Tombs and papyri depict women at various occupations such as singers, musicians, dancers, concubines, servants, beer brewers, bakers, weavers, cooks, professional mourners, and as dutiful wives, mothers, and daughters. Women were also scribes, physicians, priestesses, estate owners, and merchants. Women frequently traveled alone on business, as noted by scholars Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore comment:
Several letters reveal that women were likely to travel in order to carry out property management…their travels between estates, or from estates for business trips to cities, testify to the women’s high economic level. These women generally are property owners themselves. In [one letter], Diogenis, a landowner, gives orders regarding her property to her estate manager until she arrives to handle the business…[another] female landowner, from whom we have two letters, declares…that she is coming to the estate and wants everything in order. (82)
These women were powerful figures in their communities, commanding enormous respect, as Watterson notes:
She was her own mistress and, whether she was married or not, could act on her own behalf without being obliged to have a guardian act for her…A woman could buy and sell: if a woman owned property, she could dispose of it, whether it consisted of land or possessions, as she wished. In one papyrus, a certain Sebtitis cedes to her daughter half an aroura (0.34 acres) of corn-land; in another, several women acting together record a sale of land. (34)
This is hardly surprising when one considers the number of female deities – Baset, Hathor, Isis, Neith, Seshet, Serket,(Selket), among many others - in the Egyptian pantheon and how highly they were regarded by all the people of Egypt. The Divine Feminine was fully recognized and respected in ancient Egypt as evidenced not only by the goddesses but the women in positions of power.