The female supervisors and managers predominantly exerted their control over female workers engaged in what were perceived to be female activities. Thus, from the Old Kingdom onwards we know of women working as ‘Supervisor of Cloth’, ‘Supervisor of the Wig Workshop’, ‘Supervisor of the Dancers of the King’ and even ‘Supervisor of the Harem of the King’ – all typically female-linked occupations. These titles were not uniquely confined to women – there were certainly some male overseers of wig-making, dancing and music – but the female managers were, as a general rule, responsible for the women dancers and singers and the production of women’s wigs. However, although men occasionally supervised the female workers in these trades, we have no direct evidence for women ever managing male workers. The work of the female administrators was confined to private or royal households, and it is striking that, although there were literally thousands of scribes employed in the civil service, we know of no woman occupying an influential bureaucratic post. Similarly, but perhaps less surprisingly, we know of no women employed in any high-ranking capacity in the army or in agricultural administration.
The highest-ranking administrative title ever held by a woman belonged to the Old Kingdom Lady Nebet, wife of Huy, ‘Sole Royal Ornament’ and ‘Hereditary Princess, Daughter of Geb, Countess, Daughter of Merhu, She of the Curtain, Judge and Vizier, Daughter of Thoth, Companion of the King of Lower Egypt, Daughter of Horus’. The vizier held the most powerful and prestigious position in ancient Egypt; a position which was, in theory at least, non-hereditary. As the king’s right-hand man he was frequently a member of the king’s immediate family and, second only in importance to his monarch, he acted as both senior civil servant and chief judge. It would certainly have been very unexpected for a woman to hold such an important position of authority and circumstantial evidence indicates that, although Nebet was clearly accorded the title of vizier, the actual duties of the office were undertaken by her husband, Huy.6 No other woman was accorded the honour of this title until the 26th Dynasty.
The female administrators seem to have held their most influential posts during the Old Kingdom; evidence from the Middle and New Kingdoms indicates that women retained their salaried domestic work but were now no longer classed as supervisor or overseer, and were not included in even minor positions of authority in the royal palaces. We certainly know of several women ‘stewards’ and some ‘treasurers’ active in the private sector during the Middle Kingdom. One such professional administrator was the ‘Treasurer, Keeper of the Property of her Lord, Tchat’, whose name and titles are mentioned several times on the walls of the 12th Dynasty private tombs at Beni Hassan.7 The Lady Tchat worked as an official in the household of the influential local governor Khnumhotep where she was obviously held in the highest regard; reliefs in Khnumhotep’s own tomb, where Tchat is several times depicted standing close to the Mistress of the House, Khety, indicate that she played a prominent role in family life. Tchat combined her role of treasurer to the household with that of concubine to its master. Eventually, following Khety’s death, she gave up her official duties to marry Khnumhotep, thereby making her two surviving sons legitimate heirs to their natural father.
The sky and the stars make their music for you while the sun and the moon praise you. The gods exalt you, and the goddesses sing their song to you.
Verse from the Temple of Hathor, Dendera
Music was a particularly lucrative career which was open to both men and women and which could be pursued either on a freelance basis or as a servant permanently attached to an estate or temple.8 Good performers were always in demand and a skilful musician and composer could gain high status in the community; for example, the female performing duo of Hekenu and Iti were two Old Kingdom musicians whose work was so celebrated that it was even commemorated in the tomb of the accountant Nikaure, a very unusual honour as few Egyptians were willing to feature unrelated persons in their private tombs. The sound of music was everywhere in Egypt, and it would be difficult to overestimate its importance in daily Dynastic life. The labourers in the fields sang popular folk songs as they worked, the sailors on the Nile matched their strokes to the rhythm of a traditional shanty, and the army marched to the sound of the drum and the trumpet. Leisure hours were filled with singing and dancing, nubile all-female song and dance troupes were a standard after-dinner entertainment, and even the heavy coffins were dragged to the burial grounds to the accompaniment of a rhythmic clapping. It is therefore deeply disappointing that, despite the survival of several instruments and many artistic representations of musical activities, we have very little idea of how this music actually sounded. In the absence of a recognizable music theory and notation, attempts to replicate the sounds enjoyed by the pharaohs are bound to be little more than interesting conjecture.