1. Boudica - Queen of the Iceni (Died 61 AD)

Following the death of her husband, Boudicca led the British Iceni tribe against occupying forces of the Roman army. Her husband had stated in his will that on his death, he wanted his kingdom to be split jointly between the then-emperor of Rome and his two daughters, and when the Romans ignored this, annexed the kingdom, subjected Boudicca to whippings, and raped her two daughters, she was chosen to lead an uprising against the Roman powers. The uprising, carried out in either 60 or 61 AD depending on the source, was ultimately defeated, but not before Boudicca and her forces managed to kill between seventy and eight thousand Romans and Roman allies, and ransack two major cities, (one of them was Londinium – which would later become London). A Roman historian, Cassius Dio, commenting on the uprising a century later wrote:

“All this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame....In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh.”

2. Bān Zhāo/ 班昭 (45-116)

Bān Zhāo is recognised as being China’s first female historian. Bān Zhāo had been married at age fourteen, but when her husband died whilst she was still young, she chose not to remarry, but to instead pursue scholarship. When her historian brother, Ban Gu was arrested and executed as a result of his political affiliations, she finished his book, Book of Han, which detailed the history of the Han dynasty, incorporating information on female relatives of the emperor, (not usually included in such documents), and an essay on astronomy. Bān Zhāo would go on to write Lessons for Women, which sadly included the advice that ‘nothing is better than obedience which sacrifices personal opinion’, but which has retrospectively been considered as a manual on how women could avoid scandal in youth in order to survive long enough to become powerful dowagers. Bān Zhāo was given the title ‘gifted one’ by the empress and concubines of the court,

3. Zenobia (240-274)

Septimia Zenobia was a third century queen of the Palmyrene empire, (based in Syria), and remains a Syrian icon. By age eighteen, she was cultured, able to fluently speak three languages, and accordingly, married off to an influential member of Palmyrenean society, which was, at the time a Roman province. Her husband died within ten years of their marriage, leaving her with three sons, one of whom became King of Palmyra following his father’s death, with Zenobia ruling as Regent. Because Rome was, at the time, undergoing an ‘imperial crisis’, based on combining factors of both internal and external wars, plague, and economic depression, Zenobia determined this was the best time to break away from the Roman empire, forming the Palmyrenean empire instead. She did so in spectacular fashion, sending Palmyreneans to simply claim Roman-ruled Egypt as their own, before also conquering Roman-ruled Anatolia. Though Zenobia would ultimately be defeated in 274 AD, (and from here, accounts of Zenobia’s fate vary wildly from execution to public display to banishment to simply marrying a Roman man and living out the rest of her days comfortably), her rule was noted as one which raised an intellectual environment in court, patience towards subjects, and protection of religious minorities.

4. Hypatia (355 - 415)

Hypatia is noted as being the earliest female mathematician whose life historians can claim to have a fair amount of knowledge on. She was the daughter of mathematician and philosopher Theon of Alexandria, and she lectured in philosophy and astronomy as the head of Alexandria’s Platonist school in 400. Hypatia’s devotion to the sciences marked her as a Pagan to many of the early Christians – though it should be noted that she also taught a number of Christians, including one who would go on to become the Bishop of Ptolemais, and in preserved letters clearly regarded Hypatia with great respect – and amid rising political tensions, Hypatia was tortured and murdered by a group of Christian Zealots in 415.

5. Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria (Died 470 AD)

Euphrosyne is noted as being one of the numerous women throughout history who wisened onto how much easier life was a man, and as a result decided that they would simply just tell people they were a man. In Euophrosyne’s case, she did so to get away from a marriage her father had arranged for her, and ran away from to a local monastery, pretended to be a man called ‘Smaragdus’, and knuckled down spiritually. In an ironic turn of events, the monk helping her become closer to God was the monk who had prayed, with Euphrosyne’s parents, that they would be gifted with the miracle of a child. In an even more ironic turn of events, (or possibly just coincidental, because honestly I still struggle with when irony is really irony), Euphrosyne’s father at some point decided to visit the monastery, to speak to a monk in the hope of alleviating the pain of losing his daughter, and was placed under the guidance of Euphrosyne, dressed as Smaragdus, who comforted her father until she got ill, and confessed on her deathbed her real identity.

6. Patricia Clementina (Died 590)

Though little is known about Patricia Clementina, a gentlewoman from sixth century Naples, contemporary documents and letters reveal her to have had an uncommon amount of political influence in her region. It’s also noted through these sources that, even more uncommonly, Patricia’s influence came through her own wealth, and not simply a connection to a wealthy man.

7. Dihya (Died 701 AD)

Dihya was a Berber queen, political, military, and religious leader of the area of Northwest Africa now recognised as Alegeria. Historians know little of her early life, though it’s been speculated that her fascination with desert birds led to early advances in North African biological sciences, and that as a young woman, she married a tyrant leader in order to murder him on their wedding night. Dihya became the leader of her berber tribe in the 680s, and mounted a campaign of resistance against encroaching Arab Islamic armies of the Umayyad Dynasty, transforming the previously fairly unorganised Berber army into a well-disciplined force. Dihya’s forces took on the e Umayyad General Hasan ibn al-Nu'man, and defeated the General so extensively that he and his army retreated to Libya for a few years, during which time Dihya re-organised her army and subject. Dihya’s forces were ultimately defeated by Hasan when he returned with a much greater force, (which included Dihya’s own defected son), but accounts recounted Dihya as dying, sword still in hand, in combat.

8. Marina The Monk (715 - 750)

Another example of the ‘she decided she was fed up of facing the patriarchy, so she simply disguised herself as a man’ woman, Marina the Monk decided that she didn’t want to simply become someone’s wife, and so she (alongside her father this time!) moved into a monastery. They lived side by side, maintaining the deception (Marina became ‘Marinus’), until her father’s death. Shortly after this, Marina was placed in an unusual position when a local girl claimed the father of her illegitimate child was ‘Marinus’. Marina was banished from the monastery, and bizarrely agreed to look after the child she’d been accused of fathering. Ten years later, Marina and the child were both permitted to rejoin the monastery, though she was treated poorly by the fellow monks, still angry at her previous accused indiscretion, and it wasn’t until she was dead, and the monks began to prepare the body for funeral prayers, that it was discovered that Marinus was actually a woman, and y’know, couldn’t actually be the father of the child ‘he’ had raised. In typical fashion, right after her death, everyone realised they had done an injustice to Marina, and begged for her post-mortem forgiveness.

9. Ubayda (documents place her as being alive around 830)

Ubayda was considered one of, if not the, best musicians of her era. She was gifted with a ‘tanbur’ (a kind of fretted lute), when she was a young woman, and became so good at playing the instrument that a famous tanbur player of the time, Masdud, refused to compete against her in a competition, because of fear that he would lose, and another tanbur player noted that ‘anyone who seeks to go beyond Ubayda makes mere noise’. Ubayda become a public singer following the death of her parents, and got married, giving birth to one child. She also took on several suitors, who showered her in money and presents, ultimately making her a very wealthy woman.

10. Thumal (Died 929)

Thumal is recognised for obtaining the incredibly unique position of chief administrator of justice during the reign of Caliph al-Muqtadir; she was awarded the position by the mother of the Calipth, who believed that ‘justice was administered better with a woman in charge’. The historian Tabari noted that Thumal was good enough in her position to achieve popularity with the general public served by her position.