Submitted by MeatballDom t3_11fm7qk in history
Bentresh t1_jakd353 wrote
Reply to comment by MeatballDom in The difficulties of translating gender in ancient texts by MeatballDom
> Regarding historic texts, the only thing that comes to mind is the case of Teuta in Polybius who still is referred to with the masculine title of Basileus (βασιλεύς) .
The Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut is another example. Although often referred to today as a queen – that is, a queen regnant – she in fact used the traditional Egyptian word for king (nswt, 𓇓𓏏𓈖). There was not an independent term for "queen" in Egyptian; the title usually translated as such (ḥmt-nswt, 𓈞𓏏𓇓) literally means "wife of the king," and Hatshepsut obviously could not be her own wife.
Additionally, texts from Hatshepsut's reign use both the 3rd singular masculine suffix pronoun (=f) and 3rd singular feminine suffix pronoun (=s) to refer to Hatshepsut, with some inscriptions even switching back and forth between the two. It remains unclear how much of this was intentional and how much was scribal error.
I'll also note that some ancient languages do not distinguish between masculine and feminine but rather animate and inanimate (e.g. Sumerian and Hittite). For example, whether one translates Sumerian lugal.ani as "his king" or "her king" depends on the context – which is unfortunately not always clear, particularly with fragmentary texts.
tigre200 t1_jalsnb9 wrote
I would also like to add that the practice of reffering a queen in her own right as "king" was also common up to the middle ages. Examples include the first swedish queen, reffered to as "Kung" instead of "Drottning"
LateInTheAfternoon t1_jalvomv wrote
Are you thinking of queen Margret? She was technically neither king nor queen of Sweden, only regent (apart from the time she and her husband were king and queen of Sweden for a brief period around 1360). Her son and later her grand nephew were the kings, and she was a regent during their minorities (and beyond in the case of Eric of Pomerania). To your point, however, her position as regent was nevertheless most commonly refered to by a male word: "husbonde".
AnaphoricReference t1_jb0peqb wrote
The Netherlands has had three female Kings in a row in recent history. The Consitution is quite clear the topic: the monarch is King, and King (written) may be read as "Queen" if a woman is monarch. This led to an interesting discussion about downgrading the title of Queen as consort of the King to Princess, in analogy to Prince for the consort of a regnant Queen, because people have gotten so used to equating "King" and "Queen". And in common parlance both King and Queen were used for Beatrix: without qualification it is "Queen", but it is for instance "the first Dutch King that [..]".
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