(February 5, 2015 at 4:35 pm)Nestor Wrote: I'm curious to know if anyone can illuminate the meaning of laughter at the sight of a naked woman's body in ancient literature. I have come across a few examples of this and do not understand what it means.
First example:
In the Egyptian myth of the contest between Horus and Seth for ruling authority, found on Papyrus Chester Beatty I and dated to the 12th century B.C., "Hat-Hor, the Lady of the Southern Sycamore, came, and stood before her father, the All-Lord, and she uncovered her private parts before his face. Then the great god laughed at her."
Second example:
In the famous biblical story of Joseph and his master Potiphar's wife (as a side note, there is an interesting parallel in the much older Egyptian Story of Two Brothers), the wife tries to seduce Joseph and when he refuses, she exclaims to the men of her household and her husband that "the Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me." Perhaps I'm reading too much into this instance of laughter but furthermore...
Third example:
In Plato's Republic, the following scene is recorded: "The women then must strip for their physical training, since they will be clothed in excellence. They must share in war and the other duties of the guardians about the city, and have no other occupation; the lighter duties will be assigned to them because of the weakness of their sex. The man who laughs at the sight of naked women exercising for the best of reasons is 'plucking the unripe fruit of laughter' he understands nothing of what he is laughing at, it seems, nor what he is doing. For it is and always will be a fine saying that what is beneficial is beautiful, what is harmful is ugly. — Very definitely."
Is it just me or was there some joke about the female form in patriarchal societies?
I suspect in long standing patriarchical societies female are considered weak and unfirm, and in the context where woman directly or indirectly seek to participate in activities where strength and resolved is called for, exposing parts of anatonomy that defines a woman would be seen as an ambarassing revelation of evidence of inadaquacy that warrants a snicker, sort of like a man on the verge of sex revealing a particularly undersized prick.
