Daughters of Isis(87)

The strongly held Egyptian belief in ghosts and spirits meant that death did not necessarily bring an end to communications between husband and wife, and it was relatively common for the surviving partner to write to his or her dead spouse, asking for intercession in some personal or domestic problem. The 19th Dynasty letter written by a husband who believed that his dead wife was haunting him has already been quoted in Chapter 2. A similar letter, written during the Middle Kingdom on the surface of a red bowl, asks that the priest Intef, the husband of the widow Dedi, should use his influence to frighten off the evil spirits who are making his wife’s serving-girl ill: ‘If you don’t help in this matter, your house will be destroyed… fight for her and watch over her, save her from all those who are causing her harm.’ The bowl would have been used as an offering vessel in Intef’s tomb. Less abrupt is the Middle Kingdom stela set up by Merirtifi to his dead wife Nebitef, asking that she should help him while he is ill. He promises that, if she appears to him in a dream, he will increase her mortuary cult:

… Look, I am your beloved on earth, so fight for me and intercede for my name… Drive off the illness of my limbs. May you appear as a blessed one before me, so that I may see you fighting for me, in my dream.



The dead in turn communicated with the living via their funerary stelae: commemorative stones or plaques which were set up either in the necropolis or the temple, and which usually included some autobiographical information together with a request that passers-by should repeat a prayer for the continued well-being of the deceased. Naturally, it was the prerogative of the husband to erect a stela for his dead wife, and it was he who chose the text. The stela of the Lady Taimhotep, who lived and died during the Graeco-Roman period, is unusual in providing us with some details of her life and early death. It tells how she married at fourteen years of age and bore three daughters and a long-awaited son before dying aged thirty. It then goes on to lament the cruel fate which has snatched her from her beloved husband and children, reflecting the stylized pessimism of the Late and Graeco-Roman Period approach to death:

Oh my brother, my husband. My friend and high priest. Do not weary of drink and of food, of drinking deep and loving… The west is a land of sleep where darkness weighs on the dwelling place. Those who live there sleep as mummies. They do not wake to see their brothers, and cannot see their fathers or mothers. Their hearts forget their wives and children… Turn my face to the north wind at the edge of the water. Perhaps then my heart will be cooled in its grief.





First Intermediate Period stela showing the Ladies Hetepi and Bebi, daughters of the Steward Sennedjsui.



The elaborate dress and coiffure of a New Kingdom lady.



Old Kingdom pair-statue of a husband and wife.



Stela of Iteti, accompanied by his three wives and two of his daughters.



Middle Kingdom family stela featuring the scribal assistant Iy together with his wife, his children and his parents. The precise role of the six ‘Ladies of the House’ shown towards the bottom of the stela is unknown.



Middle Kingdom model of a female dwarf carrying a child on her hip.



The dwarf god Bes.



Fragment of an ivory ‘magic wand’ with protective deities.



Wooden tomb models of two servant women, each carrying a box and two ducks.



Cord fertility dolls of the Middle Kingdom.



Reed brush and basket, typical household implements of the New Kingdom.