenomenon,
because it provides a theoretical key for understanding how gender ideology in-
forms texts and images with violent content. The cutting off enemy phalli de-
picted on the palette of Narmer and later during the reigns of Merenptah and
Ramesses III are cited as examples of mutilation with gendered backgrounds. The
results will be discussed in comparison to studies of feminization of enemies in war
in other cultures.
Chapter 6 will attempt to connect the various cases of violence (e.g., domestic
and war) using a gendered perspective. I will also discuss these cases within the
context of an ancient Egyptian sex/gender system. Current theoretical debates in
contemporary feminist and queer theory pertaining to patriarchy and masculine
oppression offer a useful frame.

Notes
1 This is thoroughly covered in Uroš Matić, “Her Striking but Cold Beauty: Gender
and Violence in Depictions of Queen Nefertiti Smiting the Enemies,” in Archaeologies
of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books,
2017), 103–121; Uroš Matić, Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt: Violent
Treatment of Enemies and Prisoners. Philippika 134 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,
2019), 139–149.
18 Introduction

2 Many authors limit themselves to studying warriors, weapons, and bioarchaeological

evidence for violence on skeletal remains. Not many place this evidence in a social
context, informed by gender or other variables, Bo Jensen and Uroš Matić,
“Introduction. Why Do We Need Archaeologies of Gender and Violence and Why
Now?” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen
(Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 6.
3 Several scholars have argued that images of Nefertiti smiting enemies indicate that she
was of equal power to her husband Akhenaten, or that “Atenism” (new Amarna
period theological concept centered on god Aten) distorted her. I have already ana-
lyzed the exact passages from these works elsewhere and will not repeat this here; see
Matić, “Her Striking but Cold Beauty,” 111.
4 Just like queen Nefertiti of the 18th dynasty Egypt, the fictional queen Daenerys
Targaryen is depicted in the final episode of popular HBO ecranization of George R. R.
Martin´s The Song of Ice and Fire as a cruel female ruler with no mercy. Philosopher
Slavoj Žižek offered a reading of this final episode. According to Žižek, Daenerys is
depicted in the series as “a new type of a strong leader, a kind of progressive bonapartist
acting on behalf of the underprivileged”. After burning King’s Landing to the ground,
the enemy city she wanted to conquer and rule from, queen Daenerys is killed by her
nephew and lover Aegon Targaryen (Jon Snow). Žižek claims that the background
message of such a characterization of Daenerys is that all attempts of social revolution,
which she inspired either peacefully or violently, are destined to fail, and that female
rulership is destined to fail too. According to Žižek, the lowest point in the dialogue of
Game of Thrones, when Daenerys tells Jon that if he cannot love her as a queen then fear
should reign, is “the embarrassing, vulgar motif of a sexually unsatisfied woman who
explodes into destructive fury”. He adds that “the view of Daenerys with mad-furious
expression flying on a dragon and burning houses and people expresses patriarchal
ideology with its fear of a strong political woman” (https://www.independent.co.uk/
voices/game-thrones-season-8-finale-bran-daenerys-cersei-jon-snow-zizek-revolution-
a8923371.html).
5 Judith Butler, The Force of Non-Violence. An Ethico-Political Bind (London and New
York: Verso, 2020), 1.
6 Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, “Introduction: Making Sense of
Violence,” in Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Scheper-
Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 3. Exactly this aspect of
violence has been misunderstood by Stefan Bojowald in his review of my book Body
and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt (2019). He writes that I come to an “odd”
(merkwürdig) conclusion that torture and killing are on the same cultural level as care
for the sick and burial of the dead. In this he not only misunderstands that I was aiming
at cultural background of violence, but also misrepresents my words since I never
wrote that torturing and killing are on the same cultural level as care, Stefan Bojowald
“Rezension. Matić, Uroš: Body and Frames of War in New Kingdom Egypt. Violent
Treatment of Enemies and Prisoners,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 145. 6 (2020): 514.
7 Butler, The Force of Non-Violence, 14.
8 Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, translated from French by Richard Nice
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–2.
9 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 34.
10 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “Symbolic Violence,” in Violence in War and
Peace: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 272–274.
11 John Farnill Morgan and Jon Arcelus, “Body Image in Gay and Straight Men: A
Qualitative Study,” European Eating Disorders Review 17. 6 (2009): 435–443. It has also
been argued that gay men’s body image issues are overstated, Graeme D. Kan,
“Revisiting Gay Men’s Body Image Issues: Exposing the Fault Lines,” Review of
General Psychology 14.4 (2010): 311–317.
 Introduction 19

12 Slavoj Žižek, ‘‘Philosophy, the ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ and the public use of
reason,’’ Topoi 25 (2006): 137.
13 Bourdieu and Wacquant, “Symbolic Violence,” 272.
14 Beate Krais and Jennifer Marston William, “The Gender Relationship in Bourdieu’s
Sociology,” SubStance 29.3 (2000): 59.
15 Monique Wittig, “The Category of Sex,” Feminist Issues 2 (1982): 67. See also her
essay “One is Not Born a Woman” from 1981, Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and
Other Essays (Boston: Beeacon Press, 1992), 9–11.
16 Pamela L. Geller, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives. Queering Common Sense about
Sex, Gender and Sexuality (New York: Springer, 2017), 73.
17 Jeffrey Weeks, What is Sexual History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016).
18 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Translated from
French by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978 [1976]), 101.
According to Monique Witting the oppressive power of heterosexual discourses is in
preventing people to speak in terms other than heterosexual, Monique Wittig, “The
Straight Mind,” Feminist Issues 1 (1980): 105.
19 Slavoj Žižek, Violence. Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador, 2008), 1–2; un-
derstanding how these types of violence relate to each other has been recognized as a
challenge also by Richard J. Bernstein, Violence: Thinking without Banisters (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2013), 1. The question is also how much of his ideas Žižek owes to other
authors. For example, Randall Collins also writes about wars and revolutions as only
the tip of the iceberg in the base of which are relations between dominant and sub-
ordinated social groups, Randall Collins, Four Sociological Traditions (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994), 47.
20 Marilyn Strathern, Before and after Gender: Sexual Mythologies of Everyday Life (Chicago:
HAU Books, 2016), 6.
21 Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women, Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex,” in
Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter (New York and
London: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 159.
22 Cecilia L. Ridgeway and Shelley J. Correll, “Unpacking the Gender System: A
Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations,” Gender and Society
18.4 (2004): 510–513.
23 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated and edited by H. M. Parshley
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), 273.
24 Margarita Díaz-Andreu, “Gender identity,” in The Archaeology of Identity. Approaches to
Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion, edited by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Sam
Lucy, Staša Babić, and David Edwards (London: Routledge, 2005), 15; Adriana
Zaharijević, Postajanje Ženom (Beograd: Rekonstrukcija ženski fond, 2010).
25 The concept is one of the central tenets of black feminist theory. It stresses that op-
pression is not monocausal, for example in the USA it is not based either on race or on
gender. Rather, intersection of race and gender make some more oppressed or op-
pressed in a dfferent way than others, Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination
Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum
1.8 (1989): 139–167.
26 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 19.
27 Roberta Gilchrist, “Women’s Archaeology? Political Feminism, Gender Theory and
Historical Revision,” in Reader in Gender Archaeology, edited by Kelley Hays-Gilpin
and David S. Whitley (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 52.
28 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 3.
29 Jacques Derrida, Donner le Temps: 1. La Fausse Monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1991), 216.
30 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, translated by R. Nice (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1990), 53.
31 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 11.
20 Introduction

32 Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 160.

33 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 43.
34 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 35–36
35 Dejan Petrović, “O pojmu habitusa – feministička kritika teorije o društvu Pjera
Burdijea,” Filozofija i Društvo XXIV.2 (2013): 174–192.
36 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 23.
37 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New
York: Routledge, 1990), 11.
38 Butler, Gender Trouble, xi.
39 Butler, Gender Trouble, 43–44. This idea is continously erroneously understood even
by those who jump to use Butler´s work to criticize the works of others. For example,
Katherine M. Harell demonstrates this in her review of Archaeologies of Gender and
Violence (2017) edited by myself and Bo Jensen. She argues that the authors of the
papers in this volume are “blithely unaware of the growing corpus of queer scholarship
on the performance of gender in patriarchal societies. Instead, the chapters in this
volume adopt a binary viewpoint of gender, treating gender as ascribed rather than
achieved status.” Katherine M. Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of Gender and
Violence,” American Journal of Archaeology 124. 4 (2020). Butler argued several times
that there is a big difference between performance and performativity, the former
being free and theatrical, and the latter being dictated by already existing norms of
heterosexuality which people aspire to and naturalize through stylized acts. That the
authors do not utilize this idea of Butler is one thing, accusing them that they are not
familiar with it is speculative, especially coming from a position which basically
misunderstands the idea in the first place. Furthermore, binary gender systems are
attested in many socities, among else in the socities studied by the authors in the
volume and by myself in this book. A priori made assumptions on the existence of
multiple recognized genders in ancient socities have also met criticism, Stephanie Lynn
Budin, “Sex and Gender and Sex,” Mare Nostrum – Estudos Sobre o Mediterrâneo Antigo
11. 1 (2020): 1–59.
40 Butler, Gender Trouble, 192.
41 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York and
London: Routledge, 1993).
42 Geller, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives, 5.
43 Ridgeway and Correll, “Unpacking the gender system,” 528.
44 Mary Evans et al. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory (London: SAGE,
2014); Mia E. Carter, “Violence,” in Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, edited by
Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 414;
Jennifer Clarke, “War,” in Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, edited by Elizabeth
Kowaleski Wallance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 421.
45 Robert Eme, “Is Serious Physical Violence almost Exclusively Male?” Violence and
Gender 1.2 (2014): 90–93.
46 Debra Niehoff, “Not Hardwired: The Complex Neurobiology of Sex Differences in
Violence,” Violence and Gender 1.1 (2014), 19–24.
47 John Archer, “Testosterone and human aggression: an evaluation of the challenge
hypothesis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30.3 (2006): 319–345.
48 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender. Biological Theories about Women and Men.
Second Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 127–130. There is also evidence of
great variability of primate behaviour from non-aggressive to aggressive. Female pri-
mates, including humans, engage in aggression and violence in a variety of contexts,
Jennifer Bengtson and Jodie O’Gorman, “War at the Door: Evolutionary
Considerations of Warfare and Female Fighters,” in Bioarchaeology of Women and
Children in Times of War Case Studies from the Americas, edited by Debra L. Martin and
Caryn E. Tegtmeyer (New York: Springer, 2017), 28–29.
 Introduction 21

49 Emil F. Coccaro, “Testosterone and Aggression: More Than Just Biology?” Biological
Psychiatry 82. 4 (2017): 234.
50 Justin M. Carré and John Archer, “Testosterone and Human Behavior: The role of
individual and contextual variables,” Current Opinions in Psychology 19 (2018):
149–153.
51 Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (London: Penguin,
1993), 202.
52 James R. Liddle, Todd K. Shackelford, and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford,
“Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War, edited by Todd K.
Shackelford and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012), 11–19.
53 Butler, The Force of Non-Violence, 28.
54 Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 156.
55 She gave some examples of the violence of gender norms. Her uncle was incarcerated
for his anatomically anomalous body, deprived of family and friends, living out his days
in an “institute” in the Kansas prairies; gay cousins were forced to leave their homes
because of their sexuality, real and imagined; her own coming out at the age of 16; and
subsequent adult landscape of lost jobs, lovers and homes, Butler, Gender Trouble,
xix–xx.
56 Judith Butler. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso,
2009) 167. In a documentary on her life and work, Butler expressed her concerns
about situations in which gender as a norm is exercised coercively. She tells a story of a
young man from Maine (US) who walked down the street of his small town where he
had lived his entire life, and he walked with a swish in a feminine way. As he grew
older, around 14, his swish became more pronounced and more feminine. As a result,
he was harassed by other boys who fought with him. They ended up throwing him
from a bridge and killing him. Butler asks why someone would be killed for the way
they walk? Why would that walk be so upsetting to those other boys that they would
feel that they must stop it, that they must eradicate the possibility of that person ever
walking again? This is according to Butler an extremely deep panic or fear, an anxiety
that pertains to gender norms.
57 Butler, Frames of War, 167.
58 Bernstein, Violence, 179.
59 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New
York: Verso, 2004), xiv–xv.
60 Butler, Frames of War, 1.
61 Butler, Frames of War, 3.
62 Butler, Frames of War, 10.
63 Butler, Frames of War, 26.
64 Butler, Frames of War, 51–52.
65 Butler, Frames of War, 65.
66 Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (eds.) Archaeologies of Gender and Violence (Oxford: Oxbow
Books, 2017).
67 Jensen and Matić, “Introduction. Why Do We Need Archaeologies of Gender and
Violence and Why Now?” 1.
68 Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley, “Introduction: Gendering the Past,” in
Reader in Gender Archaeology, edited by Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley
(London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 3.
69 Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 199.
70 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 6.
71 Lynn M. Meskell and Rosemary A. Joyce, Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and
Egyptian Experience (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 95–103.
22 Introduction

72 Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 83–84. Bourdieu also stressed the necessity of a cri-
tical approach to ancient sources, Masculine Domination, 6.
73 For example, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen. Gender Archaeology (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2000). A notable exception is Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Archaeology:
Contesting the Past (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
74 For example, Paul Treherne, “The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-
Identity in Bronze-Age Europe,” Journal of European Archaeology 3.1 (1995): 105–144.
75 Deborah Sweeney and Assaf Yasur-Landau, “Following the Path of the Sea Persons.
The Women in the Medinet Habu Reliefs,” Tel Aviv 26.1 (1999): 116–145.
76 June Nash, “Aztec Women: The Transition from Status to Class in Empire and
Colony,” in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Mona
Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), 134–148.
77 Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, “Figurines and the Aztec State: Testing the Effectiveness of
Ideological Domination,” in Gender and Archaeology, edited by Rita P. Wright
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 160. Some have criticized these
ideas, as representations of flayed men and accounts of dismembered male captives are
much more common. Violence against women was interpreted as degradation of
womanhood, but violence against men was not interpreted as degradation of man-
hood, Scott R. Hutson, Bryan K. Hanks, and K. Anne Pyburn, “Gender, Complexity,
and Power in Prehistory,” in A Companion to Gender Prehistory, edited by Diane Bolger
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 51.
78 Eleanor Scott, “Killing the Female? Archaeological Narratives of Infanticide,” in
Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited by Betinna Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker
(Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2001), 1–21; Eleanor Scott, “The Use and Misuse of
Rape in Prehistory,” in Indecent Exposure: Sexuality, Society and the Archaeological Record,
edited by Lynn Bevan (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 2001), 1–18.
79 Nancy L. Wicker, “Selective Female Infanticide as Partial Explanation for the Dearth
of Women in Viking Age Scandinavia,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval
West, edited by Guy Hallsall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 205–221.
80 Sheila Dillon, “Women on the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and the Visual
Language of Roman Victory,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, edited by
Sheila Dillon and Katherine E. Welch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 244–271. For imperial Roman battlefield also see Stephan Faust, Schlachtenbilder
der römischen Keiserzeit. Erzählerische Darstellungskonzepte in der Reliefkunst von Traian bis
Septimius Severus. Tübinger Archäologische Forschungen 8 (Rahden: Verlag Marie
Leidorf GmbH, 2012)
81 Barbara L. Voss, “Colonial Sex: Archaeology, Structured Space, and Sexuality in Alta
California’s Spanish Colonial Missions,” in Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by Barbara
L. Voss and Robert A. Schmidt (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 41.
82 David O’Connor, “The Eastern High Gate. Sexualized Architecture at Medinet
Habu?” in Structure and Significance: Thoughts on Ancient Egyptian Architecture.
Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen
Institutes XXV, edited by Peter Jánosi (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 2005), 439–454.
83 Uroš Matić, “Traditionally Unharmed? Women and Children in NK Battle Scenes,”
in Tradition and Transformation: Proceedings of the 5th International Congress for Young
Egyptologists, Vienna, 15–19 September 2015. Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie 84.
Contributions to the archaeology of Egypt, Nubia and the Levant 6, edited by Andrea
Kahlbacher and Elisa Priglinger (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2018), 267–282.
84 Bo Jensen, “Skull-Cups and Snake-Pits: Men’s Revenge and Women’s Revenge in
Viking Age Scandinavia,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić
and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 218–219.
 Introduction 23

85 Susanne Moraw, “Death and the Maiden: Late Antique Images of Nubile Females as
Agents and Victims of Violence,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš
Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 174–175. Moraw’s take on these
imagery from the perspective of a comparison with modern pornography and studies
of pornography was criticized by Harell who insists that Moraw should have been
explicit by stating in the introduction of her paper that she will compare the Late
Antique imagery with bodies in Playboy. Furthremore, Harell states that Moraw misses
the point that the Late Antique images were consumed both by men and women.
Harell’s criticism is not fair since Moraw explicitly points out the historical back-
ground of separation between art and pornography. This separation was made in order
to devoid art of desire. Furthermore, in her introduction Moraw writes that the images
she studied are found on various media which could have been consumed by various
people. Also, Harell herself misses the point that modern pornography is not con-
sumed only by adult heterosexual men. Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of
Gender and Violence”.
86 Louise Hitchcock, “Gender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary,” in
Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford:
Oxbow Books, 2017), 271.
87 Joanna R. Sofaer, The Body as Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
88 Ryan P. Harrod, Pierre Liénard, and Debra L. Martin, “Deciphering Violence in Past
Societies. Ethnography and Interpretation of Archaeological Populations,” in The
Bioarchaeology of Violence, edited by Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Ventura P.
Pérez (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 68–74.
89 Julie Farnum, “Gender and Structural Violence in Prehistoric Peru,” in Archaeologies of
Gender and Violence, edited by Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books,
2017), 259.
90 Sandra E. Hollimon, “Warfare and Gender in the Northern Plains: Osteological
Evidence of Trauma Reconsidered,” In Gender and the Archaeology of Death, edited
by Bettina Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2001),
179–194.
91 John Robb, “Female Beauty and Male Violence in Early Italian Society,” in Naked
Truths: Women, Sexuality, and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology, edited by Ann
Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Claire L. Lyons (London and New York: Routledge,
1997), 43–65.
92 John Robb, “Violence and Gender in Early Italy,” in Troubled Times: Violence and
Warfare in the Past. War and Society 3, edited by Debra L. Martin and D. W. Frayer
(Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1997), 137–138.
93 Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Misty Fields, “Beaten Down and Worked to
the Bone: Bioarchaeological Investigations of Women and Violence in the Ancient
Southwest,” Landscapes of Violence 1.1 (2010): 1–19.
94 Rebecca C. Redfern, “Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course,”
in The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Sarah Ralph (New
York: State University of New York Press, 2012), 63–97.
95 Anne L. Grauer and Andrew G. Miller, “Flesh on the Bones: A Historical and
Bioarchaeological Exploration of Violence, Trauma, Sex, and Gender in Medieval
England,” Fragments 6 (2017): 38–79.
96 Debra L. Martin and Caryn Tegtmeyer (eds.), Bioarchaeology of Women and Children in
Times of War: Case Studies from the Americas (New York: Springer, 2017).
Noncombatants can possibly even be identified in prehistoric socities as demonstrated
by the study of a 3rd millennium BC sanctuary of Pömmelte-Zackmünde in central
Germany where two contrasting groups of graves were found, flat graves and deviant
burials. The latter contained evidence of trauma directed at infants, adolescents, and
women whose bodies were impiously thrown into shafts, André Spatzier, “The
24 Introduction

honoured and the sacrificed? Gender and violence at a sanctuary of the late 3rd
millennium BC in Central Germany,” in Archaeologies of Gender and Violence, edited by
Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 66–67.
97 Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1993), 176.
98 Androcentrism in Egyptology is strong. This is among else demonstrated by the simple
fact that women Egyptologists are excluded from even the most recent histories of
Egyptology. For example although there are many pioneer women Egyptologists, only
Nina de Garis Davies is mentioned together with her husband Norman de Garis
Davies. Other women in Egyptology are not mentioned, Thomas L. Gertzen.
Einführung in die Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Ägyptologie. Einführungen und Quellentexte
zur Ägyptologie 10 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2017).
99 There are several seminal studies on women in ancient Egypt, none on men who are
omnipresent in Egyptological works, and only some on gender. Key studies of women
in ancient Egypt were written by Barbara Watterson, Women in Ancient Egypt (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt; Jean Li, Women,
Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period (London and New York: Routledge,
2017). Some have criticized this women-centered understanding of gender studies in
Egyptology, Lynn M. Meskell, “Engendering Egypt,” Gender and History 9. 3 (1997):
597; Hana Navrátilová, “Gender and Historiography (in Deir el-Medina),” in
Sozialisationen: Individuum-Gruppe-Gesellschaft. Beiträge des ersten Münchner
Arbeitskreises Junge Ägyptologie (MAJA 1), Göttinger Orientforschungen 51, edited
by Gregor Neunert, Kathrin Gabler, and Alexandra Verbovsek (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2012), 151.
100 Ludwig D. Morenz, “Anchtifi gegen andere: zur Profilierung eines Übermenschen
durch Kontrastfigur,” in Feinde und Aufru
hrer: Konzepte von Gegnerschaft in Ägyptischen
Texten besonders des Mittleren Reiches. Abhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 78, 5, edited by Heinz
Felber (Leipzig: Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,
2005), 189–197; Richard B. Parkinson, “Boasting about Hardness: Constructions of
Middle Kingdom Masculinity,” in Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt: ‘Don your wig for a
joyful hour,’ edited by Carolyn Graves-Brown (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales,
2008), 115–142.
101 Among others, Lynn M. Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in
Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999); Meskell and Joyce, Embodied Lives;
Terry G. Wilfong, “Gender in Ancient Egypt,” in Egyptian Archaeology, edited by
Willeke Wendrich (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 164–179; D. Sweeney, “Sex
and Gender,” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles, edited by E. Frood and
W. Wendrich (2011). http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/
zz0027fc04.
102 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American
Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1054; Jeanne Boydston, “Gender as a Question of
Historical Analysis,” Gender and History 20.3 (2008): 558.
103 Most notably: Anthony J. Spalinger, War in Ancient Egypt. The New Kingdom (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005); Anthony J. Spalinger. Icons of Power. A Strategy of
Reinterpretation (Prague: The Charles University, 2011); Anthony J. Spalinger,
Leadership under fire: the pressures of warfare in Ancient Egypt. Four leçons at the Collège de
France, Paris, June 2019 (Paris: Soleb, 2020); See also Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the
Service of Order. The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt. British
Archaeological Reports International Series 2299 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011);
There are also women in Egyptology who research on war, military and violence, see
Laurel Bestock, Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt: Image and Ideology before the New
Kingdom (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). Numerous prosopographic
 Introduction 25

studies focusing on the bearers of military titles and the meanings of these titles have
been written by Andrea Gnirs and Danijela Stefanović.
104 Andrea Gnirs asserts that gender studies are almost absent from the military history of
ancient Egypt, Andrea Gnirs, “Ägyptische Militärgeschichte als Kultur- und
Sozialgeschichte,” in Militärgeschichte des pharaonischen Ägypten. Altägypten und seine
Nachbarkulturen im Spiegel aktueller Forschung. Krieg in der Geschichte 34, edited by
Rolf Gundlach and Carola Vogel (Paderborn: Ferdidand Schöningh, 2009), 99. Since
her assertion, the situation remained unchanged until only recently, Matić, Body and
Frames of War, 139–149.
105 Hitchcock, “Gender and Violence in Archaeology: Final Commentary,” 271.
106 This is the crucial problem of epistemological limits of archaeology and historio-
graphy, Staša Babić, Metaarheologija. Ogled o Uslovima Znanja o Prošlosti (Beograd: Clio,
2018), 15, 106.
107 Bernstein, Violence, vii.
108 Valerie Traub, “The Past is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate
Sexuality Studies,” in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of
Desire. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs XXXIX, edited by Kathryn Babayan and
Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 9.
109 Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess I. Ancient
Egyptian Love Songs in Context (Prague: Agama, 2009), 23–24. This is somewhat a
standard caution expressed in studies of gender and sexuality in the past. Jeffrey Weeks
also warns that our current prejudices and perceptions mediate our analyses of the past,
although the past lives on in the present, Weeks, What is Sexual History? However,
there are also those who argue that modern anthropology, gender studies and queer
theory can inform us on the differences between 21st century understanding of gender
and the understanding of gender in past socities. This is one of the supposed flaws
Harell recognized in the papers from the volume Archaeologies of Gender and Violence
(2017), together with the idea that modern understandiing of violence is different than
those of past socities, Harell, “Book Review. Archaeologies of Gender and Violence”.
Harell misses that modern anthropology, gender studies and queer theory did not
develop different concepts of gender by studying ancient societies too and that some
attempts of philosophers to define ancient experiences of sex, such as Michel
Foucault’s, met significant criticism. Only archaeologists and historians can inform us
on the differences Harell argues in favor of, also when violence is concerned. This is
exactly what the papers in the book she reviewed did.
110 Gay Robins, “Women in New Kingdom Art,” in Women’s Earliest Records. From
Ancient Egypt and Western Asia. Brown Judaic Studies 166, edited by Barbara S. Lesko
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 116.