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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN EVERYDAY LIFE
beer making Herodotus devoted nearly all of Book 2 of “History to describing the achievements and the curiosities of the Egyptians. On the Egyptian customs Herodotus reported "In any home where a cat dies" the residents "shave off their eyebrows" and “sons never take care of their parents if they don’t want to, but daughters must whether they like it or not." He also noted “Women urinate standing up, men sitting down.”
The Egyptians built canals and irrigation systems. They didn’t make so many roads. Roads were not so important because they relied on the Nile for transportation. In 2300 B.C. the ancient Egyptians built channels through the first cataract of the Nile, where the Aswan Dan stands today. This helped open the way for trade between the Pharaohs and Africa. Messages were sent along the Nile. Seals were the equivalent of signatures. They were applied on wet mud with a paint-roller like cylinder.
In his book “The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt” Toby Wilkinson paints a sobering portrait of what daily life was like for ordinary Egyptians. In a review of the book Michiko Kakutani wrote in New York Times, “Foot soldiers (who actually fought barefoot) were subject to frequent beatings and had to subsist on meager rations, which were supposed to be supplemented “by foraging and stealing.” And peasants, who did not have access to the doctors and dentists available to the wealthy, suffered from a range of debilitating diseases like tuberculosis and parasitical infections. To make matters worse, high taxes, the uncertain nature of agriculture in the Nile Valley (either too much water or too little) and the constant threat of famine combined to make daily life feel perennially precarious.” [Source: Michiko Kakutani, New York Times March 28, 2011]
Small wonder, then, Mr. Wilkinson says, that fervent belief in an afterlife — once largely the preserve of the ruling class, who regarded mummification and pyramids as vehicles for overcoming death — spread gradually to the population at large. The nature of an afterlife changed too. Whereas the wealthy, Mr. Wilkinson writes, “had been content to look forward to an afterlife that was essentially a continuation of earthly existence,” Egyptians increasingly came to hope for “something better in the next world,” to believe in the idea of “transfiguration and transformation” — an idea that “would echo through later civilizations and ultimately shape the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
Texts like “The Story of Sinuhe,” “The Eloquent Peasant,” “The Report of Wenamun , “The Tale of Woe,” and The Teaching of Ankhsheshonq” are interesting stories in their own right but also offer invaluable insights into ancient Egyptian society and the daily life or ordinary Egyptians.
Categories with related articles in this website: Ancient Egyptian History (32 articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Religion (24 articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Life and Culture (36 articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Government, Infrastructure and Economics (24 articles) factsanddetails.com
Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Ancient Egypt Magazine ancientegyptmagazine.co.uk; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Egyptian Study Society, Denver egyptianstudysociety.com; The Ancient Egypt Site ancient-egypt.org; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
See Food, Labor
Book: “ Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt” by Lionel Casson
Individuality and Ordinary Life in Ancient Egyptian Art
Souren Melikian wrote in New York Times the remarkable show “Haremhab, the General Who Became King” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the summer of 2011 — which zooms in on the time of Haremhab, the military chief who wielded immense power before ruling as a pharaoh from around 1316 to 1302 B.C.”dispels the long-held myth that ancient Egypt was a culture solely concerned with timeless icons of gods and kings in postures dictated by canon even if that is not the purpose of the show. Viewers discover that images of humans lost in their private thoughts and beset by anxiety already appeared in Egypt by the mid-third millennium B.C. [Source: Souren Melikian, New York Times, May 20, 2011]
Among a few works serving as an introduction to Haremhab’s lifetime, the small figure of a scribe, probably from Saqqara in the area of ancient Memphis, is seen seated cross-legged, holding a papyrus scroll unrolled on his lap. The hieroglyphic inscription engraved on the scroll states his name, Nikare, and his title, scribe, one of the highest offices in the ancient Egyptian administration.
At first glance, the granite statue follows the canonical representation of the official who mastered the difficult art of hieroglyphs. On closer inspection, a personalized portrait can be made out. The man, no longer in his prime, is hunched, as if bending under the weight of his concerns. Light furrows come down from his nose. No smile lights up his face. Subtle as it may be, the suggestion of weariness is unmistakable in Nikare’s three-dimensional likeness.
About four centuries later, an artist carving scenes on the limestone walls of a funerary chamber in ancient Thebes, depicted another scribe with his reed brush stuck behind his ear. A tiny fragment, 10.9 by 9.2 centimeters, or 4 5/16 by 3 5/8 inches, is preserved, showing part of the head in profile. Excavated by a Metropolitan Museum team around 1911-12, it is believed to date from 2000 B.C., give or take 20 years. The tomb was that of a pharaoh’s vizir called Dagi who may have employed the scribe. The man stares glumly. His raised eyebrow suggests incredulity. If the sculptor meant to convey the shock of a man who has suddenly been made aware of his mortality, he could not have done it better.
At rare intervals, the private life of ancient Egyptians and the feelings that they experienced moved artists to stray away from the beaten path. An intriguing sculptural group of two men at different stages of life and a young boy at their side was probably carved during the reign of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who revolutionized Egyptian thinking by proclaiming that there is only one God, some time between 1349 and 1332 B.C. On the low reliefs that depict him, Akhenaten is seen with a smile of mystical illumination. But when looking at the father and son, the anonymous artist portrayed ordinary humans.The father, who stands in the middle, embraces his son in a protective gesture, with his hand coming down over the boy’s shoulder. A sense of harmonious intimacy emanates from the happy family scene.
But, even when they set out to portray the great and the good, the ancient Egyptian artists sometimes took note of the sitters’ frame of mind. Idealized as it is, the famous Metropolitan Museum’s statue of Haremhab as a scribe, carved when he was still a general, betrays a certain weariness: hardly surprising in a man who had a full hand — as the commander in chief of the Egyptian army, he organized campaigns against the Hittites in faraway Anatolia to the northeast and Nubia on the southern front.
Lesser characters were prone to be depicted in a more individualized fashion. The small granite figure of an unidentified scribe carved between 1295 and 1070 B.C. shows a man looking alert and concerned. Eyes wide open, with his eyebrows slightly raised, the scribe presses his lips as if he had just been given an admonition about his performance.
Hieroglyphics That Offer a Glimpse Into Ancient Egyptian Life
model of a farm scene Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge, produced a book, called “Writings From Ancient Egypt“, which is comprised of texts from poets, scribes, priests, storytellers and everyday citizens spanning some 2,000 years of Egyptian civilization that offer an interesting glimpse into ancient Egyptian life and society. “It’s always struck me that people think of Egypt as a civilization that produced great art and great architecture, the pyramids, the temples and so forth, but we’re missing a huge dimension of that society if we fail to engage with the writing that the ancient Egyptians left behind,” Wilkinson told Discover magazine. [Source: Nathaniel Scharping, Discover, September 22, 2016 =]
Nathaniel Scharping wrote in Discover: “The texts gathered in the book, which comprise merely a fraction of what they put to papyrus, include samples authored by characters from all levels of society, providing a counterpoint to the god-kings in museum exhibits that often stand in for the entirety of Egyptian society today. =
“We have been able to read the Egyptians’ writing ever since the translation of the Rosetta Stone in 1803, but most of it has remained the purview of scholars. Wilkinson says that most texts dealing with their writing are kept in university libraries, written dryly and meant for academics. He aims to introduce the writings to a broader audience and hopefully illustrate an oft-overlooked fact about Egyptians: that they were people too. “It turns them into real people, rather than just the inhabitants of a long [ago], far-off and sort of remote civilization, they really shine through these writings as people like you and me with the same sort of hopes and fears and interests,” says Wilkinson. =
“There is, for example, the tale of a sailor trapped on a desert island with a giant snake possessing eyes of lapis lazuli that bears similarities to more modern fairy tales and mythical journeys. On a more prosaic level, the collection includes a letter from a minor landowner to his steward, conveying instructions about a misbehaving servant: “Now have that housemaid Senen thrown out of my house – see to it – on whatever day Sahathor reaches you. Look, if she spends a single day (more) in my house, act! You are the one who lets her do bad things to my wife. Look, how have I made it distressful for you? What did she do against you (to make) you hate her? And greetings to my mother Ipi a thousand times, a million times. And greetings to Hetepet and the whole household and Nefret. Now what is this, bad things being done to my wife? Enough of it! Are you given equal rights with me? It would be good if you stopped.”“ =
Life of the Pyramid Builders
Dr Joyce Tyldesley, University of Manchester: “To the south of the pyramid town lay an industrial district, a gigantic, cohesive complex divided into blocks or galleries separated by paved streets equipped with drains, and including some workers' housing.” There “Lehner has already discovered a copper-processing plant, two bakeries with enough moulds to make hundreds of bell-shaped loaves, and a fish-processing unit complete with the fragile, dusty remains of thousands of fish. This is food production on a truly massive scale, although as yet Lehner has discovered neither storage facilities nor the warehouses. [Source: Dr Joyce Tyldesley, University of Manchester, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]
Lehner told National Geographic, "I'm less interested in how the Egyptians built the pyramids than in how the pyramids built Egypt...Imagine yourself as a 15-year-old kid in some rural village of about 200 people in the 27th century B.C. One day the pharaoh's men come. They say, 'You and you, and you.' You get on a boat and sail down the Nile." "Eventually you came around a bend and you see this huge geometric structure, like nothing you've ever known. there are hundreds of people working on it. They put you to work. And someone keeps track of you: your name, your hours, your rations. All this was a profoundly socializing experience . You might go back to your village, but you would never be the same."[Source: David Roberts, National Geographic, January 1995]
Lehner told PBS: “You're rotated into this experience, and you serve in your respective crew, gang, phyles, and divisions, and then you're rotated out, and you go back because you have your own large household to whom you are assigned on a kind of an estate-organized society. You have your own village, maybe you even have your own land that you're responsible for. So you're rotated back, but you're not the same. You have seen the central principle of the first nation-state in our planet's history—the Pyramids, the centralization, this organization. They must have been powerful socializing forces. Anyway, we think that that was the experience of the raw recruits.” [Source: PBS, NOVA, February 4, 1997]
“But there must have been a cadre of very seasoned laborers who really knew how to cut stone so fine that you could join them without getting a razor blade in between. Perhaps they were the stone-cutters and-setters, and the experienced quarry men at the quarry wall. And the people who rotated in and out were those doing all the different raw labor, not only the schlepping of the stone but preparing gypsum.” [Ibid]
A excavation near the Sphinx and underneath the Cairo suburb of Nazlat as Samman has revealed the first settlement occupied by the pyramid builders. As of 1992 the dig had reveled 159 tombs with the remains of an overseer and major craftsmen; a storage building, perhaps a granary; a massive bakery with a hearth and containers resembling egg cartons, which held the thousands of loaves of bread baked daily; and a huge wall with a 21 foot high gateway through which workmen passed to and from the Pyramids. [National Geographic Geographica, May 1992]
Ancient Egyptian Clothes
Egyptians wore kilt-like, tunic-like and robe-like garments like those pictured in tomb painting. In many cases the garments worn by pharaohs and nobles wasn’t all that different from those worn by ordinary Egyptians. Egyptian clothes had no buttons or zippers. They were either tied or tucked.
People generally didn't wear underwear. Men and women sometimes went topless. Ordinary men often wore loin clothes and went bare chested. Even when women wore tops breasts were visible in the thin fabric. Egyptian noblemen used parasols, carried by slaves for protection from the sun.
Egyptians didn't wear hats. They sometimes wore hair bands to keep their hair out of their face of wigs. The Egyptians didn't need gloves for warmth, but women wore soft linen gloves, sometimes embroideried with colored threads, as a decorative accessory.
Commoner men (pyramid builders) wore loin clothes and women dressed in long sheaths attached above the breasts with a shoulder strap. Women also wore ankle-length skirts. The pharaoh’s kilt was called a “shendyt”.
Christina Riggs of the University of East Anglia wrote: “ The garments depicted in art do not correspond well to those discovered through archaeology, underscoring the idealization of pictorial representations. Clothing found in archaeological contexts is cut-to-shape or left in rectangular form from the loom, with long, loose tunics to be pulled on and off over the head, and many types of wraps, shawls, and mantles, which could be folded and knotted to yield different garment types. In art, tight-fitting dresses or diaphanous robes (for women), and kilts that mold to the buttocks but are voluminous in the front, hiding the genitals (for men), are more concerned with revealing and concealing parts of the body than accurately depicting the clothes that Egyptians wore. Similarly, the nudity of children and lower-status females is symbolic.” [Source: Christina Riggs, University of East Anglia, UK, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2010, escholarship.org ]
Silk and Other Fabrics Used in Ancient Egypt
Most clothes in ancient Egypt were made of wool or linen woven using a two-barred loom. The Pharaohs and upper classes favored clothes made from linen and embroidered with colored cloth. Archaeologists have collected well preserved samples of ancient Egyptian fabric and complete human-hair wigs.
The Egyptians and Mesopotamians made cloth from linen. Clothmakers made linen with a fine texture for pharaohs and noblemen. Workers wore garments made from coarser cloth. Linen is not very stretchy. Cloth was adorned with paintings made by hand. Popular designs included scarabs, lotus flowers and zigzag patterns. Mummies were wrapped in linen. The Egyptians mass produce linen for sails.
Stones carvings from 3000 B.C. show leatherworkers. A 3,300-year-old leather sandal and 3,100 gazelle hide tent have been found.
Scientists examining the hair of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy found a strand of silk. This astonishing discover provides evidence not only of the existence of silk in ancient Egypt but also of trade between ancient China and the Mediterranean 1,800 years before Marco Polo traveled the famed Silk Road.
Blue India dye is derived from a blue powder extracted from the “ indigofera” plant. The dye was known to the Greeks and Romans and used by Egyptians to dye mummy cases.
Egyptian-era loom
Linen in Ancient Egypt
Linen has was used as a fabric by the ancient Egyptian. It was strong and used for making ropes as well as clothes. Mummies were wrapped in it. It was also widely used in the Middle Ages. Linen coms from flax, a plant with a woody stem that contains long, strong but soft fibers that can be used to make heavy, course materials and ropes as well as fine fabrics, namely linen. Flax seeds contain linseed oils which is used in industry and a number of consumer goods, mainly as a drying agent for paints and varnishes. Flax is also used in making cigarette paper. Fiber flax grows tall and has few branches, narrow leaves and purple flowers. It grows best in places with constant rain and a short, cool, growing season.
Linen was an essential product in ancient Egypt, with a network of meanings and signification attached to it. Rachel Frisk of Minnesota State University, Mankato wrote: “Most Egyptians wore garments made from linen. This type of fabric is light, airy, and allows freedom of movement, which are important characteristics because of the hot and sometimes humid climate of Egypt. The second choice of fabric is wool or cotton. Wool can be warm but it has natural oils that repel moisture. Ancient Egyptians also considered wool to be impure. Cotton is airy, but not as light as linen. [Source: Rachel Frisk, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com]
André J. Veldmeijer of the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo wrote: “The spinning of flax thread for the production of textiles is well known and described in detail by various authors. Vogelsang-Eastwood suggests that first the flax fibers were loosely twisted and then spun into the final thread in a second stage. Usually, flax fibers were wetted before being spun, after which the thread could be plied, used in the manufacture of textiles.” [Source: André J. Veldmeijer, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]
Ancient Egyptian Shoes and Sandals
cobblers at work Some of the earliest known shoes from the Old World are sandals made from papyrus leaves found in an Egyptian tomb dated at 2000 B.C. A leather sandal dated to 1300 B.C. has also been found in Egypt. Sandal-makers depicted in tomb paintings went about their duties like 19th century cobblers.
Sandals and shoes were worn mainly the rich. One very old image shows a nobleman walking barefoot followed by a servant carrying his shoes. Ordinary people often went barefoot. Egyptians exchanged sandals when they exchanged property or authority. A sandal was given to a groom by the father of the bride.
Ancient shoes where generally made from woven palm leaves, vegetable fibre or papyrus and were kept in place on the foot with linen or leather bands.
Early Shoes, See Bronze Age
Men's and Women’s Fashions in Ancient Egypt
Nefertari Well-preserved clothes found in King Tut tomb include lose-fitting, sleeveless tunics worn over loin clothes, linen belts, jeweled sandals made of reed, white loin cloths and head scarves. Some of the fabrics were plain white and others were embroidered with red, yellow and blue threads and studded with gold. Scientists were able confirm the boy-kings age from a small, delicate, linen cloth.
In tomb art women are portrayed as tall and bosomy. They were often elaborately dressed and sometimes wore tight dresses that left one breast exposed. Ordinary women dressed in long sheaths attached above the breasts with a shoulder strap. Children often went nude until they were teenagers.
From what can be determined, the Egyptian upper classes were very fashion conscious. Much effort went into preparing their clothes and the hairstyles, which appeared to changed often over the centuries. Over time the kilts and tunics became long and fuller. In the Ramses II era men and women wore elaborately pleated layers of starched linen. Some women are believed to have worn live snakes around their necks.
The clothes were depicted in tomb paintings were probably different than what people actually wore. For example, sculptures of women depict them wearing sexy, thin, tight-fitting garments while clothes excavated from graves tend be loose and smock-like.
Some elite New Kingdom women wore form-fitting dresses of pleated linen. Linen undergarments were found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Ancient Egyptian Jewelry
Egyptians liked jewelry. They wore necklaces with blue faience beads, and gold leaf; girdles of cowrie shells molded in gold; silver bracelets with semi-precious stones; golden amulets decorated with the face of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility; and pencil thick glass-stud earrings. Some jewelry was believed to be imbued with magical powers. Glass eyes bead were worn perhaps to ward off evil.
Jewelry was made from gold, silver, faience (a blue stone), lapis lazuli, carnelian, green feldspar, green jasper, ivory, bone, amethyst, and black quartz. Silver was regarded as more valuable than gold. Tombs were filled with jewelry the dead wanted to take with them to the netherworld. Tomb paintings and reliefs are also full depictions of people loaded down with jewelry.
Amulets were carried by the living and wrapped with mummies. The mummy of King Tut had 143 of them. Their primary purpose was to attract “sympathetic magic” that would protect the wearer from misfortune and maybe bring some good luck. Amulets were inserted in different stages of the embalming process, each with special spells and incantations to go along with it. Some bore inscriptions and were made of materials, such as gold, faience (a blue stone), lapis lazuli, carnelian, green feldspar, and green jasper.
Amulets with protective cobras, “ ba” (winged symbols of the soul), “ re” (sun disk), ankhs, and scarabs were popular. There were amulets for limbs, organs and other body parts and ones derived from the hieroglyphics for “good,” “truth,” and “eternity.” Hearts, hands and feet were often found on mummies in places where the real body parts were normally found, the idea being that they could be offered as substitutes if the real ones were coveted by demons.
In Genesis 41:41-42 a pharaoh gives Joseph a ring to symbolize a deal has been made. Most ancient rings were made of steatite of medals such as bronze, silver or gold. Few were adorned with precious stones. Those that were usually contained amethyst, coral or lapis lazuli. Some of the oldest known rings were used as signets by rulers, public officials and traders to authorize documents with a stamp. Signatures were not used until late in history.
Hygiene in Ancient Egypt
In the dry climates of Mesopotamia and Egypt, cleanliness, washing and bathing for some was not given a high priority. But those close to Nile had better access to water than those who were not near the river.
The Egyptians values cleanliness. The Nile and various oasis supplied them water and some scholars credit them with inventing the custom of bathing. Bas-reliefs and tomb paintings showed attendants pouring water over bathers. Bathing was an important aspect of some religious ceremonies. Priests were required to bath four times a day. By 1500 B.C. some homes of Egyptian aristocrats were outfit with copper pipes that carried hot and cold water.
Upper class Egyptians bathed with soda instead of soap and used waters scented with oils and alcohols of honeysuckle, hyacinth, iris, and jasmine. The oldest known image of washing cloth was found in the tomb of Beni Hasan in ancient Egypt. It dates to around 2000 B.C. Egyptians liked fresh linen and used body ointments and skin conditioners. The Ebers Papyrus describes the treatment of skin diseases with soaplike materials made from animal fats, vegetable oils and alkaline salts.
Tooth Paste, Shampoo and Deodorant in Ancient Egypt
The ancient Egyptians are credited with toothpaste. Mark Millmore of discoveringegypt.com wrote: “At the 2003 dental conference in Vienna, dentists sampled a replication of ancient Egyptian toothpaste. Its ingredients included powdered of ox hooves, ashes, burnt eggshells and pumice. Another toothpaste recipe and a how-to-brush guide was written on a papyrus from the fourth century AD describes how to mix precise amounts of rock salt, mint, dried iris flower and grains of pepper, to form a “powder for white and perfect teeth.”“ [Source:Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com ^^^]
The ancient Egyptians used primitive toothbrushes, or "chew sticks," made of twig with frayed ends. Remnants of these chew sticks have been found in tombs dating back to 3000 B.C. The oldest known toothpaste was awful pungent, highly abrasive stuff made from crushed pumice by Egyptian doctors around 2000 B.C.
As for deodorants, Egyptians took scented baths and applied perfumed oils and little balls of incense-scented porridge into their underarms. The also discover that the removal of underarm hair decreased the odor.
Egyptians washed their hair with a mixture of water and citrus juice, sometimes mixed with soap. They freshened their breath with natron, naturally occurring sodium carbonate. A bronze razor were found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Manicurists were members of the elite.
Toilets and Sanitation in Ancient Egypt
Bathroom at house in Amarna
According to Minnesota State University, Mankato: “Proper sanitation is an important factor in any city in order to address the problems of health and sanitation. These issues were also important in the ancient world. The ancient Egyptians practiced sanitation, but in the widest sense of the word as modern technologies were not available to them. The degree of sanitation available to certain individuals varied according to their social status. [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com +]
“Where did ancient Egyptians relieve themselves? If they had the means, bathrooms were built right in their homes. There is evidence that in the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.) the gentry had small bathrooms in their homes. In the larger homes next to the master bedroom there was a bathroom that consisted of a shallow stone tub that the person stood in and had water poured over him. There is no evidence that the common people had bathrooms in their homes. +\
“In modern society a sanitation company picks up our weekly refuse. In ancient Egyptian, it was the responsibility of each household to dispose of their garbage at the communal dump-the irrigation canals. As a result, these dump canals were breeding grounds for vermin and disease. Some homes in the cities may have had trays of earth for drainage and disposal of waste. For the most part, however, ancient Egyptians simply dumped their waste in canals or open fields. +\ “Water is an important part of any sanitation process and the ancient Egyptians had plenty of water from the mighty Nile River and the irrigation systems built from it. Gathering water for individual homes was done by groups of women. The women went to the river or canal to get the water while the men actually worked in groups doing the laundry. The canals and river were also used by the common people for bathing purposes. +\
“The sanitation methods of the ancient Egyptians may seem crude when compared to the modern conveniences available in the 21st century. They did have what appears to have been a workable, viable sanitation system.
Plumbing in Ancient Egypt
According to Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine: “In 3000 B.C., a single ruler, Menes, unified the entire land and set the stage for an impressive civilization that lasted 3,000 years. He began with the construction of basins to contain the flood water, digging canals and irrigation ditches to reclaim the marshy land. From these earliest of times, so important was the cutting of a dam that the event was heralded by a royal ceremony. King Menes is credited with diverting the course of the Nile to build the city of Memphis on the site where the great river had run. By 2500 B. C., an extensive system of dikes, canals and sluices had developed. It remained in use until the Roman occupation, circa 30 B.C. – 641 A.D. For pure water, the Egyptians depended upon wells. Their prowess in divining hidden sources is shown in the “Well of Joseph,” constructed about 3000 B.C. near the Pyramids of Gizeh. Workers had to dig through 300 feet of solid rock to tap into the water. [Source: Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine, July 1989, theplumber.com ^]
Pools at Maru-Aten
“By 2500 B.C. the Egyptians were pretty adept with drainage construction, accentuated by the significance that water played in their priestly rituals of purification and those affecting the burial of the kings. According to their religion, to die was simply to pass from one state of life to another. If the living required food, clothing and other accoutrements of daily life, so did the dead. Thus, it’s not surprising that archaeologists have discovered bathrooms in some tombs. ^
“Many other details of Egypt’s past are lost in obscurity. But of their engineering skill there is no doubt. Knowing only the lever, roller, inclined plane and possibly a long copper saw, they erected immense monuments in the desert sands and along great cliffs. When anyone reflects on ancient Egypt today, the Great Pyramid of Cheops and its staggering dimensions invariably are brought to mind: It stands 481 ft. high and contains 2 million blocks of yellowish limestone. Each block weights 2.5 tons, was quarried miles away, floated on barges, and dragged from the shores of the Nile to its present site. ^
“The other monument of renown is the Sphinx, guardian of the pyramids, which the ancients carved out of bedrock. It is shaped like a crouching lion with a human head. Unfortunately it was built before the services of a good Roman plumber were available. Located outside present day Cairo, it has lost limestone blocks to the marauding influence of underground water pollution – caused mainly by nearby villagers throwing household and human waste out in the street.” ^
Pipes and Home Plumbing in Ancient Egypt
According to Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine: “Excavators of the mortuary temple of King Suhura at Abusir discovered niches in the walls and remnants of stone basins. These were furnished with metal fittings for use as lavatories. The outlet of the basin closed with a lead stopper attached to a chain and a bronze ring. The basin emptied through a copper pipe to a trough below. The pipe was made of 1/16″ beaten copper to a diameter of a little under 2″. A lap joint seam hammered it tight. [Source: Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine, July 1989, theplumber.com ^]
“Also found within a pyramid temple built by King Tutankhamen’s father-in-law at Abusir, was a brass drain pipe running from the upper temple along the connecting masonry causeway to the outer temple on the river. Excavators have discovered a tomb which supposedly contains the body of Osiris before he became a god. It contains the dividing line between Life and Death, i.e., a deep moat containing water that surrounds all sides of the figure of the god on his throne. After 5,000 years, water still fills the canal through underground pipes from the River Nile. ^
“The ancient Egyptians were early developers of pipe and the techniques of making copper alloys. In the beginning, of course, their pipe and fittings were very crude. Like the Mesopotamians, they used clay pipe made from a combination of straw and clay. First it was dried in the sun, and then baked in ovens. As they improved upon their clay sewer pipe, the Egyptians were able to drain the low-lying portions of the Nile Valley, and gradually the entire region evolved into a fertile garden. ^
“It is here in Egypt that the noria or Egyptian wheel became a common use. As in Mesopotamia, it consisted of a chain pump comprising a number of earthen pots carried round and round by a wheel. Other examples of their craftsmanship are found in bowls of beaten copper on which they casted double spouts. Originally copper basins were used only by the pharoahs.” Archaeologists have found “a stone bath with plastered sides and drain. Just below the outlet of the bath, water drained into a vase perforated at the bottom and cemented into the earth. ^
“The homes of the wealthy were airy and roomy, literally. There were bedrooms, servants’ quarters, halls, dining rooms – and bathrooms. Actually, a “bathroom” was usually a small recessed room with a square slab of limestone in the corner. There the master of the house stood while his slaves liberally doused him with water. The waste water ran into a large bowl in the floor below or through an earthenware channel in the wall where it emptied into still another bowl outside. Then that bowl was baled out by hand. Remains of early earth closets with limestone seats also have been discovered, the disposal evidently in the sandy soil.” ^
Ancient Egyptian Light and Energy
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Bundles of wood In ancient times, olive oil was used in everything from oil lamps to religious anointments and to cook and prepare condiments and medicines. It was in great demand and traveled well and people like the Philistines grew rich trading it.
About 50,000 years ago pre-historic man used lamps made of a fibrous wick fueled by animal fat. Beginning around 1300 B.C., Egyptians used earthen oil lamps with papyrus wicks to light temples and homes. The lamps were fueled by edible olive oil or vegetable oil, and animal fats, which could be consumed in times of food shortages.
The main source of light in ancient Egypt were dim illuminations that came from wicks burning in a bowl of oil salted to reduce smoke. Wicks were cut to last eight hours.
Some of the earliest lamps were made from sea shells. These were observed in Mesopotamia. Lamps made from man-made materials such as earthenware and alabaster appeared between 3500 and 2500 B.C. in Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley. Metal lamps were rare. As technology advanced a groove for the wick was added, the bottom of the lamp was titled to concentrate the oil and the place where the flame burned was moved away from the handle. Mostly animal fats and vegetable and fish oils were burned. In Sumer, seepage from petroleum deposits was used. The wicks were made from twisted natural fibers.
The first references to oil were made on cuneiform tablets in Babylonia in 2000 B.C. It was referred to as naptu , which means "that which flares up." Mesopotamians were fascinated by naphtha especially since fire created with it could not be put out with water. At that time oil came primarily from seepages. Evidence from cuneiform tablets indicates that petroleum products were used for torches, lamps, mortars, pigments, textile finishes, magic fire tricks, medicines, and incendiary weapons. One tablet read: "If a certain place in the land naptu oozes out, that country will walk in widowhood. If the water of a river bears...oil, want will seize on the peoples." Another states: "May donkey urine be your drink, naptu your ointment." Naptu was used as a skin ointment.
Urban Life in Ancient Egypt
Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia of the CNRS in France wrote: “A passage from “The Teaching for Merikara” warns against demagogues who agitate the spirits of citizens. While the setting of the narrative corresponds to the First Intermediate Period, the actual date of the text’s composition is still debated. However, many First Intermediate Period inscriptions reveal that cities and their “public opinion” had become important enough to have their role recognized and respected by local authorities. France, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]
Later, during the early centuries of the first millennium BCE, Demotic sapiential texts evoke a world of villages and towns dominated by “big men.” In both cases, both cities and small settlements provided personal and social identities hardly evoked at all in official texts — identities in which men were advised against marrying women from other villages and towns, and in which service in the temples and service to the king provided prestigious, or at least complementary, alternatives of self-presentation. It was not by chance that the concept of city-god had been a source of collective identity since the third millennium BCE.
“Despite the scarce evidence preserved, literary texts evoke the role of taverns as foci of sociability, frequented not only by ordinary people (and diverting students from their studies) but by an underworld of prostitutes. Thus, the idle scribe described in Papyrus Anastasi IV wanders in the streets, drunk and in the company of harlots. It is also possible that independent artists were part of this world, as the greedy and out-of-tune harpist satirized in a Demotic composition. Unfortunately, little is known about petty crime, gangs, rogues, and the dubious characters that might have proliferated in big cities, especially in harbors.”
Amarna as a Thriving Egyptian City
Marsha Hill of The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “Not only was Akhetaten the center for worship of the Aten and the dwelling place of the king, it was the home of a large population—an estimated 30,000 people, nowhere signaled in the provisions of the boundary stelae. When the city was abandoned after about two decades, the streets and structures with their archaeological evidence were preserved in the state in which they were left after removal of much of the stonework and destruction of statuary. Because the city was not impacted by use over long periods of evolution, the site constitutes a remarkable laboratory for observation of an ancient society, albeit a very particular one created from the ground up at a specific moment. [Source: Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2014, metmuseum.org \^/]
“A large population of officials and their dependents migrated to the city with the king. Villas of officials were scattered throughout the city; each villa or every few villas had a well, and that nucleus was then surrounded by smaller houses arranged according to the lights of their inhabitants. Amarna's excavator Barry Kemp has aptly described clusters thus formed as village-like, and he has referred to the city they formed as an "urban village." The grouping of smaller houses around an official's house points to the attachment of dependents to a given official, but also to the fact that the members of the complex were all aware of each other as interdependent in a way common to small villages.
“The city offers a good deal of information about the spiritual concerns of its people, although the disparate evidence leaves many gaps and questions. As for involvement in the official Aten religion and the temples, officials presumably commissioned some of the temple statuary of the royal family or small-scale temple equipment at workshops distributed throughout one whole zone of the city. Some of the society at least also seems to have had particular access to certain parts of the temple: the Stela Emplacement area toward the back is one example already noted. Certain figured ostraka or carved single ears—known elsewhere as dedications asking for a god's attention to prayers—may likewise be offerings deposited at some locale in the temples . Moreover, the huge bakeries attached to the Great Aten Temple, along with the many hundreds of offering tables in the temple, point to wide distributions of food, and these could be tied to broad accommodation within areas of the temple enclosure, possibly in connection with the festivals of the Aten promised on the boundary stelae. In their homes, officials might exhibit devotion to the royal family as the children of the Aten, sometimes constructing small chapels in gardens alongside their houses for their own or perhaps neighborhood use. And at least one structure located in the city's bureaucratic and military district was a sort of neighborhood shrine for a cult of the king. From the perspective of the small finds attached to houses and burials of the wider populace, there is very little overt evidence of attention to the new god, although such attention might not be well manifested in such finds for a variety of reasons. What is clear is that there was no absolute prohibition on other gods: material remains testify to continued interest in household gods like Bes and Taweret, protector deities like Shed and Isis, and belief in the efficacious magic of female or cobra figurines. The practice of honoring and invocation of important ancestors and probably other figures in the community through statues or stelae in household shrines or elsewhere seems to have pervaded society, and points to a better understanding of the phenomenon usually termed "ancestor worship". \^/
“Recent excavations have revealed the long-unknown cemeteries of the general populace. The royal and elite tombs have long been known: the royal tomb for Akhenaten along with other partly finished tombs lay in the Royal Wadi through the cliffs to the east of the city and probably held the king's body along with a number of his daughters and his mother, but these interments were removed; two groups of fine tombs for a number of the great officials lined the cliffs to the east of the city, although most of the owners were not actually buried there before habitation at the site was ended. In contrast, the recently excavated South Tombs Cemetery of the general populace shows ample evidence of use, probably holding about 3,000 individuals. A few of these individuals had coffins or stela or a piece of jewelry; most were simply wrapped, apparently not mummified, in a mat of rushes which served as a sort of coffin and accompanied by a few pots. While there was certainly no mention of traditional funerary religion involving Osiris in the royal or elite tombs, there was some variability in the South Tombs Cemetery: one burial had a coffin apparently representing the Sons of Horus. The remains present many points of interest, but perhaps most surprising is the evidence of duress and poor diet well beyond that known for other typical New Kingdom populations. The profile of the population in terms of age at death also indicates to researchers that an as yet unidentified epidemic scoured the population. Other cemeteries have been identified, and more excavation is anticipated.
Urban-Village Manufacturing Centers in Amarna
On archaeological finds in Amarna, Anna Stevens of Cambridge University wrote: “Like most settlement sites, industry leaves a particularly strong signature in the archaeological record of Amarna in the form of manufacturing installations, tools, and by-products. The site has contributed significantly to the study of the technological and social aspects of such industries as glassmaking, faience production, metalwork, pottery production, textile manufacture, basketry, and bread-making, and has been one of the hubs of experimental archaeology in Egypt.” Most of the places can be classified as “small-scale domestic production, courtyard establishments or formal institutional workshops” [Source: Anna Stevens, Amarna Project, 2016, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]
papyrus making
Marsha Hill of The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “Village-like complexes produced statuary; stone, faience, and glass vessels, jewelry, or inlays; metal items, and the like. Usually several industries operated in the same complex, serving the furnishing and embellishment of the royal buildings and other needs; by providing for these workers, the official heading the complex must have had rights to the things produced, which he then provided toward the court undertakings. By contrast, a gridded, officially planned settlement, created probably to house workers on the royal tombs and known as the Workman's Village, lay out in the desert plain between the city and the eastern cliffs. Houses themselves, from the simplest to the most elaborate, favored a plan with an oblique entry, a central room with a low hearth for reception or gathering, pillared when possible, and bedrooms and workrooms further back. Second stories may have existed, but sleeping might also take place on the roof. Cooking and food preparation seem to have been done in courtyards. [Source: Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2014, metmuseum.org \^/]
“As a beehive of building and production, the city provides many insights into ancient industry and technology, from construction, to manufacture of glass and faience, to statuary and textile production, to bread making. One revelation is the ubiquity of gypsum as a working material. Gypsum can be used as a stone, but its main use at Amarna was as a powdered material, which with various admixtures can produce anything from a hardening plaster, to an adhesive, to a concrete. Gypsum had long been employed in Egypt as a mortar, a ground for painting, and for its adhesive qualities, but at Amarna it was used to create great long foundation levels, to build up platforms, and in a few instances to form large concrete blocks that functioned like stone. It was used as a mortar for talatat and glue for inlay. It may even have been used to create a whole large stela surface in the newly discovered boundary stela H. And it was used to adhere the elements of the composite statuary created at Amarna, and apparently to construct some balustrades from a three-dimensional mosaic of pieces. The combination of flourishing and inventive composite methods with the ubiquitous use of gypsum-based adherents has the appearance of an acceleration of technological change that constitutes a kind of breakthrough, whether or not it had any validity when Amarna and Amarna systems were abandoned. \^/
Satire of the Trades
A text called “The Satire of the Trades” from “ Instruction of Dua-Khety”from the Middle Kingdom (2050- 1710 B.C.) offers a scribe’s unflattering view of various jobs. It goes: “I do not see a stoneworker on an important errand or a goldsmith in a place to which he has been sent, but I have seen a coppersmith at his work at the door of his furnace. His fingers were like the claws of the crocodile, and he stank more than fish excrement. [Adolf Erman, “The literature of the ancient Egyptians; poems, narratives, and manuals of instruction, from the third and second millennia B. C.,” 1927, London, Methuen & co. ltd., pp. 67f. reshafim.org]
carpenters
“Every carpenter who bears the adze is wearier than a fieldhand. His field is his wood, his hoe is the axe. There is no end to his work, and he must labor excessively in his activity. At nighttime he still must light his lamp. The jeweler pierces stone in stringing beads in all kinds of hard stone. When he has completed the inlaying of the eye-amulets, his strength vanishes and he is tired out. He sits until the arrival of the sun, his knees and his back bent at (the place called) Aku-Re. The barber shaves until the end of the evening. But he must be up early, crying out, his bowl upon his arm. He takes himself from street to street to seek out someone to shave. He wears out his arms to fill his belly, like bees who eat (only) according to their work.
“The reed-cutter goes downstream to the Delta to fetch himself arrows. He must work excessively in his activity. When the gnats sting him and the sand fleas bite him as well, then he is judged. The potter is covered with earth, although his lifetime is still among the living. He burrows in the field more than swine to bake his cooking vessels. His clothes being stiff with mud, his head cloth consists only of rags, so that the air which comes forth from his burning furnace enters his nose. He operates a pestle with his feet with which he himself is pounded, penetrating the courtyard of every house and driving earth into every open place.
“I shall also describe to you the bricklayer. His kidneys are painful. When he must be outside in the wind, he lays bricks without a garment. His belt is a cord for his back, a string for his buttocks. His strength has vanished through fatigue and stiffness, kneading all his excrement. He eats bread with his fingers, although he washes himself but once a day.
“It is miserable for the carpenter when he planes the roof-beam. It is the roof of a chamber 10 by 6 cubits. A month goes by in laying the beams and spreading the matting. All the work is accomplished. But as for the food which is to be given to his household (while he is away), there is no one who provides for his children.”
More Jobs from “Satire of the Trades”
“The Satire of the Trades” from “ Instruction of Dua-Khety” from the Middle Kingdom (2050- 1710 B.C.) continues: “The vintner carries his shoulder-yoke. Each of his shoulders is burdened with age. A swelling is on his neck, and it festers. He spends the morning in watering leeks and the evening with corianders, after he has spent the midday in the palm grove. So it happens that he sinks down (at last) and dies through his deliveries, more than one of any other profession.
Ancient Egyptian mail
“The fieldhand cries out more than the guinea fowl. His voice is louder than the raven's. His fingers have become ulcerous with an excess of stench. When he is taken away to be enrolled in Delta labour, he is in tatters. He suffers when he proceeds to the island, and sickness is his payment. The forced labour then is tripled. If he comes back from the marshes there, he reaches his house worn out, for the forced labor has ruined him.
“The weaver inside the weaving house is more wretched than a woman. His knees are drawn up against his belly. He cannot breathe the air. If he wastes a single day without weaving, he is beaten with 50 whip lashes. He has to give food to the doorkeeper to allow him to come out to the daylight. The arrow maker, completely wretched, goes into the desert. Greater than his own pay is what he has to spend for his she-ass for its work afterwards. Great is also what he has to give to the fieldhand to set him on the right road to the flint source. When he reaches his house in the evening, the journey has ruined him.
“The courier goes abroad after handing over his property to his children, being fearful of the lions and the Asiatics. He only knows himself when he is back in Egypt. But his household by then is only a tent. There is no happy homecoming. The furnace-tender, his fingers are foul, the smell thereof is as corpses. His eyes are inflamed because of the heaviness of smoke. He cannot get rid of his dirt, although he spends the day at the reed pond. Clothes are an abomination to him. The sandal maker is utterly wretched carrying his tubs of oil. His stores are provided with carcasses, and what he bites is hides.
“The washerman launders at the riverbank in the vicinity of the crocodile. I shall go away, father, from the flowing water, said his son and his daughter, to a more satisfactory profession, one more distinguished than any other profession. His food is mixed with filth, and there is no part of him which is clean. He cleans the clothes of a woman in menstruation. He weeps when he spends all day with a beating stick and a stone there. One says to him, dirty laundry, come to me, the brim overflows.
“The fowler is utterly weak while searching out for the denizens of the sky. If the flock passes by above him, then he says: would that I might have nets. But God will not let this come to pass for him, for He is opposed to his activity. I mention for you also the fisherman. He is more miserable than one of any other profession, one who is at his work in a river infested with crocodiles. When the totalling of his account is made for him, then he will lament. One did not tell him that a crocodile was standing there, and fear has now blinded him. When he comes to the flowing water, so he falls as through the might of God.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2018