Uppity Women of Ancient Times

Uppity Women

by Vicki León

Profiles two hundred unusual women throughout history, including gladiators, public servants, murderers, rulers, scientists, and homemakers

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Feminism, Humor, Ancient History, Historical

239 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 1995

About the author

A prolific author of non-fiction, author of numerous books for young and old, Vicki León delights in unearthing unusual facts, fresh anecdotes, and uncommon statistics to create her books on the natural world and the flip side of history. Her book have won rave reviews from a long list of media that includes People magazine. Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Voice of America, and numerous NPR stations.

Her bestselling titles for 10 and up include A Raft of Sea Otters, The Secrets of Tidepools, and three titles in the Outrageous Women series.

Her popular titles for older readers include Uppity Women of Ancient Times, Uppity Women of the Renaissance, and the other Uppity titles and the travel title Scenic Highway One.

Reviews

[UniquelyMoi ~ BlithelyBookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, full of short but fun and interesting biographies of the women who did sit idly by while history was being made around them. They all, in some "uppity" way, were part of the making of that history.


Edited to add: If you're looking for some fun historical stories, check out the Uppity Women books. Having spent so much time reading historical romance novels over the past couple of years, I've come to appreciate these books even more. Each story is short so it's a great book to take with you on vacation for quick reads on plane rides, sight seeings or lounging by the pool.

[Iset · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about Vicki Leon’s books. On the one hand, her cutesy writing style is far too juvenile to my tastes, and she often writes about her subjects with a plethora of inaccuracies cropping up. On the other hand, she usually manages to highlight some obscure snippets of information that have passed me by. For that reason, I decided to read Uppity Women, taking the information contained within with a huge pinch of salt, mainly as a prompt that I could then find out further and more accurate information about the women written about in my own time.

There’s not too much more to say about the book than that. The entries are short, but pique the interest. Some of the women I knew quite extensively already, others were brand new names to me. I don’t really have anything to add, except to conclude that it’s a fun little book that should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, and to correct a few inaccuracies below.

Queen Shudi-Ad: Actually her name was Puabi. Formerly known as Shubad due to a misinterpretation by her discoverer, Sir Leonard Woolley. Weirdly, never known as “Shudi-Ad” as far as I know. Also there’s a lot of debate around whether Puabi and her attendants died peacefully or in a violent ritual, whether they died in the tomb or were placed there later, and whether the queen herself died at the same time as her attendants or whether the attendants were supposed to join her in the afterlife at such time as whenever the queen happened to die.

Urnanshe: Actually the little statue is of indeterminate gender, and the name in the inscription cannot be categorised with certainty as either male or female. We just don’t know if this individual was a man or a woman.

Amytis: Actually recent research points to the location of the Hanging Gardens in Nineveh, not Babylon, and built by Assyrian King Sennacherib, not the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Meaning the story about Amytis likely is just a tall tale.

Kiya: Her identification as the foreign princess Taduhepa is only tenuous, and not certain. We also know that whoever Kiya was she was not the mother of Tutankhamun; DNA testing has proven that a mummy known as the Younger Lady was Tutankhamun’s mother, and that the Younger Lady was a full-sister to Akhenaten and daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye. So whoever the Younger Lady was, she was not Kiya and Kiya was not Tutankhamun’s mother.

Ashursharrat: There’s no evidence I’ve ever heard of that King Ashurbanipal was a cross-dresser, or that he died in the manner the author says.

Roxane and Barsine: Or rather, Roshanak and Stateira, as were their real names. I winced at this entry, as a Hellenistic specialist. Leon says that Alexander’s bride was formerly wife to his defeated rival, King Darius – but in fact she’s confusing her with her daughter. Alexander married Darius’ daughter, who had the same name as her mother – the mother died in childbirth several years earlier, giving birth to what was likely the last of Darius’ children (the infant did not survive).

Meryet-Neith: The author says her husband was Pharaoh Djer, but in fact her father was Pharaoh Djer and her husband was Pharaoh Djet.

Hetepheres: Leon claims here that the practise of the Egyptian royal family of frequent brother-sister marriages was a result of blood right to the throne being traced matrilineally. This is a very old theory that has long been disproven. The crown did not pass through the female line, rather, brother-sister marriages were so frequent because the royal family were emulating the gods Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and because they were very protective of their bloodlines – it wouldn’t do at all to marry a princess off to some foreign king who could then possibly invade on his wife’s behalf if her brother’s line failed; native rule was something the ancient Egyptians were very particular about. Plus, most princesses were brought up to take on the roles of their mother the queen as they grew older, ceremonial roles as priestesses, for example, which usually the queen performed; trained in the role since childhood, who better to become the next Egyptian queen? This was the real logic behind brother-sister marriages in the royal family – thought it should be noted, it didn’t always happen; several prominent royal couples were not brother and sister.

Nitocris: Leon admits the evidence is shaky for this one, but doesn’t mention the fact that the lurid story about her avenging her brother’s death is most likely a juicy fiction picked up by Herodotus (there’s a reason why he’s called “the Father of Lies”), and that most respectable historians believe there was no queen Nitocris or Netikret at all. Microscopic analysis of the Turin King list suggests that a faulty transcription was made and the individual was in fact a male Pharaoh called Netjerkare, also known as Siptah I. Other surviving king lists list Netjerkare Siptah in the exact place where Nitocris supposedly should be found. Hilariously, the author gives one of the monarch’s titles as “the Sledge and Bee”. It’s “He of the Sedge and Bee” (a type of grass), not “sledge”.

Hatshepsut: Leon states that Hatshepsut’s heir, her nephew and step-son Djehutimes III, had some unprintable things to say about her, and that her daughter, Neferure, who she married off to him, was supposed to be her spy and snitch on his activities. In fact this is entirely fictitious. There’s no evidence of a falling out between step-mother and step-son. This myth is all based around another long disproven early theory. Djehutimes was known to have been responsible for ordering the chiselling out of Hatshepsut’s name and image as pharaoh, so early archaeologists thought she must’ve been keeping a grip on power too long for her step-son’s liking, holding him back, keeping him fuming in the shadows behind the throne. But we now know, and have known for a long time now, that Djehutimes in fact did not authorise this vandalism until many decades after Hatshepsut’s death. Not exactly the actions of someone burning with a desire for vengeance. It’s more likely he authorised this action as a result of Hatshepsut’s female rule simply being seen as a slightly embarrassing oddity that might give future royal women the wrong idea.

Ety: Weirdly, Leon describes her as “pint-sized” but in all images we have of her she is shown as the same height as her husband and other figures in the scene. Leon is correct about her being depicted as overweight though.

Tiye: Leon says Tiye married Amenhotep III before he became king, but we know they married in his second year as king because he had commemorative medals struck to mark the occasion.

Ankhsenamun: She might possibly have married her great-uncle, Ay, who became king after Tutankhamun’s death, but the only evidence for this is a ring in which their names appear – in Ay’s tomb his wife Tey is shown as his queen, and Ankhsenamun is never listed on any monuments as Ay’s queen. Leon states that Ay was Ankhsenamun’s grandfather, but that is incorrect.

Shepenwhepet: This segment describes the pharaoh being killed during an Assyrian invasion, but, oddly, no such thing happened during the Assyrian invasion; Taharka fled, and the Assyrians placed Necho I on the throne as a puppet king.

Berenice: Leon says that her father watched from the sidelines as she toyed with two fiancés before finally marrying a plump thirtysomething Ptolemy III. The author has got somewhat confused here. Berenike’s father himself negotiated her betrothal to Ptolemy III, then just a prince, but after he died, Berenike’s widowed mother broke off the arrangements and got Berenike a new fiancé, Demetrios Kalos. Berenike then had Demetrios killed because he was loathed by her people and sleeping with her mother to boot – Leon calls Berenike a gentle and virtuous entry into the uppity women – hardly! Alexandrian poets wrote odes to her bravery and sheer ballsiness for orchestrating the murder, re-arranging her earlier engagement to Ptolemy, and taking control of her kingdom. Also Ptolemy III could have been as little as just ten years older than Berenike when they married, and in his mid-twenties (although, since we don’t know his exact year of birth, it’s true he could’ve been in his thirties), and we have no evidence to suggest he was overweight. Leon describes Berenike’s act of dedicating a lock of her hair to the gods for her husband’s safe return from war, but specifically describes her hair colour as “honey gold”. We don’t actually have any textual sources for the colour of Berenike’s hair, but it seems likely that she was in fact brunette, as a bust of her in the British Museum still bears traces of the original paint, showing a ruddy brown pigment that was used on both her eyes and hair. Leon concludes by mentioning the Ptolemy IV murdered his mother and a younger brother – in fact that’s probably multiple younger brothers; two, possibly three.

The Other Cleopatras: Leon says here that Kleopatra III was the sister of Kleopatra I, and that Kleopatra II was the daughter of Kleopatra I, but she’s got it wrong. Kleopatra II was the daughter of Kleopatra I, and Kleopatra III was the daughter of Kleopatra II.

Hypatia: Leon says she was pulled from her chariot but that was the governor, Orestes, Hypatia was kidnapped. Leon leaves out the part about how the feud was between Bishop Cyril, the Jews, and governor Orestes who objected to all this bloodshed, and how Hypatia was only dragged into it because the Christians thought, without proof, that Hypatia had been advising Orestes as turning him against them.

Sobekneferu: Leon mentions this queen marrying a commoner, which infuriated the populace and led to civil war and her downfall and death, but as far as this Egyptologist is aware such a thing never happened.

Puduhepa: Leon says that Naptera was a daughter of Puduhepa who was arranged to marry Ramesses II, the pharaoh of Egypt. This is incorrect. “Naptera” was the garbled Hittite transcription of Nefertari, Ramesses’ primary queen. The two women would write letters as queenly counterparts, in the name of diplomacy, but weren’t related. Puduhepa did negotiate a marriage for her daughter to marry Ramesses, but that was not “Naptera”, that is, Nefertari. The daughter was actually “Maathorneferure” – at least, that was the name the Egyptians gave her when she became one of Ramesses’ secondary queens, but we don’t know the birth name of this Hittite princess.

Jezebel: See the work of Kyra Kramer in The Jezebel Effect for a chapter on exactly how Jezebel’s history has been grossly distorted.

Bernice: There’s no direct evidence that she actually had an incestuous relationship with her brother. A few ancient commentators say so, but not all of them do, and there’s no solid evidence.

The Four Julias: Actually Julia Maesa was the elder sister of Julia Domna, not the other way around.

Galla Placidia: Author says she was the daughter of Emperor Theodosius II, in fact she was the daughter of Emperor Theodosius I.

Musa: The author mistakes Octavian Augustus for Julius Caesar. Musa was given as a gift from Augustus to the Parthian king, not from Julius Caesar the dictator.

Poppaea Sabina: Leon says that before she married Nero her possible first husband was future Emperor Otho. Actually he was her second husband, and her first husband was Rufrius Crispinus.

5 out of 10

[Raelene · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think this book would be way more awesome if it were written with more detail and with a more mature style. I do think that it is very valuable, and realized that not a whole lot more detail could be added for many of these women. Props to her for doing all the research though!

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come one, come all, and read this is little book. In the pages you will hear stories concerning -

women posioning husbands

women being torn to death by monks

women avenging their daughters who were raped (by cutting off people's hands and then building statues that are missing hands as warnings)

women as lawyers, poets, and the first 0b-gyn

Thrill to the story of the man who tried to hide in a pile of dog poo and then got ate by dogs!

Read about saints and Paul's sidekick!

Scream at the girl who become a guy!

[Vicki Cline · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun read about people usually ignored, i.e. women in ancient times. It covers Egypt, Greece, Rome and Near and Middle East. The entries are short and humorous, but maybe a bit too snarky with the humor. She's written several other collections about women in different time periods.

[SheLove2Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are short and interesting biographies of women in history who did a little more beyond being a wife and/or mother. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in ancient history it was definitely unusual!

My favorites included:
Queen Aahotep of Egypt, so renowned for her battle skills she was buried with a ceremonial battle ax!
and
Queen Tomyris of Massagete. She laid the smack down on King Cyrus of Persia in battle in a big way and basically told his corpse...'how do you like me now?'.

If you're a history fan, like I am, I recommend it.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh look at me, with my new-found freedom to *not* finish books. This is fun to flip through, but I didn't feel like I was getting much out of the brief bios, and I don't have much motivation to read every single one. It might make good bathroom reading though.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. As the title implies, it is a fun and lighthearted read, not necessarily a scholarly work. It felt more like a fascinating conversation with a friend than a lesson plan. You get to know the author through her writing style, and I, for one, liked her.

[Evelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this book were fascinating, but overall I found it a bit boring. Some of the women I had heard of: Deborah, Esther, Boudicca, Jezebel, Cleopatra, and Livia. I applaud the author for her monumental task of research. I think what I didn't like so much was her writing style. It was full of puns, jokes, and modern wordplays that wore thin after a while. I am glad that I read it, but it would not tempt me again.

[Jacquelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short little bios. A fun read. Enough info to realize how long strong women have been around!!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is light reading with a purpose: to highlight the most fascinating women, both famous and obscure, or the first three millennia of world history. Author Vicki Leon has compiled quite a list, and rather than simply listing the obvious choices: Cleopatra, Helena, and Boudicca, she has scoured historical sources, gleaning whatever she could from women-hostile ancient sources and presented a wealth of information despite her book's size and format.

While her research is thorough and her accounts exciting, Leon's writing style can be off-putting. as the reader senses her struggling to appeal to modern readers, trying to make the text more hip rather than letting the fascinating tales speak for themselves. Leon relies a great deal on clichés and colloquialisms in all of her accounts. She eliminates Roman numerals from royal names and replaces them with text (i.e. Ptolemy Two), probably to the benefit of those who haven't seen a Rocky film. Finally, she has the annoying habit of giving historical figures little nick-names, making us wonder if she's taking her work seriously at all!

Sadly, this may be for the best. With historical literacy trailing in modern society, any attempt to get people to read Uppity Women is likely an acceptable sacrifice. This reviewer would gladly put up with people saying "Valentinian Three" if they also could recall names like Gorgo, Artemisia, and Hypatia: real women who broke society's mold and could inspire others to do the same.

Despite all of this criticism, any historian or casual reader should read Leon's work. It can help fill in the gaps of their historical knowledge, and enrich their view of history for all time.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a fun read & a great look at the many roles women had in the ancient world that we never hear about. Lawyers, philanthropists, sculptors, novelists... lots of variety here! Some features are very brief, but I'm assuming that it's because the information available about many of these women is very fragmented.

I can only give this book 3 stars however. Partly because many of the features are so sparse, but mostly because this book was written in 1994 and it SOUNDS like it. The great flaw of this book is that it was written in the style of a tawdry fashion mag article, full of dated nineties references. Ew. So unfortunately it has not aged well.

The content is still nice though, & I'll be holding on to the book for future inspiration.

For example, I'm playing a D&D campaign at the moment that is set in the Bronze Age-ish Thule setting, & this book has inspired lots of great ideas of how female characters would fit into that world in unusual ways. Since Thule is an ancient world full of Conan the Barbarian-esque macho-ness, initially I had a hard time rolling a female character that I was happy with. I wish I had put my hands on this book before we started our campaign, it would have made things easier!

[Cheyenne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, it's okay, but the "girlfriend!" tone/voice that the author uses gets really annoying, so it took me a long time to read this book because I could only take so much at a time! It sparked my interest in learning more about some of these women, but the accounts of the ones I already knew a lot about were especially annoying. The tone is really off-putting, but I love that there are so many ancient women in this book that I had never heard of. Another potential drawback is the shortness of the bios, never more than two pages long, and frequently one page or less. I would recommend this as a bathroom book, and will read the next one in the series thusly. NOT for serious historian-minded people - unless you can take it with a hunk of salt, and try to appreciate it for the bits of humor that do work, and for the awesome women who inspired it.

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was pretty excited for this book and was somewhat disappointed. I understand that women living in ancient times is not necessarily a mainstream topic. While I applaud Ms. Leon for trying to bring these women and their lives to modern day readers her simplistic and often juvenile (by this I mean silly and childish, not merely written for children) manner of writing is annoying and grated on my nerves. I do not know if this was the author's attempt at updating the material and making it more accessible to today's audience but her silly nicknames, cliches, and moronic turn of phrase make it harder to take her, the women featured in this book and their amazing lives seriously. I rarely write reviews but this book was so disappointed and banal that I could not help myself.

[Mari Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through researching inscriptions, court cases, letters and artifacts Leon presents mini-biographies of 200 women didn’t let being the “fairer sex” stop them from ruling over their lives. These are not literary figures but real women who lived between 2500 B.C. and 450 A.D. Besides well known Cleopatra and Jezebel, there is the poet Korinna who beat a man five times in a poetry competition in the fifth century B.C. Semiraris a Chaldean princess is credited with inventing trousers so that she could disguise being a woman leading military expeditions. Leon writes in a unique style, referring to women as gals and uses colorful phrases to emphasis just how sassy these ladies were in a time when men truly ruled the world. I would like to develop my own unique style of writing.

[May · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure what her criteria was for choosing some of these women but I had a hard time trying to appreciate Shibtu for "inventing" interoffice memos. It felt like the author was grasping for names to fill out the sections which is broken down geographically and then chronically. Without proper footnotes and a style that tries to be more down-to-earth than academic, this book fails to deliver and I found myself skimming ahead to see if it would get better. To be my bitter disappointment, it only marginally got better when there was more historical evidence surrounding a particular woman. Not a book I could recommend.

[Meltha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up at a library book sale, curious from the title. There are definitely a lot of women in here that I had never heard of before along with a few who are pretty well known (Boudicca, for example, and Cleopatra). The problem is, some of them aren't all that intriguing for much of any real reason. Others are "uppity" for being prostitutes or marrying family members (there is A Lot of incest in this). Others I would have like more info on, but everyone was either one or two pages. Also, I'm not sure what the Wild Women Association on p. 138 was supposed to be, as it was somewhat symbolically a blank page. Overall, some interesting bits and pieces scattered around.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was quite excited to receive this book but was slightly disappointed. it is written in a really informal style which does not serve the content well. If it's purpose is to take women's role in history more seriously, it has failed. If it aims to be 'Horrible Histories' for adults then I suppose it's successful.

The majority of the content is really interesting, although could have done with more in depth information (& proper referencing). Some stories did not fulfil the brief of Uppity Women: I do not believe that being depicted with a questionable hairdo is enough.

[Netanella · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little resource book, offering about a two-page summary of the doings of extravagant and famous women from Mesopotamia to the fall of the ancient world. A bibliography of suggested reading is offered at the end. A lovely volume to add to my shelf, and I'm glad I picked it up.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writing so vague as to be essentially meaningless. I appreciate the effort to bring attention to women often overlooked by the historical record, but this serves as nothing but a jumping off point to further reading - at *best.*

[Kris Dersch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Better as a concept than in reality. I liked the idea of learning about women who don't often get discussed, but it had this tongue in cheek voice that would have been better in smaller doses and I couldn't finish.

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gossipy anecdotal history turns out to be not my cup of tea at all, but then I find People magazine boring. YMMV

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another in Vicki Leon's series on Uppity Women and this one covers Babylon, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Levantine, Greece and its Islands, Rome and some of its provinces during 2500BC through 450AD. Few names may be familiar but most of the 200 individuals Leon chose will not be. But that's okay since the histories are a short page or two long.

Each woman's tale is fleshed out with historical and cultural information so that her actions (as well as those responding to her) can be better understood. Queens, harlots, musicians, philosophers, artists and athletes who all managed to achieve an notable accomplishment either for herself, her family or for her nation.

To the negative, Leon's glib colloquialisms can get monotonous and sometimes a bit juvenile but as each piece is so short, if it starts to annoy the reader, the book is easily set down and taken up at a later time.

2022-039

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fun book highlighting tons of women you've probably never heard of. I recognized a few inaccuracies so I sure wouldn't use this book as my sole source of information for all these people, but it's a fun starting point to find out more about history's most forgotten.

I really liked that the entries never had this like "yass go queen grrrl power" vibe for the more, ah, unsavory women. I've seen some women do that these days, act like it's some kind of "yasss go off sis" moment if a woman murders someone, and this book doesn't do that.

The tone is pretty fun, and I don't really understand how someone could see a book with the word "Uppity" in the title and then be AGHAST that the tone of the book isn't super serious. Or that a book about 200 people on like 190 pages doesn't have much more than a few paragraphs dedicated to each person.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book in 8th grade or so, when one of our progressive media center ladies handed it to me because "you will be in a book like this one day."

On a reread, I have to say she was oddly spot-on. While the super-90s, gossipy style (add deeply uninclusive and somewhat bigoted in there too but...) is off-putting to my more modern sensibilities, I did find it easy to read and enjoyed the catalog of interesting historical figures. Thank Goddess we have google now so we can get the facts/more pith to the story if we'd like.

A good intro to lots of interesting women, but it just wets your whistle. Use it as a jumping off point and ignore the shitty personality of the author :3

[Rebecca Thomason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I just like it. Filled with fantastic information from exhaustive research, the author crammed in more slang and mid-90s pop culture references than you can shake a stick at. So much so, really, that it detracts from the amazing content, for me. I am very curious if my students will A: get most of the references and B: understand the underlying information she is trying to convey. At least it is a great place to start learning about ancient women and their achievements/antics.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick, breezy, entertaining read about various women in ancient history who were different from the norm, ranging from noble queens to poisoners. Each woman’s story is quite short, and the longer stories I somehow found more boring. This book mixes fact and fiction, the truth and myth, and it feels like reading fables and gossip. That’s not a bad thing, and this book was pretty inspiring and interesting for an uppity woman in modern times.

[Emma McGilvray · Rating 2 out of 5]

i was very disappointed by this book. it is a collection of the stories of outspoken women, but only has a page, maybe a page and a half, on each woman. almost no context was provided and if it was, done poorly with outdated language. the author also wrote it in a way that it seemed like she was trying to be relatable and use popular language but didn’t really do it right. this was like if carrie from sex and the city wrote a few paragraphs on each woman after reading their wikipedia page.

[camille · Rating 2 out of 5]

maybe this is because i'm biased against (most) ancient history because it isn't my specialty and also i had to read this in a day for my class (worst circumstances to read a book) but i was not the biggest fan! the writing style and tone annoyed me a lot and it is very very a glossy cursory view, plus i disagree with some inclusions and exclusions from the list of women featured

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun introduction regarding women of antiquity who we didn't know about, but should have. One review mentioned the lack of information and wanted more detail, and so did I. Unfortunately, for many of these women, there is very little surviving material (as often mentioned in the text). Not a single narrative, just a series of short pages on each woman/women.