Finger rings are rarely shown in either paintings or sculpture but they were worn by both sexes from the Predynastic period onwards, growing in popularity until, by the New Kingdom, faience rings were being mass produced and worn as fashionable costume jewellery. These rings were worn on any finger of either hand though scarab-seal rings, which were indicative of high social status and consequently confined to male bureaucrats, were by convention worn on the third finger of the left hand. In contrast, earrings were almost unknown until the New Kingdom when, influenced by their foreign neighbours, women of all ranks pierced their ears and enthusiastically purchased a wide variety of styles. Gold hoops and glass studs, very similar in design to those worn all over the world today, became very popular. Decorated faience ear plugs, comparatively large flat discs with a grooved edge designed to permanently stretch the earlobe far beyond its natural size, were also highly prized. As today, the expensive and well-made gold and jewelled earrings worn by the ladies of the court were reproduced in cheaper materials such as pottery or glass, and became within the reach of everyone’s pocket. High-ranking men also wore earrings and Tutankhamen’s mummy had pierced ears even though he was not wearing his earrings when he was mummified. Earrings for men were not simply a form of personal adornment; they represented a badge of faithful service to the king and were only worn by those who had also been awarded a ceremonial gold necklace for their loyal work. The pharaoh traditionally used expensive gifts of jewellery, the ‘Gold of the Brave’, as a means of expressing his approval to both his distinguished soldiers and his loyal civil servants, somewhat as medals and knighthoods are awarded today. The lucky recipients of these tokens of esteem frequently recorded the presentation ceremony on the walls of their tombs.
The importance of an Egyptian woman’s jewellery is very difficult for us to assess. We can see that it had an ornamental function, can assume that it acted as an indication of the wealth and social status of the woman and her family, and know that many of the pieces also had a perceived protective power. Whether the woman also regarded her jewels as an investment for her future is less clear. In many societies where women’s ownership of property is limited, jewellery and gold ornaments, often given by the husband at the time of the marriage, are traditionally held to be the property of the woman herself and act as her hedge against hard times. This is the case in the modern Egyptian village where gold is given to a girl by her fiancé to seal their engagement. It is the weight of the gold rather than the craftsmanship of the pieces which is of importance in this instance. The system functions because the jewellery given is precious, and has a recognized high financial value which may be redeemed at a later date. In contrast, the situation in Dynastic Egypt, where a woman’s right to a share of joint property was recognized both by convention and by the law, and where the majority of the jewellery which has been recovered is not of particularly high value, is not directly comparable. All indications are that the jewellery was simply valued as an indication of social status and as a means of expressing personal taste.
She who once lacked even a box now had furniture, while she who used to see her face in the water now owns a mirror.
Admonitions of the Middle Kingdom Scribe Ipuwer
Sadly, there was no way that the Egyptian lady could get a head-to-toe view of herself dressed in all her finery as full-length mirrors were unknown; indeed, the less affluent members of society had to be content with viewing their reflections in the River Nile. For those of greater means, a hand-held mirror of polished metal, appropriately named a ‘see-face’, was very useful for examining the features and perfecting the makeup. The majority of the mirrors which have been recovered are made from bronze and are heavily tarnished with pitted and corroded surfaces, but experimental repolishing has confirmed that they would indeed have provided a true or even a slightly magnified image. As with many other everyday objects in Egyptian life,
Fig. 28 Bronze mirror
mirrors came to be regarded as far more than a simple aid to achieving beauty. The oval mirror, with its inexplicable ability to show a virtual image and reflect and concentrate light, became associated with the religious concepts of life, creation and regeneration and, to a lesser extent, was also connected with the gods of the sun and the moon. The decorated handles of the mirrors reflected these mystical overtones, and often depicted either a papyrus or lotus stalk, representative of creation and reproduction, or the head of Hathor, the personification of love, beauty and fertility.
Even though mirrors must certainly have been used by both men and women they appear to have held a particular significance for women. Tomb illustrations suggest that wealthy ladies treated their mirrors as stylish accessories, carrying them around in a special protective mirror-bag designed to be worn over the shoulder. Tradition decreed that these women should be portrayed with mirrors carefully positioned underneath their chairs. Mirrors became an important element in illustrations representing childbirth, formed one of the standard offerings made by upper-class women to Hathor of Dendera, and were commonly included among female grave goods. All this implies that the mirror itself was regarded by the Egyptians as an obvious symbol of femininity or fertility. Indeed, it has even been suggested that the many illustrations of women at their toilette, all of which involve the use of mirrors, may well have a hidden ritual or sexual significance which is now unfortunately lost to us.
6
The Royal Harem
Beware of the woman who is a stranger in your town. Do not stare at her as she goes by, and avoid sexual intercourse with her. Such a woman, away from her husband, is like deep water whose depth is unknown.
Prudent advice from the New Kingdom Scribe Any
The harem is a concept largely unknown in both ancient and modern western culture. However, the image of the exotic Turkish-style seraglio, a secluded and closely guarded pleasure-palace filled with scantily dressed concubines idling away their days in languid preparation for their sultan’s command, has become an integral part of our western fascination with the mysterious east, a fascination which stretches from the temptingly decadent orientalist paintings of the nineteenth century along the Road to Morocco and beyond. Most inappropriately, it is this vision of a haven of oriental hedonism and secret sensual delights which has heavily influenced our interpretation of the evidence for and against the role of the harem in Egyptian society.
Early excavators fully expected to find Ottoman-style harems in Egypt and so find them they did, ruthlessly classifying almost all single and otherwise unexplained females as either concubines or courtesans in need of male protection. On this shaky basis of dubious identifications and outright guesswork the concept of the wildly polygamous Egyptian society grew to become firmly entrenched in the public imagination, influencing the interpretation of new archaeological finds. It is only in the past few years that egyptologists, aided by new archaeological, linguistic and anthropological research, have come to realize that their understanding has been seriously warped by these preconceived ideas and ingrained assumptions. We now know that there was no direct Egyptian equivalent of the traditional seraglio described above and no widespread tradition of either polygamy or concubinage; the royal harem of the pharaohs certainly did exist, but as a very different place to the high-class brothel of our imagination.
If you wish to retain the friendship of the household which you enter either as a master, a brother or a friend, whatever you do, beware of approaching the women.
Old Kingdom scribal advice
Although the overwhelming majority of Egyptian men remained monogamous, officially restricting themselves to one wife at a time, all householders could find themselves in the position of providing a home for a varied assortment of unmarried or widowed sisters, daughters, aunts, mothers-in-law and mothers. Consequently, the private women’s quarters of any sizeable household or palace could reasonably be classified as a harem, the term being used in its modern sense to refer to either the group of ladies or to their accommoda
tion without any necessary implication of sexual bondage. The king, in his role as head of the royal family, had the duty of supporting a relatively large group of queens, princesses and concubines together with their numerous children, nurses and personal attendants. This group of women constituted the royal harem.
Unfortunately, we do not know how the Egyptians themselves referred to these households of women. During the Old and Middle Kingdoms the term ipet nesut was used to describe a vague but obviously female-based royal institution. This term is now conventionally translated as ‘Harem of the King’, although the exact meaning of ipet is by no means certain and it may well prove equally valid to interpret the ipet nesut as the ‘Royal Women’s Quarters’, the ‘Royal Apartments’ or even the ‘Royal Granary’ or the ‘Royal Accounts Office’.1 Following the traditional translation, various male officials have been identified as ‘Overseer of the Harem’; as this identification rests solely on the interpretation of the word ipet, it may be incorrect. In a similar fashion, the ladies of the royal court who bore vague and non-explicit titles such as ‘Royal Ornament’ or ‘Sole Royal Ornament’ have conventionally been interpreted as royal concubines. However, this is a translation which again reflects the preoccupations of the early egyptologists; it is now clear that the ‘Sole Royal Ornaments’ were eminently respectable First Intermediate Period ladies who were often also priestesses of Hathor, while the more general title of ‘Royal Ornament’ was used to describe the ladies-in-waiting attached to the 13th Dynasty court.
The earliest direct evidence for an entourage of women ‘belonging’ to the monarch is provided by the subsidiary burials which are associated with the royal tombs of the Archaic Period 1st Dynasty at Abydos. These graves were allocated to men and women who had been closely attached to the king in a personal and subservient capacity, rather than to high-ranking court officials and ministers. They therefore include servants and minor mortuary priests, together with dwarfs, favourite dogs and, of course, favourite women.2 The number of subsidiary burials accompanying each monarch varied but was invariably large; for example, the burial-complex of King Djer included the graves of over three hundred associated retainers. Ninety-seven private stelae have survived from Djer’s secondary burials, and it is striking that seventy-six (78 per cent) of these graves were occupied by women. Many of these ladies had been interred with high-quality grave-goods suggesting that they had been people of some importance in court circles; it is by no means a foregone conclusion that they were all royal concubines.
Unfortunately, most of the subsidiary burials have been badly plundered and their human remains dispersed, so that in many cases it is now only the names and rather vague titles carved on the surviving gravestones which give an indication of the sex of the interred. We therefore have no scientific evidence to suggest how the occupants of these graves met their end. It may be that as the king made detailed preparations for his own death he also made provision for his loyal retainers, allocating plots of land for their subsidiary graves and thereby ensuring that, at the end of their natural lives, they could be interred in the shadow of their master’s far more impressive tomb. Alternatively, it must be considered at least possible that the graves were dug for servants who were either killed or forced to commit suicide following the death of their master. Professor Emery, the excavator of the subsidiary graves around the Sakkara burial associated with Queen Meryt-Neith, had the opportunity of observing the position of some of the human remains as the graves were opened, and he remarked that:
No trace of violence was noted on the anatomical remains, and the position of the skeletons in no case suggested any movement after burial. It would therefore appear probable that when these people were buried they were already dead and there is no evidence of their having been buried alive. The absence of any marks of violence suggests that they were killed by poison prior to burial.3
The harsh tradition of automatically sacrificing loyal retainers and even wives following the natural death of their master or husband is one which is occasionally found in strongly feudal and patriarchal societies both ancient and modern. Indeed, the now illegal Indian custom of suttee, which requires a widow to throw herself on to her husband’s blazing funeral pyre, is still surreptitiously practised in remote parts of rural India today. The most relevant contemporary parallel to the archaic Egyptian burials comes from Mesopotamia. The Sumerian Royal Cemetery of Ur has been dated to approximately 2650 BC. Here, both kings and queens shared magnificent tombs with their personal attendants and a wealth of treasure, while the associated burials included a mass grave, now known as the Great Death Pit, which yielded the bodies of six men and sixty-eight elegantly dressed women. All these courtiers had apparently entered their grave willingly, taking poison to the accompaniment of music provided by the musicians whose fingers were still resting on their harp strings four thousand years later. The Sumerian Royal family, like the Egyptian, enjoyed semi-divine status and was perceived as the mortal parallel to the heavenly gods. It would appear that their servants and attendants were happy enough to exchange a certain earthly existence for the chance to continue to serve their gods in the next world.4
Although it is possible that either voluntary or involuntary human sacrifices were made during the Archaic Period, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this wasteful tradition extended into the Old Kingdom. However, the Old Kingdom monarchs did continue the custom of maintaining a relatively large group of women attached to the court, and the more important of these women, the principal wives, daughters and mothers of kings, were eventually buried in the subsidiary tombs constructed around the royal pyramids. Herodotus believed, incorrectly, that at least one Old Kingdom princess had earned the wealth to build her own pyramid:
The wickedness of King Cheops reached such a pitch that, when he had spent all his treasures and wanted more, he sent his daughter to the brothels with orders to earn a certain sum for him – how much, I don’t know. She earned the money, but at the same time she asked each of her clients to give her one stone as a contribution towards building a monument which would perpetuate her own memory. With these stones she eventually built the pyramid which stands in the middle of the three which are in front of the great pyramid.
More direct evidence for the existence of the Middle Kingdom royal harem comes from Papyrus Boulaq 18, a day-book which lists all the business undertaken by the 13th Dynasty court at Thebes and so provides us with details of the composition of the immediate royal household at that time. Thanks to this document we know that the king’s personal entourage was made up of eight to thirteen male court officials plus the royal family (one queen, one prince, three king’s daughters and nine king’s sisters) together with the ‘house of nurses’: nineteen nurses and associated groups of children. All these high-ranking ladies were crammed together in rather basic accommodation within the royal residence, generally occupying a stark suite of rooms built around a courtyard close to the king’s private quar ters. This lack of ornate or richly decorated apartments was typical of all Egyptian palaces. Throughout the Dynastic age it was customary for the court to move around the country on long tours of inspection and, consequently, the royal palaces were not necessarily designed for permanent occupation. Instead, they were built to be used as short-stay rest houses and the fact that most were named ‘Mooring Place of Pharaoh’ accurately reflects their rather sporadic occupation. Only the New Kingdom palace at Amarna seems to have been intended for a more settled family life.
Fig. 29 Sculptor working on a statue of Queen Meresankh
By the beginning of the New Kingdom the royal harem had expanded to encompass a far wider range of women, including numerous concubines and secondary wives of foreign origin. Polygamous royal marriages had always been acceptable in Egypt but during the New Kingdom, perhaps due to greater foreign influence, there was a clear increase in the number of royal brides, with a corresponding increase in the number of royal children. The long-lived King Ramesses II, who died wh
en over ninety years old, was perhaps unusually well-blessed; he proudly claimed to have fathered at least seventy-nine sons and fifty-nine daughters by various women – all of these would have spent at least their earlier years within the crowded harem. At this time the phrase per khenret was used to denote a community of women; per clearly means house, but khenret, which is generally translated as harem, is highly similar to the words used to mean prison and fortress. All three words seem to come from the same root, meaning ‘to restrain’, hinting, perhaps misleadingly, that there may have been an element of compulsion about membership of the royal harem. An alternative suggestion, that khenret should be translated as ‘establishment of musicians’, is still the subject of intense debate among egyptologists.5
A miracle brought to His Majesty Kirgipa [Gilukhepa], the daughter of the prince of Nahrin Sutarna, and the members of her harem, some 317 women.
Marriage scarab of Amenhotep III
The kings of Egypt did not like to use their women as pawns in tactical marriages with neighbouring monarchs. When the King of Babylon, whose daughter was married to Amenhotep III, requested an Egyptian princess for his own harem he was curtly told ‘Since the days of old, no Egyptian king’s daughter has been given to anyone.’ In contrast, they had absolutely no objection to welcoming foreign women into their own household when it suited their diplomatic ambitions. Marriage with the daughter of a neighbouring monarch ensured that the two kings became relations, and therefore friends, strengthening alliances and reducing the chances of conflict. Consequently, although diplomatic royal marriages were unknown during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, from the time of Tuthmosis IV onwards there was a slow trickle of foreign princesses entering Egypt in order to marry the king. These women travelled to their weddings with large dowries and considerable numbers of female attendants. They were received with all due pomp and ceremony and were then established in the harem-palace, where they took an Egyptian name and the honourable title of secondary wife6 before sinking into obscurity.
Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley Page 18
