ce and authority despite social constraints” (Swann 148).
In Egypt, unlike many other ancient civilizations like Greece, woman and men appear to have had the same legal and economic rights as depicted in Egyptian art and historical inscriptions. Like most ancient civilizations, most of the history of ancient Egypt that remains is the history of the elite, especially when we look at ancient Egypt before the New Kingdom. For ancient Egyptian society was no egalitarian state. While men and women may have been considered of equal status, there was no such equality between the elite and the social classes. Yet, even among the lower classes there seems to have been an equality between the genders, what many historians believe is the result of the particular religious ideology of the era, “Since Egyptian national identity would have derived from all people sharing a common relationship with the king, then in this relationship, which all men and women shared equally, they were—in a sense—equal to each other…Legal distinctions in Egypt were apparently based much more upon differences in social classes, rather than gender differences. Rights and privileges were not uniform from one class to another, but within the given classes, it seems that equal economic and legal rights were, for the most part, accorded to both men and women” (Piccione 1).
Once we get closer to the Ptolemic Period of Egyptian history records are more readily available from the middle and lower classes. At this time in history, the Egyptians lived under the auspices of their Greek rulers but were able to choose whether they wanted to utilize the legal system of Egypt or Greece when it came to contractual agreements or legal disputes. Even though this was the case, the Egyptian system afforded women more privileges and rights than the Greek system did to Greek women who functioned under its more restrictive social and legal code. When it came to a wo...