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MeatballDom OP t1_jak1xve wrote

Reply to comment by badwolfdad in The difficulties of translating gender in ancient texts by MeatballDom

This is a problem with the priorities of ancient historians, there aren't a lot of texts dealing with anyone other than men in historical texts, and personal traits are almost never mentioned outside of attacks in court speeches or debates, which are not always the most reliable.

But things like plays often mocked characters, sometimes outright, sometimes a bit more subtitle, and characters outside the Great Men Theory scope would appear in them as well. Therefore, it's necessary to look at cases of fiction to get a better sense of how these things were treated in antiquity.

We do get some letters, outside of my scope though, but I know there's some great Byzantine, and some Egyptian stuff, that colleagues have worked on.

Regarding historic texts, the only thing that comes to mind is the case of Teuta in Polybius who still is referred to with the masculine title of Basileus (βασιλεύς) . I don't know if anyone outside of mythology was referred to as Basileia while being the leader of a place before Teuta, but it did become common later, but Polybius uses the term while still making it very clear that she's a woman, and modern translators typically go for "Queen Teuta" when translating this, giving it a feminine spin that isn't actually present in the text. It's something we all have to grapple with when doing translations, how much should we stick to the original text, how much should we add in for our modern understandings of gender both in the literal and grammatical sense, and so on.

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Bentresh t1_jakd353 wrote

> Regarding historic texts, the only thing that comes to mind is the case of Teuta in Polybius who still is referred to with the masculine title of Basileus (βασιλεύς) .

The Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut is another example. Although often referred to today as a queen – that is, a queen regnant – she in fact used the traditional Egyptian word for king (nswt, 𓇓𓏏𓈖). There was not an independent term for "queen" in Egyptian; the title usually translated as such (ḥmt-nswt, 𓈞𓏏𓇓) literally means "wife of the king," and Hatshepsut obviously could not be her own wife.

Additionally, texts from Hatshepsut's reign use both the 3rd singular masculine suffix pronoun (=f) and 3rd singular feminine suffix pronoun (=s) to refer to Hatshepsut, with some inscriptions even switching back and forth between the two. It remains unclear how much of this was intentional and how much was scribal error.

I'll also note that some ancient languages do not distinguish between masculine and feminine but rather animate and inanimate (e.g. Sumerian and Hittite). For example, whether one translates Sumerian lugal.ani as "his king" or "her king" depends on the context – which is unfortunately not always clear, particularly with fragmentary texts.

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tigre200 t1_jalsnb9 wrote

I would also like to add that the practice of reffering a queen in her own right as "king" was also common up to the middle ages. Examples include the first swedish queen, reffered to as "Kung" instead of "Drottning"

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_jalvomv wrote

Are you thinking of queen Margret? She was technically neither king nor queen of Sweden, only regent (apart from the time she and her husband were king and queen of Sweden for a brief period around 1360). Her son and later her grand nephew were the kings, and she was a regent during their minorities (and beyond in the case of Eric of Pomerania). To your point, however, her position as regent was nevertheless most commonly refered to by a male word: "husbonde".

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AnaphoricReference t1_jb0peqb wrote

The Netherlands has had three female Kings in a row in recent history. The Consitution is quite clear the topic: the monarch is King, and King (written) may be read as "Queen" if a woman is monarch. This led to an interesting discussion about downgrading the title of Queen as consort of the King to Princess, in analogy to Prince for the consort of a regnant Queen, because people have gotten so used to equating "King" and "Queen". And in common parlance both King and Queen were used for Beatrix: without qualification it is "Queen", but it is for instance "the first Dutch King that [..]".

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badwolfdad t1_jaml2wy wrote

Elizabeth the First refers to herself as Prince. My guess is we understand less of language before us than we realize and modern gender issues are clouding our ability to understand it as intended. What’s important is the author’s opinion not ours.

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Shkval25 t1_jao4ypt wrote

Interesting. Do you have an example of context? "Prince" was frequently used as a generic term for a ruler.

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badwolfdad t1_jamjgfn wrote

Here is my larger question. My wife is a historian. Dual PHDs her specialty is Medieval European History and Literature. She reads at a functional level Latin, Greek, French, German, Portuguese, and Russian. She is one of the most brilliant humans I have ever met. In the 10 years she went from HS to 2 PHDs and the 20 years of experience since as a historian and conservationist, she has never mentioned any of this. Not once. It sees to only exist in today’s world among todays gender questions. Are we not a little conceited to assume and insert our beliefs into the writings of long dead people? Does their own intent and the messages they wanted to convey to their audience matter? Just a humble man’s thoughts.

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Doctor_Impossible_ t1_jaojcg4 wrote

>In the 10 years she went from HS to 2 PHDs and the 20 years of experience since as a historian and conservationist, she has never mentioned any of this.

So why not get her to post her thoughts?

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MeatballDom OP t1_janoi67 wrote

Insert what beliefs? This is purely a reflection of the actual text that the Greeks and Romans used, and how they wrote. Have her read the article and see what her thoughts are.

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