Women Who Went Before

In our Season 2 finale, we learn about Christian women from late antiquity who sought to transform their bodies inside and out: ascetics and monastics. From fasting to renouncing sexual “appetites” to special clothing—there were lots of things that marked a monk. Dr. Rebecca Krawiec explains all of this and more. Why did women join monasteries? What do we do with those extreme stories of saints pu...

Can we trust Roman statues to tell us about real people? What were the differences between gods and humans in art? How much of a say did the emperor have over how Roman women dressed and lived their lives? Dr. Caroline Vout answers these questions and many more in the penultimate episode of Season 2, as we learn how the Romans put bodies on display. Access full transcript and episode show notes Wo...

People groups, power, hierarchy, and othering—big themes in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad . In this episode we learn from Dr. Jackie Murray about what race was and wasn’t in Ancient Greek literature. We see how gender and class intersected with race. We’ll learn about a Greek novel The Aethiopica , what a metic was, and what this all has to do with some recent Hollywood controversies. Transcript and e...

CW: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Dr. Rhiannon Graybill shares her research on sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and ways of reading such messy stories for then and now. We also talk about violent tropes in modern romance literature and Rome's origin stories—and what these kinds of tales do to those who read them. She says, “In our world sexu...

We talk with Dr. Shai Secunda about the Babylonian rabbis’ science of blood, breaking taboos through sex education, and menstruation as a cure for rabies. Today, taboos about menstruation keep thousands of girls from attending school. For Jewish sages in late antique Persia, such beliefs led to laws that required women to stay away from their husbands during their periods and to wash at prescribed...

Dr. Ada Nifosì tells us about the gymnastics of ancient Egyptian birth, why Egyptian women ate donkey balls and their cats ate penis cakes,  and why the god Seth should be avoided at all costs. Childbirth was a scary time for women, and that desire for safety and comfort is reflected in their stories about their gods. The most important goddess, Isis, was enshrined in Egyptian mythology as giving...

Dr. Julia Watts Belser talks about ancient prenups, dancing at weddings, and what the rabbis had to say about beauty. We meet an Etruscan woman named Seianti Hanunia, an Egyptian Jewish woman Tapamet, and hear the (sometimes damaging) ideas of sages Shammai and Hillel. Paying attention to disability matters because it’s noticing a person’s full human experience. Access transcript and episode show...

Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells us about the veil in ancient Greek culture. Many women in the distant past (as today) wore veils during their life. Veiling meant many things to many people. It could be a means of patriarchal control, a sensual turn on, or a practical choice in a hot climate.  From weddings to acts of piety and expressions of grief, veils "spoke." When she chose to reveal...

Dr. Julia Kelto Lillis asks, "To whom does a woman’s virginity belong?" Join her and your hosts as we dive into the world of early Christian purity culture, what wine has to do with the V-Card, and why the gods like to make babies with virgins. Like today, the concept of virginity was culturally significant in the ancient world. But unlike today, virginity as an act of devotion to God co...

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rebecca Flemming and talk about ancient gynecology, wandering wombs, and what agency, if any, women had over the healing of their bodies. How did medical writers in Greece and Rome describe a woman’s anatomy and its inner workings? And how did those beliefs influence the treatments they prescribed? Read transcript and episode show notes: https://www.womenwhowe...

In a time when society is thinking passionately about bodily rights and who gets to make decisions about women’s bodies, Season 2 turns to history. Women in the ancient world mattered, and so did their bodies—maybe learning about them can give us new questions as we face our own world.  In our season intro episode, meet an ancient high-priestess of Ur and the first known author in human history: E...

On the Season 1 finale we talk with Dr. Deborah Lyons about ancient Greek myths, breaking cultural boxes, and why we should all strive to be killjoys. Pandora's box, Penelope's gifts, Helen's beauty in Sappho's poetry, and more. Why does it matter that Pandora didn't actually have a box in the earliest versions of the myth? How were objects and the practice of gift-giving...

In the penultimate episode of season 1, “In Her Own Words: Ancient Women Authors,” we talk with historian and classicist Dr. Kate Cooper about gatekeeping, the privilege of individualism, and those rare surviving moments when women wrote for themselves. The famous Greek poet Sappho, who wrote of love and loss. Faltonia Betitia Proba, the elite Roman woman who adapted Virgil to tell Christian histo...

In Episode 8 our hosts talk with Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander about whether women can keep track of their own periods, religious law as a boys’ club, and why ancient rabbis cared about witchery.   Episode show notes: https://womenwhowentbefore.com/ suffering-witches-to-live . Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Emily Chesley and Rebekah Haigh. The music is composed and prod...

Dr. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau explains how two lethal women perform gender in the Hebrew Bible. Judith and Jael were talented Jewish heroines who skillfully played their hands (and bodies) to save their people from invading armies. How might the stories about Clytemnestra and the Ugaritic goddess Anat have shaped these biblical narratives? How does the book of Judith intersect with Judas Maccabee and t...

Dr. Solange Ashby teaches us about Nubian warrior queens, Hollywood stereotypes about Egyptian women, and why you shouldn’t trust Wikipedia. Meet the powerful, voluptuous queens of Meroe—Amanirenas, Amanitore, Amanishakheto. While Roman noblewomen were supposed to stay hidden at home, these queens were ruling and leading their troops into battle.  Hear how Nubian families tracked filiation through...

We interview  Dr. Thomas A. J. McGinn about Roman prostitution, marriage laws, and a strange Cinderella story. What was a paterfamilias and how did they determine a woman’s life? Were prostitutes merely doing their civic duty? Why did early Christians call the Roman government the pimp-in-chief? Autonomy and agency are the overarching themes of this episode. We explore them in laws governing Roman...

We talk to Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey about how gender shaped ancient thinking about God, women's church choirs, and the complex web of metaphors for the divine within Syriac Christianity. Women Who Went Before is written, produced, and edited by Rebekah Haigh and Emily Chesley. The music is composed and produced by Moses Sun . This episode was fact-checked by Jillian Marcantonio and George Ki...

Dr. Elaine Pagels joins us to talk about manic pixie dream girls, lost Gnostic texts , and why being a heretic might not be so bad. Stereotypes about women aren't solely a modern phenomenon. Two pervasive archetypes in early Christian writings were the devil's gateway and bride of Christ . Where did these labels come from? And what were some alternative perspectives found in gnostic text...

We explore ancient Jewish fan fiction, why makeup made the angels fall, and the ever-present problem of ghostwriting with Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed in Season 1 Episode 2, "Ghostwriting the Daughters of Men: Whose Writing Is it Anyway?" You've heard of the human fall story in Genesis 3, but what about the angelic fall stories in Genesis 6, 1 Enoch , and the Testament of Reuben ? How d...

We talk to Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz about history’s nameless faces, the news negativity bias, and how to raid ancient texts to find women. How were women named and anonymized in Jewish and Christian texts? When did bene Yisra’el mean "sons of Israel" in the Hebrew Bible, and when did it include the daughters too? What do we know about female scribes in antiquity?  Who was Rav Hisda'...

In our season intro we ask: Why aren't women in our ancient history textbooks? What is antiquity? How were women imagined in ancient Mediterranean societies? And why does women's history matter?  Meet the North African woman Perpetua, whose prison diary from Carthage is one of the few surviving literary texts written by an ancient woman. And meet your podcast hosts, Rebekah Haigh and Emi...