Daughters of Isis(23)

We have surprisingly little information about the size or composition of the typical Egyptian household, although archaeological evidence suggests that, as in present-day rural Egypt, the western-style nuclear family was unusual and the extended family was the general rule, with family groups of six or more adult members being common. Such extended family units were economically highly efficient, particularly in rural areas where all the members of one family worked the same plot of land. Perhaps more importantly, they represented security for their members, providing welcome physical and financial support in a society with no formalized welfare programme and a rather crude legal system. From the woman’s point of view, domestic chores must have been very much eased by sharing with the other females in the household, and childcare would not have been the problem which it is for many mothers today. However, to modern eyes at least, there was a price to pay for this security: the almost complete lack of privacy in the average Egyptian home. Society had absolutely no regard for the individual’s need for solitude, and the western concept of parents and even children requiring their own personal space would have seemed incomprehensible to people who regarded sharing their sleeping quarters with four or five other family members as reassuring rather than invasive.

Although some young boys left home to enlist in the army, daughters almost invariably remained with their parents until marriage. They then left their family to live with their husband, either joining him in establishing a new home or moving in with their new in-laws and all their dependent children. Consequently, the population within each house varied from year to year, dwindling as the older members died or married out only to swell again with new births and the introduction of new brides. Contemporary census information indicates that the immediate household of a soldier named Hori, a resident on the Middle Kingdom housing estate of Kahun, was fairly typical. The dimensions of his house measured 12 × 15 metres, and into this rather cramped space he packed his wife, his baby son Snefru, his mother and five assorted female relations who may well have been his dependent unmarried sisters. When, many years later, Hori died and Snefru became head of the household he continued to provide a home for his mother, his widowed grandmother and at least three of his maiden aunts.1 A similar picture of apparent overcrowding is obtained from the more wealthy household of the priest Heqanakht which included his mother Ipi, his concubine Iutemheb, his five sons and an unspecified number of assorted daughters, daughter-in-laws and servants.

Almost all Egyptian houses, rich or poor, whether built as homes for the living, the dead (tombs) or the gods (temples), followed the same basic pattern, with an open public area or courtyard leading through semi-private reception rooms into a private area. In the houses this private area was firmly restricted to women, children and immediate male family members. This pattern is still followed in most Egyptian villages today, where convention dictates that many domestic activities may occur in front of the house and that guests may be entertained in the main reception area, but male visitors will never expect to set foot in the private women’s quarters at the back of the house. Whether there were areas of the ancient Egyptian house specifically reserved for men is less clear, although illustrations preserved in tombs suggest that women were in no way confined to their quarters or prevented from mixing socially with the men of the household. To be ordered back to the women’s quarters was considered a dire



Fig. 12 Cross-section and plan of a typical Deir el-Medina house

disgrace: the oath taken by women testifying in the law courts was ‘may I be sent to the back of the house if I am not telling the truth’.

Despite this universal houseplan there was, as might be expected, a wide discrepancy in the scale of available accommodation which ranged from extensive royal palaces and magnificent country estates to small one-roomed huts which were occupied by the poorest of families. Nevertheless, the preferred building material for rich and poor alike was always sun-dried mud-brick, a material in plentiful supply along the banks of the Nile. Mud-brick was used to build all the internal and external house walls, while strong and reasonably watertight roofs were made by resting bundles of reeds on a framework of wooden cross-beams and sealing them with mud. Wood was then used to make doors, columns and window frames as required. Stone was both expensive and less easy to handle than mud-brick and consequently only used in domestic architecture when there was no alternative – for example, at Deir el-Medina, there was no convenient source of either water or mud to make the cheaper and lighter bricks. Wealthy householders did occasionally employ stone for high-visibility status symbol features such as thresholds, door-frames and the bases of wooden pillars, and these expensive stone components were often salvaged and re-used by subsequent generations when the less durable mud-brick surrounds had collapsed. In the grandest of households these stone fitments bore carved inscriptions and were painted in bright colours.