The Egyptians were by no means unusual in their desire to father many offspring. Peasant societies traditionally show a great respect for fertility, and nowhere is this more true than in modern rural Egypt where a great man can easily be identified by his many sons and the unfortunate woman who shows no signs of pregnancy becomes the subject of endless speculation and gossip less than a year into her marriage. To remain childless is a tragedy in a country where parents stress their parenthood by themselves taking the name of their eldest son, using the prefix abu (father of) or om (mother of), and where women without children are politely referred to as om el-ghayib, ‘mother of the absent one’. In these circumstances the concept of waiting to start a family, or perhaps restricting the number of planned children, becomes incomprehensible, and sterile men have been known to kill themselves rather than admit that they are incapable of fathering a child. The ancient Egyptians would have felt at one with their modern counterparts in this matter.
Do not prefer one of your children above the others; after all, you never know which one of them will be kind to you.
Late Period advice to parents
There are very few societies where female babies are actively preferred to males, and Egypt was no exception to this general rule. Although girls were clearly loved by their parents, as witnessed by several family portraits which include daughters in formal but affectionate poses, boy children undeniably conveyed greater status. This preference for boys may be hard for us to condone but is perhaps easy to understand. In any society with no efficient welfare or pension system children represent a financial investment for the future. Boys, who traditionally work outside the home, have a high-earning potential while girls, whose work within the home is unwaged, will marry and devote their work to the good of their husband’s family. In ancient Egypt the eldest son also had an important part to play in his parents’ funeral ritual; a role which could not be adequately performed by a daughter.
The preference for boy children was never as extreme as it was in other ancient societies, and the Egyptians never developed the tradition of overt female infanticide – the abandoning of girl babies at birth – which became accepted practice in both Greece and Rome. This legalized form of murder was to its practitioners simply a late form of abortion, and as such remained valid Roman law until AD 374. It allowed the father the sole right to refuse to rear any child, just as the father had the sole right to authorize his wife to have an abortion. The mother had absolutely no say in the matter, and an unwanted infant was simply exposed on the local rubbish dump soon after birth.
Double the food which your mother gave you and support her as she supported you. You were a heavy burden to her but she did not abandon you. When you were born after your months she was still tied to you as her breast was in your mouth for three years. As you grew and your excrement was disgusting she was not disgusted.
New Kingdom scribal instruction8
Although the detailed mechanism of menstruation was not fully understood the significance of missing periods was clear, and most Egyptian women were able to diagnose their own pregnancies and even forecast the expected delivery date without any medical interference. Those who were in doubt could consult a doctor who, for a fee, would conduct a detailed examination of the woman’s skin, eyes and breasts, all of which are known to undergo marked changes in the first few weeks following conception. As an additional test, a urine sample was collected from the hopeful mother-to-be and poured over sprouting vegetables or cereals, with subsequent strong growth confirming pregnancy. The changes in the levels of hormones present in the urine, monitored in our modern pregnancy-testing kits, had a stimulating effect on the vegetation. Following a positive test it was even possible to anticipate the sex of the unborn child by a further study of the growing power of the mother’s urine; if it was sprinkled on both wheat and barley a rapid growth of barley would indicate a boy, wheat a girl. The physicians also developed a number of tests which could be used to determine whether a childless woman was ever likely to become pregnant. A physical inspection of the lady could prove particularly informative in this respect as, ‘if you find one of her eyes similar to that of an Asiatic, and the other like that of a southerner, she will not conceive’. An expert examination of the breasts could be used to indicate a fertile woman, a newly pregnant woman and even the sex of an unborn child.
Certain vegetables were strongly equated with fertility, and so vast quantities of lettuce were consumed by those wishing to conceive. The Egyptian lettuce grew tall and straight, rather like a modern cos lettuce, and when pressed it emitted a milky-white liquid. It is therefore not entirely surprising that this vegetable became associated with the ithyphallic god of vegetation and procreation, Min, and was firmly recommended by the medical papyri as a sure cure for male impotence. The experts, however, differed over the precise effects of lettuce. Discorides and Pliny believed that it should be taken to repress erotic dreams and impulses, while Hippocrates felt that it was actually an anti-aphrodisiac. Pliny recommended leeks rather than lettuce to stimulate the sexual appetite.