New Exhibition Project

Women in Ancient World

Today, women’s rights are still very much in debate or dispute across most societies of the modern world. The issues in most societies reflect an embedded perception of women in the need of male protection, but how did this perception evolve? Has it always been so? According to some studies, reflective of nature itself, certain prehistoric social arrangements were matriarchies, or at least, communal groups in which women held equal roles to men, but as social structures became more complex, so did gender differentiation evolve.

As cultures, we are the recipients of the precepts of our past, and in the western world, our past leads to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, and in particular to the legacy of ancient Rome. Like most ancient cultures in general, the principal role of women was recognized as that of wives and mothers; indeed procreation was the primary obligation of women to their society. Men on the other hand, were assigned the roles of laborer, warrior, politician and patriarch. But there was then, as now, exceptions to the norm, and this unique and exceptional exhibition investigates the evolution of the female role in the ancient world and illuminates the ‘exceptions’.

Etruscan women held prominent social positions, and enjoyed equal-status privileges unrivalled in the ancient world. Women in ancient Egypt could own property and even be queens, although they lived in a patriarchal society. Women of ancient Sparta received almost the same education as men, including athletic training. And, in the Roman world, the female figure acquired multi-faceted attributes: from goddess and sacred priestess to muse, from estate manager to skilled politician; all aspects of Roman women who became conscious and capable advocates of their own life and fate.

Developed in collaboration with the Museo Nazionale Romano and other archaeological collections of Italy, this unique exhibition presents an extraordinary selection of artifacts and artworks including original statues, wonderful frescoes, precious everyday life objects, jewelry, and hidden epigraphic heritage that give voice to well-known and lesser-known women of the ancient Mediterranean world, with a specific focus on the culture of ancient Rome, ultimately shedding light on all those precepts that frame the debate today.