The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World

“For the general reader or the beginning scholar of the ancient world on the path to become more, The Missing Thread is one of the works that makes a good starting point.”

Any broad study of women in the ancient world owes much to Merlin Stone’s pioneer work, When God was a Woman (1978). Daisy Dunn in The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World shows how far scholarship has come “with a history of antiquity through women.”

Dunn begins with a summary of the legends of the first woman Pandora, as an example of the intellectual thought of males about women. The image is not a pretty one, “women wove as she wove, deceived as she deceived . . . loved as she loved.”

Women would not be denied, however, even in ancient societies, in myth and reality. Great artists like Sappho and other women such as Olympias, Lucretia, and Claudia, and Cleopatra, defied socially imposed stereotypes to go beyond a male image “of the raw essence of femininity.”

“The importance of ancient women’s work exceeds the contributions of individuals,” however. Often the story of women in a society is told through professions such as baking and weaving, as with early death, enslavement, and victims of war. The history or legend of the Etruscan Tanaquil, for example, is built around clothes.

Birth, family, marriage, guaranteed secession, and sex are discussed, as well as the less obvious such as the instances of financial independence. Socially imposed decisions on gender began with whether a baby was allowed to live or was left to die, especially if female.

The author warns, however, “many of these women are shadow” and much of the history of the ancient world is lost, including for feminist studies. Influence, real and imagined by male historians, of women among powerful men as mothers and wives are a thread in this work. Too often, what survives, is reflections found through prejudiced male writings.

Dunn writes that historians “are always at the mercy of the material that comes down to us,” but especially when the subjects are not dominant males. Some important stories, such as Dido, women of the Julio family, the female athletes in the Olympics, the oracles, the Spartan women, the Scythians, and the Vestal Virgins, however, are better known.

Proto-feminist satire in male literature such as Greek plays also find a place in myth and parable, including the hoax that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by a woman. The Carthaginian, Etruscan, and Macedonian females became famous because their treatment was depicted as so exceptional in the male-generated ancient literature.

The Ancient World in this work is the Eastern Mediterranean; The Missing Thread begins with the Minoan civilization of Crete and then studies classic European civilizations through the Greeks and then the Romans to the days of Julius Caesar. Occasionally, the Egyptians, Hittites, Lydians, Persians, and Sumerians are mentioned.

Dunn provides a basic introduction to many ancient societies, although sometimes digressing from the main theme of this thick book to do so. Among the “missing threads” uncovered in these tales of societies is Pythia the oracle; Tomyris, warrior queen; and Gorgo of Sparta. The author brings out often omitted backstories and connections.

Much appears here on the Minoans because that culture’s art prominently depicted women. The author does make note of what can be learned from what is lacking in the story of the subsequent Mycenaean/Homeric period. Similarly, Classical Greece offers stories of women warriors and influencers from Greece to the Black Sea to Persia.

Dunn’s work benefits through progress in scholarship and society, including modern archaeological discoveries. Ironically, the author tells how Harriet Boyd Hawes’ work on Crete played an unappreciated role in literally unearthing and interpreting the remnants of that past.

The author writes in an entertaining story telling style, only somewhat chronological, to bring together common “threads.” That format allows for discussions of topics such as possible reasons for why women were painted in certain colors in different societies and women goddess figures.

For the general reader or the beginning scholar of the ancient world on a path to becoming more, The Missing Thread is one of the books that makes a good starting point. Other publications will take the reader further. This work has annotation, a bibliography, and some illustrations.