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It was hot and dusty as she walked, leaning on her stick, back to the house at the end of the village. She and her husband, Khaemnun, now lived with Qenherkhopshef, one of their four sons, and his family. It was a crowded household, but their son would not have it any other way. “You never have to worry,” he always said, “I will always take care of you.” “I am so glad I finally did it,” she thought. Without letting anyone in the house think she was doing anything but visit her daughter, Wosnakhte, at the beginning of the village, she had left the village and walked north to the village court. She had her will written out by the scribe of the court with five men as witnesses. She had made sure that it was clear. Her personal property was only to be inherited by four of her eight children. The other four, Neferhotep, Manenakhte, Henshene, and Khanub, would get nothing of hers. “They can inherit from their father,” she scoffed, “but not from me.” “They probably don’t know if I am alive or dead,” she said out loud, banging her stick down into the ground and scaring away one of the village dogs.
THE FAMILY
The unit of the family was, as in most cultures, the backbone of ancient Egyptian society. Evidence seems to show that most families were multigenerational, and the household consisted of parents and children along with grandparents, and often aunts. Sometimes it is confusing for modern scholars to figure out exact relationships in ancient Egyptian families because terms for family members from different generations were not distinguished. For example, the word used for son and grandson and daughter and granddaughter was the same. In the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE), a wife was often referred to with the word “sister,” but it did not mean that the woman was actually physically related to her husband. There is some thought that the word “sister” first began to be used for a wife who was a man’s cousin, and then, later in the New Kingdom, it simply became accepted as the word for wife.
Although brother-sister marriage is known among royalty in ancient Egypt, there is no evidence for sibling marriage outside of the royal family. As in ancient Egyptian mythology, gods married their sisters, such as the marriage of Osiris and Isis, both of whom were children of the earth god, Geb and his sister the sky goodness, Nut, it seems that sibling marriage was a sign of divinity, and kings chose it for that reason. Sibling marriage is also a way to keep power and property in the family, and that certainly played a part in ruling families. There is evidence for sibling marriages in the royal family in the Fourth Dynasty (2614–2494 BCE), the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties (2055–1773 BCE), and the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Dynasties (1580–1279 BCE). There is not a clear pattern, but sibling marriage seems to occur at times when a new royal line begins and the kings need to stress their divine legitimacy to rule.
Archaeological evidence seems to show that the average ancient Egyptian household had six people. If a family was well-to-do, any number of servants lived with them as well.
Papyri found at the late Middle Kingdom (1877–1650 BCE) town of Lahun contain census information collected over a period of time, allowing a glimpse into the individuals who made up a household and how the character of the household changed (Kemp 2006: 219). The first document shows that a soldier named Hori lived in a house with his wife, Shepet, and their son, Sneferu. In the next document, this nuclear family of father, mother, and child is still in the same house, but they have been joined with the father’s mother, Harekhni, and five other females who seem to have been the father’s sisters. In the last document that refers to this household, Hori is not listed and so must have passed away, as his son Sneferu is now the head of the household. Sneferu’s mother, Shepet, is still with him, as is his grandmother, Harekhni. Three of Sneferu’s five aunts are still part of the household, so two may have married or else died.
Another similar government census is known for the New Kingdom workmen’s village at Deir el-Medineh on the West Bank of Thebes. It isn’t clear why such a census was taken, but the village of Deir el-Medineh, like that of Lahun, belonged to the government, and they may have kept track of households to make sure that only people who were part of the workforce lived there. The Deir el-Medineh census papyrus is broken into fragments, but some parts are still readable. On the parts that can be read, none of the houses have as many as six inhabitants, and some houses only have the name of a single man as the inhabitant.
A fairly well-documented family is that of the farmer Heqanakht in the early reign of King Senusret I (1956–1911 BCE) of the Twelfth Dynasty. This family is documented not by a government census but by information in Heqanakht’s personal letters. Heqanakht wrote a series of letters home to his family who lived in a settlement near the Fayum, when he was in Upper Egypt at Thebes. He had been made the ka-priest of an important official buried at Thebes, and so he had to be in Thebes for long periods of time. In the letters, which are mainly concerned with business and farming, various references are made to the members of his family and the family problems.
One of the letters sent by Heqanakht to his family in the early Middle Kingdom. It is written in hieratic script with black ink on papyrus. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
We learn from Heqanakht’s accounts that on a monthly basis, he supported 18 people (Parkinson, 1991: 102). This group included his mother, Ipi; his second wife, Hepetet, whom he married recently; a son named Sneferu; another named Anpu; and at least one daughter, Neferet. Other males in the household may have been his brothers, sons of brothers, or men who worked with Heqanakht, but the relationships are not clear. There are also three female servants who live in the house. In the letters, it becomes clear that the new wife is not being treated well in the household, as at one point, Heqanakht asks, “What about this evil treatment of my new wife?” (Parkinson, 1991: 105). For some reason, Heqanakht seems to blame one of the female servants in the house, named Senen, for mistreating his wife. Heqanakht also mentions twice in the same letter that Sneferu should be well taken care of, so he must have been either the favorite son or perhaps the youngest.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
Although the details involved in how people got married in ancient Egypt are not understood, it is clear from ancient Egyptian texts, known as wisdom literature, that getting married and starting a family were the societal ideals. Certainly, there must have been men and women who did not marry, although staying single seems to have been unusual. In the Lahun census discussed previously, it is clear that unmarried women stayed with their parents or brother and did not have a home of their own. There is some evidence in the Twelfth Dynasty that if a princess did not marry her brother, the king, then she did not marry. This would have been a rather strict way of keeping hold on the throne of Egypt. Women tended to be buried with their husband, and queens were buried by the pyramid of their husband, the king. A number of Twelfth Dynasty princess burials have been found, for example, near the Dashur pyramid of Amenemhat II and the Lahun pyramid of Senusret II. This placement of their tombs would indicate that these women never married and so were buried with their father, because they did not have a husband.
The word for marriage in ancient Egyptian was “establish a house,” which is something that the man was supposed to do, and went hand in hand with having a family as well. Because the average life span in ancient Egypt would have been about twenty-five to thirty years, both women and men must have got married at a rather young age. Children would have been the expected outcome of marriage in ancient times, especially because there would not have been dependable contraceptives. There are, however, at least three ancient Egyptian medical texts that give “recipes” for “not to become pregnant” or “to cause a woman to stop pregnancy.” In two of the texts, crocodile feces were to be mixed with dough and then soaked with something else, but the papyrus is damaged at that point. In the third papyrus, the “recipe” was to be a mixture of the pod from an acacia tree, colocynth, and dates, mixed with honey. Both of these mixtures were to be used as vaginal suppositories. The crocodile feces are the most unusual of the ingredients. Perhaps they had magical importance, because the crocodile was an animal associated with the god Seth, evil brother of the god Osiris, who wanted to stop Osiris’s pregnant wife, Isis, from having a baby, because Seth, after having killed Osiris, wanted to take the throne and rule Egypt.
Outside of the royal family, marriages were monogamous and were expected to be lifelong. Kings could have any number of wives, perhaps in order to make sure that they had a son to follow them on the throne, but having more than one wife at a time does not seem to have been the case with nonroyal men. Divorce was known; it does not seem to have been looked down upon. Since a rather high number of women must have died in childbirth, it is not usual to find evidence in a tomb scene that shows a man with more than one wife, meaning that he had remarried after the death of the first wife. There is also written evidence that shows women who had been widowed married again.
Marriage was carried out privately, and there is no evidence of a religious or state ceremony, any official being present, or any particular document being signed. From the Late Period, beginning in 664 BCE and after, there are marriage contracts known that stipulated a sum of money, the “wife’s gift,” to be paid by the husband to the wife if he wanted to divorce her, but for the bulk of pharaonic civilization, there were no such documents known. There is some written evidence from the New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medineh that in order to ask to marry a woman, the man took a present to her parents. A marriage took place when the woman publicly moved in with the man. It appears that this relationship was meant to be long-lasting and that any children from the marriage inherited the property of their mother and father.
Divorce seems to have been much the same, in the sense of being carried out without any legal or religious intervention. The woman simply left the man’s house and took her property with her. If there was an argument over personal or communal property, a divorce was decided in a local court, such as the court in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) village of Deir el-Medineh. There is written evidence that shows if the divorce was because of the wife’s infidelity, she had to give up her claim to any communal property. If there was no disagreement that needed a court decision, the woman just moved out of her husband’s house with her personal property, and the marriage ended. Evidence seems to show that a man was more likely to ask for a divorce than a woman and that the most common reasons given for a divorce were constant fighting, adultery, or that the man wanted to marry another woman, usually a younger one. There is no evidence at all from ancient Egypt as to what happened to the children when a couple divorced; it must have been clear to all involved as the matter of child custody was never written down.
CHILDREN AND CHILDBIRTH
Children in ancient Egypt were considered important because they would help their parents and take care of them in their old age. Parents also depended on their children to make sure that they had a proper burial when they died. There is no evidence whatsoever that ancient Egyptians preferred to have a boy rather than a girl when the baby was born. The only mention of the importance of having a son is found in the Instructions of Any, a text which is thought to have been written in the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom (1550–1295 BCE). At the very beginning it says, “Take a wife while you’re young, that she make a son for you” (Lichtheim 1976: 136). This advice probably fits with the tradition at that time that jobs, even government positions, were hereditary and went from father to son, keeping it within the family. Other ancient cultures—for example, the Greeks—preferred male children and exposed newly born females. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in 50 BCE wrote that the ancient Egyptians were very odd and “raise all their children” (Oldfather 1989: 275).
Another example of gender equality, when it comes to having boys or girls, is expressed in amuletic decrees of the Third Intermediate Period (1069–664 BCE). By means of an oracle, a god or goddess would pronounce that a female baby would be healthy and protected and, when she grew up and married, would have both male and female children. A similar pronouncement would be made for a male baby that he would be healthy and protected, and when he grew up and married, his wife would bear him both male and female children.
The ancient Egyptian idea that fertility is a characteristic of males, not females, may explain why ancient Egyptian men were accepting of whatever sex their children were. They were responsible for producing a girl or a boy, not their wife. Women were thought of as a container, so to speak. The seed for a child came from the father, who put it into the mother to be protected and taken care of until it was grown enough to be born. This idea of male fertility is behind all the creator myths of ancient Egypt; creators were all male: Atum or Ra, Amun (also Amun-Ra), and Ptah. One text, probably dating from the Sixth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (2345–2181 BCE), known as the Instructions of Ptahhotep, gives some advice about how a man should take care of his son, if “by the grace of god” he has one: “Do for him all that is good, he is your son, your ka begot him, Don’t withdraw your heart from him” (Lichtheim 1973: 66).
Ancient Egyptian medical papyri include directions for tests that could be done to see if a woman was able to have children and what sex the child would be. One test had a woman urinate on a bag of barley seeds and another bag full of emmer wheat seeds. If the seeds did not sprout, then the woman was not pregnant. If the seeds sprouted, then the test went one step further and stated that if the barley seeds sprouted, the woman would have a girl, and if the wheat sprouted, she would have a boy. This determination of the baby’s sex was based on the fact that in the ancient Egyptian language, the word for barley was “feminine” and the word for wheat was “masculine,” so it was hardly very accurate.
CHILDREN IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART
Ancient Egyptian children were often depicted in tomb scenes and in statuary along with their parents. There were certain artistic characteristics, beyond just small size, in how a child was shown that made it clear that the individual was a child. They were normally shown nude, so perhaps children were often nude in daily life. Children also have their hair pulled into a sidelock on the right side of their head. Often an amulet in the shape of a fish hangs down from the sidelock. This amulet would have provided magical protection for the child if they fell into a canal, or the Nile River, that just like a fish they could swim; drowning must have been a very real danger in ancient Egypt. Children were also depicted holding their index finger up to their mouth, depicting a typical baby characteristic of sucking on fingers. In art, males were characteristically shown with red or brown skin, while women had white or yellow skin. These same colors were applied to boys and girls in painted scenes and statuary.
DIVINE PROTECTION FOR CHILDBIRTH
In ancient Egypt, as in other ancient civilizations, pregnancy and childbirth were extremely dangerous for both the mother and the child. As well, the first five years of a child’s life could be dangerous in terms of survival, and ancient Egyptian women probably lost 50% of their children before the age of five. Certain deities, particularly Taweret and Bes, were called upon for protection. Taweret was a mix of a hippopotamus, lion, and crocodile. She was depicted as a hippopotamus, with a lion mane and paws and a crocodile tail. She was shown very round and heavy like a pregnant woman but was also very scary. Bes was a very ugly male dwarf, also mixed with lion characteristics. Both Taweret and Bes could be shown holding knives that made them even more fearsome. These two deities could be offered to at small shrines set up in the house, and they were also depicted on household objects and furniture used for children. In particular, Bes and Taweret were depicted on protective ivory wands that would be used to draw a circle in the packed earth floor of the house, around the new mother and her baby. The magical protection of Taweret and Bes would then be around them and protect them from harm, especially since the wand was made from hippopotamus ivory, associating the protective wand even closer with the goddess Taweret.
A statuette of the protective goddess Taweret, who is a hippopotamus with a lion head and crocodile tail. (Statue of Taweret, Cairo, Egypt, 1925–1933. Science Museum, London. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0))
There were other goddesses who were connected with the actual birth of the baby. It is known from ancient Egyptian texts that women squatted on “birth bricks” to raise them up off the ground in order to deliver their child. This allowed another woman who was helping her to catch and help deliver the baby. There were four bricks used, two horizontally stacked to support each foot. The “birth bricks” were related to a goddess named Meskhenet, who personified these bricks, and aided and protected the delivery of the baby. The name Meskhenet was also used for the actual bricks themselves.
In 2001, archaeologists discovered a birth brick for the first time, in an ancient Egyptian villa of the later Middle Kingdom (about 1650 BCE) at the town of Wah Sut in Abydos in Upper Egypt. The villa where the birth brick was found belonged to the governor of the town, and it is known that his wife was a princess. The brick was found in a section of the villa that seemed to have been a granary that was rebuilt into a seven-room domestic unit. Clay sealings were found there with the name of the “king’s daughter, Reniseneb,” and it is assumed that this unit was her private living area within her husband’s large villa.
A magic ivory wand from the Middle Kingdom decorated with creatures who would protect women giving birth and children. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The brick was painted with religious and mythical images that likened the birth of the baby to the birth of the sun god, Ra, every morning and transferred divine protection to the child being born. The scenes on the Meskhenet also magically transformed the birthing mother into the goddess Hathor so that the mother herself became divine and protected at the moment of delivery. One long side of the brick was broken away, but the other side depicted a woman on a throne holding her newborn with two other women attending her. One stood behind her, and the other kneeled down in front of her with her arms out. This seems to suggest that the scene protects both the birth and just after. The four edges of the brick are somewhat damaged, but each had been painted with various protective creatures, such as Taweret, a lion, or a cobra, who would drive away or defeat anything evil or dangerous that would threaten the mother or the baby. These same creatures are those carved on the protective ivory wands just discussed previously.
We have no evidence for women who worked as midwives, although it seems logical that women with experience delivering babies would have been called upon to help out. There were doctors in ancient Egypt, but they were few and worked for elite and royal households. There were no specialties such as obstetrics or pediatrics, and in fact, any internal medical problem, such as a pregnancy, was dealt with using magic. Contrary to popular modern beliefs, the ancient Egyptians did not practice surgery, and there would have been no way to intervene and help a woman having difficulty delivering her baby, other than by using magical spells and objects.
Two objects were often kept in an ancient Egyptian house and were brought out in case of problems in labor or delivery. One was a small clay statue of the god Bes. It was used along with a magical spell that was to be recited four times over a dwarf of clay placed on the woman’s abdomen. The main part of the spell was “Come down, placenta, come down, come down … she who is giving birth becomes better than she was, as if she was already delivered” (Janssen and Janssen 1990: 9). The second object was a small clay or limestone representation of a woman on a bed with a baby next to her. This piece would have been used in a similar magical fashion, called sympathetic magic, so that the woman in labor would become a happy, new mother with a healthy baby, just like the figure in the statuette.
DOMESTIC PROTECTION FOR MOTHERS AND THE NEWBORN
In about a third of the houses of the workmen’s village at Deir el-Medineh, a special space was constructed in the first room of the house for the protection of the newborn baby. A rectangular brick platform, more than a meter long, was built against one of the walls, or in one of the corners, and was enclosed, sometimes all the way up to the ceiling. There was an opening in the middle of the long side, led up to by a short flight of steps. This structure has been called a bed or an altar. If it were a bed, it would only be comfortable for a baby, and it may well have been used as a protected space for one, particularly after birth. When these “beds” were discovered, some still had decoration on the outside. The decoration that remained depicted the god Bes, a protector of children and childbirth, or a female, dancing or playing a musical instrument. There were also leaves of the convolvulus, or morning glory, vine painted on some of the bed enclosures. This plant is also depicted growing on arbors, or other roofed but open spaces, where women are shown nursing their newborn babies. It is not yet clear, however, why this particular plant was associated with childbirth.
Actual wooden beds, referred to as “women’s beds” in written documents from Deir el-Medineh, have been discovered at the village. The legs of the beds are carved in the shape of standing figures of the god Bes. The use for these beds is not completely clear, but it is thought that the mother and her newborn would sleep on it after the birth, with the Bes figure legs protecting them from harm. Since there is written evidence of someone in the village going to buy a birth amulet and a woman’s bed, it does seem that there was a special protective bed to be used after childbirth.
BURIALS OF MOTHERS AND BABIES
In a late Middle Kingdom villa at Wah-Sut, called Building E by the excavators, five baby skeletons were found buried under the floor in the house; two of the babies had been placed in wooden boxes (Picardo 2006). All these burials were in the southwest portion of the villa, in what might have been the bedroom complex that belonged to the lady of the house. Four such burials were also found in contemporary palatial houses at the town of Lahun in the Fayum with one of the burials mentioned as being in a box. It seems that the mother must have wanted the baby close to her, so it was buried within the house and not in the village cemetery. The New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medineh has a hill running along its east side. Baby burials were found all along the bottom of the hill alongside the wall of the village. Again, it seems that keeping baby burials close to the family was of importance.
Sometimes skeletal evidence is found that shows both the mother and the baby must have died during the birth. The burial of Queen Mutnodjmet at Saqqara gives evidence of this sad occurrence. She was buried in the tomb of her husband, General Horemheb, who served under King Tutankhamun, and then eventually became king of Egypt himself. He may, in fact, have married Mudnodjmet when he became king. Her skeleton shows that she was probably thirty-five to forty years old at the time of her death. There are bones of a “mature fetus” mixed with her bones, suggesting that they both died during a difficult birth (Strouhal 2008: 1–4). Mutnodjmet’s pubic bones also seem to suggest that she had suffered earlier difficult births, and the thickening seen in her skull vault might have been in reaction to extensive blood loss (Strouhal 2008: 3). Interestingly enough, this skeletal evidence may back up what scholars seem to know of the history at this time at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty. King Horemheb (1323–1295 BCE) had no son to follow him on the throne, and so he picked another military man, Ramses I, as his successor.
POSTPARTUM CARE AND NAMING
We know very little about postpartum care in ancient Egypt, although there is some evidence that the woman and her child were secluded at least for the first two weeks. We do not understand if it was for protection in terms of health or some type of purification period. Breast feeding is depicted and mentioned in texts, and wet nurses are known as well, especially for royal children. We don’t have any evidence that ancient Egyptians celebrated birthdays. It is not until the Middle Kingdom that we have some slight written evidence of individuals knowing in which king’s reign they were born, and by the New Kingdom, we have a statement by the architect Amenhotep, son of Hapu, inscribed on his statue, that he is eighty years old. By the time of the Late Period beginning in 664 BCE, complete birth dates are known.
Children seem to have been named right at birth, and there is some evidence that it was the mother who chose the child’s name. The name chosen either seemed to express something about the baby or the name was more formal and contained the name of a deity or reference to a religious celebration that occurred at the same time as the birth. Some of the less formal names for a baby girl were Neferet, “pretty one”; Miut, “kitty cat”; Itesankh, “Her father lives”; and Aneksi, “She belongs to me.” A more formal female name would have been something like Mutemwia, which means “the goddess Mut is in her sacred boat.” This would refer to the fact that the baby girl was born when the goddess Mut, the spouse of the god Amun of Karnak, had come out of her temple in a religious procession. Sometimes a formal name seems to reflect a problem with the birth or a concern that the child might not live, such as the name Djedisetiusankh, which translates into English as “Isis says that she shall live.” A child was given only one name, and the name does not seem to have any connection to the name of the father or what we would call a family name. Nicknames were known, however, especially if someone had a particularly long name. The nickname was referred to as the “beautiful” or “good” name. For example, the princess Wattetkhethor had the beautiful name of Sesheshet, the “lotus.”
There is written evidence of adoption in ancient Egypt, and adopting someone seems to have been a fairly simple process. It could be done if the couple did not have children, or if the man wanted a certain person to inherit from him, he could adopt that person. In the New Kingdom, adoption was also used to pass on an official position. Since a father always passed his job on to a family member, typically his oldest son, he could adopt someone if he wanted to pass his job on to them.
One adoption document from the reign of King Ramses XI (1099–1069) at the very end of the New Kingdom is quite interesting (Eyre 1992). A stable master named Nebnefer writes a document adopting his wife as his child, because they have no children, and he doesn’t want anyone other than her to inherit from him. Seventeen years later, the wife, named Rennefer, writes a document saying that she and her husband had bought a female slave who had given birth to two girls and a boy, all of whom Rennefer had raised because she had no children of her own. Rennefer states that she gives these three children their freedom and also that her own brother, Padiu, has married one of the two girls. Rennefer then states that these four people, the three freed siblings and her brother, will inherit all her property. It would appear that Nebnefer was fairly well-off, and so it was important to make clear exactly who could inherit so as to protect their inheritance. This document is quite unusual, and it is not known how common it was for an ancient Egyptian man to have children from a woman who was not his wife in order to have an heir.
MOTHERHOOD
Numerous literary texts from ancient Egypt specifically mention the high regard in which mothers should be held. Women who had given birth and nurtured their children were seen as individuals who should be respected and cared for. In particular, sons seem to have been expected to love and honor their mothers and take care of them when they were old. The Instructions of Any, a didactic text composed in the early New Kingdom around 1500 BCE, admonishes a young man to support his mother with double the food she had given him, because “she had a heavy load in you, but she did not abandon you when you were born after your months. She was yet yoked, her breast in your mouth for three years” (Lichtheim 1976: 141).
In some ancient Egyptian literary teachings, which are referred to as “wisdom texts,” women are portrayed as having two different natures: “good” and “bad.” On the one hand, there is the perfect, virtuous wife and loving mother, and on the other hand, the strange, dangerous woman who can lead a man astray. All these “wisdom texts” contain advice for men about staying away from the second type of women and the consequences of not doing so. These texts seem to have been aimed at up-and-coming young officials and may have given this advice to protect their reputation, which was important for being promoted. This type of literature also stresses how important the ideal wife and mother was and how they were to be cherished and taken care of. Men were warned not to boss their wives around at home, not to start arguments with their wives, and when they have married and settled down, not to fool around with other women. There are documents that suggest it was a crime for a man to have sex with a married woman unless he was her husband. Along with the list of crimes committed by a corrupt foreman named Paneb at the village of Deir el-Medineh is the mention that he had sex with three women who were the wives of workmen. Included in the statements in the so-called Negative Confession of the Book of the Dead, which are recited in order to join Osiris and live in the afterlife, there is one that denies having had sex with a married woman.
An interesting will was written by an elderly woman and mother named Naunakhte, who lived in the New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medineh on the Theban West Bank (Černy 1945). She had first been married to a much older man, Qenherkhopshef, a scribe at the village, who died not long after and left her everything, as they did not seem to have had any children, although he may have had children from an earlier wife. (It makes one wonder if Qenherkhopshef had adopted Naunakhte in order to protect the inheritance that she would receive from him.) Naunakhte then remarries, a man named Khaemnun, a village workman, and they have eight children. In year 3 of the reign of Ramses V (about 1145 BCE), Naunakhte, who must be elderly by now, goes to the village court and writes a will in which she disinherits four of her eight children because they are not bothering to take care of her. She carefully states in the will that although they may inherit property that comes from their father, Khaemnun, they may not inherit any of her own property, which she had from her father and her first husband. A document written a year later acknowledges that Khaemnun came to the village court to request that Naunakhte’s wishes be upheld and her property be handed out as she wished, so she must have passed away.
THE GODDESS ISIS AS THE PERFECT MOTHER
The role model for the perfect mother in ancient Egypt was the goddess Isis, who was important in the myth of Osiris. The earliest mention of this myth, and Isis as well, is in the Pyramid Texts, which first appeared in written form in pyramid burial chambers at the very end of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2375 BCE) of the Old Kingdom. Much later in the first century BCE, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote down the most complete version of the Osiris myth, and that is the one most people are familiar with today. Very briefly, the myth is as follows: Osiris was the husband-brother of Isis, and he ruled as the king of Egypt. Seth, the brother of Osiris, was jealous, as he wanted to be the king, and he killed Osiris. Isis and her sister, Nephthys, carefully protected and took care of the body of Osiris, such that he was able to impregnate Isis, even though he was dead. Isis hid away in the swamps of the delta when she was pregnant, so Seth could not find her. She continued to hide after giving birth to their son, Horus, and carefully guarded Horus until he was old enough to fight Seth. Horus avenged his father by defeating Seth and took the throne and ruled Egypt. Because of her sacrifice and care for both her husband and son, Isis was thought of as the goddess who embodied love and dedication to spouse and children.
Isis never had her own temple and cult until late in pharaonic times. The first temple dedicated entirely to her was on the island of Philae, at the south end of the First Cataract, the border with Nubia, built by King Amasis (570–526 BCE) of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. Hymns at the temple address her as “Lady of Heaven, Earth and the Netherworld,” “who gave birth to all the gods,” and “Divine Mother.” Later in the Thirtieth Dynasty, King Nectanebo I (380–362 BCE) built a temple for Isis, referred to as the Iseum, at Behdet el-Hagar in the Egyptian delta. By the Ptolemaic Period, or the Greek time in Egypt, the cult of Isis as a universal goddess, perfect wife and mother, and a savior of people had spread throughout the ancient world.
ELDERLY WOMEN AND WIDOWS IN ANCIENT EGYPT
Ancient Egyptian texts that discuss social behavior and good manners often mention that a well-brought-up man helps elderly people and takes care of widows. The Instructions Addressed to King Merikare date to the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE) but are cast in the form of a First Intermediate Period (2160–2055 BCE) king giving advice to his son. In one section about being just, the king states, “Don’t oppress the widow” (Lichtheim 1973: 100). In another text of this genre, The Instruction of Amenemope, which was written to outline behaviors for the ideal young man, the author says to leave a widow alone if you find her collecting grain left in the field after the harvest and be patient with her (Lichtheim 1976: 161). It may have been common, therefore, for widows who had been left without income to join in gleaning the grain fields to get grain for themselves. Rekhmire, the Theban vizier of King Thutmose III, states in his autobiography that “he protected the widow who did not have a husband” (see translation of primary text below). Just like what happens to women nowadays, ancient Egyptian women who lost husbands through divorce or death probably found themselves in economic difficulties. This is why having children was so important for women. An earlier autobiographical text in an Upper Egyptian tomb from the end of the Old Kingdom, or perhaps later, states that among the good deeds done by the tomb owner was “speaking up on behalf of the widow” (Strudwick 2005: 362), so possibly women on their own needed not only economic help but also help with legal or other issues.
Women with children who lived to adulthood certainly had a chance for a better life when they were elderly. The house census at Lahun shows that the soldier Hori had his mother living with him and his wife and son, and when he died, his son, Sneferu, kept both his mother and his grandmother in the house. In one of the letters from the landowner Heqanakht, he exhorts the person he sends it to: “[G]reet my mother Ipi a thousand times and a million times!” (Parkinson 1991: 105). Certainly, Ipi must have been a very respected member of the household. The elderly lady Naunakhte disinherits four of her children for not taking care of her now that she is old, but she has another four children who she says do take incredibly good care of her and to whom she wills her possessions.
Although the average life span in ancient Egypt was about thirty years, there were individuals who lived much longer. The main threat to a woman’s life in ancient Egypt was childbirth, and if a woman lived through her childbearing years, she undoubtedly, like most women today, outlived men. Therefore, there would have been elderly widows in every community. There is not much evidence for elderly women in ancient Egyptian tomb scenes; as following the conventions of ancient Egyptian art, women were always to be shown young and beautiful. Minor or unimportant figures could be shown realistically, however, and from the Old Kingdom, there are scenes and statuettes of elderly women grinding grain and a few painted tomb scenes showing women with gray hair.
There is somewhat more evidence for elderly and widowed women in written documents and physical remains, especially from the New Kingdom workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh. A woman named Ii-Neferti was the wife of the workman Sennedjem. Their family tomb in the cemetery west of the village was discovered and opened in 1886 and contained the bodies of twenty people. The coffin and objects of Ii-Neferti were sent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Eventually her mummy was unwrapped and sent to the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A study of the body in 1933 concluded that based on cranial sutures, tooth loss, and arthritis, the skeleton suggested an advanced age of seventy-five years. Although it would be good to have a more modern study done to verify Ii-Neferti’s age, clearly her skeleton is one of an older woman.
A stela belonging to Ii-Neferti was removed from one of the chapels at Deir el-Medineh in 1818 and is now in the Bankes Collection in Dorset, England. It shows her kneeling and adoring the moon god Thoth and begging him for forgiveness, because he had caused her to see “darkness by day.” This is possibly the ancient Egyptian phrase for blindness, although some scholars interpret it as describing depression. Standing behind her and also adoring the god is her grandson Anhotep. Ii-Neferti asking for forgiveness was the focus and reason for the carving of the stela, so she is the largest figure on it. Her husband, Sennedjem, does not appear with her, as by the conventions of ancient Egyptian art, he then would have been the focus of the stela and be the largest figure. We don’t know when Ii-Neferti or her husband died, and whether or not she was a widow in her old age, but statistically speaking, she probably was.
DOCUMENT: VIZER REKHMIRE, THEBAN TOMB 100
These lines were part of the autobiographical text of the Eighteenth Dynasty Vizer Rekhmire, who served King Thutmose III (1425–1479 BCE). The tomb is Theban Tomb 100 on the West Bank of the Nile at Thebes, modern Luxor. The text is on the wall of the south end of the transverse hall inside his tomb.
I defended the widow who did not have a husband. I established the son and heir upon the seat of his father. I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, and meat, ointment and clothing to him who had none.
Source: Sethe, Kurt. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961, p. 1078, lines 6–10. Translated by Lisa Sabbahy from the hieroglyphic text.