This Corrupt Boss Was Charged With Sexual Harassment—3,000 Years Ago

The astonishing legal record of a village in ancient Egypt shows that men using their power to hurt women is a tale as old as time.

The sun god Re slowly coasted across the western horizon, descending to the Duat, the Underworld, as he did every night. Last gasps of illumination gilded stone buildings, scattered like a handful of grain about crooked streets. Dozens of men, bronzed skin slick with sweat and smeared with dirt, trickled out from the ragged cliffs looming above the little village. Having labored in the nearby barren valley since sunup, they finally let their shoulders sag with weariness. And a muscular man with a sinister air about him banged frantically on a door.

“I will kill you tonight!” he roared, repeatedly bashing a palm-sized rock against the house of the man who raised him. A gaggle of brawny youths pushed the muscular man back, and he pushed back violently. Before Re returned at dawn, nine men would bear the marks of his fists.

Meet one of ancient Egypt’s greatest recorded villains, a master craftsman named Paneb. He resided in a tiny village, nestled in a desert valley on the west bank of the…