Ancient Egyptian - Social Life

PROFESSIONS

In Ancient Egypt there were definite social classes which were dictated by an egyptian's profession. This social stratification is like a pyramid. At the bottom of the 'Social Pyramid' were soldiers, farmers, and tomb builders, who represented the greatest percent of the Egyptian population. The workers supported the professionals above them, just as the base of the pyramid supports the rest of the structure. Above the workers were skilled craftsmen, such as artists, who used primitive tools to make everything from carts to coffins.

Above the craftsmen were the scribes. The scribes were the only Egyptians who knew how to read and write, and therefore had many types of job opportunity. A scribe's duties ranged from writing letters for townspeople, to recording harvests, to keeping accounts for the Egyptian army. Above these scribes were more scholarly scribes, who had advanced to higher positions such as priests, doctors, and engineers. Priests were devoted to their religious duties in the temples at least three months out of every year, during which time they never left the temple. At other times the worked as judges and teachers.

The medical profession of Ancient Egypt had its own hierarchy. At the top was the chief medical officer of Egypt. Under him were the superintendents and inspectors of physicians, and beneath then were the physicians. Egyptian doctors were very advanced in their knowledge of herbal remedies and surgical techniques. Also part of Egyptian medicine were magic, charms, and spells, which had only psychological effects, if any, on a patient.

Engineers, with their mathematical and architectural knowledge, were responsible for the ning and building of the monuments, temples, and pyramids of Egypt. The architects were not the actual builders, insttead they were in charge of the branch of government involved. Then men who did calculations, drew up the s, surveyed the sites, and supervised the work day were scribes.

Above the priests, doctors, and engineers were the high priests and noblemen whom the pharaoh appointed as his assistants, generals, and administrators, who together formed the government. The vizier was the pharoah's closest advisor. Finally, at the top of the social pyramid was the pharaoh. The pharoah of egypt was not simply a king and a ruler, but was was considered a god on earth.

EGYPTIAN HOMES

Villagers (tomb builders, farmers, and the like) lived in cramped villages with narrow streets near the tombs sites or farmlands. The houses they occupied were made of bricks. The bricks were made of mud and chopped straw, molded and dried in the hot Egyptian sun. These dwellings deteriorated after time, and new ones were built right on top of the crumbled material, creating hills called tells. Only buildings that were meant to last forever were made of stone.

The homes themselves were squarish in shape, with a vent on the roof and narrow windows. The front space of hte house was used by the villager for his trade and possibly for keeping some livestock. The living area was shared by the family. There was little furniture save beds and small chests for keeping clothes. The kitchen was at the back of the ouse where there might be an underground cellar for storage. There was no running water and sometimes a single well served an entire town. Egyptian villagers spent most of their time out of doors. They often slept, cooked, and ate atop their houses' flat roofs.

Two examples of actually excavated villages were El-Amarna, and Deir el-Medinah. The workers village at El-Amarna was laid out along straight narrow streets, within an boundary wall. The houses were small, barrack-like dwellings, where animals lived as well as people. Many houses had keyhole-shaped hearths and jars sunk into the floor. There was no well in the village and the water had to be brought from some distance away. Life must have been far more pleasant in the village of Deir el-Medina, home to the workers of the Theban royal tombs. There was a single street with ten houses on either side. The houses in this village had three large rooms, a yard and a kitchen, underground cellars for storage, and niches in the walls for statues of household gods.

Wealthy Egyptian people had spacious estates with comfortable houses. The houses had high ceilings with pillars, barred windows, tiled floors, painted walls, and stair cases leading up to the flat roofs where one could overlook the estate. There would be pools and gardens, servant's quarters, wells, graneries, stables, and a small shrine for worship. The wealthy lived in the countryside or on the outskirts of a town.

The ancient Egyptians, even the wealthy ones, had a very limited assortment of furniture. A low, square stool, the corners of which flared upwards and on top was placed a leather seat or cushion, was the most common type of furnishing. Chairs were rare and they only belonged to the very wealthy. Small tables were made of wood or wicker and had three to four legs. Beds were made of a woven mat placed on wooden framework standing on animal-shaped legs. At one end was a footboard and at the other was a headrest made a curved neckpiece set on top of a short pillar on an oblong base. Lamp stands held lamps of simple bowls of pottery containing oil and a wick. Chests were used to store domestic possessions such as linens, clothing, jewelry, and make-up.

CLOTHING AND JEWELRY

Fashion for men and women, rich or poor, changed very little over the centuries in Ancient Egypt. The clothing worn by men and women was made of linen, and it was very lightweight for the hot climate. All men, from the tomb worker to the pharaoh, wore a kind of kilt or apron that varied in length over the years, from halfway above the knee, to halfway below it. It was tied at the front, folded in at the side, or in two knots at the hips. A sleeved, shirt-like garment also became fashionable. Men were always clean-shaven, they used razors made from bronze to shave their beards and heads. Women wore straight, ankle-length dresses that usually had straps that tied at the neck or behind the shoulders. Some dresses had short sleeves or women wore short robes tied over their shoulders. Later fashions show that the linen was folded in many tiny vertical pleats and fringes were put at the edges. Wealthy people wore sandals made of leather that had straps across the instep and between the first and second toes.

Egyptians adorned themselves with as much jewelry as they could afford. Wealthy people wore broad collars made of gold and precious stones liked together, which fastened at the back of the neck. Pairs of bracelets were worn around the wrist or high on the arm, above the elbow. Rings and anklets were also worn. Women wore large round earrings and put bands around their heads or held their hair in place with ivory and metal hair pins. Ordinary people wore necklaces made of brightly colored pottery beads.

The Egyptians cared about their appearance a great deal. The women spent a lot of time bathing, rubbing oils and perfumes into their skin, and using their many cosmetic implements to apply make-up and style their wigs. Using a highly-polished bronze hand mirror, a woman would apply khol, a black dye kept in a jar or pot, to line her eyes and eyebrows, using an 'brush' or 'pencil' made of a reed. Men wore this eye make-up as well, which was not only a fashion but also protected against the eye infections which were common in Egypt. They would use a dye called henna to redden their nails and lips. Wigs were worn by men and women. A woman would place a cone made of fat soaked in sweet smelling ointment on her head, which slowly melted over her wig during a warm evening. (ew!)

WOMEN

Egypt's society was typically male-dominated. The word of the man of the house was law, and a wife was in many ways her husband's servant. On the other hand, Egyptian women enjoyed far more rights and privileges than in other lands, modern as well as ancient.

On the down side, Egyptian wives had to share their husbands with other women. Most men could not afford a harem, as the pharaoh could, but had a primary wife and one or more concubines, who were permanently locked into a subordinate position that could leave them helplessly open to humiliation. At banquets wives and husbands were usually seated separately. A husband who was angry with his wife could banish her to her quarters, and could beat her- within limits. An Egyptian woman paid for adultery with her life, even by burning at the stake, while it was no crime at all for a man. The Egyptian portrayal of men was upstanding, heroic, and true, while women were portrayed as frivolous, spiteful, and false.

On the up side, reliefs and pictures show the important role of housewives and that Egyptian husbands were aware that it took two to make a marriage. Some sagely advice to a husband was 'Thou shouldst not supervise they wife in her house, when thou knowest she is efficient. Do not say to her: 'Where is it? Fetch it for us!' when she has put it in the most useful place. Let thine eye have regard, while thou art silent, that thou mayest recognize her abilities.' In ancient Greece, women were second-class creatures who led lives apart, closed off in a special area of the house. Entertaining, sports, and even casual passing of time were for men only, as in Islamic countries today. In ancient Egypt, husband and wife chatted together, listened to music together, and threw parties together. A wife even went along on her husband's hunting forays to keep him company. Egyptian women shared with men important legal rights that in many other nations were totally denied them. They were allowed to own land, operate businesses, testify in court, and bring actions against men. Egyptian women enjoyed a dimension of freedom greater than any of their counterparts from other places in ancient times.

FOOD AND DRINK

The egyptians were very secure in that the Nile valley always yeilded enough to feed the country, even when famine was present in other nearby parts of the world. The Egyptian's basic food and drink, bread and beer, were made from the main crops they grew, wheat and barely. There were many types of bread, including pastries and cakes. Since there was no sugar, honey was used as a sweetener by the rich, and poor people used dates and fruit juices. Egyptians liked strong-tasting vegetables such as garlic and onions. They thought these were good for the health. They also ate peas and beans, lettuce, cucumbers, and leeks. Vegetables were often served with an oil and vinegar dressing. s, dates, pomegranates and grapes were the only fruits that could be grown in the hot climate. The rich could afford to make wine from their grapes. Ordinary people ate fish and poultry. On special occasions they ate sheep, goat, or pig; but there was little grazing land available so meat was expensive and most people ate it only on festive occasions. Egyptians stored their food in jars and granaries. Fish and meat had to be especially prepared for storage. One method was salting. Another was to hang up the fish in the sun, which baked them dry.

In ordinary families the cooking was done by the housewife, but larger households employed servants to work in the kitchen and a chef - usually a man - to do the cooking. The Egyptians had ovens, and knew how to boil roast, and fry food. There were few kitchen tools: pestles, mortars, and sieves.

Hieroglyphics

Besides pyramids and sphinxes, the Egyptians are known for hieroglyphics, or a form of picture writing. Hieroglyphics uses small pictures which represent different words, actions, or ideas. There were over 700 of these letters. Some pictures stood for whole words. A series of wavy lines meant 'water.' All of the letters in heiroglyphcs were consonants. The Egyptians did not write vowels and did not use any punctuation.

Hieroglyphics were very intricate and must have taken a very long time to write. It is no wonder that most egyptians couldn't read or write. Gradually hieroglyphics were simplified and an easier system, called hieratic script, was developed. The original hieroglyphics were reserved for writing on buildings and tombs, while hieratic was used for everyday purposes, such as recording taxes, and were written in ink on egyptian paper, called papyrus. Hieratic was replaced by demotic, another simplified version which could be written flowingly and quickly, like script. Demotic is found with hieroglyphics and Greek on the Rosetta Stone.

The Egyptians made their paper, called papyrus, from reed stems which had to be flattened, dried, and stuck together to make es. They cut the stem of the t vertically in thin slices. They laid the strips next to each other lengthwise and slightly overlapping to form the a layer. More slices were placed on top of them in the other direction to form another layer. A cloth was placed on top of the reeds and they pounded the sheet of reeds with a mallet. The pounding made the juices of the t stick them together. The resulting sheet of papyrus was slightly sticky and was put out to dry in the sun. When it was dry, it was rubbed smooth with a stone or a piece of wood. To make long rolls of papyrus, the Egyptians glued the ends of the sheets or papyrus together with a paste made of flour and water. Egyptian 'pens' were tin, sharp reeds, which they would dip in ink to write with.

Scribes were the few Egyptians who knew how to read and write. There were a wide range of employment opportunities for them. A scribe might write letters or draw up contracts for fellow-villagers, but others had more demanding jobs. They might record the harvest and collected the state's share of it in taxes. They could calculate the amount of food needed to feed the tomb builders. They would keep accounts onestates and order supplies for the temples and the Egyptian army. In this way, they kept the government working. Other scribes were more scholarly and wrote mathematical or medical papers. Some acted as teachers or librarians who copied books and composed inscriptions for tombs and temples. A scribe's job was to be a manager or a civil servant. Scribes could hold a wide variety of positions.

A scribe's proffession was highly regarded in Ancient Egypt. Although being a scribe was rewarding, the training could take as long as twelve years. Most of the boys who went to school learned to be scribes. Many Egyptian children did not go to school, but went to work with their father and learned his trade. Girls stayed at home with their mothers and learned household skills, though there is evidence that some girls were taught to read and write.

Schools were attached to the temples. The children were taught in groups by teachers who were very strict and made their pupils work hard. Boys who misbehaved or were lazy were often beaten. Since papyrus was expensive, the boys practiced on reusable clay tablets called potsherds. These could be wiped clean with a rag. A scribe sat Indian style and held his writing board in his lap. Among his other writing materials were sharpened reeds, a scribal palette with red and black inkwells, and a water jug in which to dip the reed.

The students learned to read and write by repetition. Over and over they would copy texts such as this one: 'Set your sight on being a scribe; a fine profession that suits you. You call for one; a thousand answer you. You stride freely on the road. You will not be like the hired ox. You are in front of the others.' The teacher might also dictate to them, 'O scribe do not idle or you shall be cursed straightaway. Do not give your heart to pleasure of you shall fail. Write with your hand, recite with your mouth. Do not spend a day of idleness or you shall be beaten. A boy's ear is on his back and he listens when he is beaten=8A' As a reading lesson, the boys would be given papyrus scrolls from which they would chant out loud, 'I have been told that you have abandoned writing and that you reel about in pleasures, that you have turned your back on hieroglyphics.' As well as hieroglyphics and hieratic writing, they leaned subjects such as arithmetic, useful in this occupation since it involved counting and calculating.

Egyptian Art

Frontalism

Every example of Egyptian art from any time period strictly adheres to the same style. There is a code, or a set of rules for producing the artwork. The style is called frontalism. In reliefs or paintings, frontailsm means that the head of the character is always drawn in profile, while the body is seen from the front. Although the face is to the side, the eye is drawn in full. The legs are turned to the same side as the head, with one foot placed in front of the other. The head is at right angles to the body. Every ure, in paintings or sculptures, stands or sits with a formal, stiff, and rigid posture. The stance of the body is severe, but the faces are calm and serene, and almost always tilted slightly towards the sky, as if the ures were basking in the warm sun.

It is truly remarkable that in thousands of years, this was the one and only style. There are slightly different 'rules' for the drawing of animals and slaves from the way pharoahs and gods and portrayed.

'Ti Hunting the Hippopotamus' is carved on a surface of a stone. This form of artwork is called a relief. Here we see frontalism in the two dimensional form. Ti's shoulders and head make right angles. All the ures, humans and hippos alike, are etched in profile. However, the slaves and the animals are more natural and relaxed. Ti is enormous, while the slaves who row his boat are atively small. Also, in real life, hippos are larger than people, but this image of Ti could easily outweigh two of the hippos he is hunting. Why did the Egyptians paint this way? Didn't they know better? Didn't they have the artistic skill to paint things as they really were? The theory behind the style is that Ti is a pharoah, therefore associated with the gods, and to show that he is a diety, he is painted in the severe style of frontalism. The slaves are lesser beings. To show this, they are painted more naturally, and the animals are painted even more realistically than that.

Cute little guy, isn't he? Another artistic 'rule' is that nothing should be drawn infront of the face or body of the pharoah. That is why, in this painting, the king has drawn his bow behind his back, with his arms bent at unusual angles. This was not a hunting technique!

During the reign of Akenaten, there were many political and religious changes. Akenaten decided that Egyptians should workship one god, Aten, and he relocated the pharoah's house from the modul of Thebes to Armana, the city of the cult of the Aten, the sun god. Akenaten even changed his name, which was origianally Akenahmun, which means servant of the head-god Ahmun, to Akenaten, which means servant of the sun. These changes influenced the art and sculpture. The rigid poses of former images were completely abandoned. Akenaten ordered his artists to portray him in relaxed, natural poses. The characters in these portraits seem to move with fluidity in ison to the old reliefs, where ures seem to be stuck in their formal positions for eternity.

Here, the sun god, represented by the disk, extends his arm-like rays down to Akenaten and Nefretiti. Akenaten's physical traits showed through in the artwork, whereas beforehand, the representations were only slightly suggestive of the subject's personal features. In the picture at the far right, Akenaten is show with a potruding chin, oblong head, thick lips, and his belly hangs over his garment. Any other pharoah would never expose his foibles in stone. Perhaps Akenaten wanted to personalize his image, so that he would be remembered by his face as the pharoah who brought renching change to Egyptian society. This change in the style of art, which was called the Armana style, dominated while he and then his son, the famous King Tut, held the throne. The unique artwork sets Akenaten's reign apart from all the other pharoahs. Perhaps this was his modus operendi. Akenaten caused so much outrage among his people, that King Tut, upon inheriting the throne, immeadiatly changed the religion back to polytheoism, and changed the ending of his name, which was 'aten,' like his predecessor, to 'ahmun' so that his permanent name, and the name on his tomb, reads 'Tutenkahmun.' The cult of Aten, however, was the major relgious infuence in young life, and therefore there is much evidence of the sun god in the art found in his tomb.

Prehistoric Man

Near the town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac is a series of prehistoric rock dwellings located downstream from the Lascaux cave.

The caves include some of the most significant archaeological finds of the Upper Paleolithic (from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago) and Middle Paleolithic (200,000 to 40,000 years ago) periods; they are especially noted for their extensive wall drawings. Situated in the Vézère Valley (the location of some 150 archaeological sites) the Eyzies-de-Tayac caves are among a series of decorated grottoes in the area that were collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.

Following the discovery of flint and bone splinters in the area in 1862, a series of excavations were undertaken by the French geologist Édouard Lartet and the English banker Henry Christy. Their work quickly established Les Eyzies-de-Tayac as the principal archaeological site for the Upper Paleolithic Period. Among their discoveries were the multicoloured animal drawings of the Font-de-Gaume cave and an incredible display of stalactites and stalagmites in the Grand Roc. A rock shelter at La Madeleine (the type site for the Magdalenian culture) yielded bone and antler tools. The cave of Le Moustier is the type site of the Mousterian industry, a tool culture known for its flake implements.

Cro-Magnon is the name of a rock shelter near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, where several prehistoric skeletons were found in 1868. Sent to the site, the French geologist Louis Lartet began excavations in which he established the existence of five archaeological layers covered with ash. The age of the human remains found in the topmost layer (along with worked flint and the bones of animals of species now extinct) is Upper Paleolithic (c. 35,000-l0,000 years ago), but the attribution of these to a clearly defined Upper Paleolithic culture is less definite. Traditionally regarded as Aurignacian, since typically Aurignacian artifacts were found in the rock shelter, they could be more recent, and it has been suggested that they should be assigned to the Perigordian (a separate industry covering approximately the same time period as the Aurignacian), which would give an age of about 25,000 BC.

In Palentology, the term Perigordian industry is given to the tool tradition of prehistoric men in Upper Paleolithic Europe that followed the Mousterian industry, was contemporary in part with the Aurignacian, and was succeeded by the Solutrean. Perigordian tools included denticulate (toothed) tools of the type used earlier in the Mousterian tradition and stone knives with one sharp edge and one flat edge, much like modern metal knives. Other Upper Paleolithic tool types are also found in Perigordian culture, including scrapers, borers, burins (woodworking tools rather like chisels), and composite tools; bone implements are relatively uncommon.

The Perigordian has two main stages. The earlier stage, called Chatelperronian, is concentrated in the Périgord region of France but is believed to have originated in southwestern Asia; it is distinguished from contemporary stone tool culture complexes by the presence of curved-backed knives (knives sharpened both on the cutting edge and the back). The later stage is called Gravettian and is found in France, Italy, and Russia (there termed Eastern Gravettian). Gravettian people in the west hunted horses to the near exclusion of the reindeer and bison that other contemporaries hunted; in Russia Gravettians concentrated on mammoths. Both appear to have hunted communally, using stampedes and pitfalls to kill large numbers of animals at one time. Gravettians in the east used large mammoth bones as part of the building material for winter houses; mammoth fat was used to keep fires burning. Gravettian peoples made rather crude, fat 'Venus' urines, used red ochre as pigment, and fashioned jewelry out of shells, animal teeth, and ivory.

Archaeological finds in the Perigord, made another profound impact on the study of religion when in 1841 the discovery of prehistoric human artifacts and later finds gave clues to early man's magico-religious beliefs and practices. These discoveries, notably the cave paintings in the Dordogne, northern and eastern Spain, and elsewhere, gave scholars encouragement to work out the course of man's religious evolution from earliest times. Spectacular as prehistoric archaeology was proving to be, however, it could only yield fragments of a whole that is difficult to reconstruct. Even the famous cave paintings of Les Trois Frères, in the Dordogne, for example, which portray among other things a dancing human with antlers on his head and a stallion's tail decorating his rear, does not yield an unambiguous interpretation: is the dancing ure a sorcerer, a priest, or what? He very likely is a priest presenting himself as a divine ure connected with animal fertility and hunting rites--but this remains as only an educated guess. Hence, it became attractive to many scholars of religion to try to supplement ancient archaeological evidence with data drawn from contemporary primitive peoples--i.e., to interpret the prehistoric Stone Age through present-day stone age cultures. This procedure has several pitfalls--partly because contemporary 'primitives' are themselves the product of a long historical process and because their culture may have changed over the millennia in many and various ways.

Lascaux

A cave containing one of the most outstanding displays of prehistoric art yet discovered, located above the Vézère River valley near Montignac. It is a short distance upstream from another major cave-art site, Eyzies-de-Tayac. The two sites, with some two dozen other painted caves and 150 prehistoric settlements in the Vézère valley, were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1979

Discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, the cave was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil. It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet [20 metres] wide and 16 feet [5 metres] high) and several steep galleries, all magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted ures. In all there are some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of yellow, red, brown, and black. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet long), their horns portrayed in a 'twisted perspective'; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the 'unicorn'), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; several red deer; bovids; great herds of horses; the heads and necks of several stags (3 feet [1 metre] tall), which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition.

The narrative scene has been variously interpreted but is probably based on shamanism. Its central ure is a bison that appears to have been speared in the abdomen; hanging, or spilling, from the animal near the spear is a lined, ovular sack that may represent entrails. In front of the bison's horns, and falling away from the animal, is a bird-headed man--the only human ure depicted in the cave--with an erect phallus. Just below, or beside, the man is a stick with a bird ornament as a finial. Another spear is near the man's feet, and off to the left a rhinoceros seems to be walking away from the scene.

Archaeologists have theorized that the cave served over a long period of time as a centre for the performance of hunting and magical rites--a theory supported by the depiction of a number of arrows and traps on or near the animals. Based on carbon-l4 dating, as well as the fossil record of the animal species portrayed, the Lascaux paintings have been dated to the late Aurignacian (Perigordian) period (c. 15,000-l3,000 BC). The cave, in perfect condition when first discovered, was opened to the public in 1948. Its floor level was quickly lowered to accommodate a walkway, destroying information of probable scientific value in the process--and the ensuing pedestrian traffic (as many as 100,000 annual visitors), as well as the use of artificial lighting, caused the once-vivid colours to fade and algae and bacteria to grow over some of the paintings. Thus, in 1963 the cave was again closed. In 1983 a partial replica, 'Lascaux II,' was opened nearby for public viewing; by the mid-l990s it registered some 300,000 visitors annually.