Fig. 19 All-female dinner band
The typical Egyptian secular orchestra included a large percussion section with rattles, clappers and drums helping to define the beat of the music, and strong wind and string sections with a combination of clarinets, double oboes and flutes and at least one harp. The players were supervised during the Old Kingdom by a conductor who stood in front of the performers, indicating the rhythm and pitch of the music by a complicated series of hand gestures. This conductor appears to have become superfluous to requirements at some stage during the Middle Kingdom, and was no longer depicted by the New Kingdom artist. At this time lyres and lutes were first introduced into Egypt from Asia; these very quickly became very popular additions to the standard postprandial ensemble.
All the Egyptian gods and goddesses were understood to enjoy a good tune, and so the temples employed bands of musicians and choirs of singers and dancers to enhance communication
Fig. 20 Female percussion group
with the deities. These temple musicians, both men and women, were employed on a regular basis and given frequent coaching sessions by official instructors who worked hard to ensure that the clapping and singing were as perfect as possible. More high ranking were the official songstresses of the deity; many upper-class women described themselves as religious songstresses, even including their title on their funerary monuments; it would appear that this should again be classed as an honorary temple position rather than a paid job. These ladies were certainly held in highest regard, and at Abydos there was even a special cemetery reserved for the songstresses of a number of gods and their stillborn babies.
Holy music for Hathor, music a million times, because you love music, million times music, to your soul, wherever you are. I am he who makes the singer waken music for Hathor every day at any hour she wishes.
Middle Kingdom song to Hathor
Very few of the gods actually played any instrument; the only one to be regularly depicted performing for his own evident pleasure was Bes, the ugly dwarf god who was associated with women and childbirth. Goddesses were generally more strongly identified with music than their male counterparts and, while the goddess Merit was recognized as the personification of music, it was Hathor, goddess of love, ‘Mistress of Music’ and attendant at royal births, who was most closely linked with music, in particular with one musical instrument: the sistrum which was played only by women. It was a rather large loop-shaped rattle with a long handle, often featuring the head of Hathor, which had initially represented the papyrus reeds of the Nile Delta where, mythology decreed, Hathor had been forced to hide with her young son. Eventually the sistrum lost all trace of its original meaning and instead started to serve as a religious symbol for life itself. It consequently became absorbed by other deities, and was particularly identified with the cult of Isis at the end of the Dynastic period. The playing of the sistrum was often accompanied by the rattling of the heavy menit bead necklaces which the female musicians carried in their spare hand. To a lesser extent, the round tambourine was also associated with both women and religion; New Kingdom illustrations suggest a link between this tambourine and the cults of both Hathor and Isis, while we know from the surviving temple birth houses that the beating of round tambourines was the appropriate way to mark the divine birth of a king.
Music was occasionally associated with women for more prosaic reasons. The Turin Erotic Papyrus, for example, includes one scene where a prostitute has hastily dropped her lyre to copulate with an over-eager client, while a crude sketch on a piece of wood recovered from a New Kingdom Theban tomb shows a woman who is actually engaged in full intercourse with a man but who still clings on to her lute. The clear inference is that prostitutes used their musical skills to entice their clients, and a link between music, femininity, sex and even childbirth is again suggested by the Bes tattoos on the musical prostitute’s thighs. Less tastefully, to modern eyes, figurines which show male harpists with their instruments resting on disproportionately erect penises again emphasize the link between music and sexuality.
The weaver in the workshop is in a worse position than the woman in labour. With his knees pushed up against his chest he is unable to breathe the air. If he misses just one day of weaving he is given fifty lashes. He has to bribe the doorkeeper with food to let him see the light of day.
Middle Kingdom Satire of the Trades
Throughout the ancient world cloth production was primarily associated with women. In near-contemporary Greece and Rome this specialization of duties was taken to extremes, and the mistress of the house was held responsible for the provision of all the cloth (invariably wool) which would be needed by her family. This included all the clothing, sheeting, towels and shrouds, and was a daunting undertaking for any woman. Fabric manufacture became a very highly rated domestic task, to the extent that wool-work, spinning and weaving, rather than knitting, eventually became synonymous with woman’s work and was expected of females of all ranks and ages. A virtuous wife could easily be identified by her skills at the loom, and even the most noble of Greek ladies was expected to spend a large part of her day weaving in order to provide the clothing for the household and its dependants.9 As the large and heavy loom could not easily be transported, this effectively condemned her to spending many hours working alone at home.