If Kara Cooney’s explosion of revelations, insights and ruminations are any indication what learning can be like outside the classroom, hordes of hungry minds should be stampeding the Auditorium Theater’s doors for each of its National Geographic Live series. This year the theater is conducting a yearlong run dedicated to inspirational women. Cooney, a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA, held a large and appreciative audience enthralled with her description of what it was like When Women Ruled the World.
Nothing about the presentation was anticipated. The speaker, topic and delivery were each unorthodox and radically interesting. Because Cooney’s academic research extends beyond her vast knowledge of Egyptology to include specialized study in craft production and economies of the ancient world, she was able to add tremendous credence to her propositions on the status on women extending back to humankind’s earliest beginnings 20,000 years ago. You wouldn’t expect life to have been “better” for women during the hunter-gatherer period than the agrarian age that followed it. But the process of aggregating food meant much slower birth cycles; usually every four years. By the time the agrarian epoch was established and women gave birth every year to generate labor in a farming society, their role became more rigidly relegated to one of dependence.
Using her explanations to draw a direct line to the present day, Dr. Cooney took a long pause to elaborate on how unique and important ancient Egypt is to the history of women. Her emphasis centered on power. How did women come to it, hold it and use it. And her examples were many beginning with Merneith in the first Dynasty and reaching to Cleopatra in the 19th. Certain things, like the manner of ascension remained constant. Women were often named regent over a young male because early Egyptian civilization believed women proved superior proxies. They rarely ruled alone. And their contributions were often erased from record. Research nonetheless has revealed how effective many of them, like the careful strategist Hepshepsut, were.
Liberally peppering her speech with allusions to current political and social realities, Cooney’s feminist stance was open and added a refreshing dynamism to her delivery. The correlations she drew from the way women reigned in antiquity to how women would govern in contemporary societies, given the opportunity and the will, were remarkably astute and fertile ground for historical projection.
In January, Mireya Mayor will take the Auditorium stage to share her singular experiences as a primatologist and co-discoverer of the world’s smallest primate.
National Geographic Live
When Women Ruled the World
The Auditorium Theatre
September 26, 2018
50 E. Ida B. Wells Dr.
Chicago, IL 60605
www.auditoriumtheatre.org
