Think Like an Egyptian (36 page)

As far as we can tell, no one needed to keep lists of such equi-valences. It was second nature to know that a basket had the value of one deben of bronze or half a khar of grain. This provided the basis for buying and selling in which both parties agreed on the overall value of the transaction, even though the buyer might pay with a mixture of things. We have a receipt that records that a policeman bought an ox from a workman and paid for it with ajar of fat worth 30 deben, two linen pieces worth 10 deben, scraps of bronze weighing (and thus worth) 5 deben, and 10 hin (the hin being 0.48 liters) of vegetable oil worth 5 deben. The total came to 50 deben of bronze, the agreed price of the ox.

In the modern world we are used to valuing everything in units of money, the basis of which is faith in a promise extended by banks that the same value will continue to be honored wherever it is presented. The Egyptian system was based upon real commodities that people could see and touch, economic stability coming from surpluses held in reserve by the palace and especially by the temples.

The balance became a symbol of equilibrium. The city of Memphis was the “balance of the two lands.” It lay midway between Upper and Lower Egypt and was the place where the final reconciliation after judgment took place between the quarreling gods Horus and Seth. More commonly the equilibrium referred to impartiality on the part of officials, especially those who judged between two claimants and who could metaphorically call themselves “balance keeper.” In a tale a poor countryman on his way to market is wrongly arrested but turns out to possess the gift of eloquence. With this he attacks the way that those responsible for justice are harsh to the poor. One of his metaphors is the balance: “Does the hand-balance deflect? Does the stand-balance tilt? Does Thoth show favor so that you (the high official) may do wrong? Be the equal of these three.” The ultimate balance was the one that a person faced when they were led into the hall of judgment after death (see no. 58, “Truth”).

 

 

 

 

The hieroglyph depicts a folded length of cloth combined with a horizontal length of fringe with knotted threads. The example shown here is unusually detailed.

The making of cloth was one of the major industries of ancient Egypt, probably carried out in most households rather than in separate factories. Cloth was used for clothing, sacking, sails, and awnings. It was normal in ancient Egypt to produce an excess that went into store, perhaps into a household’s wooden chests, where it represented wealth and could be used as a means of exchange on market day.

Today, filmgoers will have an idea that ancient Egyptian men dressed in short kilts, wearing on their heads a piece of striped cloth folded to leave flat lappets on either side of the face. This attire is based on statues of kings and probably bears little relation to reality. Textiles found in Egyptian tombs suggest triangular loincloths were worn either as an undergarment or perhaps by laborers as their sole clothing, and over this wide, loose, sleeveless tunics and untailored rectangular lengths. Mostly clothing was undecorated except for long fringes down at least two sides of each plain length. The plain lengths served a variety of purposes, depending on their size. They could be tied around the waist to gather in the loose tunic, or wrapped around the body rather like a Roman toga. All securing was by knots and tucks, rather than by pins or brooches. The greatest development of tailoring seems to have taken place in the Old Kingdom, from which period several shaped and stitched women’s dresses with bodices have survived.

The style of wearing the wraparounds varied from period to period, and of course between men and women. In general, Egyptian dress would have had more of a loosely bundled appearance than one expects from looking at statues and tomb paintings. Linen famously takes creases, and this would have contributed to the general appearance of Egyptians, especially toward the end of the day. Statues of the official class from the New Kingdom dress the owners, male and female, in heavier costumes that appear to be elaborately pleated. Some examples of closely set accordion pleats in pieces of linen have survived, but on the statues it is possible that the artist is rendering into a tidy form the natural creasing of linen.

Laundering was a widespread occupation, to some extent done by professionals. To judge from ancient tomb pictures, and models of laundrymen in tombs, it involved much beating of the linen with wooden clubs and tight wrangling to expel the water, either by a pair of men twisting the piece of cloth in opposite directions or a single man twisting it against a wooden anchoring post. Linen fibers are particularly tough, and rough treatment of this kind renders them softer and more supple. It helps first to rub in a cleansing agent. The Egyptians are mostly likely to have used natron (see no. 3, “Grain”).

Egyptians had a strong preference for plain white cloth, although there were exceptions. Statuettes of servant girls from the tomb of Meketra of the early Middle Kingdom, for example, depict long dresses with colored patterns. Yet among the several hundred items from Tutankhamun’s tomb (including about 145 loincloths), very few were decorated.

Written sources speak often of linen, and the numerous finds of textiles in Egyptian tombs almost exclusively comprise linen pieces. We find little evidence of woolen garments, despite the Egyptians owning and farming sheep. Not a single item in Tutankhamun’s tomb was made from wool. Among 5,000 small cloth fragments excavated at Tell el-Amarna, only 48 (about 1 percent) were of wool (some from goats rather than sheep). Yet winter nights are cold in Egypt, and sometimes chill winds can blow during the day. It is hard to believe that the warmth of wool was not appreciated and taken advantage of. Late in Egyptian history the Greek visitor Herodotus noted that while the common people wore woolen garments, it was “contrary to religious usage to be buried in a woolen garment, or to wear wool in a temple,” suggesting that the elite believed wool was unclean.

 

 

 

 

The sign is one of a small group of playful hieroglyphs that combine a specific visual act (in this case the pouring of pure water from ajar) with a sign that stands for a dominant letter (in this case the human leg,
, which routinely wrote the letter “b,” the last letter of
w
b [wab],
“to be pure”). Especially during the Old Kingdom, however, artists varied the shapes of individual signs: in the example at the top of the page, a kneeling man substitutes for the leg.

Purity was sought for temples, altars, offerings, clothes, and women after childbirth. Priests should be “pure of hands” before the gods. The place of embalming was the “pure place,” in one tomb called the “pure place of wrapping.” The principal means of purification was through washing in water. A not uncommon scene on temple walls shows gods pouring cascades of water over a figure of the king. Unlike Christian baptism the Egyptian ceremony represented an act of regular outward cleansing rather than the passage to a state of grace and entry to a community of believers.

The term “to purify” could be applied to the restoration of an old temple. In the 13th Dynasty a priest named Amenysenb, of the temple of Osiris at Abydos, received a command from the king to “purify” the temple. His description of the purification, however, mainly covers cleaning and repairs to the fabric and its wall decoration, for which draftsmen were supplied who could retouch the painted reliefs and hieroglyphs. For completing this task Amenysenb was rewarded with “ten heaps of offerings garnished with sweet cakes, and half a young ox.”

“To be pure” gave rise to the principal word for a priest,
w
b (wab),
“pure one.” Not all priests were professionals: at Deir el-Medina, senior workmen ministered to the cult of the dead king Amenhetep I and carried his statue around the village in procession as an honorable spare-time occupation. When on duty priests washed in water deemed to be pure, shaved (including the head; see no. 64, “Razor”), and swallowed natron (see no. 3, “Grain”), perhaps dissolved in water. Although their duties were often administrative, some of the priests expressed reverence toward their office: “I did nothing wrong in his [the god’s] domain. I did not neglect what I ought to do in his presence. I trod his ground, bowing and in awe of his dread. I have not been fierce toward his staff, I being [as] a father to them,” wrote the high priest Bakenkhensu looking back over a lifetime of service to the temple of Amun-Ra at Thebes.