Building Outside the Lines: Networks, Women’s Agency, and Euergetism in Egyptian Cults

Published 2023 in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

This article explores a previously overlooked corpus of women’s building projects in the Roman East. Earlier studies omitted examples from the popular Egyptian cults, which produced a partial understanding of euergetism’s relationship with gender and religion. Isiac women’s construction activity is notable because women were largely excluded from priesthoods, which scholars see as motivation for many building dedications. Focusing on 19 examples found in Isiac sanctuaries analyzed with a networked approach, this article argues that women’s buildings introduced new deities and rituals and reconfigured existing social networks to enhance their agency and standing within the cultic community. The paper also reassesses familial dedications. Though scholars have assumed women dedicating with men were silent partners, the case of Anthestia Iucunda at Dion’s Iseum suggests that she, not her husband, was the driving force behind a major renovation. Integrating Isiac evidence, then, suggests that women could use buildings to assert agency outside the priesthood.

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Gender and Alterity

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Materializing Migration