@the-inkling-devoted

@the-inkling-devoted

Nyx, goddess of the night.

Women of the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean who were Pioneers

Enheduanna was a Sumerian poetess. She is history’s first recorded author and her works were dedicated to the goddess Inanna/Ishtar.

Merneith was the first woman to be a Pharaoh in Egyptian history.

Sappho was, and is still, one of the most famous lyric poets from Ancient Greece. She is the only female author from Ancient Greece or Rome whose work survives to any significant length. Many of her love poems were addressed to other women. They made up nine books in the Library of Alexandria but now only 1% of her work survives. She is still Antiquity’s most famous female author.

Livia Drusilla was the first empress consort of Rome and the wife of Augustus. She was crucial in managing the succession as her son Tiberius would succeed her husband as emperor. The Senate accorded her unprecedented honours. (As much as I love Sian Phillips’ portrayal of her in I, Claudius, she was not a murderess)

Hypatia of Alexandria was a pioneering scientist and mathematician. She pioneered the use of the astrolabe and influenced algebra. She was not a Christian and she was an unmarried female scientist. Due to this well as to the fact that she was a powerful political force in the city of Alexandria and an ally of the governor Orestes, she was accused of witchcraft and lynched by a Christian mob in 415.

Theodora was the first empress in her own right. She was the daughter of a very lower-class bear trainer in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Orphaned at a young age, she was forced to become an actress (which also likely meant that she had to be a prostitute). She was the mistress of a governor before she moved to Alexandria and converted to Miaphysite Christianity. She returned to Constantinople to spin wool and may have become a spy for the heir to the throne Justinian. She eventually somehow met him and they married. They were crowned emperor and empress in 527. She was the first woman to be Roman empress in her own right. She fought for women’s rights and supported religious freedom for various Christian sects. She banned forced prostitution, made rape a capital crime and ended the death penalty for women who were found guilty of adultery. Theodora also had a role in reforming the legal code of the Roman Empire itself in the Justinian code. So she is partially responsible for the principle of assuming innocence until guilt is proven. In the Nika Riots in 532  when Justinian was prepared to flee, she convinced him to stay and put down the riot. When he fell ill like many people at the time with the plague, she was able to take the responsibility of ruling and there were no serious challenges to her authority. 

Anna Komnene was a Roman/Byzantine princess who lived at the time of the First Crusade. She was the daughter of Emperor Alexios I. Anna was one of the most educated women of her time. She was educated in the sciences and medicine as well as literature. She wrote a history of her father’s life, the ‘Alexiad’. This makes her the first female historian. She was also a political rival to her brother the Emperor John.  

Maybe I should practice mindfulness more often, because I just realized that I’m surrounded. Laptop, tablet, and smartphone all doing different tasks on a hardwood desk that wouldn’t be out of place at a nunnery, a wooden chair under my butt of the unique strain that falls between “looks painful” and “not so bad”, the night sky on my right and endless library shelves to my left (as well as below on the lower story). What snapped me into this realization was the word “epeolatry” floating behind my eyes like so much steam from a coffee cup, and the resulting rapid-fire joke that doesn’t make sense at less than the speed of thought.

If there was a stereotype for devotees of Nisaba, if such a thing had enough traction to be a stereotype, then this four-eyed girl with a lamassu pin- tablet and stylus in hand- might qualify.

One of my favorite places in Gdańsk ⭐

maybe we are even from the same star