This is your chance to win a virtual group meeting with the Producer of Out of Egypt and UCLA Egyptian Art & Architecture Professor, Dr. Kara Cooney! Additionally, the winner will also receive a signed book!
Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptology at UCLA and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies in the ancient world, she received her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. In 2005, she was co-curator of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cooney produced a comparative archaeology television series, titled Out of Egypt, which aired in 2009 on the Discovery Channel and is available online. Her popular books include The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches from Routledge (2022), and Recycling for Death: A Social History of Ancient Egypt and The Royal Caches from American University in Cairo Press (forthcoming 2023).
A woman’s power in the ancient world (and perhaps even today) was always compromised from the outset, and this discussion will address the root causes of this social inequality. The female king of Egypt, Hatshepsut, was able to take the throne for a considerable length of time, but she could only do so by sharing power with a male ruler. Cleopatra attempted to use her sexuality and money to build alliances with warlords of the Roman empire and keep its imperial exploitation at bay. Given this social reality in the ancient world, how then did women negotiate their limited leadership roles? Were they able to rule “behind the throne” so to speak? How are we to find a woman’s power when it was so habitually cloaked by a man’s dominance? This discussion will address those questions and ask how much of this ancient reality still touches us today.