7
Ii-Neferti held on to her grandson, Anhotep, and, with her other hand, tapped the ground with a stick to make sure that she wouldn’t walk into anything. She couldn’t see at all now; she saw darkness by day. Anhotep was leading her to the wise woman to ask what caused her blindness and what she should do. When they arrived, the woman took her by the hand. Ii-Neferti couldn’t see the woman, but she smelled the smoke and incense and heard her quiet reciting of spells. Suddenly the wise woman said to her, “[I]t is the Moon, Thoth, the great god who harkens to prayer who makes you see night by day. You must make him a stela and present it with offerings and he will be merciful. But you must stop all this gossiping and quarreling, that is why the god has punished you.”
THE MOST IMPORTANT GODDESS IN THE LIFE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WOMEN
Without a doubt, Hathor was the most important goddess for women in ancient Egypt. Hathor was associated with women, love, fertility, childbirth, dancing, joy, playing music, and drinking. Childbirth rituals and symbolism were tied to Hathor. Mirrors and other objects connected with beauty were made with a depiction of Hathor. Love poetry mentions Hathor, mostly referring to her as the “Golden One,” perhaps because of her close relationship to the sun god. The Egyptians celebrated a festival of drunkenness, or ecstasy, tied to Hathor every year right before the inundation of the Nile began. But beyond Hathor’s importance as a goddess associated with the lives of women, Hathor was of utmost importance in the mythology that backed the Egyptian state and the divinity of the king.
Her name in ancient Egypt was Hwt-hor, which literally means the “House of Horus.” Horus was the falcon god who ruled Egypt after his father Osiris, the first mythical king of Egypt, was killed by his jealous brother Seth. Isis, of course, was the mother of Horus in the myth of Osiris, but in the mythology of the sun god Ra, Hathor was the wife of Ra, the mother of Horus and therefore the mother of the king. In the modern mind, Horus having different parents might be considered contradictory, but it did not bother the ancient Egyptians. When you died, you went to the afterlife with Osiris, and you rose and were born again every day with Ra; it is just two different ways to explain the same thing. The king was considered to be the falcon god Horus, son of the sun god Ra. Ra and Hathor were thus the parents of the king, and the king and the queen themselves were Ra and Hathor.
Hathor is usually depicted as a woman with a sun disk and horns on her head, but she can also be shown as a cow, which was her animal manifestation. Sometimes just her face is depicted front on, framed by the ears of a cow. Hathor was the wife of the sun god, but she could also be his daughter, and she was a personification of the eye of the sun god. Hathor was close to the goddess Sakhmet, the lion goddess; Bastet, the cat goddess; and Mut, the wife of the god Amun, as well as cobra goddesses such as Meretseger and Renenutet. From the Old Kingdom into the Middle Kingdom, hundreds of women were priestesses of Hathor, and many more were dancers, singers, and musicians in rituals and celebrations for her. Although her main cult temple was at Dendera, north of Thebes, there were many chapels and temples for Hathor throughout Egypt. In fact, the largest of the small temples at Deir el-Medineh was the Hathor temple. King Seti I (1294–1279 BCE), the father of Ramses II, had it built on the north side of the village.
There were also temples of Hathor outside of Egypt proper, as Hathor was thought to be the goddess who protected Egyptians when they went beyond the boundaries of the Nile valley. There is a temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim near the turquoise mines in the southern Sinai, where Hathor was worshipped as the “Mistress of Turquoise.” There was also a temple of Hathor as the “Mistress of Byblos” at the Egyptian settlement at Byblos in Lebanon. It could be that Hathor was tied to faraway places because of an important myth concerning her known as the “Myth of the Eye of the Sun” or the “Return of the Wandering Goddess.” The story is roughly this: Hathor became angry with Ra and went off to the Eastern Desert, and when Ra wanted his eye back, he sent the other gods after her. Finally, Hathor was persuaded to return and as she traveled back from the farthest reaches of the desert to the Nile valley, all sorts of people and animals joined in and accompanied her. Hathor’s return was one of the most important festivals and was celebrated throughout Egypt. Not only on her return did she become pregnant and give birth to the new son of the sun but her return also coincided with the inundation of the Nile and the return of fertility and life to Egypt.
The temple of the goddess Hathor in the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh on the West Bank of Thebes. (Bálint Hudecz/Dreamstime.com)
RELIGION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Archaeological material found in ancient Egyptian houses sheds light on the religious beliefs of the members of the household as well as religious practices that might have been carried out. Most of this domestic religious information comes from two workmen’s villages dating to the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE): the workmen’s village at the city of Amarna, which was only occupied for about fifteen years during the reign of King Akhenaten (1352–1336 BCE), and the village of the workmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Medineh, which was lived in for the entire period of the New Kingdom. At both sites, archaeologists discovered small chapels or temples maintained by the villagers, which were seemingly the focus of their communities. Other evidence of religious beliefs or rituals comes from objects or decorations found preserved in the village houses.
VILLAGE CULT CHAPELS AT DEIR EL-MEDINEH AND AMARNA
Both these government villages built for workmen and their families had temples and chapels built just to the north outside of their walled village. It is possible that the same people who lived at Deir el-Medineh were moved to Amarna during the reign of King Akhenaten, and that is why the chapels at both sites have similarities. It is also possible that these buildings were simply part of the religious tradition of the ancient Egyptians at that period and would have existed at many villages; it is only at Amarna and Deir el-Medineh, however, that they have been preserved.
The chapels all have a similar plan on a straight axis. There is an outer hall, one or two inner halls, and then at the back the sanctuary, which is usually divided into three parts. Sometimes the sanctuary is reached by a short flight of stairs. Chapels often have benches along the walls of the outer hall. Temples, of which there are two at Deir el-Medineh, never have benches. The chapels were built from stone, mud brick, mud plaster, and gypsum, and the halls and sanctuary were roofed with wooden beams, matting, and plaster.
Kings built two temples and one chapel at Deir el-Medineh, but there is no evidence of royal construction at the Amarna chapels. The largest and best-preserved temple at Deir el-Medineh is the Hathor temple built by Ptolemy IV (221–205 BCE) that replaced and expanded an earlier Eighteenth Dynasty temple of Hathor. There is also an Eighteenth Dynasty temple for the god Amun that was later enlarged by King Ramses II (1279–1213 BCE) and the temple for Hathor that was built by King Seti I. In total, there were more than thirty-two temples and chapels built at Deir el-Medineh during the time from the early Eighteenth Dynasty when the village was founded to the end of the Twentieth Dynasty (1550–1269 BCE), when it was deserted. At Amarna, twenty-three chapels were built during the period of fifteen years when the city of Amarna was inhabited.
At Deir el-Medineh, there is textual evidence that makes it clear that workmen divided into groups, perhaps even family groups, and functioned in the role of priests in these chapels. In some of the chapels, actual limestone seats with names were found. The texts on the seat, along with the person’s name, might mention how happy they were to be in the presence of the god, or they use the expression that they are “sitting in the hand of the god” (Sweeney 2014: 226–28). These villagers carried out the cult rituals for the gods or goddesses of the chapels, which in other communities or towns would have used professional priests. Women in the village functioned as singers, as the position of priestess no longer existed in the New Kingdom. Particularly in the temple and the chapel of Hathor, female singers would have had an important role in rituals and at festival times.
The important deities in the chapels at Deir el-Medineh were not only Hathor and Meretseger but also Amun, Taweret, and the deified King Amenhotep I and his mother, Ahmose-Nefertari. Amenhotep I was considered to be the patron saint of the village because it was supposedly during his reign in the early Eighteenth Dynasty that the village was first built. The priests of his chapel carried his statue out in oracular processions where legal problems in the village were decided by the movements of the statue. A full discussion of this oracle can be found in Chapter Two.
Amenhotep I’s mother, Ahmose-Nefertari, was one of the most revered queens of the New Kingdom. She was the sister-wife of Ahmose I, holding the title “Great Wife of the King.” Ahmose was the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who chased the Hyksos invaders out of the delta and reunited Egypt. Ahmose made his wife part of the cult of the god Amun at Karnak Temple, giving her a new position with the title of “God’s Wife of Amun.” She was the first person to hold this position, and later, she passed it down to Queen Hatshepsut. Along with this new title, Ahmose-Nefertari was granted estates, with workers and animals, that made her a very wealthy woman. This property was granted forever to the holder of the title “God’s Wife of Amun,” and the property was passed down from royal woman to royal woman.
Ahmose-Nefertari’s second son, Amenhotep I, followed her husband, King Ahmose, on the throne. Amenhotep I was a young boy when he inherited the throne, so his mother served as the regent. This meant that Amenhotep was king, and everything was done in his name, but his mother made all the decisions and was actually ruling for him. She was buried on the West Bank of Thebes, but after the end of the New Kingdom, both her mummy and that of her son were transferred into a cachet for the royal mummies in the cliff above Deir el-Bahari. Her mummy was discovered there in 1818 and is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Other than for deities, the chapels at Deir el-Medineh were also used for ancestor cults, like those carried on in the village houses with stelae and busts. The chapels had gardens to produce food as well as ovens for cooking. Probably animals for slaughter were kept nearby as well, although archaeological evidence for animals by the chapels has not been found and may have been lost in the first excavations done in the 1920s. In the first hall of the chapels were benches where families could sit and eat as well as set down stelae and ancestor busts.
The twenty-four village chapels found so far at Amarna all seem to have been associated with funerary cults and ancestor worship. Just on the east of the area with the chapels was a small cemetery with a number of burial shafts. The families in the Amarna workmen’s village did not have elaborate tombs with courtyards, or large houses, for having banquets, but they had these chapels, probably shared with their neighbors. The chapels had benches on the outer halls for sitting as well as eating, evidenced in some of the halls where seeds and bits of bone were found. There were large jars and T-shaped basins for water, and in annexes to the chapels were pens for animals, such as pigs, based on the bones and coprolites found. There were also areas for slaughtering the animals as well as ovens for cooking. Pottery bowls were discovered with burn marks in them, so incense was being burned. There were also small gardens next to the chapels, or in some cases, the gardens were in an open chapel courtyard. Fragments of leaves and remains of flower heads were also found in some of the chapels, indicating the making of garlands. Scenes in elite tombs of funerary banquets always show the guests wearing floral garlands.
Along with ancestors, there is written evidence from some of the chapels that gods and goddesses were also worshipped. The names of the gods Aten, Amun, Isis, and Shed have been found. Aten was the sun disk, the god whose cult King Akhenaten established, and for whom he built the city of Amarna, or Akhetaten, the ancient Egyptian name of the city. Shed is a god who appeared during this time. His name means “savior,” and people called upon him for help. Shed is a form of the god Horus and is shown as a young man with a bow and arrow and often driving a chariot. These chapels were plastered and painted with religious symbols and designs, although most had been lost except from Chapel 561, the largest chapel, which, for example, has a lotus flower frieze along the top of the walls in the inner hall, vultures with wings spread out in the small hall before the sanctuary, and a panel with winged sun disk in the sanctuary itself. The artistic conventions of the Amarna Period are not apparent in the decoration, however.
THE GODDESS MERETSEGER AT DEIR EL-MEDINEH
Meretseger was a local Theban cobra goddess who was important during the New Kingdom, especially at the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh. Her name means “She who loves silence,” a good name for a snake that is dangerous when bothered. Meretseger was thought to inhabit the mountain on the West Bank of Thebes known as the Peak of the West. At the base of the mountain on the front side facing east was a shrine of Hathor since at least the time of the Sixth Dynasty, so both goddesses were associated with this mountain and with each other.
Certainly, the villagers had to worry about cobras coming into their houses, so worshipping and offering to the snake goddess Meretseger may have been a way to try and pacify her and remove the danger. On the pathway leading from the village of Deir el-Medineh southwest to the Valley of the Queens, there was a rock outcropping that was considered sacred to both the god Ptah and Meretseger. The most important temple for the god Ptah was in Memphis, in Lower Egypt, but since Ptah was the god of craftsmen, it was logical that he was worshipped at Deir el-Medineh, the village of workmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs in both the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.
In particular, Meretseger was thought to punish those who had misbehaved in some way, causing them to become ill or blind. To be healed, a villager would set up a stela at the rock sanctuary, where small chambers had been cut into the rock, dedicating the stela to Meretseger and begging for forgiveness. Meretseger was one of the most revered deities in the Theban area, and she was considered to be merciful to those who repented.
THE CONCEPT OF THE AFTERLIFE
The seeming preoccupation that the ancient Egyptians had with death came about from their wish to live forever and to overcome death. They wanted to continue the life that they had on the earth even after they died. This life after death took place in the Sekhet Iaru, or the Field of Rushes, which was a copy in heaven of the Nile valley. There, people would spend eternity enjoying abundant fields and with magnificent crops of grain, trees groaning with fruits, and lush and beautiful flowers everywhere. The afterlife reflected their former life on the earth but was perfect, without any toil, trouble, and suffering.
To get into the afterlife, a person would have to be physically and psychologically intact, just like they were in life. This meant that a person had to have their body, their ka or soul, and their ba, “energy” or “liveliness.” A person’s ka was created at the time the person was, and it was inseparable from them until they died. Your ka was like your twin. When you died, your ka lived in the “house of eternity,” your tomb, and had to be taken care of, just as you had been in life. A contract would be signed with a ka-priest or ka-priestess who would go to the tomb everyday with food and drink to offer to your ka. The priest’s or priestess’s descendants would inherit the job, theoretically ensuring that someone would bring food offerings to the tomb forever. Although there is evidence of more men serving as ka-priests than women as ka-priestesses, they were known, and at least two women in the Old Kingdom were overseers of these priests and priestesses.
The offerings for the deceased were placed in the chapel in front of a “false” door—a symbolic door carved in stone and only used by the ka, who was able to pass through it. There was also a statue of the deceased in the tomb, referred to as a ka-statue that the ka could inhabit. The ka-statue was placed in a small, enclosed room, called a serdab, often positioned behind the false door. The serdab could also be a separate room with a small vertical opening to let the ka look out at the offerings, hear the chants of the priest or priestess, and smell the incense that would be burned.
The ba is always shown as a bird. The ba left the corpse during the day and flew out of the tomb to soak up sunlight, warmth, and life. It would then return back to the corpse at night and enliven it. Because it was important that the body was preserved and appear lifelike and recognizable to the ka and ba, the ancient Egyptians experimented with preserving the body, and the practice of mummification developed.
MUMMIFICATION
A body buried in the hot desert sand dries out and becomes naturally mummified. When the ancient Egyptians began to place bodies in tombs, however, they had to counteract decomposition by developing a method of artificial mummification. Mummification was carried out by a special group of priests in a structure that was possibly temporary and set up for the occasion, called the Per-nefer, “The Beautiful House.” The body was laid on a wooden embalming table, and the brain was removed through a small hole made at the back of the nostrils or else at the base of the skull. Then, certain other internal parts of the body were removed. A cut was made in the lower-left abdomen, and the lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines were taken out. The reason for the immediate removal of these organs was to stop the decomposition of the body. Each one of these organs was embalmed separately and placed in one of the four stone jars, called canopic jars. These jars were, in turn, placed in a canopic box. At the funeral, this box was placed next to the coffin in the burial chamber.
The cavity of the body was then packed with linen and the body heaped with natron, a substance composed mainly of sodium carbonate and bicarbonate. Natron dehydrated the body, removing moisture and fat, so that the body did not decay. After forty days, the natron was removed, and the mummy was washed with palm wine and spices. Then the wrapping ritual began, which took fifteen days if done properly. As the body was wrapped, spells were recited, and various small objects with amuletic powers were placed in the wrappings to protect the body.
Scholars are discovering through CT scans of mummies that not everyone considered elite in ancient Egypt, and discovered buried in well-provisioned tombs, underwent the embalming procedure that was just described. A man named Kha, who seems to have been an architect associated with the tombs at the Valley of the Kings in the period of the reign of kings Amenhotep II to Amenhotep III, was discovered in his undisturbed tomb, Theban Tomb 8, with his wife Merit, in the western cemetery at Deir el-Medineh. In both their mummies, the organs that would normally be removed are present, although, of course, they are desiccated, and no incision to remove their organs can be seen in the lower abdomen of either of them.
Merit’s body had been wrapped in many layers of linen that have been tested and show that natron, oils, plant gum, balsam, and beeswax had all been applied to the body or the wrappings. Her mummy was then placed in an anthropoid, or human-shaped, wooden coffin. The top of the coffin was completely covered in gold leaf, and the sides were decorated with gold leaf depictions of deities. This coffin was then placed inside of a larger, rectangular outer coffin, which was completely covered in black bitumen. Merit had a stucco and linen mummy mask over her face and shoulders. It was covered in gold leaf that was then decorated with inlaid glass. On her mummy were gold earrings, a broad collar, a bead necklace, a bracelet, a girdle of gold beads in the shape of cowrie shells, and six gold rings. Merit died when she was about thirty years old, but no evidence for the cause of her death was found.
THE HEART AMULET AND THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
Beginning at the end of the Middle Kingdom, around 1650 BCE, an amulet called a “heart scarab” was first placed on royal mummies, placed over the area of the heart, which was not removed from the body because the heart was thought to be the place of the mind or conscience. The underside of the heart scarab was inscribed with a text from what is known now as the Book of the Dead. The ancient Egyptian name was the Book of Coming Forth by Day, as the spells in it were to make the deceased live again with the rising of the sun each morning. The spells from the Book of the Dead were mostly written on a papyrus roll and placed in the tomb, but the spells could also be painted on tomb walls, or certain spells could be put on particular objects. Book of the Dead papyri appear at the end of the Second Intermediate Period. There were almost two hundred spells that made up the Book of the Dead, many of which had their origin in the Pyramid Texts that appeared in the Old Kingdom reign of King Unas, around 2375 BCE, and the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE), which developed out of the Pyramid Texts. Not all the spells were always written in copies of the Book of the Dead, although a few spells were essential and appeared in all the copies.
Both men and women could have a copy of the Book of the Dead put in their tomb with them. Someone could buy a prewritten copy with spaces left in certain places for their names to be added in or if one could afford it, request a copy done specifically for them so that their names could be added into the text as it was written and their figures put into some of the vignettes or pictures. Merit, wife of Kha, was not only mentioned in and shown in her husband’s Book of the Dead but she had her own copy of the Book of the Dead as well, which is somewhat unusual.
Spell 30B, which ensured that the heart would not testify against the deceased in an important judgment ritual called “The Weighing of the Heart,” was put on the underside of the heart scarab. “The Weighing of the Heart” was a ritual that the deceased was believed to go through during the first night after being buried. It took place in front of the god Osiris, the god who ruled the afterlife, and if the deceased passed the “test,” they went into the afterlife, joining the god Osiris for eternity. Part of the spell written on the heart scarab reads, “O my heart which I had from my mother … Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance!” (Faulkner 1972: 27).
At the Weighing of the Heart ritual, which is depicted in a scene, or a vignette drawn in Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, the deceased had to recite the “Negative Confession” to a group of underworld deities, denying that they had committed any of forty-two different sins in their lifetime. The deceased had to address each god or goddess and then state a particular sin that they did not commit. This confession begins: “O, Far-strider who came forth from Heliopolis, I have done no falsehood. O, Fire-embracer who came forth from Kheraha, I have not robbed. O, Nosey who came forth from Hermopolis, I have not been rapacious” (Faulkner 1972: 31), and so on until the deceased had insisted that they were innocent of all forty-two sins.
A “Weighing of the Heart” scene from the Book of the Dead. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
After this “Negative Confession,” the heart of the deceased was weighed in a scale pan against the feather of Maat, symbolizing “Truth” or “Justice.” If the heart of the deceased was heavy with sin, the scale pan with the heart would sink down, and a terrifying creature named Ammit, who had the head of a crocodile, the fore parts of a lion, and the hind parts of a hippopotamus, would gobble up the heart, thus destroying the physical completeness of the deceased and ending their chance to live again in the afterlife. If the deceased was not physically and psychologically complete in the way they were on the earth, they could not enter the afterlife and live again; the ancient Egyptians referred to this as the “Second Death.”
THE FUNERAL
When the wrapping of the body was completed, the deceased was handed back to their family for the funeral. A procession, the size and extravagance of which would have depended on the wealth of the deceased, would take the mummy to the tomb. Depictions of New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) funeral processions at Thebes always show the crossing of the Nile, going from the east to the west side, as the town of Thebes was on the east side and the necropolis with the tombs on the west. The crossing of the Nile was done by boat, and then the deceased would be dragged to the tomb on a sled pulled by oxen or cattle, accompanied by men carrying the possessions of the deceased that would be placed in the tomb.
Mourners would also accompany the procession, along with two women who played the roles of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, the two sisters of Osiris, who, in ancient Egyptian mythology, were responsible for protecting the body of Osiris and burying him. These two goddesses were referred to as the djerty, “the two kites,” as kites were birds of prey whose shrill cries resemble wailing. Nephthys was always positioned protectively at the head of the coffin of the deceased, while Isis was at the feet, because that is how they had protected Osiris. Female and male mourners were divided into separate groups; the female group always appeared to be larger, consisting of not only female relatives but also professional mourners hired for the occasion. The women had their linen dresses tied below their breasts, so they were partially uncovered. Their long hair was loose and unkempt. They wailed and threw up their arms, threw dust over their heads, and wept. Scenes of this almost-choreographed anguish and lamenting have been referred to as a “performance of loss” (Riggs 2013: 158).
By the time of the New Kingdom, the main funeral ritual, “The Opening of the Mouth,” was carried out on the mummy in the courtyard area in front of the tomb. This ritual’s name comes from the fact that the mouth was the first of twenty-three parts of the deceased’s body that was touched with specific objects so that the body could function again in the afterlife. The mouth was touched with an adze tipped with meteoritic iron so that the deceased could talk and eat again. After this funeral ritual was completed, the deceased was buried and, in the coming twelve hours of night, faced the judgment with the weighing of the heart and the passage to the afterlife. If one passed into the afterlife successfully, one became an akh, an “effective one,” and lived again.
TOMB ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION
Because funerary structures were to last for eternity, the ancient Egyptians built them, or cut them, out of stone. Although ancient Egyptian tombs differed in size and plan over time, they all fulfilled two specific functions. The substructure of the tomb under the ground protected the body, while the superstructure, above the ground, provided a place for a cult of the deceased. For the most part, nonroyal tombs of the Old Kingdom took the form of a “mastaba,” which was built out of limestone blocks in a rectangular or bench shape. The name “mastaba” comes from the Arabic word for a bench. Good examples of mastabas can be seen at the Old Kingdom Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 BCE) site of Giza.
The mastaba is basically solid except for a vertical shaft through the superstructure down to a small burial chamber, just large enough for the sarcophagus and some accompanying objects. After the burial, the entire shaft was filled with rubble and closed at the top with stone. The only space that opened up in the superstructure was a small L-shaped room in the southeast corner that functioned as a chapel for offerings for the deceased. The focal point of the chapel was a “false door” in the west wall. It is a stone replica of a door with an offering formula to feed the deceased along the top and then a depiction of the deceased sitting at a table of bread. Down along the sides are the titles and name of the deceased.
Often right behind the false door was a small hidden room called the “serdab,” which is the Arabic word for a cellar. In the serdab was the ka-statue of the deceased, which the deceased could occupy. Sometimes servant statuettes were placed in the serdab as well, depicting, for example, a woman grinding grain and another woman mixing the mash for beer. The ka could also pass through the false door, and when the ka-priest arrived with food and drink for the deceased, the ka could partake of the sustenance and live. If the ka-priest could not come, the table of bread scene showed the deceased eating, and the carved offering formula with its hieroglyphic words for beer, bread, oxen, ducks, and other foods could feed the deceased. The servant statuettes could also feed the ka. Later in the Old Kingdom, more rooms were put into the mastaba, and the walls covered with scenes of daily life. There were scenes of life on the estate of the deceased with the growing of plants and rearing of animals. Then scenes closer to the false door showed male and female servants bringing food to the deceased.
A second type of tomb, the rock-cut tomb, was also used in the Old Kingdom, particularly in the provinces of Upper Egypt, where the tombs were cut into the limestone cliffs facing the Nile. Generally, a rock-cut tomb had a single chamber cut in the rock for the tomb chapel, and the burial chamber was a shaft cut down in the rock from the chamber floor. Both mastabas and rock-cut tombs continued to be used through the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE), but by the New Kingdom (1550–1295 BCE), a rock-cut tomb rather than a built tomb was the rule. The best examples of New Kingdom tombs can be seen on the West Bank of ancient Thebes where religious and government officials were buried. More than four hundred rock-cut tombs are known. The tombs can be large or small but follow a fairly typical plan.
An enclosed court was built with mudbrick walls in front of the rock face of the Theban mountain. In the rock at the back of the court, the entrance into the tomb chapel was cut. Sometimes a small brick pyramid was built over the doorway into the chapel. The shaft down to the burial chamber was cut out on the floor of the open court. The interior of the tomb chapel was arranged in a T shape, with a corridor going straight in from the door and a transverse corridor just inside the door. The interior walls were all painted with scenes. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, the walls were decorated with scenes of the official’s daily life as well as the rituals for his burial, while in the later New Kingdom, religious scenes dominated.
In all these tombs, the focus is on the male person for whom it was built. As most women married, they were taken care of by their husbands and included into their tombs. The woman could have a ka-statue in her husband’s serdab and also could be shown in the table of bread scene with him or could be shown with him in other scenes in the tomb. A wife was given a separate shaft down to a burial chamber, like her husband. Only rarely, however, did a woman, especially a nonroyal woman, have her own tomb. A tomb, like a mastaba at Giza, was granted to an official by the king, so a woman could not have a tomb like that, as women did not function as government officials. From what we know, if a woman was not buried with her husband, she could be buried with her father or added into a family tomb.
DOMESTIC CULTS FOR THE AKH, OR “SPIRIT,” IN HOUSES AT DEIR EL-MEDINEH
In the second room of the houses in the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh were niches in the wall that once held a stela or a bust of a family ancestor, who was thought of as having lived a good and moral life. In one house, excavators found three niches, and on the ground below were two ancestor busts that must have fallen out of them. This was a lucky find, as it provided unquestionable evidence for the use of the niches. These ancestors were referred to as an akh iqer n Ra, “an efficient spirit of Ra,” meaning that this person had entered the afterlife and was in the company of gods such as Ra and Osiris. On these stone stelae, the ancestor is shown sitting in front of offerings and holding a lily, a symbol of rebirth. The stelae have inscriptions naming the ancestor and the person who set up the stelae and a short offering formula for them. A majority of the ancestors on the stelae are male. The busts are carved out of limestone, sandstone, or wood. They have no inscriptions and are often very worn or damaged, and their original paint is gone. This has made it very difficult for scholars to identify them as male or female, and it was possible that they were never meant to actually resemble a specific person. There are about ninety busts known from Deir el-Medineh, more than any other place in Egypt.
The stelae and the busts were the focus of a domestic cult that was concerned with solving personal and family problems in the household as well as continuing to remember the deceased. The ancestor was offered libations and food and was asked to act as an intermediary with a god or goddess to take care of a difficulty or problem. These ancestor stelae were also found in the chapels in the village, and so we can assume that they served the same purpose in both and could be worshipped in chapels and private houses and perhaps moved from one to the other.
LETTERS TO THE DEAD
Another way that the living made contact with relatives who had passed away takes the form of letters, referred to as “Letters to the Dead.” There are only around two dozen of these letters known. The earliest are from the time of the later Old Kingdom, and they seem to stop by the end of the New Kingdom, a period lasting from about 2345 BCE to 1295 BCE. The early letters are written on clay vessels filled with a food offering, which were then placed at the tomb of the deceased. Later letters were written on papyri or sometimes a piece of limestone. The letters generally explain a problem that the living relative is having, such as illness, some kind of upset, or problem with inheritance, and either accuse the deceased of causing it or request that the deceased solve the problem. One of the most famous of these letters, dating from the New Kingdom, is from a man who writes to his deceased wife, describing their marriage and how kind and thoughtful he was always to her and how he has remained faithful to her for the three years since she died. He pleads, “What have I done against you wrongfully for you to get in this evil disposition in which you are?” (Wente 1990: 216). The letters to females seem in general to want to pacify them, reminding them of how much they are missed and that they must be kind to the household they left behind. It has been suggested that perhaps women addressed in some of these letters died in childbirth, and therefore having died prematurely may have been thought to be angry and malevolent sprits that had to be pacified (Schiavo 2020).
THE WISE WOMAN AT DEIR EL-MEDINEH
There are four short texts on ostraca (a pot sherd or piece of limestone used to write on) found at Deir el-Medineh that mention going to the wise woman or that someone should go to the wise woman. In ancient Egypt, this person was ta rekhet, “the knowing woman.” One text, written by a man to a woman, asks her to go to the wise woman about his two boys who had died and find out if this was their fate. Another text is also about a death, and the person is told that it was caused by the manifestation of the god Ptah. Another person wants to know what manifestation of a deity has affected their eyes. The ancient Egyptians believed that gods and goddesses could punish them and cause illness, and the wise woman seems to have been the one to interpret what had happened and tell the person what to do, if anything. It also seems that the wise woman was consulted when children were sick. It is possible that a similar wise woman existed at other ancient Egyptian villages, but only at Deir el-Medineh, where a large amount of written evidence from the village was preserved, has the mention of her.
In 2014, the torso of a female mummy from a badly disturbed tomb at Deir el-Medineh was studied (Austin and Gobeil 2016). The head, legs, and hands were missing, but a large number of tattoos could be seen on the neck, torso, and arms. The neck was tattooed with wadjet eyes, sitting baboons, and nefer signs. The wadjet eyes are protective, baboons can be associated with Thoth who is a magician, and the meaning of the nefer sign is “good.” Tattoos of snakes are in the three places: front of the shoulders, by the armpits, and on the right arm. Also on the right arm is a tattoo of a sistrum handle, and the left arm has small cows of Hathor and a papyrus plant. Lotus blossoms were tattooed on her lower back. Suggestions have been made that this woman could have been a wise woman, a magician, or a “scorpion charmer” who treats both scorpion and snake bites, or she could have functioned as all three. The tattoos that have Hathoric symbolism could fit into this explanation as well, as in later Ptolemaic times, Hathor is referred to as a wise woman. Perhaps Hathor was thought of in this way earlier as well.
AN ELITE THEBAN FESTIVAL BANQUET
Evidence for banquets in ancient Egypt is provided best in New Kingdom Theban tomb scenes from the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE). These banquets most probably took place in the courtyard in front of the tomb and were tied to either the funeral celebration after the burial or a festival taking place in the necropolis of Thebes, on the West Bank, such as the “Beautiful Festival of the Valley,” when the statue of the god Amun left his temple at Karnak, along with the statues of his wife, Mut, and his son, Khonsu, and crossed the river to visit each of the royal funerary temples. This was an annual festival that took place in the tenth month of the year. As the god visited the temples that took care of the cults of the deceased kings, the people from the city of Thebes had a holiday and visited the tombs of deceased members of their family.
A scene of a “Beautiful Festival of the Valley” banquet can be seen in the tomb of Userhat, Theban Tomb 56. Userhat served King Amenhotep II (1727–1400 BCE), and his most important title was “scribe who counts bread in Upper and Lower Egypt” (Hodel-Hoenes 2000: 65), which put him in charge of grain for the production of both flour and bread, the most important Egyptian food. His position included overseeing baking and supplying all the bread for the army rations, which explains why in other parts of the tomb army recruits are shown. His wife was named Mutnefert, “the goddess Mut is beautiful,” and she carried the title of “royal ornament,” reflecting a position of status within the king’s court. Userhat and Mutnefert had two daughters. Their oldest daughter, Henutnefret, held the title “lady of the court, beloved of her Lord” (meaning “the king”), which possibly meant that she was raised at court with the king’s daughters. Her father, Userhat, had been raised in the royal court and stated that in his autobiography in the tomb.
In the first offering scene of the banquet, Mutnefert sits next to her husband and holds on to his arm. She is wearing a full-length white linen gown with shoulder straps and a long wig, decorated with a lotus and topped with a cone of unguent. Under her chair are objects that belong to her: a mirror and a pet monkey who is tied to the back leg of the chair. Both the mirror and the monkey are things that are associated with the goddess Hathor, as is the drinking and music at the banquet. Mutnefert and her husband sit with offerings of food and drink in front of them. Their two daughters offer them a bowl of wine and a broad necklace, while their son, standing behind his sisters, holds up a “Bouquet of Amun” to them. This bouquet has in the center a large open water lily, which symbolizes birth, or in this case in a tomb scene, rebirth in the afterlife.
In a register below this scene, the guests at the banquet are shown smaller in size. The guests are sitting, with women and men divided into two groups. It is not known if this is realistic and that in an actual ancient banquet, women and men were separated. The women are sitting on thick mats, with unguent cones on their heads. Their hands reach for bowls of wine, given by a female servant. In one hand, the servant holds a very small vessel that is thought to contain some kind of narcotic to enhance the effect of the wine. The scene with the male guests is quite damaged. They are sitting on stools or chairs that are quite high, under a grapevine. They also have flower collars and unguent cones, but the detail is hard to see.
Another of these scenes depicts musicians and singers. There is a male harpist sitting and playing, and behind him sit three females; the first plays a double flute, while the next two clap their hands, so perhaps they were singers. There are further figures behind them, but they are damaged. A banquet like this would take place in the courtyard right outside the tomb, and probably the festivities would go on all night. At such a festival, it was expected for both women and men to become very inebriated, to the point of ecstasy, or having an epiphany. Drinking too much seems to have been looked down on in daily Egyptian life, but in the context of a religious festival, it was accepted and, in fact, expected.
DOCUMENT: HEMIRA, PRIESTESS OF THE GODDESS HATHOR, FALSE DOOR
This is a translation of the right half of the false door of a woman named Hemira who was a priestess of the goddess Hathor. In fact, that was her only title. The limestone false door was found at the site of Busiris and dates to the very late Old Kingdom around 2160 BCE. It is the only known monument with her name; her actual tomb has never been found. Hemira mentions her husband in the text but not by name, and she is the only person depicted on the false door. When the text talks about her “good name,” that is a way ancient Egyptians referred to a nickname.
The long offering text on the right jamb of the door reads:
An offering which the king gives and which Anubis, foremost of the divine booth who is in his wrappings, lord of the sacred land, gives, may offerings be given in the wag-festival and the festival of Thoth, for the justified Hemira, her good name is Hemi.
The shorter text on the inner jamb next to it reads:
“I gave bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked, praised of her husband, Hemira. As for anyone who will say bread and beer for Hemi in this her tomb, I am an excellent spirit, I will not do evil to them.”
Source: The drawing of the false door in Fischer, Henry. Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom and of the Heracleopolitan Period. New York, 2000, p. 40, fig. 30. Text translated by Lisa Sabbahy.