ARCE-NY: Switching Genders in Ancient Egyptian Myths: A Tale of Two Stories by Dr. Ann Macy Roth

Lecture Information

A productive way of looking at ancient Egyptian society’s assumptions about the differences between men and women is to examine works of art and literature in which they play the same roles, and note the places where changes needed to be made. For example, one can compare the same chapter of the Book of the Dead when it belongs to a man and when it belongs to a woman. A similar comparison can be made when a man and a woman play the same roles in a literary narrative.

In this lecture, Dr. Ann Macy Roth will argue for the underlying similarity of two well-known ancient Egyptian stories, “The Tale of Two Brothers” from the New Kingdom and “The Myth of Isis and Osiris” as recorded by Plutarch in Greek during the Graeco-Roman period but alluded to in earlier Egyptian texts. By examining what can stay the same in these stories and what must change when the gender of the character is changed, we can gain some insights into what the ancient Egyptians thought about the nature and roles of men and women.

Speaker Bio

Ann Macy Roth grew up in Portland, Oregon and received both her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Egyptology at the University of Chicago. After several years at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, she served as a visiting instructor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was appointed to a faculty position at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1993, and since 2003 she has taught at New York University, where she is now a clinical professor.

Prof. Roth’s field research in Egypt has included directing nine seasons of epigraphic and archaeological fieldwork at Giza between 1989 and 2005, the first part of which was published as A Cemetery of Palace Attendants (Giza Mastabas 6); her second

volume on the Western Cemetery is in preparation. Her principal writing project at the moment, however, is a study of the patterns of gender relations in ancient Egypt.