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“Now what am I supposed to do?” Irer thought to herself. She had just finished her monthly rotation as wab-priestess in the temple of the deceased king, Senusret II, at Lahun. She always left her time in the temple humbled but content…. She had served the eternal soul of the king. Now, as overseer of weaving, she has to get a letter sent off to that useless official in charge of paying the weavers. He never showed up with their rations, so they stopped weaving. The slave women cannot weave, so nothing can be done. The warp threads are on the looms with no one to weave! I must get to the scribe and have a letter done. I must remember to tell the scribe to refer to him as lord, and say “may you live, prosper and be happy,” and also say several times in the letter that I am his humble servant; then maybe he will take note and send food provisions so that the weavers go back to work.
UNDERSTANDING THE POSITION AND ROLE OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT EGYPT
A large amount of both written and pictorial evidence exists to tell us about women in ancient Egypt. We can glimpse into the lives of royal females, noble women, as well as peasant women, but it is questionable how accurately we understand their actual status and role in ancient Egyptian society. Most of the pictorial evidence preserved is from tombs, which only royalty or nobility could afford, and the relief scenes and statuary in the tombs depict a perfect world meant for the eternal afterlife and are not a truly realistic depiction of everyday life. Royal women had their own tombs, but nonroyal women shared the tomb of their husband, in which the husband was the central figure, and women were shown according to an elite male perspective, which was produced by artists and craftsmen who were all male.
Elite women, depicted in statuary or scenes in their husbands’ tombs, are represented following the gendered conventions of ancient Egyptian art. The woman is shown light-skinned, reflecting the fact that she spends her time indoors rather than out in the sun. She is also shown in passive poses and in statuary stands with both feet together, unmoving, whereas men are always shown striding and therefore busy. One Egyptologist even wrote an article entitled “Did Women ‘Do Things’ in Ancient Egypt” (Routledge 2008) because of the way women are always portrayed as passive, compared to men. A common scene in elite tombs is the man fishing and fowling in the marshes. The man stands in a striding position in the papyrus skiff, spearing fish and taking down birds with a throw stick. His wife is usually much smaller and sitting down, often clinging to his leg. Sometimes she points out prey to him. His daughters can also be in the skiff, and they are in the same poses as their mother. Routledge goes on to discuss the ancient Egypt phrase meaning “to do something” and points out that it was never applied to female action in ancient Egypt, except once for Queen Hatshepsut when she was king.
That a woman is shown physically smaller than her husband, and is also shown touching or embracing him, and not the other way around, stresses her secondary or inferior position to her husband. In ancient Egyptian art, the person touching someone else is considered to be less important than the person being touched. There is a statue of General Horemheb, before he was king, from his nonroyal tomb at Saqqara. He sits next to his wife, and instead of her reaching over to embrace him, he reaches over to her and holds her hand. Horemheb must have requested that their statues be carved in such a way, clearly reflecting his affection for his wife.
Another characteristic for showing the dominant or most important individual in ancient Egyptian art is expressed by who is on the left side, from the point of view of the person facing the piece of art. In statues portraying the tomb owner and his wife, almost without exception, the tomb owner is on the left and his wife on the right. The same position can be seen on stelae, as well, with the deceased on the left and his children offering to him, standing on the right. If a stela showed the king offering to a god, the god would be on the left and the king on the right and so on.
Art in ancient Egypt, in terms of statuary and painted scenes, was associated with a tomb or temple and had a religious purpose. All statuary that would have been carved in stone or wood, for women, would have depicted them standing or seated, alone or with a husband or children, and would have been placed in the serdab of the tomb in which she was buried. In this small, enclosed chamber, referred to as a serdab, the ka, or soul, of the woman could manifest and take part in receiving the offerings of food and drink brought to the tomb by the ka-priestess or priest. The tomb scenes in which women appeared would have shown them sitting by themselves or, more likely, with their husband; being offered food and drink; or watching scenes of daily life in their estate, where their edible offerings would be produced.
In a tomb scene or statue, an elite woman was depicted only young and beautiful, the perfect state that she should be in forever. On the other hand, non-elite women could be represented in daily life scenes in tombs, taking part in the activities of the tomb owner’s estate. In these scenes, non-elite women would be active and working: weaving, mixing mash for beer, grinding grain, serving food, and pulling up flax. Their figures are not bound by the same conventions as elite women, because what is important to show is the production of food and goods for the afterlife and not the people doing it. For this reason, non-elite women can also be shown old, wrinkled, and bent over.
Representations of women in written evidence are more balanced, in the sense that we have letters and documents from people in everyday life and situations, but again the people doing the writing always appear to have been male. Although scholars assume that there were “pockets” of female literacy among the royalty and nobility, there is no direct proof for female literacy in ancient Egypt. We can reconstruct a view of the lives of women in ancient Egypt, but it is filtered through a masculine lens, as it is both described and depicted for us only by men.
WOMEN AT WORK
“A woman is asked about her husband. A man is asked about his rank” (Lichtheim 1976: 140). This saying comes from The Instructions of Any, a text to explain to up-and-coming young officials how to behave. It was composed in the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE). The statement given is very reminiscent of conversations at modern cocktail parties, where people ask women, “And what does your husband do?”
Ancient Egyptian women held many different types of jobs, and these jobs changed, sometimes quite dramatically, throughout the long span of almost three thousand years of pharaonic civilization. One thing that did not change, however, was that women in ancient Egypt never held government positions. They never had jobs in the administration of the country. From the king on down, the power structure of ancient Egypt was entirely male. This is rather odd, as for the most part, in all other aspects of life, men and women in ancient Egypt were fairly equal, but women never served as government officials.
This situation must be related in some way to the fact that women were not sent to school and trained as scribes. Certainly, there must have been “pockets” of literate women in elite and royal families. For example, there seems to be enough indirect evidence to assume that some women at the workmen’s village at Deir el-Medineh could read and write. But everything preserved about school in ancient Egypt is about schoolboys and male tutors and teachers. In the context of education and school, females are never mentioned. In order to be a government official, one had to be literate, or be a scribe, as reading and writing documents were essential for the functioning of governmental bureaucracy. Even though the vast majority of the ancient Egyptian population was illiterate, their country functioned very bureaucratically with endless numbers of documents. That so many of these documents have been preserved has made possible that we fairly accurately understand many aspects of life in ancient Egypt.
Evidence for the different jobs that were held by women comes either from inscriptions giving the name of a woman with a title that reflects her job or from a tomb scene that actually shows a woman at work. For the most part, non-elite women are the ones represented in the daily life scenes in tombs, showing the activities going on at the tomb owner’s estate. These scenes focus on agriculture and the production of food that was offered on a daily basis to the soul of the deceased.
It was also non-elite women who made up the largest portion of the female population in ancient Egypt. These working women are shown in such activities as spinning and weaving, sieving the mash for beer, grinding the grain for bread, and serving food. Women did not do agricultural labor, other than winnowing grain after it had been threshed or pulling up the stalks of flax that would be used to make linen thread for weaving. In tomb scenes that are associated with the tomb owner’s funeral or funerary cult, non-elite women are shown as professional mourners. Two women play the parts of the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys, protecting the coffin at the head and the foot, while other women in the procession wailed, wept, and threw dust over themselves.
Women as professional musicians and singers were most common in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE). They are depicted in tomb scenes entertaining guests at a festival, such as the Beautiful Festival of the Valley that was held on the West Bank of Thebes. While the image of the god Amun was carried in procession to each of the royal mortuary temples on the West Bank, families celebrated by holding feasts in the courtyards of, or nearby, their tombs. The musicians worked in groups of three, with one woman playing the harp, another the lute, and the third with a double flute, lyre, or a tambourine. Singers also were usually in a group of three. The ancient Egyptians used the number three to express the plural, so showing three singers might actually mean that there were lots of them. There could also be women who sat and clapped with their hands, to keep time. There were sometimes a few dancers with the musicians, or some of the musicians were quite animated, moving as they played.
Often the only dancers portrayed are those in a religious context, particularly in rituals or festivals for, or associated with, the goddess Hathor. Hathor’s dancers were in a group known as the khener. These women were often tattooed, and the dances were quite acrobatic. They are depicted dancing with clappers and also mirrors, and other women standing by them shake the musical instruments symbolic of the Hathoric cult, the menat necklace and the sistrum. The members of the khener often used to sing as well.
The khener dancers actually can be found in a range of contexts using dance. There were khener dancers for the king’s court. There were khener dancers for the temples of a number of gods and goddesses other than Hathor. There were also khener dancers for women giving birth, and some scholars think that these dancers were also midwives. In ancient Egyptian thought, rebirth after death was parallel to childbirth, so having the khener dancers at a childbirth, as well as at a funeral, was logical.
WOMEN’S WORK IN THE OLD KINGDOM
In terms of titles, from the period of the Old Kingdom (2650–2150 BCE), women held titles such as weaver, overseer of weavers, singer, overseer of singers, dancer, grinder of grains, food vendor, winnower, domestic servant, hairdresser, stewardess of the queen’s household, as well as overseer of ornaments, overseer of cloth, and seal bearer. Women of elite status, because of their husbands’ position as important officials, could be part of the royal court and, therefore, carry a title such as “noblewoman of the king,” or “ornament of the king,” although titles such as these probably reflected the woman’s status and not an actual job. “Ornament of the king” was also a title held by many priestesses of Hathor.
Women could hold religious positions that gave them a title of priestess. A ka-priestess, a woman who maintained tomb offerings, offered food at the tomb of a deceased person on a daily basis. The ancient Egyptians believed that the dead had the same everyday needs as the living, and so the deceased had to be fed and taken care of. The food came from a farm or “estate” owned by the family of the deceased and was supplied to the ka-priestess. The food offered to the dead was thought only to be partaken of by the soul of the deceased, and therefore, the food was taken home by the priestess, and that was her pay. A woman could become a ka-priestess by being asked to serve as one by the tomb owner before they died or by inheriting the job from someone in her family. Often it seems that women carried out this job in the place of their husbands. It could be that the husband had died and this was a way widows could keep an income. A position of ka-priest was typical for men, and in fact, there were many more ka-priests than ka-priestesses.
PRIESTESSES OF HATHOR AND NEITH
Also in the Old Kingdom, many women, both elite and non-elite, and also princesses, were priestesses of the goddess Hathor or the goddess Neith. There were over four hundred Hathor priestesses during this time, and there were temples or chapels for Hathor throughout Egypt. Some women, although not as many, were also priestesses of Neith, whose cult was not as widespread as that of Hathor. Not much is known about the goddess Neith, although her importance goes back to the beginning of ancient Egyptian history. She was a protective goddess and, early on, was associated with hunting and warfare. She is depicted as a woman in a long dress, wearing the Red Crown on her head. The Red Crown is associated with the delta, or Lower Egypt, and in the Late Period (664–30 BCE), the cult center of Neith was at the city of Sais in the delta.
Hathor, on the other hand, was the most important female related to Ra, the god of the sun who created the world and everything in it. Hathor was Ra’s wife, and therefore the mother of the king, as the sun god was the king’s father. In some myths, Hathor was the daughter of the sun god as well, as Hathor functioned as the “feminine element” anytime the sun god needed one. Hathor was depicted as a woman with horns and a sun disk on her head. She could also appear in animal form as a cow. Hathor is tied to women and childbirth, as well as dance, drinking, and music. The main temple of Hathor was located at Dendera in Upper Egypt, just south of Abydos.
The priestesses of Hathor held two objects that were associated with the goddess. The first was a menat, a necklace of very heavy beads attached to a counterpoise. The second object was a sistrum, a rattling instrument held by a handle and shaken. Hathor priestesses in the Old Kingdom often wore a red scarf around their neck, letting it fall down their back, when taking part in rituals and offerings to the goddess. These priestesses took care of the offerings and rituals in the temples, where they were also joined by other women who were singers, musicians, and dancers. A special group of dancers called the khener was known from the time of the Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BCE) onward. They were most commonly known as dancers for the goddess Hathor, and their dance group could include men as well. They held clappers in the shape of hands, as well as mirrors, which probably symbolized the sun disk, while they danced. Representing the goddess Hathor, the khener danced at funerary feasts as well as at childbirth celebrations. Rebirth and birth were both associated with Hathor, as she was the mythical mother of the newborn sun god.
WOMEN’S WORK IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (1970–1640 BCE), women’s titles had undergone quite a change. Titles such as “overseer” or “inspector,” or titles indicating work or status of importance in the royal palace, were no longer held by women, with the only exception being the title “overseer of weavers.” Middle Kingdom women no longer appear to have had any positions of authority over others, even in household labor. Another noticeable difference between the Old and Middle Kingdoms was that work in the Middle Kingdom seems to be much more clearly differentiated between males and females. With very few exceptions, titles show that women worked inside buildings, while men did any kind of work that was outside or away from the home. Men did all agricultural labor as well as crafts. It was only in the production of textiles, which were produced inside a house or workshop, that women, not men, were the important laborers and did the spinning and weaving. Men are really not weavers until the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE), when the vertical loom is introduced and used instead of the horizontal one. A vertical, or upright, loom needs more shoulder strength, and that is thought to be the reason that men started weaving.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TEXTILES AND WEAVING
Textiles were used extensively in ancient Egypt for both the living and the dead. People needed clothing and bedding, and the dead needed to be wrapped. Textiles are already known in Neolithic times, around 5000 BCE from the area of the Fayum, and were produced by people referred to by archaeologists as the Fayum A culture, probably the earliest people known in Egypt to have settled down and domesticated both plants and animals. The majority of all the textiles in Egypt are linen, which is made from the fibers of the flax plant. Pieces of linen textiles were found in the Fayum when excavations in the 1920s discovered the Fayum A remains. The fibers from the flax plant first have to be spun to produce thread, which was then wound into coils or balls. This process needed spinning whorls, made in stone, and spinning bowls that were mostly pottery but could also be stone. Because stone preserves so well, finding spinning whorls at an ancient site serves as evidence that thread was being spun and textiles must have been woven. Ancient Egyptian women wove on horizontal wooden looms until the New Kingdom when vertical looms were used. Since wood is perishable, the only archaeological evidence for a loom would be the post holes left in the ground from the four pegs at the corners of the loom. Vertical looms needed to be steadied at the top, so they were set up against a wall. If it was set against a stone wall, holes were cut for the loom pegs, and these holes can still be identified.
A finely woven linen sheet from the storehouses of Queen Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
By the time of the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE), there are tomb scenes, especially at Beni Hassan in northern Upper Egypt, that show women working in all the stages of producing thread from flax fibers and weaving it into linen cloth. Stalks of flax are pulled out of the ground and then broken open with sticks to remove the fibers. The fibers are then spliced together to form one long thread and wrapped into balls of thread. To make sure that the thread is strong enough, two single threads were spun together. This part of the process needed spindles and spinning bowls. Simultaneously, two threads are fed through spinning bowls to moisten them, and then they are pulled up to a spindle on which they are spun. The women stand, pull the threads together onto the spindle, roll the spindle on their thigh to roll up the threads, and drop the spindle to pull and extend the thread. This process would have taken many days to create enough thread to weave a useable piece of cloth. The thread was then wrapped around pegs on the wall to be ready for weaving. These scenes at Beni Hassan also include a woman who is clearly older than the women spinning and weaving, and above her is written the title “overseer of the weaving.”
THE CHANGE OF WOMEN’S TITLES WITH THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
It would appear that in the time called the First Intermediate Period (2160–2055 BCE), which came between the Old and Middle Kingdoms, there were political and social changes that brought about women being more closely tied to house and family, while men became more dominant in anything that was outside of the household and was of economic importance. This situation came about because of two changes: one having to do with the climate and the other one political. By the end of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian climate had become very dry. Rainfall had stopped, and the grasslands on each side of the Nile River had become the deserts that one sees in Egypt today. This change happened along with a period of erratic Niles that caused low inundations and famine. There is evidence from the autobiographies inscribed in the tombs of high officials in provincial towns that there was not enough water in the river, crops could not be grown, and local people had to be supplied with rations of food to keep them from starving.
Also, at the end of the Old Kingdom, central control of the country from the capital at Memphis was lost, and civil war between the nomes, or provinces, broke out. The situation may simply have been too dangerous, so women chose to stay at or near home to protect themselves and their children. There is no clear evidence that this is what happened, but the status of women changed dramatically, and scholars have never really addressed that change. Finally, King Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BCE), who came from Thebes, defeated the line of kings at Heracleopolis who had taken over from the kings at Memphis and reunited Egypt, beginning the period called the Middle Kingdom.
One important new female title, nebet per, “mistress of the house,” appeared with the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, around 2055 BCE, and became the most important female title of that period. Scholars assume that the title nebet per indicated a married woman and was the equivalent of the modern title “housewife.” This new title seems to go hand in hand with the fact that women at this time were closely tied to work that was inside their house. Another change at this time was the disappearance, for the most part, of the title “priestess.” When the Middle Kingdom began, only a few women still held the title of “priestess,” and they were all wives of very high officials, particularly nomarchs, who ruled over provinces in ancient Egypt. Earlier, in the Old Kingdom, more than four hundred women had held the title “priestess,” and these women came from all levels of society and had served at temples of Hathor in the area near Memphis, or in Upper Egypt. By the later part of the Middle Kingdom, the title of priestess of Hathor disappeared completely. The religious cults of Hathor continued to be taken care of because the male title “priest” never disappeared.
WOMEN’S TITLES IN THE NEW KINGDOM
When the title of priestess disappeared, wives of high officials took on the religious title shemayit, or “chantress” of a deity, particularly of the god Amun, whose religious center was at Karnak Temple at Thebes. There were also some chantresses of the goddess Hathor. “Chantress” seems to be the only nonroyal female religious title that existed in the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE). Some scholars see the title “chantress” as a position equivalent to that of priestess but with different duties. A chantress accompanied priests in the temple providing calming hymns and prayers to please the god or goddess. The chantress held the rattling instrument called a sistrum as well as a heavy bead necklace, called a menat, that was attached to a counterpoise. Both the sistrum and the menat were objects sacred to the goddess Hathor, and they were shaken to create a noise considered soothing to the goddess. The noise they made was supposed to mimic the sound Hathor made as a cow when she walked through rustling papyrus plants. In the beginning, the chantresses of the New Kingdom were always wives of upper-middle-class or elite officials, and these women all had the same two main titles: “mistress of the house” and “chantress of Amun.”
Another title of importance that could be held by wives of high officials in the New Kingdom was menat nesut, “wet nurse of the king.” This woman would have been virtually part of the royal family, and her position would have meant not only royal favor for her but perhaps also advancement for male members of her family. Two of the better known royal wet nurses were Sitra, the nurse of Queen Hatshepsut, and Maia, the nurse of Tutankhamun. A rather damaged sandstone statue (JE 56264) in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo depicted Sitra seated with the small child Hatshepsut, mostly broken away, on her lap (Roehrig 1996: 17). When the statue was carved, Hatshepsut was already king, but she is depicted in the statue as a child king. What is left of her figure shows her wearing the shedjet-kilt, the royal kilt, and her sandals rest on a depiction of the Nine Bows, representing the enemies of Egypt. Only the king stands on the Nine Bows. Sitra must have been very important to Hatshepsut, because she seems to have been buried in tomb KV 60 in the Valley of the Kings.
A carved wall scene in the tomb of Maia, the wet nurse of Tutankhamun, discovered in North Saqqara in 1996, still preserves the figure of Maia, along with Tutankhamun, as a little boy, seated on her lap facing her (Zivie 2007: 73). Tutankhamun wears the Blue Crown of the king, and his name in the tomb is Tutankhamun, not Tutankhaten, which means the royal court had already left the city of Amarna, moving back to the capital at Memphis, when this tomb was decorated.
THE VILLAGE MARKET
In Old Kingdom, tombs at Saqqara are scenes of marketplaces with women busily selling and trading. As there was not yet currency in ancient Egyptian times, things were either traded or sold in exchange for a certain amount of grain or copper, or the value of things as calculated on how much grain or copper it would be worth. For the most part, women are seen selling fruits, vegetables, and textiles, as well as selling beer to drink. In one of the Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BCE) tombs, above a woman pouring beer into a pottery bowl, it says in hieroglyphs “bowl woman,” and the man drinking the beer says that “the grain is good.” In the New Kingdom, there are scenes in Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE) tombs at Thebes depicting women selling things in marketplaces that are clearly alongside the river. The people buying their goods are men getting off the boats that tie up at a nearby harbor. The women are selling goods that they make at home anyway, such as loaves of bread, beer, or woven linen cloth, and taking them to the marketplace to sell and help out with their household expenses. In this way, their work is still traditional as it is tied to something they do at home.
WOMEN AND LAW
Upholding “justice” or “truth” was very important in ancient Egypt. The concept of truth was personified as a goddess named Maat, who had existed at the time when the world was created. The most important responsibility of an ancient Egyptian king was to uphold Maat and therefore uphold world order and defeat chaos. This kept the gods and goddesses happy and all of Egypt as well. The vizier, who was the most powerful official under the king, had many responsibilities, including being the chief justice of Egypt. As such, the vizier held the title of “High Priest of Maat,” who had to see that law, known as hep in ancient Egypt, was upheld.
When a court case had to be heard, a group of judges was put together. If it were a serious case, it would have been heard in one of the Great Courts, which seem to have been in Memphis and Thebes. The vizier would pick from important officials, such as high priests, army officials, or mayors of towns to judge the case. Otherwise, the case could be heard in a local court, known as a kenbet. The defendant would explain their case, and the judges, perhaps after questioning witnesses, would hand down a decision. There were no lawyers or jury. If it were a criminal case, the defendant or defendants would be “questioned by the stick.” A defendant could also be asked to take an oath, called the “Great Oath,” which invokes both the god and the king, and it seems that lying under oath could bring the death penalty.
From what we can tell, women in ancient Egypt enjoyed legal equality with men. Women could inherit property and will it as they pleased. They could buy, sell, and trade, although a man often handled business and property for his wife. Women could bring cases in court and also serve as witnesses. They could also be arrested, tried, and given similar punishments to those of men. If women were divorced, they retained their personal property and received one-third of the communal property. If the woman was being divorced because of committing adultery, she lost her third of the communal property. In the Late Period (664–332 BCE), a woman could have a “marriage contract” stating that her husband had to pay her a specified sum in order to divorce her. These contracts seem to have originated to keep men from divorcing their wives to marry other, and usually younger, women.
HERYA, THE CRIMINAL
The trial of a lady named Herya was written on an ostracon, a fragment of limestone, used to write on, and was discovered at the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medineh on the West Bank of Thebes. It is dated to the sixth year of the king Seti II (about 1194 BCE). A workman named Nebnefer went to the village court, or kenbet, and said that a copper chisel that he had in his house was gone. This chisel was undoubtedly government property, because the workmen in the village were given their tools and equipment by the government. Nebnefer had asked everyone in the village, but no one knew anything about it. Then a woman came to him and said that she had a dream, a “divine manifestation,” and in it she saw that Herya took the chisel.
Herya was brought to the court, but she denied that she took the chisel. Herya took an oath in the name of Amun and the king, stating that she had not taken it. The court sent one of the village men back to Herya’s house with her to search her house, and he came back with the chisel and also objects that had been stolen from the village temple of Amun. There is no mention of Herya’s husband or children being present in the court case. It would be odd if Herya had a house in the village without a husband who was a workman, as the village belonged to the government, who gave houses to each of the workmen, but no husband is mentioned.
Finding these objects meant that Herya was guilty not only of theft but of perjury as well. Stealing the chisel belonging to the government and stealing the objects from the temple were both crimes against the state, as was taking a false oath in the name of Amun and the king, and so Herya faced the death penalty. The verdict of the court stated, “Mrs. Herya is a great criminal who deserves death. The workman Nebnefer is in the right” (Donker van Heel 2016: 57). The local judges had their decision taken to the vizier, and the vizier ordered Herya taken to the river bank. Being taken to the river bank has been interpreted in different ways. Some scholars assume that she was going to be put to death by drowning. Others have wondered if she would be fed to crocodiles. Or, was Herya to be executed in some other way, and her body thrown into the river, so that she would not be allowed a proper burial? Egyptologists still don’t know the meaning of this statement. There is not much evidence about how the death penalty was carried out, except that in Ramesside times (1265–1069 BCE), which is when Herya lived, tomb robbers were sentenced to death by being impaled on a sharp stick.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Punishment for crimes in ancient Egypt was mostly physical and was carried out right after the verdict was decided. For example, if a person was found guilty of stealing something from someone else, they would be beaten and forced to return what had been stolen, as well as possibly having to pay a certain amount to the person they stole from. People were not given jail sentences like nowadays, although they could be sent to the equivalent of an agricultural labor camp or to a quarry and made to do hard labor. Women were not exempt from being forced to do hard labor. For example, in the time of King Thutmose III, if a man ran away to avoid military service, his entire family could be sent to labor in a quarry as punishment.
The standard punishment handed out for a serious crime was one hundred blows and five pierced wounds, although it is not clear what part of the body was pierced and how it was done. If the crime was serious enough, people could also be punished with having their ears and nose cut off. A papyrus known as the Judicial Papyrus of Turin, as it is in the Turin Museum in Italy, records the trial and punishment of more than thirty people who were associated in various ways with the assassination of King Ramses III (1184–1153 BCE) in the Twentieth Dynasty. Different types of punishments were given out, depending on the extent of the person’s involvement in the assassination conspiracy. The document gives five different lists of people based on their punishments, going from most severe to least severe. In the first list were seventeen men and six women, who were wives of some of them. They were sentenced to death, but the way in which they were to die was not written in the document. It is also interesting that the six women were just listed as “six women” and their names were not given, although all the men were named.
The next list was of people left unnamed, and one who was named, who colluded with the conspirators and were also sentenced to death. However, this time it is stated that they were not harmed and took their own lives. The next group of people listed included the prince, Pentawere, who was set to seize the throne when his father was killed. The document states that all these people committed suicide. There is no evidence how this was done, however. The next list was of people who were punished by having their nose and ears cut off and mentioned that one of these men then committed suicide. At the very end of the document, a man was listed as having been scolded but left alone.
The main person in the conspiracy to kill the king was one of the king’s three wives, Tiye, who wanted her oldest son, Pentawere, to take the throne. Apparently, the conspiracy started with her and women allied with her in the harem. The king had another queen, Isis Ta-Hemdjert, and a third queen, also with the name Tiye, who seems to have been the most important of the queens, as she held the title of the “King’s Great Wife,” and as such, her oldest son should take the throne. Indeed, it was her son, Ramses IV, who took over the throne upon the death of his father.
The minor queen Tiye and the ladies of the harem are mentioned in the Judicial Papyrus, as the people found guilty conspired with them, but the punishment for the queen and her harem ladies is never mentioned. Her son is clearly stated to have been left to commit suicide, but nothing is said about the queen. It is possible that part of the document is missing, as it was cut into pieces when it was found in the 1800s. It might also have been considered inappropriate to record the punishment of a royal wife.
SOLVING LEGAL MATTERS WITH THE ORACLE
An oracle of the deified king Amenhotep I was used in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (1295–1069 BCE) at Deir el-Medineh to settle disputes between the villagers. The oracle seemed to be equal to having a dispute heard in the local court and perhaps, because what the oracle said was divine, carried more weight. On festival days, workmen of the village who acted as the priests for the cult of King Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose-Nefertari came out of their chapel carrying a statue of Amenhotep I. The village of Deir el-Medineh was supposed to have been founded in the time of Amenhotep I, and he and his mother were considered to be the patron saints of the village.
The statue of Amenhotep I would have been in a wooden litter on two poles, with four priests holding up each pole on their shoulders. The movement of the priests carrying the statue determined the answers to the questions asked. If the answer was a “yes,” the priests would carry the statue forward, while if the answer was “no,” they would move backward. Sometimes two ostraca, which were small pieces of pottery or limestone, were written on with two different answers and buried on opposite sides of the path that the oracle procession would follow. If the priests carrying the image dipped in one direction or the other, then the answer was given. The oracle might also be asked who in the village stole a particular object. Then priests would carry the king’s image throughout the village until it stopped at the door of the guilty person. Both men and women could consult the oracle. Questions asked by men seem to have been tied to their work and wages, while questions from women dealt more with disputes about personal property.
Oracles had been used earlier in the Eighteenth Dynasty to show divine approval for royal decisions. One interesting use of the oracle was by Queen Hatshepsut. She was the regent for her stepson-nephew Thutmose III when he became king because he was too young to rule on his own. Then, instead of staying regent, she had herself proclaimed king along with him, in a situation called a co-regency. Usually a co-regency came about when a father proclaimed his son king with him, so in case he died, the son was already ruling. Hatshepsut, however, went from queen regent to king. She was very cognizant of the fact that her rule as king might be questioned, and so she issued a great deal of propaganda about the fact that the god Amun was her divine father and that he wanted her to rule. Hatshepsut stressed that she carried out Amun’s every command and everything she did was for him.
In year nine of her joint reign with Thutmose III, Hatshepsut decided to send an expedition to the land of Punt, which was along the coast of the southern part of the Red Sea. Punt could have been in the area of Eretria, or possibly Somalia, or even Saudi Arabia on the other side of the Red Sea. The ancient Egyptians had gone to Punt for myrrh and frankincense in the Old and Middle Kingdoms in order to use it in temple rituals. Hatshepsut used an oracle to show that the god Amun commanded her to go to Punt and get myrrh for his temple rituals. This oracle was not one in which the priests moved the figure of the god in order to answer; this oracle actually had a voice that came from the stand on which the god’s divine boat carrying his statue was placed. Hatshepsut says in her inscription about the oracle that she actually heard a command from the god himself.
DOCUMENT: QUEEN HATSHEPSUT, MORTUARY TEMPLE AT DEIR EL-BAHARI
The following text is from the back wall of the first portico of the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari on the West Bank of Thebes. She is explaining that in an oracle at Karnak Temple, she asked what to do for her father the god Amun. He commanded her to go to Punt and get myrrh, and she did exactly what he commanded. Notice that the masculine pronoun “he” is used, even for Hatshepsut, as the king of Egypt should be male.
“The Majesty of the palace, may he live, prosper and be healthy, appealed at the steps of the throne of the lord of the gods. A command was heard from the great throne, an oracle of the god himself: Search out the ways to Punt! Explore the ways to the hillsides of myrrh!”
In response Hatshepsut answered:
“I will lead the army on water and on land to bring the marvels of Punt to this god.”
Source: Sethe, Kurt. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie IV. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961, p. 342, lines 10–17. Translated by Lisa Sabbahy from the hieroglyphic text.