Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley

by Daughters of Isis- Women of Ancient Egypt (epub)

  The right of a man to end an unhappy alliance by ‘repudiating’ an unsatisfactory wife is known from the 12th Dynasty onwards and almost certainly existed earlier in Egyptian history. The corresponding right of a wife to initiate a divorce is only documented from the New Kingdom onwards but, given that Egyptian law consistently treated married women as independent individuals, it would appear that it simply went unrecorded in earlier times. There are certainly very few recorded case histories dealing with a woman repudiating her husband; whether this indicates that women were less fickle or had lower expectations of their partners is not clear. It may be that, in a society which placed great emphasis on fertility, and consequently on youth, an elderly wife would think twice about rejecting her husband as she might well be unable to find a replacement willing to maintain her. As there were no legally defined grounds for divorce almost any excuse could be cited as a reason to end the alliance and in effect the marriage could be terminated at will. In practice, financial considerations and perhaps pressures from the two families concerned, who may well have been related, must have provided some restraint. There is no indication that divorce was regarded as a social stigma for a man, although the repudiated wife, particularly one rejected in favour of a younger and more attractive or more fertile bride, may well have felt publicly shamed.

  Do not divorce a woman of your household if she does not conceive and does not give birth.

  Late Period scribal advice

  A diverse variety of reasons have been recorded for the ending of marriages, many of which would be familiar to the divorce lawyers of today. Marriages often failed because of mutual incompatibility, because the husband wished to devote himself to his work, or because one party had fallen in love with another. The rejection of an infertile wife was a common enough tragedy, although not one that society approved of. A 21st Dynasty letter which has survived from the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina quotes the unusual and almost certainly apocryphal story of a man and wife who had been married for over twenty years. When the husband fell in love with another woman he looked for a reason to end his marriage, and decided on ‘I repudiate you because you have no sight in one eye.’ Not surprisingly his wife, who had been partially blind throughout the entire marriage, was not particularly impressed by her husband’s feeble excuse and roundly mocked him for taking twenty years to notice her deformity.

  For a long time egyptologists believed that concubines, the official mistresses of both married and unmarried men, were accepted throughout Egyptian society although they were not generally accorded either the respect or the legal rights reserved for married women. It now appears that the number of official concubines may have been seriously overestimated as there has been an unfortunate tendency to classify all otherwise unidentified single women as concubines. A growing understanding of the textual evidence is starting to indicate that many of the unmarried ladies attached to households actually served as administrators, musicians or maids. Even in the letters of Heqanakht, where the Lady Iutemheb is described as hbsw.t, a term which has not been found in any other text but which has been traditionally taken to mean concubine, it is by no means certain that the lady in question was not an official second wife.5

  Do not fornicate with a married woman. He who fornicates with a married woman on her bed, his wife will be copulated with on the ground.

  Late Period advice to young men

  Married women were certainly not allowed any degree of sexual licence and adultery – ‘the great sin which is found in women’ – was the most serious marital crime which a wife could commit, and one which would almost certainly lead to ignominious divorce and the total loss of all legal rights. Men in turn were expected to respect another man’s sole right of access to his wife, and indulging in sexual relations with a married woman was frowned upon, not for moral reasons, but because it was a sure and certain way of enraging a cuckolded husband. Even a relationship between a willing unmarried woman and a married man could be fraught with danger, and one letter which has survived from Deir el-Medina tells how a group of villagers ganged together to confront a woman known to be conducting a clandestine affair with the husband of a neighbour.6 The mob could only be prevented from seriously assaulting both the woman and her family by the timely intervention of the local police. The wronged wife had attracted the sympathy of her community, and the adulterous husband was ordered to regularize his affairs and obtain a divorce at once, as the people could not be restrained from acting for a second time. As in many cases of adultery the woman was clearly seen as a temptress corrupting a weak but essentially innocent man, and Egyptian myths and wisdom texts, all written by males, are full of dire warnings to stay clear of other men’s wives who would use all their feminine wiles to snare them into sexual relationships.

  Then she spoke to him, saying ‘You are very strong. I see your vigour every day.’ And she desired to know him as a man. She got up, took hold of him, and said ‘Come, let us spend an hour lying in bed together. It will be good for you, and afterwards I will make you some fine new clothes.’

  New Kingdom Tale of Two Brothers

  A wife caught in adultery was open to the harshest of physical punishments from her husband. In theory she could be put to death; the New Kingdom Westcar Papyrus, a collection of stories about the fabulous Old Kingdom court of King Cheops, tells how an unfaithful wife was burned and her ashes scattered on the River Nile, while in the Tale of Two Brothers Anubis eventually kills his guilty wife and throws her body to the dogs, thereby denying her an honourable burial. Diodorus Siculus reports that the adulterous Egyptian wife was liable to have her nose cut off, while her partner in crime would be savagely beaten. In practice divorce and social disgrace seem to have been the accepted penalty, and the wife repudiated on the grounds of adultery was roundly condemned by everyone.

  Prescription to make a woman cease to become pregnant for one, two or three years; grind together finely a measure of acacia and dates with some honey. Moisten seed-wool with the mixture, and insert it in the vagina.

  Ebers Medical Papyrus

  Illegitimate children appear to have suffered no specific hardships or discrimination in Dynastic Egypt, although in the New Kingdom Tale of Truth and Falsehood a young fatherless boy was cruelly taunted by his schoolmates: ‘ “Whose son are you? You don’t have a father.” And they reviled him and mocked him.’ Several contraceptives and even abortion-procuring prescriptions were available for those couples who wished to avoid a pregnancy; these were generally concocted from a diverse range of curiously unpleasant ingredients and frequently included a measure of crocodile dung. The use of animal excrement as a contraceptive appears to be a peculiarly widespread phenomenon: in southern Africa elephant droppings have often been used as a prophylactic, while the English Boke of Saxon Leechdoms of AD 900 cheerfully suggested that those wishing to avoid children should ‘take a fresh horse turd and place it on hot coals. Make it reek strongly between the thighs up under the raiment.’7 The efficacy of these methods is unknown, although it is tempting to assume that the application of a judicious amount of any type of dung to the private parts may well have cooled the ardour and made the use of any further precautions unnecessary. Perhaps not surprisingly, no evidence for ‘male’ contraceptives such as condoms or recipes for potions to be applied to the male genitalia have been recovered; methods such as coitus interruptus (withdrawal of the penis before ejaculation) or coitus obstructus (full intercourse with the ejaculate entering the man’s bladder due to pressure on the base of the urethra) would naturally leave no trace in the archaeological record.

  Man is more anxious to copulate than a donkey. What restrains him is his purse.

  Observation of Scribe Ankhsheshonq

  The more intimate aspects of married life were very important to the Egyptians, who held the continuing cycle of birth, death and rebirth as a central and often repeated theme in their theology. Intercourse naturally formed an integral part of this cycle, and the Egyptians di
splayed no false prudery when dealing with the subject of sex. Unlike most modern views of heaven, which tend to concentrate on spiritual rather than physical gratification, potency and fertility were regarded as necessary attributes for a full enjoyment of the Afterlife, and consequently false penises were thoughtfully moulded on to the mummified bodies of dead men, while their wives were equipped with artificial nipples which would become fully functional in the Afterlife. Female fertility dolls with wide hips and deliberately emphasized genitalia were often included among the grave goods of men, women and children to help the deceased regain all lost powers. Although clearly sexual symbols, these figurines are often carrying tiny baby dolls, emphasizing the fact that sex was regarded as just one of the more pleasing aspects of the wider subject of fertility. There was no artificial distinction drawn between the enjoyment of sex and the wish to produce children, and a woman’s fertility consequently contributed to her sexual attractiveness. The clear and artificial division which most westernized societies make between sex and reproduction can be seen when trying to picture a provocatively pouting Playboy centrefold posing with her newborn infant.

  The Egyptians were certainly not coy about sexual matters. However, as most of the evidence which they have left us comes from religious or funerary contexts where explicit references to

  Fig. 7 Pottery fertility figurine

  intimate subjects would have been considered inappropriate, we do not have much opportunity for archaeological voyeurism. Love songs, myths and stories all make rather vague and veiled references to intercourse, while crude graffiti, dirty jokes and explicit drawings scribbled on potsherds are far more basic. One of the world’s earliest examples of pornography, the so-called Turin Erotic Papyrus, contains a series of cartoons depicting several athletic couples cavorting rather self-consciously in a wide variety of imaginative and rather uncomfortable-looking poses. Unfortunately, we do not know whether the papyrus was supposed to be a true record of events observed in a brothel or, as seems far more likely, simply represented the draughtsman’s more extravagant fantasies. Certainly, basing our understanding of conjugal relations on the Turin Papyrus would be similar to believing all that is suggested by blue movies to be typical of modern western life. More down-to-earth evidence compiled from texts and ostraca confirms that the more conservative ‘face-to-face’ positions and intercourse from behind were the preferred sexual postures for most couples.

  Then Seth said to Horus: ‘Come, let us have a feast day at my house.’ And Horus said to him: ‘I will, I will.’ Now when evening had come, a bed was prepared for them, and they lay down together. At night, Seth let his member become stiff, and he inserted is between the thighs of Horus. And Horus placed his hand between his thighs and caught the semen of Seth.

  New Kingdom Story of Horus and Seth

  We must assume that, as in any sophisticated society, more unusual sexual castes did exist, but the Egyptians themselves maintained a discreet silence in these matters. Homosexual activity, which was by no means frowned upon in many parts of the ancient world, seems to have played little part in Egyptian daily life; the Book of the Dead, that indispensable guide to the Afterlife, lists abstinence from homosexual acts among the virtues but gives us no indication of how common such acts might have been. The homosexual episode in the Story of Horus and Seth, quoted above, has been variously interpreted as either a symbol of Seth’s general unfitness to rule or as a sign of Seth’s physical dominance over his nephew. The Middle Kingdom version of this tale credits Seth with the immortal line ‘How lovely your backside is.’ Horus then reports this unexpected advance to his mother Isis, who advises her

  Fig. 8 A prostitute enjoying sex with a client

  son to catch Seth’s semen, thereby avoiding the humiliation of impregnation by his enemy.

  As in many societies where men write the histories, lesbianism seems to have passed completely unrecorded. Rumours of more fantastic sexual behaviour were recorded by Herodotus, who seems to have been particularly fascinated by the seamier side of Egyptian life: ‘In my lifetime a monstrous thing happened in this province, a woman having open intercourse with a he-goat.’ Even if this was true, it was clearly not a common occurrence. Necrophilia involving the abuse of freshly dead female bodies in the embalming houses, also hinted at by Herodotus, is again totally unrecorded by the Egyptians themselves.

  Take to yourselves a wife while you are young, so that she may give you a son. You should begat him for yourself when you are still young, and should live to see him become a man.

  New Kingdom scribal advice

  In the days following her wedding the young bride would have eagerly looked for the telltale signs which would indicate that a baby was on the way. It would be very difficult for us to overemphasize the importance of her fertility to the Egyptian woman. A fertile woman was a successful woman. She was regarded by men as sexually attractive, was the envy of her less fortunate sisters and, as the mother of many children, she gained the approval of both society and her husband. Every man needed to prove his masculinity and potency by fathering as many children as possible, and to do this he had to have the co-operation of a fruitful wife. The wife, for her part, needed many children to please her husband, ensure her security within the marriage and enhance her status in the community. Mothers had an important and respected role within the family, and were frequently represented in positions of honour in the tombs of both their husband and sons. Children were not, however, simply status symbols. Both husband and wife appear to have loved their

  Fig. 9 A prostitute painting her lips

  offspring dearly, and Egyptian men had no misplaced macho feelings that made them embarrassed or ashamed of showing affection towards their progeny. To produce a large and healthy brood of children was every Egyptian’s dream, and babies were regarded as one of life’s richest blessings and a cause for legitimate, if occasionally exaggerated, boasting; we must either assume that the 11th Dynasty army captain claiming to have fathered ‘seventy children, the issue of one wife’ was over-counting to emphasize his virility, or else feel deeply sorry for his wife.

  The Egyptians were by no means unusual in their desire to father many offspring. Peasant societies traditionally show a great respect for fertility, and nowhere is this more true than in modern rural Egypt where a great man can easily be identified by his many sons and the unfortunate woman who shows no signs of pregnancy becomes the subject of endless speculation and gossip less than a year into her marriage. To remain childless is a tragedy in a country where parents stress their parenthood by themselves taking the name of their eldest son, using the prefix abu (father of) or om (mother of), and where women without children are politely referred to as om el-ghayib, ‘mother of the absent one’. In these circumstances the concept of waiting to start a family, or perhaps restricting the number of planned children, becomes incomprehensible, and sterile men have been known to kill themselves rather than admit that they are incapable of fathering a child. The ancient Egyptians would have felt at one with their modern counterparts in this matter.

  Do not prefer one of your children above the others; after all, you never know which one of them will be kind to you.

  Late Period advice to parents

  There are very few societies where female babies are actively preferred to males, and Egypt was no exception to this general rule. Although girls were clearly loved by their parents, as witnessed by several family portraits which include daughters in formal but affectionate poses, boy children undeniably conveyed greater status. This preference for boys may be hard for us to condone but is perhaps easy to understand. In any society with no efficient welfare or pension system children represent a financial investment for the future. Boys, who traditionally work outside the home, have a high-earning potential while girls, whose work within the home is unwaged, will marry and devote their work to the good of their husband’s family. In ancient Egypt the eldest son also had an important part to play in his parents’ funeral rit
ual; a role which could not be adequately performed by a daughter.

  The preference for boy children was never as extreme as it was in other ancient societies, and the Egyptians never developed the tradition of overt female infanticide – the abandoning of girl babies at birth – which became accepted practice in both Greece and Rome. This legalized form of murder was to its practitioners simply a late form of abortion, and as such remained valid Roman law until AD 374. It allowed the father the sole right to refuse to rear any child, just as the father had the sole right to authorize his wife to have an abortion. The mother had absolutely no say in the matter, and an unwanted infant was simply exposed on the local rubbish dump soon after birth.