Egyptologist Janet H. Johnson writes:
From our earliest preserved records (Old Kingdom) the formal legal status of women (no matter if they were unmarried, married, divorced, or widowed) was identical to that of Egyptian men. Egyptian women, like Egyptian men, were legally responsible for their own actions and personally accountable to both civil and criminal law. They were able to acquire, own and dispose of both real estate and other personal property. They could enter into contracts in their own names; they could initiate court cases and likewise be sued; they could serve as witnesses in court cases, they could sit on juries; and they could witness legal documents…Women had legal rights and were willing to fight for them.426
Marriage
Marriage contracts dealt predominantly with financial matters and were, “extremely advantageous to the wife…Either party could divorce the other on any grounds, but the economic consequences of the annuity contract made this a serious step for the husband.”427 In the event of divorce, women also tended to have custody rights of children. This was in stark contrast with, “patriarchal Rome, where a pregnant widow was obliged by law to offer her newborn baby to her dead husband’s family; only if they had no use for the child was she given the chance to raise her baby herself.”428
Egyptian women could also choose who they wanted to marry independently of social class—even slaves or foreigners. This too differed significant from the customary practices of other societies of the time. During their rule over Egypt, the Romans would introduce complex inheritance regulations to pressure Egyptians to marry only within their own social class.429
As in many of the comparatively favorable conditions enjoyed by Egyptian women, Isis played a pivotal role, in this case, as the “upholder of the marriage covenant.” During a wedding, it was in Isis’ name that the husband made a “solemn contract to be obedient to his wife.”430
Women’s Work
Regarding careers and work, women were excluded from a number of positions, for example, city mayors and royal scribes, and from certain crafts, such as sculptors, carpenters, and public gardeners.431 Then again, men were similarly excluded from certain activities. For instance, women were the key producers in the two principal industries in Egypt: food and textiles.432
The foremost industrial craft in Egypt was the manufacture of linen textiles. It was critical for both the living and the dead—a single mummification could require as much as 1,000 square yards of linen cloth.433 As in the medieval period, women participated in all aspects of linen manufacturing: harvesting the flax, hackling, roving, spinning the fibers into threads, and the weaving process. Weaving frequently included mass-production “factories” with many workers supervised by an overseer, who was usually a woman. Women also reportedly accepted payment for finished cloth and bore the title “Overseer of the House of Weavers.” It was only in the later part of the New Kingdom that some men were allowed to enter the weaving industry.434
Many women held high positions in public administration and courtly functions. This included female stewards for kings, queens, and princesses, “seal bearers” (treasurers), and chiefs of funerary priesthood. This is well documented in the Old Kingdom.
Women Rulers
While women appeared equal or may even have been favored in some legal and private matters, the most powerful position of all—the pharaoh—was almost always, but not exclusively, held by men. Not infrequently there existed female regents, i.e., a pharaoh’s who mother ruled on her son’s behalf until he matured. More significant still, between 3000 and 1000 BCE, four women officially assumed the throne.435 It was during the regency of Ny-netjer of the Second Dynasty (2770–2649 BCE) that, “It was decided that women might hold the kingly office.”436
While rarely actualized, the mere fact that there was no ideological or theological barrier for women to rule in Egypt was a remarkable situation and indication of the ancient Egyptian mindset. Even today, many nations, including such world-leading countries as the United States, China, Russia, France, and Japan, have yet to elect a female president or prime minister.
Women and Poetry
Another parallel with the Central Middle Ages was the unusual appearance of love poetry in Egypt, comparable in some respects to Courtly Love literature. In fact, Egyptians were the people known to write love poetry.437 Much to the amazement of contemporary Greeks, Egyptian women often took the initiative in courtship, addressing the man or proposing marriage in love poems and letters.438
Seen from a modern perspective, and in light of recent advancements in women’s rights, Egypt was still primarily a man’s world. The unique status of women in Dynastic Egypt is more readily understood, however, by comparison with conditions in other civilizations of that period (see insert).
Women’s Status in Other Ancient Civilizations
A basis of comparison for women’s status is offered by two civilizations with which Egypt had extensive commercial and cultural contact: Mesopotamia and Greece. A small sampling of their characteristic laws and customs are synthesized here.
Mesopotamia’s Hammurabic law (ca. 1750 BCE) considered it normal practice for a man unable to repay his debts to give away his wife or children as slaves in compensation. The father, without the involvement of either the mother or daughter herself, customarily arranged all marriages.439 In the ancient Middle East it was customary that, “Adultery is possible only on the side of the wife, because she is the property of the husband.”440
Historian and author Gerda Lerner writes:
Divorce was easily obtained for men, who merely had to make a public declaration of intent. It was difficult for a wife to obtain a divorce and only those without blemish might attempt it because the law states that: ‘If [the woman] has not kept herself chaste but is given to going about out [of the house], and so belittle her husband, they shall cast that woman into the water.’441
Athens and other Greek city-states did not recognize a woman’s independent existence. Women had no political rights and did not participate in any decision-making. Fathers or male relatives arranged a woman’s marriage. Women could not own or inherit any property, nor enter into any transaction involving more than the value of one bushel of grain.442
Greek women were also excluded from public life. Women were kept in seclusion in the gyneceum, an isolated area in the back of the house, where no man could enter except close relatives. Greek historian Xenophon (428–354 BCE) proposed that, “It is better for a woman to stay inside the house, and not show herself at the door.”443 The Greek playwright Menander (342–292 BCE) wrote that, “A decent woman must stay at home; the streets are for low women.” The only women accepted in public or permitted to be educated into literacy and the finer social arts, were hetaira (prostitutes).444
Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley states:
Egypt was undoubtedly the best place to have been born a woman in the whole of the Ancient World. During the dynastic period, as the Greek historian Herodotus observed, Egyptian women enjoyed a legal, social and sexual independence unrivaled by their Greek or Roman sisters…They could own and trade property, work outside the home, marry foreigners and even live alone without the protection of a male guardian.445
It is again Isis who is officially credited with having made, “the power of women equal to that of men.”446
EGYPTIAN ARCHETYPAL REPRESSION
The medieval and dynastic golden ages both ended when a centralizing power took over. In Europe it took the form of kings ruling by “divine right.” In Egypt instead, it occurred with the loss of sovereignty to ancient Rome. But unlike the abrupt medieval demise, the Egyptian end came gradually, with cultural erosion by foreign patriarchal influences, namely, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Persian, Hyksos, Greek, then Roman followed by Christianization.
As in Europe, Egypt’s decline also coincided with replacement of its yin currency by a yang monetary system, imposed by Rome. This monetary change was accompanied by an accelerated concentration of wealth, typical of the
Roman Empire. In Kerkereosiris, a Fayum village representative of the Roman period, an estimated population of 1,500 families farmed some 3,000 acres, which averaged out to a mere two acres per family. In stark contrast, one privileged family, the Apions, who had twice achieved the position of praetorian prefect in public administration during the 6th century CE, controlled a whopping 75,000-acre estate.447
In Egypt as in medieval Europe, the constellation of yang shadows became increasingly dominant: a monopoly of yang-type currencies prevailed, patriarchy was affirmed, and the repression of the Great Mother archetype ensued. This repression increasingly activated the collective emotions of greed and fear of scarcity, which became embedded in the culture through the monetary system.
Commonalities
Honoring the Great Mother archetype, demurrage-charged currencies, and abundance for the masses can be all understood as imprints of the same archetypal coherence. The golden periods both in Egypt and medieval Western Europe coincided with honoring both yin and yang values. The end of each period coincided with renewed archetypal repression of the Great Mother.
Again, we do not claim a “magical,” direct causal effect between Great Mother veneration and the choice of monetary systems. In both these periods when the Great Mother was honored, however, a yin demurrage-charged currency was also adopted, which very likely contributed to the unusual abundance and exceptional economic conditions of each civilization.
These two societies also had in common an archetypal coherence that differed markedly from the rest of the world. And not only did each culture honor the Great Mother, but in many respects, the medieval Black Madonna was none other than Isis herself—her titles and emblematic chair were merely transferred. More surprising still, some of the Black Madonnas venerated in France were actually original Egyptian statues of Isis (see insert).
The Black Madonna—Egyptian Connection
There are numerous connections between the medieval Black Madonna and the Egyptian Isis. Both icons are seated in the same straight chair—the Cathedra—the symbol of her power and, not coincidentally, the origin of the word “cathedral.” Other connections include the “oriental” anecdotes in many Black Madonna legends, the esoteric Egyptian “alchemical” link, and the identical and particular kinds of miracles performed in their legends. A few of the many other associations are listed below.
Several Black Madonna statues—namely, the Black Virgin of Boulogne in France and at the Sablon in Brussels, Belgium—are reported to have arrived by river, standing on a boat with no sails or crew, with a copy of the Gospels in an oriental script.448 This is an exact transposition of the ritual along the Nile by which Isis arrived by boat in her sacred cities. Isis was traditionally invoked as “Star of the Sea,” “Seat of Wisdom,” and “Queen of Heaven,” three titles by which St. Bernard referred specifically to the Black Madonna a millennium later.
The literal and symbolic blackness of the Black Madonna also has deep associations with Isis. Plutarch describes the famed “Veil of Isis” as black. Members of Isis’ main priestly groups were known as the “wearers of black” because they specialized in mourning her.449 Isis’ brother and lover, Osiris, was also called “the Black One.” The spells invoking Isis began with, “Thy kingdom resides in that which is utterly black.”450
The famed pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela derived its name from compostus stellae (literally “compost of stars” in Latin). This pilgrimage was associated with the Black Madonna sanctuaries. It was also called the “Path of the Milky Way,” a direct reference to Isis in her Hathor form, and a name by which our own galaxy is known. Some of the Black Madonna statues were popularly referred to as les Egyptiennes.451 Examples include the Black Madonna of Chartres in Northern France, and in Southern France, the Black Madonna of that of Meymac, which dates back to the 12th century.
In a number of cases, the connections are even more explicit. Several medieval statues revered as the Black Madonna were actually antique statues of Isis that had been directly imported from Egypt. A chronicle from 1255 mentions that upon the return of Louis IX from the Crusades, “He left in the country of Forez an image of Our Lady carved in black color that he had brought back from the Levant.” In actuality, this is an original Egyptian statue of Isis with Horus on her lap.
Another Egyptian “Black Madonna” statue, long preserved and honored in St. Germain des Prés (a suburb of Paris), was removed and destroyed during the 16th century on orders of Bishop Bretonneau, because he did not appreciate its “pagan origins.”452 The famous Black Madonna from Le Puy and other such statues were also destroyed by French revolutionaries in 1793. Fortunately, a scientist named Faujas de Saint-Fons had made three very detailed analyses and a scientific description of that specific statue earlier in 1777. He determined the statue to be “of Isis with Osiris [sic], which had been modified into a Madonna.”453 He even mentions hieroglyphic inscriptions identical to those that he had found on the well-known archeological “Table of Isis.”454
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Both the Central Middle Ages and Dynastic Egypt offer testimony to the relationships between types of money and our collective psyches and society. These past civilizations also provide a warning that is relevant today. Medieval economist Guy Bois views the events that culminated in the Plague as “precedent[s] of a systemic crisis.”455 It might be prudent to heed these lessons of the past and expand our understanding of how monetary systems affect all of us, particularly in light of the ongoing instability of our current global money system.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT - The Balinese Exception
Life and livelihood ought not be separated but to flow from the same source, which is spirit. Spirit means life, and both life and livelihood are about living in depth, living with a meaning, purpose, joy, and sense of contributing to the greater community.
~MATTHEW FOX
The study of matrifocal societies offers insights about how an archetypal and monetary framework different from our own might impact our lives and society. Such an investigation requires us to look to the past as most indigenous peoples and matrifocal societies have by now either been destroyed, adapted beyond recognition to the ways of invaders, or otherwise succumbed to the pressures of the modern world.
Fortunately, there is at least one known exception. One unusual indigenous culture has managed to endure and maintain much of its ancient cultural heritage and monetary system. Present-day Bali offers us at least some sense of what honoring the Great Mother archetype and yin-yang values in society is actually like.
EXCEPTIONAL BALI
Quilted rice paddies, volcanoes soaring up through the clouds, dense rain forests, blue-green seas, religious statues and an almost endless array of colorful festivals are some of the images that greet the millions of tourists who visit the island of Bali each year. Bali is part of the archipelago of Indonesia, a mostly Islamic nation in which the Balinese are proud of preserving their particular Hindu culture.
Like many tropical islands, the Balinese economy derives part of its income from tourism. But Bali differs from most other tourist meccas. A clue to this island’s exceptional culture is noted by the literally thousands of cultural and religious activities that take place in Bali annually. The vast majority of these activities are performed not for foreigners, however, but for the Balinese themselves and for their deities.
It is still true today as it was when Swedish artist Tyra de Kleen observed in the 1920s that, “At their temple feasts [the Balinese] combine two good purposes, namely to please their gods and amuse themselves.”456 Out of the 5,000 dance groups listed with the provincial authorities in Bali a decade ago, less than 200 were paid performances staged for tourists, while the other 4,800 performance groups performed only for “temple time.”457
Temple groups play for foreigners in order to earn income for their instruments, costumes and such. They do not, however, earn an income for their art. In comparison, practically all traditional dance groups on other Pacific Isl
ands today, like Hawaii, Fiji, and Tahiti, perform mainly for tourists.
The Balinese exception begs inquiry. What is the secret of their resilience? Why has this indigenous culture survived when so many others have not? How can a people with a GNP per capita that is about one tenth that of the United States find the money, time, and the resources for such extravaganzas and activities? To answer such questions, we must look at some key features of this unusual society.
COMMUNITY: THE BANJAR
Community is an essential element of Balinese life and culture. Many important activities, such as rice growing and the elaborate preparations for festivals and religious ceremonies, require the efforts and cooperation of not only family members and friends, but on occasion, the participation of entire communities.
The order and cooperation common to the Balinese society is realized by interrelated, local organizational structures.458 The most significant of those structures, to which most Balinese still belong, include:
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