essay about famous egyptian woman

• The 25 Most Influential Women in Egyptian History

We remember twenty-five of the most influential women who have shaped the country’s history; women whose memory should not be forgotten as Egypt looks to the future.

A lmost 4,500 years ago, Peseshet, a physician in ancient Egypt, became the first woman in recorded history to practise medicine, maybe even the first female scientist as well. It took several millennia for another Egyptian woman, Helena Sidarous, to re-enter the field of medicine, in the 1930s.

Throughout the history of humanity, during the highs and lows of the fight for female emancipation, Egyptian women have fared quite well. Their status may have fallen sharply at certain times, but they have always managed to dust themselves off and re-emerge. In this article, we remember twenty-five of the most influential women who have shaped the country’s history.

Singling out specific names for this list posed quite a challenge. There have been many strong women who have left their mark on Egypt’s history; however, we chose to limit it to historical figures up to the mid-twentieth Century, enabling us to see more clearly if their impact has in fact, extended to the present.

What we mean by influence must also be explained. The influential women chosen are those who held positions with a high degree of political power; those who acted as pioneers in certain professions, opening the door for future generations of women; or those who became icons, inspiring men and women alike.

It would be impossible to list every woman who has had an impact on Egypt’s history, but this is our attempt to pay tribute to twenty-five of them, hoping to portray more stories of trailblazers and  icons in the years to come.

Hatshepsut, 1508–1458 BCE, Pharaoh

Why is Hatshepsut first on our list?

It isn’t simply because she ruled Egypt as a woman in antiquity. There were other women before her who ruled the country – Nitocris of the Sixth Dynasty and Sobeknefru of the Twelfth are among other female monarchs who preceded Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty. So, what makes her worthy of being number one on a list like this, prepared more than three millennia later?

It is simply because she is among a handful of Egypt’s greatest rulers. She towered over her peers, regardless of gender, and appropriately so, since Hatshepsut ruled Egypt not as a great queen, but as a great king. Hatshepsut, who normally portrayed herself as a man for social acceptance, ushered in one of the most prosperous and peaceful reigns of Ancient Egypt. She led armies to war at the start of her reign, but focused her energy mostly on establishing trading relations with foreign countries and bringing immense wealth to Egypt. This wealth helped launch an era of fne art and architecture as well as grand building projects of unrivalled standards in the classical world. As with all pharaohs, immortality was no trivial matter to Hatshepsut. She endearingly expresses this worry on one of her obelisks at Karnak Temple, saying, ‘Now my heart turns this way and that, as I think what the people will say. Those who see my monuments in years to come, and who shall speak of what I have done’.

Tiye (ca. 1398 BC–1338 BCE), ‘Great Royal Wife’ and mother

She is the first figure you notice as soon as you walk into the Egyptian Museum, and she probably wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Queen Tiye’s monumental statue, which portrays her sitting alongside her husband, Amenhotep III, with her arm around his shoulder, makes a clear statement about the level of authority she had. It isn’t just this monumental statue that is intriguing, even her smaller sculptures stand out as slightly odd. She has an uncommonly serious (almost angry) expression on her face in practically every depiction. The no-nonsense Tiye has caused many historians to wonder about this woman, who obviously must have been a force to be reckoned with.

Wife of Amenhotep III and mother of the infamous Akhenaten, Tiye was not of royal blood herself, yet she exercised great influence over the reign of both kings. The first Egyptian queen to have her name recorded in offcial acts, Tiye’s role during her husband’s reign mostly involved dealing with foreign dignitaries who respected her strength of character and wisdom.

Tiye’s influence, however, is perhaps most significant when it comes to her son Akhenaten, known as the ‘heretic king’. Was it Tiye who led him to follow such controversial religious beliefs? Or maybe Akhenaten simply inherited his mother’s strength of character, enabling him, against all the odds, to abolish the deities of a highly religious country like Egypt? In all cases, letters to and from Amarna (Akhenaten’s new capital city) show us that his mother, who outlived his father by twelve years, continued to be his guide, confidant and adviser during one of Egypt’s most revolutionary periods.

Cleopatra VII (69–30 BCE), Queen of Egypt

The last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra was from the line of the Ptolemies, of Greek-Macedonian origin, who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. Like Hatshepsut, she began her reign as co-regent to her brother/husband, and eventually saw to it that she ruled on her own.

Cleopatra is mostly known, of course, for a life of epic love affairs, all to keep Egypt independent from the Roman Empire.

Little attention is given to how the Egyptians themselves perceived their pharaoh. Was Cleopatra loved by the Egyptians? Well, for one, unlike most of her Ptolemaic predecessors, Cleopatra actually learned to speak the Egyptian language. By trading with Eastern nations, she built up Egypt’s economy, reinforcing her country’s status as a world power and bringing some peace to a country that had been riven by internal wars. The few available Egyptian sources contemporary to her reign suggest that she was actually quite popular among her own people.

A recently discovered coin (found in 2007) bearing a portrait of Cleopatra sparked a debate on whether she was, in fact, beautiful. Struck two years before her death, the coin shows a rather unattractive Cleopatra with a large nose, narrow lips and a sharp chin – nothing like Elizabeth Taylor or Vivien Leigh. But perhaps this is why she is a woman still worth remembering thousands of years later. She wasn’t just a pretty face. Plutarch says it best when he explains, ‘Her actual beauty … was not so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence … was irresistible. … The character that attended all she said or did was something bewitching’.

Shajar al-Durr (d.1257 CE), Sultana

A former slave girl who was elected queen by a group of military men in a medieval Islamic country … Shajar al-Durr must have been quite a woman.

Her husband, the Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Ayyub, had purchased her along with other Mamelukes of Turkic origin, and it was this group of Mamelukes who remained most faithful to him and managed to establish a new Mameluke state in Egypt after his death. Al-Salih Ayyub’s final years in Egypt were mostly spent on military campaigns against the crusaders. At this time, Shajar al-Durr exercised great influence over the army and eventually ran the kingdom’s affairs when her husband fell ill. When al-Salih Ayyub died in the midst of the crisis created when Louis IX of France invaded Egypt, Shajar al-Durr decided to conceal his death until she had secured the support of the army by putting his son, Turanshah, in power. 

Turanshah’s incompetence led to his murder by his father’s Mamelukes, and they later convened to elect Shajar al-Durr as queen of Egypt. The Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad (theoretically considered the source of authority over Muslim territories) disapproved and sent the Mamelukes a threatening letter saying, ‘If you are left with no man fit to rule but this woman, then it is our obligation to send you one of ours to take the sultanate’. A co-regent was thus chosen, Ezz al-Din Aybak, whom Shajar al-Durr married in order to cement her position. She did, however, keep the reigns of power in her hands. When Shajar al-Durr learned about Aybak’s plans to take another wife, she had him murdered. Three days later, Aybak’s other widow murdered Shajar al-Durr using wooden bath clogs in one of the most famous stories of Egyptian folklore.

THE TRAILBLAZERS

Being the sole woman in a class of fourteen men at the school of literature at Fuad I University in 1929 must have been awkward for everyone. Suhayr al-Qalamawi probably wasn’t very intimidated; she outperformed all her colleagues practically every year. She became one of the first women to graduate from university and obtain a master’s degree. She was also the first woman to earn a PhD, which was for a study of the epic One  Thousand and One Nights , a book that would be attacked more than fifty years later for being ‘immoral’.

Al-Qalamawi became professor of modern Arabic literature in 1956 and later became head of the department of Arabic language at Egypt’s leading university for nine years.

Born in the city of Tanta, al-Qalamawi went to school at the American College for Girls and took the bold step of being one of the first young ladies to register for classes at Fuad I University. The dean of the school of literature at the time was Taha Hussein (known in Egypt as the ‘dean’ of Arabic literature), who was very supportive of al-Qalamawi’s endeavor. Hussein helped her find work as a writer with the university magazine, after which she worked her way up to become editor, launching a long career of writing and journalism.

Al-Qalamawi, who joined the Egyptian parliament in 1967, chaired and helped to establish the first Cairo Book Fair, which remains a strong institution to this day. She wanted to make international literature available to the regular Egyptian and saw to the establishment of libraries and projects that provided affordable books and translations of numerous international classics for Egyptian readers. It was also she who introduced modern Egyptian literature as a discipline of study at the university level, a genre that was and remains somewhat underappreciated vis-à-vis classical Arabic literature.

Her mother’s fierce battle with cancer may have been what propelled Samira Moussa to study science and to eventually explore the medical uses of nuclear energy.

Born in a small town in Gharbeyya, Moussa moved to Cairo with her father, and he enrolled her in one of the first girls’ schools in Egypt. At Banat al-Ashraf High School, she ranked first countrywide in the secondary school certificate examinations of 1935. This made her school eligible for a financial grant from the government, and Nabaweyya Moussa – the school’s founder – decided to invest this prize money in a laboratory for Moussa’s use. She later graduated with high honors from the Faculty of Science, Fuad I University (the future Cairo University) and, with the aid of Dr Mostafa Mousharafa, dean of the faculty, became its first female Egyptian faculty member. She eventually obtained her master’s degree in gas thermal convection and later travelled to the UK, where she got her PhD in atomic radiation.

Moussa believed in the concept of ‘Atoms for Peace’ and is quoted as having said, ‘My wish is that through the use of atomic energy, cancer treatment will be within the reach of the masses, just as aspirin is’. Maybe it would have come true had she lived long enough to pursue her dream. In 1952, Moussa embarked on a trip to the US on an exclusive visit to several state-of-the art atomic research facilities. On 5 August 1952, while driving along a mountainous road to the University of California, an opposing truck suddenly appeared on the high cliff road, pushing Moussa’s car off the edge. She was killed immediately but the driver seems to have jumped out of the car right before it fell off the cliff and has never been found. The case remains unsolved to this day.

An adventurous rebel with a fascination for aviation, the young Lutfia kept her father under the impression that she was attending a study group while she took aviation classes twice a week. She later got herself a job as a receptionist at Cairo Airport (to pay for her classes after her father found out) and hid in a two-seater plane before it took off so she could experience flying for the first time.

In 1933, al-Nadi got her pilot’s license (the thirty-fourth license issued in Egypt), and, at the age of twenty-six, she finally realized her dream of flying a plane on her own from Cairo to Alexandria, competing in a race where she achieved first place and simultaneously became the first female pilot in Egypt’s history. Later,al-Nadi took her father on a flight and circled over the pyramids a few times; awestruck, he eventually became her biggest supporter, despite having earlier opposed her flying classes.

Feminist Hoda Shaarawi started a fundraising campaign to buy an aircraft for al-Nadi so she could spread her wings over the world and show the capabilities of Egyptian women. Many women were to follow in al-Nadi’s footsteps subsequent years (Blanche Fattouche, Aziza Moharram, Aida Takla, Leila Massoud, Aisha Abdel Maqsud, and others). Although female pilots are now rare in Egypt, there are a few exceptions, such as Captain Dina al-Sawi, who ably flies jumbo jets for Egypt Air today.

A pioneering magazine editor, al-Said is known for her flagship publication Hawaa  ( Eve ), still a popular publication, that printed 175,000 copies at its launch in 1954. As a writer, she tackled more than beauty tips and kitchen recipes. Her cause was female equality, and she used the might of her pen to fight for it through many turbulent events.

It was during her childhood in the strict society of Assiut that the work of feminists like Hoda Shaarawi and others started gaining momentum. At the age of fourteen, al-Said joined the youth section of the Egyptian Feminist Union, and, in 1931, she became one of the first women to attend Fuad I University. In her obituary in The Independent, journalist Adel Darwish tells us that, ‘Although she was married to a millionaire member of the semi-feudal aristocracy, … she insisted on giving him half her monthly salary towards running the home, since their marriage contract was based on equality’.

Soon after she graduated in 1935, Amina was hired by the popular al-Musawwar magazine, where she wrote a regular column until shortly before her death. She used her column to support fellow activists, like the controversial and militant Doria Shafk, and her popular ‘Is’alouni’ (‘Ask Me’) column to encourage political debate. Having the courage to speak openly about politics during the dictatorship of Nasser gained al-Said immense respect from her fellow journalists.

As she rose in status, eventually becoming chairperson of the monumental Dar al-Hilal publishing group, the gutsy al-Said began taking on a new cause for women: fighting  the Islamic fundamentalist tide that began in the 1970s. Unfortunately al-Said died in 1995, disappointed in Egyptian women, as she felt that the fundamentalist tide was getting the better of them. Three days before her death, she is quoted as having said that ‘Contemporary [Egyptian] women have no stomach for a fight’.

Although not the first female lawyer (that credit goes to a Naima al-Ayouby), Abdel Rahman is the most well known of the pioneering generation. The ultimate working mother, Abdel Rahman was a successful lawyer, activist, board member of several major organisations, and parliamentary member for seventeen years, all while raising nine (yes, nine!) children.

Like most of the other women on this list, Abdel Rahman was among the first females to graduate from Fuad I University and the first one to graduate from the faculty of law. She was already a mother of five at the time but had the immense support of her husband, who had encouraged her to enroll in 1933, a few years after they married.

Abdel Rahman’s first case was one that most paralegals would consider too intimidating to start with: one of involuntary manslaughter. Abdel Rahman, who convinced her boss to let take the case on her own, walked into the courtroom (as she told a journalist half a century later) ‘having studied my case very well, looking very serious and without a speck of makeup on’. She won the case and her client was acquitted; the budding lawyer became very popular and eventually started her own firm.

Among Moufida’s most significant cases was that of fellow activist Doria Shafk, who was summoned to court after she stormed  parliament with 1,500 women and a list of demands. There were hundreds of female lawyers in Egypt at the time (1951), but Moufida was the strongest. She and the other lawyers who volunteered to defend Shafik succeeded in getting the case postponed sine die .

Abdel Rahman was also the only woman to participate in the work of the Committee for the Modifcation of Status Laws for Muslims. The laws that regulated family matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance were crucial in reshaping the legal system to adapt with the progress women had made in entering the workforce and participating in public life.

Inspiring writers, poets, feminists, scholars and filmmakers well into the twenty-first century, Hypatia’s brutal murder immortalized her legacy rather than killing it. Hypatia is considered the earliest female scientist with a well-documented life . She wrote numerous books on mathematics and astronomy, her main passion.

Hypatia, who dressed as a scholar or teacher rather than in traditional women’s clothing, moved about Alexandria freely, driving her own chariot. She taught at the Neoplatonist School of Philosophy at the Lyceum where she eventually became director in 400 CE.

Little historical evidence on Hypatia survives, but what does remain implies that she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer, and, with the aid of her student, Synesius of Greece, the hydroscope.  It is through the letters of her students that we learn about her life and influence outside her native city of Alexandria. Hypatia was a popular lecturer, drawing students from many parts of the Roman Empire.

Although many of Hypatia’s students (such as Synesius himself) were Christians who revered their teacher, it was an angry Christian mob that ultimately killed her due to conflicts with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. A pagan philosopher encouraging experimental science was too much of a controversy in the increasingly religious environment of the time, leading to the tragic end of her life.

Hypatia was riding her chariot around Alexandria when the angry mob captured her and dragged her naked body through the city, mutilating her flesh and burning her remains. In doing this, they unwittingly immortalized the memory of a woman who was to be an icon to scientists and philosophers from then on.

One of the most famous and unprecedented aspects of the Egyptian revolution of 1919 was that for the first time in the country’s history, women took to the streets with men, demanding their country’s liberation. The revolution that was inspired by nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul, however, was not led by him. Zaghloul was in exile at the time. It was his wife who announced through her secretary at the door of their home where people gathered that, ‘If Saad Zaghloul has been detained, with God and the nation as her witnesses, his wife and partner, Safeyya Zaghloul, shall place herself in his position of sacrifice and struggle for our nation, and she considers herself mother to all those who marched to face bullets for the sake of their country.’ From that day, Safeyya Zaghloul became known as the ‘Mother of Egyptians’, and the home that she shared with her husband was and remains known as the ‘Home of the Nation’.

Daughter of a prime minister, Zaghloul walked a very unconventional path for a member of the conservative aristocracy of the time. She married a man of humble origins (Saad Zaghloul), removed her veil (the Turkish ‘yashmak’) in 1921 and stood at the front lines of political activism, during her husband’s life and long after his death.

On the first Thursday of every month, Egyptian royalty and aristocracy would gather around their radios in their posh Garden City or Zamalek villas. More modest families from Cairo all the way to Aswan would huddle next to their smaller radios.

Taxi and bus drivers would park their vehicles and gather at the nearest café. The streets of Cairo would be practically deserted on the first Thursday of every month from the 1930s to the 1960s. This was the regular day for Egypt’s diva to sing them into a state of euphoria. All Egyptians, rich and poor, men and women alike, relished it like little else. Born to humble origins in a small village in Daqahleyya, Um Kulthum’s father dressed her up as a boy when she was twelve to sing ‘inshad’ with his troupe of religious chanters at local gatherings and celebrations.

She was introduced to the music scene in Cairo at age sixteen by the famous composer Zakareyya Ahmed and, through her collaboration over the following years with some of the finest composers, lyricists and musicians of the time (and perhaps of Egypt’s history), Um Kulthum’s career reached stellar heights.

She sang her epic songs to the Egyptian King Farouq and was deemed too valuable to lose; it was President Nasser who insisted on bringing her back into the limelight after a brief withdrawal following the 1952 coup d’état. Um Kulthum went on to provide great support for the Egyptian military and travelled the world raising funds for the wars Egypt fought to defend its borders.

Um Kulthum is today still regarded as possibly one of the greatest female singers to have ever lived. Her signature look, with the chignon and dark glasses, has become iconic and still inspires pop artists and designers across the Middle East.

Born in Lebanon, Rose al-Yusuf moved to Egypt at the age of ten and grew up with the family of theatre troupe owner Iskander Farag in Alexandria. Al-Yusuf began her career as a stage actress and joined the troupes of Aziz Eid, then Okasha, followed by Ramsis, and made a name for herself as an actress. She retired from acting, however, by 1925 and applied for a publishing license.

With limited funds, but supported by friends in the artistic and creative fields, she established a magazine that worked ‘without an office, without salaries and without rest’, as her daughter Amaal (Zaki) Tulaimaat would recall in an interview. This was the beginning of the career that immortalized her. Rose magazine (named after its founder) started off as a literary and cultural publication, but it soon became more political.

Being a political magazine in turbulent times had its cost, though, and at some point, her license was revoked, forcing her to reapply under a new name. In time, her magazine would return and Rose would continue to publish fiery articles against the British occupation, irking the ruling powers and leading to her arrest on several occasions.

The loves in her life also added to her enigma. Al-Yusuf first married engineer-turned-actor Mohamed Abdel Qudous. Her son Ihsan would later become one of Egypt’s most eminent novelists. She then married actor-producer Zaki Tulaimaat. Both marriages did not last very long, however. Rose al-Yusuf’s name survives to this day through her publishing house and its flagship publication, Rose Al Yusuf  magazine.

Egypt’s renaissance during the first half of the twentieth century was largely attributed to one major factor, the establishment of an Egyptian university. The institution that was created to qualify Egyptians to lead their country produced both men and women who would go on to become acclaimed writers, scientists, thinkers, artists and politicians.

The project, however, did not come about very smoothly. At first, a nationwide subscription campaign collected donations from everyone from wealthy industrialists all the way down to schoolchildren. Along with some financial support from Khedive Abbas Hilmi II (who ruled Egypt at the time), the institution managed to rent its first building but soon had to move to another location, remaining in a state of financial instability for almost ten years.

The university’s future was finally assured with the support of Princess Fatma Ismail. The daughter of Khedive Ismail donated a vast plot of land in Giza where the university was finally built. She paid for the construction and donated a large quantity of her jewellery for set-up costs. To ensure the university’s sustainability, she endowed the yield from 600 feddans (578 acres) of land to cover annual operating expenses.

Today, with twenty-three faculties and more than 200,000 students graduating annually, Cairo University is Egypt’s largest higher education institution. The university celebrated its centenary in 2008, and throughout its entire journey, it has never forgotten the patronage of this one woman, whose generosity changed the face of an entire country.

THE ACTIVISTS

The word feminism in Egypt is practically synonymous with the name of Hoda Shaarawi, but of all her actions and deeds, it wasn’t until 1923 that she made the statement that she would cement her legacy. Upon her return from a women’s conference in Europe, Hoda Shaarawi and her partners, Ceza Nabarawi and Nabaweyya Moussa, stepped off the train at Cairo Railway Station and removed their veils.

The scores of women who were waiting for them at the station gasped in shock. There were a few moments of silence, and then everyone broke into raucous applause with some of the braver women proceeding to remove their veils as well. Although Shaarawi is most remembered for removing the veil, she did not dedicate much more energy to this cause, and rather addressed the core of women’s issues in Egypt, such as education and suffrage.

Shaarawi, who was born into aristocracy and was married to a prominent Wafd party leader, led a life of activism long before the infamous veil incident. In 1914, she founded the Intellectual Association of Egyptian Women, and, during the 1919 revolution, she led Egyptian women to march alongside the men – an unprecedented act.

After her famous return in 1923 from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, Shaarawi founded and became the first president of the Egyptian Feminist Union. The EFU focused on various issues, particularly women’s suffrage, increasing education for women, and changing the Personal Status Laws. In 1924, she led a group of women to picket the opening of parliament and submitted a list of nationalist and feminist demands, which were ignored by the Wafdist government, whereupon she resigned from the Wafdist Women’s Central Committee. It was not an easy battle, and Shaarawi would not see most of the fruits of her labor during her lifetime, but through the EFU, she laid the groundwork for future feminist victories long after her death.

Ceza Nabarawi was the youngest of the three women who famously removed their veils in 1923 in front of a shocked audience. The twenty-six-year-old had followed in the footsteps of Hoda Shaarawi, leading women in the 1919 revolution and continuing the struggle of the Egyptian Feminist Union long after its main founder’s death.

Born Zeinab Murad, she was renamed by her mother’s cousin, who adopted her as an infant after her parents separated. She lived in Alexandria and moved to Paris, where she was educated at the Lycée de Versailles until the age of seventeen.

When she returned to the confnes of bourgeois Egyptian life, Ceza fell into a depression. She did not come out of it until Hoda Shaarawi took her under her wing to join the fight for the emancipation of the Egyptian woman.

In addition to being editor-in-chief of the EFU’s feminist publication, L’Egyptienne , Nabarawi was also the organisation’s leading figure for decades and chairperson of the Berlin-based International Democratic Women’s Federation, a position that she later renounced after disagreeing with the organisation’s stance on the Palestinian question.

Nabarawi was more fortunate than Shaarawi in that she lived to see many of the EFU’s demands met, the first of them being the raising of the minimum age for marriage to sixteen, followed by the provision of equal opportunities for education and the right for women to run for parliament, among many others.

Once described in the press as ‘the only man  in Egypt, Doria Shafik was the driving force behind the modification of the Egyptian Constitution to give women the right to elect and be nominated for political office. On 19 February 1951, she led a 1,500-woman demonstration and stormed through the gates of the Egyptian Parliament while it was in session. She declared a hunger strike until Egyptian women were granted equal constitutional rights to men.

A week later, the council granted Egyptian women the right to vote and run for political office. Shafik earned her PhD in philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1940; her thesis subject was on women in Islam, and in it she argued that Islam does allow equality for women. She returned to Egypt to set up a woman’s liberation movement entitled ‘Daughter of the Nile Union’ in 1948.

After the coup d’état of 1952, Shafik requested the government to transform ‘Daughter of the Nile Union’ into the first women’s party of Egypt; it was subsequently recognized as an official political party with a feminist agenda. However, as all the political parties of the time were soon rendered inactive, she realized that her battle was not getting any easier.

In 1957, following a hunger strike in protest against Nasser’s regime, she was placed under house arrest. Soon after that, her magazine (named New Woman ) was closed, and her name was officially banned from the press. Shafik entered a long period of seclusion and depression that ended with her suicide in 1975. 

Raised by a single mother in a middle-class family, Moussa grew up knowing first-hand just how important it was for a woman to be able to make her own living. One of the key feminists of twentieth-century Egypt, she fought not only for women’s rights, but also against colonial rule. Her image was perhaps cemented in Egyptian memory in 1923 when, along with Hoda Shaarawi and Ceza Nabarawi, she removed her veil to announce to Egyptian society that Egyptian women would be silent and hidden no more. Although she was an activist on many fronts, Moussa’s primary passion was education. Education would empower women, giving them a stronger footing in the labour force and more financial independence, all crucial for ending sexual violence against them and ultimately lessening their vulnerability.

The first female to graduate with a secondary school certificate from the famous Saniyya school, Moussa dedicated her life to the pursuit of educating women and advancing female Egyptian teachers in the school system.

She became the first Egyptian headmistress, the first female chief inspector at the Ministry of Education and the first female member of the Press Syndicate. Eventually, she, together with two other pioneers, Malak Hefni Nassef and Labiba Hashem, was invited to lecture at the then newly established Egyptian University (later to become Fuad I and then Cairo University).

Among her numerous publications is a book entitled Women and Work , and another called Fruits of Life on Girls’ Education , which, in 1908, was incorporated as a part of the curriculum by the Ministry of Education. Moussa also wrote her autobiography, in which she described her life of struggle advocating for women’s emancipation in a male-dominated society that also happened to be under colonialist rule.

One of the earliest women to advocate women’s rights, Nassef’s demands were quite modest compared to later feminists and even some of her contemporaries. In a lecture she gave to a group of women in 1909, she listed her demands for women’s rights, which included the provision of basic education and a quota for women to work in the fields of teaching and medicine.

In contrast to Shaarawi’s secular and Western-oriented feminism, Nassef promoted a view that worked within the Islamic system of nineteenth-century Ottoman Egypt. Among her list of demands in the 1909 lecture was that Islamic Sharia be observed in the rituals of marriage (thus allowing women to see and approve their future husbands before an arranged marriage). Malak’s 1910 collection of talks and essays entitled, Al-Nisa’iyyat  ( Women’s Affairs ) disregarded Western values of feminism and attempted to define an improved status for women within a reformed Islamic context instead.

Known also by her pen-name ‘Bahithat al-Badia’ (‘searcher of the desert’)  – inspired by her post-marital life in the Fayum  –  Malak produced poetry and literature that was lauded as among the finest of her time. Known as more of a reformer than a revolutionary, her ideas moved quite safely within the confines of a conservative religious society. It would have been interesting to see how her life would have played out vis-à-vis secular revolutionaries such as Hoda Shaarawi and Doria Shafik, but it wasn’t meant to be. Nassef died at the age of thirty-two from Spanish fever at her home in the Fayum.

THE ARTISTS

Born to an upper middle-class family in the Darb al-Ahmar district, Aisha Taymour’s family produced many literary figures that would rise to fame in Egypt. Her mother, however, only wanted her to learn the domestic skills that high-born girls of that era were expected to master; Taymour recalls in her memoirs that her mother tried to force her to learn embroidery, for example. Taymour, on the other hand, was obsessed with books and reading, and her greatest joy was hearing the sound of a pen gliding over a piece of paper. Her father was the one who came to the rescue, and he nurtured his daughter’s love for writing and literature.

At the age of fourteen, Taymour married Mahmoud Bek al-Islambouli and moved to Istanbul, where she lived until his death in 1875. She then returned to Egypt, aged thirty-five, and resumed her studies with two women tutors who helped her master Arabic grammar. Thereafter, she authored and published several works of fiction, discussing issues related to gender, religion and politics. She authored a work of fiction entitled Al-Luqa Ba’d al- Shatat  ( Reunion After Separation ) as well as an allegorical tale, Nata’ig al-Ahwal fil-Aqwal wal-Af’al  ( The Consequences of Circumstances for Words and Deeds ), and a treatise on gender relations, Mir’at al-Ta’mmul fil-Umur  ( The Mirror for Contemplating Affairs ). She is, however, most remembered for the heart-wrenching poems she wrote when mourning her daughter who died at the age of twelve.

Born Mofida Mohamed Ghoneim in Alexandria, Aziza Amir is not just remembered as one of the ‘firsts’, she was one of the genuine founders of the Egyptian film industry. Amir’s career began with Youssef Wahbi’s Ramsis theatre troupe but she soon made the jump from acting to producing. In an age teeming with national sentiment (these were the post-1919 revolution years), Amir was praised as a ‘pure Egyptian’ pioneer, and true to her cause, she made films that addressed issues that deeply concerned Egyptian society.

She is most famous for her 1927 re-adaptation of Laila , which was Egypt’s longest feature film at the time. A newspaper reporter recounted that banker Talaat Harb praised Amir at the movie premiere and said to her, ‘You have accomplished what no man has accomplished’.

Aziza relied significantly on the men in her life to fulfill her goals. She first married the wealthy Upper Egyptian Ahmed al-Sherei, who was disowned by his family for marrying an actress. She then left him to marry his younger brother and finally married her co-star Mahmoud Zulfikar, with whom she founded a production company, Amir Film. Wanting to prove that Egypt produced world-class actresses, Amir sought to star in films outside Egypt, acting in the French film The Tunisian Girl  in 1930 and the Turkish film, In the Streets of Istanbul .

Known as the ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ of the East, the Alexandria-born Rushdi was discovered by fellow Alexandrian Sayyid Darwish. After hearing the ten-year-old Rushdi sing one of his songs, it is said that he was so impressed that he went and bought her two pounds-worth of chocolates and candy. Two pounds translated into a lot of candy at the time! He later convinced her mother to take Fatma and her sisters Ratiba and Ensaf to Cairo to open up more opportunities for them in the performing arts. When established in Cairo, Fatma began acting in small parts in Naguib al-Rihani’s plays.

Sayyid Darwish opened the door for Rushdi’s career, but it was theatre troupe owner Aziz Eid who took it to the next level. After two years of intensive classes in acting and oration, Fatma, who eventually married Eid, rose to become the prima donna of the prestigious Ramsis theatre troupe. After the couple’s divorce, Rushdi established her own troupe and named it after herself. The popular Fatma Rushdi troupe was to incubate the talents of future greats such as Mahmoud al-Meligi, Mohamed Fawzy, Abdel Moneim Madbouly and many others. Rushdi later established a film production company and moved from the theatre to movie-making and acting, her most famous cinematic role being in El Azima  ( Determination ) in 1939. Rushdi authored two books about her life and career, Ana wa-l-Regal  ( The Men and Me ) and Kefahi fil-Masrah wal-Cinema  ( My Struggle in Theatre and Cinema ).

A riddle to many, Inji Efflatoun came from a comfortable, bourgeois family but exhibited immense torment in her paintings. Not satisfied with a life of Parisian dresses and piano classes, she went from being a silver-spoon-fed baby to becoming a leading feminist and communist. It is said that it was her art tutor, Kamel al-Telmissany, who spoke to her of the plight of the Egyptian peasant and inspired her lifelong struggle for the rights of the working classes.

In 1948, she wrote Thamanun Miliyun Imra’a Ma’ana  ( Eighty Million Women With Us ), a strong condemnation of imperialism. The following year, she published Nahnu al-Nisa al-Misriyyat  ( We, The Egyptian Women ), an analysis of women’s oppression as well as national oppression. By that time, Efflatoun was an active member in Egypt’s communist party, fighting  for women’s rights around the world and representing Egypt at women’s conferences.

Considered a pioneer of Egyptian modern art, Efflatoun started painting at a very early age and achieved great success later in life, leading her to exhibit at the Venice Biennale in 1952 and at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1956, as well as in many other countries. She was arrested and imprisoned during Nasser’s roundup of communists in 1959, yet continued to paint in prison, preserving a powerful visual record of the women’s prison experience at al-Kanater. Following her release in 1963, with Egypt’s communist party dissolved, she continued to focus on painting. Efflatoun held many exhibitions worldwide after her release from prison, the final one being in Cairo in 1987. She died, aged sixty-five, while still writing her memoirs.

THE SYMBOLS

Isis was not the only female deity in the ancient Egyptian pantheon; however, it is the cult of Isis which has spread beyond the borders of Egypt, been appropriated into icons of ensuing religions, and in one way or another managed to survive into Egypt’s modern era.

Isis, the primary goddess in ancient Egypt, was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife, as well as the matron of nature and magic. She was also the protector of the dead and goddess of children, from whom all beginnings arose.

Following the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the worship of Isis was Hellenisized and spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world. Temples were erected for her throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, and her cult grew strong in the Roman Empire in spite of several periods of persecution.

Scholars have drawn clear links between the Holy Trinity of Isis, Osiris (Serapis) and Horus and the Holy Trinity of Christianity. The way Isis was perceived and the practice of her faith is very similar to the reverence for Mary among Christians. In fact, many chapels built for the Virgin were built purposely on the remains of temples to Isis. Moreover, some of the most familiar iconography of the Madonna and Christ is very similar to that of Isis and Horus. The impact of Isis in Europe was so strong that some historians have claimed that the origin of the name of the city of Paris comes from ‘Par Isis’ meaning ‘near the temple of Isis’. The temple of Isis meant here, stood where the church of St Germain-des-Prés stands today.

In contemporary Muslim Egyptian culture, anthropologists have noted that many of the habits followed by the elderly women who tend the mausoleum of Sayyeda Zainab for blessings have many similarities with the women of the cult of Isis.

What can we say, other than that the Egyptian Fellaha (peasant woman) was the first Lady Liberty. When Bartholdi, who sculpted New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty, was first inspired to create a figure of such epic proportions, it was in Egypt.

The monumental statues of Karnak inspired the French sculptor to create a statue of an Egyptian Fellaha symbolizing Egypt in its renaissance, holding the light to the East ‘shining the road to Asia’. By the time Bartholdi was finished, Khedive Ismail could no longer foot the bill and a few years later, Egypt’s Fellaha underwent some changes and was shipped to Ellis Island as Lady Liberty.

When Mahmoud Mokhtar depicted Egypt in his famous ‘Egypt’s Renaissance’ statue, he also envisioned her (Egypt) as a Fellaha. In popular Egyptian poetry and prose, the country is often referred to as ‘Bahia’ (a genuinely rural Egyptian name for girls). Egypt’s golden-hued land is often likened to the sun-kissed skin of the Fellaha, who toils the land daily.

The image of the ancient Egyptian woman farming the fields with her husband on tomb walls shows how deeply entrenched her role was in Egypt’s main source of income and strength over the millennia: its agriculture. The Fellaha is the symbol of Egypt’s sacred fertile land and the bearer of prosperity who has fed and nurtured Egyptians from the dawn of their existence until today, when she has come to represent the country itself.

An earlier version of this article named a Merit-Ptah as the first female physician in Egypt, this fact was debunked by Jakub Kwiecinski, a medical historian at the University of Colorado. To learn more about why read here .  

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Yasmine El Dorghamy holds an MA in international education policy from Stockholm University and manages an educational foundation in addition to teaching visual culture at the American University in Cairo. She also publishes RAWI - Egypt’s Heritage Review, a bilingual (Eng/Ar) publication dedicated to Egyptian history and heritage.

Nefertiti: Egyptian Wife, Mother, Queen and Icon

Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was the great royal wife of King Akhenaten and, in contemporary Western culture, is perhaps ancient Egypt’s most famous queen – as the iconic bust in the Berlin Museum evinces. She and Akhenaten produced six daughters, a female royal contingent that enjoyed unusual prominence during Akhenaten’s reign. In fact, Nefertiti holds the position as the Egyptian queen with the most surviving appearances on monuments and other artistic mediums. 

During his reign, Akhenaten enacted a series of shocking religious and societal changes that re-centered the Egyptian pantheon around a formerly peripheral god: the Aten. This political move most likely created a place of prominence for Nefertiti within official mediums. To cement the pharaoh’s societal changes, greater authority was placed on the royal family – a decision in which  Nefertiti’s influence was continually emphasized. As a result, Nefertiti is frequently shown making offerings to the Aten without her husband, suggesting that she possessed an unusual level of autonomy in the Egyptian court. Images even show Nefertiti smiting the enemies of Egypt – a motif previously reserved only for the pharaoh.

In addition to being used as an authority figure within her husband’s new iconographic program, depictions of Nefertiti were used to embody several important principles of the religious reforms centered on the Aten. The main tenants of the new Amarna religion were laid out in the Great Hymn to the Aten , a text that discusses the role of the solar disk in providing earth’s occupants with life and sustenance. One principle emphasized throughout the Great Hymn to the Aten is the concept of fertility and the generation of new life, an idea often mirrored in the art of the Amarna period. For instance, both men and women were depicted with large stomachs and thighs in what appears to have been an effort to call to mind gods of fecundity, such as Hapy.

In a shrine stela now in the Berlin Museum, Akhenaten and Nefertiti are seated facing one another with the Aten shining down above them. Akhenaten holds one of the couple’s daughters in his arms and kisses her on the lips, while Nefertiti sits with one of her daughters on her knee and the other perched on her shoulder reaching playfully for her mother’s earrings. In this scene, Nefertiti is only slightly smaller than her husband in a way that suggests the natural dimorphism of the sexes rather than a hierarchical scale. In addition, the facial features, dress and posture of the royal couple are remarkably similar. They both wear headgear of similar shapes, with Nefertiti wearing her typical flat topped crown and Akhenaten wearing what appears to be his blue crown (the stela is damaged). Finally, the Aten holds two ankh symbols to the noses of the king and the queen, suggesting that even in the eyes of the Aten, Akhenaten and Nefertiti were analogous.

All of these parallels in depictions of the king and queen seem to reflect their complementary nature. As stated in the Great Hymn , the king was intended to function as the intermediary for the Aten on earth, which suggests Nefertiti was his female equivalent in this role. This idea is bolstered by the fact this stela was a shrine in a private house, implying that citizens of Amarna were meant to worship the entire royal family and not just the king.

Nefertiti may have maintained a position of influence even after her husband’s death. Many scholars suggest she even was one of Akhenaten’s successors and reigned under the name Neferneferuaten. Between Akhenaten’s last year on the throne and the time that Tutankhamun became pharaoh, we know two distinct kings briefly reigned under the names of Neferneferuaten and Smenkhkare. Confusingly, these two kings shared the same prenomen when Nefeneferuaten’s was abbreviated, which led scholars initially to believe they were the same person. However, consensus now holds that Neferneferuaten was not the same person as Smenkhkare and that she actually was a female pharaoh based on the feminine endings on some of her epithets and the feminine spelling of her prenomen. Early on, scholars suspected Nefertiti and Neferneferuaten were the same person because Nefertiti used the name Neferneferuaten when she was queen. This theory was further supported in 2012 when the Leuven Archaeological Mission discovered a graffito at Deir el Bersha naming Nefertiti as Akhenaten’s chief queen. This inscription dates to Akhenaten’s regnal year 16, which was his second to last year on the throne. This text indicates Nefertiti was alive late into her husband’s kingship and could have been in a position to succeed him. However, even if Nefertiti did not reign as a king, she undoubtedly remains one of ancient Egypt’s most famous queens.

Recommended Reading

Arnold, Dorothea 1996.  The royal women of Amarna: images of beauty from ancient Egypt . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cooney, Kara 2018.  When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt . Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society.

Tyldesley, Joyce A. 1999.  Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen . New York: Viking.

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• The Most Illustrious Women In...

The Most Illustrious Women in Egyptian History

Despite the societal restrictions and the outdated norms that some in the community have held and continue to hold, Egyptian women have proven their power and ability to create change; and for that, they are the backbone of the Egyptian society. Here are some of the many great women who have made history.

Known as “the Queen of the Nile,” Cleopatra was the last active ruler of ancient Egypt. Founded by Ptolemy, a general serving under Alexander the Great during his conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C., Cleopatra ruled Egypt for almost three decades. Famous for her exotic beauty, she was also a well-educated queen who spoke up to nine different languages. She protected Egypt against the expansion of the Roman Empire until she died in 30 B.C.

Tahani Amer

Tahani Amer is an Egyptian senior technologist at NASA. Since 2008, Amer has worked with NASA on several projects including LandSat Data Continuity Mission project, the Discovery, the New Frontiers Programs, and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. For her efforts and great achievements, Amer received U.S. Patent #6331075 for The Thermal Conductivity of Thin Films System in 2001, the NASA Administrator Fellowship Program Award in 2004, and the NASA Performance Award in 2006.

Shajar Al Durr

Shajar Al Durr was the second Muslim woman to become a queen/Sultana in Islamic history, and her full name was Asmat Al Din Umm Khalil Shajar Al Durr. Al Durr defended Egypt against the Crusaders’ occupation, gaining back Damietta from the French. She was married to the Sultan, As-Salih Ayyub, before marrying Mamluk soldier and eventual Sultan Izz Al Din Aybak after her first husband’s died. Her rule over Egypt in between her husbands’ marked the end of Ayyubid Dynasty and the beginning of the Mamluk Era. During this time, Cairo became the center of power, controlling Egypt and Syria for more than two centuries.

Dalia Mogahed

Dalia Mogahed was an adviser for former US president Barack Obama and worked in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership. There, she helped produce many policy recommendations that were eventually adopted by the Obama administration.

Sameera Moussa

Sameera Moussa was a nuclear physicist and the first Egyptian woman to hold a Ph.D. in atomic radiation. Her goal was to make medical nuclear power affordable to everyone, and she organized the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference. In 1952, Moussa died in the US after her car fell from a height of 40 feet while embarking on a trip. There is a lot of conspiracy surrounding her death because the invitation she received for the trip turned out to be fake.

Lotfia El Nadi

Lotfia El Nadi was the first Middle-Eastern woman as well as the first African woman to earn a pilot’s license. Becoming the first Egyptian female aviator, she earned her license when she was only 26 years old at a time when Egyptian women were expected to marry and become housewives after finishing their primary education. Despite her father’s objections, El Nadi signed up to take flying classes lessons. After only 67 days of study with 33 male classmates, El Nadi earned her pilot’s license.

Umm Kulthum

Umm Kulthum is the most-famous Egyptian singer and songwriter in Egypt and the Middle East. Given the honorific title Kawkab Al Sharq—Star of the East—Kulthum was known for her extraordinary-vocal abilities and her unique style. During her lifetime, she sold over 80 million records worldwide. The love for Kulthum wasn’t only due to her strong voice, but also due to the type of songs she sang. Although she started off singing romantic songs, she also had powerful and encouraging songs for soldiers, Egypt’s working class, and those affected by the wars to uplift the Egyptians’ spirit.

Aya Medany was an Egyptian modern pentathlete who competed in three Olympiads (2004, 2008, and 2012) and won Silver in the the 2008 World Championship before retiring from the sport in 2013.

Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-American freelance journalist who has had work featured in publications such as the Washington Post , Miami Herald , Christian Science Monitor , The Guardian , and the New York Times . She normally writes essays and opinion pieces about Egypt and the Islamic world and has received several awards including the Women’s Media Center Speaking Truth to Power Award in 2014, the Cutting Edge Prize (for distinguished contribution to the coverage of the Middle East) from Next Century Foundation in 2006, and she was named one of the “100 Most Powerful Arab Women” by Arabian Business in 2012.

Hilana Sedarous

Hilana Sedarous is the first Egyptian woman to become a doctor. She traveled to London in 1922 to study mathematics and eventually medicine. In 1930, she became a doctor and worked in several hospitals including the Kitchener Hospital in Cairo. She also had her own clinic and continued to treat patients until she was 70 years old.

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Powerful Female Pharaohs of Egypt

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The rulers of ancient Egypt , the pharaohs, were almost all men. But a handful of women also held sway over Egypt, including Cleopatra VII and Nefertiti, who are still remembered today. Other females ruled as well, although the historical record for some of them is scant at best—especially for the first dynasties that ruled Egypt. 

The following list of ancient Egypt's female pharoahs is in reverse chronological order. It begins with the last pharaoh to rule an independent Egypt, Cleopatra VII, and ends with Meryt-Neith, who 5,000 years ago was probably one of the first women to rule.

Cleopatra VII (69–30 B.C.)

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Cleopatra VII , the daughter of Ptolemy XII, became pharaoh when she was about 17 years old, first serving as co-regent with her brother Ptolemy XIII, who was only 10 at the time. The Ptolemies were descendants of a Macedonian general of Alexander the Great's army. During the  Ptolemaic dynasty , several other women named Cleopatra served as regents.

Acting in the name of Ptolemy, a group of senior advisers ousted Cleopatra from power, and she was forced to flee the country in 49 B.C. But she was determined to regain the post. She raised an army of mercenaries and sought the backing of Roman leader  Julius Caesar . With Rome's military might, Cleopatra vanquished her brother's forces and regained control of Egypt. 

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar became romantically involved, and she bore him a son. Later, after Caesar was murdered in Italy, Cleopatra aligned herself with his successor, Marc Antony. Cleopatra continued to rule Egypt until Antony was overthrown by rivals in Rome. Following a brutal military defeat, the two killed themselves, and Egypt fell to Roman rule.

Cleopatra I (204–176 B.C.)

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Cleopatra I was the consort of Ptolemy V Epiphanes of Egypt. Her father was Antiochus III the Great, a Greek Seleucid king, who conquered a large swath of Asia Minor (in present-day Turkey) that had previously been under Egyptian control. In a bid to make peace with Egypt, Antiochus III offered his 10-year-old daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Ptolemy V, the 16-year-old Egyptian ruler.

They were married in 193 B.C. and Ptolemy appointed her as vizier in 187. Ptolemy V died in 180 B.C., and Cleopatra I was appointed regent for her son, Ptolemy VI, and ruled until her death. She even minted coins with her image, with her name taking precedence over that of her son. Her name preceded that of her son in many of the documents between her husband's death and 176 B.C., the year that she died.

Tausret (Died 1189 B.C.)

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Tausret (also known as Twosret, Tausret, or Tawosret) was the wife of the pharaoh Seti II. When Seti II died, Tausret served as regent for his son, Siptah (aka Rameses-Siptah or Menenptah Siptah). Siptah was likely the son of Seti II by a different wife, making Tausret his stepmother. There is some indication that Siptal may have had some disability, which perhaps was a contributing factor to his death at age 16.

After Siptal's death, historical records indicate that Tausret served as pharaoh for two to four years, using kingly titles for herself. Tausret is mentioned by Homer as interacting with Helen around the Trojan War events. After Tausret died, Egypt fell into political turmoil; at some point, her name and image were stripped from her tomb. Today, a mummy at the Cairo Museum is said to be hers.

Nefertiti (1370–1330 B.C.)

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Nefertiti ruled Egypt after the death of her husband, Amenhotep IV. Little of her biography has been preserved; she may have been the daughter of Egyptian nobles or have had Syrian roots. Her name means "a beautiful woman has come," and in the art from her era, Nefertiti is often depicted in romantic poses with Amenhotep or as his co-equal in battle and leadership.

However, Nefertiti vanished from historical records within a few years of assuming the throne. Scholars say she may have assumed a new identity or may have been killed, but those are only educated guesses. Despite the lack of biographical information about Nefertiti, a sculpture of her is one of the most widely reproduced ancient Egyptian artifacts. The original is on display at Berlin's Neues Museum.

Hatshepsut (1507–1458 B.C.)

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Widow of Thutmosis II, Hatshepsut  ruled first as regent for his young stepson and heir, and then as pharaoh. Sometimes referred to as Maatkare or the "king" of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hatshepsut is often depicted in a fake beard and with the objects that a pharaoh is usually depicted with, and in male attire, after a few years of ruling in female form. She disappears suddenly from history, and her stepson may have ordered the destruction of images of Hatshepsut and mentions of her rule.

Ahmose-Nefertari (1562–1495 B.C.)

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Ahmose-Nefertari was the wife and sister of the 18th Dynasty's founder, Ahmose I, and mother of the second king, Amenhotep I. Her daughter, Ahmose-Meritamon, was the wife of Amenhotep I.  Ahmose-Nefertari has a statue at Karnak, which her grandson Thuthmosis sponsored. She was the first to hold the title of "God's Wife of Amun." Ahmose-Nefertari is often depicted with dark brown or black skin. Scholars disagree on whether this portrayal is about African ancestry or a symbol of fertility.

Ashotep (1560–1530 B.C.)

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Scholars have little historical record of Ashotep. She is thought to have been the mother of Ahmose I, the founder of Egypt's  18th Dynasty and New Kingdom, who defeated the Hyksos (foreign rulers of Egypt). Ahmose I credited her in an inscription with holding the nation together during his rule as a child pharaoh when she seems to have been regent for her son. She may also have led troops in battle at Thebes, but the evidence is scant.

Sobeknefru (Died 1802 B.C.)

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Sobeknefru (aka Neferusobek, Nefrusobek, or Sebek-Nefru-Meryetre) was the daughter of Amenemhet III and half-sister of Amenemhet IV— and perhaps also his wife. She claimed to have been co-regent with her father. The dynasty ends with her reign, as she apparently had no son. Archaeologists have found images that refer to Sobeknefru as Female Horus, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and Daughter of Re.

Only a few artifacts have been positively linked to Sobeknefru, including a number of headless statues that depict her in female clothing but wearing male objects related to kingship. In some ancient texts, she is sometimes referred to in terms using the male gender, perhaps to reinforce her role as pharaoh.

Neithhikret (Died 2181 B.C.)

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Neithhikret (aka Nitocris, Neith-Iquerti, or Nitokerty) is known only through the writings of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus . If she existed, she lived at the end of the dynasty, may have been married to a husband who was not royal and may not even have been a king, and probably had no male offspring. She may have been the daughter of Pepi II. According to Herodotus, she is said to have succeeded her brother Metesouphis II upon his death, and then to have avenged his death by drowning his murderers and committing suicide.

Ankhesenpepi II (Sixth Dynasty, 2345–2181 B.C.)

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Little biographical information is known about Ankhesenpepi II, including when she was born and when she died. Sometimes referred to as Ankh-Meri-Ra or Ankhnesmeryre II, she may have served as regent for her son, Pepi II, who was about six when he assumed the throne after Pepi I (her husband, his father) died. A statue of Ankhnesmeryre II as nurturing mother, holding the hand of her child, is on display at the Brooklyn Museum. 

Khentkaus (Fourth Dynasty, 2613–2494 B.C.)

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According to archaeologists, Khentkaus has been characterized in inscriptions as the mother of two Egyptian pharaohs, probably Sahure and Neferirke of the Fifth Dynasty. There is some evidence that she may have served as regent for her young sons or perhaps ruled Egypt herself for a brief time. Other records suggest she was married either to the ruler Shepseskhaf of the Fourth Dynasty or to Userkaf of the Fifth Dynasty. However, the nature of records from this period in ancient Egyptian history is so fragmentary as to make confirming her biography impossible.

Nimaethap (Third Dynasty, 2686–2613 B.C.)

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Ancient Egyptian records refer to Nimaethap (or Ni-Maat-Heb) as the mother of Djoser. He was probably the second king of the Third Dynasty, the period during which the upper and lower kingdoms of ancient Egypt were unified. Djoser is best known as the builder of the step pyramid at Saqqara. Little is known about Nimaethap, but records indicate that she may have ruled briefly, perhaps while Djoser was still a child.

Meryt-Neith (First Dynasty, approx. 3200–2910 B.C.)

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Meryt-Neith (aka Merytneith or Merneith) was the wife of Djet, who ruled around 3000 B.C. She was laid to rest in the tombs of other  First Dynasty pharaohs , and her burial site contained artifacts usually reserved for kings—including a boat to travel to the next world—and her name is found on seals listing the names of other First Dynasty pharaohs. However, some seals refer to Meryt-Neith as the mother of the king, while others imply that she herself was a ruler of Egypt. The dates of her birth and death are unknown.

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• Women Rulers of the Ancient and Classical World
• Meryt-Neith
• Ancient Egypt Picture Gallery
• Biography of Queen Nefertiti, Ancient Egyptian Queen
• Cleopatra Study Guide
• Cleopatra VII: The Last Pharaoh of Egypt
• The Life and Romances of Cleopatra
• Biography of Cleopatra, Last Pharaoh of Egypt
• Weighing the Evidence: Was Cleopatra Black?
• The Ptolemies: Dynastic Egypt From Alexander to Cleopatra
• Biography of Hatshepsut, Pharaoh of Egypt
• Powerful Women Rulers Everyone Should Know
• Akhenaten: Heretic and Pharaoh of New Kingdom Egypt
• The Symbolism Behind the Double Crown of Egypt

16 Egyptian women who made history

On the International Women’s Day, we honour and remember 16 Egyptian women who made history. Egyptian history is dominated by triumphant Egyptian women in every field possible, from Ancient Egyptian times to modern day Egypt.

Nabwiyya Musa

Nabawiyya Musa was a prominent Egyptian woman who was one of the founding members of the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) in 1923.

In 1907, she became the first Egyptian female to graduate from high school. She grew up within a middle class family in Alexandria, and became an educator as well as a prolific writer.

Her writing was a mirror to the period in the Egyptian history in which she lived. She believed that giving women an equal status as men will make them less vulnerable and less prone to sexual assault.

First Five Women to Graduate from University

In 1929, five Egyptian young women became the first females to graduate from the Egyptian University (currently Cairo University). The five women were Dr. Naima Al-Ayouby, Ms. Fatema Salem, Mrs. Zuhaira Abdul-Aziz, Dr. Suhayr al-Qalamawi, and Ms. Fatema Fahmy. al-Qalamawi became later one of the prominent figures in Egyptian literature and politics. She was also a president to the EFU as well as the chairperson of the Arabic Department at Cairo University.

Hilana Sedarous 

Hilana Sedarous was the first Egyptian female doctor in 1930. Sedarous was among the first five Egyptian female students to study in England after they received a scholarship in 1922. She worked in Kitchener Hospital (currently Shoubra General Hospital) and she was carrying out her surgical procedures there. She then opened her private clinic with a specialisation in Obstetrics and Gynecology. After she retired, she worked on the translation of children’s books and she donated most of her massive wealth to charitable causes.

Lotfia El Nadi

Sameera Moussa

Sameera Moussa was the first female Egyptian nuclear physicist as well as the first female teaching assistant at the Faculty of Sciences at Cairo University after her graduation in 1939. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and became the first non-American to be granted access to American atomic facilities. She hoped that her work would lead to affordable medical treatments and peaceful use of atomic energy. During her visit to the United States in 1952, her car fell from a height of 12 metres which killed her instantly. It is believed that the Mossad were behind the accident with the help of Jewish actress Raqya Ibrahim.

Rawya Ateya

In 1957, 70 percent of the parliament refused to let women join the parliament as members. However, Ateya overcame the odds and received 110,807 votes. “I was met with resentment for being a woman. Yet I talked to them and reminded them of the prophet’s wives and families until they changed their opinions.” Ateya said. In 1973, she chaired the Society of Families of Martyrs and Soldiers, earning her the nickname “mother of the martyred combatants” She died in 1997, after she inspired millions of women to pursue their dreams.

Hikmat Abu Zayd

Hikmat Abu Zayd was the first female cabinet member in Egypt in 1962, becoming the Social Affairs Minister. Born in 1992 in Asyut governorate, she graduated from Cairo University in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree. She then progressed further in her studies, to get a Master of Arts from the University of St Andrews in 1950 and a doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of London in 1957. In 1962, she was named as Minister of Social Affairs serving until 1965, changing many aspects of the social affairs law in Egypt. For instance, she made it obligatory for men to show up in court to get a divorce. She died in 2011 at 89, leaving behind an inspirational legacy to Egyptian women.

Anissa Hassouna

Anissa Hassouna was an Egyptian politician and Member of the Egyptian Parliament. She became the first woman elected on the board of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs in 1976. Born in 1953, she graduated from Cairo University and started her career right after her graduation in the mid-70s. In 2009, she joined the Magdi Yacoub Foundation, which was founded in 2008 to provide free cardiac care to children in Egypt, and became the executive-director. She left the foundation in 2016 to serve as a member of the Egyptian Parliament. She advocated for human rights, free religious speech, and reforms within education and culture. In 2018, she requested the Parliament create free playgrounds for children in every district. And in 2019, she suggested that the PM shall create a law to ban the usage of plastic to help save the environment and the Egyptian wildlife. In 2017 she was diagnosed with cancer, and she received chemotherapy and radiation therapy, however, she was not fully cured. She died in March 2022 at the age of 69.

Tahani Al-Gebali

Tahani Al-Gebali made headlines in 2003 when she became the first female judge in Egypt. She also served as Vice President of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt. She remained the only female judge until 2007, when 32 women were appointed to various judicial positions. She was born in 1950 and graduated from Cairo University. “Everything new is at first resented, when women first went out to learn, people said it was the end of time, when women went out to work they said it is the end of the world. But it was not. And women have proven themselves in all fields.” said Al-Gebali. She died in January 2022 at the age of 71 after she contracted COVID-19.

In 2008, Eva Habeel became the first female mayor in Egypt, beating five male candidates for the position. She was the mayor of Komboha, an Upper Egypt village near Asyut governorate. She was a member of the National Democratic Party (NDP).  Her father was a mayor of the same village.

Dalia Mogahed

Dalia Mogahed is an Egyptian-American who in 2009 became the first veiled Muslim woman to hold a position in the White House. She was born in Cairo in 1975 and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 4. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a minor in Arabic from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also received an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in Washington, D.C. Up until this point she is fighting for Muslim women’s rights in the western world. In 2020 she talked about the French incident with Muslim French citizens saying: “it is all open and anyone can say anything they want” condemning the fact that Holocaust denial is criminalized and wearing a veil is banned in French schools.

Sarah Samir

In 2015, Egyptian Sarah Samir became the first female football referee for male teams in Egypt. Samir said that she looks forward to being a referee in more games in the future, hoping that one day she can join the World Cup. “I want to take part in more than World Cup. I’m still young, I have a chance to do so,” she said in an interview.

On the International Women’s Day, Egyptian women have been triumphing and making headlined in every field possible for more than 100 years, and still counting.

Maha Ghanem first female university head in Upper Egypt

International Women’s Day: Celebrating inspiring female entrepreneurs in Egypt

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4.3: Women in Ancient Egypt

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https://www.worldhistory.org/article..._and_copyright

One of the central values of ancient  Egyptian   civilization , arguably the central value, was  ma'at  - the concept of harmony and balance in all aspects of one's life. This ideal was the most important duty observed by the  pharaoh  who, as mediator between the gods and the people, was supposed to be a role model for how one lived a balanced life.  Egyptian art ,  architecture , religious practices, even governmental agencies all exhibit a perfect symmetry of balance and this can also be seen in gender roles throughout the history of ancient Egyptian civilization.

Egyptian Royal Woman  bstorage (Copyright)

Women  in ancient  Egypt  were the equals of men in every area except occupations. Historians Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs note how women were equal to men in almost every area except for jobs: "Men fought, ran the government, and managed the farm; women cooked, sewed, and managed the house" (89). Men held positions of authority such as king, governor, general, and a man was considered the head of the household but, within that patriarchy, women exercised considerable power and independence. Egyptologist Barbara Watterson writes:

In ancient Egypt a woman enjoyed the same rights under the  law  as a man. What her  de jure  [rightful entitlement] rights were depended upon her social class not her sex. All landed property descended in the female line, from mother to daughter, on the assumption, perhaps, that maternity is a matter of fact, paternity a matter of opinion. A woman was entitled to administer her own property and dispose of it as she wished. She could buy, sell, be a partner in legal contracts, be executor in wills and witness to legal documents, bring an action at court, and adopt children in her own name. An ancient Egyptian woman was legally  capax  [competent, capable]. In contrast, an ancient  Greek  woman was supervised by a  kyrios  [male guardian] and many Greek women who lived in Egypt during the  Ptolemaic Period , observing Egyptian women acting without  kyrioi , were encouraged to do so themselves. In short, an ancient Egyptian woman enjoyed greater social standing than many women of other societies, both ancient and modern. (16)

The respect accorded to women in ancient Egypt is evident in almost every aspect of the civilization from the religious beliefs to social customs. The gods were both male and female, and each had their own equally important areas of expertise. Women could marry who they wanted and divorce those who no longer suited them, could hold what jobs they liked - within limits - and travel at their whim. The earliest creation myths of the  culture  all emphasize, to greater or lesser degrees, the value of the feminine principle.

The Divine Feminine

In the most popular creation myth, the god Atum lights upon the primordial mound in the midst of the swirling waters of chaos and sets about creating the world. In some versions of this tale, however, it is the goddess  Neith  who brings creation and, even where Atum is the central character, the primordial waters are personified as Nu and Naunet, a balance of the male and female principles in harmony which combine for the creative act.

Following the creation and beginning of time, women continue to play a pivotal role as evidenced in the equally popular story of  Osiris  and  Isis . This brother and sister couple were said to have ruled the world (that being Egypt) after its creation and to have taught human beings the precepts of civilization, the art of  agriculture , the proper worship of the gods. Osiris is killed by his jealous brother Set, and it is Isis who brings him back to life, who gives birth to his child  Horus  and raises him to be king, and who, with her sister  Nephthys  and other goddesses such as  Serket  and Neith, helps to restore balance to the land.

Isis Wall Painting  The Yorck Project Gesellschaft für Bildarchivierung GmbH (GNU FDL)

The goddess  Hathor , sent to earth as the destroyer Sekhmet to punish humans for their transgressions, becomes people's friend and close companion after getting drunk on  beer  and waking with a more joyful spirit. Tenenet was the goddess of beer, thought to be the drink of the gods, who provided the people with the recipe and oversaw successful brewing. Shay was the goddess of the written word and librarians, Tayet the goddess of weaving, Tefnut the goddess of moisture. Even the passage of the year was viewed as feminine as personified by Renpet who notched her palm branch to  mark  the passage of time. The goddess  Bastet , one of the most popular in all of Egypt, was a protector of women, of the home, and of women's secrets.  Egyptian religion  honored and elevated the feminine, and so it is hardly surprising that women were important members of the clergy and  temple  life.

Women &  Religion

The most important position a woman could hold, beginning in the  Middle Kingdom of Egypt  (2040-1782 BCE), was  God's Wife of Amun . There were many "God's Wives" associated with different deities, and initially, in the  Middle Kingdom , the God's Wife of  Amun  was simply one among many. The God's Wife was an honorary title given to a woman (originally of any class but later of the upper class) who would assist the high priest in ceremonies and tend to the god's statue. Throughout the  New Kingdom of Egypt  (1570-1069 BCE) the position increased in prestige until, by the time of the  Third Intermediate Period  (1069-525 BCE), the God's Wife of Amun was equal in power to a king and effectively ruled Upper Egypt. During the  New Kingdom  period, the most famous of the God's Wives was the female pharaoh  Hatshepsut  (1479-1458 BCE) but there were many other women to hold the office before and after her.

Portrait of Queen Hatshepsut  Rob Koopman (CC BY-SA)

Women could be scribes and also priests, usually of a cult with a feminine deity. The priests of Isis, for example, were female and male, while cults with a male deity usually had only male priests (as in the case of Amun). The high prestige of the God's Wife of Amun is another example of the balance observed by the ancient Egyptians in that the position of the High Priest of Amun was balanced by an equally powerful female.

It must be noted that the designation 'cult' in describing ancient Egyptian religion does not carry the same meaning it does in the modern day. A cult in ancient Egypt would be the equivalent of a sect in modern religion. It is also important to recognize that there were no religious services as one would observe them in the present. People interacted with their deities most completely at festivals where women regularly played important roles such as the two virgins who would perform  The  Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys  at the festivals of Osiris. Priests maintained the temples and cared for the statue of the god, and the people visited the temple to ask for help on various matters, repay debts, give thanks, and seek counsel on problems, decisions, and dream interpretation.

Dreams were considered portals to the afterlife, planes on which the gods and the dead could communicate with the living; they did not always do so plainly, however. Skilled interpreters were required to understand the symbols in the dream and what they meant. Egyptologist Rosalie David comments on this:

In the  Deir el-Medina  texts, there are references to 'wise women' and the role they played in predicting future events and their causation. It has been suggested that such seers may have been a regular aspect of practical religion in the New Kingdom and possibly even earlier. (281)

These wise women were adept at interpreting dreams and being able to predict the future. The only extant accounts of dreams and their interpretation come from men, Hor of Sebennytos and Ptolemaios, son of Glaukius, (both c. 200 BCE), but inscriptions and fragments indicate that women were primarily consulted in these matters. David continues, "Some temples were reknowned as centres of dream incubation where the petitioner could pass the night in a special building and communicate with the gods or deceased relatives in order to gain insight into the future" (281). The most famous of these was attached to the Temple of Hathor at Dendera where the clergy was largely female.

The Temple of Hathor  Steve F-E-Cameron (CC BY-SA)

Occupations of Women

The clergy of ancient Egypt enjoyed great respect and a comfortable living. History from the  Early Dynastic Period in Egypt  (c. 3150- c. 2613 BCE) through the  Late Period of Ancient Egypt  (525-332 BCE) abounds in records of the clergy, especially that of Amun, amassing land and wealth. In order to become a priest, one had to first be a scribe, which required years of dedicated study. Once a woman became a scribe she could enter the priesthood, go into teaching, or become a physician. Female doctors were highly respected in ancient Egypt, and the medical school in  Alexandria  was attended by students from many other countries. The Greek physician Agnodice, denied an education in  medicine  in  Athens  because of her sex, studied in Egypt c. 4th century BCE and then returned to her home  city  disguised as a man to practice.

As the course of study to become a scribe was long and hard, however, not many people - men or women - chose to pursue it. Further, scribes were usually from families of scribes, where great value was placed on literacy and children were expected to follow in their father's or mother's occupation. Women, therefore, were regularly employed as weavers, bakers, brewers, sandal-makers, basket weavers, cooks, waitresses, or as a "Mistress of the House," which today would be an estate owner. When a woman's husband died, or when they divorced, a woman could keep the home and run it as she liked. This aspect of gender equality is almost astounding when one compares it with women's rights over just the past 200 years. A widow living in America in the early 19th century CE, for example, did not have any rights in home ownership and had to depend on a male relative's intercession to keep her home after the  death  or departure of her husband. In ancient Egypt, a woman could decide for herself how she would make money and keep her estate in order. Scholar James C. Thompson writes: 

There were many ways in which a 'Mistress of the House" could supplement her income. Some had small vegetable gardens. Many made clothing. One document shows an enterprising woman purchasing a slave for 400 deben. She paid half in clothing and borrowed the rest from her neighbors. It is likely the woman expected to be able to repay the loan by renting out the slave. Indeed, we have a receipt showing that one woman received several garments, a bull, and sixteen goats as payment for 27 days work by her slave. Those who could not raise the money on their own sometimes joined with neighbors to buy a slave. Women were often part of such a consortium. We know that a woman could inherit and operate a large, wealthy estate. A man who owned such an estate would hire a male scribe to manage it and it would seem reasonable that an heiress would do the same thing. We have little evidence of elite women with paying jobs whether full or part time. (3)

Especially talented women could also find work as concubines. A concubine was not simply a woman who was used for sex but needed to be accomplished in  music , conversation, weaving, sewing, fashion, culture, religion, and the arts. This is not to say, however, that their physical appearance did not matter. A request for forty concubines from  Amenhotep III  (c. 1386-1353 BCE) to a man named Milkilu, Prince of  Gezer , makes this clear. Amenhotep III writes:

Behold, I have sent you Hanya, the commissioner of the archers, with merchandise in order to have beautiful concubines, i.e. weavers.  Silver ,  gold , garments, all sort of precious stones, chairs of ebony, as well as all good things, worth 160 deben. In total: forty concubines - the price of every concubine is forty of silver. Therefore, send very beautiful concubines without blemish. (Lewis, 146)

These concubines would have been kept by the pharaoh as part of his harem and, in the case of Amenhotep III, very well kept as his  palace  at Malkata was among the most opulent in Egypt's history. The king was considered deserving of many women as long as he remained faithful in caring for his Great Wife but, for most of the Egyptians, marriage was monogamous and for life.

Love, Sex, & Marriage

As noted above by Watterson, women were considered legally capable in every aspect of their lives and did not require the supervision, consultation, or approval of a man in order to pursue any course of action. This paradigm applied to marriage and sex as well as any other area of one's life. Women could marry anyone they chose to, marriages were not arranged by the males of the family, and they could divorce when they pleased. There was no stigma attached to divorce even though a life-long marriage was always regarded as preferable. Brier and Hobbs comment on this:

Whether rich or poor, any free person had the right to the joys of marriage. Marriage was not a religious matter in Egypt - no ceremony involving a priest took place - but simply a social convention that required an agreement, which is to say a contract, negotiated by the suitor on the family of his prospective wife. The agreement involved an exchange of objects of value on both sides. The suitor offered a sum called the "virginity gift" when appropriate, to compensate the bride for what she would lose, indicating that in ancient times virginity was prized in female brides. The gift did not apply in the case of second marriages, of course, but a "gift to the bride" would be made even in that case. In return, the family of the bride-to-be offered a "gift in order to become a wife". In many cases, these two gifts were never delivered since the pair soon merged households. However, in the event of divorce, either party could later sue for the agreed gift. (88)

Ancient Egyptian couples also entered into prenuptial agreements which favored the woman. If a man initiated the divorce, he lost all right to sue for the gifts and had to pay a certain sum in alimony to his ex-wife until she either remarried or requested he stop payment. The children of the marriage always went with their mother and the home, unless it had been owned by the husband's family, remained with her.

Sabu's Family Group Statue  Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin (CC BY-NC-SA)

Birth control and abortions were available to married and unmarried women. The Ebers Medical Papyrus, c. 1542 BCE, contains a passage on birth control: "Prescription to make a woman cease to become pregnant for one, two, or three years. Grind together finely a measure of acacia dates with some honey. Moisten seed-wood with the mixture and insert into the vagina" (Lewis, 112). Even though virginity might have been prized by men initiating marriage, it was not required that a woman be virgin on her wedding night. A woman's sexual experience before marriage was not a matter of great concern. The only admonitions concerning female sexuality have to do with women who tempt men away from their wives. This was simply because a stable marriage contributed to a stable community, and so it was in the best interests of all for a couple to remain together. Further, the ancient Egyptians believed that one's earthly life was only a part of an eternal journey and one was expected to make one's life, including one's marriage, worth experiencing forever.

Reliefs, paintings, and inscriptions depict husbands and wives eating together, dancing, drinking, and working the fields with one another. Even though Egyptian art is highly idealized it is apparent that many people enjoyed happy marriages and remained together for life. Love poems were extremely popular in Egypt praising the beauty and goodness of one's girlfriend or wife and swearing eternal love in phrases very like modern love songs: "I shall never be far away from you/While my hand is in your hand/And I shall stroll with you/In every favourite place" (Lewis, 201). The speakers in these poems are both male and female and address all aspects of romantic love. The Egyptians took great joy in the simplest aspects of life and one did not have to be royalty to enjoy the company of one's lover, wife, family, or friends.

Egyptian Queens & the Lost Gifts of Isis

Still, there is no denying that Egyptian royalty lived well and the many queens and lesser wives who lived in the palace would have experienced enormous luxury. The palace of Amenhotep III at Malkata, mentioned above, extended over 30,000 square meters (30 hectares) with spacious apartments, conference rooms, audience chambers, a throne room and receiving hall, a festival hall, libraries, gardens, storerooms, kitchens, a harem, and a temple to the god Amun. The palace's outer walls gleamed brightly white, while the interior colors were a lively blue, golden-yellow, and vibrant green. The women who lived in such palaces experienced a life far above that of the lower classes but still had their duties to fulfill in keeping with  ma'at .

Egyptologist Sally-Ann Ashton writes, "In a world that was dominated by the male pharaoh, it is often difficult to comprehend fully the roles of Egyptian queens. A pharaoh would have a number of queens but the most important would be elevated to "principal wife" (1). The role of the principal or great wife varied with the pharaoh. In the case of Queen  Tiye  (1398-1338 BCE), the wife of Amenhotep III, she regularly took part in the affairs of state, acted as a diplomat, and even had her name written in a cartouche, like a king.  Nefertiti  (c. 1370-1336 BCE), the wife of  Akhenaten , cared for their family while also helping her husband run the country. When her husband essentially abandoned his duties as pharaoh to concentrate on his new monotheistic religion, Nefertiti assumed his responsibilities.

Queen Nefertiti  Philip Pikart (CC BY-SA)

Great queens are recorded as far back as the  Early Dynastic  Period in Egypt with Queen Merneith (c. 3000 BCE) who ruled as regent for her son Den. Queen Sobeknefru (c. 1807-1802 BCE) took the throne during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and ruled as a woman without regard for the trappings of tradition that only a male could reign over Egypt. Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty took Sobeknefru's example further and had herself crowned pharaoh. Hatshepsut continues to be considered one of the most powerful women of the ancient world and among the greatest pharaohs of Egypt.

Although female rulers are in the minority in ancient Egypt, powerful queens are not. Their duties and many of their activities remain undocumented or, at least, untranslated, but there is no doubt - based on the information that is available - that these women exerted considerable influence over their husbands, the court, and the country.

WOMEN'S STATUS IN EGYPT WAS INCREDIBLY ADVANCED FOR ANY TIME IN WORLD HISTORY, INCLUDING THE PRESENT. 

In the beginning of time, when Osiris and Isis ruled over the world in peace and justice, Isis is said to have given gifts to humanity and, among them, the gift of equality between men and women. This Egyptian legend is exemplified by the high status women enjoyed throughout Egypt's history. Brier and Hobbs note how "the status of women in Egypt was incredibly advanced for the time" (89). This is no doubt true, but one could argue that women's status was incredibly advanced for any time in world history, including the present. A woman in ancient Egypt had more rights than many women living in the present day.

Equality and respect for women continued through the  Ptolemaic Dynasty  (323-30 BCE), the last to rule Egypt before it was annexed by  Rome .  Cleopatra VII  (c. 69-30 BCE), the last queen of Egypt, is among the best representatives of women's equality as she ruled the country far better than the males who preceded her or thought to co-rule with her. Women's status began to decline in Egypt with the rise of  Christianity  in the 4th century CE and its belief that sin had entered the world through Eve's disobedience and that women were of less value and less to be trusted than men. The Arab Invasion of the 7th century CE brought  Islam  to Egypt and effectively ended the kind of equality women had known in the country for almost 3,000 years. 

Bibliography

• Ashton, S.  The Last Queens of Egypt.  Routledge, 2003.
• Brier, B & Hobbs, H.  Ancient Egypt: Everyday Life in the Land of the Nile.  Sterling, 2013.
• David, R.  Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt.  Penguin Books, 2003.
• Graves-Brown, C.  Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt.  Continuum, 2010.
• Lewis, J. E.  The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Egypt.  Running Press, 2003.
• Robins, G.  Women in Ancient Egypt.  Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Shaw, I.  The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.  Oxford, 2016.
• Tyldesley, J.  Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt.  Penguin Books, 1995.
• Watterson, B.  The Egyptians.  Wiley-Blackwell, 1997.
• Watterson, B.  Women in Ancient Egypt.  Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1994.

Contributors and Attributions

Joshua J. Mark

A freelance writer and former part-time Professor of Philosophy at Marist College, New York, Joshua J. Mark has lived in Greece and Germany and traveled through Egypt. He has taught history, writing, literature, and philosophy at the college level.

Old News, Vintage Photos & Nostalgic Stories

5 famous egyptian women who made history.

• Administrative corner

How funny does it sound the phrase “it’s a man’s world” to Egyptian women when it is said by a Western woman? Women have their struggles all around the world, but still, when the oppression of women is a core ideology of a culture, it’s hard to even establish the phrase “Women’s rights” – let alone fight for it.

And yet, there is a long list of brave women who simply did it in their own way, they left eternal marks in the Egyptian culture and social life.

Huda Sha’arawi

Born in 1879, Huda Sha’arawi was a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, nationalist, and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union. At the time, women in Egypt were confined to the house or harem. As seen in all of her pictures, Hude is wearing a Hijab. Sha`arawi resented such restrictions on women’s movements and started organizing lectures for women on topics of interest to them. This brought many women out of their homes and into public places for the first time. Sha`arawi even convinced them to help her establish a women’s welfare society to raise money for the poor women of Egypt. In 1910, Sha`arawi opened a school for girls where she focused on teaching academic subjects rather than practical skills such as midwifery.

After World War I, many women took part in political actions against the British rule. In 1919, Sha`arawi helped organize the largest women’s anti-British demonstration. In defiance of British orders to disperse, the women remained still for three hours in the hot sun. Sha`arawi made a decision to stop wearing her veil in public after her husband’s death in 1922

She led Egyptian women pickets at the opening of Parliament in January 1924 and submitted a list of nationalist and feminist demands, which were ignored by the Wafdist government, whereupon she resigned from the Wafdist Women’s Central Committee. She continued to lead the Egyptian Feminist Union until her death, publishing the feminist magazine l’Egyptienne (and el-Masreyya ), and representing Egypt at women’s congresses in numerous European cities. She advocated peace and disarmament. Even if only some of her demands were met during her lifetime, she laid the groundwork for later gains by Egyptian women and remains the symbolic standard-bearer for their liberation movement. She began to hold regular meetings for women at her home, and from this, the Egyptian Feminist Union was born. She launched a fortnightly journal, L’Égyptienne in 1925, in order to publicize the cause.

Umm Kulthum

Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer, who mesmerized Arab audiences from the Persian Gulf to Morocco for half a century. She was one of the most famous Arab singers and public personalities in the 20th century. Beginning in 1937, she regularly gave a performance on the first Thursday (which in most Islamic countries is the last day of the workweek) of every month. By this time she had moved from singing religious songs to performing popular tunes — often in the colloquial dialect and accompanied by a small traditional orchestra — and she became known for her emotive, passionate renditions of arrangements by the best composers, poets, and songwriters of the day. These included the poets Aḥmad Shawqī and Bayrām al-Tūnisī (who wrote many of the singer’s colloquial Egyptian songs) and, later, the noted composer Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, with whom she collaborated on ten songs.

Known sometimes as Kawkab al-Sharq (“Star of the East”), Umm Kulthūm had an immense repertoire, which included religious, sentimental, and nationalistic songs. In the midst of the turmoil created by two world wars, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the 1952 Egyptian revolution, she cultivated a public persona as a patriotic Egyptian and a devout Muslim. She sang songs in support of Egyptian independence and in the 1950s sang many songs in support of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, with whom she developed a close friendship.

She remained one of the Arab world’s best-selling singers even decades after her death. In 2001 the Egyptian government established the Kawkab al-Sharq Museum in Cairo to celebrate the singer’s life and accomplishments.

Durriya Shafiq

Doria Shafik was a feminist, philosopher, poet and editor, and one of the principal leaders of the women’s liberation movement in Egypt in the mid-1940s. As a direct result of her efforts, Egyptian women were granted the right to vote by the Egyptian constitution.

Shafik was born in Tanta, in the Nile Delta and studied in a French mission school. At sixteen she became the youngest Egyptian to earn the French Baccalaureate degree. At nineteen she was awarded a scholarship by the Egyptian Ministry of Education to study at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She also studied for a Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne. Upon her return from France to Egypt in 1940, Shafik hoped to contribute to the education of her country’s youth, but the dean of the Faculty of Literature of Cairo University denied her a teaching position on the pretext that she was “too modern.”

In 1945, Princess Chevicar, (the first wife of Egypt’s then former King Fuad I offered Shafik the position of editor-in-chief of La Femme Nouvelle , a French cultural and literary magazine addressing the country’s elite. Shafik accepted the position, and with Chevicar’s death in 1947, took complete responsibility for the magazine including its financing. Under her direction, La Femme Nouvelle gained regional status. In 1948 Shafik created the Bint Al Nil Union, to help solve women’s primary social problems and to ensure their inclusion in their country’s policies. The union also worked to eradicate illiteracy by setting up centers for that purpose throughout the country, set up an employment office and a cafeteria for working women.

As a result of Shafik’s efforts women are granted the right to vote under the constitution of 1956 with the condition however that they be literate which was not a prerequisite for male voting.

Sameera Moussa

Sameera Moussa was an Egyptian nuclear physicist who held a doctorate in atomic radiation and worked to make the medical use of nuclear technology affordable to all. She organized the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference and sponsored a call for setting an international conference under the banner “Atoms for Peace”. Despite the fact that Moussa got high grades in her secondary education, and could have gotten into engineering, she insisted on joining the Faculty of Sciences at Cairo University. In 1939, Moussa obtained a BSc in Radiology with first class honors after researching the effects of X-ray radiation on various materials. Dr. Moustafa Mousharafa, the first dean of the faculty, believed in his student enough to help her become a remarkable lecturer at the faculty. Afterward, she became the first assistant professor at the same faculty and the first woman to hold a university post, being the first who obtained a Ph.D. in atomic radiation.

Moussa believed in “Atoms for Peace” and said, “I’ll make nuclear treatment as available and as cheap as Aspirin.” She worked hard for this purpose and throughout her intensive research, she came up with a historic equation that would help break the atoms of cheap metals such as copper, paving the way for a cheap nuclear bomb.

On August 5, 1952, after her first visit to America she intended to return home, but she was invited on a trip. On the way, the car fell from a height of 40 feet, which killed her immediately. The mystery of the accident, since the invitation to California was shown to be untrue later on, besides the vanishing of the car driver who jumped from the car just before it rushed down, made some people believe it was a planned assassination. It is alleged that the Israeli Mossad was behind Moussa’s murder by a Judeo-Egyptian actress, Raqya Ibrahim (Rachael Abraham).

Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. She has written many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She has been described as “the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World”. She is founder and president of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. She has been awarded honorary degrees on three continents. Nawal el Saadawi has held positions of Author for the Supreme Council for Arts and Social Sciences, Cairo; Director General of the Health Education Department, Ministry of Health, Cairo, Secretary General of Medical Association, Cairo, Egypt, and Medical Doctor, University Hospital and Ministry of Health. She is the founder of Health Education Association and the Egyptian Women Writer’s Association; she was Chief Editor of Health Magazine in Cairo, Egypt and Editor of Medical Association Magazine .

Saadawi graduated as a medical doctor in 1955 from Cairo University. In 1972 she published Woman and Sex , confronting and contextualizing various aggressions perpetrated against women’s bodies, including female circumcision. The book became a foundational text of second-wave feminism. As a consequence of the book and her political activities, Saadawi was dismissed from her position at the Ministry of Health. Long viewed as controversial and dangerous by the Egyptian government, Saadawi helped publish a feminist magazine in 1981 called Confrontation. She was imprisoned in September by President of Egypt Anwar Sadat. She was released later that year, one month after the President’s assassination. Of her experience, she wrote: “Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.”

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Egyptian Women, 23 Egyptian Women Who Made History

In a culture bound by oppression, Egyptian women never stood a chance in acquiring the same fame, power and success of that of an Egyptian man. Women stood in the background while men stood in the forefront taking credit for work women also contributed too. Women were regarded as second-class citizens and women’s rights issues were ‘elitist’ and unimportant.

Yet, despite all of that, there are many women who have soared to heights of success that were unmatched to that of a man at the time. There have been women who thrived and triumphed against all odds. There have been women who defended their country, women who recreated art, women who took office, women who changed policies and women who thrived in sports, business and ethics.

This is just a sample of kind of the women who existed and still exist in Egypt.

1. CLEOPATRA

“I WILL NOT BE TRIUMPHED OVER.”

Known as the last active Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, Cleopatra was a politician, mathematician and a businesswoman. She was fluent in nine languages and during her rule she defended Egypt from the vastly expanding Roman Empire.

2. LOTFIA EL NADI

“IT WAS MY REVOLT, I HAD TO DO IT.”

Eighty years ago, Lotfia El Nadi became the first Egyptian woman to be a licensed pilot. At age 26, she was among the youngest at the time to achieve her lifelong dream.

This remarkable woman, who was also a friend of Amelia Earhart, was made an honorary citizen by Switzerland and was an inspiration for women across Egypt and the world.

3. JIHAN EL MIDANY

“I WANT TO PROVE THAT THE VEIL DOES NOT HAVE TO PREVENT GIRLS FROM DOING ANYTHING.”

Jihan El Midany is an Egyptian pentathlete who was the first Egyptian woman to carry the national flag into the Olympic ceremony. Jihan, who was 18 at the time, came in 12th place.

4. MONA ELTAHAWY

“THE WOMAN EXPLAINING EGYPT TO THE WEST”

Mona Eltahawy is a distinguished Egyptian-American freelance journalist, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald Tribune, U.S. News and World Report. She was ranked the 30th most powerful Arab Woman in 2012 by Arabian Business.

5. TAHANY EL GEBALI

“EVERYTHING NEW IS AT FIRST RESENTED. WHEN WOMEN FIRST WENT OUT TO LEARN, PEOPLE SAID IT WAS THE END OF TIME, WHEN THEY WENT OUT TO WORK THEY SAID IT WOULD BE THE END OF THE WORLD. BUT IT WASN’T. AND WOMEN HAVE PROVEN THEMSELVES IN ALL FIELDS.”

Tahany El Gebali made headlines in 2003 when she was appointed as Egypt’s first female judge. She gained nationwide prominence after acquiring a series of high-profile cases. She was also the first woman to be elected on the Permanent Bureau of the Union of Arab Lawyers. Tahany was ranked 23rd on The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women by Arabian Business. Recently, Tahany was appointed Deputy President of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court.

6. NAWAL EL SAADAWI

“TO ME, ‘BEAUTY’ MEANS TO BE NATURAL, CREATIVE, HONEST – TO SAY THE TRUTH.”

Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian women’s rights activist, author, physician and psychiatrist. Saadawi has published many books pertaining to women and Islam. She has also founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association and co-founded the Arab Association for Human Rights. Saadawi has been awarded honorary degrees in three continents, some of which entail North-South prize from the Council of Europe in 2004 and the Inana International Prize in Belgium in 2005.

7. HILANA SEDAROUS

‘THE FIRST FEMALE EGYPTIAN DOCTOR’

Hilana Sedarous is the first female Egyptian doctor. Born in Tanta, Sedarous was sent to London in 1922 to study mathematics and medicine. In 1930, she earned her doctoral and returned to Egypt. She established a private clinic specializomg in obstetrics and gynaecology.

‘STAR OF THE MIDDLE EAST’

The biggest female entertainment name in the Arab world was born as Civene Mohamed Nasim. Yousra, her stage name, began making films in the 70’s. Yousra has worked as an UN Goodwill Ambassador and was ranked 29th most influential Arab woman by Arabian Business. Yousra has received more than 50 awards in recognition for her work as a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador.

9. UMM KULTHUM

“MY FATHER WAS UNEASY. THE IDEA THAT HIS DAUGHTER SHOULD SING IN FRONT OF MEN HE DIDN’T KNOW, WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO ACCEPT, BUT MY SINGING HELPED SUPPORT THE FAMILY. SO HE DRESSED ME IN BOY’S CLOTHES, AND I SANG THIS WAY FOR SEVERAL YEARS. I REALIZE NOW THAT HE WANTED TO CONVINCE HIMSELF, AND THE AUDIENCE TOO, THAT THE SINGER WAS A YOUNG BOY, AND NOT A YOUNG WOMAN.”

Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer, songwriter and actress who sang for almost four decades. Her success as a singer and a song writer exceeded that of others and the cultural power she has is unparalleled. She recorded hundreds of songs and her fame rose to levels unforeseen for Arab women at the time. She toured in the Middle East singing in cities like Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, Tunis and Tripoli. She had private concerts for Presidents and Royals. Today, Kulthum is regarded as the greatest female Arabic singer in history.

10. DALIA MOGAHED

“I CAN TELL YOU CHARACTER TRAITS I ADMIRE AND WORK TO DEVELOP IN MYSELF – PERSEVERANCE, SELF-DISCIPLINE, COURAGE TO STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT EVEN WHEN IT IS AGAINST ONE’S FRIENDS OR ONE’S SELF.”

Dalia Mogahed made history when she became the first veiled Muslim woman to hold a position in the White House. In 2009, she was selected to be Barack Obama’s advisor on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships. Mogahed was also the Executive Director of the Gallup American Centre for Muslim Studies.

11. ANISSA HASSOUNA

“ FIRST WOMAN ELECTED ON THE BOARD OF THE EGYPTIAN COUNCIL FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS ”

Anissa Hassouna currently holds the position of executive director of Magdi Yacoub’s foundation, vice president of the board of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, and is a lecturer at the Banking Institute in Cairo and the Diplomatic Institute. Hassouna began her career as a diplomat for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She later went on to work for the Council of Arab Economic Unity, Egypt’s International Economic Forum as the Director General, and Misr Iran Development Bank as Assistant General Manager.

12. MERVAT TALLAWY

“IN EGYPT WE ARE SAYING THE FALL OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM WILL BE BECAUSE OF WOMEN. THEY DON’T SIT STILL AT ALL. THEIR VOICE IS VERY RAISED AT DEMONSTRATIONS, SIGNING PETITIONS—THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. WE WILL NOT ACCEPT THE SITUATION. WE WILL FIGHT IT UNTIL THE END. EITHER THEY WILL PUT US IN JAIL OR THEY WILL CHANGE THEIR ATTITUDES.”

Mervat Tallawy is currently one of Egypt’s most prominent female figures. Tallawy is the former Under-Secretary General of the UN and former deputy director of the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women. She was also Egypt’s Minister for Insurance and Social Affairs during 1997-1999 and served as ambassador to Japan and Austria. Recently, she was elected as the head of the National Council for Egyptian Women (NCEW).

13. NADIA YOUNES

‘ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED, EFFECTIVE AND CHARISMATIC OFFICIALS’ – WHO

Nadia Younes was a remarkable Egyptian national who worked for 33 years with the UN and the World Health Organization. Younes served as Deputy Spokeswoman for the Secretary-General from 1988 until 1993 and Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Rome. After a long, successful

career, her life was tragically cut short on August 19th 2003 by the devastating bombing at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which was being used as the UN Headquarters in Iraq.

14. SAMEERA MOUSSA

“I WILL MAKE NUCLEAR TREATMENT AS AVAILABLE AS ASPIRIN”

Sameera Moussa was a nuclear scientist who dedicated her life to make medical nuclear power affordable to all. Moussa arranged the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference. A pioneer in her field, she was honored and awarded posthumously by the Egyptian Army, and former President Anwar Sadat.

In 1952, however, she was killed when her car plummeted from a height of 40 feet after being invited somewhere in California, following a visit to the US. Her death is shrouded in conspiracy, with some blaming the Mossad or other intelligence organizations for her death. The driver of her car disappeared and the the invitation she had received turned out to be false.

15. KAMILIA ABDELFATTAH

“ PAVING THE WAY FOR CHILD PSYCHOLOGY IN EGYPT ”

Kamilia Abdelfattah is a pioneer in the field of child psychology. Abdelfattah established and headed the childhood higher institute studies of graduates Ain Shams University (1981–1986). She was also chosen as woman of the year in Who’s Who UK encyclopaedia 1997 and Cambridge University.

16. FARKHONDA HASSAN

“THE OBJECTIVE NOW IS NOT TO RENEGOTIATE OUR DREAMS, BUT TO EMPHASIZE THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF ALL ACTORS. WE ARE NO LONGER SEEKING PROMISES, BUT ARE DEMANDING ACTION.”

Farkhonda Hassan is a geology professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and is chair of the Commission on Human Development and Local Administration of the Shura Council. Since 2000, Hassan has been a member of the National Council for Women in Egypt and is currently the Gender Advisory Board of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development and Secretary-General. Her career is centred around women’s causes in many aspects of society on a grass-roots level.

17. JEHAN SADAT

“THEY PUT ASIDE THE TALK OF PEACE AND INSTEAD ACTED FOR PEACE.” [REFERRING TO THE PEACE TREATY MADE BETWEEN HER HUSBAND, ANWAR AL SADAT, AND ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BEGIN.

Jehan Sadat is the former Egyptian First Lady and widow of former President Anwar El Sadat. Jehan dedicated much of her life to volunteer work with the less fortunate. During her husband’s presidency, Sadat changed the world’s view on Arab women by participating in volunteer work.

Sadat also received many national and international awards for public service and humanitarian work with women and children. She has been awarded over 20 national and international honorary doctorate degrees from universities and institutions around the world. She was also the first female chairperson for the People’s Council of Munofeyya Provincial governorate and has been a visiting professor at many universities such as the University of South Carolina, Radford University and American Univeristy (AU).

18. HUDA SHA’ARAWI

“MEN HAVE SINGLED OUT WOMEN OF OUTSTANDING MERIT AND PUT THEM ON A PEDESTAL TO AVOID RECOGNIZING THE CAPABILITIES OF ALL WOMEN.”

Huda Sha’arawi is perhaps one of Egypt’s most famous feminist figures of all time, along with Durriya Shafiq, Safia Zaghloul and Ester Fanous. Sha’arawi was the founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union. In 1919, Sha’arawi helped organize one of the largest women’s anti-British protest of all time. After attending the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, Sha’arawi made a conscious decision to remove her face veil, an act that would go down in history as one of the most defining moments of feminist resistance in Egypt.

19. GAZBIA SIRRY

‘SPOKESPERSON OF THE PEOPLE’

Gazbia Sirry is a prominent artist and professor of fine arts. Sirry has about 70 personal exhibitions across the Arab world, Europe and the US. Regarded as one of the most distinguishable Egyptian artists of the past fifty years, her work has been featured in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art & Science Museum Evansville, Indiana; The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. She has been awarded several fellowships from international universities one of which is the University of London.

20. TAHANI RACHED

“THE MESSAGE SHOULD BE DELIVERED THAT THERE IS NO ART UNLESS WE HAVE THE FREEDOM TO CONSTRUCT THAT ART.”

Tahani Rached is an Egyptian Filmmaker who has produced several movies some of which include Four Women of Egypt. Her work has received several awards, some of which include Public Award in the International Documentary Film Festival.

21. AZZA FAHMY

“SO I TIED MY HAIR BACK, PUT ON MY OVERALLS AND SPENT MY DAYS IN A WORKSHOP FULL OF MEN LEARNING THE TRICKS OF THE JEWELLERY MAKING TRADE.”

Azza Fahmy is an iconic Egyptian jewelry designer who founded the Azza Fahmy Company. After acquiring a BA in Interior Design, Fahmy began her journey with jewelry in a Khan El Khalili workshop. Forty years later, her work has been featured globally in international Fashion Shows and her jewelry is recognized everywhere.

22. TAHANI TOSON

‘THE VOLLEYBALL PLAYER OF THE CENTURY IN AFRICA’

Tahani Toson is a professional Volleyball trainer and former player for the Egyptian National team and Al-Ahly Club. She was named most valuable player 35 times in just 18 years. She has led the Egyptian national team to 14 championship wins. Toson was named Ninth-Best Player during the 2003 World Cup in Japan and Fifth-Best Bulwark during the 1995 World Cup in Japan, also. In 2000, she was named “Player of the Century” in African Volleyball.

23. DURRIYA SHAFIQ

“TO WANT AND TO DARE! NEVER HESITATE TO ACT WHEN THE FEELING OF INJUSTICE REVOLTS US. TO GIVE ONE’S MEASURE WITH ALL GOOD FAITH, THE REST WILL FOLLOW AS A LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE.”

During the 1940’s, Durriya Shafiq was among the leaders of the women’s liberation movement that took place in Egypt. A women’s rights activist, Doria Shafik is the reason women were granted the right to vote by the constitution. Shafiq also formulated the Bint Al-Nil Party and translated the Qur’an to English and French.

FATEN HAMAMA

‘LADY OF THE ARAB CINEMA’

Faten Hamama is one of Egypt’s and the Arab world’s most prominent producers and actresses and was chosen as ‘Star of the Century’ by the Egyptian Writers and Critics organization at the 2001 Alexandria International Film Festival.

Hamama made her silver screen debut in 1939 when she was only seven years old, and from there, she was on a path to shatter the common depiction of Egyptian women in film as objects – secondary to their male counterparts. Hamama chose to play roles that depicted women as independent and powerful. For example, in Sira Fi Al-Wadi, she played a rich man’s daughter who was a down-to-earth woman that helped the poor.

Today, she remains to be regarded as one of the most important and inspiring actresses in the history of Arabic cinema and is commonly known as ‘The Lady of the Arab Cinema.’

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Q- Is it safe to travel to Egypt 2020? A -Tourists have been visiting Egypt for centuries and Egyptians have well-earned reputation for warmth and kindness toward visitors. Egyptian cities are generally very safe, especially in area where tourists frequenty.

Q-What are Egypt's Visa Requirements? A -If you want to apply for a Visa On Arrival that lasts for 30 days then you should be one of the eligible countries, have a valid passport with at least 6 months remaining and pay 25$ USD in cash, as for the E-Visa for 30 day you should have a valid passport for at least 8 months, complete the online application, pay the e-visa fee then print the e-visa to later be presented to the airport border guard. You could also be one of the lucky ones who can obtain a free visa for 90 days. Read More About Egypt Travel Visa.

Q-What is the Top Traditional Egyptian Food?A -Egypt has a variety of delicious cuisines but we recommend “Ful & Ta’meya (Fava Beans and Falafel)”, Mulukhiya, “Koshary”, a traditional Egyptian pasta dish, and Kebab & Kofta, the Egyptian traditional meat dish.

Q-What is the Best Time to Visit Egypt?A - The best time to travel to Egypt is during the winter from September to April as the climate becomes a bit tropical accompanied by a magical atmosphere of warm weather with a winter breeze. You will be notified in the week of your trip if the weather is unsafe and if any changes have been made.

Q-What to Pack for Your Egypt Tour?A -You should pack everything you could ever need and but in a small bag so you could move easily between your destinations.

Q-Why Book With "JOURNEY TO EGYPT"? A -We have been creating the finest vacations for more than 10 years around the most majestic destinations in Egypt. Our staff consists of the best operators, guides and drivers who dedicate all of their time & effort make you have the perfect vacation. All of our tours are customized by Travel, Financial & Time consultants to fit your every possible need during your vacation. It doesn't go without saying that your safety and comfort are our main concern priority and all of our resources will be directed to provide the best atmosphere until you return home.

Q-What is the Weather is Like? A -The temperature in Egypt ranges from 37c to 14 c. Summer in Egypt is somehow hot and winter is cool and mild but sometimes it becomes cold at night. The average of low temperatures vary from 9.5 °C in the wintertime to 23 °C in the summertime and average high temperatures vary from 17 °C in the wintertime to 32 °C in the summertime. The temperature is moderate all along the coasts..

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion? You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Unearthing hatshepsut, egypt's most powerful female pharaoh.

Excavators from a 1928–29 expedition in Egypt sorting fragments of granite statues. At back left is Djeser-Djeseru, Hatshepsut's mortuary complex. Photo by Harry Burton, February 15, 1929

«Before the British scholar Terence Gray adopted the name Wei Wu Wei and began his studies in Taoism, he was a budding Egyptologist with an iconoclastic streak. In 1920, seemingly tired of history as it had hitherto been written, he published a biographic study of the Egyptian queen and pharaoh Hatshepsut written not as a dry academic tract, but as a drama.» It was no modest play: Gray, ostensibly warning readers about its complexities, boasted that it was longer than Shakespeare's Hamlet in its written form. For practicality's sake, he wrote, "an acting edition may be brought into existence by the omission of eight scenes." [1]

Yet writing a great story was only Gray's secondary task. His chief aim, he wrote, was to "reconstruct the life of one of the greatest women in history." [2] His play was intended as a corrective to the prevailing narrative of Hatshepsut's reign: that it resulted from a woman's deceitful intentions. By Gray's time, the scholarly consensus was that Hatshepsut could only have seized, not inherited, power following the death of her husband, the pharaoh Thutmosis II. Even two Met curators, William Hayes and Herbert Winlock, who excavated her funerary temple in the 1920s, were convinced she was a "vain, ambitious, and unscrupulous woman," as Hayes put it in 1953. [3]

This interpretation was driven largely by the erasure of Hatshepsut's memory after her death. In 1927, Winlock discovered a pit full of smashed statues of the pharaoh, which were ordered destroyed by her nephew, Thutmosis III, who became sole king after her death. (For the first part of his reign, they ruled together with Thutmosis III as the junior partner.) For Winlock and Hayes, the story was simple: Hatshepsut had usurped the throne, and Thutmosis III, who had grown tired of ruling alongside his aunt, was setting the record straight by carving her out of history.

Left: Hatshepsut . New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (ca. 1479–1458 B.C.). Indurated limestone, paint. From Egypt, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri & el- Asasif, Senenmut Quarry, MMA excavations, 1926–28/Lepsius 1843–45. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1929 (29.3.2). Right: The reverse of the statue, which has remnants of yellow and blue pigment on Hatshepsut's headcloth

Today, thanks to more recent scholarship, that story has been revised. In 2005, The Met (with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) organized the exhibition Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh , which presented her reign as a period of stability, prosperity, and artistic ingenuity. During her kingship, Hatshepsut reinstated trade with peoples in Asia, restored monuments that had fallen into disrepair during the Second Intermediate Period, and built a vast and innovative mortuary complex, Djeser-Djeseru.

The above seated statue of Hatshepsut from The Met collection illustrates one of the core problems the pharaoh had to confront: How should a female pharaoh be depicted? Although most sculptures and images depict her as a male king—such was the precedent for depictions of pharaohs—this one quietly emphasizes her femininity, especially in the softness of her face, her narrow nose, small mouth, and high cheekbones, all of which are relatively naturalistic. In addition, the statue has the king's titles written in the feminine form, describing Hatshepsut as "Daughter of Re, Lady of the Two Lands," a reference to Upper and Lower Egypt.

Similar descriptions on Hatshepsut's temple surprised early Western visitors. When Jean-François Champollion, who is credited with deciphering the Rosetta Stone and therefore had a sense of how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, came across relief decorations on her temple, he was taken aback to find occasional feminine grammar. A female ruler was not completely unimaginable; the Ptolemaic Egyptian priest Manetho recorded the existence of several in his histories of Egypt, with which Champollion was familiar. But it was remarkable that Hatshepsut's memory, which Thutmosis III tried to erase, remained despite his attempted proscription. More than 1,300 years after she died, Manetho noted that her rule lasted more than 20 years. Considering all that, the literal meaning of Hatshepsut's name—"foremost among noblewomen"—could not be more appropriate.

To learn more about Hatshepsut, download a free copy of the Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh exhibition catalogue on MetPublications.

Seated statue of Hatshepsut on view in gallery 115 , alongside other objects depicting the pharaoh

[1] Terence Gray, The Life of the King of the South & North Kamari'a, Daughter of the Sun, Hatshepsut (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1920), xix.

[2] Ibid., xiii.

[3] William C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 2—The Hyksos Period and the New Kingdom (1675–1080 B.C.) (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 82.

Pac Pobric is an editor in the Digital Department.

• Ancient History

What life like for women in ancient Egypt?

Whenever people study the famous monuments and people of ancient Egypt, the lives of women in their culture is often forgotten.

This is mainly due to the fact that most of the well-known temples, tombs, and statues, were all built to glorify the achievements of great male pharaohs. 

However, by doing this, we miss out on some of the great lives and legacies of women in ancient Egypt, even if they weren’t particularly rich and powerful.

Traditional roles and responsibilities

It is probably no surprise to learn that the lives of many women in ancient Egypt were centered around their households. 

In the home, they were expected to prepare the family’s food and care for children.

But, depending upon their social class, women could also participate in a surprisingly wide range of activities.  

Peasant women also toiled in the fields alongside men, planting and harvesting crops that sustained the Egyptian economy.

If they lived in towns, many women engaged in commerce and craft. They sold goods in markets, ran bakeries, and worked as weavers.

In comparison, among the elite, could administer large estates, oversee teams of laborers and manage the business financial accounts.  

For royal women such as Nefertiti and Cleopatra , they could even wield political power to shape the dynastic and diplomatic landscapes of their times.

They could negotiate with foreign dignitaries, influenced military strategies, and, in some cases, even ruled as pharaohs.

In addition, royal women could, through strategic marriages and giving birth to the heir to the throne, they could be vital in securing alliances and dynastic succession.  

Family life and marriage for Egyptian women

The typical ancient Egyptian marriage was monogamous, and while not primarily arranged, families often played a significant role in the union.

Legal documents such as marriage contracts were not customary unless there was a specific reason to formalize the agreement in writing.

This was often the case of property arrangements. Often, it was used among the noble families, when strategic marriages were common to consolidate wealth and power. 

Then, when women became mothers, they were referred to as "mistress of the house".

As such, they were considered key figures in managing the household and educating the young on social and moral conduct.

Their influence was crucial in shaping the next generation: they passed on skills such as weaving and cooking to their daughters as a way of preparing them for their future role as wives and mothers. 

The power of becoming a priestess

Women in ancient Egypt could hold a significant influence in religious sphere , by becoming a priestess.

They were integral to the worship of powerful female goddesses such as Hathor, Isis, and Nut.

The priestesses’ role was to perform music, dance, and carry out holy rituals that were believed to be essential in maintaining order in the universe. 

Interestingly, women had a powerful role in Egyptian funerary practices. At the tombs of the deceased, female mourners, known as the 'Kites of Nephthys,' were responsible for enacting rituals of grief.

Such ceremonies were believed to help the soul of the dead to transition safely into the afterlife.

As a result, women's performances like this were believed to appease the gods. 

In a similar way, there were often practitioners known as "wise women." These women offered people a series of spells, charms, and a secret knowledge of medicinal herbs to use when required.

The right incantation could either heal, protect, or sometimes curse, particular people.

As such, women in these roles were both respected and feared by many in Egyptian society.  

The surprising legal rights Egyptian women had

Women in ancient Egypt enjoyed a much higher degree of legal rights than other ancient civilizations.

For example, they could own, buy, and sell property independently without the oversight or permission of their male relatives.

This freedom allowed them to engage in economic activities and manage their assets as they saw fit.

Consequently, their right to property was protected by law, and many women took advantage of this to accumulate and control personal wealth. 

In fact, women could litigate and be sued. They were expected to appear in court and provide testimony just as men were, and women in Egypt could defend their own rights and also challenge any grievances they faced.

This is evidenced by rare surviving court records, such as those of the worker's village at Deir el-Medina, where women are frequently seen initiating legal actions regarding family matters and property disputes. 

Could ancient Egyptian girls go to school?

Unfortunately, education in ancient Egypt were primarily reserved for the male elite, but some women did manage to receive formal education.

This was particularly true for those from wealthy families. Such women were often taught to read and write hieroglyphs, a skill that was crucial for those involved in temple work or the administration of estates.

For instance, records show that only about 1% of the population was literate, with a smaller fraction of that percentage being women. 

Among these educated women, Peseshet, who lived around 2400 BC, is a particularly fascinating figure.

As a director of female physicians, she practiced medicine and also likely played a role in teaching at one of the ancient world’s earliest known medical schools at the Saqqara complex.  

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Three remarkable female pioneers of Egyptology that the history books forgot

The vital contribution of these remarkable pioneering women to our understanding of ancient egypt should not be underestimated, writes toby wilkinson. .

Visiting the harems of Cairo, living atop an Egyptian temple and getting shot at in the desert were not the usual exploits of a woman in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But Sophia Lane Pool, Lucie Duff Gordon and Hilda Petrie were three remarkable women who broke free of the gender constraints of their times to make invaluable contributions to our understanding of the Nile Valley and the Egyptian people. Here, Toby Wilkinson , acclaimed Egyptologist and prize-winning author, tells us more about their fascinating stories. 

From the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC until the early nineteenth century AD, the history of Egypt, and of Western encounters with the country, was written exclusively by men. When the Romans conquered the Nile Valley, they brought with them their social attitudes and their highly gendered culture, and the lot of women took an immediate turn for the worse. 

Sixteen centuries later, Europeans began to show an interest in the cultures of the ancient world but, as befitted a hobby that mixed the derring-do of foreign travel with dilettantish debates in London clubs, these antiquarians – and their successors, the early anthropologists and archaeologists – were all men. The history of Egyptology is dominated by the discipline’s founding fathers, while accounts of pioneering women are as rare as an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

But, look hard enough and a few remarkable individuals do emerge from the shadows. The first of these forgotten female pioneers is

Sophia Lane Poole

Sophia Lane Poole (1804–1891) was born into an educated, middle-class family, but little is known about her life beyond two decisive events: her marriage in 1829, and her sojourn in Egypt with her brother, Edward Lane, in the 1840s. The first was what society expected of any self-respecting young woman in Regency England; the second was highly unusual for the time. Sophia’s brother Edward was a leading scholar of Arabic language and culture. The product of two earlier visits to Egypt was his landmark work, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians . When he returned to Egypt a third time, in 1842, with his sister, wife and two nephews for company, it was to gather material for his magnum opus, An Arabic–English Lexicon . 

While Edward pored over Arabic manuscripts in the mosques and madrassas of Cairo, Sophia carried out her own research, visiting the city’s harems to observe first-hand the lives of Egyptian women. Like her brother, she was a dispassionate and objective scholar, not bound by the prejudices of many of her contemporaries. She recorded the everyday cruelties suffered by wives, children and slaves, but also the maternal tenderness she witnessed. Her observations of Egyptian women were both nuanced and balanced. The resulting two-volume book, The Englishwoman in Egypt (1851), is every bit as remarkable as her brother’s work, yet it is little known today. In a sign of the times in which she was writing, even Sophia’s name is missing from the title page, which carries the following description: ‘Letters from Cairo written during a residence there in 1842, 3, & 4, with E.W. Lane, Esq. Author of the ‘Modern Egyptians’.By his sister’.

Lucie Duff Gordon

A decade-and-a-half after the publication of Sophia Lane Poole’s book, another series of letters from Egypt, showing a similar sensitivity to their subject, was published to great acclaim. This time, however, their author, Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–1869), was able to claim full credit. Where Sophia had demonstrated the self-effacing respectability expected of her class, Lucie, with her radical upbringing, literary connections and aristocratic relatives, was more comfortable breaking the rules. In 1862, suffering from tuberculosis, she travelled to Egypt for its warm, dry climate. Apart from one brief visit back to London, she stayed in the Nile Valley for the next seven years, residing for much of the time in a ramshackle house on the roof of Luxor Temple. 

But Lucie was uninterested in ruins: for her, the most pressing matter was the benighted situation of the ordinary Egyptian people. Her clear-sightedness and openness to other cultures made her an unusually sharp observer of colonial attitudes. In her letters home, she was equally scathing about Egypt’s corrupt rulers, putting her life in danger from the regime’s spies and henchmen. When her correspondence was published, as Letters from Egypt (1865), Lucie became something of a celebrity, sought out by Nile tourists (including the Prince and Princess of Wales). But her health continued to worsen and, in 1869, she died in Cairo, her faithful Egyptian servant at her side. As The Times' obituary noted, ‘Lady Duff Gordon lived in Egypt, and in Egypt she has died, leaving a memory of her greatness and goodness such as no other European woman ever acquired in that country.'

Hilda Petrie

Our third female pioneer, whom history has almost completely ignored, was Hilda Petrie (1871–1956). While her husband, Sir Flinders Petrie, is famous as the founding father of Egyptian archaeology, the role played by his long-suffering, redoubtable wife on his countless excavations is much less well-known. Not only did Hilda raise the necessary funds and assist her husband in the actual digging, she also measured and drew the artefacts they uncovered, and prepared the discoveries for publication. She produced two scholarly books of her own, Egyptian Hieroglyphs of the First and Second Dynasties (1927) and Seven Memphite Tomb Chapels (1952). But, during her husband’s lifetime, her contribution to his work went almost entirely unsung. Just about the only mention Flinders makes of Hilda in his one thousand books and articles is when relating an incident which happened on a dig: ‘a man came in the dark and shot at close range at the first person who came out of our mess-hut, which was my wife. Happily she escaped.’

Less happily, Hilda Petrie, in common with Sophia Lane Poole and Lucie Duff Gordon, has for too long escaped the historian’s pen. As we look forward to the bicentenary of the decipherment of hieroglyphics and the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, it is time to recognise and celebrate Egyptology’s female pioneers.

A World Beneath the Sands

By toby wilkinson.

The golden age of Egyptology was undoubtedly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time of scholarship and adventure which began with Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 and ended with the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later. In A World Beneath the Sands , the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson tells the riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt's ancient civilisation drove them to uncover its secrets.

Tutankhamun's Trumpet

It is over one hundred years since Howard Carter first peered into the newly opened tomb of ancient Egyptian boy-king, Tutankhamun. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: ‘Yes, yes, wonderful things.’ In  Tutankhamun’s Trumpet , acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes the objects buried with the king as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed portrait of ancient Egypt – its geography, history, culture and legacy. One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten thematic groups, are allowed to speak again – not only for themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them.

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Egyptian Streets

Independent Media

5 Revolutionary Egyptian Women Authors to Learn About

By Fadila Khaled

Egypt has produced many women writers over the last century, many of whose names will be wholly unfamiliar.

In a patriarchal society, women are oppressed. Usually, ‘oppression’ is a term that refers to physical or emotional abuse, sexual harassment, rape, or domestic violence, along with other, more structural, issues, such as lack of access to x, fewer opportunities to y. However, patriarchy also works towards erasure. Simply, it erases women and their stories, it discredits them, and often buries their work and their thoughts beneath a mountain of dominant patriarchal ones.

Therein lies the power of oral histories, because many of the writers on the coming list are gone, but their stories live on.

Enayat Al-Zayyat (1936 – 1963)

Born in 1936 to a wealthy family, Enayat Al-Zayyat was the middle child to sisters Aida and Azeema. She attended school with her childhood best friend actress Nadia Lotfy, both of whom received their education in German. However, she did not continue her education, and instead was married in 1956, at the young age of 20.

Al-Zayyat married Kamal Ibn Shaheen, and while they had a son, their marriage quickly fell apart, leaving Al-Zayyat a divorcee in the late 1950s. Deep into depression, Al-Zayyat wrote. She wrote short stories, diary entries, and eventually a novel titled Love and Silence. When Al-Zayyat sent her novel to a publishing house, she received a firm rejection, which resulted in her death by suicide in 1963, two months before her 27th birthday.

Love and Silence was published after her suicide, which gained the novel much attention. At the time, it was hailed as a masterpiece by many literaries and critics, but was also equally met with comments claiming it was a ‘mediocre’ novel. Love and Silence is a daring novel; descriptive, emotive, and controversial, Al-Zayyat tackles topics and issues that were, and still are, relevant to all women, such as Love and Silence is about Al-Zayyat’s freedom, a freedom to love, above all else.

Radwa Ashour (1946 – 2014)

In 1946, Radwa Ashour was born to lawyer and literature enthusiast Mustafa Ashour, and poet and artist Mai Azzam, in a house in El-Manial.

Between the end of World War II and the Nakba, Radwa’s birth into the world was surrounded by upheaval, especially as her formative years also witnessed the movement of the Free Officers, which worked to overthrow British rule in Egypt in 1952. Thus, it is fair to say that Radwa, deeply affected by the political economy at the time, developed a keen interest in history, politics, and literature, which led her to the English Literature department at Cairo University.

Radwa Ashour is a staple name for anyone in the region who has an interest – no matter how passing – in Arabic literature, politics, or history. Novelist, academic, critic, university professor, revolutionary, wife to Palestinian poet Mourid Al-Barghouti, and mother to the famous poet Tamim Al-Barghouti; Radwa Ashour is seen by many as an icon.

Some of her most famous works include; Al Tantouriah, Athqal Min Radwa, Thulathiyat Ghernata (The Granada Trilogy), Al-Sarkha, Hagar Dafe’, and Farag.

All of Radwa Ashour’s novels have female protagonists, all of whom are radicalized in some way or the other. Her characters are glaringly real, they are activists and artists and poets, ones who experience prison, exile, revolution, illness, and other startlingly real things relevant to Radwa’s personal life experience, which is ripe with strife.

Latifa Al-Zayyat (1923 – 1996)

Latifa Al-Zayyat was a university professor, revolutionary, activist, academic, political prisoner, and writer. Born in Dumyat in August of 1923, Al-Zayat enrolled in Cairo University in the early 1940s and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. During her university years, particularly 1945, she became a founding member of Rabitat Fatayat al Jami’at wa Al Ma’ahid (The League of University and Institutes’ Young Women) along with painter and activist Inji Efflatoun.

She also received her PhD from Cairo University in 1957, but started teaching English at the Girls College of Ain Shams University in 1952, later becoming the chair of the department. She also served as the director of the Egyptian Arts Academy.

Al-Zayat shaped generations of young feminist women at both the Cairo University and Ain Shams campuses. As Marxist feminists, Al-Zayat and Efflatoun were a part of the leading Marxist-feminist movement of the 1940s and 1950s , establishing a strong presence for women in Leftist Egyptian circles and preserving that space for the coming generation of young women revolutionaries.

Her most notable works include ‘The Open Door’ and ‘The Owner of the House’, both of which have been translated to numerous languages and have won her awards. They both also have a female protagonist who is concerned with fighting the patriarchy, colonialism, and middle class family values.

Arwa Salih (1951 – 1997)

Arwa Salih is a communist, feminist, activist, veteran leader of the Egyptian Student Movement of the 1970s, journalist, political prisoner, and author of the deeply controversial Al-Mubtasarun (The Stillborn, 1996).

Born in 1951, Arwa Salih studied English Literature at Cairo University. She worked as a school teacher when she first graduated, but did not feel fulfilled in that position. She started working as a translator for both the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) and economic newspaper Al-’Alam Al-Yawm, which was funded by Saudi Arabia.

However, Salih also translated various Marxist texts and published them in secretly circulating pamphlets and newsletters belonging to The Egyptian Communist Workers Party. Later, Salih became a member of the central committee for the party, which originally grew from the womb of the 1972 student movement and was deeply involved in the ignition of the Bread Intifada of 1977.

She published various socio-political essays under pseudonyms in similar underground newspapers and magazines belonging to other communist organizations, working in secret during Sadat’s rule in fear of prosecution and imprisonment.

Arwa Salih led sit-in strikes alongside Siham Sabri in Cairo University, and with the help of many others, wrote essays for jara’ed al-ha’et (wall posters), composed revolutionary slogans, read and recited poetry, and even performed plays. Arwa was arrested when police forces stormed the Cairo University campus on the 29 December of 1972, her time in prison along with her extreme engagement and involvement in these movements and protests were the foundation of her essay collection, Al-Mubtasarun.

Al-Mubtasarun is a controversial work because it is a study of what Salih calls ‘the melancholic generation’; her generation of radical revolutionaries, activists, artists, and leaders. Moreover, Salih exposes the sexual exploitation of women in communist parties and organizations at the hands of their male counterparts, who belonged to their same intellectual circles, organizations, and movements. It is a deeply painful read, as Arwa herself was experiencing unimaginable turmoil while writing it.

Arwa Salih committed suicide in 1997 and her second essay collection, titled Saratan Al-Rawh (Cancer of the Soul), was published posthumously.

Ahdaf Soueif (1950 – )

Ahdaf Soueif is a novelist, veteran revolutionary of the Egyptian Student Movement of the 1970s, political and cultural commentator, and university professor. She is also sister to renowned political activist and mathematics professor Laila Soueif, and aunt to prominent activists Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Mona Seif, and Sanaa Seif.

Born in 1950, Ahdaf Soueif was classmate and friend to Arwa Salih, and they both studied in the English Literature department in Cairo University.

Soueif’s first published work is a collection of short stories titled Aisha, which came out in 1983. Her first novel, In the Eye of the Sun, came out a decade later, in 1993. Set between Egypt and the UK, the coming of age story follows Asya, a young Egyptian woman enamored with art. In this novel, Soueif pays tribute to her comrade and friend, Arwa Salih. It was followed six years later by The Map of Love, in 1999, which sold over a million copies and was translated into more than 20 languages.

Her most famous work that she has translated is Mourid Barghouti’s novel, I Saw Ramallah, which has a foreword by famous thinker, academic, and writer Edward Said.

Ahdaf Soueif is not only concerned with Egyptian history and politics, but also Palestinian history and politics as evidenced by her initiation of the first Palestinian Festival of Literature in 2008, of which she is the Founding Chair.

A cultural and political contributor to the Guardian newspaper, Ahdaf Soueif played a large role in reporting on the Egyptian revolution in 2011. A year later, in January of 2012, she published her personal account of the revolution within the year, titled Cairo: My City, Our Revolution.

In the same year, Soueif became a Trustee of the British Museum, and maintained her position until her resignation in 2019, lasting a total of seven years.

Soueif continues to be active on social media, advocating for the release of her imprisoned nephew Alaa Abdel-Fattah.

The work of Egyptian women literaries is brilliant, not only due to its profundity or obvious skill, but primarily because their work documents the struggles of women and advocates for them. At a time where students are only told about Naguib Mahfouz and Ihsan Abdel-Koddous, reading the works of these women proves the existence of another discourse at the time, one that is unprecedented in its progressiveness in the MENA region.

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Egypt , Lit Lists , WiTMonth #WITMonth , Amal Al Banna , Camellia Hussein , Egypt , Esraa Mokaidam , Farah Abey , Hend Ja'far , Miral al-Tahawy , Radwa Ashour , Salwa Bakr , Sherin Younis , Women in Translation Month

9 Short Stories by Egyptian Women, in Translation

In 1993, University of Texas Press brought out a collection of short stories by Egyptian women, in translation, edited by Marilyn Booth, called My Grandmother’s Cactus :

In her introduction, Booth notes that Egyptian women writers have been contributing to the short-story genre since the 1890s; her collection presents work by eight writers whose work began to emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Salwa Bakr, Seham Bayomi, Mona Ragab, Etidal Osman, Ibtihal Salem, Neamat el-Biheiri, Radwa Ashour, and Sahar Tawfiq.

Although this list does include short stories by Radwa Ashour and Salwa Bakr — who also has a whole collection, The Wiles of Men , translated by Denys Johnson-Davies — it largely focuses on work by women writers who emerged in the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s.

Esraa Mokaidam’s “ Red, Shiny, and Pleasing to the Eyes ,” translated by Basma Ghalayini

Egyptian storyteller and scriptwriter Esraa Mokaidam published her first poetry collection in colloquial Egyptian in 2014, won first place for the short story coffee library project contest in 2016, and second place for the Goethe Institute Cairo Short Stories competition in 2018. Her “ Red, Shiny, and Pleasing to the Eyes ” was translated by Ghalayini; it centers around a strange wooden mannequin who stands in, brilliantly, for a wife. It opens:

She stood naked in the window display; still, she seemed fully made up. This was not the first time he had seen her, with her red cascading hair setting her apart from the bald ones. However, the cause of the crowd this morning was her round breasts which she had exposed for the first time.

Amal Al Banna’s “ The Drowned ,” translated by Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi

This tale, which mixes elements of horror, folktales, and magical realism, opens on a moonless night.

It was a harsh cold night, and the moon was nowhere to be seen. It was at the end of its cycle, the high clouds covering its penumbra and concealing the light of the stars. The superstitious say the spirits live at night, and that they even take over the roads, especially during the long winter nights. Thunder, they say, is nothing but the sound of their fighting, and lightning the blood from their endless wars.

Farah Abey’s “ Behind the Casuarina Trees ,” translated by Katharine Halls

Egyptian author Farah Abey, born in 1998, writes short stories and reviews books and films. Her “ Behind the Casuarina Trees ,” translated by Halls, is a surreal, meta-folktale set around the village of Kafr al-Walga, in which: 

The deeds of our ancestresses were passed on. The craft of fashioning a story in this way was inherited by generation after generation. The killers were given distinctive details to ensure that the story born would be exciting, that trees and tongues would pass it on.

Hend Ja’far’s “ Running in Circles ,” translated by Basma Ghalayini

Hend Jaʿfar is a writer and academic from Ismailiyya who works in the manuscripts department at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Her story, “The Soul at Rest,” appeared in her first collection, which was published in 2015 and took a Sawiris Prize. A translation by Basma Ghalayini appeared in  The Book of Cairo , ed. Raph Cormack, and she spoke about storycraft with ArabLit . “Running in Circles,” also translated by Ghalayini, begins with a dream that seeps into the protagonist’s waking life:

About a year ago, specifically on the night of 28 October, I dreamt that I was running scared in a circular forest filled with medium-height, triangular-shaped trees. The trees had been attentively pruned by some gardener whom I hadn’t met in my dream so far, but the exaggerated coordination of the forest made me imagine him to be a dexterous man with phenomenally skilled workmanship and a rigid mind, explaining why he had duplicated the forest trees from originals in public parks.  No one was chasing me, but the density of trees formed a maze that made running necessary.

Sherin Younis, “ A Fish in Search of Its Limbs ,” translated by Enas El-Torky

This surreal story about motherhood in search of a self opens:

Drowsily, I opened my eyes, only to be overwhelmed by a strong fishy smell that made me nauseous. I cursed the allergy that transformed my nose into a hotbed of intermingling scents, prone to sudden bouts of flu. It looked like a fake clown nose, while it was as effective as that of a bloodhound. The smell controlled me like a strong drug, compelling me to wake up, as if it were a higher power. Then it forced me to stagger until I sat on the toilet, then shoved me, unwilling, under the showerhead to take my morning wash, in hopes of getting rid of the scent. And still, my body remained as if hypnotized, the odor holding me in a stupor-like state. 

Camellia Hussein’s “ Spiders ,” translated by Basma Ghalayini

This terrifying short-short story was written as part of Short Stories Cairo, a collaboration between KfW Stiftung and the Goethe-Institut for the promotion of young literary talent. It opens: 

Every morning he shaves his beard so spider legs fall, fill the sink and block the plug hole. He emerges from the bathroom with a soft shiny face, and leaves the sink for me to clean after him.

Miral Al-Tahawy’s “ The Guest ,” translated by Samah Selim

This story, by the Mahfouz Medal-winning Al-Tahawy, focuses on the lives and bodies of women. It opens:

She has become more like her grandmother than her mother, Hend thinks to herself. She remembered how she used to squirm in her grandmother’s lap, an angry child with a bare bottom. She was hard to keep up with as a child, light and thin, teething and crawling and speaking well before any of her brothers did. She proved that she was a creature capable of surviving and flourishing on the barest necessities of life. Her mother often left her to her own devices. She would crawl up the hill behind the western balcony right up to the solitary room roofed in wood and clay that looked, for all the world, like a heavenly dome. They called it “the high place.” A woman sat at its door, a woman that they did not call “Grandmother” but rather “the Guest,” though she never once stepped out of the confines of the family home. “The Guest is sleeping,” they would say, or “The Guest wants such and such” or “Go bring the buttermilk pan from the Guest’s room.”

Salwa Bakr’s “ How The Peasant Woman Kneads Her Dough ,” translated by Srpko Leštarić and Edward Alexander

Stories by Salwa Bakr blend satire, feminism, and folk stories, often setting characters against unachievable desires. This story opens:

The door opened suddenly and the sunlight soaked the dark mud hut which had no other openings. At this, all three monkeys began to shriek and jump up and down, in the hope that it could be the beginning of the end to the suffering which they had endured throughout the whole of the previous night. The first monkey, who was named Zaqzuq by their keeper Sharshar, attempted to be courteous and, when Sharshar burst through the door, raised a hand as though to greet him. He didn’t respond to this in any way, maybe out of haughtiness (since he looked down on the monkeys), but maybe just because he had quickly turned to his wife who had entered after him, leading a goat. They had, namely, brought a goat, for whose presence at that moment the three monkeys could not see a single sane reason. In any case, when Zaqzuq saw that the man did not acknowledge him with any sort of polite gesture, he swallowed the insult and dropped his hand back down onto the floor, as though he were waiting for something.

Radwa Ashour’s “ The Man Sitting in the Park is Waiting ,” translated by Emily Drumsta

This short story, by the great Radwa Ashour, focuses on the interplay between a mother, a son, and a man sitting in the park. It opens:

At first I didn’t notice him. I was busy playing with the little one: he would throw the ball, I’d raise my head to follow it as it flew up high, then I’d run with my arms open to meet it as it fell. The little one was jumping and running, babbling and laughing endlessly, and like him I was running and laughing, though my movements were heavier, my cries fewer.

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