More direct evidence for the existence of the Middle Kingdom royal harem comes from Papyrus Boulaq 18, a day-book which lists all the business undertaken by the 13th Dynasty court at Thebes and so provides us with details of the composition of the immediate royal household at that time. Thanks to this document we know that the king’s personal entourage was made up of eight to thirteen male court officials plus the royal family (one queen, one prince, three king’s daughters and nine king’s sisters) together with the ‘house of nurses’: nineteen nurses and associated groups of children. All these high-ranking ladies were crammed together in rather basic accommodation within the royal residence, generally occupying a stark suite of rooms built around a courtyard close to the king’s private quar ters. This lack of ornate or richly decorated apartments was typical of all Egyptian palaces. Throughout the Dynastic age it was customary for the court to move around the country on long tours of inspection and, consequently, the royal palaces were not necessarily designed for permanent occupation. Instead, they were built to be used as short-stay rest houses and the fact that most were named ‘Mooring Place of Pharaoh’ accurately reflects their rather sporadic occupation. Only the New Kingdom palace at Amarna seems to have been intended for a more settled family life.
Fig. 29 Sculptor working on a statue of Queen Meresankh
By the beginning of the New Kingdom the royal harem had expanded to encompass a far wider range of women, including numerous concubines and secondary wives of foreign origin. Polygamous royal marriages had always been acceptable in Egypt but during the New Kingdom, perhaps due to greater foreign influence, there was a clear increase in the number of royal brides, with a corresponding increase in the number of royal children. The long-lived King Ramesses II, who died when over ninety years old, was perhaps unusually well-blessed; he proudly claimed to have fathered at least seventy-nine sons and fifty-nine daughters by various women – all of these would have spent at least their earlier years within the crowded harem. At this time the phrase per khenret was used to denote a community of women; per clearly means house, but khenret, which is generally translated as harem, is highly similar to the words used to mean prison and fortress. All three words seem to come from the same root, meaning ‘to restrain’, hinting, perhaps misleadingly, that there may have been an element of compulsion about membership of the royal harem. An alternative suggestion, that khenret should be translated as ‘establishment of musicians’, is still the subject of intense debate among egyptologists.5
A miracle brought to His Majesty Kirgipa [Gilukhepa], the daughter of the prince of Nahrin Sutarna, and the members of her harem, some 317 women.
Marriage scarab of Amenhotep III
The kings of Egypt did not like to use their women as pawns in tactical marriages with neighbouring monarchs. When the King of Babylon, whose daughter was married to Amenhotep III, requested an Egyptian princess for his own harem he was curtly told ‘Since the days of old, no Egyptian king’s daughter has been given to anyone.’ In contrast, they had absolutely no objection to welcoming foreign women into their own household when it suited their diplomatic ambitions. Marriage with the daughter of a neighbouring monarch ensured that the two kings became relations, and therefore friends, strengthening alliances and reducing the chances of conflict. Consequently, although diplomatic royal marriages were unknown during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, from the time of Tuthmosis IV onwards there was a slow trickle of foreign princesses entering Egypt in order to marry the king. These women travelled to their weddings with large dowries and considerable numbers of female attendants. They were received with all due pomp and ceremony and were then established in the harem-palace, where they took an Egyptian name and the honourable title of secondary wife6 before sinking into obscurity.
Gilukhepa, a princess of the Asian kingdom of Mitanni, was sent by her father to marry King Amenhotep III. Their marriage agreement was the subject of a lengthy diplomatic correspondence which was fortuitously preserved on clay tablets in the Amarna state archives, while their eventual union was commemorated on the marriage scarab quoted above.7 Amenhotep was clearly happy with the new addition to his household, for several years later he started to negotiate for the hand of Tadukhepa, another princess of Mitanni, the daughter of King Tushrata and the niece of Gilukhepa. In these new marriage negotiations Tushrata stipulated that his daughter should be acknowledged as a principal queen and ‘Mistress of Egypt’, providing a huge dowry to support his daughter’s claim. In return, Amenhotep presented his new father-in-law with an even larger amount of gold. Unfortunately, the elderly groom died soon after the marriage contract was completed and his entire harem, including Tadukhepa, Gilukhepa and the daughter of the King of Babylon, was transferred to his son and heir, the future King Akhenaten.