Episode
The Hidden and the Formalized: Female Queerness in Ancient Egypt
- Published
- May 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3644
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Summary
Thank you paid subscribers, KinchStalker , Phoenix , Tomas Johansson , and many others for tuning into this live video with Jordan Galczynski and Amber Myers ! You filled the chat with such sharp and interesting questions. This is exactly the kind of conversation we love — primary sources, spirited disagreement, duck genitalia, and the occasional new moon. We’ll be back soon. CW— mature themes; sex; sexuality; sexual assault What does it mean to look for queer lives in the ancient world? We don’t want to impose today’s freedoms onto a patriarchal past, but we also don’t want to erase the biological reality that queer people have always existed in the world. That tension—generative, unresolved, and genuinely fun to argue about—animated our latest live conversation, and we’re thrilled so many of you joined us for it. Two Women, Arms Entwined We kicked things off with a pair statue currently held at the Museo Egizio in Turin. Amber had shared it earlier in the week and it immediately sparked debate among the three of us. Dating to the Thutmosid period and likely from a tomb in the Theban necropolis, it shows two women — Idu and Rui — seated side by side in white linen shifts and elegant bipartite wigs, arms wrapped around each other in precisely the embrace you’d expect to see between a husband and wife. The museum’s own description calls the relationship between them “unclear.” Which is, of course, the perennial problem. Are they friends? Sisters? Mother and daughter? Could they be something more? Kara was the self-described cynical voice in the room, skeptical that ancient Egyptian society would have allowed a formally commemorated queer female relationship — while also being completely open to the possibility that a very real relationship could have existed behind the…