Think Like an Egyptian (31 page)

The verb
pr
was used to describe the emergence of most things: light, darkness, illnesses, persons at the time of their birth, their name. The creator-god “came into existence through his own agency” out of the primeval water, “without a mother,” at the beginning of time (see no. 52, “Primeval time”). Although the Egyptians did not develop the concept further, their use of a derived word, meaning “forms,”
prw
(
kheperu
), suggests they saw even gradual subsequent change as a series of replacements of old forms by new. An Egyptian described the course of growing up as “making my forms,” and the process could continue until death. At the time of final judgment, there was a danger that testimony of ill conduct would be given by the heart “of my different forms” (that is, stages of life or ages). The Egyptians also maintained a limited belief that gods, kings, and the spirits of the dead could change themselves into different “forms.” A prayer for the mayor of El-Kab, Paheri, envisages that his “living soul” [ba] will “assume the form of a phoenix, swallow, falcon, or heron, as you please.”

 

 

 

 

It is easy to assume, though we have no actual proof, that ancient Egypt had a very high infant mortality rate. We have very little information on family size. A fragment of a papyrus census of the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina names no more than two or three children in any one house. On the other hand, a widow of the same place, named Naunakht, in drawing up her will, disposed of her property among her eight children, who had clearly survived infancy. A reconstruction of population size assumes that a gradual increase took place over the entire period of ancient Egyptian civilization—from around one million in the 1st Dynasty to perhaps three million at the time of the Roman conquest—but there was no population “explosion,” such as has happened in modern times. Immigration accounted for some of the increase, but it is also likely that the rate of reproduction was only a little above that of simple replacement.

The hieroglyph for “child” is the outline of a boy sitting on an adult’s lap with a finger held to his mouth. It was customary for boys to have their heads shaved except for a long twisted sidelock of hair (which the hieroglyph omits). Several objects have been found in excavations in Egypt, both in tombs and among houses, which look like children’s toys: balls made from wood or segments of leather sewn together and stuffed with dried grass or barley husks; “tops” made from wood and faience (a bright blue glazed substance); human and animal figurines, some with movable parts (for example, a wooden feline whose hinged jaw can be moved up and down by means of a piece of string taken up through a hole in the head—like a few others it is the product of skilled craftsmanship). In calling them toys we tend to assume that they are for children, but this is by no means definite.

Several tomb scenes of the Old and Middle Kingdoms show boys playing games in groups. They are naked and sometimes wear the child’s sidelock of hair. They climb onto each other’s shoulders; they jump over the outstretched arms of seated companions. In a game entitled “building the wine arbor” a pair of boys stand and, with arms extended, grasp the wrists of another pair of boys who lean backward and allow themselves to be spun around. From the same period and later come pictures of groups of girls who dance and juggle balls. They might have continued these performances into adulthood, sometimes dancing on religious occasions. One of the monuments celebrating Queen Hatshepsut’s coronation is a red quartzite shrine at Karnak temple. It shows a procession of girls or women somersaulting backward, accompanied by musicians playing harps and sistra (see no. 67, “Sistrum”).

An Egyptian childhood did not exclude responsibilities that today we might consider belong to adulthood. The tomb biography of a senior priest, Bakenkhensu of the time of Rameses II, records that after passing 4 years as a child, for the next 11 years as a youth he was a trainee stablemaster in one of the royal stables. During this time he attended a school attached to the temple of Mut. He became a priest and rose through the senior ranks of the priesthood of Amun over a period of 70 years. He was presumably close to 90 when he died.

An important mark of the transition from boy to man was circumcision, although evidence from mummies shows that not all families chose to circumcise their children. One man’s tombstone epitaph records that he had “achieved office before he was circumcised.” The statement by another man that he had been circumcised along with 120 others suggests that it was made into a ceremony for the entire age group of the community and not centered on the family.

Egypt’s most famous child is Tutankhamun, about 18 years old when he died but about 8 when he became king, probably not far short of the age at which children generally began to accept the responsibilities of adulthood. The large collection of textiles from his tomb include loincloths and tunics that, to judge from their dimensions, were made for him early in his reign (although the designs are the same as those for adults). The same must be true for his small ebony chair, only 39 centimeters deep and 71 centimeters high to the top of the back. Probably a son of King Akhenaten and married to one of his half-sisters (Ankhsenpaaten), but probably not the next in line of succession, Tutankhamun found himself heir to Akhenaten’s troubled legacy of religious reform. It was he who rejected his father’s monotheism and reopened the temples to the old gods, whether from personal conviction or from the influence of others we do not know.

 

 

 

 

Half of ancient Egyptians born at any one time would be dead by around the age of 30, from disease or warfare. But those possessing a strong constitution could expect to reach a respectable age. Senior priest Bakenkhensu must have lived to around 90 (and clearly faced no compulsory retirement). His king, Rameses II, ruled for 67 years.

A tale about the magician Djedi gives us a picture of a venerable old man. A visiting prince finds Djedi “lying on a mat in the courtyard of his house, one servant beside him anointing him, another rubbing his feet.” The prince greets him with the words: “Your condition is like that of one who is ageless; for old age is the time for death, enwrapping and burial. [You are] one who sleeps till daytime free of illness, without wheezing.” As the story develops we find that, presumably on account of the veneration that accompanies his extreme age, he attracts no wrath from the king when he refuses to demonstrate, using a living human captive, his ability to join severed heads to bodies and bring them alive again. Djedi is said to be 110 years old at the time. This age recurs in Egyptian literature as an ideal to hope for: “May he [the god Atum] vouchsafe you 110 years upon earth, your body whole, growing old with a contented heart.”

Men (the sources here say nothing of women) desired not only to retain their health but also to attain a level of respect: “I reached the old age of an honored man, being daily in the favor of His Majesty, fed from the table of the king.” They hoped to see their sons settled in good positions: “I was allowed to reach old age, with all my children holding office in the palace.”

In the hieroglyph a man leans on a staff. Many examples of staffs have survived from tombs: straight, naturally sinuous, with curved, forked, and flanged ends made by leaving a small amount of the original parent branch or trunk projecting upward and downward at an angle. Staffs could have bronze inlays, bear the owner’s name, and, if they belonged to a king, be carved and sheathed in gold. A court lady, Senebtisi, was buried with six staffs lying beside her in her coffin, and others in a special long box. Tutankhamun, despite his youth, was left with 130 sticks and staffs, perhaps showing that a staff was not exclusively bestowed in old age.

Ideally a man would have a dutiful son to succeed him in whatever office he held and to look after him. The son would be “a staff of old age,” as the Egyptians put it, including in the legal texts that transferred an office from father to son with the Pharaoh’s permission. A particular office, of governor of a province or of priest, for example, might remain in the same family for several generations. In the late New Kingdom one Theban family held many of the most senior offices in the Amun priesthood for almost two centuries, until military families broke the succession and took over.

Not all lived up to the family ideal. The widow Naunakht discriminated in her will between her eight children, five of whom had been kind to her in her old age and who would therefore inherit her property, and the three others (a man and two women) who had not helped her and who would receive nothing of hers, although they were entitled to receive a share of their father’s contribution to the marriage property.