Alaa Alghamdi

In Women and Science in the Ancient World, Margaret Alic explains that there has been a long history of women as scientists and healers. Perhaps it is most natural that women were involved in the healing arts and scientist, as through the ages, they were “healers, surgeons and midwives”, dealing with the basic physical needs of their families and the larger community (Alic 13). Alic implies that this association between women and the physical and natural scientist is one reason that Greek deities tended to be “down to earth” (16). At the same time, however, the Greek tradition of philosophy and science was informed by Platonism and the study of ideal, abstract forms and purely logical derivations. It was broadly within the context of the ancient Greek tradition of inclusiveness that Hypatia of Alexandria lived and worked in the fifth century AD; however, in as many ways as she represented her culture and era, she was also an anomaly. Perhaps this is because Hypatia existed at a crossroads, near the geographical and historical meeting point or point of rupture between cultures and eras. 

As such, Hypatia was perhaps uniquely representative of her time, a period and culture that were rapidly changing following the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of Rome and the impending split between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. In the age that was to follow, neither Byzantium nor the European West was prepared to offer much autonomy to women – although, it may be argued, there were powerful women in the Eastern empire. Essentially, however, both were patriarchal societies. It is tempting to cast Hypatia as a representative of a golden age of gender equality, given her level of knowledge, respect and influence; however, to do so would ignore that fact that she was atypical for her time and unusually liberated, identifying as a scholar rather than as a typical woman and enjoying a high degree of freedom as a result. Nevertheless, she was also proof of the fact that in her day it was possible, if atypical, for a woman to hold such a dominant and influential position. As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, Hypatia was an intellectual leader and teacher, and both a scientist and a philosopher. In the centuries that followed, it would become close to impossible to conceive of a woman holding such a position. 

  Of course, the manner of Hypatia’s death also shows that she was far from unaffected by the profound shifts that were about to take place in society. Her murder came about as the result of a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria, Governor Orestes and the Bishop of Alexandria – one Christian and one pagan, and each therefore representative of a conflicting worldviews. The fact that she was murdered by a mob of Christians, and the brutality of the act, is heavily symbolic as well as factual. The Christian worldview would soon drive women as well as pagans into a disenfranchised and subordinate position. 

  Although she flourished within her day, Hypatia was a highly controversial figure in her lifetime, with various parties unsure about how to interpret her social and intellectual contributions. She was caught in the crossfire of the struggle between Christianity and paganism, as the Bishop objected to her presence on a number of counts – she was a ‘heretic’, a practitioner of experimental science and the pagan religion – and she was a woman who did not act as other women did. Cyril’s teaching against her incited the mob that led to her murder, an act that was carried out with a determination to annihilate all corporeal remains of the woman. 

Hypatia’s body was burned in the library of Alexandria (which was itself later destroyed when Alexandria fell to invading Muslims in the 7^th century). Aside from simple annihilation, the manner of her death ironically calls to mind the sublimation of the flesh to the higher call of learning. Hypatia was a Neo-Platonist, and as such, must have believed in the existence of an incorporeal and wholly abstract divine. Neo-Platonism in fact strongly influenced Christian thought; for Augustine of Hippo it was the last step before embracing Christianity. In many ways, Neo-Platonism goes further than Christianity explaining a spiritual principle that is beyond the realm of the body. The philosophy Hypatia embraced and taught theoretically transcends mortal divisions such as gender, but as a woman located in a historical time and place she was a representative of the feminine and, at least in part, fell prey to the fact that she was atypical and therefore inappropriate as a woman in her society. 

It is known that Hypatia was the author of several now obsolete inventions, but whatever written works she produced did not survive. What, then, is the importance of this scholar, who is noteworthy for the ways in which she both did and did not represent her gender and her society? She demonstrates both the agency and the vulnerability of women in the late classical period, and a type and degree of knowledge that was soon to be lost to much of the world, and only slowly and painstakingly recovered over the next thousand years. The society that produced, preceded and succeeded her was not particularly exemplary in terms of gender equality, but Hypatia herself stands out as a lone example of the transcendence of gender-based restrictions. 

Professor of English Literature *

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