Ancient Women In Military Positions In Elizabeth D. Carney’S Article "Women & Military Leadership In Pharaonic Egypt"

In Elizabeth D. Carney’s Women and Military Leadership in Pharaonic Egypt, she argues that since being a royal Egyptian woman was of great prominence than other monarchies in the ancient world, it is of no surprise that part of it was involvement in an aspect of military leadership. By using clear examples, she is able to convince one of her argument. For instance, the simple fact that Ahhotep, mother of Ahmose, is mentioned on the Karnak stele is of course notable, however, since it is said to praise and recognize her unusual role. This role being that she either oversaw or organized military engagements, according to one of her sources, G. Callender.

Another example being that of the female tombs. While some contents were consistent with other burials of that nature, such as a pair of bead bracelets or a falcon collar, others were not quite so. Noting that some female tombs were distinctly militaristic, a golden necklace with three large gold flies was found around the neck of a mummy. This is significant because this particular jewelry was primarily given as an award of militaristic bravery. Also found in the tomb were various other military goods (daggers, armlets, among others) inscribed with the names and titles of Ahmose and his brother and predecessor, Kamose.

Carney argues that this suggests that this royal woman, who was seemingly closely associated with both Ahmose and Kamose, was being memorialized for her militaristic role. By the end of the article, Carney is able to thoroughly convince the reader of her thesis. Carney draws quite heavily from other scholars’ works, particularly from prior to 1990. This could come from the possible lack of new evidence surrounding this subject. While the majority of pages in the article she does not rely heavily on her citations, there are some which do.

For instance, in page six of her article, where she is referring to the military objects in a burial, she uses citations for all four objects she named, two of which might as well have been the same citation. However, this is potentially an effective usage because it could trigger curiosity in the reader to question why she would cite multiple things coming from the same burial. Like mentioned before, she does not always do this. When she does not include an abundance of citations in one page, she more often than not gives her own insight on that particular subject before referencing someone else’s work.

For example, she mentions how depictions of royal women as military leaders with typical “king” attributes were rare, but there are quite a few examples, especially from the New Kingdom period. After this she references a survey in E. S. Hall’s The Pharaoh Smites His Enemies: A Comparative Study by explaining to the reader what these depictions portrayed. By doing this, Carney is able to “paint a picture” to allow the reader to visualize the aforementioned. Carney utilizes the citations this way because she wants to be able to have the most pertaining evidence to support her claims.

By doing this, she is able to more accurately and convincingly get her argument across. Since this article was published in 2001, there is a high possibility of new evidence arising seventeen years later. In an article that were to be hypothetically published today, one can imagine that scholars would have obtained data on not only militaristic Egyptian royal women, but quite possibly military women in other cultures in the same period. By comparing and contrasting, one would be able to see how and if women in the military impacted their respective cultures.

Overall, Elizabeth D. Carney makes excellent claims towards her thesis, providing the grounds to look more indepth at ancient women in military positions of power, specifically ancient Egyptian royals. It is clear by Carney’s reasoning, that royal women acting in military leadership roles in Pharaonic Egypt, most notably the New Kingdom era, were important in the sense of symbolic idealism of social order in the reigning ruler.