Lost Voices of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt

by Charlotte Booth

  One man, Kyky, had no children and therefore had no one to oversee his funeral and mummification, so he donated all his goods to the temple of Mut while he was alive to ensure they cared for his mortuary cult20 – an ancient case of leaving the money to the ‘cat home’ or charity.

  This duty to care for the elderly became embroiled in the religion, and in the tomb biographies it often states, ‘I have protected the widow who had no husband … I provided for the old one while I gave him my staff, causing the old woman to say “That is good”.’21

  These biographies emphasised the good deeds of the deceased to facilitate their entry into the afterlife. Helping widows was also included in many of the Wisdom Texts, which outlined ideal behavioural conduct. One such text, written on an ostracon in the Petrie Museum, emphasised, ‘You should not mock an old man or woman when they are decrepit. Beware lest they take action against you before you get old.’22 However, this advice did not prevent people making fun of the elderly. The Turin Erotic Papyrus depicts a New Kingdom Theban brothel where the clients are balding and likely to be elderly. At the start of the papyrus the man is enthusiastic but as his adventures continue he becomes exhausted, with one scene showing him lying under the bed with a huge, erect penis while the young woman above tries to entice him into her arms. In the next scene he is carried away by two young girls, his huge penis now flaccid.

  In the Tomb Robbery Papyri in the British Museum, a man called Shedsukhons shows frustration with his elderly father, who interfered in the division of spoils: ‘O doddering old man, evil be his old age; if you are killed and thrown into the water who will look for you?’23

  There was no official retirement age and people worked for as long as their health allowed. One image in the tomb of Paheri at El Kab shows an elderly man with a receding hairline and a pot belly working in the fields. He boasts to a younger worker, ‘If you bring me thousands of bundles, I will still comb them!’ The younger colleague was not impressed and shows little respect to the old man, replying, ‘Hurry up and don’t chatter so much you baldy yokel!’24

  In a letter from Deir el Bahri from the reign of Hatshepsut, a working old man is annoyed at an elderly labourer: ‘… regarding the one whom you have given me. Behold, he is an old man and is causing a little trouble for his [son?].’25

  While the majority of the elderly were at the mercy of the kindness of their children, or, in a worst-case scenario, strangers, a state pension was provided for the workmen at Deir el-Medina and the military. Records at Deir el-Medina showing the amount of grain distributed on a monthly basis mentions a ration going to a few widows and workmen described as ‘old’. It is unknown if these people were providing a service or working on the royal tomb; the provisions were less than the average wage, but adequate enough to live on.

  Soldiers of working age received land as part of their salary under the proviso that they would be available for work whenever needed. The yield from this land could be maintained as a form of pension once they were too old to fight. In one of the Miscellanies, the life of an Egyptian man is described;

  Man comes forth from the womb of his mother, and he runs to his master;

  The child is in the service of a soldier, the young man is a fighter,

  The old man is made to be a cultivator, the adult man to be a soldier.26

  This indicates that it was considered normal for an old man, a veteran soldier in particular, to become a farmer upon retirement, as they continued to work the land they had been given as part of their salary.

  The king often gave favoured officials an honorary priestly or administrative title once they were too old to work, allowing a salary but with no responsibilities attached. A Theban official, Nebamun (TT90), for example, was given the position of chief of police by Thutmosis IV: ‘Now My Majesty has ordered to appoint him to be police chief on the west of the city of Thebes, in the places Tembu and Obau until he will reach the blessed state [of the dead].’27 The provision of this role until death indicates it was in title only, and was therefore a pension post. Records indicate that a common sinecure was the role of priest in a chapel. For example, Inushefnu, ‘who had been a general’, was in charge of a chapel of Ramses III in the temple of Min at Akhmin after retirement. Another man, Dhutemhab, also a former general, was in charge of a chapel to Wepwawet at Asyut. Perhaps these were quiet jobs suited to a man in retirement.

  When the time came, one of the most important things a child (eldest son) could do for his parents was to provide them with a decent burial, as well as ‘keep their name alive’ through voice offerings and prayers. The Egyptians were worried that should these rituals not be carried out adequately they would not enter the afterlife and were destined for oblivion. This led to a fierce patriotism and it was important to be buried in your own town where a traditional burial was guaranteed. In the tale of Sinuhe he asks, ‘What matters more than being buried in the land where I was born?’28 So once you were home in your town, according to the Westcar Papyrus, ‘Old age is the time of death, enwrapping, and burial.’29

  Mummification and the elaborate burial practices have often led to the belief that the Egyptians were obsessed with death, whereas in fact it demonstrates an obsession with life and its continuation. This rested on the belief that after death the deceased continue to live in the afterlife. The afterlife was a replica of Egypt, with a central river and fields of crops in abundance. The dead were buried with all their possessions as they believed there was a need for such items when they were reborn into this eternal paradise. A wonderful example of the belief in a continuance of life is the rather pragmatic addition to the tomb ensemble of shabti figures, which were essentially servant figures. Should the deceased be called upon to carry out any work in the afterlife the shabti figure would jump in and offer to do the work on their behalf.

  An interesting document in the British Museum (P. BM 10800) was a receipt for some shabti figures and provides some insight into their role;

  I have received from you the silver for the 365 shabtis and their 36 managers, in total 401, my heart being satisfied. They are male servants and female servants. I have received from you the case silver for them, the 401 shabtis … So hurry and work to replace the Osiris beloved by god, the priest Ihafy. Say ‘We will do’ at any hour he will ask you to do the daily service. I have received from him the silver for you.30

  It is thought that perhaps shabtis, like an average workman, needed assurance that they would be paid for the work, and receipts like this were buried with the deceased in order to reassure the shabtis that they had been paid in advance and ensure they would not strike due to lack of rations (see chapter seven).

  However, the most important item to take to the afterlife, of course, was the body, as without one it would be impossible to be reborn at all. This belief eventually led to one of the processes most synonymous with ancient Egypt – the process of mummification.

  Considering the amount of written evidence available from ancient Egypt, it is unusual that there are no contemporary records of how the mummification process was carried out. The earliest written record comes from Herodotus (fifth century BCE), although earlier tomb images depict some of the funerary rituals. However, the mummification process was either considered too mundane or too well known to record. Therefore we have to use Herodotus in conjunction with the mummies themselves to understand the process.

  For the past century, the earliest evidence of mummification was from a fourth-dynasty, royal burial. All that remained was a mummified arm bearing some bracelets of semi-precious stones. Unfortunately the nineteenth-century archaeologists were more interested in the jewellery than the arm and therefore discarded it, leaving only a picture of this early, artificial body preservation.

  However, at the time of writing (2014), Jana Jones, from Macquarie University, Sydney, had carried out a study on fifty bodies from the Pre-Dynastic Period at Bolton Museum, UK, producing some interesting evidence. The bodies were from the sites of Mostagedda and
Badari and all had a waxy appearance. Studies demonstrated it was a man-made substance of animal fat or oil, pine resin, plant extracts and natural petroleum, which had been heated in antiquity. As this substance was consistent across all the bodies it strongly suggested that the communities of Mostagedda and Badari were practicing artificial mummification two thousand years earlier than previously thought.

  Mummification was believed to have been carried out by priests who held a high status within the community. It is assumed the embalmers worked on the west bank of the Nile in a temporary structure called the Pure Place, Place of Purification or House of Perfection,31 which may also have acted as a showroom allowing the embalmers to display their work for potential customers, although sadly nothing of such structures has been discovered in the archaeological record.

  The only evidence we have of the process itself can be found in the numerous embalming caches that have been excavated. Essentially, all the materials used in the mummification process but not buried in the tomb were buried in their own place, which has enabled us to identify some of the items used. These caches include all of the material used in the embalming process: for example, labelled pots and jars containing coloured powders for colouring the mummy; resins for filling, deodorising and sanitising the mummy; linen for stuffing and wrapping; natron for drying the body; wax for covering the body and blocking orifices; various oils for curing and scenting the body and making it supple; terebinth resin to be used as deodorant and perfume; sawdust and chaff for stuffing cavities; lamps; fragments of the funerary feast; and a broom to sweep away the footprints of the last person to leave the tomb. Some caches also contain the embalming table, which was low, due to most of the process being performed in the squatting position, and often stained with natron and oils.

  In addition to providing information about the items used in mummification, the embalming caches can also provide information on the funeral itself. For example, Tutankhamun’s embalmer’s cache was buried outside KV54 in the Valley of the Kings and comprised twelve jars containing floral collars worn by the mourners at his funeral, a gilded cartonnage mask normally placed over small canopic coffins, broken pottery drinking cups, wine jars and two hand brooms. The remains of the funeral feast were also stored away in a jar, which tells us there were eight people present at the feast and they ate mutton, fowl and game bird.

  Generally, anything that touched the body was buried with it, as it was considered to hold an element of that person. This meant any hair separated from the body during the mummification process was wrapped and buried, as well as placenta saved from their own birth, which was often mummified and buried alongside them as their ‘twin’ or ka.

  Mummification was generally only for the wealthy as it was an expensive process, although there were three pricing options available. The most expensive was designed to create an ‘Osiris’ of the deceased. The process started when the body was brought to the embalmers and washed. In the New Kingdom they then removed the brain, as it was believed to be superfluous to requirements. All thought processes and emotions were thought to happen in the heart rather than the brain. To remove it, the ethmoid bone at the top of the nose was broken, and the brain was removed in pieces using a hooked instrument. Experiments have shown this method was inefficient for removing the whole organ. An alternative method necessitated pouring juniper oil and turpentine up the nose, dissolving the brain, which was then poured out through the nostrils.

  The mouth was cleansed and packed with resin and a paste also made from resin was applied to the face. Next, a cut was made in the left side of the abdomen using a flint knife, enabling the embalmer to remove all internal organs except the heart. As the heart was considered to be the centre of all thought processes and emotions it was believed to be essential for eternal life. The removed organs were preserved, wrapped and placed in canopic jars. These were a set of four jars, each lid formed into a different shape representative of the four sons of Horus. Each son had a specific role in the protection of the organ within. The stomach was placed in the jar with the jackal head (Duamutef), the intestines in the hawk-headed jar (Qebusenuef), the lungs in the jar with the baboon head (Hapy) and the liver in the human-headed jar (Imsety). These were then placed in the tomb, either in their own room if the tomb was big enough, or close to the coffin in smaller tombs.

  The body cavity was cleaned with palm wine and an infusion of pounded spices, which prevented it from smelling. The abdomen was then stuffed with bundles of natron wrapped in linen and left to dry. The body as a whole was also packed in natron. Depending on the size of the body the drying process took between thirty-five and forty days. Once the body had dried out the cavity was filled with a mixture of aromatic substances and linen or sawdust to give it shape. The hole in the side was sewn up and the wound hidden with a bronze or leather cover.

  A recent experiment carried out at Sheffield University by Joanne Fletcher suggested that in the eighteenth dynasty, instead of covering the body in natron it was submerged in a salt bath, which infused the soft tissues themselves with the salt solution, preserving them from the inside. This solution was made using deionised water, into which natron was dissolved. The internal organs were removed, although the brain was left intact, as the procedure used was not always efficient for total removal. Then the body was placed in the natron solution. After four weeks soaking in the solution and two weeks drying in a temperature-controlled unit designed to emulate the Egyptian climate, a mummy had been formed. This soaking and drying part of the process took forty-two days.32 Traditionally the wrapping normally took between thirty and thirty-five days giving a total of seventy days for the whole process, but Fletcher’s experiment only allowed twenty-eight days for this part of the procedure.

  This period of seventy days was significant to the ancient Egyptians as it was believed that when Osiris died (see chapter three) it was seventy days before he was reborn again into the afterlife. This was based on the observation of the star Sirius, closely associated with Osiris, and the approaching inundation. It disappeared for seventy days before reappearing, announcing the New Year and subsequently Osiris’ rebirth into the afterlife.

  Wrapping was just as important as the preservation of the body, and a priest wearing an Anubis mask oversaw the process. As each limb was wrapped it was essential to recite the appropriate prayers in order to turn the limb into a divine object. There were numerous layers of bandages, with one second-dynasty mummy having sixteen intact layers remaining of what may have been thirty original layers. In the Middle Kingdom, between each layer of bandages was a sheet to provide extra padding. Anything up to 400 square meters of linen could be used to wrap a mummy. Between all of these layers of bandages the priests laid protective amulets, each in a designated place, with a specific set of prayers and incantations attached to them.

  To make the body appear more lifelike, pads of linen were placed to emulate breasts, and in the twenty-first dynasty they went so far as to make slits behind the knees, ankles and heels in order to place folded linen pads under the skin, ensuring the body shape was not lost. As the eyeballs were not removed when the body dried they often sank into the head, so false ones were placed beneath the eyelids. These were made of faience, linen or even onions, in the case of the mummy of Ramses IV.

  Other modifications were made to the body in order to make them more lifelike, or, in some instances, to provide them in death with what they were missing in life. For example, the mummy of an elderly priestess Nesitet-nebtaris from the twenty-first dynasty had a fracture at the top of the femur that rendered her almost immobile. It seems she spent the latter part of her life bedridden, resulting in pressure sores on her buttocks and back. The embalmers stitched up the worst of the abscess with flax and covered the stitching with resin. Their final act of kindness was to cover her bed sores by grafting gazelle skin over the raw areas,33 ensuring injury free skin for the afterlife.

  Some modifications to the mummies were made for more practical reas
ons than for those carried out on Nesitet-nebtaris. The twenty-fifth-dynasty mummy of Padiament, for example, had two poles pushed into his neck in order to hold his head in place. These sticks were held fast by resin poured into the throat and mouth. The neck is also padded with extra thick material to stabilise it. As there is no sign of an injury or decapitation it is assumed that the head, which remains heavy even after desiccation, was too heavy for the neck, resulting in it falling off during the mummification process.34 This does perhaps suggest that the embalmers were not always as careful with the body as they should have been, which is attested to by the mummy of the unknown man in the British Museum (EA22814), whose CT scan has revealed a wooden embalming tool was left in his head. It appears to be a wooden spatula and was lost when the embalmer was removing the brain. As he had lost his tool he was unable to complete the process, or at least he gave up trying, leaving the remainder of the brain in the head.35

  With such a large amount of linen needed for each body, many of the bandages were recycled household linen. Some bandages bear the names of different people and it is thought these were donated household linens that had been marked up for the laundrymen. Royalty, however, had custom-made bandages and some of Ramses II’s were woven from blue and gold thread. The twenty-second-dynasty mummy of Tjayaetimu, the Temple Singer, has a gap in the back of her cartonnage coffin revealing the outer wrappings were of red, brown and blue stripes. This could be her dress or it could be coloured bandages,36 either one producing an attractive mummy.

  In the later periods funerary texts from the Book of the Dead, the most common being chapters one, two and three, were written on the bandages to aid the deceased in the afterlife. Chapter one specifies, ‘This spell is to be recited after going to rest in the West, the Tjenenet-shrine being made content with its lord Osiris when going to and fro to the sacred barque of Re; his body on his bier shall be reckoned up, and shall be enduring in the Netherworld, namely that of N.’37