NEFERTITI, HYPATIA, AND SAPPHO: RECEPTION HISTORY AND WOMEN IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Abstract

The study of ancient women is made difficult for scholars for many reasons. Lack of sources about these women written during their lifetimes, issues of translation and interpretation, the desire to fictionalize women’s stories and use them to make statements about modern issues, and the personal experiences or biases of artists and writers all affect the narratives available to scholars in the twenty-first century. This work surveys the ancient sources available to construct narratives of the lives of Nefertiti, Sappho, and Hypatia and examine the possible problematic aspects of these sources with attention to eighteenth and nineteenth century scholarship on these sources that established the histories available to modern scholars of these three women. This work also examines the artistic reception of these women and the effects of contemporary politics, perspectives on sexuality and gender, and the artists’ backgrounds in the representations of Nefertiti, Sappho, and Hypatia in sculpture and painting from the eighteenth century into the twenty-first century.