numerous and varied. But dancing, singing, and performing upon musical
instruments were their favorite amusements. The kettle drum and the
castanet were in common use among them, and pictures of girls playing on
the lute are not infrequent. A wall painting in a Theban tomb discloses
the fact that dancing girls were often employed to afford merriment at
the feasts. It was not against Egyptian etiquette for women to attend
banquets, and they are often represented as drinking freely, even to
drunkenness, lying about with forms exposed, and vomiting from
overindulgence.
In this connection it is curious to note the relation of the women of
Egypt to gymnastic feats. In the Turin Museum there is an example of a
female acrobat, who is in the very act of performing with wonderful
agility a very difficult feat. The young woman is nude, with the
exception of a double belt, one thong of which encircles the waist, the
other confines the hips. She is willowy in form and with great ease and
grace she throws herself backward, apparently about to turn a
somersault, but she keeps her feet upon the ground, and her hands almost
touch her heels. Her hair flows out loosely as she seems about to whirl
her lithe body through the air.
That the Egyptian women were pleasure-loving may be learned by many a
monument. Portrayals of elaborate festivals have been unearthed, others
are recorded by early historians. Herodotus gives a description of one
of these in honor of the Egyptian Diana in the city of Bubastis. "They
hold public festival not only once in a year but several times.... Now
when they are being conveyed to the city of Bubastis they act as
follows; for men and women embark together, and great numbers of both
sexes in every barge; some of the women have castanets on which they
play, and the men play on the lute during the whole voyage, the rest of
the women sing and clap their hands together at the same time. When in
course of their passage they come to any town, they lay their barge near
to land, and do as follows: Some of the women do as I have described,
others shout and scoff at the women of the place; some dance, while
others stand and pull up their clothes; this they do at every town at
the river-side. When they arrive at Bubastis, they celebrate the feast,
offering up great sacrifices and more wine is consumed at this festival
than in all the rest of the year. What with men and women, besides
children, they congregate, as the inhabitants say, to the number of
seven hundred thousand."
The law of Egypt prescribed that there should be in each family but one
legitimate wife. From numerous representations upon the monuments it
would seem that great affection usually existed between spouses.
Marriage was termed "founding for one's self a home." Temporary or
tentative marriages were often made for one year. After the expiration
of the trial period, by the payment of a certain sum, the man might
annul the agreement.
The Tel-el-Amarna tablets brought to light in 1887, furnish some very
interesting and informing materials concerning diplomatic marriages.
Many letters passed between the kings of Egypt and the rulers of the
land of Mitanni, and other Asiatic provinces concerning the marriage of
royal daughters to the King of Egypt or to the king's son. Even
bargaining concerning dowry finds a place in this correspondence.
Inquiries respecting the treatment of a daughter who has been given in
marriage to a prince, complaints of the breaking of the marriage
contract, and all conceivable complications which might grow out of
these marital relations, are discussed.
In the days of the Ptolemies and in the Roman period, it became very
common for men to marry their own sisters, especially in the royal
families. This was true of Cleopatra, the daughter of Ptolemy Epiphanes
and Cleopatra. She married first her brother Ptolemy Philometer, and
later, a second brother Ptolemy Physcon. This was the Cleopatra who
lived a century before the famous "witch of the Nile." She distinguished
herself by her signal favoritism toward the Jews, who had then become
very numerous in Egypt, giving great encouragement to Onias in his
undertaking of the erection of a Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt.
In modern Egypt, however, marriage with sisters has given way to
marriage between cousins, which in current opinion is by far the best
sort of wedding match. It is not strange that this custom of legalized
incest, the marrying of sisters should have sprung up in a land where
Osiris and Set were worshipped. For both of these gods were wedded to
their sisters, Isis and Nephthys.
As among the Hebrews, it was a matter of congratulation and of great
domestic happiness to possess children, and much rejoicing took place at
the birth of a babe. The inscriptions of monuments and tombs would
indicate, too, a very beautiful family life in Egypt. There was nothing
that so tended to give domestic life this charm as the fact that the
mother took complete charge of the child's upbringing. She was its
nurse, feeding it from her own breast often till it reached the age of
three years. In Eastern countries it is not uncommon to see children of
considerable size thus taking nourishment. When the child was unable to
walk, or when the journey was too great for the yet undeveloped limbs,
the mothers carried their children upon their necks, as do the Egyptian
mothers to-day.
Motherhood was much respected both by sons and daughters,--more than is
true of the children of modern Egypt,--and the wise men and poets of the
land wrote and spoke most tenderly and sympathetically of the maternal
love. As one of them said: "Thou shalt never forget what thy mother hath
done for thee. She has borne and nourished thee. If thou forgettest her,
she might blame thee, she might lift up her arms to God, and he would
surely hear her complaint." An utterance of an Egyptian sage, which
bears the spirit of the words of the Hebrew wise man, who said: "Forsake
not the law of thy mother. Bind it continually upon thy heart, and tie
it about thy neck. When thou goest it shall lead thee, and when thou
sleepest it shall keep thee. When thou awakest it shall talk with thee;"
and again: "Despise not thy mother when she is old." Affection between
mothers and their sons was very strong. Many of the inscriptions upon
tombs, with the accompanying pictures, reveal the dead son and his
mother, and not the son and his father. This is in accordance with the
very common fact in Eastern lands, especially in this part, that
brothers and sisters by the same mother were much closer to one another
than brothers and sisters by the same father. It is quite evident that
in early days in Egypt descent was always traced through the mother, and
not through the father. When, in a remote period, marriage ties were
loose or polyandry was practised, it was manifestly easier to trace the
family lineage through the mother. In ancient Egypt, it is interesting
to note that inheritance of property passed not from a father to his
son, but to the son of his sister, or sometimes to the son of his eldest
daughter.
When children were named they did not receive a family or surname. All
names were individual, the gods coming in for their share of honor
in the selection, as was very common among ancient people, among
whom religion pervaded everything. The girls were frequently
named, for poetic or imaginative reasons, after trees, animals,
qualities of moral excellence, and the like. Such appellations as
"Daughter-of-the-crocodile, Kitten," etc., were not infrequent; and even
here we find a religious motive, for both the crocodile and the cat were
worshipped in Egypt. Mummied sacred cats have been exhumed in great
numbers in recent years, only to be ruthlessly turned into fertilizers
by the unappreciative and practical Westerner. "Beautiful Sycamore" is
also an example of a woman's name. "Darling" and "Beloved" were also
favorite names, and "My Queen" is also found. From the number of
instances discovered, it would seem--and not unnaturally--that women
liked to be called after Hathor, the goddess of love.
How did the little girls amuse themselves in those far-off Egyptian
days? The girl nature is the same the world over, and has not undergone
any radical change since the very dawn of history. The girls, of course,
played with dolls. These were made from cloth and were usually stuffed.
Some of them had long hair. Figures resembling jumping-jacks, loosely
jointed and manipulated with a string, were a means of merriment for the
little ones. The nursery was also frequently brightened by the presence
of flowers; and birds, some free and some caged, were common pets; cats,
too, were everywhere, and the small donkey furnished much sport.
It may seem somewhat strange that in a land to which has often been
attributed the invention of the art of writing, there should have come
down to us no literature from the hand and brain of a woman. The secret
of this is probably found in the fact that while women were respected
and even esteemed as the equals of men, yet it was not considered worth
while to educate them in a literary way. In some of the arts, however,
such as music, women were skilled.
In modern Egypt the education of the women is sadly neglected. It does
not compare with that given them in ancient times. Indeed, in Mohammedan
countries, generally, woman is sternly thrust into a position of
inferiority, even of degradation. The school provided for the
instruction of the children in Egypt, as in all Mohammedan countries, is
the _kattub_, which is to be found in most towns and even in some of the
small villages. These schools are attached, when possible, to a mosque,
and the instruction is religious rather than literary, for the teaching
is limited to the Koran, and all instruction is in the Arabic language.
The schoolmaster, who usually has an assistant, is himself very ignorant
of all that the modern Western world would term "learning." Even the
elements of a modern education are strangers to him. There are said to
be about nine thousand five hundred of these kattubs in Egypt, and in
them are enrolled one hundred and eighty thousand pupils. But the kattub
is dark and unattractive. There are no seats or furniture of any kind.
To an Occidental eye, the schoolroom is inconvenient in every respect,
and withal quite unsanitary and forbidding. The teacher sits on a mat,
cross-legged. In front of him are ranged two rows of children, both boys
and girls, sitting sideways to the teacher. One would suppose, seated as
the children are, that the dreary humdrum of the daily instruction was
surely meant to go in at one ear and out at the other. But the pupils
learn to repeat passage after passage from the sacred book of Mohammed.
For the time is largely taken up reciting _sura_ after _sura_ from the
Koran, and the most lengthy passages are well memorized, the master
correcting the boy or girl whose tongue has slipped, or prompting one
whose memory has failed him. As the singsong of recitation is rolled out
in languid sweetness, the pupils sway their bodies back and forth,
keeping time to the rhythm. There is no casting of eyes at the girls, no
giggling, no crooked pins in use, in the kattubs. The pupils know the
stern master is on serious business bent. Besides, he makes use of the
principle of "the expulsive power" of preoccupation; for, while the
memorizing and reciting of texts goes on, there are no idle hands for
Satan to make busy. The teacher himself sets the example of industry,
for his hands are engaged in weaving a mat, while his ear watches to
detect the slightest lapse from correctness in the pupil's tongue. So,
too, the boys and girls must be busied at some useful handiwork, such as
plaiting straw. Thus, "technical training" goes hand in hand with the
mental in modern Egypt. The number of girls in these schools, however,
is comparatively small. There are hopeful signs in the matter of female
education in the Egypt of to-day, for the government, seeing the need,
has granted a double sum for every girl in attendance upon the kattubs.
Women of all lands have had an important place in the time of sickness
and death. Egypt is no exception to the rule. There were doctors in this
cultured land. Specialism was in vogue even in ancient Egypt. As the
celebrated Greek historian again says: "Medicine is practised among them
on the plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder and
no more." There were eye specialists, headache specialists, tooth
specialists, intestine specialists, and so on to the end of the category
of diseases. Some of their treatises, comments upon cases, diseases,
formulae, methods of physicians, both of Egypt and of other lands, have
come down to us. And yet, it must be confessed that exorcism held an
important place in the Egyptian practice of medicine; and the women were
among the foremost believers in this magical method of effecting cures.
The Egyptian lady is suffering from a most violent attack of headache.
She sends for the physician. He presently arrives, with one or more
servants or assistants, bringing with them his book of incantations, and
a case containing his _materia medica_, which consists of a goodly
supply of clay, plants or dried roots of all sorts, cloths, models in
wax or clay, black or red ink, _et caetera_. A diagnosis of the case is
hurriedly made. Kneading some clay, with which various ingredients are
mixed, this disciple of Aesculapius, or rather of Imhotep, repeats the
appropriate incantation several times, places the ball of clay under the
head of the sick, and leaves, feeling sure that the inimical spirit
which torments her will not be able to gain possession against the
powerful charm.
In case of death in any household, the mourning was pronounced and
pitiable. The part which women played in Egyptian funerals was not
unlike that among the Hebrews and other Oriental peoples. "They were,"
says Maspero, in his _Struggle of the Nations_, "not like those to which
we are accustomed--mute ceremonies in which sorrow is barely expressed
by a fugitive tear. Noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their
necessary concomitants. Not only was it customary to hire weeping women,
who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and
simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relations
and friends did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief
nor from disturbing the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate
expressions of their sorrow." "O my father!" "O my brother!" "O my
master!" "O my beloved!" would be heard from the female voices standing
around the dead. There was no superstition which prevented a fond
embracing of the body of the loved one who had just passed away. Tears
flow in great profusion, hair and garments are rent, and the women beat
their breasts, and then depart from the house of death. "With nude
bosoms, head sullied with dust, the hair dishevelled and feet bare, they
rush from the house into the still, deserted streets." Friends and
sympathizers join in their grief as they pass along, and follow the
procession of mourning. Since the Egyptian believes that the spirit can
survive only so long as the body lasts,--a sort of conditional
immortality,--the corpse must be embalmed. The method is determined by
the rank of the deceased. If it be a princess who has passed away, the
most elaborate and costly methods and materials must be used. Each toe
and finger must be carefully and separately wrapped and cared for. Next
comes the solemn funeral procession, with the noisy, heartrending hired
mourners, the libations and offerings, the catafalque drawn by oxen, and
at length the dead is laid away in the tombs. An important part of the
Egyptian funeral is the banquet, in which the dead, through his
representative, partakes; during the feasting, the _almehs_ execute
their death dances and sing their songs appealing to the living
concerning death and the dead.
It is Nut, the goddess of heaven, who, during the journey of the soul,
after it leaves the tomb appears from the midst of a sycamore tree,
offering the spirit a dish containing loaves and a cruse of water, and
if the soul accepts the proffered gift, he becomes the guest of the
goddess. Beyond are dangers of every sort which only amulets and the
most powerful incantations can dispel. If the soul can pass
these--though many fall by the way--he is transported by the divine
ferryman to the presence of Osiris, the great god. Maat, the goddess of
Truth, stands by and whispers the proper confession into the ear of him
whom Osiris questions, and the soul is passed on to the "Field of
Beans," the place of the blessed, where feasts, dances, songs, and
conversation are thereafter enjoyed.
Probably no Egyptian woman was ever more influential, for a period at
least, than Queen Tyi, the mother of King Chuen-Aten, who is better
known as Amenophis IV. His father, Amenophis III., was born, as the
story goes, under conditions most auspicious. Ra, the great Sun god, who
was considered to have been the father of all the Pharaohs, and the
first sovereign of Egypt, as well as the creator of the universe,
favored King Thothmes by giving to him the son for whom he prayed. Queen
Moutemouait, wife of Thothmes, as she lay sleeping in her palace was
suddenly aroused by seeing her husband by her side, and then immediately
afterward the form of the Theban Amen. In her alarm she heard a voice
telling her of the birth of a son, who should come to the throne in
Thebes, and then the apparition "vanished in a cloud of perfume sweeter
and more penetrating than all the perfumes of Arabia." The child whose
advent was predicted became King Amenophis III., one of the most
brilliant and successful kings of the eighteenth dynasty.
King Amenophis III. was wedded to a foreign wife, more than one in fact.
Among the wives of his harem was Gilukhipa, or Kirgipa, a daughter of
the house of Mitanni, between which and the Pharaohs of this epoch the
Tel-El-Amarna tablets reveal so voluminous a correspondence. There was
also in his harem a Babylonian princess, and, most famous of all, a
lady, probably of Semitic extraction, whose name was Tyi. This Queen Tyi
became the mother of the successor to Amenophis III. Under the influence
of the queen-mother, the young King Amenophis IV. resolved on extensive
religious reforms. He determined to dethrone or degrade the former
deities of Egypt and exalt the "Sun Disc." Asiatic influence was
paramount. He changed his capital from Thebes to the site of
Tel-El-Amarna, and erected there both palace and temple. He changed his
name to Chuen-Aten (Glory of the Solar Disc). But during his activity as
a religious reformer, his empire was falling away by the sad neglect of
the foreign affairs to which his father gave so large and successful
attention. At his death his work fell to pieces, and his reformation
swung back. Even his sons who succeeded him undid his work, and his name
comes down to us as "The Heretic King," being caricatured by artists of
the period which followed his ephemeral undertakings.
A modern Egyptian woman, or perhaps more accurately an Arab woman,
digging into a mound in Middle Egypt, not far from the Nile, for the
purpose of getting some material with which to patch her hut, pulled out
a piece of baked clay with some queer inscriptions upon it, which turned
out to be the cuneiform characters of the Assyro-Babylonian writing.
Further excavations revealed the record hall of Amenophis IV., long
buried under the ruins of his short-lived city. This collection of
documents and correspondence in the Assyrian language, which was the
Lingua Franca of those early days, are the source of our most accurate
knowledge of the marriages, domestic relations and diplomatic history of
this period in Egyptian history; indeed, of the history of the
surrounding peoples as far east as the Mesopotamian valley.
At least two Egyptian women emerge in the Hebrew records, one of whom
would indicate a low degree of morals, if we may judge of Egyptian women
of high standing of the period by this one. It is Potiphar's wife who
fell so deeply in love with Joseph, the handsome young Hebrew slave whom
Potiphar had bought and made a servant in his own household, that she
sought to use her wiles to entice the youth from rectitude. At length
failing in her purpose, she charged him with attempting to use violence
upon her, and had him imprisoned, only to find that the young man was to
come forth stronger at last and find an honored place in the annals of
Hebrew life in the land of Egypt.
The other Egyptian woman of whom Hebrew history speaks is Pharaoh's
daughter, who, bathing in the Nile, with her maidens, discovered the
infant who was destined to lead Israel out of Egypt and become the chief
power in moulding the Hebrew commonwealth. The young Egyptian woman who
became a mother to the child Moses, gave him all the advantages of
Egyptian culture, which for those days were by no means meagre, and so
played no insignificant part in the making of a lawgiver, and through
him, in the making of a nation, whose moral and religious influence was
to be second to none in the history of the past.
Late Judaism came in contact with a number of Egyptian princesses,
especially in the age of the Ptolemies. Among these are the Cleopatras,
three of whom lived a whole century before the days when Mark Antony was
led astray by the most celebrated of all the women of this name. One of
these was daughter of Antiochus the Great and wife of Ptolemy Epiphanes.
She being attracted by the value of the balsam and other products of
Palestine, asked that the taxes of the land of the Jews be given her as
her dowry. A second Cleopatra, daughter of the last, greatly favored, as
we have already noted, the Jews in Egypt, according to Josephus, and was
in turn greatly beloved by the larger number of the Jews of the
Diraspora, or Dispersion, who had sought refuge and a livelihood in the
rich region of Egypt.
The third Cleopatra, daughter of the last-mentioned and of Ptolemy
Philometer, was married in B.C. 150 to Alexander Bala. His checkered
career is given us by Josephus and in the First Book of Maccabees. Two
other women of this name also appear in the history of the Jews, one a
mother of Ptolemy Lathyrus, a woman of great force and determination,
who expelled her son from Egypt and caused him to take refuge in the
island of Cyprus. The last was wife of Herod the Great, and mother of
"Philip the Tetrarch." The story of Cleopatra, the beguiler of Mark
Antony, is too well known to need repeating here. The women of Egypt of
the Macedonian and Roman periods, let it suffice to say, were a power in
the affairs of those marvellous days.
The moral code of the Egyptians, theoretically speaking, was relatively
high, though it cannot be said that the women well known in Egyptian
history or presented in romance bore an exceptionally elevated
character. But the best women of ancient days were not usually those
whose names were furthest known or most widely heralded. According to
the Greek legends, some of the queens were not slow to accomplish their
purposes, regardless of the method or the cost. Queen Nitocris, of the
fifth dynasty, the celebrated queen with the "rosy Cheeks," avenged the
murder of her brother by inviting the conspirators against his life to a
banquet hall lower than the Nile, and while they feasted turned in the
waters of the river upon them.
The Egyptian religious life was shared in by priestesses. Their pantheon
contained goddesses, who were highly honored. Women were considered to
have souls as well as men, and as great honor was paid them in the rites
accorded to the dead.
Sacred prostitution, which was so well known among the ancient Semites,
was also practised in Egypt. Anthropomorphism was common there as
elsewhere among early religionists. The gods were supposed to have their
generation in the same manner as men. The male and female divinities
therefore had their necessary part in the mysterious creations of
nature. The female function in generation, however, was a purely passive
one. Just as, according to the current ideas, the father was the sole
parent of the child, the mother only furnishing carriage and nourishment
for the infant, so the female principle in nature was receptive
matter--"the lifeless mass in which generation took place."