01-10 TABLE of CONTENTS: Women in Ancient Egypt DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Nancy Wilson and Army Major Marie Rossi. Women in Ancient Egypt "Discussing the position of women in ancient Egypt, theologian and archaeologist Roland de Vaux wrote in 1965 that In Egypt the wife was often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed. Obedience was urged upon husbands in the maxims of Ptah-Hotep. Marriage contracts of all periods attest the extremely independent social and economic position of women.       "According to E. Meyer, who is quoted in the Vaertings' study, 'Among the Egyptians the women were remarkably free... as late as the fourth century B.C. there existed side by side with patriarchal marriage, a form of marriage in which the wife chose the husband and could divorce him upon payment of compensation.'       "Love poems, discovered in Egyptian tombs, strongly hint that it was the Egyptian women who did the courting, ofttimes wooing the male by plying him with intoxicants to weaken his protestations. Robert Briffault wrote of an Egyptian woman clerk who later became a governor and eventually the commander-in-chief of an army."             -- Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman. New York, London: Harvest Harcout Brace Jovanovich. 1976. ISBN 0-15-696158-X. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 01-10 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 01-10-1480, Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy and regent of the Netherlands (1507-15, 1519-30) for her nephew Charles who would become Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. She negotiated the Treaty of Cambria, known as the Ladies' treaty with Louise of Savoy, who was regent of France (1515, 1525-26). The treaty was one of the first recorded instances of women with power deciding to compromise rather than follow the usual course of kings and going to war to settle disputes. B. 01-10-1797, Annette Elisabeth von Droste-Hlschoff, one of Germany's great poets of the era. Her poems, primarily published between 1838 and 1860, had bold imagination, strong lyrical tones with metric freedom. Her novella The Jews' Beech Tree (1842 trans. English 1958) is recognized as a landmark. B. 01-10-1820, Louisa Lane Drew, American actor and manager of her own theatre in Philadelphia, the influential and successful Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theatre. Event 01-10-1860, a five-story brick textile factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts collapsed because cheap building were materials used by the owners. The building, 300 by 85 feet, had heavy machinery on the upper floors. The workers on the lower floors were mostly mill girls. Ninety people died and hundreds crippled in the catastrophe. Many trapped in the rubble were burned to death. The building owners were not prosecuted. Owner greed that replaced decent mill working conditions of the early 19th century would soon turn Laurence into the the site of violent labor reform disputes, led by such firebrand union organizers as Emma Goldman and Mother Jones. B. 01-10-1870, Maud Younger, suffragist and labor reformer who is known for her work for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. B. 01-10-1896, Worth Tuttle Hedden, author who explored Southern culture and women's place in it. B. 01-10-1898, Katharine Burr Blodgett, inventor, research physicist, who developed the first non-reflecting glass (as used in picture frames) and was the first research scientist at General Electric Laboratories who was also a woman. B. 01-10-1903, Dame Barbara Hepworth, award-winning British sculptor whose works became more and more abstract as her career bloomed. Her contemporary fame has suffered from the female erasure in the art world. The BH monumemt to Dag Hammarskjold is outside the UN building in New York. B. 01-10-1910, Galina Sergeyevna Ulanova, incomparable Russian ballet dancer, the first Soviet prima ballerina assoluta. Trained initially by her mother Maria Romanova, GU became one of the most legendary of all Russian ballet dancers, known for her sustained flow of movement (cantilena style) and depth of emotion. She did not dance outside the Soviet Union until 1951. At 49, well past her physical prime, she toured the U.S. to sold-out, mesmerized crowds. B. 01-10-1927, Gisele Mackenzie, Canadian singer, star of Your Hit Parade TV show during the 1950s. Her mother was a concert singer and pianist. B. 01-10-1931, Marlene Sanders, pioneering American woman broadcast journalist (the first woman to anchor a network evening news broadcast). She became a vice president and director of TV documentaries. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR WILSON, NANCY:       "While Ann and I were growing up, all our friends wanted to marry the Beatles. Ann and I wanted to BE the Beatles."             -- Nancy Wilson of Heart ROSSI, MARIE:       "What I am doing is no greater or less than the man who is flying next to me. Or in back of me."             -- Army Major Marie Rossi, 33, of Oradell, NJ, several days before her "non-combatant" helicopter crashed the day after the cease fire in the Persian Gulf combat. She flew the big CH-47 Chinook helicopter and was commander of Company B form the 159th Aviation Battalion which dropped paratroopers deep into southern Iraq | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |