Daughters of Isis(4)

Fig. 4 Husband and wife statue

and groups where a woman plays a dominant role are very rare, suggesting that women through either choice, economic necessity or social opportunity did not invest in statues.

He who commits any offence against my concubine, he is against me and I am against him. Look, she is my concubine and everyone knows how to treat a man’s concubine… Would any of you be patient if his wife had been denounced to him? Then why should I be patient?

Letter from the priest Heqanakht



The letter quoted above was written by the minor Middle Kingdom priest Heqanakht to his family.6 It is as indicative of domestic discord and strife as any letter written today and, indeed, the disquieting undercurrents evident in this angry message inspired Agatha Christie to write her popular murder-mystery Death Comes as the End which is set in pharaonic Egypt.7

The literate Egyptians were inveterate writers, and the dry desert conditions have ensured the preservation of monumental inscriptions, fragile papyri and leather scrolls in which we have been able to read not only impersonal royal pronouncements, formal religious texts and rather dull business letters but also the private law cases, romantic love poetry and intimate family letters which give a human face to the sometimes rather dry archaeological bones. Ostraca (sing. ostracon: limestone chips and pottery fragments used as writing materials) were the memo-pads of the past, and were used in their thousands as Egyptians jotted down unimportant messages which would have wasted the expensive papyrus. Vast numbers of these ostraca have survived, allowing us a glimpse into the more humdrum day-to-day lives of the ordinary people. Perhaps we should not be too surprised to learn that personal relationships in ancient Egypt were not very different from the relationships of today; there were many loving and united families but, as Heqanakht’s correspondence suggests, there were also bitter inter-family quarrels over money and status. At all times gossip and innuendo were rife while the rumoured immoral behaviour of others was, of course, of universal interest.

However, all this written evidence needs to be treated with a due degree of caution. It should always be remembered that our record is both incomplete and randomly selected – that even though many texts have survived many more have been destroyed, leaving whole aspects of life simply unrecorded. Those documents which do survive present us with several problems of interpretation. Although we are able to translate literally many of the words which the Egyptians used we do not come from the same cultural and social background and, just as a visitor from the planet Mars equipped only with a dictionary would have trouble understanding the radio commentary to a football game or the meaning of the words of a pop song, so we may be missing some of the more subtle nuances and colloquial expressions which would have been clear to the intended reader. This is particularly true of the romantic love songs and the myths and legends, where the Egyptians deliberately employed metaphors and double entendres to add a pleasing twist to their message. The Egyptian habit of exaggerating or even inventing the glorious deeds carved on monumental inscriptions simply adds to our confusion; the Egyptians themselves could see no reason why they should not usurp the monuments, and even the actions, of their illustrious forebears.

Above all, it should be remembered that literacy was confined to a very small percentage of the population, almost all of whom were male members of the middle and upper classes. The surviving documentary evidence therefore deals primarily with matters which concerned a restricted section of the community, and is both written from a male viewpoint and intended for a contemporary male reader. Even where a text purports to be by a woman – for example, the love poetry written from a young girl’s viewpoint – it was often composed by a man and therefore gives a male interpretation of a woman’s assumed feelings. Since most women could neither read nor write, many matters of purely feminine interest are simply excluded from the written record.8

The ship commander Ahmose, son of Abana, the justified, speaks, and says: ‘I speak to all of you. I speak to let you know of the favours which have come to me. I have been rewarded with gold seven times in the sight of the whole land, with male and female slaves as well. I have also been endowed with very many fields. The name of the brave man is preserved in his deeds; it will not perish in the land forever.’

From the New Kingdom autobiography of Ahmose, son of Abana9



In a tradition which started during the Old Kingdom, many Egyptian men of high rank and breeding made a permanent record of their daily activities and achievements. This lengthy and stylized ‘autobiography’ was preserved on the walls of their tomb. Typically, these texts detail the trials and triumphs of the deceased’s life and, although invariably written in an exaggerated and, to modern eyes, rather boastful style, they can provide the student of Egyptian history with a great deal of information concerning the life of their subject. Unfortunately women, as the secondary occupants of the tomb, have rarely left us this type of information. We have no female autobiographies to compare with those of the men,10 and the rather muted epithets which are traditionally used to praise a dead woman ‘Whom the People Praised’ or ‘Guardian of the Orphan’s Heart’ are both vague and rather meaningless.