This volume has a clear purpose in the genre of academic books on ‘women in antiquity’, which is to be a book about ‘real women – their bodies, names, occupations, interests, sex lives, religious functions, and legal capacities’ rather than women constructed by men in myth or literature (p. 1). This is a refreshing approach, which the authors take through the use of a range of both archaeological and textual evidence ranging in time from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman Empire. Given that the book is immense – with a total of 74 chapters – I shall comment only on a few of the features and highlights.

The book is divided into ten parts along geographical/cultural lines; the parts are of varying length: (1) Mesopotamia (eleven chapters), (2) Egypt (nine chapters), (3) Hittites (three chapters), (4) Cyprus (six chapters), (5) the Levant and Carthage (nine chapters), (6) the Aegean, Bronze Age and Historical (thirteen chapters), (7) Etruria and the (pre-Roman) Italian Archipelago (eleven chapters), (8) Rome (seven chapters), and (9) looks at ‘peripheral’ societies (four chapters). The book ends (Part 10) with a coda on martial rape through the ages. Many chapters are illustrated, and the images are always relevant and informative. Often they show women depicted in different media, for example there are ceramic and wooden figures, paintings, reliefs and seals, and there are also maps, plans and other images. Most of the parts have a brief historical introduction that sets the contributions into context. These are helpful, given the wide coverage, and in particular will aid those coming to the book from the broader fields of cultural, gender or women's studies rather than ancient history, classics or archaeology.

With ‘real women’ in mind, it is to be expected that many of the women that appear in the book were members of the ruling or at least elite class, given that they are more visible in the sources, textual and archaeological. We meet the third-millennium bc queen Uqnitum of Urkesh, in northern Mesopotamia (pp. 53–6), the Late Bronze Age Hittite queen Pudehepa (p. 306) and a Mycenaean priestess called E-ri-ta (p. 611), from the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age transition there is Hatiba of Cyprus (p. 386), from the Archaic period the Etruscan aristocrat Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa (pp. 769–80), from the Roman Republic the matriarchs Cornelia and Atia (p. 885), and from the Celtic fringe of Roman times Boudicca and Cartimandua (pp. 1019–22). Of these women, to varying degrees, it is possible to reconstruct some aspects of their lives.

Pudehepa is an interesting example, discussed in T. Bryce's chapter on women in Hittite society, for she has left us some of her own words. The daughter of a priest and virtual co-ruler of the Hittite kingdom with her husband Hattusili III, she was a key player in Hittite governance and diplomacy of the thirteenth century bc. After the death of Hattusili, as Hittite queens (tawananna) did, she retained her status and influence. In a long career, she engaged in her own right in the international world of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean – she corresponded with Ramesses II, sealed key treaty documents, acted as an arbiter in disputes between vassal states and arranged politically advantageous marriages for members of the royal family. B.J. Collins discusses the role of women in Hittite religion and provides an image of Pudehepa from a carving at Firaktin, in which she is depicted pouring a libation to the sun god, next to Hattusili (fig. 23.1, p. 330). She also appears in G. Beckman's chapter, offering a prayer for her husband to the sun goddess of Arinna (p. 323).

Of E-ri-ta and Hatiba, amongst others, we know much less, which means the authors of the chapters in which they appear must inevitably explore these women through discussion of ‘women’ more generally. C. Boëlle-Weber, for example, probes the ‘lacunose’ Linear B records of Mycenaean Greece, limited in scope and date, to demonstrate some of the roles women played in Late Bronze Age religious life – at least as far as they came into the view of palace administration. The story of the reconstruction of a number of faces of Minoan and Mycenaean women and men from skeletal remains is well told by J. Prag (pp. 561–72). Hatiba of Alashiya is known only from the Egyptian Tale of Wenamun (eleventh century bc or later) – we can only speculate as to whether she really existed or whether there ever were female rulers of Cypriot cities. Nevertheless, L. Steel argues that the archaeological evidence, especially from graves, does hint at the presence of ‘wealthy women who potentially owned and controlled their own property, were possibly literate and who surely wielded some economic power and authority’ (p. 395).

J. Swaddling's chapter on Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa is an excellent example of combining multiple strands of archaeological evidence to bring one person's life vividly into focus. We see not only Seianti's tomb, with its representation of her (fig. 53.1, p. 769), but also her skeleton (fig. 53.2, p. 772) and reconstructions of her face (fig. 53.4, p. 777). Examination of her remains shows that she had given birth to one child and had suffered a variety of ailments probably related to some kind of accident sustained in early adulthood; these may have caused her difficulty in eating and speaking (p. 775). She died relatively young, aged 50–55. The jewellery from her grave shows her to have been a wealthy and fashionable woman (p. 773).

J. Picton's examination of the women of the royal ‘harem town’ of Gurob, Egypt, also names and shows representations of some of the real women of the town visualised in wooden statuettes (pp. 233–7). The emphasis is on elite women, many of whom can be named; the existence of 28 commoners is mentioned, but they are not named in the chapter (p. 238). The latter may have had a variety of roles including skilled textile makers, cooks and dancers, as well as servants. Of particular interest is the note on the different cultural meaning of ‘the trade in women’ – diplomatic marriages – in Egypt and other Near Eastern cultures; the former saw the receiving of brides as a sign of its dominance, whereas for the latter the opposite was the case and sending brides was a sign of status (pp. 232–3). Either way, women from thousands of miles away may have ended up at Gurob and similar sites.

Commendably, the book does not restrict itself to women of the highest status. We see Uqnitum's wet nurse Zamena and her cook Tuli (pp. 56–8), Alke, a prostitute in the Piraeus (p. 705), and in Hellenistic Egypt, we learn of an Olympias, a dancer and a flute player, and a contract she made for a year's exclusive service (p. 728). H.W. Becker finds women active in the Roman urban economy, for example a fish-seller called Aurelia Nais (p. 917) and several female owners of brick-making businesses such as Flavia Pelagia and shop owners like Mecia Dynata (p. 925). Combining archaeological and textual evidence, D. Sweeney looks at the women of the small workers’ village of Deir el-Medina, which, during the ten-day week in which the men were off working, was ‘the realm of women and children’ (p. 243). Some women's lives are partly visible through texts, for example Naunakhte, who attempted (unsuccessfully) to withhold an inheritance from the unworthy four of her eight children (p. 248). Some of the women at Deir el-Medina, probably unusually for Egypt, were able to read and/or write as there are letters ‘by, to, and between women’ (p. 247).

Because of the variations in evidence, we find a corresponding variation of styles in the contributions. For example, J. Younger's chapter on Minoan women relies mainly on art, including representations of women in frescoes and on rings and pottery, and there are no named individuals mentioned. In F. Lo Schiavo and M. Milletti's chapter on Nuragic women (Sardinia; pp. 749–68) and C. Norman's chapter on Danaunian women (northern Apulia; pp. 865–76) too, discussion is based on material culture. In contrast, in G. Ramsey's chapter on Hellenistic women and the law, she notes that the volume of written evidence for the period allows women's history to be ‘written as both micro-history of individuals and on the broad scale of regional comparisons’ (p. 726). E. Hemelrijk's chapter on Roman women's daily life, despite being rather brief, draws on sources such as Pliny for the life of Ummidia Quadratilla, and Plutarch on Cornelia, and also makes use of inscriptions, reliefs and other material artefacts. One such is the marble statue of ‘the drunken old woman’, which represented a social, artistic and literary ‘type’ (the anus ebria), known throughout antiquity and reflecting the presence of some of the most vulnerable members of society – represented ‘with little empathy’ (pp. 901–2). A. McCullough's chapter busts some of the myths about female gladiators (pp. 954–63).

The book is a veritable treasure trove for those seeking to find women of all ‘classes’ in the ancient world. It is a useful companion to S. James and S. Dillon's A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (2012). The contributors piece together their stories from multiple strands of evidence (textual, iconographical and physical), and where individual women are lost, tell us what they can. Where evidence is lacking or interpretation unclear, this is pointed out rather than glossed over. The simple act of naming women, even when little of the individual beyond the name is known, helps populate and balance the canvas of history from which real women have so often been missing, or at least subordinated in some way to their male counterparts. The presence in the volume of women's faces and bodies, their possessions and the locations of their activities or interment, also emphasises their existence and their individual lived lives without the mediation of a male intercessor to embed them in text.