A Brief List of Women Scientists through Time (Antiquity a.k.a. pre-5th century CE)

I start this blog with a caveat, throughout history there has been a tendency to under-report on women participating in the sciences... what follows is definitely not a comprehensive list. Please add your finds to the following list:

•  Merit Ptah, (2700 BCE) the world's first, currently known, female physician. 
• Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BCE), Sumerian (Akkadian) astronomer and poet, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad.
• Tapputi-Belatekallim  (~1200 BCE mentioned in a clay tablet dated), considered the first chemist. She was a Babylonian perfumer, the first person in history recorded as using a chemical process, the first referenced still.
• Theano (6th century BCE), philosopher, mathematician and physician
•  Perictione (5th century BCE), Greek philosopher, mother of Plato
•  Arete of Cyrene (5th–4th centuries BCE), natural and moral philosopher, North Africa
•  Pythias of Assos (4th century BCE), Greek biologist and embryologist with a special interest in marine zoology.
•  Agnodice (4th century BCE), potentially the first woman physician to practice legally in Athens. The story goes that she hid her gender except to her female patients, so she would be able to practice medicine, especially gynecology. When many women quit going to the the male doctors they brought Agnodice before the court and accused Agnodice of seducing "his" female patients. Agnodice then, graphically, exposed that she was a female. The response was to then  condemn her for violating the law by studying medicine. A crowd of women arrived to praise her medical successes. The result, the laws of Athens were changed and women physicians were allowed to treat women.
• Hypatia (370–415), Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher.
• Aemilia (300-363 BCE), Gallo-Roman physician
• Favilla (2nd century), Roman physician.
• Aglaonice (1st or 2nd c. BCE), astronomer Greece, regarded as a sorceress for her ability to make the moon disappear, in other words she could predict the time and ~area where a lunar eclipse would occur. One of a group considered the "witches of Thessaly", that were active from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE.
•  Maria Prophetissa (b/n 1st and 3rd c. CE), considered first western alchemist, developed several pieces of chemical apparatus.
•  Metrodora (ca. 200-400 AD), Greek physician and author
• Leoparda (4th century AD), physician and gynecologist
• Macrina (4th century AD), Greek physician and nun

News: Ancient Egyptian Sundial Discovered at Valley of the Kings

• Photo source: View PhotoLiveScience.com - A sundial dating to the 13th century B.C. and considered one of the oldest Egyptian sundials, was discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the burial place of rulers from Egypt's New Kingdom …more 

The 13th century BC (19th Dynasty) Valley of the Kings sundial may be the oldest Egyptian sundial. It was discovered just outside the Valley in (what is believed to be) a workman's home.
"The significance of this piece is that it is roughly one thousand years older than what was generally accepted as time when this type of time measuring device was used," said University of Basel researcher Susanne Bickel. Bickel has worked in the area since 2008.

From LiveScience:

The sundial is made of a flattened piece of limestone, called an ostracon, with a black semicircle divided into 12 sections drawn on top. Small dots in the middle of each of the 12 sections, which are about 15 degrees apart, likely served to give more precise times.
A dent in the center of the ostracon likely marks where a metal or wooden bolt was inserted to cast a shadow and reveal the time of day. [See Images of the Sundial and Egyptian Burials]
"The piece was found with other ostraca (limestone chips) on which small inscriptions, workmen's sketches, and the illustration of a deity were written or painted in black ink," Bickel told LiveScience in an email.
Bickel and her colleagues aren't sure for what purpose the workmen would've used the sundial, though they suggest it may have represented the sun god's journey through the underworld.
"One hypothesis would be to see this measuring device in parallel to the illustrated texts that were inscribed on the walls of the pharaohs' tombs and where the representation of the night and the journey of the sun god through the netherworld is divided into the individual hours of the night," Bickel wrote. "The sundial might have been used to visualize the length of the hours."
The device may have also been used to measure work hours. "I wondered whether it could have served to regulate the workmen's working time, to set the break at a certain time, for example," she said. However, Bickel noted, a half-hour wouldn't mean much to these people.
In the same area, Bickel and her colleagues have made several amazing discoveries, including a tomb with two burials, one from Egypt's 18th dynasty and the other from the 22nd dynasty, which was brought into the tomb some time after the pillaging of the first burial. A wooden coffin linked to the secondary burial contained the mummy of a chantress of Amun called Nehmes-Bastet. The scientists are not sure who would've been buried in the original tomb, though they found remains of a mummy without linen bandages on the floor of the structure. "This badly broken mummy is probably the original first owner of the tomb," write the researchers on their website.