Women, gender and identity in third intermediate period Egypt: the theban case study

This title clarifies the role of women in Egyptian society during the first millennium BCE, allowing for more nuanced discussions of women in the Third Intermediate Period.

It is an intensive study of a corpus that is both geographically and temporally localized around the city of Thebes, which was the cultural and religious centre of Egypt during this period and home to a major national necropolis.

Unlike past studies which have relied heavily on literary evidence, Li presents a refreshing material culture-based analysis of identity construction in elite female burial practices.

This close examination of the archaeology of women's burial presents an opportunity to investigate the social, professional and individual identities of women beyond the normative portrayals of the subordinate wife, mother and daughter.