Women and War
Although the Egyptian ruler could view Egypt's foreign opponents ‘as women', foreign women fare better than men in Egyptian descriptions and depictions of warfare; so Asiatic women care for their panicked and injured male compatriots in late Old Kingdom imagery, and in a description of a Seventeenth Dynasty Theban attack on the Hyksos capital only Hyksos women make some appearance on the enemy palace walls and sound the alarm.[389] In iconography, female captives do not appear as restrained, although the Late Egyptian story of the Capture of Joppa appears to refer to both sexes as handcuffed.
No reference to the rape of enemies appears in either texts or iconography, suggesting that sexual violence was not an ideologically encouraged aspect of warfare.[390]The female Egyptian ruler, who does not visually participate in domination of foreigners in earlier imagery, becomes an active participant during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The early queens of the Eighteenth Dynasty appear to have exercised a more than ceremonial role in military matters and foreign relations. During a period of particularly well-attested and elaborate diplomatic letter exchanges, the queen (Nefertiti) may appear in the pose of smiting foreign women, might stand behind the king in a smiting scene brandishing her own weapon (Ankhesenamun), and could even appear in the guise of a female sphinx trampling foreign women.[391]