Were Ruling AE Queens Ultimately Placeholders

[Wistman]

In the current issue of Time magazine, egyptologist Dr. Kara Cooney of UCLA makes a point about women who achieve pinnacle power and their willingness or ability to use that power to transform the system within which they have risen.  Her theme springs from the history of six Egyptian queens who achieved kingly rule in ancient Kmt, how they wielded their powers, and what and how lasting was the outcome of their tenure.

Quote

Six powerful queens, five of them becoming pharaohs in their own rights — and yet each and every one of them had to fit the patriarchal systems of power around them, rather than fashioning something new. The story of female power in ancient Egypt is a tragedy.

Dr. Cooney is instructive in furthering parallels to our current times and politics.

   http://time.com/5425216/ancient-egypt-women-in-power-today/

Still, I find this sizing up of some of the great AE queens more than a little deflating; they always seemed extraordinary and dynamic to me, but then I’m not female.  Yet the point the author makes is thought provoking.  She is, after all, a bona fide professor of Egyptology and knows her stuff.  But were the Egyptian queens proto-feminists to be charged ultimately with a lackluster assessment, at least in this transformational regard?  Is twenty first century gender politics a fair guide for adjudication?  Did Nefertiti as regent/pharaoh intend to change this paradigm, only to pay a horrible price for it?  What about the gender dynamics of the Imperial culture in AE?  Was there room for change in gender power?  Was Amarna the opening move of such a change?

 

[SHaYap]

I don't get it ...

~

[BorizBadinov]

I think this is a fair question in regard to determining the extent of equality in ancient cultures many of which are held up as placards for change in our current culture. I do not believe you can use a prior culture in that way due to the nature of political power and varying societal norms for any given culture and time. 

We would have to understand extremely well each individuals personality traits, their rise to power i.e. were they simply in the right place right time or did they seize opportunity? What were their detractors and how much or how little opposition did they truly face and from what sectors of the population? Were they used as figure heads by behind the scenes operators or truly strong personalities capable of wielding command? I am sure we know what was recorded but was that truly the story as it happened or history from a biased perspective?

Generalization that they were all just placeholders seems disingenuous to me (granted I am no authority) given that some were apparently given lavish funerary rituals and some were attempted to be erased from history. I tend to disagree with theories that try to fit all the various elements into one prescribed mold when individuality and pollical climate must play a large role in each case.