Women dethroned in the Axial Age

[lpetrich]

The end of her-story: close-knit fraternal networks as an evolutionary response to powerful archaic women | Seshat

In Ultrasociety (2015) Peter Turchin memorably uses the label alpha male states to describe the first polities in history. This is, he says, because of their structural inequality with a “god-king” dominating cowering subjects; true, perhaps, but these societies weren’t literally dominated by men. Queens, priestesses and princesses held together the key palace, temple and diplomatic networks. Interestingly, after the archaic states (3000-1000 BCE) fell, the new states were networked almost entirely by men.

Archaic era civilization is often described “palatial” but the palace was more than a posh home; it was the source of all power relationships, and the temples that were often headed by priestess were the legs under this command module.

For the 99 percent, the ancient temples were not obvious symbols of massive inequality. As food store, land-holder, place of learning, career ladder, and (in Egypt, Greece, Babylon and India) brothel – which, ingeniously, helped pay for the system (Manuel 1989) – they had a magnetic status and utilitarian role that held society together.

Additional sums donated to temples, often by aristocratic women, made this social glue stickier with fear. The priests and priestesses invoked deities made terrifyingly memorable with human sacrifice. Paired with a relentless diet of ancestor-worship even the living regent became an unchallengeable god.

This was the case not only in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, but also in India and China.

So below, as above. Of a sample of 348 heavenly deities from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece 46% are female. Of the gods with “Creator” traits (fertility, instigator, good luck, production etc.) 52% were female compared to deities with “Destroyer” traits (Fire, storms, death, plague etc.) which were 69% male.

The remaining category is "Guardian", and that one roughly parallels "Creator".

However, sometime after 1200 BCE civilization crashed and burned (Cline 2014). The palace and its temple satellites, the priestesses and the goddesses, no longer held society together. Whether life was so much worse during the Bronze Age collapse is debated but out of it a vast, new institution emerged: a “secular” bureaucracy.

Massive, professional, male and uncoupled from the palatial court, legitimized by a Father god – it was common to all the axial age “mega-Empires”, as Turchin called them.

...
Whether by Roman or Confucian quill, women were almost entirely struck from the bureaucratic rolls. In China, now blocked from the external bureaucracy women were left only with “duplicitous methods” (Hinsch 2011). Where they had a role, such as Persia, women were personnel managers in the Achaemenid bureaucracy and “compensation managers” during the construction of Persopolis (Farazmand 2009). Nevertheless, the Greeks claimed the intrigues of powerful Persian women caused upheaval and rebellion. Eventually, Islam swept through the region. Job done.

On the plus side, imperial bureaucracies are good for ensuring continuity and stability, since they continue despite the coming and goings of those on top.

However,

The new civilizations were not to lack high status and educated women; it was to not employ them, and to end their contracts. The Roman Empire had many priestesses: in Rome, the College of the Vestals; in Greece, at the Eleusinian Mysteries at the Temple of Demeter and at Eleusis the Temple of Apollo, at Delphi. Theodosius I the Christian closed these pagan temples in 394, 392 and 390 CE.

Like their ancient sisters, axial age women generally could own property. They were educated and published poetry – as they did before (the first poet known to history was Enheduena of Akkad). The power structure of the new age just did not want them.

Something rather curious.

One serious flaw in the palace model was the lack of firewall to prevent elite conflict – acid to the bonds of a state – spilling into the bureaucracy and the temples. The stunning Amarna Revolution was possible because these institutions of state were identified with the all-powerful New Kingdom king Akhenaten. Not only that, the harem was a notorious brewing-ground for conspiracy – and marriage diplomacy had created harems full of foreign princesses. A harem conspiracy from New Kingdom Egypt even assassinated the Pharaoh Ramesses III.

Marriage diplomacy (Cline 2014) for god-kings was, like the temples, priestesses and goddesses, an essential gel that held together archaic civilization – but also an Achilles heel. Diplomatic incident? Have a princess! While they agreed to send daughters to each other’s harems and trade they stayed awesome gods rather than humiliated-defeated-in-war kings. But as foreign queens and princesses became nodes of diplomatic and trade networks and hired staff to promote their interests (Cline 2014), they must have become a destabilising influence.

Or convenient scapegoats.

 

[whollygoats]

Hmmm...Will we stumble in to Leonard Shlain's hypotheses here?

This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.

Left brain, right brain?

Also, does anybody else remember reading Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade?