Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley Read online

  Even though the Egyptian woman enjoyed an unusual degree of freedom, it would be naive to regard her as a fully liberated prototype of the modern career woman. Indeed, all evidence suggests that men and women led very different lives. The Egyptians themselves, an instinctively conservative people who placed great value on the continuance of traditions, were happy enough to accept that everyone had his or her particular and predetermined role to play in the maintenance of natural order and stability. This belief in a correct and unalterable way of doing things became absolutely fundamental to the Egyptian way of thought. To a people who continually sought out and emphasized the reassurance of links with the past and who at all times felt an unusually deep bond with their ancestors, the realities of an unchanging social structure were not so much stifling as immensely comforting. No one thought of questioning the uneven distribution of wealth and status throughout the community, just as no one ever questioned the inherited right of the pharaoh to rule, because these were the traditional and correct social divisions which, it was fully understood, were necessary to maintain the status quo. Egyptian daughters therefore looked forward to leading a life very similar to that led by their mother and grandmothers before them, interpreting this continuity as a sign that Egypt, and therefore the world, was functioning correctly.

  1

  Images of Women

  Wherever you go, beware of approaching the women.

  Old Kingdom scribal advice

  The women of Dynastic Egypt created quite a stir in the ancient world. Legally free of the strict male supervision which more patriarchal societies imposed on their wives and daughters, these fortunate females appeared to their contemporaries to lead excitingly independent lives tinged with an alluring romance. In a land of exotic and unusual customs, where the king lived as a god, the gods took the form of animals and the entire population appeared obsessed with death, women were acknowledged to be one of the strangest phenomena. Their distinctive exotic beauty, coupled with fantastic rumours of lax Egyptian morals and wanton Egyptian females, simply added to their fascination and served as an inspiration to the authors and poets of Greece and Rome. It is this rather decadent image of Egyptian womanhood which has been perpetuated by more modern authors from Shakespeare onwards, so that even today the names of Nefertiti and Cleopatra conjure up a vision of the ultimate femme fatale.

  But just how accurate is this portrait of the active, independent and sexually liberated Egyptian lady? How did the Egyptians themselves view their womenfolk? And how did the women see themselves?1 It is not always easy for us to gain an understanding of the beliefs and cultural conditioning which lie behind the deeds of the past. Archaeological evidence, invaluable when attempting to assess material culture and used as the basis of all the subsequent chapters in this book, rarely allows an insight into ancient thought processes. For example, archaeology may tell us that Egyptian kitchens were situated at the back of the houses, furnishing us with a wealth of factual detail concerning different types of ovens and cooking utensils. It cannot, however, tell us who did the cooking. Was cooking a menial task to be despised? Or was the cook a respected member of the household, honoured for his or her skill?

  Fig. 1 Lady carrying goods

  Fortunately, the Egyptians have left us two contrasting means of studying their attitude towards women. An examination of contemporary arts (painting, sculpture and literature) can provide us with an idealized view of womanhood by allowing us to study the image which the Egyptians themselves wished to present to the world. At a more down-to-earth level, a consideration of the legal system and its treatment of females gives us an understanding of how, in practice, women were treated within the community. By combining these two very different types of evidence we can go at least some way towards an understanding of the woman’s place in Egyptian society.

  *

  The idiot who looks at a woman is like a fly sucking on blood.

  Papyrus Insinger, first century AD

  Representational art, with its colossal stone figures, vibrant tomb paintings and delicately carved reliefs, presents us with some of our most enduring images of Dynastic women, allowing us the chance to expand our knowledge of Egyptian society by examining and contrasting the ways in which men, women and children were recorded by their fellow citizens. However, Egyptian art differed greatly in both style and function from its modern western counterpart, and it is not possible to make a literal interpretation of the abundant painted scenes and statues without some understanding of the conventions which exerted a profound influence on the work of the contemporary artists.

  The ancient Egyptians did not recognize the concept of ‘art for art’s sake’; every single piece of their art was commissioned for a definite purpose and each image or statue had a deliberate and well-defined function. Aesthetic considerations were never the sole or even the primary concern of either the artist or his patron. This strictly utilitarian view led the Egyptians to regard all their painters and sculptors as craftsmen rather than artists and to confine their work to certain highly specific contexts, usually either the temple or the tomb. Here, standard and widely recognized formal scenes were presented not merely as a means of enhancing the décor but because they made an important contribution to the religious and/or political aspect of the building. An illustration of the king vanquishing his traditional enemies carved high on the wall of a temple, for example, both expressed the power of the monarch and reinforced the authority of the king, while a scene depicting a dead man enjoying the delights of the Afterlife added a magical strength to the deceased’s endeavours to reach the Field of Reeds. Scenes painted on the interior walls of private houses were similarly impersonal. Accurate artistic ‘snapshots’ of Dynastic family life were extremely rare, and almost all the surviving household paintings include a fairly direct religious or magical message.

  Not surprisingly, this deliberately practical emphasis stifled any impulse towards experimentation and creativity. Instead, it led to the development of strict artistic conventions and a repertoire of constantly repeated themes which satisfied the Egyptian love of tradition and continuity. Although there were many subtle changes in artistic styles throughout the Dynastic period, and although no two tomb walls are precisely identical, we find that the same conventional scenes are represented over and over again with very little variation in content.

  The principal female figures depicted in formal paintings are almost invariably upper-class wives or daughters included in the scene by virtue of their relationship to a particular man. That is, they are shown in the tomb of their husband, father or son, rather than being tomb owners in their own right. It is not surprising that these women conform to a stereotyped view of the role of the Egyptian female as a passive support to her husband or father. Women take a secondary role in the proceedings; although they may be both active and prominent, they are obviously less active and less prominent than the male tomb owner. Often depicted on a much smaller scale than their spouse, they almost always stand behind their man. How far this formal representation of the relationship between men and women reflects the true situation we can now only guess, but it does seem obvious that within their tombs Egyptian husbands wished to preserve the traditional image of the man as the head of the household.

  One exception to the general rule of the inert female is provided by the tombs of the queens of Egypt. Several of these women-only burials include scenes where wives act independently of their husbands; for example the 4th Dynasty tomb of Queen Meresankh (‘She-Loves-Life’) reveals the queen picking lotus blossoms while enjoying an informal boating expedition with her mother.2 An even more striking contrast to the conventional depiction of passive women is provided by the representation of a besieged Asiatic town found on the wall of an Old Kingdom

  Fig. 2 Queen Meresankh boating in the marshes with her mother, Queen Hetepheres

  tomb at Deshasha. This unique scene clearly shows the village women fighting with knives and bare hands to defend their hom
es from enemy Egyptian bowmen. Whether or not the scene should be read as an appreciation of the bravery of the local (non-Egyptian) women, or as a less than flattering comment on the valour of their menfolk, is not now clear.3

  I was an artist skilled in my art and pre-eminent in my learning… I knew how to depict the movements of a man and the carriage of a woman… No one succeeds in all of this apart from myself and the eldest son of my body.

  Inscription of the sculptor Irtisen

  Fig. 3 Women fighting in the streets

  The principal private individuals painted by the artists were almost invariably presented as perfect physical specimens dressed in gleaming white clothes, adorned with spectacular jewels and positively bursting with vigorous good health. The women, their femininity emphasized by rounded breasts and buttocks and less well-defined muscle groups, were all, without exception, beautiful. Every feature on their idealized body was shown from its best or most typical angle, and some rather contrived and contorted-looking poses developed as the artists struggled to paint their standing subjects with the head in profile, a single eye and eyebrow shown as from the front, the torso also shown from the front, the hips viewed from the side and the legs shown separately and slightly apart.

  To modern eyes, accustomed to images which faithfully mirror reality and the now conventional use of foreshortening and perspective, this stylization leads to an unnatural and rather primitive-looking painting technique which makes all Egyptian two-dimensional art instantly recognizable. However, to the Egyptians, who expected to see a formalized rather than an impressionistic form, it was a necessary precaution. After all, the Egyptians reasoned with their own intensely practical brand of logic, if a part of the body couldn’t be seen, it almost certainly wasn’t there. It was vital that the main figures painted on tomb walls should be both seen and understood to be complete because, if by some mischance the physical body should defy the art of the embalmers and decompose after death, the spirit of the deceased might be compelled to live on in his or her painted image. Few Egyptians were willing to run the risk of surviving minus an arm or a leg in the Afterlife.4

  The ‘fairer sex’, who conventionally worked indoors away from the burning Egyptian sun, were invariably painted with lighter skins than their ochre-coloured menfolk. This convention completely ignored the fact that society was racially well-mixed at all levels; as has already been noted, the Egyptians did not require their art to be an accurate representation of life. Some women were depicted with a black skin, but this did not necessarily imply a Negroid origin. Black, the colour of the fertile Egyptian soil, symbolized regeneration and was therefore used to indicate those awaiting rebirth in the Afterlife. Following this logic, a lady depicted with green skin was understood to be dead, green in this instance being the colour of life (i.e. the expectation of resurrection) rather than putrefaction. For both men and women, dead and alive, colour was used to fill in the outline of the figure without any attempt at shading, so that the image appeared complete to the pedantic Egyptian observers.

  Most Dynastic men of substance chose to be preserved for posterity with stylized rolls of unhealthy-looking fat sagging around their not-insubstantial waists. This less than subtle convention was employed as a means of stressing the wealth of the subject; clearly only the richest Egyptians could afford to consume large amounts of food without needing to burn off calories during hard manual labour. Fat became firmly equated with power, a message which is made very clear in tomb scenes where skinny workmen and those of low rank are shown working beside their overweight masters. In at least a few cases the conventional upper-class paunch may have had some basis in reality. Wealthy Egyptians were inordinately fond of eating and drinking, and the mummified bodies of several New Kingdom pharaohs, including Tuthmosis II and Ramesses II, showed large folds of flabby skin over the abdominal region, indicative of a life-long weight problem.5

  In contrast, fat Egyptian females were very rare indeed, and the assorted wives, daughters and sisters who accompanied the tomb owner always maintained an acceptably svelte appearance which was highlighted by their fashionably tight clothing. The obese and possibly steatopygic Queen of Punt and her fat daughter must have been regarded as both unnatural and unwomanly by the workmen who had the duty of recording their images on the walls of Queen Hatchepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri. Whether this female thinness was simply an artistic convention, or whether it should be interpreted as a deliberate comment on women’s less powerful relationship with men, is not clear. In any case, the fact that artists chose to depict all women as slender certainly does not mean that they actually were all slim.

  The more minor female figures included in the painted scenes did not need to conform to a stereotyped image of slender feminine passiveness. As these non-central characters formed a relatively small and unimportant part of the total picture the artists felt free to take liberties with their appearance, rejecting the rather stilted formal poses appropriate to the tomb owner and his wife and adopting instead a more naturalistic and lighthearted style. Ugly, old, badly dressed and fat women all appear to enliven the backgrounds of more formal scenes, and it is these more relaxed figures shown working, resting and going about their business, who provide us with a lively and far more typical view of many aspects of everyday Dynastic life. Nubile young girls dance, play their musical instruments and perform impressive gyrations for the entertainment of their patrons, while sedate maids grind endless bushels of corn to make bread and elderly peasant women toil in the fields pulling flax and gleaning grain.

  Egyptian sculpture was every bit as practical in its conception as Egyptian painting. All statues were automatically invested with magic or religious powers and could be used to represent or replace real people as necessary. Abstract or ‘unnecessary’ sculpture was therefore unknown in Egypt, and craftsmen confined themselves to depictions of gods, kings and wealthy individuals. All these works were ultimately intended to serve as a substitute person or god in either the temple or the tomb.

  During the Old Kingdom the vast majority of private statues were carved for inclusion in the tomb. These figures provided a convenient base for the soul of the departed to receive offerings and, like the two-dimensional images, could serve as a replacement home for the spirit should the original body decay. By the Middle Kingdom, however, most private statues were commissioned so that they could be placed in the courtyards of the great temples where they would serve as an acceptable substitute for the absent devotee and could absorb and transmit any benefits received from their proximity to the god. This tradition continued throughout the New Kingdom, to the extent that most major temples developed associated stoneworking industries. Therefore the pious pilgrim who had been unable to transport a statue from home was able to buy a custom-made figure – ranging from a few inches high to lifesize – to which his or her own name could be added. These proxy worshippers were placed in silent staring ranks facing the sanctuary; when the courtyard became too crowded they were simply removed and buried in a large pit within the sacred temple precincts.

  An Egyptian had to be either rich or influential to be able to afford a substantial hard-stone statue. It is not surprising that the recovered statues provide us with a fairly accurate reflection of the more high-ranking sections of society. Most statues represent relatively wealthy men, either single men or groups of related men who have contributed to the cost of a communal statue. Husband-and-wife statues and family groups including dependent children are not uncommon, and these almost always show the wife physically supporting her husband with her arm around his shoulder in a traditional wifely pose. Whether this should be interpreted as a subservient posture, or a sign of family solidarity, is not now clear. Statues of the king and queen invariably depict the wife on a much smaller scale than her husband. This is a true reflection of the relative importance of the couple, but reveals the difference between a god and a mortal rather than that between a husband and a wife; in other family groups the couple are shown mor
e or less to scale, and in cases where a woman of normal height was married to a dwarf the husband is clearly shown to be shorter than his wife. The woman invariably wears formal clothes which allow the artist to emphasize her sexuality by stressing the outline of her breasts. Single female statues, women-only groups

  Fig. 4 Husband and wife statue

  and groups where a woman plays a dominant role are very rare, suggesting that women through either choice, economic necessity or social opportunity did not invest in statues.

  He who commits any offence against my concubine, he is against me and I am against him. Look, she is my concubine and everyone knows how to treat a man’s concubine… Would any of you be patient if his wife had been denounced to him? Then why should I be patient?

  Letter from the priest Heqanakht

  The letter quoted above was written by the minor Middle Kingdom priest Heqanakht to his family.6 It is as indicative of domestic discord and strife as any letter written today and, indeed, the disquieting undercurrents evident in this angry message inspired Agatha Christie to write her popular murder-mystery Death Comes as the End which is set in pharaonic Egypt.7

  The literate Egyptians were inveterate writers, and the dry desert conditions have ensured the preservation of monumental inscriptions, fragile papyri and leather scrolls in which we have been able to read not only impersonal royal pronouncements, formal religious texts and rather dull business letters but also the private law cases, romantic love poetry and intimate family letters which give a human face to the sometimes rather dry archaeological bones. Ostraca (sing. ostracon: limestone chips and pottery fragments used as writing materials) were the memo-pads of the past, and were used in their thousands as Egyptians jotted down unimportant messages which would have wasted the expensive papyrus. Vast numbers of these ostraca have survived, allowing us a glimpse into the more humdrum day-to-day lives of the ordinary people. Perhaps we should not be too surprised to learn that personal relationships in ancient Egypt were not very different from the relationships of today; there were many loving and united families but, as Heqanakht’s correspondence suggests, there were also bitter inter-family quarrels over money and status. At all times gossip and innuendo were rife while the rumoured immoral behaviour of others was, of course, of universal interest.