Greek Privilege, Genital Mutilation & the Colorful Hellenistic World

A History of Mankind (167)

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The social divide between Hellenistic Greeks and Eastern subjects was only widened by the fact that many of their customs were incompatible to the extent that each community often found the other’s habits despicable.

The Greeks found one Egyptian custom particularly abhorrent: multiple commentators, from Strabo to Philo of Alexandria and Galen, remark upon female genital mutilation, noting that it was performed to curb sexual desire among local women.

Greek distaste for the practice (which never became usual among Egyptian Greeks) is a sign that, even if the average cultivated Greek could hardly be considered a feminist, even sophisticated places in the East, like Egypt, had harsher rules on female behavior and upbringing.