Since antiquity, women have often been linked with sessility and domestic spaces, while a great deal of famous travellers have been men. However, even if cultural expectations and divisions of labour have shaped patterns of human mobility in gendered ways, women have always been on the move. In this paper, I present an overview of their travel in Jewish antiquity based on the literary and cultural representations found in the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish writings, which reveal a surprising range of women on the move, whether the question is about local, regional or longdistance trips. Certainly, the textual sources are often fictive and do not therefore provide us with direct access to socio- historical realities in the ancient world. Yet, I argue that they serve as important documents of cultural history and echo the variety of the phenomenon.

Organisers: 
Troels Myrup Kristensen and Jakob Engberg
tmk@cas.au.dk

Location:
Antikmuseet

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