An Apt Memorial

Helena-Reet transformed into Cleopatra. Photo by mnadi.

I attended the fifth Dorothy Buchan Lecture last night at Leicester. Dorothy Buchan was a retired headmistress of a school in Leicester with an interest in Graeco-Roman Egypt and the study of women in antiquity. When she passed away a fund was formed and an annual lecture series started. It’s the school’s only major regular event, and so far they’ve generally been stunning. This year it was Dorothy Thompson “Queens and Commoners in Ptolemaic Egypt”.

Like the previous years I learned something new. Dorothy Thompson demolished the myth of Cleopatra as femme fatale. More interestingly, from my point of view, she showed how Egyptian women in comparison to their Greek and Macedonian counterparts had much more legal power. The eventual Hellenisation of Egypt seemed to be a real blow for the independence of women. Under Greek law they always had to be represented by a male, either husband or father.

She also astounded me with the importance of text in Ptolemaic Egypt. One transaction was accompanied with sixty pieces of paper establishing rights of ownership and genealogies of ownership to various goods. I tend to view the classical world as literate in parts, which is perhaps a dated opinion. You don’t have to understand text to venerate its power. In fact in terms of venerating it, it may even be an advantage to not understand it. But I think the sheer scale of the use of text in Egypt shows that you can’t simply dismiss it as a tool of the elite.

Like the previous years it was a strong show, and next year’s also looks like it will be excellent as Helen King of Reading will be giving it. All in all I think its an apt memorial for an educator.