Instructing a woman is like holding a sack of sand whose sides have split open.
Late Period opinion of Scribe Ankhsheshonq
There is no direct evidence to show that girls ever accompanied their brothers to school. Indeed, as primary education was merely the first step towards a vocational training, and as few girls if any were expected to progress to high-status professions, most parents would have baulked at the unnecessary expense required to educate their daughters. After all, formal education was a privilege reserved for very few boys and the majority of the population remained both illiterate and uneducated. Nevertheless, and in spite of Scribe Ankhsheshonq’s rather bigoted opinion, society did not object in principle to the education of females. Although the only Egyptian woman to be depicted actually putting pen to paper was Seshat, the goddess of writing, several ladies were illustrated in close association with the traditional scribe’s writing kit of palette and brushes.1 It is certainly beyond doubt that at least some of the daughters of the king were educated, and the position of private tutor to a royal princess could be one of the highest honour. The very influential New Kingdom official Senenmut, Steward of Amen during the reign of Queen Hatchepsut, clearly regarded his position as tutor to Princess Neferure, daughter of Hatchepsut and heiress to the Egyptian throne, as the high point of his unusually successful career.
Fig. 17 The goddess Seshat
More surprising is the evidence provided by ostraca recovered from Deir el-Medina which suggest that at least some ordinary housewives were able to read and write. These texts, which seem to be informal notes jotted down to jog the writer’s memory, deal with fairly trivial female concerns such as laundry lists, underwear and dressmaking advice, and as such are certainly not the type of document which a woman would employ a scribe to write on her behalf. It would, however, be wrong to extrapolate from this evidence and deduce that the majority of housewives were educated. Presumably the standard of literacy in a town like Deir
Fig. 18 Primitive hieroglyphs from Deir el-Medina
el-Medina, which included a high percentage of educated draughtsmen, masons and artists together with their families, was far higher than in a purely agricultural community where few peasant men and women would ever need reading and writing skills. It is interesting that Deir el-Medina has also yielded a number of non-hieroglyphic symbols which were obviously used by the illiterate or partially literate as a means of identifying their personal property. These signs, which vary from simple geometric shapes to more intricate hieroglyph-like figures, have been found on house and tomb walls, but are most commonly used to identify laundry which was sent to the washerman.
There’s nothing better than a book; it’s like a boat sailing on the water.
Middle Kingdom Satire of the Trades
Very few of the privileged women who received a primary education were able to progress via formal apprenticeships into professional careers. This is not necessarily because there was an official ban on women occupying influential posts and, indeed, no such veto has ever been recorded. Instead, it reflects the fact that a girl would be embarking on her nuptial and domestic responsibilities at precisely that age when her brother might expect to commence his training. Without all the conveniences of modern life, including efficient contraception, the mistress of the house had more than enough work to fill her day, and she would certainly have been unable to take on the commitment of a full-time career. After all, the upper-class wife derived her status from her husband’s position in the community and she had no need to work to increase either her social standing or her personal wealth.
A wife was, however, expected to support her husband in his chosen career, to the extent that she might even be called upon to act from time to time as his official representative. The clearest surviving example of a wife deputizing for her absent husband is recorded in a New Kingdom letter written to the Scribe of the necropolis, Esamenope, by his wife Henuttawi.2 Henuttawi tells how, at her husband’s request, she supervised the reception of two ships of grain intended to pay the monthly rations of the Theban workmen. Unfortunately, when the ships were unloaded there was an obvious shortfall in the number of grain sacks, and Henuttawi, without herself directly challenging the sailors, proposed that the matter should be investigated further as someone had obviously tampered with the cargo during the voyage. Although it would have been more usual for a son to take over Esamenope’s role, no one questioned Henuttawi’s right to act officially on her husband’s behalf, and her ability to carry out her role effectively seems to have been accepted by all.