Women in Transportation

Sources

Female Opportunities . Egypt was a land in which women were better off than in most parts of the ancient world. Few occupations were completely closed off to women, including occupations having to do with trade and transportation.

Old Kingdom Evidence . Several Old Kingdom relief sculptures show women aboard transport boats; in at least one case, a woman is actually steering the boat. Children aboard the same vessels suggest that in these cases one may be seeing an image of a boat that was owned by a family and that all family members—women, men, and children—worked together on what was essentially a small, mobile family business.

Women Skippers . Most interesting is the fact that several female skippers are known by name to scholars. These women all lived during the Ptolemaic period between 323 and 30 b.c.e. They are known because their names figure in real estate contracts. (Contracts and other legal documents are an invaluable source of insight into the Egyptian “middle class”—artisans and merchants who may not have been literate themselves, but who had to have dealings with the government and with the legal system.) One of the women is named Tawepyt, and she is described as a “woman skipper.” Another woman, named Tameneh, is called the “fisherwoman”—the tide does not guarantee that she was the operator of a boat, but the title “fisherman” often has this connotation. In light of the illustrations from the Egyptian Old Kingdom of women working aboard boats, one might guess that these Ptolemaic women also were probably part owners with husbands or other family members in small boats that were operated as family enterprises. Unfortunately, there is not much specific evidence for women involved in other facets of transportation or communication. Some women were referred to as “merchants,” and this occupation may have involved them in arranging for the transportation of goods. A special case is the fact that in the Ptolemaic period, women of royal rank often owned large transport ships. Needless to say, these women never were involved in the actual running of their vessels. Probably they were simply investors who turned the operation of the ships over to their captains or special shipping agents called naukleroi (a Greek term meaning literally “man in charge of a ship”).

Sources

Zahi Hawass, Silent Images: Women in Pharaonic Egypt (New York: Abrams, 2000).

Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Steve Vinson, The Nile Boatman at Work (Mainz: von Zabern, 1998), pp. 90–91.