LIVING IN ANCIENT EGYPT

Pa-debeliu-Aset

LIVING IN ANCIENT EGYPT

By Libby Clay

Docents, it’s almost time to renew our passports… passport tours, that is. Since the Ethnographic Gallery won’t be available for some tithe, I ‘ve been looking for more material on the other areas we use on the tour. I began with Egypt:
because two things puzzle me: (I) why the bread and the food in the ancient gallery case are “hardened” and how they got that way, and (2) why Pa-debeliu-Aset (2000.11.2)is wearing a false beard when he was not a pharaoh.

 Minerals must have replaced the pore space in the food and bread, but how? Where did the minerals come from? Perhaps they were from small, modest entombments where no moisture could seep in. I wonder about the condition of foodstuffs in the large tombs. I know that the rice found in the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen would still germinate, but what about other foodstuffs?

I didn’t find the answer to the beard, but I did find out more about pharaohs. Beginning at the top of the pyramid with the king, he (or she in the case of Queen Hatshepsut) wore a false beard as a sign of maturity and status. The daily purification rituals required of the King prevented him from growing his own beard. The false beard was square-ended and carved of wood or made of woven fibers. It was suspended by strings from the tabs on his brow band. When he died, the king was entitled to wear the longer, narrower plaited beard with a rounded, upturned end... like the one “Pa” is sporting.

The king had official headdresses, the simplest being the names, ahead cloth of blue and yellow stripes with two shaped lappets that hung down, one over each shoulder. The loose cloth at the back was gathered into a sort of pigtail. As with all his crowns, the nemes was attached to a brow band of leather or linen, tied behind his head with ribbons. King Ny-user-ra wears the nemes. Pharaoh never went bareheaded. If the occasion called for a crown, the choice depended on the specific power necessary for the event. The double crown, combining the crowns of Lower and Upper Egypt was a symbol of his power over the two parts of his realm. The crowns could be worn separately as well, the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red of Lower Egypt. In the eighteenth dynasty, the time of the Maya, the blue war crown was. developed. King Tutankhamen wears this crown in paintings on a chest found .in this tomb. The crowns always bore the sacred uraeus, a multi-colored cobra, symbol of Buto, and the cobra goddess who was ready to deal death to Pharaoh’s enemies.

The king wore the pleated shendjyt-apron with its triangular front piece. Ordinary mortals wore loincloths or kilts. Women wore simple shifts or wrap-around skirts. Priests were permitted to wear only garments of white linen and sandals
made from papyrus. Animal products in the form of leather or wool were considered “unclean” for the temple. Homes of all but the aristocracy were modest, made of hardened mud-brick, with only a door and perhaps a couple of small apertures to let in air and .keep out the sun.  They: had  flat roofs for sleeping in the cooler night air Lighting at night was by stone or baked clay cups in which twisted wicks coated with oil were burned. Furniture might consist of a chest for storage and simple cubic stools and small pedestal tables for meals. People slept on mats with head rests made of wood or stone, meant to promote sleep and protect the head from the stings of crawling insects

Besides raising children, a wife’s primary role was managing a household that could be quite large, sine it was a man’s responsibility to care for any unmarried or widowed females in his immediate family. Orphaned nieces and nephews would be adopted and brought up as the householder’s own. In addition, the wife would be responsible for getting water: several times a day from the Nile or an irrigation ditch. It was also her duty to see to baking the bread and brewing the beer that were the staples of Egyptian life. Grinding the grain for the flour was an arduous task, performed on a stone tray-like mortar. The resulting flour was coarse and, despite sieving, often had some grit in it, the molars of many mummies show severe wear. Bread .could come in as many as sixteen varieties and shapes, from flat pita-like bread baked on the outside of an oven, to yeast-risen bread baked in a domed oven set on stones. Beer was brewed using leftovers from the bread to start fermentation  It was often sweetened with dates. Children, of course, drank milk

Both boys and girls wore the side lock of youth, a lock of hair on the right side of the head. The rest of the hair was shaved off or cut short. A child went nude, often till puberty; with its side lock and its finger in its mouth to indicate recent weaning. See the little bronze statue (#1) of Horus as a child in the first case in the Gill Center.

Also in the first case is a mummified cat Cats were much admired because of their cunning, resourcefulness and ability to catch poisonous snakes. Later they were domesticated and served their families by catching the mice that plagued every house. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, if a house caught on fire, the family ignored the fire to make sure the cat was safe. If a domestic cat died of natural causes the whole family shaved off their eyebrows. No wonder one of their major gods was the cat-goddess Bastet.

In the case on mummification, there is a small dish of natron. Natron. is a naturally-occurring crystalline mixture whose principal constituents are washing soda and baking soda. This all-purpose cleanser was used in ancient Egypt for washing everything from household crockery to sacred vessels, from linen clothing to the people who wore the clothes. It was considered so necessary that bags and bowls of it were offered to the gods and requested in funerary offering lists. Pellets of natron were chewed to freshen the breath and clean the teeth. It was also used to wash the body for embalming and for desiccating it.

Sources: Cottreli, Leonard: Life under (he Pharaohs; Andreu, Guillemette:Egypt n the Age of the Pyramids; Herodotus: The Histories; Wilson, Hilary, People of the Pharaohs: From Peasant to Courtier.