Figure 4: Attic grave relief depicting a woman dying in childbirth, dating back to 330 BC; it is housed in Harvard Art Museums. It is made of pentelic marble, which was often employed to create most monuments in Classical Athens.
 
 
Endnotes
[1] Tsoucalas, Gregory & Sgantzos, Markos. (2017). Calculating Pregnancy’s Duration in Ancient Greece. Gestational, or Fetal Age?. Obstet Gynecol Int J. 6. 00209. 10.15406/ogij.2017.06.00209.
[2] Robertson, Noel. "Greek Ritual Begging in Aid of Women's Fertility and Childbirth." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 113 (1983): 143-69.
[3] Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo. "Ancient Greek Women and Art: The Material Evidence." American Journal of Archaeology 91, no. 3 (1987): 399-409.
[4]E. Iversen, Papyrus Carlsberg No. VIII with Some Remarks on the Egyptian Origin of Some Popular Birth Prognoses, Copenhagen (1939).
[5] Adamson, P. B. "Some Rituals Associated with Parturition in Antiquity." Folklore 96, no. 2 (1985): 176-83. Explanation on pg.176.
[6] Mann Michael, The Sources of Social Power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1986), pg.2.
[7] Ibid, pg.6.
[8] Whitmeyer, J. M. "Mann's Theory of Power - A (Sympathetic) Critique." The British Journal of Sociology 48, no. 2 (1997): 210-25. Comment made on pg.210.
[9] Collins, Randall. "Marx, Weber, and Mann." Contemporary Sociology 42, no. 4 (2013): 482-84. Comment on pg.482.
[10] Mann (1986), pg.23.
[11] Johnson, Janet H. “The legal status of women in ancient Egypt.” In Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with Cincinnati Art Museum (1996). See pg.175.
[12] Unknown, Statuette of Mut or Nekhbet, ca.1070-664 B.C. Third Intermediate Period-Kushite Period – on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Galley 125.
[13] te Velde, Herman. "Mut", in Redford, D. B. (ed.), The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion, New York: Oxford University Press (2003). See pg.238.
[14] Unknown, Statue of Nakht-mut, in Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, ed. Anne Capel, New York: Hudson Hills Press (1996). Translated on pg.182.
[15] Johnson (1996).
[16] Brewer, Douglas J and Emily Teeter. Seminar is extracted from Chapter 7 of Egypt and the Egyptians, Cambridge University Press (2001).
[17] Ferrero, Mario. "The Rise and Demise of Theocracy: Theory and Some Evidence." Public Choice 156, no. 3/4 (2013): 723-50. See pg.723-724.
[18] O'Connor, David. "Political Systems and Archaeological Data in Egypt: 2600-1780 B.C." World Archaeology 6, no. 1 (1974): 15-38. See pg.15.
[19] Wenke, Robert J. "Egypt: Origins of Complex Societies." Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989): 129-55. See map on pg.131.
[20] Fontaine, Carole R. "A Modern Look at Ancient Wisdom: The Instruction of Ptahhotep Revisited." The Biblical Archaeologist 44, no. 3 (1981): 155-60. Comment made on pg.156.
[21] Roccati, Alessandro. "Dating Ptahhotep's Maxims (Note Letterarie VI)." Orientalia, NOVA SERIES, 83, no. 2 (2014): 238-40. Comment on pg. 238.
[22] Fox, Michael V. "Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric." Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 1, no. 1 (1983): 9-22. See pg. 10.
[23] Unknown, Instructions of Ptahhotep, in Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, ed. Anne Capel. New York: Hudson Hills Press (1996). Translated on pg.175.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] A. L. Boegehold, “Perikles’ Citizenship Law of 451/0 BC”, in Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology, ed. A. L. Boegehold and A. C Scafuro, Baltimore (1994). According to Roy, J. "'Polis' and 'Oikos' in Classical Athens." Greece & Rome 46, no. 1 (1999): 1-18, “by making descent from the mother as important as descent from the father for a child's inherited status, the law may well also have given the wife a greater importance within the household.”
[27] S. Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, London (1995). See pg.128.
[28] For more information on Athenian democracy see Jones, A. H. M. "The Athenian Democracy and Its Critics." The Cambridge Historical Journal 11, no. 1 (1953): 1-26. 
[29] King Erichthonios was born from an attempted rape of the goddess Athena by Hephaistos, hence causing Athena to be viewed as the “divine mother” of Athenian royal line. For further explanation, refer to Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. “Athenians and Eleusinians in the West Pediment of the Parthenon.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, no. 60 (1991): 331-362.
[30] R. Parker, “Myths of Early Athens”, in Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. J. Bremmer, London and New York (1988).
[31] Hesiod, Theogony, in “THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS,” Greece and Rome 61, no. 2 (2014); see pg.176 for translation.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Pritchard, David M, “THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS,” Greece and Rome 61, no. 2 (2014): 174–93.
[34] J. Gould, ‘Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980). See pg.45.
[35] Pericles, Funeral Oration, in “THE POSITION OF ATTIC WOMEN IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS,” Greece and Rome 61, no. 2 (2014). See pg.178 for translation.
[36] Allison, Craig Y. Michigan Law Review 89, no. 6 (1991): 1610-617. See pg.1610.
[37] Pritchard (2014).
[38] Ibid.
[39] Johnson (1996), pg.176.
[40] Ibid.
[41] The New Kingdom was a period between 16-11BC. For further reading, see Hagen, Fredrik. ""The Prohibitions": A New Kingdom Didactic Text." The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 91 (2005): 125-64.
[42] Johnson (1996), pg.176.
[43] Brewer, Douglas J and Emily Teeter (2001).
[44] Unknown, Nykauinpu and his wife, Hemetradjet. 2477-2466 BCE. Sculpture. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.
[45] More information on ancient Egyptian women’s dress can be found in B. M. C. "The Dress of the Ancient Egyptians: I. In the Old and Middle Kingdoms." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 11, no. 8 (1916): 166-71. 
[46]Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: New Kingdom, Lichtheim 1976: 182, University of California Press (2006)
[47] “Thus, the primary duty of Athenian women of childbearing age was to produce little Athenians” on pg.119 in O'Neal, William J. "The Status of Women in Ancient Athens." International Social Science Review 68, no. 3 (1993): 115-21.
[48] Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford (2005). See pg.276.
[49] Bardis, Panos D. "The Ancient Greek Family." Social Science 39, no. 3 (1964): 156-75. See pg.160.
[50] Pritchard (2014).
[51] Louis Cohn-Haft. "Divorce in Classical Athens." The Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 1-14.
[52] Ibid, pg.4.
[53] Berent, Moshe. ""STASIS", OR THE GREEK INVENTION OF POLITICS." History of Political Thought 19, no. 3 (1998): 331-62. See pg.333.
[54] Morris, Ian. "Economic Growth in Ancient Greece." Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 160, no. 4 (2004): 709-42. See pg.732.
[55] Further insight in the legal rights of ancient Egyptian women can be found in Allam, S. "Women as Holders of Rights in Ancient Egypt (During the Late Period)." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 33, no. 1 (1990): 1-34. 
[56] For more information on Herodotus and his study of Egypt, see Lloyd, Alan B. "Herodotus' Account of Pharaonic History." Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte 37, no. 1 (1988): 22-53. 
[57] Herodotus, Historiae II: 35, in Dieleman, Jacco. "Fear of Women? Representations of Women in Demotic Wisdom Texts." Studien Zur Altägyptischen Kultur 25 (1998): 7-46. See pg.7.
[58] Pomeroy, Sarah B., "Technikai kai Mousikai: The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period," American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1997), 51-68.
[59] Holt Parker, Women Physicians in Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire, in Women Healers and Physicians: Climbing a Long Hill, ed. Lilian Furst, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press (1997). See pg.132.
[60] KING, HELEN. "AGNODIKE AND THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE." Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, NEW SERIES, no. 32 (212) (1986): 53-77. 
[61] Pomeroy, Sarah B. “Plato and the Female Physician.” The American Journal of Philology 99. No. 4 (1978): 496-500.
[62] Refer to pg.299 of Kosmopoulou, Angeliki. "'Working Women': Female Professionals on Classical Attic Gravestones." The Annual of the British School at Athens 96 (2001): 281-319. 
[63]Holt Parker, 133.
[64] Pomeroy (1978)
[65] Ibid. pg.500
[66] Plato, Republic, Volume I: Books 1-5, ed. Christopher Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013).
[67] For works of female medical writers, read PARKER, HOLT N. "GALEN AND THE GIRLS: SOURCES FOR WOMEN MEDICAL WRITERS REVISITED." The Classical Quarterly 62, no. 1 (2012): 359-86. 
[68] Hanson, Ann Ellis. "Hippocrates: "Diseases of Women 1"." Signs 1, no. 2 (1975): 567-84.
[69] Hippocrates, Diseases of Women, ed. and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 538. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2019). See pg.71.
[70] Hippocrates, Rebecca Flemming, and Ann Ellis Hanson. "Hippocrates' "Peri Partheniôn' (Diseases of Young Girls): Text and Translation." Early Science and Medicine 3, no. 3 (1998): 241-52. See pg. 251-252.
[71] Hippocrates, The Oath, ed. and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 147. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2019). See pg. 299.
[72] Hippocrates, Nature of the Child, ed. and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 520. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2019). See pg. 51.
[73] Hanson, Ann Ellis. "Hippocrates: "Diseases of Women 1"." Signs 1, no. 2 (1975): 567-84. See pg. 567.
[74]Ann Roth, “Father Earth, Mother Sky: Ancient Egyptian Beliefs about Conception and Fertility”, in Reading the Body: Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record, ed. Alison Rautman, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1999). See pg.187.
[75] Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as a pharaoh during Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, between 1507–1458 BC. See the following article for further reading on her: MARGETTS, EDWARD L. "THE MASCULINE CHARACTER OF HATSHEPSUT, QUEEN OF EGYPT." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 25, no. 6 (1951): 559-62.
[76] Roth (1999), pg.188.
[77] Zeitlin, Froma I. "THE DYNAMICS OF MISOGYNY: MYTH AND MYTHMAKING IN THE ORESTEIA." Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149-84. See pg.180.
[78] For a more detailed analysis of the myth, see Lincoln, Bruce. "The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation." The Harvard Theological Review 72, no. 3/4 (1979): 223-35. 
[79] Nixon, Lucia. “The Cults of Demeter and Kore.” In Women in Antiquity: New Assessments, ed Richard Hawley and Barbara Levick, 75-96. New York: Routledge (1995). See pg.92.
[80] Roth (1999), pg.189.
[81] Akhenaton’s Hymn to Aton in Ibid.
[82] Rutherford, Ian. "Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas: A Greek Novel and Some Egyptian Models." Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 117 (1997): 203-09.
[83] TEETER, EMILY. "The Body in Ancient Egyptian Texts and Representations (Plate 6)." The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 37, no. 1/4 (2000): 149-70. See pg.163.
[84] Contendings of Horus and Seth in Locke, Norman. "A Myth of Ancient Egypt." American Imago 18, no. 2 (1961): 105-28. See pg.111.
[85] Teeter (2000), pg.163.
[86] Roth (1999), pg.190.
[87] Vergilian Society Egypt Tour Egyptian Encore, Vergilius 57 (2011), 164-166.
[88] Wainwright, G. A. "The Bull Standards of Egypt." The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 19, no. 1/2 (1933): 42-52. See pg.51.
[89] Roth (1999), pg.190.
[90] Brewer, Douglas J and Emily Teeter (2001)
[91] Wayne Ingalls. "Demography and Dowries: Perspectives on Female Infanticide in Classical Greece." Phoenix 56, no. 3/4 (2002): 246-54. See pg.250.
[92] Patterson, Cynthia. ""Not Worth the Rearing": The Causes of Infant Exposure in Ancient Greece." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 115 (1985): 103-23. See pg.120.
[93] Unknown, Instructions of Ptahhotep, 175.
[94] Ibid.
[95] For an analysis on Egyptian clothing read Riefstahl, Elizabeth. "A Note on Ancient Fashions: Four Early Egyptian Dresses in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston." Boston Museum Bulletin 68, no. 354 (1970): 244-59. 
[96] John R. Baines, Fecundity Figures: Egyptian Personification and the Iconology of a Genre (Warminster, 1985), 125.
[97] Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt, London (1993). See pg.180.
[98] Sweeney, Deborah. "Forever Young? The Representation of Older and Ageing Women in Ancient Egyptian Art." Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 41 (2004): 67-84. See pg.69.
[99] Unknown, Decorated Birth-Brick from South Abydos, in Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt, ed. David Silverman, New Haven: Yale University Press (2009).
[100] Roth, Ann Macy, and Catharine H. Roehrig. "Magical Bricks and the Bricks of Birth." The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 88 (2002): 121-39. See pg.129.
[101] F. Fetten, “Der ägyptische Stuhl” (1982), comments on the symbolism of chairs and thrones on pgs.218-228.
[102] H. Kees, “Farbensymbolik in ägyptischen religiösen Texten (1943), 413–79.
[103] Baines, John. "Color Terminology and Color Classification: Ancient Egyptian Color Terminology and Polychromy." American Anthropologist, New Series, 87, no. 2 (1985): 282-97. See pg.284.
[104] Wegner, Jospeh. Decorated Birth-Brick from South Abydos: New Evidence on Childbirth and Birth Magic in the Middle Kingdom in Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt, ed. David Silverman, New Haven: Yale University Press (2009). See pg.457.
[105] Homer, Iliad, translated by A.T. Murray. Loeb Classical Library 170, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1924).
[106] Murnaghan, Sheila. "Maternity and Mortality in Homeric Poetry." Classical Antiquity 11, no. 2 (1992): 242-64. See pg.245.
[107] Wegner (2009), pg.457.
[108] T. G. Wilfong, “Menstrual Synchrony and the ‘Place of Women’ in Ancient Egypt”, in Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F., ed. E. Teeter, J. Larson. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1999, pg.419–434.
[109] Frandsen, Paul John. "The Menstrual “Taboo” in Ancient Egypt" Journal of Near Eastern Studies 66, no. 2 (2007): 81-106. See pg.100.
[110] “He slept with] me again and again, and we loved each other. When my time of hsmn (period) came, I made no more hsmn”, from Setne I in Ibid.
[111] For further examples: “She is a fertile field for her lord”, Instructions of Ptahhotep; "The male member to beget, the female womb to conceive, and increase generations in Egypt”, Hymn to Khonsu in Lichtheim, Miriam, and Joseph G. Manning. Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III: The Late Period. University of California Press (2006).
[112] Unknown, Instructions of Ptahhotep, 175.
[113] Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo. "Ancient Greek Women and Art: The Material Evidence." American Journal of Archaeology 91, no. 3 (1987): 399-409. See pg.403.
[114] Liston, Maria A., and John K. Papadopoulos. "The "Rich Athenian Lady" Was Pregnant: The Anthropology of a Geometric Tomb Reconsidered." Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 73, no. 1 (2004): 7-38. See pg.20.
[115] Unknown, Attic Grave Stele: Woman Dying in Childbirth. 330 BCE. Sculpture. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge.
[116] Pritchard (2014).
[117] “Since women's roles were most productively played out in the private world of the household, where male and female were integrated, it was only men who could operate effectively in the public world with its polarised and hierarchical system of gender.” In Foxhall, Lin. "Household, Gender and Property in Classical Athens." The Classical Quarterly 39, no. 1 (1989): 22-44. Comment on pg.31.
[118] Refer back to Pericles’ comment that a wife’s “glory is great…if there is the least possible talk of [her] among men either for praise or blame” in Prichard (2014).
[119] Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, James Robson, Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World. Rewriting antiquity. New York: Routledge (2015).
[120] Louis Cohn-Haft. "Divorce in Classical Athens." The Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 1-14.
[121] Brewer, Douglas J and Emily Teeter (2001).
[122] O'Neal, William J. "The Status of Women in Ancient Athens." International Social Science Review 68, no. 3 (1993): 115-21.
[123] Roth (1999).
[124] Spaeth (1991).
[125] Zeitlin (1978).
[126] Roth (1999).
[127] Robins (1992).
[128] Unknown, Instructions of Ptahhotep.