10 things you (probably) didn't know about Ancient Egypt
The land of the pharaohs is famous for its huge pyramids,
its bandaged mummies and its golden treasures. But how much do you
really know about ancient Egypt? Here, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley
shares 10 lesser-known facts…
Thursday 28th January 2016
Fresco on the Tomb of Iti showing the transportation of wheat by
donkey. Donkeys were more commonly used by the Ancient Egyptians than
camels. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
1) They did not ride camels
The camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the
dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden,
and boats as a highly convenient means of transport.
The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land,
creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who
needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for
those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked
to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden
barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light
papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day,
high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky
in his solar boat.
2) Not everyone was mummified
The mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a
defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and
time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of
society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in
the desert.
So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They
believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the
body retained a recognisable human form. Ironically, this could have
been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with
the hot and sterile desert sand; a natural desiccation would then have
occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and
this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the
sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial
equipment plus a recognisable body led to the science of artificial
mummification.
3) The living shared food with the dead
The tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and
the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed
families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the
regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber
protected the mummy from harm.
Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular
basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then
physically consumed by the living. During the ‘feast of the valley’, an
annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in
the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent
drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their
reunion with the dead.
Food offerings to the dead. From a decorative detail from the Sarcophagus of Irinimenpu. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
4) Egyptian women had equal rights with men
In Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as
equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn,
buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male
guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children.
They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And
they were expected to deputise for an absent husband in matters of
business.
Everyone in Ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and
wives being allocated complementary but opposite roles within the
marriage. The wife, the ‘mistress of the house’, was responsible for all
internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the
household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage,
played the external, wage-earning role.
5) Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of
intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to
create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the
writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal
achievements.
As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely
used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing.
Towards the end of the dynastic period they used demotic, an even more
simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the
same ancient Egyptian language.
Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs
or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps
considerably less) of the population was literate.
Legal text on parchment, written in hieratic: a list of
witnesses during the settlement of a quarrel, 1000 BC. (Photo by DEA / G
Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images)
6) The king of Egypt could be a woman
Ideally the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king.
But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the
power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king.
On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their
own right as female kings and using the full king’s titulary. The most
successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than
20 prosperous years.
In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might
classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In
Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as
‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for
these women.
7) Few Egyptian men married their sisters
Some of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These
incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties
from birth, and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and
their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who
might otherwise remain unwed, while restricting the number of potential
claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods,
several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions.
However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of
Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal
birth.
Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until
the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship
terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and
‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these
words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an
actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over
this issue.
8) Not all pharaohs built pyramids
Almost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and
Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern
deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the
sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the
waters of chaos at the beginning of time.
But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was
out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary
monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the
Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city
of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the
border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile
desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal
mortuary cult.
Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were
buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been
discovered.
9) The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves
The classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid
had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children
desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably
popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in
fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up
to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under
the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month
shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a
temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form
of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty,
burial in the nearby cemetery.
Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, which was not, as many believe, built by slaves. (Photo by MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)
10) Cleopatra many not have been beautiful
Cleopatra VII, last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of
Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely,
then, she must have been an outstanding beauty?
Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case.
All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and
deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their
makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to
appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty
within and outside Egypt.
