Eg noblewomen.lec

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Life at the top: the life of women in the wealthy classes

For women in richer families, these ancient Egyptian women had the best of

opportunities. Although they still faced the problems of a world without secure

contraception and the consequent perils of childbirth, richer women had better food and

clothing and more comfortable homes, as rich women do today. Few of them had an

opportunity to partake in working or religious activities outside the home, but some

women were involved in the cult of the god Amen in Thebes. Unfortunately, not much is

known about the princesses and queens who were at the peak of society: these

women will be discussed in later lectures.

The roles of upper class women in the New Kingdom were mainly

confined to domestic life, such as the securing of food and liquid supplies for the

family, the spinning and weaving of cloth, the care of children and the few

pleasures that the neighbourhood afforded, such as visiting friends – refer to your

handout. Some of them appear to have had training in the playing of musical

instruments, as some of the Old and Middle Kingdom tomb decoration reveals.

The harp is the favoured musical instrument and can be in the hands of either

wives or daughter, but women are shown striking the circular drum and the wife

of the noble, Ny-ankh-Pepy of Meir, is entitled “percussionist” (xnwt).1 (Other

percussionists are known from temple scenes in the OK as well as the MK.)

Those women who were at the peak of the upper classes will have had an

opportunity to be present in the royal court as attendants. Many of these would

have served the queen, although what their actual duties were we are not

certain. Fischer2 has pointed out that a few women are involved in the temple

rituals depicted in the jubilee of Niuserre at the Abu Ghurob sun sanctuary, but

we do not know either their position or what duties they were performing. It is

possible, however, that these women are xntyt-S: female officials who received

1 H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom and of the Heracleopolitan period, MMA (New York, 2nd edn, 2000), 24.2

? Ibid., 25.

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wages for assisting in the royal mortuary temples at Abusir. Some of those

women also had the title of “percussionist” (xnwt).

One outstanding courtier was Neferesres [OHT], who had a string of

courtly titles. She was a khekeret-nswt courtier (the less elevated grade of

courtier), a sole khekeret-nswt (the upper grade of courtier), an Overseer of

Pleasures, and Overseer of all the beautiful pleasures of the King. She was the

Overseer of the royal Ibu Dancers, Overseer of the royal Khener Troupe and she

carried the epithets: “She who sees the Beauty of her Lord every day” and “She

who pleases the Heart of the King of Lower Egypt in all his places”. She does

not appear to have been married – perhaps she was a career woman – and she

shared a tomb with Nymaatre, the Overseer of Singers, with whom she probably

worked. (Nymaatre himself was married to someone else.) He might have been

her brother.

Women with strong voices might join the ranks of the Dryt, or professional

mourners. Special singing groups of merit singers seemed to have been present

on royal occasions during the Old Kingdom. Other young girls might be trained

as professional singers, dancers, or musicians for the cults of the gods or,

sometimes, for musical troupes at the court of the king. Amongst the few Middle

Kingdom professions for women there is one Hsyt m bnt – a singer who was

also a harpist.3 There were several different groups of dancers that performed at

different functions. We know from reliefs found at Abusir4 that there was a

khener of dancers who performed for the king and, from the tomb records of

Neferes-res, we know that they provided entertainment for the king and were

sometimes under the direction of a female overseer. Other khener groups were

present at funerals, but we do not know many details about them, other than their

3 W. Ward, Essays on Feminine Titles of the Middle Kingdom and related subjects, American University (Beirut, 1996), 12.

4 Z. Hawass & M. Verner, “Newly Discovered Blocks from the Causeway of Sahure”, Mitteilungen des Deutsches Archäologisches Institute Kairo 52, (1996), 177 - 186.

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representation on many tomb walls. They usually operated with singers and a

small orchestra. Since we have a number of tomb reliefs with the wives or

daughters performing with such groups, it is not impossible that prestigious

khener groups could consist of high-born women (called a xnrtt). Men were also

included in the khener troupes.

It is probable that the khener were the more prestigious group of dancers,

but there were the more vigorous ibu dancing troupes. Yet a third group of

dancers was the Sndt, dancers of the Acacia House (singular dancer, Sndtt),

which was a religious function in which women were permitted.5

Much more prestigious than the kheneretet were the courtly attendants.

While we do not know what exactly they did, we know how to find them in the

records because of their titles. The lowest grade were the Spswt nswt, noble

women of the king. They are present in small numbers throughout the Old

Kingdom and early Middle Kingdom periods, but we know nothing about their

roles. More elevated than these are the Xkrt nswt, the adorned ones of the

king – in reality, the lower grade female courtiers. Above them in rank are the

Xkrt nswt watt: the Sole Female Courtiers, who must have waited on the

royal family. Outranking them, however, were the rxt nswt, those who were

known to the king. While there is some elasticity about all these titles, the

meaning of rxt nswt is the most contentious. It might mean someone whom the

king recognised in some way, or it might even extend to a descendant of a king,

for many of these people can be shown to be grandchildren of Egyptian rulers.

All of them were courtiers, and, usually, only the Xkrt nswt watt or the rxt nswt

will have a place in a royal necropolis.

Some of the more fortunate women in New Kingdom times might have

gained added status as a Singer of Amen, Min or one of the other gods.

Occasionally, the wife of the High Priest or some favoured courtier became the 5 E. Edel, Das Akazienhaus und seine Rolle in den Begrabnisriten des alten Ägypten, MÄS (Berlin, 1970).

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Superior of those singers, but those women belonged to the highest ranking in

society and were often attendants of the royal court. One woman is recorded as

“the wife of Min” (the god); her title is Hmt Mnw.6 It is the first of the elevated

titles associated with the priesthoods of women; another from the Middle

Kingdom is entitled Hnwt nt Imn – the Lady of Amon. This may have been a

prelude to the later God’s Wife of Amen, which was only available to royal

women. A select few amongst the most privileged women might attain the rank

of Adoratrice of Amen – particularly if their daughters became wives or

concubines of the king, but very few women had any other type of employment

unless they were workers dependent on their work for a living. Amongst those

women were basket-makers, cooks, beer-brewers, kitchen hands, gardeners and

meal grinders. The less skilled worked alongside the men in the fields.

In the New Kingdom, there appear to be very few women who have

administrative or professional positions of any kind other than within the context

of temple service. But does this reflect the reality of the period? Male bias

cannot be divorced from the representations of women in both written texts and

painted images. The reliefs and paintings that adorn the walls of tomb chapels

were executed by men and were oriented toward men, with women playing a

passive role. A study of the texts from tombs reveals that, despite the presence

of women within the reliefs and paintings, the texts were concerned with the

Afterlife of the male tomb owner. No men are ever shown mourning a wife, yet

many women died before their husbands did. In the Old Kingdom, indeed, a

large percentage of the tombs of family men do not feature a wife at all.7

Furthermore, none of the essentially female tasks, such as upper class women

weaving or performing domestic tasks is discovered within our sources – though

weavers and nurses of the lower classes are depicted within tomb reliefs and

paintings – especially of the Middle Kingdom.

6 N. Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish III, fig. 26.

7 See, for example, A.M. Roth, A Cemetery of Palace Attendants (Giza Mastabas 6), MFA (Boston, 1995), 44; see also the articles in the Bibliography by V.G. Callender.

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In the later New Kingdom era, women of the upper classes may be seen

in some tombs engaged in ceremonies associated with their husbands. On the

face of it, it looks as though they are active participants in funerary ritual. In fact,

though, they are praising their husbands and performing gestures that would

ensure that he has a happy Afterlife.

Women did not have equality with men in ancient Egypt, except before the

law, in regard to property and in connection with taxation. Both men and women

could own property and dispose of it as they liked, and both were punished if

they committed crimes, although the punishment inflicted differed between men

and women. Both were liable for taxation during the Middle Kingdom, for we

have cases of women who ran away to escape their labour obligations, but the

position of the upper class woman does not appear in our records.

The monuments belonging to women also tell us a lot about the

attitudes society has towards them. Most monuments are made for men. If

their husbands thought it proper, many of them included their wives on their

memorials. But quite a number of men are featured alone on their stelae,

although some of them may include a son or a daughter in effigy or in the text.

The will of Prince Nikaure – mentioned in the literature section – is an example

where Nikaure is arranging for a mastaba-tomb for his daughter near the

pyramid of Khafre, the second of the three great pyramids on the Giza plateau.

There are scores of private tombs around these three pyramids, so many that

excavation still continues after more than a century, and their publication lags

behind their discovery by as much as 50 years. In Khufu’s western cemetery,

Prince Merib did the same for his daughter, Nensedjerkai. We will look at

these examples next week.

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In contrast to those provisions for upper class women, some women

cannot be found in the tomb record of their husbands; if they are lucky, they

can be depicted in the tombs of their sons or daughters.8

While the stelae of the Middle Kingdom feature not only wives, but

children, parents and other relations, on other occasions, in different eras, the

mistress of the house is not even mentioned in the husband’s tomb or on his

stele. We do not know the reasons for this. There are in the New Kingdom – as

in earlier periods, too – quite a number of stelae in which women appear on their

own. [OHT] In this example, this temple Singer lifts her hands in praise of the

goddess Hathor, but the phrase, nbt pr, indicates that she is a married woman.

Her husband’s name does not appear on the stele, however. Gay Robins9 has

observed that there are unwritten rules in Egyptian art – which she calls “gender

decorum” – about which we are in the dark. For example, when a female is the

rare owner of a tomb, her husband is always absent because of some protocol

about which we are ignorant. It may be that, as it is the female’s tomb, and as

men are nearly always shown as being larger than their female companions, the

male presence in a tomb would result in the uncomfortable visual situation of a

female tomb owner being shown as being larger than the male. In a similar

situation, when a husband omits his wife’s name from his stele, this, too, is

probably “in accordance with the rules of gender decorum”, as Robins believes.

Perhaps religious fashion may have played a part, because in certain periods of

history, such as the late 5th Dynasty and the Amarna periods, women are

surprisingly absent from the tombs of their husbands. Of the forty-six tombs at

Amarna, for example, only one (the tomb of Aye) contains wall reliefs featuring

the wife of the tomb owner.10 This makes the tomb of Maia really exceptional.

8 Henry G. Fischer records two false doors, CG 1501 and LD Text I, 19 (Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom and of the Heracleopolitan period, MMA (New York, 2nd edn, 2000), 60 note 51). In addition, there is Princess Sedit, well represented in the tomb of Merib of Khufu’s Western Field, at Giza.9 Gay Robins, Reflections of Women in the New Kingdom , Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 1995), 7

10 Alain Zivie, ”Tutankhamen’s Nurse, Maia “ Egypte, Afrique & Orient,

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Maia’s tomb is similar in construction to the tomb of Aper-el, Akhenaten’s

vizier, whose tomb was discovered by Zivie at Saqqara. Her name is spelt in

several ways throughout the tomb: Maia, Mtia – and may have been a pet name

for Mut + something – perhaps even Mutemwia – but Mwt was a banned name

during the Amarna period. She has several titles, some of which are merely

extension variations, but the main ones are mnat nswt, mnat nswt Sd(.t),

mnat nswt Sd(.t) Haw nTr, rdt snq n nTr nfr, Hsyt n nTr nfr being among

them. (Translated, these mean: royal nurse, Nurse who nourishes the king, She

who nourishes the divine body of the king, She who gives milk to the perfect god,

She who is a praised one of the perfect god.)

Maia is represented many times throughout her tomb, always with a long

full wig ending in ringlets [slide]. Her portrait is most frequent on the pillars in

her tomb, where she wears the shebyu collar of two rows of golden disc beads.

Although such collars are worn by kings from the time of Thutmose IV onwards,

and, during the Amarna period are seen as prize gifts being given to the highest

officials, few females are so honoured by being awarded the collar. Aye’s wife,

Tey, who was the nurse of Nefertiti, is distinguished in this way, however. Maia

may, in fact have been represented at Amarna carrying Tutankhamen, for

several nurses are shown in the Royal Tomb of Akhenaten, in the so-called

Princesses’ Suite. Royal nurses there are indicated with a fan being held behind

them and the child within their arms.

Although she must have been married and must have born a child (as the

king’s wet nurse, she needed to be lactating), Maia’s own family is not

represented within her own tomb. This has perhaps to do with what Gay Robins

has called the “gender decorum” of mortuary monuments: males are sometimes

without their wives and females without their spouse, as we saw a little earlier.

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Ward has observed that “It is frankly difficult to offer a satisfactory

overall generalization about women in public life outside the temples. I have

the impression that a rather small minority of Egyptian women entered what we

would term secular professions”, he says. “There do not seem to have been

any particular societal barriers preventing them from doing so, so it would be

rather a matter of choice on the part of individual women themselves. To a

certain extent, we lack enough documentation, but this is not the whole

answer. The women who were educated and therefore eligible to enter public

life belonged to the upper classes and it was these very women who already

had extensive responsibilities over their large households. It may be that few

women of this class had the time to engage in public professions. The ‘working

mom’ was just not a role that most women could take on even if they wished to

do so.”

In summing up his excellent essay on the status of women, Professor

William Ward has concluded that “The best [he] can offer as a general rule of

thumb is [the view that while] public life was the domain of men, women had

the vast responsibility of private life. The number of women who were able to

move into the public professional sector was relatively small and those that we

can identify are the exceptions.11

11 Wm Ward, ‘The Status of Women’, internet lecture: www.stoa.org/diotima/essays

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