Think Like an Egyptian (26 page)

 

 

 

 

Oils and unguents were so valuable they were usually transported and stored in small and often distinctive containers. The hieroglyph shows a slightly flaring tubular stone jar, its flat lid secured with string. According to present evidence the Egyptians did not practice distillation and could not make perfumes, which are distilled from scented parts of plants. Instead, they steeped fragrant plant substances in oil or fat, either by cold pressing or by boiling, to create scented unguents or ointments. We know that the wood and resin of various trees not native to Egypt, including cedar from Lebanon, were some of the ingredients used. They would have given off a warm, rich, tangy aroma.

Unguents were smeared over the body, of both women and men: “I wish I were her laundryman ... I would wash away the unguent from her clothes and wipe my body with her dress,” opines a lovesick man. It came in jars, and an elegant way of dispensing it was to scoop out a little with a delicately carved spoon into which, one supposes, the fingers were dipped. In the many scenes of banqueting in Egyptian tombs of the New Kingdom, the women wear a cone-shaped object on the crown of their heads and, in some, brown streaks descend over their fine linen shawls: a common interpretation is that the cones are of viscous unguent that, over the course of a warm evening, slowly melted, re-anointing the skin and giving off its scent as it did so.

Seven jars of unguent were buried with the dead, each containing a different variety of oil or unguent. Ancient Egyptian texts do not tell us the ingredients, however, although the name of one does derive from that of a fragrant tree that might be cedar. The formulas for unguents might have been quite complicated because “medical” texts, which contain recipes for curative compounds, show that the Egyptians maintained a tradition of mixing unusual ingredients.

 

 

 

 

The word “to love,” written
mr
(meri),
is depicted through the sign of the common wooden hoe, similar in its sound but unrelated to the concept of love. The term covered as wide a spectrum of feelings as its English counterpart. Gods loved the king and truth, parents loved children. A person loved life (while hating death), and there were places that the soul loved (or desired). The New Kingdom has left us several collections of songs or poems on the theme of romantic love, and in these the word clearly conveys passion:

Let not the people say of me “A woman laid low by love!”

Otherwise, the sources concerning the relations between men and women confine themselves to the pragmatic aspects of marriage and to instances of sexual predation.

Marriage was not recognized by the Egyptian theological system, which steadfastly kept away from the detailed affairs of humans and provided no sacred book of guidance. Even the manuals of instruction on ethics and behavior, one of the most popular forms of literature in ancient Egypt, gave the topic only passing comment compared to their extensive advice on the relations between a man and his seniors and juniors: “Take a wife while you are young, that she make a son for you. She should bear for you while you are youthful. It is proper to procreate. Happy the man whose progeny are many.”

The king maintained a harem, but this seems not to have been copied even by rich officials. The references to marriage that we do have imply that a man had one wife to whom, as “mistress of the house,” he delegated authority within his household. He could take in other women as sexual partners, texts distinguishing between wives and women who are “with” a man, but they were not given a status of their own, as in the case of the royal harem. Nor is it clear if women occupied a separate, more secluded part of the house. A rare glimpse of family life comes from the letters of the farmer Hekanakht, writing home during an absence. He had recently remarried, probably after the death of his first wife, and in response to his family’s disapproval of his choice, he writes: “Would one of you be patient when his wife was denounced to him? In what way can I be at the same table with you? Shall you not respect my new wife?” As a solution (and presumably for both his and her comfort) he asks that she be sent from home to him.

We know next to nothing about how people chose partners or had them chosen, or about marriage ceremonies. In the love songs of the New Kingdom the pining lovers often seem to be relative strangers to one another, but this was not necessarily typical for Egyptian society. A touching case, which illustrates how complex marital relationships could be, is that of a childless widow, Ninefer. Her slave girl had three children (presumably fathered by the widow’s deceased husband), all of whom had behaved well toward her. In recognition she allowed her younger brother to marry one of the girls, gave all three of them their freedom and, along with the brother, made them heirs to her property.

Men and women came to marriage with property of their own (sometimes no more than a few household goods) and retained ownership of their belongings. It was also proper for the man to give extra property to his intended wife. In one case of second marriage, the husband had to get the agreement of his existing children to give four slaves to his bride, the lady Anoksunedjem. No less a person than the vizier himself comments upon the case, emphasizing that a man’s obligations to the woman he lived with outweighed all others: “Even if it had not been his wife but a Syrian or Nubian whom he loved and to whom he gave property of his, who should counter what he did?”

Along with marriage came infidelity. The teachings of the sage Ptahhetep offer pious advice against casual liaisons: “If you want to maintain friendship in the house you enter as master, brother, or friend, wherever you enter, beware of approaching the women! ... A short moment like a dream, then death comes from having known them.” Blame could fall on either or both parties. In a tale of magicians, a priest named Webaoner takes his revenge upon a man who is seeing too much of his wife. He makes a wax crocodile that comes to life and seizes him. He burns the guilty wife in a field, her ashes being cast into the river.

No legal codes have survived from ancient Egypt, so we cannot say whether rape and seduction contravened a particular law. What is clear is that they caused offense in the community and were seen as evidence of undesirable conduct, along with thefts, beatings, and acts of impiety. There came a point when offensive behavior could no longer be tolerated. A list of a person’s offenses would be presented to a higher official, to secure a trial on the grounds of persistent misconduct. That the law itself might have been neutral in the face of sexual misconduct on its own is suggested by a case in which a servant, finding a skilled workman in bed with his bride-to-be, complained to the magistrates who ordered him (and not the skilled workman, his superior) to be given 100 blows, with the warning words, “Now, what did you say?”

 

 

 

 

The sistrum was a religious musical instrument, used by women in the cult of the goddess Hathor and other goddesses. Akhenaten’s daughters used it in their adoration of the sun, the Aten. It had no place in secular music performances, such as those staged at banquets. Except for the handle, it was made from metal. When it was picked up and shaken by the handle back and forth, the metal rods would slide from side to side, producing a tinkling sound. The top of the handle was decorated with a face of the goddess Hathor, and in more elaborate designs her face was crowned with a box in the shape of a shrine or temple. This version inspired a distinctive type of architectural column found in Hathor temples (the best-known example being at Dendera in Upper Egypt, 50 kilometers north of Luxor), which resembles the handle of a sistrum with its ornamental top.

Hathor was most widely worshiped as a kindly protective goddess. Although temples were built in her honor, Egyptians detected her presence in natural places, in the rustling leaves of the sycomore tree (see no. 12, “Tree”) and in places in the desert, especially where there was a conspicuous outcrop of rock. Shrines were built to her at mining camps and garrison forts, the largest of them being at the turquoise mines in the southern mountainous part of Sinai, where she was worshiped as “Hathor Lady of Turquoise.” Egyptian traders and mariners reaching the port of Byblos on the Lebanese coast could celebrate their safe passage at a local shrine of “Hathor Lady of Byblos.”

Hathor had the power to see a person’s destiny. In a story about a doomed prince, as soon as the previously barren queen gives birth to her son, a group of Hathor goddesses visit him to foretell his fate, concluding that: “He will die through the snake, or the crocodile or the dog.” Whether this happens we do not know, for the end of the story is lost. The king’s first step was to have him shut away in a remote though luxurious palace for safekeeping.