Chapter 33

Women
Excerpt from
Historical Deception: The Untold Story of Ancient Egypt
by Moustafa Gadalla

General
No society, past or present, did or does value
their women like the ancient Egyptians did. Whenever a society values women so highly, equality
between men and women is the natural outcome.
The woman was referred to as Nebt-Het, literally meaning The Golden (meaning highest/noblest) Lady of the House. There is not a single
reference made to a man as the master of the
house.
The most important aspects/attributes/principals of God were
personified by women. The netert, Ma-at, personifies the cosmicordering principle. She keeps the universe in balance, order and
harmony. Her cosmic power is the source without which the other
neteru(gods/goddesses) are functionless and nil.
And there are Auset(Isis), Mut, Sekhmet, Nebt-Het(Nephthys),
Het-Heru(Hathor), Seshat, and many other female neteru, who personify the greatest aspects of the One Universal God.

Matrilineal/Matriarchal Society
The ancient Egyptians were totally aware of the planetary laws.
The modern discovery/rediscovery of such laws are attributed to

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Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who himself boasted in print, that he

had rediscovered the lost laws of Egypt. He was honest, but his
followers were/are not.
Kepler rediscovered that the orbit of a planet/comet, about its sun
is an egg-shaped path (ellipse). Each planetary system is balanced
only when the planets orbit is an egg-shaped plane that has 2 focci,
with its suns center of mass at one of its focci.
Planet
(Child)

Sun
(Father)

(Mother)

The creation stories in ancient Egypt begin with the cosmic egg (an
ellipse). In the Khmunu(Hermopolis) traditions, the cosmic egg contained the bird of light (the sun). All planets/comets follow the
egg-shaped (elliptical) orbit, with a sun at one of its focci.
Likewise, on earth, the female is the source of energy, the sun. It is
her power that keeps the planets (children), each in its own independent orbit. That is to say, the matrilineal/matriarchal system
follows the planetary laws.
The matriarchal system, as the social manifestation of planetary
laws, was the basis of the social organization in ancient Egypt where.
the queen sister and queen mother had positions of great respect
and potentially much authority.
Throughout Egyptian history, it was the queen who transmitted the
solar blood. The queen was the true sovereign, landowner, keeper

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of the royalty, and guardian of the purity of the lineage. Egyptian

kings claimed a right to the throne through marriage with the oldest
Egyptian princess. Through marriage, she transmitted the crown to
her husband, he only acted as her executive agent.
This law was reflected in the Egyptian folklore of Ausar, who became the first Pharaoh of Egypt, as a result of his marrying Auset
(Auset means seat, i.e. authority). Septet (Sirius) is the dwelling
star of Auset. It is the sun of our sun. Septets precise cosmic role,
in our modern astronomy and physics, is still unfolding. Some
scholars suspect that Egypt knew that Septet is the greater sun,
about which our sun and solar system orbits. The Septet (Sirius)
star, i.e. Auset, is the sun of suns, i.e. the mother of mothers, the
Cosmic Queen.

As a rule, in the Egyptian tombs as far back as the Old Kingdom, the
mother of the deceased is represented with the wife, while the father
rarely appears. On the funerary stelae of later times also, it is the
usual custom to trace the descent of the deceased on the mothers
side, and not on that of the father. The persons mother is specified,
but not the father, or he is only mentioned incidentally.

Surviving records from the Middle Kingdom show that the nomes
(provinces) of Egypt passed from one family to another through
heiresses; thus he who married an heiress would gain for his son the
inheritance of his father-in-law.

Western academicians are uncomfortable with writing about the

matrilineal and matriarchal societies. Some even went so far as to
state that the reason they traced the mothers only, was because fathers were unknown or in doubt. They are in pain, trying to ignore,
downplay, and explain it through their own dark sides. Their underlying, pathetic, resentful and contemptuous thinking is, what
Europe did not have, cannot be!

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In High Positions
As mentioned earlier, women personified major aspects/attributes
of the One God. How much higher can a woman get than that?
Since women were the legal heirs to the throne, they played an
important part in the affairs of State, performing as a kind of power
broker. The Queens of Egypt sometimes wielded exceptional influence, as advisers to the Pharaohs. Some queens governed Egypt for
long durations. Hatshepsut, in particular, is a good example of a
woman Pharaoh.
Women could hold any position in the temple. There were priestesses of the neteru. Several of them reached the position of holy
women. Some of those holy women (similar to nowaday saints)
had their own special shrines.
As early as the fourth or early 5th Dynasty, there are records of
female doctors. One woman (Doctor Peseshet) had the title Lady
director of Lady physicians.
The office of scribe was not limited to males; women were known
to have held the title, too.
Women enjoyed every right pertaining to property, and had legal status which enabled them to buy, sell and take legal action.

As a Wife
The Wise Man, Ptah-hotep, gives the following advice to men:
If thou art a man of note, found for thyself an household, and
love thy wife at home, as it beseemeth. Fill her belly, cloth
her back; unguent in the remedy for her limbs. Gladden her
heart, as long as she lives; she is a goodly field for her lord.
The historian Diodorus reported that part of the agreement entered into at the time of marriage was, that the wife should have

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control over her husband, and that no objection should be made to

her commands.
An instruction from the New Kingdom (c. 1500 BCE) affirms
Diodorus account:
Do not control your wife in her house,
When you know she is efficient;
Dont say to her: Where is it? Get it!
When she has put it in the right place.
Let your eye observe in silence,
Then you recognize her skill:
It is joy when your hand is with her,
There are many who dont know this.
It has been stated by some that the Egyptian priests were only
allowed to have one wife, while the rest of the community had as
many as they chose. On the contrary, the monuments depict each
individual with a single consort. Mutual affection, tenderness and
expression of endearment can be noticed by the fond manner, in
which they are seated together, and with their children.
Men and women either sat together, or separately, in a different
part of the room. They were not kept in the same secluded manner
as those of ancient Greece. The Egyptians treated their women very
differently, as the accounts of ancient writers and the sculptures
sufficiently prove. At some of the public festivals, women were
expected to attend, in the company of their husbands or relations.
The ancient Egyptian woman was described best by a widower,
writing of his late wife:
She is profitable of speech, agreeable in her conversation,
of good counsel in her writings; all that passes her lips is
like the work of Ma-at, the netert of Truth, a perfect woman,
greatly praised in her city, giving the hand to all, saying that
which is good, repeating what one loves, giving pleasure to
all, nothing evil has ever passed her lips, most beloved by
all....
In the Ausar(Osiris) Legend, Auset(Isis) and Ausar(Osiris), the

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sister and brother got married. The relationship between Auset(Isis)

and Ausar(Osiris) was purely an allegorical fable.
Some historians, such as the Sicilian Diodorus, reported that
marriages, between brothers and sisters, were owing to and inspired
by the Auset(Isis)/Ausar(Osiris) legend! This misunderstanding
may have come as the result of the fact that the ancient Egyptian
word for brother and husband is the same word, sn, as well as the
word for sister and wife, sn.t. These words are derivatives of the
verbal stem sni, which has the meaning to embrace, to kiss. Used
in context, they would represent person whom one usually embraces, person whom one is familiar with. Therefore, we must
be cautious when encountering sn and sn.t in certain texts, and we
should not draw too many conclusions about incest and the like.
During certain periods of the ancient history, it was lawful for
ancient Egyptians, Athenians and Hebrews to marry a sister by the
fathers side, not however, born by the same mother. Very few Egyptians married their half-sister (from the fathers side), and only if she
was the legal heir, so as to inherit the throne. The Ptolemies did not
observe the restrictions of the fathers side, but Ptolemies were not
Egyptians.
The few marriage contracts which have survived the ages show
that the womans rights were all well respected.
In a contract dating from 580 BCE, but probably based on earlier contracts, the prospective husband takes oath that if he leaves
his wife either from dislike, or preferring another, he will return the dowry and a share of all paternal and maternal property for
the children which she may bear.
If the marriage failed, the formula for the man was to say before
duly accredited witnesses, I have abandoned thee as wife. I am removed from thee. I have no claim on earth upon thee. I have said unto
thee, Make for thyself a husband in any place to which thou shalt go.
At the same time, financial provision had to be made for the divorced wife. Similarly, a wife wishing to divorce her husband also
had to pay compensation.

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As a Mother
Motherhood was revered in ancient Egypt. The following sage
sums it up:
Thou shalt never forget what thy mother has done for thee.
...She bore thee and nourished thee in all manner of ways. If
thou forgettest her, she might blame thee, she might lift up
her arms to God, and He would hear her complaint. After
the appointed months she nursed thee for three years. She
brought thee up, and when thou didst enter the school, and
was instructed in the writings, she came daily to thy
master with bread and beer from her house.

Children
One of the characteristic traits of
the ancient Egyptians was their love
for their children. They displayed
such a parental affection without limitation.
As reported by Plato, education for
the young was very essential. Mannerism and discipline were emphasized. They had rooted respect for old
age, as well as for strangers. They required every young man to
give place to his superiors in years. If seated he was supposed to
rise, on the elders approach.
The Egyptians always expected a great deal from their children,
and, on the whole, their expectations were fulfilled. This was true
among all classes of people.
Their tremendous love coupled with this high expectation of
their children may have contributed to the long duration of the
Egyptian civilization.
There was no distinction being made between their offspring by
a wife or any other woman, and they all equally enjoyed the rights
of inheritance.

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Family Members by Feeding

In the Middle East, since ancient times, mothers regularly nurse
each others' babies when they get hungry. The act of suckling a
child will make the woman a 'mother' to the child, and henceforth
her offspring will be 'brothers' and 'sisters' to the nursed (suckled)
child. The nursed children will refer to their feeding nurse as 'mother',
the same term that they used for their biological mother.
Many Egyptologists (who are almost all Europeans or their descendants) don't recognize this fact, and as a result, confused the
chronology and the relationships between individuals in ancient
Egypt (and the biblical characters as well). When an un-informed
"scholar" gets stuck in his chronology, s/he does not hesitate to
paint the Egyptian relationship as "incest".