It was both customary and comfortable to sit or squat on the floor and, although roughly made stools, some as low as 16 cm high, were used by all the people, formal chairs with backs and arms were relatively expensive status symbols used only by the upper classes. Short footstools were highly popular with the chair-using élite. Small individual tables or eating-stands were manufactured to co-ordinate with the chairs, but again these were by no means considered essential domestic equipment and, as in modern rural Egypt, food was usually served on woven mats spread on the floor. The diners sat or squatted round the mats and helped themselves to whichever dish they fancied. Although spoons and knives were used in the preparation of food, eating with the fingers was considered perfectly polite at all levels of society. We even have a delightfully informal depiction of King Akhenaten enjoying a large joint of beef while Queen Nefertiti holds a whole roast bird in her right hand.
How great is the lord of his city. He is a cool room that allows a man to sleep until the dawn.
Middle Kingdom Hymn to King Senwosret III
The bedrooms were similarly stark. Indeed, specific bedrooms were a luxury enjoyed only by the more wealthy who could afford to be extravagant with their space; most families had fairly informal sleeping arrangements, needing only a mat or a folded linen sheet and a curiously hard curved stone or wooden headrest to be sure of a good night’s dreams. This portable sleeping paraphernalia could easily be packed away at dawn when the room needed to resume its daytime function. Those rooms which were specifically intended to be bedrooms often had a low brick platform built along one wall to serve as the base for a mattress of thickly folded linen sheets which prevented cold, damp and perhaps insects reaching the sleeper. The wooden beds which were available were both costly and space-wasting, an important consideration in the overcrowded houses, and were consequently used only by the very wealthy who greatly prized them as status symbols; Scribe Ipuwer repeatedly lamented that during the anarchical First Intermediate Period ‘He who did not sleep on a box owns a bed’, and ‘Those who owned beds are on the ground, while he who lay in the dirt spreads a rug.’ His sense of outrage at this impropriety and reversal of the natural hierarchy was only calmed with the coming of law and order, when he was able to report:
It is good when beds are made ready and the masters’ headrests safely secured. When everyone’s need is filled by a mat in the shade, and a door shut on him who sleeps in the bushes.
The best of the beds were fitted with integral ‘springs’ made from rushes and interlaced cord. Curiously, some of the earliest beds had such a pronounced slope towards the foot that it was apparently necessary to employ a footboard to prevent the unconscious sleeper from slowly sliding downwards. This design defect was corrected during the New Kingdom when beds became far flatter and presumably more comfortable for the restless sleeper. The remaining bedroom furniture was minimal. There may have been a low stool to sit on while dressing the hair and applying makeup, and elaborate cosmetic and jewel boxes would have been prominent in the boudoirs of the wealthy. Perhaps because of the shortage of good Egyptian wood, fitted bedrooms were unknown and wardrobes, cupboards and chests of drawers were rarely used. Instead, a wide range of chests, boxes and woven baskets with tie-fasteners was used to store folded clothing, linen and personal possessions.
One item which could be found in all the rooms of the house was the lamp. The sun sets both quickly and early during the Egyptian winter, and there was a need for some form of artificial lighting if family life was to continue after the evening meal. Lamps ranged in design from very simple oil-burning bowls with floating cloth wicks to sophisticated and surprisingly modern-looking standard lamps; long carved wooden pillars designed to support a large pottery oil-burning lamp. Fires, torches and portable braziers were all used to increase this rather dim light while providing welcome warmth during the colder winter evenings. Nevertheless, the Egyptian house must have been a rather gloomy place after dark, and the majority of the population rose at daybreak and retired to bed at dusk.
The kitchen was extremely simple by modern standards, typically including a cooking fire, one or more small circular ovens, grinding equipment, pottery vessels and storage space for all the food and utensils necessary for the preparation of the household meals. As wood was both expensive and in short supply the fuel used in cooking was almost invariably dried dung which had the advantage of burning with a long-lasting, odourless and clean heat and was free to those who had access to animals. Sheep dung in particular burns for a very long time, and ready-prepared cakes of sheep droppings mixed with straw have been recovered from some of the Amarna kitchens. The manure had to be collected on a daily basis and moulded into suitable firebricks by mixing with water and straw before drying in the sun, a rather time-consuming and unglamorous duty which, just as in modern Egypt, was presumably delegated to the more junior females and the children. Once laid, the fire could easily be lit by means of a simple bow drill or the spark from a struck flint.