Remembering Women by Christine Lehnen: Sneak Peek
Posted on 2025/05/19 , tagged as Christine Lehnen, Coming Soon, Remembering Women
Share this
Remembering Women: Lessons From the Ancient World by Christine Lehnen
Sneak Peek
Women do have a history of their own.
All we need to do is remember it.
‘A fascinating, thought-provoking exploration of powerful women’s lives in the past and today, showing how important it is that we remember their successes, leadership, independence and equality.’
Marion Gibson, author of Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials
Due to advances in bioarchaeological methods, scientists have discovered that one out of three women in Ancient Scythia was an active warrior buried with her weapons. Far from being confined to their homes, these women rode out to hunt, travelled to distance places, or used weapons to fend off their enemies. These warriors were no exceptions to the rule, with women enjoying a significantly higher degree of equality than their Greek contemporaries.
Remembering Women argues that there is a historical precedent for a fairer society. From reappraisals of well-known objects, such as the earliest human bone calendars from the Stone Age, to revelatory findings of innovative bioarcheological methods used on human remains from Ancient Scythia, evidence is accumulating that there were places in the past where all women were allowed to thrive.
Interweaving new findings from archaeology with the stories of her mother and grandmother, as well as her everyday experiences as a woman living today, Lehnen explores our collective memory of women and argues that it needs to change if we are to create an egalitarian society. Remembering Women follows the traces left in the material, literary, and archaeological record by our foremothers, and their heirlooms, artwork and stories, to take a fresh look at our life in the present.
Take the first steps towards changing our cultural memory for the better with the extract below!
Helen of Troy leaves her husband in the dead of night.
I imagine her hastily packing her things, casting about her room, wondering what she can part with and what she cannot live without. Will she bring her precious bronze mirror? The warrior Amazon puppet her mother gave her when she was a child? Her brush? (Of course she will bring her brush, and hair pins or bands, anything to hold it in place. It is windy out there on the Aegean Sea.) It must have been daunting to pack her things, to even entertain the idea of running off with Paris, Prince of Troy. This palace in Sparta is all she has ever known. Famously, her husband came to live with her after he won her hand, not the other way around, as would have been more common. She has grown up in this palace, she has barely ever left this city. This is where her family is, where she gave birth to her daughter, where she has made a life for herself. It must have been a hard thing to leave that night. Anyone who is an immigrant, who has had to leave the place they know to go to a strange place, will know how difficult it is. Anyone who has had to leave a lifelong partner, no matter how abusive, will testify to the courage it requires.
Helen is a legendary figure, but women like her existed, and they have existed throughout time: women who left their houses, the men they were with and who owned them, the families they had raised, to go and discover an unknown future, no matter the risks. There is the woman in Ancient Assyria who left her male ‘owner’ and sought refuge with another woman, a female lover or friend. We do not retain her name, but let us imagine we do. Let us say her name was Atalia, this woman who left her husband knowing it would almost certainly end in her death. Think how courageous she must have been still to leave in the middle of the night, to choose hope over despair, to make a life for herself, no matter how brief. Then there is Neaera, the Corinthian woman sold into prostitution, who left her owners and ran from the pimp Phrynion to live a free life in Athens. She raised her daughter Phanos in the same spirit, a girl who would refuse to become a demure wife once wedded, resulting in legal challenges to the family. More recently, there is my friend R, who had to get a job as a cleaner, hide her wages away from her partner, save up, learn how to drive, pack her suitcases and hide them at the back of the wardrobe, all so that she would be able to up and go one night, vanish within seconds. Atalia, Neaera, R: women who have had the courage to say no to the lives they were living, and yes to the uncertain futures ahead of them.
[…]
Women today still feel that consequence, every day. Six women are murdered every hour of every day worldwide. In the UK, a woman is killed by a man every three days. In six out of seven cases, the killer is a man she knows, and seventy-four per cent of women are killed in their own homes. As women, we are aware how dangerous our homes may be, whether the knowledge is conscious or not. My friend R left in secret, stole away in the dead of night because she too feared violent retribution. This was sensible, as data from the Femicide Census shows that ‘separation is a risk factor for intimate-partner femicides’, as violent men may choose to kill women rather than lose control over them. The fate of another friend of mine bears testimony to this fact. My dear friend S, one of the most intelligent, capable, and confident people I know, had to leave the country she was born and raised in to escape an abusive and violent male partner. As Margaret Atwood once wrote, men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men are going to kill them.
Atalia was indeed killed by the Assyrian state, as far as we know. We cannot be sure of the fate of Neaera and Phanos, but Phanos’s husband brought charges against them with the aim of stripping them of their Athenian citizenship, forcing them once more into sexual slavery. No record of the end of the court case survives, but historian Eric Berkowitz does not see much hope for them in the misogynist, xenophobic slave society of Classical Athens. We all know how Helen’s mythical story ends, and it is not a happy ending: Menelaus uses her escape as a pretext to raise an army and destroy the beautiful city of Troy, murder and enslave the entire population, and bring her back to Sparta, where she secretly prepares and feeds him a narcotic potion in the evening so that she may escape his dominance for a few hours.
It may seem difficult at times to find hope in Greek myth, but it can be found in Scythia, in the Stone Age, even in the earliest periods of human history. In the graves of our foremothers and forefathers, the women who were warriors with and without children, the men who wore jewellery, made warm cloaks, and cared for their children. Think of all the children who grew up with their fathers. In fact, I will raise you one: think of all the children who grew up with happy mothers and happy fathers, who had the chance to grow into happy people themselves, because they did not have to choose between hunting and motherhood, or masculinity and a pair of earrings.
