Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Palaeolithic to the Byzantines

Guy D. Middleton surveys women’s lives across the ancient Mediterranean from prehistory to the Byzantine world through the stories of thirty individuals. Queens and elite women appear alongside figures whose experiences survive through archaeology, inscriptions and other fragmentary evidence, allowing the book to move beyond a single civilisation or social rank.

Hatshepsut, the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti and the philosopher Hypatia are among the better-known names. They share the pages with Bronze Age priestesses such as Eritha and Karpathia and Eutychis, known from Pompeii. Middleton draws together burials, painted pottery, graffiti and written sources to explore what can be recovered about women whose lives were rarely recorded on their own terms.