Daily Life in Ancient Egypt PDF

DAILY LIFE OF
THE ANCIENT
EGYPTIANS
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DAILY LIFE OF
THE ANCIENT
EGYPTIANS
Second Edition
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The Greenwood Press “Daily Life through History” Series
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brier, Bob.
Daily life of the ancient Egyptians : / Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs.— 2nd ed.
p. cm. — (The Greenwood Press “Daily life through history” series,
ISSN 1080 – 4749)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–313–35306–2 (alk. paper)
1. Egypt—Social life and customs—To 332 B.C. I. Hobbs, A. Hoyt. II. Title.
DT61.B685 2008
932—dc22 2008019502
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2008 by Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008019502
ISBN–13: 978–0–313–35306–2
ISSN: 1080–4749
First published in 2008
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48 –1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Unless otherwise noted, all line drawings have been taken from: Jean-Francois Champol-
lion, Monuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie, Vols. 2– 4 (Geneva: Editions de Belles-Lettres,
n.d.; reprint of Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1845); J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the
Ancient Egyptians (London: John Murray, 1836); and Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez,
Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquite (London: Chapman and Hall, 1883).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Chronology xv
1. History 1
2. Religion 35
3. Government and Society 65
4. Work and Play 83
5. Food 109
6. Clothes and Other Adornments 127
7. Architecture 155
8. Arts and Crafts 181
9. Technology and Construction 213
10. Warfare 247
11. Medicine and Mathematics 271
vi Contents
Glossary 293
Annotated Bibliography 297
Index 305
Map of modern Egypt indicating ancient sites. From A Complete Guide
to Egypt and the Archaeological Sites, by A. Hoyt Hobbs and Joy Adzigian
(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1981).
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people deserve thanks for their help with this book. David
Moyer read the entire manuscript, found most of our errors, cor-
rected our spelling and, in general, proved indispensable. Pat Rem-
ler worked hard and long securing illustrations and editing the text.
Rivka Rago took valuable time from her own work as an archaeo-
logical artist to draw many of the illustrations. Our former editor
at Greenwood Press, Emily Birch, deserves our humble thanks for
her patience and astute suggestions. Last, but far from least, the
Trustees of Long Island University graciously granted the authors
sabbaticals from teaching to work on the first edition of this book.
INTRODUCTION
Ancient Egypt compiled a stunning list of accomplishments. Its

Karnak Temple has never been surpassed in size by any later place
of worship, and the Great Pyramid, with a north-south orientation
as precise as the most modern surveying instruments could achieve,
is still the most massive building ever raised by humankind. The
massiveness and precision of its buildings compare favorably with
the accomplishments of technological societies almost 5,000 years
later. Its form of government, although radically different from
modern societies, was sufficiently solid that it sustained the civili-
zation for almost 3,000 years, a record unlikely to ever be broken,
and it was comparable in sophistication, complexity and efficiency
to the Chinese empire that developed two millennia later. Ordinary
citizens in ancient Egypt lived and worked in much the same ways
as the average European of the eighteenth century, more than 4,000
years later, but ate better and enjoyed more variety in their food.
Their clothing was eminently practical (sandals sold in our depart-
ment stores still copy ancient Egyptian styles) but could also be
as intricate and glamorous as the most stylish modern gown. In
architecture, ancient Egyptians invented the column, houses with
patios, latrines and the first “air-conditioning” by using roof scoops
to circulate breezes through their homes. Their art had no com-
petition for at least 2,500 years, and ancient Egyptian carpenters
xii Introduction
invented every method of joining wood known today. Medicine in

ancient Egypt stood head and shoulders above the rest of the world
for 2,700 years until Greece’s Late Period. The Egyptian army con-
trolled a larger area than any troops in history until the Persians
marched in 1,500 years later, and no nation ever dominated its
neighbors for as long.
With a civilization so advanced and in many ways so modern,
ancient Egyptians seem very much like ourselves—we feel that if
we were somehow transported to ancient Egypt we would find
kindred souls. The people we would actually encounter, however,
provide the great paradox of ancient Egypt. Despite their preco-
ciousness in many areas, they were not like us at all in the most fun-
damental ways. Their buildings, architecture, clothing, food and
medicine may have been thousands of years ahead of their time,
but their view of the world was closer to a prehistoric caveman’s
than to ours. They saw the universe as inhabited by a panoply of
gods—spirits that controlled every natural phenomenon and left an
Egyptian feeling powerless, dependent on prayers and offerings to
entice gods to accomplish what he could not do on his own. Rather
than individuals, pursuing their own destiny, ancient Egyptians
acted like helpless pets waiting for whatever their masters, the
gods, might provide. This paradoxical combination of startlingly
modern accomplishments with incredibly ancient thought pro-
cesses, of people who looked both forward and back, is what this
book attempts to describe.
That a comprehensive description of the ancient Egyptians is even
possible, however, verges on the miraculous. As our second oldest
civilization, dating from 3000 b.c., Egypt’s age is truly incredible.
We think of Greeks from the days of Socrates and Plato as primeval,
but their fifth century b.c. perspective looked back to an Egypt as
old as those ancient Greeks are to us today. Only because of three
unique factors is specific information available to show what peo-
ple did so long ago and how they lived: Egyptians’ love of writ-
ing, their accurate tomb paintings, and the modern fascination with
ancient Egyptian culture.
Egyptians were among the first people to develop writing and,
luckily, they loved their invention, covering yards of papyrus and
temple and tomb walls with words. They made lists of what they
owned, recorded court cases, described battles and preserved
recipes, wrote books on medicine and religion, and told stories.
An inherent conservatism of character caused them to preserve
their oldest writings and copy them over and over, increasing
Introduction xiii
the chances that examples would survive. Several hundred rolls

of papyrus have endured to our day, along with extensive wall
inscriptions.
Since their religion told them that gods would re-create whatever
they saw on a tomb wall, Egyptians decorated their tombs with
paintings of what they most enjoyed. These walls illustrate the cloth-
ing, the conduct of professions and the leisure activities of actual
people. Although Egyptians took great pains to hide their tombs
from robbers in underground recesses, they seldom succeeded—
valuable burial goods spurred looters to great efforts. Still, because
a painted wall held no resale value in ancient times, the paintings
remain for the most part, even in plundered tombs, subject only to
the ravages of time and weather. Here, too, we are fortunate. The
greatest natural enemy of a painted plaster wall is moisture, which
in Egypt is as slight as anywhere in the world. Numerous painted
and carved walls remain vivid today, some as bright and fresh as
the day the painter laid down his brush to admire his completed
work.
Finally, Egypt has held a deep fascination for diverse groups dur-
ing our century, from those interested in the Bible, to those attracted
by Egyptian art, to those intrigued by the occult. As a result, this
country has been investigated more than any other ancient civiliza-
tion. Because the Bible describes Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt, Moses’
liberation of the Jews from Pharaoh and a visit by the Holy Family,
Egypt retains strong Christian and Jewish connections. Hordes of
scholars have sifted the sands of Egypt for two centuries search-
ing for clues that might bear on these sacred events. Another impe-
tus came when Napoleon stormed Egypt with his army in 1798.
His fascination with the ancient culture led him to include as part
of his entourage France’s greatest scientists, savants who roamed
the country, sketching temples and artifacts, drawing maps and
recording plants and animals. When the army returned to France
after Napoleon’s defeat, these scientists brought descriptions of an
art and architecture outside the classical tradition that excited the
first of periodic Egyptomanias. The French Empire style with its
Egyptian motifs was one direct result. Egyptomania recurred in
1923 with the discovery of the magnificence inside Tut’s tomb. This
time the craze spread beyond France and England to the United
States and the rest of the world. Such fascination caused genera-
tions of young people, dreaming of discovering similar treasures,
to set their sights on Egypt. No wonder treasure hunters have
combed Egypt for almost two centuries in competition with hordes
xiv Introduction
of scientifically minded Egyptologists, sifting the sands, poking the

ground for holes, copying and translating inscriptions.
Thanks to all the recovered objects, inscriptions, paintings, and
surviving temples and tombs, we know a great deal today about
how these ancient people lived and what they thought. This infor-
mation fills the remaining pages of this book. Why did tens of thou-
sands of free citizens work like slaves to build a pyramid? Why
did Egyptians believe cats, ibises and beetles were sacred? What
did people eat long before stores existed, and what did they wear?
Surprisingly few popular books focus on the clothing, food, build-
ings, government, working conditions and religion of the ancient
Egyptians and attempt to answer such questions. Of those that do,
many were published fifty or more years ago. So it seems appro-
priate to revisit the life of the average ancient Egyptian to add the
discoveries of modern research to what was known before. Our
approach is to describe the historical development of Egypt first,
along with its religion and form of government, to pave the way
for understanding why Egyptians worked, ate and dressed as they
did. Architecture, art, warfare and medical and the other knowl-
edge that Egyptians achieved follow, as a kind of conclusion. The
very end of the book consists of an annotated bibliography which
we hope will encourage the reader to further investigate this fasci-
nating culture.
New discoveries are made every year in Egyptology so the oppor-
tunity to revise our book allows us to update our information based
on recent finds. In particular, this second edition gives us a chance
to present a new theory about how the massive pyramids were con-
structed and to generally discuss how ancient Egyptians were able
to accomplish their wonders, great and small, so we added a new
chapter to explain their methods of construction and the technology
they employed. We also took this opportunity to add new illustra-
tions and improve the writing, which can always be bettered. The
bibliography has been updated, both to include works that did not
exist at the time of original publication and to expand it to include
periodicals of general interest.
CHRONOLOGY
Predynastic Period (c. 4000 –3150 b.c.) Towns in Egypt; early religion;
pottery and stone vessels; no unified government or writing.
[c. 3100: Sumer invents writing.]
Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 –2686 b.c.) Unified pharaonic govern-
ment; writing; early tombs.
Dynasty I (c. 3050 –2890 b.c.). Narmer: the first pharaoh.
Dynasty II (c. 2890 –2686 b.c.). Pharaohs’ tombs grow.
[2700: approximate date of Biblical flood.]
Old Kingdom (c. 2686 –2181 b.c.)

Dynasty III (c. 2686 –2613 b.c.). Zoser builds first pyramid.
Dynasty IV (c. 2613–2498 b.c.). The three pyramids of Giza.
[c. 2500: rise of Minoan civilization.]
Dynasty V (c. 2498 –2345 b.c.). Sun temples.
Dynasty VI (c. 2345 –2181 b.c.). First Pyramid Texts.
First Intermediate Period (2181–2041 b.c.)

Dynasties VII–X. Concurrent pharaohs.
Middle Kingdom (2040 –1782 b.c.) Resurrection of unified government;

conquest of Kush.
Dynasty XI (2060–1991 b.c.). Capital moved to Thebes.
Dynasty XII (1991–1782 b.c.). Portraiture; development of Fayum.
xvi Chronology
Second Intermediate Period (1782–1570 b.c.) Hyksos control northern

Egypt and introduce chariots.
Dynasties XIII–XVII.
New Kingdom (1570 –1070 b.c.) Conquest of Canaan, Lebanon and

Syria; rise of the god Amun; Akhenaten’s monotheism.
Dynasty XVIII (1570–1293 b.c.). Conquests; Hatshepsut; monotheism.
[c. 1500 b.c.: Stonehenge constructed.]
Dynasty XIX (1293 –1185 b.c.). Rameses the Great; monumental art.
[c. 1230 b.c.: Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.]
Dynasty XX (1185 –1070 b.c.). Capital moved north.
[c. 1120 b.c.: Trojan War.]
Late Period (1069–332 b.c.)

Dynasties XXI–XXXI. Attacks by foreign powers; Persian domination;
decline.
[c. 950 b.c.: The time of King Solomon of Israel.]
[587 b.c.: Destruction of Jerusalem; Babylonian captivity of the Jews.]
[428 b.c.: Birth of Plato.]
Ptolemaic (332–30 b.c.)

Dynasties XXXII–XXXIII. Alexander the Great; Ptolemies; Cleopatra.
Conquest of Egypt by Rome (30 b.c.).
1
HISTORY
When Herodotus, the world’s first historian, visited Egypt in the

fifth century b.c., he asked its priests what was the key to Egypt’s
greatness. “Egypt is the gift of the Nile,” they said; and so, from
the very beginning, it was. Egyptian civilization would never have
accomplished its wonders had it not been for this gift of nature,
so crucial to its people and so mysterious that they considered it
divine.
Like clockwork each spring the usually placid Nile roared—more
than twice as high as during the rest of the year—in a torrent into
southern Egypt. River banks could not contain the increased vol-
ume which spilled over—in some places for as much as a mile—and
covered flat plains on either side. As the flood gradually emp-
tied into the Mediterranean in Egypt’s extreme north, the water
receded, leaving behind a residue of millions of tons of fertile silt.
Surrounded as Egypt was by the Sahara Desert, it should have been
a desolate, arid environment, but thanks to the Nile, it enjoyed
unrivaled fertility. Not only did the Nile provide water so Egyp-
tians need not depend on unpredictable rain, but its annual floods
replenished soil that would otherwise be drained of nutrients by
continual planting. Growing more food with less manpower than
any other country in the world, Egypt acquired a surplus to trade
and time to devote to matters other than mere survival.
2 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians
By the dawn of the third millennium, a population of almost

one million had established communities that nestled close to the
Nile, following the river’s long, thin course through the center of
the country. Along both banks, a mile or more of farmland was
bordered first by cliffs, then by desert. At Egypt’s southernmost
point—modern Aswan—giant boulders clogged the Nile to create
one natural boundary; the vast Mediterranean formed its northern
border. To the west spread a thousand miles of arid Sahara, while
east lay the barren Sinai Peninsula and the deep Red Sea. Nature
had created a vast fortress wall that protected Egyptians from hos-
tile neighbors, while nurturing them with unfailing sun, abundant
water and bountiful crops.
By 3000 b.c. Egypt possessed all the characteristics of a country
except one. Her people spoke a common language and shared simi-
lar religious beliefs, but no government had yet been created which
could unite her separate groups of people into a nation; someone
had yet to invent that political mechanism. The new system was
created by a man whose unification of Egypt was revered through
all its history, but the means by which he accomplished his feat
became known only as the result of an archaeological excavation at
the beginning of our century.
Excavators working in the ancient town of Hieraconpolis, near
the southern end of Egypt, found an unusual object. Among a cache
of sacred relics buried in the remains of an early temple lay an over-
sized slate cosmetic palette, similar to others Egyptians used for
grinding malachite which they mixed with fat to produce the green
cosmetic worn above their eyes. Instead of the normal six-inch pal-
ette, however, this one stood two feet tall—a palette for the gods.
With carved pictures and rudimentary writing it told the story of
the unification of Egypt. One side shows a large figure grasping an
enemy by the hair with one hand while raising a mace menacingly
with the other. Hieroglyphs over the scene call the man “Narmer.”
The reverse side shows Narmer leading a procession of tiny figures
carrying banners, while a little man behind him in the outfit of a
priest cradles a pair of sandals.
Most significantly, Narmer wears one kind of crown on one side
of the palette and a different crown on the other—distinctive royal
hats known as the Red Crown of the North ( ) and the White
Crown of the South ( ). The pictures narrate Narmer’s leadership
of a southern confederation (with processional banners represent-
ing various communities) to its successful conquest of the north, a
conquest that made Narmer the first ruler of a unified Egypt. Except
History 3
for relatively brief periods of instability, the country remained a

single entity throughout its 3,000-year history, but Egyptians never
forgot their origins. They always referred to their country as the
“Two Lands,” and their ruler as the “Lord of Upper and of Lower
Egypt,” a way of acknowledging the indispensable role of the pha-
raoh in holding a divided country together. Other Egyptian records
assign the original pharaoh the name Menes, a different designa-
tion for the same man—every pharaoh had at least two names.
Egypt, blessed once by its fortunate geography, achieved addi-
tional strength from its unification, forging 2,000 years of artistic
excellence and military dominance—achievements unequaled then
or since. A century later Egypt had developed a complex national
government, a sophisticated religion and a written language; it was
the first country to earn the accolade “civilized.”1 Most of the insti-
tutions that would characterize Egypt’s civilization throughout its
long existence were already in place, not least of which was Narmer’s
form of government which allowed the all-powerful pharaoh to
mobilize an entire population to carry out massive public projects.
The Narmer Palette, humanity’s oldest document of an event, depicts

Narmer on one side (shown left) smiting an enemy while wearing the tall
White Crown of Upper Egypt. The reverse side (shown right) portrays a
procession in which he wears the Red Crown of lower Egypt to signify his
conquest of lower Egypt.
Tradition credits Menes/Narmer with establishing Memphis as

the capital of Egypt. The first capital of the country, it remained the
seat of government throughout most of Egypt’s history. For almost
two centuries after Narmer, Egypt continued to consolidate power
and gather energy. During this time, an idea began to germinate
and develop: belief in a pharaoh’s divinity and immortality. If, after
death, the king resurrected to live again in another world, he would
need clothing, food and furniture to sustain him. Providing for their
pharaoh’s eternal life increasingly became the business of his sub-
jects, as they were called upon to build ever larger tombs to store
the food and equipment required for his next existence.
Many ancient cultures held similar beliefs about their ruler’s
divine afterlife and expended great energy creating special burials
for their kings. Egypt’s special contribution was a new tomb design
first devised in about 2700 b.c. Architects for the pharaoh Zoser
stacked six decreasingly smaller stone brick rectangles on top of
each other to form a towering, 200-foot-high “Step Pyramid.” This
first large building ever raised in stone by humankind initiated a
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the oldest large building in stone. Two
dummy temples in solid stone appear in the foreground. Photo courtesy
of Pat Remler.
History 5
series of pyramids, structural feats that became the signature of

Egypt, dazzling us now as much as they amazed the ancients.
Because of the sheer length of Egypt’s history, it is helpful to use
the nine eras historians have developed to divide Egypt’s 3,000-year
history into coherent pieces. Egyptologists refer to the time just
before Narmer’s unification as “Predynastic” (or “Archaic”) and
the period from the unification of Egypt up to the raising of the
first pyramid as “Early Dynastic.” The great age of pyramids that
Zoser initiated is known as the “Old Kingdom,” after which came
a period of anarchy and chaos, the “First Intermediate Period.”
Egypt reassumed power in the “Middle Kingdom,” experienced
another decline during the “Second Intermediate Period,” and res-
urrected itself again in a final great era of art and military success
in the “New Kingdom” before undergoing a slow decline during
the “Late Period,” ancient Egypt’s final era. Since each period cov-
ers many centuries and numerous kings, a later Egyptian priest-
archivist named Manetho subdivided each period into groups
called “dynasties,” to indicate rule by descendants of a single fam-
ily. He separated the Early Dynastic period into the first two dynas-
ties and the Old Kingdom into the third, fourth, fifth and sixth
dynasties, and so on. Additional information about Egypt’s oldest
times is supplied by its architecture. Architectural changes tell us
about engineering advances, economic conditions and political and
religious movements, while carved pictures and writing inform us
about the events of the times. Beginning with the New Kingdom,
surviving papyri provide us with increased details.
THE NINE ERAS OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

Period Dates Dynasties
Predynastic to 3150 b.c.
Early Dynastic 3150–26862 I–II
Old Kingdom 2686–2181 III–VI
First Intermediate Period 2181–2040 VII–XI
Middle Kingdom 2040–1782 XI–XII
Second Intermediate Period 1782–1570 XIII–XVII
New Kingdom 1570–1070 XVIII–XX
Late Period 1069–332 XXI–XXXI
Ptolemaic Period 332–30 XXXII–XXXIII
OLD KINGDOM (2686–2181 b.c.)

The Third Dynasty, led by Zoser, builder of the Step Pyramid, set
the Old Kingdom on an unprecedented building spree, although his
two successors built smaller step pyramids near Zoser’s at Saqqara.
However, the first pharaoh of the next dynasty, Sneferu, attempted
to erect an eight-step pyramid thirty miles distant at Meidum
which incorporated a significant design advance. For the first time,
the steps were filled with polished stone to form smooth slanting
sides—the true pyramid shape we know today. Although this first
attempt proved structurally unstable, he continued experiments
with other true pyramids, and, despite a failed second attempt,
raised yet another that stood solidly enough to last thousands of
years. Together, Sneferu’s three pyramids used more stone than the
famous Great Pyramid.
As authors of the world’s first history books, the Greeks passed
down a great deal of misinformation, including the name of Sne-
feru’s son whom they referred to as “Cheops,” although his Egyp-
tian name was Khufu. He must have been infected with his father’s
passion for pyramids, for near Cairo, on a desert plateau called Giza,
he built the most massive stone structure the world has ever seen.
The Great Pyramid, which originally rose 481 feet in the air, was the
tallest building in the world until the Eiffel tower finally surpassed
it 4,500 years later. Resting on a base 756 feet square—large enough
Sneferu’s pyramid at Meidum is the first attempt at a pyramid with

the familiar straight sides. Structural problems caused the strange shape
shown in the picture. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
History 7
to contain the cathedrals of Milan, Florence and Saint Peter’s in

Rome, along with Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s in London—
the 2,000,000 stones forming the mass of its structure average two
and a half tons each. Since a pharaoh never began his royal tomb
until taking the throne and since Khufu reigned for twenty-three
years, the entire project—from initial surveying to leveling the land
and piling millions of stones upon stones—must have been com-
pleted in about two decades. Meeting this schedule meant that, on
the average, one two-and-a-half-ton block had to be quarried and
moved into place every two minutes of every hour of every work
day for those two decades. Inside, a magnificent passageway leads
a third of the way up the pyramid to a granite chamber in which a
polished granite sarcophagus held Khufu’s mortal remains. Com-
plex anti-burglary systems, such as passageways that led to dead
PHARAOHS OF THE OLD KINGDOM

Dynasty Pharaoh Dates (B.C.)
III Setnakhte 2686–2668
III Djoser 2668–2649
III Sekhemkhet 2649–2643
III Khaba 2643–2637
III Huni 2637–2613
IV Sneferu 2613–2589
IV Khufu (Cheops) 2589–2566
IV Djedefre 2566–2558
IV Khafre (Chephren) 2558–2532
IV Menkaure 2532–2504
IV Shepseskaf 2504–2500
V Userkaf 2498–2491
V Sahure 2491–2477
V Neferirkare 2477–2467
V Shepseskare 2467–2460
V Neferefre 2460–2453
V Niuserre 2453–2422
V Menkauhor 2422–2414
V Djedkare 2414–2375
V Unas 2375–2345
VI Teti 2345–2333
VI Pepi I 2332–2283
VI Merenre 2283–2278
VI Pepi II 2278–2184
VI Nitokerti 2184–2181?
ends and massive stone plugs that sealed the true route to the
burial site, sadly proved to no avail: the pyramid was picked clean
in ancient times.
In addition to building the largest of all tombs, Khufu constructed
a temple where offerings could be made to his immortal soul and
a grand causeway leading from his pyramid to yet another temple
in the valley below. Five large pits around the pyramid contained
the boats intended to transport his remains and funerary goods to
the next world. One of these disassembled boats, found almost per-
fectly preserved in 1954, was built of the finest Lebanese cedar and
measured 143 feet from bow to stern.3
The Great Pyramid was only the first of three imposing pyramids
erected at Giza which earned the Old Kingdom the name “Pyramid
Age.” Khufu’s son Khafra, known to the Greeks as Chephren, took
up the challenge at Giza with a massive effort beside his father’s
The world’s oldest boat, the “solar”

boat of the pharaoh Khufu who built
the Great Pyramid. Photo courtesy of
Pat Remler.
History 9
The Sphinx at Giza depicts the face of the pharaoh Khafra who built the
second largest pyramid. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
Great Pyramid. Since it stands on higher ground, Khafra’s pyramid

rises even higher than its famous neighbor, although it actually
stood ten feet shorter when it was new. Its gleaming casing of white
limestone, transported by boats from quarries across the Nile, still
covers the top, laid over interior limestone blocks which were cut
from the surrounding Giza site. Probably in the course of freeing
these interior blocks, quarrymen struck a seam of harder rock they
avoided, leaving a small hill. Khafra had this outcrop carved in
the shape of a recumbent lion bearing his own face—the famous
Sphinx. The Greeks misunderstood this sixty-foot-high, almost-
200-foot-long symbol of power for a woman (perhaps taking its
shoulder-length headdress for long hair). In the valley below his
pyramid, Khafra constructed a valley temple, as had his father, of
monolithic hard granite columns supporting a roof above a pol-
ished alabaster floor. Early this century parts of twenty-three realis-
tic, life-sized statues of the king were found inside.
Khafra’s son, Menkaura (whom the Greeks called Mycerinus),
raised the last of the famous Giza pyramids. Half the size of its
neighbors at 218 feet in height, it is distinguished by a lovely cas-
ing of hard red granite transported from Aswan, 500 miles to the
south. The casing covers only the bottom quarter of the pyramid,
however, for Menkaura died unexpectedly after a reign of 28 years,
leaving his pyramid and mortuary temple incomplete.
As a result of this spate of pyramid construction, the Giza pla-
teau grew into a virtual city of the dead—laid out in orderly streets
lined with smaller pyramids for queens and princesses, along with
hundreds of low, rectangular tombs for favored, but nonroyal,
courtiers and royal sons. Even today, the magnitude of this project
astonishes.
Were it not for the two months every year when the Nile’s
water covered Egypt’s farmland, idling virtually the entire work-
force, none of this construction would have been possible. During
such times, a pharaoh offered food for work and the promise of
favored treatment in the afterworld, where he would rule, just as
he did in this world. For two months annually, workmen gathered
by tens of thousands from all over the country to transport the
blocks a permanent crew had quarried during the rest of the year.
Overseers organized the men into teams to transport the stones
on sleds, devices better suited than wheeled vehicles to moving
weighty objects over shifting sand. A causeway, lubricated by
An aerial view of a portion of the Giza plateau, site of the famous pyr-
amids, showing some of the hundreds of subsidiary tombs arranged in
orderly rows with “streets” between them. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
History 11
water, smoothed the uphill pull. No mortar was used to hold the
blocks in place, only a fit so exact that these towering structures
have survived for 4,600 years—the only Wonders of the Ancient
World still standing today.
As if exhausted from its building frenzy, the glorious Fourth
Dynasty simply faded away with a last, short reign. We know
little of the origins of the Fifth Dynasty except indications that its
founder was born to a royal daughter who married to a nonroyal
husband and that his ascendance to the pharaohcy involved a reli-
gious revolution over the sun god Ra, who became the great god of
Egypt thereafter. Six of the Fifth Dynasty’s nine pharaohs incorpo-
rate Ra in their names, and all follow them with the phrase “Son of
the Sun.” Most chose a burial site at modern Abusir, five miles from
Giza, where they built a new type of mortuary complex. Because
they concentrated on building temples dedicated to the sun, their
pyramids were poorly constructed and stood only 200 feet tall or
less. Beside each pyramid, however, stood a temple consisting of a
Some of the magical spells that cover

the burial chamber of the pharaoh Unas.
Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
football-field-sized open courtyard brilliant in the sun. At one end,

beside a squat obelisk—the symbol of the sun’s rays—rose an altar
for offerings. Inside the open temple stood a slaughterhouse for
sacrificial animals, along with storerooms and housing for priests.
These five large sun temples within a mile of each other, far
from any city, were obviously intended only for the benefit of
their deceased kings. Since the resources to supply temples with
offerings and priests with food could not be maintained for every
ensuing ruler, the pharaoh Unas, who may have been the last of
the Fifth Dynasty or the first of the Sixth, turned away from such
temples and built, at Saqqara, a small, sixty-two-foot-tall pyramid,
with an innovative concept that compensated for its diminished
size. Lovely hieroglyphs, incised in the stone and filled with bright
blue pigment, cover the walls of the burial chamber from floor to
ceiling. This text is the first ever inscribed inside or outside any
pyramid. Called the “Pyramid Texts,” this collection of magic spells
was intended to ensure the safe passage of the pharaoh to the next
world. So powerful were these words believed to be that characters
in the shape of birds were drawn with cut wings and those of animals
with partial legs, lest the birds fly away and the animals run off.
The next three Sixth Dynasty kings, most of whom enjoyed a
long reign, all continued to use Pyramid Texts. The second of these,
Pepi I, who died in his fifty-third year on the throne, must have sur-
vived into his seventies. He was succeeded by a middle-aged son
who reigned only five years and died childless, leaving the throne
in turn to a young half-brother, born in his father’s twilight years.
Pepi II thus began his rule as a child of six and lived to reign for
ninety-four years, the record for any monarch in history. When,
after almost a century, the doddering old man died, he left a nation
weakened and dissipated by years of senile rule and, since his sons
had predeceased him, his surviving daughter, Nitokerti, became the
first woman to rule Egypt. During the distracted final years of her
father’s reign, the pharaoh’s authority had weakened to the point
that representatives who governed various parts of Egypt on the
pharaoh’s behalf and who had formerly built their own tombs near
the pharaoh to acknowledge his dominance, now lived and died in
whichever section of the country they administered—a sign of seri-
ous disrespect. After Nitokerti’s death, the country lay in shambles.
Despite its chaotic end, the glorious Old Kingdom produced the
most elegant art of any period in Egypt’s long history. Large stone
portrait sculptures painted to a lifelike realism incorporated haunt-
ing, rock crystal eyes; wall reliefs still delight with their accuracy
History 13
and elegance of form. The country had grown efficient and powerful
enough to import materials for jewelry and construction from as far
as Afghanistan for lapis lazuli, Lebanon for cedar wood, the Sinai
for turquoise, and Kush (modern Sudan) for gold. Egypt showed
signs it was a force to be reckoned with as her armies forged into
the Sinai, Palestine, Syrian, Libya and the Sudan. Above all, the
wonders of construction accomplished at such an early time in his-
tory proved to be the Old Kingdom’s outstanding achievement and
would awe the world ever after. This single, 500-year era in Egyp-
tian history had enjoyed a longer day in the sun than do most coun-
tries during their entire history.
FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (2181–2041 b.c.)

One clear sign of the chaos that characterized the First Interme-
diate Period comes from the ancient historian Manetho who cites
more than 140 rulers from four dynasties over a 121-year period,
a record possible only if the collapse of central authority allowed
several “pharaohs” to rule simultaneously. The fact that various
dynasties claimed different capitals supports this view of competing
rulers. No great monuments remain from this era, implying that the
massive building projects of previous times had been abandoned,
presumably because the strong authority to commission them no
longer existed. A later papyrus describes the depths to which the
country had sunk, how completely law and order had vanished.
The bowman is ready. The wrongdoer is everywhere. There is no man

of yesterday. A man goes out to plow with his shield. A man smites his
brother, his mother’s son. Men sit in the bushes until the benighted traveler
comes, in order to plunder his load. The robber is the possessor of riches.
Boxes of ebony are broken up. Precious acacia wood is cleft asunder.4
As the authority of the pharaoh weakened, government function-

aries gathered more responsibility and power into their own hands.
Political offices, previously appointive, became hereditary, insulat-
ing the office holder even more from a pharaoh’s control. With one
powerful person or another proclaiming himself pharaoh—and
dressing and acting like one—how was anyone to know which pre-
tender was the true ruler?
While various pretenders called on the population for their alle-
giance, the mass of the country—its farmers—cared little about
who ruled them, for their work remained the same. Life went on,
even if more fearful and disrupted. Some art was created, but of
a coarser quality than what preceded it; some buildings rose, but
smaller and less refined than earlier projects; some expeditions
searched for imports, but less frequently and more scaled back than
before. It was as though Egypt were marking time, waiting for a
resurrection.
MIDDLE KINGDOM (2040–1782 b.c.)

It was inevitable that someone would emerge strong enough to
overcome the other pretenders and unify the country again. Three
times in Egypt’s history—at its very beginning, at the end of the
First Intermediate Period and at the end of the Second Intermedi-
ate Period—such a man came out of the south to impose his will on
the nation. Why all three conquests originated in the south poses an
interesting question. Perhaps southerners, living far from the for-
eign cultural influences of the Mediterranean were more ardently
patriotic; perhaps a more concentrated population was easier to
mobilize; perhaps proximity to rich Kush with its mercenaries and
gold gave southern leaders a military edge over opponents. What-
ever the reason, it was a southern warrior who succeeded in ending
the chaos of the First Intermediate Period and initiating the Middle
Kingdom.
The south had long been home to a family with pretension enough
to consider themselves royal by enclosing their names in cartouches,
an act which caused later record keepers to refer to them collectively
as the Eleventh Dynasty. An insignificant town called Waset (“the
Scepter”), which the Greeks later designated Thebes, became their
capital and, appropriately, the falcon god of war, known as Montu,
became their patron god. Since one leader of this dynasty boasted
of conquering Abydos, a city only forty miles to the north, their
original area of influence could not have been large. Montuhotep I
(“Montu Is Pleased”) changed all that. In the fourteenth year of his
reign, Montuhotep put down an insurrection in Abydos and added
the title “Lord of the White Crown”—the king of the south—to his
titulary; by the thirty-ninth year of his reign, he had added the title
“Uniter of the Two Lands.” Like Narmer/Menes before him, he had
conquered the north and unified the country.
Montuhotep’s achievement in reuniting the country accords him
the status of founder of the Middle Kingdom. This southern king
made his hometown, Thebes, the capital of his resurrected country,
abandoning the old capital Memphis, which had fallen into
History 15
PHARAOHS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

XI Montuhotep I 2060–2010
XI Montuhotep II 2010–1998
XI Montuhotep III 1997–1991
XII Amenemhat I 1991–1962
XII Senusert I 1971–1926
XII Amenemhat II 1929–1895
XII Senusert II 1897–1878
XII Senusert III 1878–1841
XII Amenemhat III 1798–1786
XII Sobekneferu 1785–1782
neglect. With central authority restored and a powerful pharaoh

to commission construction projects, the arts reawakened and the
army strained at the bit—a glorious era dawned.
Like other pharaohs throughout Egypt’s history, Montuhotep
began, in what remained of his fifty-one-year reign, to construct his
royal tomb. But because he came from a part of Egypt with different
funeral traditions from those of the previous Memphite kings, his
architect built, in front of sheer cliffs across the river from Thebes,
a huge temple on a platform surrounded by columns on all sides
except the rear. On top, a hall led back to an open court running to
the cliffs, with a shrine at its end for a statue of the king, but a tunnel
running under the court ran deep into the cliffs to the actual tomb.
To set off the sweeping building, a large garden in front was planted
with scores of tamarisk and sycamore trees. This most elegant com-
plex played the sweep of stacked colonnades against the simple
ramp and open garden that led up to them. Walls behind the colon-
nades were carved with scenes of the pharaoh trampling enemies,
hunting and planting seeds. But where, in all this architecture, was
the traditional pharonic pyramid? Viewed from the front, the cliffs
behind Montuhotep’s temple form a natural pyramid shape.
Montuhotep II followed his famous father and namesake in
building a similar mortuary complex, but he died after reigning
only twelve years and never completed the building. Confusion
followed. We have evidence of at least a six-year reign by a third
Montuhotep, but hear no more from this family. During his short
reign, Montuhotep III employed a man named Amenemhat, the
son of a commoner named Senusert, as his vizier. After the dust
had cleared, this Amenemhat emerged as Montuhotep’s successor,
Aerial view of remains of the unusual Middle Kingdom temple of Mon-

tuhotep I on the left, beside the New Kingdom temple of Hatshepsut on
the right. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
beginning a great new dynasty, whose kings alternated the names

Amenemhat and Senusert.
This newly royal family came from a small town in the center of
Egypt that worshipped a god named Amun, “the Hidden One,”
who, from then on, except for a brief period of religious revolution
700 years later, became the chief god of Thebes, and so, in effect,
for all Egypt. Amenemhat I established a new capital near modern
Lisht, ten miles south of Memphis, which he called It-towe, “Grasp-
ing the Two Lands.”
The great quantity of temples and tombs constructed during this
dynasty testifies to Egypt’s renaissance. Once more pyramids—
even if only about 200 feet tall—were raised, some now (in homage
to Montuhotep II) on terraces reached by an open ramp. Tombs of
the pharaoh’s courtiers are found clustered around his burial again,
showing that the king’s influence had regained its former impor-
tance. Despite his firm control of the country, however, Amenem-
hat lacked royal blood. To ensure his family’s continuing reign, he
initiated a practice adopted by successive rulers and made his son
coregent for the last ten years of his thirty-year reign. Senusert I
thus automatically became pharaoh when his father passed away,
History 17
and during his forty-four-year reign he began the subjugation of

the upper Sudan—“Kush” to the ancient Egyptians—building forts
to maintain control of the gold Egypt consumed so insatiably. His
successors solidified this conquest. Senusert I also built an elegant
little temple at a place called Karnak, near Thebes, initiating what
would become the largest religious complex in the world.
Successive Amenemhats and Senuserts took special interest in an
area—called the Fayum today—which surrounds Egypt’s one great
lake. They substantially raised agricultural productivity there by
constructing a thirty-mile canal that carried water from the Nile to
increase the lake’s size. Art flourished, as demonstrated by a trove
of jewelry belonging to two daughters of Amenemhat II—Egyptian
goldwork at its exquisite height. His successor Senusert II began
the practice of using adobe bricks for the mass of a pyramid before
covering them with fine polished stone, making them appear as
substantial as the pyramids of old but with far less work. His grand-
son, Amenemhat III, enjoyed a forty-five-year reign, long enough
to watch his own pyramid as it grew over the years. He built a
residence nearby around which much of the government clustered,
creating a crowded city so complex that the amazed Greeks later
mistook it for the famed labyrinth.
Although Amenemhat IV served briefly as copharaoh with his
father, Amenemhat III, he died without heirs so his sister succeeded
him. After a coregency with her father, Sobekneferu reigned at most
three years before darkness again descended on Egypt. The line
had run out.
Although half as long as the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom
was no less important or successful. During its flowering, the Egyp-
tian language attained a level of refinement that ever after made it
the model for good prose in ancient Egypt. Art achieved an elegant
realism: for the first time, pharaohs’ faces were shown with lines of
care and age, rather than idealized. Buildings, though not as mam-
moth as those of the Old Kingdom, possess a refinement that makes
them second to none. Egypt also mounted serious military expedi-
tions into the Sudan, forays that would later extend throughout the
Middle East. Even a thousand years later, Egyptians looked back on
the Middle Kingdom as a glorious time.
SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (1782–1570 b.c.)

As Babylon first stirred, China became unified, and the pillars of
Stonehenge rose, Egypt entered its second Dark Age. Repeating the
pattern of the First Intermediate Period, more than 160 kings from
three different dynasties ruled during a period that lasted only
slightly more than a century and governed from three, or perhaps
even four, different capitals. Once again the country had split apart
into reduced kingdoms ruled by different pharaohs. In its weak-
ened state Egypt became vulnerable to powerful tribes from cen-
tral Russia, called the Indo-Europeans, who spoke the earliest form
of the Greek language and evolved into the Mycenaeans of Ho-
mer’s Trojan War. Flowing into the Mediterranean basin, the Indo-
Europeans also conquered Turkey, later evolving into the Hittites
who would become Egypt’s rival for Middle Eastern dominance
when she became strong again. Key to their conquests was a great
new military weapon—the chariot—which, along with the horse,
they introduced to Europe and the Middle East.
During this time, immigrants—either Indo-Europeans or those
displaced by their raids—increasingly inundated Egypt from
the area of modern-day Israel. Egypt’s power vacuum permitted
the new arrivals to gain control of the northern Delta and establish a
capital at Avaris, in the extreme northeast. Called Hyksos (“foreign
kings”) by the Egyptians, their race is obscure, although some of
their names, one of which sounds like “Yakeb-her,” suggest Semitic
roots. Regardless of their background, the Hyksos took on Egyptian
trappings, built temples to Egypt’s gods, wore Egyptian clothes and
carved tens of thousands of small, beetle-shaped amulets, called
scarabs, just as the Egyptians did. No matter; to the natives, these
Hyksos remained “vile asiatics” and despised occupiers.
A Theban family, later referred to as the Seventeenth Dynasty,
began the long effort to win Egypt back for the Egyptians. Since the
mummy of the next to last leader of this family shows massive head
wounds, it is obvious their effort did not go smoothly. Kamose, the
final ruler of the dynasty, described the situation:
What serves this strength of mine, when a chieftain is in Avaris, and

another in Cush, and I sit united with an Asiatic and a Nubian, each man
in possession of his slice of this Egypt, and I cannot pass by him as far as
Memphis. See, he holds Khmun, and no man has respite from spoliation
through servitude to the Setyu. I will grapple with him and slit open his
belly. My desire is to deliver Egypt and smite the Asiatics.5
Kamose describes Egypt as divided into at least two kingdoms,

with Kush ruled by a third king. He boasts, in his continuation of
the story, of his march north with an army, his siege and destruction
History 19
of Avaris and his safe return to Thebes. The facts, however, must
have been somewhat different since the next Theban king also
attacked Avaris, making Kamose’s campaign appear more a raid
than a conquest. Vanquishing the Hyksos became the task of his
brother (or, possibly, nephew), Ahmose, who, during his twenty-
five years of rule, not only captured Avaris but continued across
the Egyptian border into Gaza to conquer a Hyksos stronghold.
Ahmose returned to the south of Egypt and successfully recaptured
Kush and its gold mines to complete the reunification of Egypt.
NEW KINGDOM (1570–1070 b.c.)

However pleased the Egyptians may have been to evict the Hyksos,
they owed a great debt to their former occupiers. Egypt learned
about chariots and horses from the Hyksos along with the secret of
producing bronze, a metal harder than their copper. Battles against
the Hyksos also led Egypt to look beyond its northern borders for
the first time and, with a better-equipped army, eventually to domi-
nate the Middle East. Each military success and the plunder that
accompanied it encouraged successive pharaohs to donate temples
to the god Amun of Thebes, raising that city to co-capital status
with Memphis and its god to first place in Egypt’s pantheon.
Ahmose is counted as the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the
beginning of the New Kingdom, which consisted of the Nineteenth
and Twentieth dynasties as well. After twenty-five years spent in
conquests, he passed the scepter to his son Amenhotep I who drove
even farther south into Kush and began the custom of designating
a government official as the “King’s Son of Kush,” to demonstrate
this southern territory’s annexation by Egypt. His successor, Tuth-
mosis I, was a commoner who attained the throne by marrying the
eldest royal princess, for the Egyptian throne was passed through
the female side. Tuthmosis forged south but took his army north-
east as well, through modern Israel into Syria, even crossing the
Euphrates River into Iran—the first major incursion into an area
which would soon fall within Egypt’s sphere of power.
Noteworthy as well were Tuthmosis’ funerary preparations. By
this time, Egyptians had learned the hard way that burying a royal
body inside pyramids visible for miles only served as a challenge to
tomb robbers: all the Old and Middle Kingdom pharonic pyramids
had been plundered. Tuthmosis attempted to foil the robbers by hid-
ing his tomb. A desolate spot was found across the Nile from Thebes
in a small valley that became known in Arabic as Wadi el Malook,
PHARAOHS OF THE NEW KINGDOM

XVIII Ahmose 1570–1546
XVIII Amenhotep I 1551–1524
XVIII Tuthmosis I 1524–1518
XVIII Tuthmosis II 1518–1504
XVIII Tuthmosis III 1504–1450
XVIII Hatshepsut 1498–1483
XVIII Amenhotep II 1453–1419
XVIII Tuthmosis IV 1419–1386
XVIII Amenhotep III 1386–1349
XVIII Akhenaten 1350–1334
XVIII Smenkare 1336–1334
XVIII Tutankhamen 1334–1325
XVIII Ay 1325–1321
XVIII Horemheb 1321–1293
XIX Rameses I 1293–1291
XIX Seti I 1291–1278
XIX Rameses II 1279–1212
XIX Merenptah 1212–1202
XIX Amenmesses 1202–1199
XIX Seti II 1199–1193
XIX Siptah 1193–1187
XIX Twosret 1187–1185
XX Setnakhte 1185–1182
XX Rameses III 1182–1151
XX Rameses IV–XI 1151–1070
the “Valley of the Kings.” Here a great underground cave with halls
and storage rooms was constructed into which Tuthmosis’ body was
laid to rest after his ten-year reign. The entrance was sealed, dirt
was heaped over it, and all who had participated in the construc-
tion were sworn to secrecy. Hiding one tomb might have succeeded,
but when scores of successive monarchs tried the same trick in the
same three-acre valley, thieves soon caught on. All, except the tomb
of Tutankhamen, were thoroughly robbed in ancient times.
Tuthmosis I’s successor, Tuthmosis II, the son of a lesser wife,
earned the throne by marrying his father’s eldest daughter by his
principal wife—that is, his half-sister. His death ended an undis-
tinguished eighteen-year reign, and he left a widow with no sons.
Again the son of a lesser wife was chosen for the crown. Since
Tuthmosis III was a child of only nine or ten when selected pharaoh,
History 21
A statue of the female pharaoh Hat-

shepsut showing her false beard.
someone had to act as regent until the young king attained matu-
rity. Hatshepsut, widow of the recently deceased king, seized the
role and, in one of the stranger interludes in Egypt’s history, was
crowned as coruler two years into her regency, after which she
appropriated all of the paraphernalia of a pharaoh. The fact that
one pharonic insignia was a beard gave Hatshepsut no hesitation:
she is portrayed in statues and wall carvings with a delicate oval
face ending in an incongruously false royal goatee. Scribes also had
a problem, since the word for “pharaoh” was masculine and titles
and common phrases were all designed for a male king. Referring
to her, they as often wrote “his majesty” as they did “her majesty.”
Her male garb was not intended to fool the citizens into believing
their pharaoh was male. Statues unequivocally portray a female,
whose sex, in any case, would have been obvious to any Egyptian
from her name, “She Is First Among Noble Women.” Rather than
denying her femininity, she was proclaiming that she was also a
pharaoh, an office that traditionally had been held by a man.
Hatshepsut proceeded to feminize Egypt. Her reign included no
great military conquests; the art produced under her authority was
soft and delicate; and she constructed one of the most elegant tem-
ples in Egypt against the cliffs outside the Valley of the Kings. Built
beside the famous mortuary temple of Montuhotep I, Hatshepsut’s
version elongated the original design to produce a different aes-
thetic. A long ramp ascended to a wide terrace from a courtyard
filled with pools and trees. Bordered by a sweeping wall of col-
umns, the terrace stretched the length of Montuhotep’s entire tem-
ple, and held a ramp that ascended to a second terrace, also lined by
a sweeping wall of columns. Atop its columned halls, whose walls
were covered with lovely carvings, stood the temple proper whose
smaller rooms contained statues of the queen. Some wall scenes
showed her birth as a divine event in which the god Amun disguised
as her father Tuthmosis I impregnated her mother, indicating that
the god had personally placed her on the throne. Another series
depicts a large expedition she sent to Punt, probably modern-day
Somalia on Africa’s northeast coast, and the ships’ return bearing
myrrh, ebony, ivory, gold, baboons and leopard skins. Hatshepsut
erected two huge obelisks in Karnak temple and claimed she had
restored numerous temples throughout Egypt. Her tomb, where
she was buried in the twentieth year of her rule, is located deep
inside the cliffs that form the Valley of the Kings behind her temple.
It also contained the sarcophagus of her father.
After Hatshepsut’s death, her stepson and coruler, Tuthmosis III,
came into his own. A year later he led a large army into the Middle
East to reestablish the authority lost during Hatshepsut’s reign.
After a brilliant campaign, he returned with 2,000 horses, 1,000
chariots and assorted additional plunder. In one ten-year period,
Tuthmosis conducted eight campaigns in this area, capturing all
its major cities and crossing the Euphrates where records claim he
took time to enjoy an elephant hunt in which he killed 132 of them.
Tuthmosis carried Egypt’s standard as far as it would ever reach,
and, for this reason, he is considered Egypt’s Napoleon. He also
built extensively at Karnak and added his own obelisks near those
of Hatshepsut.
Tuthmosis was also responsible for almost obliterating Hatshep-
sut’s name from Egyptian history because as a female pharaoh she
had upset maat—the normal order. Stone carvers were dispatched
throughout the land to erase her name and face wherever they
were found, and official lists of pharaohs claimed that Tuthmo-
sis II was followed by Tuthmosis III, with no mention of Hatshep-
sut in between. Tuthmosis III, regarded as one of the greatest of all
History 23
pharaohs, joined his ancestors in the next world in the fifty-fourth

year of his reign.
In what had become custom, Tuthmosis III had associated his son
with him on the throne before his death, so Amenhotep II came
unquestioned to his crown. One would expect a son raised by a mil-
itary father to seek approval through warrior skills—certainly he
bragged about his strength and athletic prowess: according to one
story, he shot an arrow through a metal plate as thick as the palm of
a hand is wide. Nonetheless, after his father’s death, Amenhotep II
engaged in only two military campaigns during a twenty-five-year
reign. His successor, Tuthmosis IV, boasted that he had received the
throne as a reward from the Sphinx in return for uncovering it from
the sand. Although the story is intriguing and the actual events are
unknown, the need for such a story reveals that Tuthmosis IV’s
One example of the attempt

by Tuthmosis III to obliterate
the name and image of Hat-
shepsut, in this case leaving
a clear outline of the original
striding image. Photo cour-
tesy of Pat Remler.
ascendance required some kind of serious intervention—thus the

claim of divine assistance. In any case, although the young king
reigned for thirty-three years, he conducted only one military expe-
dition into Nubia.
His son, Amenhotep III, “the Magnificent,” came to the throne
when Egypt stood at the apex of its power and wealth, and he set
out to enjoy his position to the fullest. His impeccable pedigree—
pharaoh for a father and pharaoh’s principal wife for a mother—
allowed him to marry whomever he wished. He chose Tiye, the
daughter of two commoners, then proclaimed throughout the land
that she was now officially royal, his “great royal wife.” Amen-
hotep III did whatever he wanted, and what he wanted most was
to enjoy life and build monuments. Across the Nile from Thebes,
where open land remained available, he built a splendid palace
compound consisting of separate sumptuous buildings for himself
and his staff and for the harem and its staff, as well as a kitchen,
stables and barracks for his royal guards. There was also a festival
hall for celebrating coronation anniversaries and an artificial lake,
large enough to sail a royal barge. He also built a mammoth funer-
ary temple, of which only two sixty-five-foot-tall seated statues of
Amenhotep—the famed Colossi of Memnon—survive today, and
he erected an entire temple, the largest built by any single person,
in Thebes.
Despite a sybaritic life, personal tragedy struck near the end of
his thirty-eight years as pharaoh. His eldest and favorite son died,
leaving only a malformed younger son to carry on. After his father’s
death, this new pharaoh, Amenhotep IV, made a bid to change his
world.
He began worshipping the visible sun, which he called the Aten,
and he changed his own name to Akhenaten (Beneficial to the Aten).
He added a new kind of temple within Karnak, the previous pre-
cinct of Amun. This temple, unlike Amun’s dark and mysterious
chambers, lay open to the sun. Finally, in a truly revolutionary move,
Akhenaten decided that his god was the only god and that he could
not worship his god in a place where other, false gods were cel-
ebrated. He moved his entire court to a desolate location in the
middle of Egypt, near the modern city of Tel Amarna, where, since
no town existed at the time, neither did temples to other divinities.
There he built a large city from scratch—Akhetaten, the “Horizon
of the Aten”—complete with housing projects for workmen and
government functionaries, temples and a magnificent palace. Sur-
rounding the perimeter of the town, boundary markers proclaimed
History 25
that he would never leave his new city. All those who could afford
to do so began constructing their tombs in the hills nearby.
Akhenaten’s religion is history’s first recorded example of mono-
theism, and it did not fare well. Although Akhenaten worshiped his
one god in Akhetaten, Egyptians elsewhere continued to celebrate
all their traditional gods. Dismayed by their actions, Akhenaten sent
stone carvers throughout Egypt to obliterate the names of the other
divinities and close their temples, a gesture which changed few
people’s religious practices but forced them angrily underground.
Unhappy too were the thousands of priests of the old gods who had,
in effect, been thrown out of work by this revolutionary pharaoh,
as well as the army who stood idle while the visionary Akhenaten
preached a message of love and peace and Egypt’s subject territo-
ries rebelled. It was an experiment that lasted only for the seven-
teen years of Akhenaten’s reign and died with him.
Akhenaten’s beautiful wife Nefertiti and five of their six daugh-
ters died before him, leaving only one daughter to carry on the line.
Although she was only about nine years old, this daughter was
married to the one surviving royal male—a half-brother roughly
the same age—to give him a solid claim to the throne. The young
The Colossi of Memnon as drawn by artists who accompanied Napoleon

during his invasion of Egypt from 1798 to 1801.
AKHENATEN’S ART
Not the least of Akhenaten’s innovations was to change the art of Egypt.
Before, art had been generic—individuals were portrayed by standard
images of a man or of a woman—such that, even if the owner of a tomb
were an old man, he was pictured as a perfectly formed, young person,
indistinguishable from the owner of the next tomb. Scenes also were
standard. Over and over we see the same pictures of a tomb owner
seated at a table overflowing with food or we see him overseeing work-
ers in a field. Intimacies are never displayed. All this changes radically
with Akhenaten’s reign.
New scenes appear. Now the pharaoh sits with a child on his lap, his
wife rubs his chin, pharaoh rubs noses with a daughter. (Egyptians did
not kiss.) Contrasted with the intimacy that the pharaoh displays with
those near and dear, commoners regularly now include a scene of the
pharaoh rewarding them with honors.
The very picture of the royal body changes. Faces become unnaturally
long and thin, eyes narrow to slits, the nose grows long, lips swell to bul-
bous masses, and a strange growth seems to bulge from the back of the
head. The neck becomes swanlike, shoulders narrow along with arms,
chests seem to grow breasts, stomachs swell as do thighs, but calves and
ankles shrink. Nothing like this had been seen before or since. However,
this new aesthetic did not survive its patron, Akhenaten.
Theories abound to attempt to explain this artistic revolution. Some
see these strange images as realistic portrayals of a diseased Akhenaten.
Indeed, an affliction called Marfan’s Syndrome causes similar bodily
changes. Yet Akhenaten’s wife, Nefertiti, is similarly displayed, although,
having a different mother and father, it is unlikely that she was similarly
afflicted. Also, the famous and beautiful head of the queen shows a face
normal in shape. Another theory, based on the fact that only royals were
portrayed in this manner, sees the new artistic canon as a way to visu-
ally distinguish royals from commoners. Yet another theory points to
Akhenaten’s break from the past in religion and sees a similar break in
art based on non-Egyptian sources. However, no foreign art seems simi-
lar. All we can be sure of is that Akhenaten wanted to break as sharply
with the past in how the world and its people were displayed as he had
broken with the old religion. The specific standards of his new aesthetics,
however, remain a mystery.
couple moved back to Thebes, restored the old religion and changed
their “Aten” names to Ankesenamen and Tutankhamen.
Obviously, two nine-year-old royals could not make these politi-
cal decisions themselves. The power behind the throne was an aged
vizier named Ay, who orchestrated a publicity campaign to present
History 27
the new pharaoh as a friend of the old gods. He had Tutankha-

men order the repair of the temples damaged during his father’s
religious revolution, add decoration to his grandfather’s temple in
Thebes and donate the largest gold idol ever of Amun, so heavy that
thirteen priests were needed to transport it.6 After only ten years of
rule, at age nineteen, Tutankhamen died under highly suspicious
circumstances.7 Evidence points to the old vizier Ay who proceeded
to marry Tutankhamen’s widow in order to qualify himself for the
pharaohcy. Whatever the circumstances surrounding his ascension,
Ay lived only four years more, by which time no one of royal blood
survived.
The next pharaoh was thus a commoner. The commander-in-
chief of the army, Horemheb, used his power base to take control
of the country and managed to enjoy an action-filled twenty-seven
years on the throne. As can be expected from his background, he
campaigned in the Middle East to reestablish Egypt’s domina-
tion. He also built a splendid pair of pylons at Karnak. His most
dubious architectural achievement involved directing workmen to
comb all of Egypt to search out and eradicate every reference to
Akhenaten, Tutankhamen and Ay and replace their cartouches with
his own. He calculated the beginning of his reign from the death of
Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti in an

intimate scene with one of their daugh-
ters. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
Amenhotep III, pretending that these three subsequent kings had

never existed. No wonder Tutankhamen’s tomb was lost from sight
until its discovery in modern times—officially he never lived.
Since Horemheb had no children, his death again left Egypt lead-
erless. His vizier, a former army buddy named Rameses, stepped
in as Rameses I, the first of many pharaohs to bear that name.
Rameses I founded the Nineteenth Dynasty, but since he was of
the same generation as Horemheb, he came to his throne as an old
man and lasted barely two years. His son, Seti I, hoping to ensure
that the throne remained the province of his descendants, built a
grand new temple, not at Thebes, but thirty miles north at Abydos,
the precinct since primeval times of the old god Osiris. Inside, he
constructed chapels for various gods of Egypt, creating a kind of
national cathedral, and included a chapel for the worship of him-
self. His instant divinity notwithstanding, Seti I made certain his
son was clearly associated with him before his thirteen years of rule
ended. Rameses II, the Great, thus began his sixty-seven-year reign
as a teenager.
Four of Rameses’ fifty sons. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
History 29
During his first decade, Rameses the Great warred in the Mid-
dle East against Egypt’s mighty new rival, the Hittite nation. After
three campaigns, a treaty ended hostilities and Rameses’ military
efforts, but not his telling of them. Rameses inscribed temple after
temple with words and scenes of his battles, in every one of which
his gigantic figure is portrayed single-handedly saving the day. One
would think he fought hundreds of times. Since the rest of his long
reign was spent building temples for more walls on which to boast
of his few victories, his figure appears throughout Egypt and as far
south as his imposing temple at Abu Simbel—all smiting the same
enemies over and over. His true talent lay, however, in producing
offspring, and he proudly displayed the many names of his one-
hundred-plus children. More statues and temples bear his name
than that of any other pharaoh, but not because he created more,
rather because, following the lead of Tuthmosis III and Horemheb,
he substituted his name on whatever already existed.
His thirteenth oldest son, Merenptah—who, being middle aged
when Rameses the Great died, reigned for only ten years—took up
arms for a campaign in the Middle East, claiming to have destroyed
all the small kingdoms there, including Israel. His sons, Amen-
messes and Seti II, each served short reigns prior to the ascension
of a pharaoh who, for some reason, was succeeded by his own
father’s widow, a queen buried in the Valley of the Kings. A decade
of confusion followed before a new dynasty began.
The Twentieth Dynasty began with a king who did little in his
two years of power except appropriate the tomb of the last queen of
the previous dynasty. His son, Rameses III, who initially took that
famous throne name to give himself additional stature, later earned
it by saving Egypt. At the time, the whole Mediterranean area had
been invaded by a migratory people who had conquered all the
countries along their march, including Rameses the Great’s enemy,
the Hittites, before being turned away by the Egyptians in the Delta
after a mighty land and sea battle. With their advance stopped, the
invaders disbursed to settle elsewhere around the Mediterranean.
(One tribe, called the Peleset, settled in the area thereafter named
for them—Palestine; another, the Libu, took Libya; the Danu took
Greece.) After the victory, Rameses III built a great temple on the
west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes. The temple was unusual
both because it annexed a palace and because it was fortified with
guard towers and walls sixty feet high and twenty-five feet thick.
On the awesome exterior walls of the temple his artists carved
florid scenes of his great battle. The rest of Rameses III’s reign of
thirty-one years included an expedition to Punt for precious incense

and another to the Sinai for turquoise.
Problems began to surface during his reign. An inscription reports
that workmen in the royal necropolis went on strike because
their pay was months in arrears. Another records the arrests of
highly placed government officials and ladies of the harem for an
attempt to assassinate the pharaoh. Something serious was amiss.
Rameses III was succeeded by Rameses IV through Rameses XI,
most of whom reigned only briefly. The next dynasty moved the
capital to Tanis in the Delta, not far from the earlier Hyksos capital,
so rulers could more easily monitor threats from the Mediterranean
and the Middle East. As soon as the center of power moved from
Thebes, more strikes occurred, tomb robberies increased, and the
high priests of Amun grew ever more independent, even donning
pharonic crowns as part of their dress. The New Kingdom, like the
Old and the Middle Kingdoms before it, gradually weakened and
disappeared.
Never again would Egypt stand as tall as during this last of
its great periods. It had achieved its greatest military prowess,
Rameses the Great’s temple at Abu Simbel was carved out of a solid stone
mountain and presented four statues of the pharaoh in front standing
sixty-seven feet tall. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
History 31
dominating an area more than four times its own size and amass-
ing riches such as no country had ever known. An indication of
the vastness of its wealth can be measured by the treasures found
in the tomb of one of the most insignificant of the era’s pharaohs,
Tutankhamen: the innermost of his three coffins was solid gold and
weighed more than 200 pounds. Gold topped all the obelisks of
Egypt, and the sanctuaries of most of the thousands of Egyptian
temples were filled with golden idols of the gods. Egypt was rich,
strong and proud throughout most of the glorious New Kingdom.
LATE PERIOD (1069–332 b.c.)

The Late Period consists of 500 years of ups that never attained
the heights of earlier kingdoms and downs that reached the depths
of the earlier intermediate periods. Heroic battles were fought and,
at times, former glories were reasserted, but, over all, Egypt’s dom-
inance gradually weakened as outside forces challenged first its
control of the Middle East then its very independence.
The next dynasty, the Twenty-first, after moving the capital north
to Tanis, began burying their dead there. Two relatively undespoiled
pharonic tombs were discovered there during the previous century,
whose scanty contents demonstrate how substantially Egypt’s for-
tunes had changed. Strange events began toward the end of this
dynasty when a Libyan prince living in Egypt somehow compelled
the last pharaoh of the Twenty-first Dynasty to marry one of his
daughters to his son. This Libyan prince, named Sheshonk (whom
the Bible called Shishak when he sacked Jerusalem), became the
first pharaoh of the Twenty-second Dynasty, and he used his son’s
royal connection to breed a line of Libyan pharaohs. In all, eight
Libyans ruled for over 200 years, but when the line ran out, affairs
in Egypt had reached a stage of chaos, and the next two dynasties
ruled concurrently.
In the meantime, Egypt’s old vassals in Kush had grown so Egyp-
tianized that they viewed the collapse of traditional values in their
mother country with disgust. A Kushite prince who rode north,
conquered both of the competing pharaohs and began a Kushite
dynasty, the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, had the misfortune of ascending
the throne just as a great foreign power challenged its authority.
After the warrior-nation Assyria conquered Palestine, it sent army
after army against Egypt until it conquered Thebes and chased the
Kushite pharaoh south. When the Assyrians returned home after
plundering Egypt, the Kushite king came back, this time to meet
defeat and death. After the same fate befell his successor, the Kush-
ites decided their original home was a safer place than Egypt.
Rebellion against the Assyrians was finally organized by a fam-
ily from the Delta town of Sais, who, aided by the distraction of
Assyria’s new competitor Babylon, expelled the invaders to found
the Saite Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Wars between Assyria and Baby-
lon allowed Egypt some breathing room. Pharaohs built monu-
ments again, this time copying the art of the Old Kingdom—even
inscribing the old Pyramid Texts in their tombs—to demonstrate
their longing for the good old days. Concurrently, refugees from
the Assyrian-Babylonian conflict poured into Egypt. There were
Greeks in numbers sufficient to build a city of their own and Jews
from Palestine.
The second of the Saite kings, Neko II, attempted to revitalize
Egypt’s economy. He broke ground for a canal to link the Red Sea
with the Mediterranean, a forerunner of the Suez Canal, and com-
missioned a fleet of Phoenician ships to round Africa. But Egypt’s
period of quiet ceased before either project was completed when
enemies came at her from several directions. Phrygian cavalry from
the Caucasian Mountains charged up to the border and turned
away only when bribed; Medes raided the Middle East; and, most
worrisome of all, Babylon, after defeating Assyria, began to feel
invincible. Neko died in a clash with the Babylonian king Nebu-
chadrezzar at Karcamesh in Syria in 605 b.c., along with most of
his army. A few years and two pharaohs later, Nebuchadrezzar
returned, besieging Jerusalem. Apries, the pharaoh at that time,
saved it; but in 587 Nebuchadrezzar returned, destroyed Jerusalem
and took its citizens captive to Babylon.
A revolt in Egypt brought the dynasty’s last pharaoh, Amasis, to
the throne. In what at first seemed a fortunate turn of events, the
Babylonian threat ended when a new power, the Persians, sacked
their city of terraced gardens. But if Persia could conquer mighty
Babylon, she must have been powerful indeed. Persia first cleared
the field by defeating the Medes and Lydians in Anatolia (Turkey),
then turned serious attention to Egypt. King Cambyses brought a
mighty army to meet Amasis in a battle that hung in the balance until
the Egyptian lines broke. Amasis retreated south to Memphis where,
after a long siege, he surrendered his country to the Persian king.
The Twenty-seventh Dynasty thus consists of five Persian kings.
But the Egyptians were not finished yet. After the Persians had
been twice defeated by the Greeks, Egypt seized the opportunity
to reassert its independence. Six pharaohs, divided into three brief
History 33
dynasties, ruled from the Delta for sixty-one years, after which
time the Persians, their strength renewed, reinvaded to establish
Dynasty Thirty-one. In all, except for the sixty-one-year interlude
of Egyptian independence, Persians ruled Egypt from 534 through
332 b.c. They met their match in Alexander the Great, the great war-
rior from Macedonia in northern Greece, who defeated the Persians
in Anatolia before turning to Egypt, where he was welcomed as a
savior and proclaimed pharaoh.
Alexander stayed only long enough to found Alexandria, his city
on the Mediterranean, because the Persian king Darius III had raised
another army to contest him. After defeating that army, Alexander
made sure Darius would raise no more troops by chasing the Per-
sian king as far as Afghanistan where he was killed by his own
men. Far from home, Alexander decided to press on to India, bat-
tling his way to its southern shore. After receiving a serious wound
in one of the final fights, Alexander made his way back to Babylon
where he died in 323 b.c. from poison, dysentery or the effects of his
wound. His death, which left the “world” he had conquered with
no ruler, spurred various generals to lay claim to whatever part of
Alexander’s dominion they could. The commander of Alexander’s
personal guard, Ptolemy, seized Egypt to found its final dynasty, the
Thirty-second Dynasty, named the “Ptolemaic” after its founder.
Egypt’s last rulers were therefore Greeks without a drop of Egyp-
tian blood because they married only other Greeks. The thirteenth
of these Ptolemies, the celebrated Cleopatra, became embroiled in
Roman politics when she cast her fortune first with Julius Caesar,
then, after his death, with his protégé Marc Antony. Roman civil
war between Antony, supported by Egypt’s troops and fleet, and
Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, at the head of Rome’s legions, went
hard against Antony, who, in 30 b.c., chose suicide over captivity.
Cleopatra’s own suicide soon after Antony’s reduced Egypt to a
province of the Roman Empire and ended its independent history
until modern times.
NOTES
1. Egypt vies with one other contender for the honor of being the first
civilization: Sumer in southern Iraq holds equally strong credentials. Some
archaeologists consider Egypt the first nation; others opt for Sumer.
2. For this and subsequent dates see Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The
Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, by Peter
A. Clayton (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994).
3. For a detailed description see The Boat Beneath the Pyramid, by Nancy
Jenkins (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980).
4. Translated by Alan Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1961), 109.
5. Ibid., 166.
6. Noted by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt in Tutankhamen: Life
and Death of a Pharaoh (New York: Penguin Books, 1984; a reissue of New
York Graphic Society, 1963), 182. Desroches-Noblecourt claims that thirteen
stretchers, not men, however, were required to transport the idol.
7. For the murder theory, see The Murder of Tutankhamen, by Bob Brier
(New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1998).
2
RELIGION
Nothing affected the everyday lives of ancient Egyptians more than

their religion which differed, both in theory and practice, from any
we know today. Egyptians worshiped not a single god, but a vast
array from which they could pick and choose. Common people
took almost no part in religious rituals; that was the sacred respon-
sibility of the priestly class. The afterlife was believed to be not an
abstract spiritual realm, but a concrete, real destination mirroring
life in this world. Finally, attaining eternal life did not require per-
forming any good acts, but simply doing no wrong.
POLYTHEISM
It is difficult to imagine a time before the existence of science, but
such was Egypt’s situation throughout her entire 3,000-year his-
tory. Because no scientific principles existed to explain natural phe-
nomena, Egyptians believed that whatever occurred in their lives
or environment had a supernatural cause. Not understanding why
events happened or how to control them, they considered some-
thing as familiar and central to their lives as the sun to be more
than an astronomical object; it was the falcon god Ra. The Nile was
not just a river obeying simple laws of nature, but the god Hapi,
depicted as a hermaphrodite—a male with sagging breasts.
Egyptians depended on the good will of their gods to give them

what they wanted. The disappearance of the sun each night, for
example, frightened them into imagining that it made a dangerous
journey past enemies who tried to prevent its reappearance in the
morning. So they made offerings to the gods, prayed, did in gen-
eral whatever they believed their gods might demand to ensure its
return. Lacking scientific laws to explain diverse phenomena, they
regarded each natural event as the province of a separate god and
assigned that god personal characteristics and a physical form. Of
course they did not really believe the sun was a bird or that a river
had breasts. Wrestling with the impossible task of representing
invisible powers in some concrete manner, they chose to symbol-
ize a particular god as a creature or attribute that exhibited similar
abilities: birds fly, breasts produce liquid.
At the peak of their civilization, during the Eighteenth Dynasty,
Egyptians worshiped more than a thousand gods. Some were the
same deity celebrated under different names in different cities, but
most were separate gods.
Ancient Egyptians were not required to choose a single god to
worship, unlike later practices of monotheism. In the case of child-
birth, for example, several divinities were responsible for different
aspects of the process. One, a pregnant hippopotamus called Tauret,
the “Great One,” protected a woman through the term of her preg-
nancy. Another, a lion-headed male dwarf named Bes, looked after
the child when he was born. When a woman became pregnant, she
wore an amulet of Tauret around her neck for protection, much as
Christians wear saints’ medals. After giving birth, the new mother
donned a Bes amulet.
Despite an abundance of special-occasion gods, Egyptians
believed that a few chief gods controlled everything in their world,
including the lesser deities. In Memphis, the administrative capi-
tal of Egypt, priests credited the chief god Ptah, a human figure
wearing a skullcap, with creating the world by imagining it in his
mind, then uttering the word. Thebes celebrated a different major
god—Amun, the “Hidden One”—with powers so great he could
not be visualized, yet because he had to be represented in some
way in order to pay him homage, he was depicted as a man with a
tall ostrich plume crown.
To introduce order into their large collection of gods, Egyptians
placed each within a hierarchy based on their relative powers. Rely-
ing on the familiar, they collected their pantheon into “families”
of threes—a father, mother and son—the first trinities, with the
Religion 37
MAJOR EGYPTIAN GODS

Name Depiction Attributes
Amun Man with tall crown of The “Hidden One,”
ostrich plumes king of the gods,
associated with the
sun
Anubis Jackal God of embalming
Apis Bull Power and fertility
Aten Solar disk The sun
Bast Cat or woman with cat Goddess of the East
head and of fire
Bes Dwarf with feathered War and childbirth
headdress, mane and tail
Hapi Man with breasts The Nile
Hathor Cow or woman with a Motherhood
crown of horns around
the sun
Horus Falcon or man with Sky and protector of
falcon head the pharaoh
Imhotep Seated man with skullcap Healing
Isis Woman with crown, the Magic
sun between two horns
Khnum Ram or ram-headed man Creator
Maat Feather or woman with Divine order
single feather on her
head
Min Man standing with erect Fertility
penis
Nut Woman stretched across Sky
the sky
Osiris Standing man wrapped Protector of the dead
as a mummy
Ptah Man in sheathe with Wisdom and writing
skullcap and staff
Ra Sun or falcon with sun Sun
headdress
Sekhmet Woman with lioness’ Dangers to humans
head
Seth Doglike animal with Evil
pointed ears and forked
tail
Sobek Crocodile Water dangers
Toth Baboon or man with ibis Writing, knowledge
head
superiority of a chief god symbolized by his fatherhood. Memphis’

chief god Ptah was paired with Sekhmet, a lioness; their son Nefer-
tum appeared in human form with lotus plants on his head. Similarly,
Amun’s wife was Mut, a lioness-headed human; their son Khonsu
took the form of a ram-headed human. One feature of polytheistic
religions is that even if someone lived in Memphis and prayed to
Ptah, he could still believe in Amun. The principle is the same as a
baseball fan today who roots for the New York Yankees and believes
they are the best team, yet knows that the Boston Red Sox are just
as genuine. It is not that they don’t exist; they just aren’t your team.
RELIGIOUS PRACTICE
Egyptians also practiced their religion differently from modern
people whose attendance is expected at a church, temple or mosque
for participation in joint prayer, recitation of common beliefs and
practice of rituals. Egyptian lives were so filled with gods they felt
no need to set aside special times for praying together. Only on rare
festival days might groups congregate outside a temple to witness
a performance of holy rites. In every other respect the business of
religion was conducted entirely by proxy: only priests were permit-
ted inside temples and only priests were allowed to perform the
rituals. In effect, being a believer required no action whatsoever.
An Egyptian temple was a dark, mysterious place considered to
be the divine residence of a specific god or god’s family, rather than
a communal gathering place for worshippers. Far inside, in the
“holy of holies,” the innermost room of the temple, stood a sacred
statue of the temple god. These statues—usually bronze images up
to two feet tall inlaid with gold and silver or, occasionally, com-
posed of solid gold—were meticulously served and cared for by
specially trained priests as if they were living gods. Each morn-
ing the priests opened the doors to the shrine, placed food before
the statue for its first meal, painted cosmetics around its eyes, per-
fumed it, and dressed it in white linen. These rituals complete, they
closed the doors to the shrine until it was time for the next rites.
The only occasion an average Egyptian might see his cult statue
was on important festival days when people crowded into temple
courtyards for rare glimpses of their god’s image as it was carried
outside on portable litters of gilded wood.
According to ancient texts, these cult statues could nod their
heads and talk. Perhaps the reality was that priests secretly pulled
strings to make the head move, spoke for the god by throwing their
Religion 39
voices, or otherwise represented their own words as the deity’s.

Whatever the illusion employed, statues were consulted for their
opinions on a variety of personal problems; one ancient record even
credited a statue with solving a crime.
A papyrus in the British Museum describes a theft that took place
in Thebes. When, during the festival of Opet, the great statue of
Amun was carried from Luxor to Karnak Temple, about a mile
and a half away, a citizen named Amunemwia who guarded the
storehouse of a nobleman appeared before his local statue to report
that five colored shirts had been stolen while he napped one day.
Addressing the statue, he asked, “My good and beloved lord, wilt
thou give me back their theft?” to which the papyrus states that
“the god nodded very greatly.” Amunemwia began to read a list of
townspeople. The statue, upon hearing the name of the farmer
Pethauemdiamun, nodded and said, “It is he who stole them.”
When the accused farmer was dragged in front of the statue he
denied the theft and appealed to the oracle of his own district,
Amun of Te-Shenyt, whose judgment agreed with the first statue.
Pethauemdiamun again denied the theft and was brought before
a third statue, Amun of Bukenen, “in the presence of many wit-
nesses,” with the same result. Returning to the original statue of
Amun of Pe-Khenty, Pethauemdiamun was forced to ask, “Was it
I who took the clothes?” When he received an affirmative nod he
finally broke down and confessed. He was beaten a hundred times
with a palm-rib and made to swear that, if he went back on his
word to return the clothes, he would be thrown to the crocodiles.
Cult statues even served as judges in courts of law. In a case involv-
ing a dispute over the ownership of a tomb, an oracle actually—
somehow—wrote its decision. A workman named Amenemope
had laid claim to a tomb he said belonged to his ancestor Hai, but
necropolis officials who inspected the site questioned his claim
when they found only a coffin with no name, funerary equipment
or offerings. To settle the matter, Amenemope appealed to his local
god who, according to his own account, “gave me the tomb of Hai
in writing”—a mystery indeed. Perhaps two papyri—one support-
ing Amenemope’s claim, the other denying it—were presented to
the statue who indicated his choice with a “nod.”
Another case, involving a dispute over a house, is recorded on
a pottery fragment in the British Museum. The builder Kenna
had found an abandoned house in poor repair and renovated it
for himself, but he was prevented from moving in by his neigh-
bor, Mersekhmet, who claimed that he had previously consulted
Principal gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt.
Religion 41
Priests with shaved heads carry the sacred barque of a god. The god’s
image was placed in the shrine in the middle of the “boat.”
the statue of Amenhotep I and been told that he and Kenna should
share the house. Kenna decided to take the case before the same
statue in the presence of witnesses. As townspeople assembled
outside the temple, the “carriers of the god” paraded the statue for
all to see and heard the god say, “Give the dwelling to Kenna its
owner again . . . no one shall divide it.” Perhaps one of the priests
uttered the actual words. In any event, Kenna got his house.
Although temples generally employed groups of priests to tend
cult statues, say prayers and conduct temple business, during Egypt’s
earliest history, pharaohs bore the sole responsibility for maintain-
ing divine order by acting as high priest, in addition to serving as
king. As Egypt grew more populous, pharaohs no longer had time
to perform all the duties and rituals demanded by the burgeoning
numbers of temples. The designees who were selected as stand-
ins evolved into Egypt’s priestly class. Because they merely rep-
resented the pharaoh, these men were not required to hold deep
religious convictions; only their duties distinguished them from
other government workers. Priests, in fact, often held regular jobs
as carpenters, scribes, or goldsmiths in addition to their religious
responsibilities because most worked in the temple only a total of
three months a year: their tours of duty lasted thirty days, followed
by three months of secular life.
Because each temple needed some full-time person to manage
its operations, the position of first god’s servant evolved. As tem-
ples grew more complex and powerful, these men oversaw temple-
owned farms, fields, cattle, and orchards and managed the temple
staff. The position carried such responsibility and power that par-
ents frequently advised their children to become scribes because
it was from these ranks that first god’s servants were chosen. In
the case of large temples, second and third god’s servants existed
beneath the first god’s servant; beneath them were endless other
priests, each performing a specific job.
Regular priests fell into two categories: those directly responsible
for the cult statue and those who performed other kinds of reli-
gious duties. Wab priests, held to the highest standards of cleanli-
ness because they came in contact with the cult statue, shaved all
their body hair to avoid lice and wore nothing but pure white
linen clothing. Even their internal purity was monitored: they
had to swear they had not recently eaten fish, considered ritually
unclean, before touching the idol. Other priests, called “scroll car-
riers,” managed the sacred scrolls in the temple library, recorded
donations and estate revenues, kept inventory and recited prayers.
When the bakers, beer brewers and cooks, who supplied each tem-
ple with offerings, and the farmers, herdsmen and overseers of the
temple estates were all counted, these thousands and thousands of
religious functionaries in ancient Egypt formed the largest bureau-
cracy, in terms of percentage, the world had ever seen.
Priests were primarily paid—directly or indirectly—from the pha-
raoh’s coffers. When warrior pharaohs returned from conquered
foreign lands with gold and other booty, they donated a portion of
their plunder to the temples, both in gratitude for the gods’ favor
and to ensure their continued goodwill. Foreign conquests also
supplied Egypt with captives who provided an important source
of manpower for temple construction and work on temple estates.
Further adding to the wealth of the temples, pharaohs often donated
large tracts of their own land to temples as continuing annuities
until the holdings of Egypt’s religious orders paralleled those of
the Roman Catholic Church in Medieval Europe—each growing to
rival the wealth of its kings.
Egyptian priests spent little time dealing with the well-being of
individuals, seldom advising or counseling those with personal
problems, but concentrating instead on cosmic matters such as
Religion 43
keeping the sun in the sky and ensuring the fertility of the land.
Any individual who desired special favors from the gods could,
however, pay for offerings and prayers that priests would perform
on their behalf.
The only other personal service priests regularly performed
for believers was to interpret their dreams—also for a fee. One
might even arrange to spend the night near a temple god, hoping
to receive a divine message during sleep. Since all dreams were
considered prophetic, the key lay in their interpretation, a service
priests performed with the help of special books. Since these books
were written thousands of years before the idea of an unconscious
mind, they ignore the possibility that a dream might result from the
dreamer’s experiences.
Along the right-hand margin of one surviving copy of a Dream
Book1 run the words, “If a man sees himself in a dream”; an accom-
panying horizontal line describes a dream and categorizes it as
either “good” or “bad” and why, as in these examples:
Dream Prophecy
Killing an ox Good. Enemies will be removed from
one’s presence.
Seeing a large cat Good. A large harvest is coming to the
dreamer.
Climbing a mast Good. He will be suspended aloft by
his god.
Seeing one’s face as Good. Authority will be gained over the
a leopard townsfolk.
A dwarf Bad. Half his life is gone.
Bare backside Bad. He will soon be an orphan.
Picking dates Good. He will find food from his god.
A dream’s details, not its theme, determined its meaning: Egyp-

tians viewed their dreams as messages from the gods. Regardless of
who the dreamer was, dream symbols were universal, carrying the
same message for everyone.
LIFE AFTER DEATH

No civilization ever invested more faith, energy or money in
attaining life after death than ancient Egypt. Its people loved life,
yet made extensive and costly preparations for death because their
religion promised they would live again—just as the myth of Isis

and Osiris taught.
Isis and Osiris had unusually strong bonds with one another;
according to the myth, they were both brother and sister and hus-
band and wife. Isis was a fabled magician and Osiris was credited
with bringing civilization first to Egypt—by introducing domesti-
cated animals and farming into the formerly precarious existence
along the Nile Valley—and then to the world. When Osiris returned
from his travels, his evil brother Seth invited him to a great ban-
quet, after which he offered a prize to whoever could fit inside a
wooden chest he had previously constructed to Osiris’ exact body
measurements. When Osiris climbed inside, Seth immediately
sealed the lid, poured molten lead over it, and threw it into the Nile.
Isis set out to recover his body, found it in a foreign country and
brought it back to Egypt for a proper burial. But Osiris’ tribulations
were not over. When evil Seth discovered the grave, he hacked the
body into fourteen pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt.
Undaunted, and trusting in her magic, Isis recovered all the pieces
but one—the penis, which had been thrown into the Nile and eaten
by fish. She reassembled her deceased husband, fashioned an arti-
ficial penis to replace the missing part, then, assuming the form of
a bird, hovered over Osiris’ body until he came back to life. Thus
revived—remember this is a myth—Osiris impregnated his wife
before departing to become ruler of the next world.
No one knows whether this ancient myth gave the Egyptians their
first ideas about the hereafter or whether the myth was invented
later to explain ideas that already existed. In either case it contains
their most basic beliefs about death; even the box that fit Osiris later
became their human-shaped coffin. It demonstrates the Egyptians’
most important religious belief: resurrection—that a physical body
would literally revive in the next world, just as Osiris was magi-
cally reanimated. To gain a perfect eternal life required an intact
body. Isis went to such lengths to retrieve the corpse of her husband
for a proper burial because, if she had not pieced together his dis-
membered body—the vehicle for eternal life—he could not have
been resurrected.
Certain ideas about life after death evolved over time. Originally,
immortality was not thought to be parceled out equally: only the
pharaoh was assured eternal life, a reasonable assumption given
that he alone descended from the gods. It was believed that a non-
royal Egyptian’s best chance for eternal life was to be buried near
his pharaoh’s pyramid in hopes that the king would take some
Religion 45
An ancient bronze statue of the god Osiris

who presided over the land of the dead.
commoners with him to the next world. Our earliest known writings
about resurrection were found on the walls of the royal pyramid of
Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, and include hundreds of
magical inscriptions in vertical lines running from ceiling to floor.
These hieroglyphic “utterances,” referred to as Pyramid Texts, detail
the three stages of a pharaoh’s transition to the next world: awaken-
ing in the pyramid, ascending through the sky to the netherworld,
and finally being admitted into the company of the gods. The prin-
ciple behind all the spells is the same: the word is the deed. Saying
something, or having it inscribed on a pyramid wall, made it so.
According to these texts, the king’s body rested in its burial cham-
ber until it was time to travel through the sky to the next world—
somewhere to the west because that was the place where the sun
died each day. (Fittingly, Osiris, god of the dead, was called the “Lord
of the West” and the dead were referred to as “westerners.”) When
its journey was complete, a pharaoh’s body would be welcomed
by Osiris to begin its eternal life, an existence that would continue
much as it had in this world. A pharaoh would need clothes, furni-
ture, food and drink, all of which had to be buried with the body.
Next to Unas’ pyramid stood a mortuary temple where commis-
sioned priests made offerings of food and drink for the sustenance
of his eternal body. The offering of prayers was also considered
essential for eternal life. Because Egyptians realized their priests
were fallible, often lazy, setting up a fund to pay for the prayers was
no guarantee they would be made. In the event the priests did not
do their job, some of the prayers were also inscribed on one wall of
the pyramid’s burial chamber so that the written word could sub-
stitute for the spoken:
Oh Unas, stand up. Sit down to thousands
of loaves of bread and thousands of jars
of beer. The roast for the double rib is
A section of the Book of the Dead for a priest named Nes-Min

that specifies the amulets to be placed on the mummy.
Religion 47
from the slaughter house, thy retch-bread

is from the Wide Hall. As a god is supplied
with the offering meal, Unas is supplied with
his bread.2
Although the Pyramid Texts applied only to royalty, during the
lawlessness that followed the collapse of the Old Kingdom, pyra-
mids were opened and robbed, allowing commoners to learn about
the spells. By the Eleventh Dynasty, with stability restored, non-
royals began inscribing similar writings on the sides of their own
coffins to assure their own immortality. Known as “Coffin Texts,”
they are variations of the Pyramid Texts, with the same concern—
the well-being of the deceased. Eventually, these spells became so
numerous that they no longer fit on the coffin, which led to their
being written on rolls of papyrus that were placed inside the coffin
and today are referred to collectively as the Book of the Dead.
Although not a book in the sense of a single work but many ver-
sions of roughly the same material, each consisted of a collection
of spells, incantations, prayers, hymns and rituals. The various
versions—among them numbering about 400 different spells—
have been standardized and codified by Egyptologists for ease of
reference. Any spell dealing with the deceased’s heart, for example,
is called chapter 30.
As customers eager for immortality increased, books of the dead
became a major industry for scribes who made thousands of copies.
Naturally, quality varied greatly. Some scrolls stretched as long as
ninety feet with beautifully colored paintings to illustrate different
spells; others were brief with no illustrations. In general, people got
what they paid for. Many of the books were, at least for the period,
mass produced. Places for the deceased’s name were left blank—the
first “forms” in history—until purchase, when a scribe would fill
in the appropriate information. Because these scrolls were written
before an owner was known, their language had to be general; for
example, “Ask the local god of your town for power in your legs”
instead of calling the god and the owner by their names. Mistakes
were made: a scribe might not understand what he was writing
or be careless; sometimes the same spell was repeated in different
parts of the same papyrus because two scribes worked simultane-
ously on different sections of the same book. Even illustrations in
mass-produced work could prove problematic. Artists sometimes
drew their pictures on the top of sheets before scribes wrote the
appropriate text below; if an artist left insufficient room for the
words, chapters might be severely abbreviated or condensed, some-

times to the point of unintelligibility, or the picture might illustrate
a different spell. Despite all these mistakes and problems, however,
such papyri provide abundant information about ancient Egyp-
tians’ understanding of life after death.
To achieve an afterlife, Egyptians expected two final judgments,
crucial tests to be passed before admittance into the next world.
One was beyond the deceased’s control; the other was based on
his persuasive skill. The first test placed the heart of the deceased
on one side of a balance scale whose other pan held a feather. Since
the feather hieroglyph ( ) stood for the word maat or “truth,” this
test examined the heart to determine how truthful the person had
been in life. Osiris is usually depicted presiding over the judgment
to ensure fairness while the god of writing, Toth, records the result.
If the dead person failed the test, his heart was thrown to a crea-
ture with the body of a hippopotamus and the head of a crocodile
who destroyed the person by eating his heart. Egyptians sent no
one to Hell, only out of existence. After surviving the balance scale
Weighing of the Heart Ceremony. In this scene from the Book of the Dead
the heart (right pan of the scale) of a deceased is weighed on a balance
scale against the feather of truth (left pan of the scale). Left of the scale
stands Toth, the ibis-headed god of writing, recording the result with his
scribe’s palette and brush.
Religion 49
test, the deceased would be ushered into the Hall of Double Truth
for a second judging by a tribunal of forty-two gods. He would be
required to “separate himself from evil doings” by making a plea,
convincing each god that he had never done a specific wrong.
One purpose of the Book of the Dead in guiding the deceased
through the judgment process was to reveal the names of the
forty-two judging gods, because Egyptians believed that knowing
someone’s name gave them power over that person. (Amun, for
example, was considered so mighty that “only his mother knew his
name.”) The petitioner was told to gain the upper hand by greeting
each god in turn by saying his name, then instructed as to which sin
to deny to satisfy that particular deity. For example:
Hail Strider, coming forth from Heliopolis. I have done no wrong.
Hail Eater-of-Shadows, coming forth from the caverns. I have not
slain men.
Hail He-Whose-Two-Eyes-Are-on-Fire, coming forth from Sais.
I have not defiled the things of the gods.
Hail Breaker-of-Bones, coming forth from darkness. I have not trans-
gressed.
Hail Doubly-wicked, coming forth from Ati. I have not defiled the
wife of any man.
Hail Disposer-of-Speech, coming forth from Weryt. I have not
inflamed myself with rage.
Hail Provider-of-Mankind, coming forth from Sais. I have not cursed
God.
Hail White Teeth, coming forth from Ta-she. I have not slaughtered
the divine cattle.3
If the deceased passed this second test and was declared “true of
voice,” he earned passage to the netherworld and became a “west-
erner,” ready to be welcomed by Osiris.
Egyptians focused so much attention on the importance of their
physical bodies that it may seem as if they lacked any concept of a
soul. In fact, however, they had such an abstract concept. In chapter
125 of the Book of the Dead, the dead person’s soul is represented as
a heart, but the fully evolved theory was more sophisticated. A soul
was thought to be made up of several parts, the most important of
which were the ba and the ka.
The ba was represented as a bird with the head of the deceased.
Since the ba of a living person was rarely spoken of, we can deduce
that it came into independent existence only when someone died
and so resembled modern concepts of a soul. But unlike its modern

counterpart, an Egyptian ba had physical needs. Relatives of the
deceased were supposed to leave offerings in front of the tomb to
feed the ba until it reached the next world; paintings in the Book of
the Dead even show the ba flying around the tomb or outside it. One
amusing papyrus tells the story of a man who laments the sad state
of the world and considers killing himself while his ba ironically
argues with him, threatening to desert him in the next world if he
commits the deed. A special spell in the Book of the Dead, “Causing
the Uniting of the ba and its body in the Netherworld,” ensured that
his ba would be reunited with the deceased.
Oh great god, cause that my ba may come to me from any place where it
is. If there is a problem, bring my ba to me from any place where it is. . . . If
there is a problem, cause my ba to see my body. If you find me Oh Eye-
of-Horus, support me like those in the Netherworld. . . . May the ba see the
body and may it rest upon its mummy. May it never perish, may it not be
The ba, or soul, of the dead typically was

represented as a bird, perhaps to symbol-
ize its weightlessness, with the head of the
deceased.
Religion 51
One of two likenesses of Tut-

ankhamen from his tomb called
ka-statues, where his astral dou-
ble, or ka, could reside if his body
were destroyed.
separated from the body for ever.—Say this spell over an amulet of the ba
made of gold, inlaid with stone that is placed on the deceased’s neck.4
The soul’s second element was called the ka, a kind of spiritual
duplicate of the deceased that required a place to dwell—preferably
the mummified body. A wealthy Egyptian would be buried with a
ka-statue, a likeness of himself that the ka would recognize and in
which it could live, in the event that his body was later destroyed.
MUMMIFICATION
Preserving the physical body after death became, over the cen-
turies, a kind of Egyptian industry. At first, the dead were simply
placed in sand pits and covered with more sand. Contact with the
hot, dry granules quickly dehydrated the body and created natural
mummies. Later, as burials became more elaborate, bodies were

placed in rock-cut tombs but, away from the drying sands, they
soon decomposed. Artificial mummification was needed to dehy-
drate the body before burial.
When someone died, a member of his family ferried across the
Nile to embalming shops on the west bank where a type of mum-
mification, which varied according to price, was chosen. Much as
we hire hearses today, a special funerary boat was rented for the
occasion to transport the corpse to the shop where it was deposited
for seventy days. Female mourners who accompanied the body
were paid to weep, wail and throw sand on their heads in tradi-
tional gestures of lament.
The mummification process removed the moist internal organs
which cause a body to decompose. In the most expensive method
of mummification, the brain was drained out through the nasal pas-
sages after a long, needlelike instrument was inserted through the
nostril to break into the brain cavity, then a thin tool with a hook,
resembling a coat hanger, was pushed into the cranium and rotated
to break the brain into pieces. When the cadaver was turned upside
down, the mixture ran out through the nostrils. The brain was one
of the few parts of the body embalmers discarded because it was
Anubis, god of embalming, puts the final touches on a mummy.
Religion 53
thought to serve no useful function. Egyptians believed people

thought with their hearts—when thoughts excite us, our hearts
beat more quickly.
Embalmers next removed the organs inside the torso through a
small abdominal incision in the left side. The stomach, intestines,
liver and spleen were all pulled through this hole, but the heart
was left in place so the deceased, once resurrected, would be able to
think and say the magical spells necessary to become reanimated.
Organs were individually stored in one of four jars specially made
for the purpose, each with a lid carved in the shape of one of
the four sons of Horus: Mesti, the human headed son; Duamutef,
the jackal; Hapi, the baboon; and Qebesenef, the hawk. These jars
were called “canopic” jars by early Egyptologists because the
Greek god Canopus was worshiped in the form of a jar. A fluid,
called the “liquid of the children of Horus” was poured over the
internal organs to preserve them and the jars were sealed. Finally,
priests recited prayers to invoke the protection of Horus’ sons.
Mesti says: I am Mesti, thy son, Osiris. I come so that I may protect thee.
I cause thy house to prosper, to be firm, by the command of Ptah, by the
command of Re himself.
Hapi says: I am Hapi, thy son, Osiris. I come so that I may protect thee.
I bandage for thee thy head and thy limbs, killing for thee thy enemies
under thee. I give to thee thy head forever.
Duamutef says: I am thy son, Horus, loving thee. I come to avenge my
father, Osiris. I do not permit his destruction to thee. I place it under thy
feet forever and ever.
Qebesenef says: I am thy son Osiris. I have come that I may protect thee.
I gather together thy bones, I collect thy limbs, I bring for thee thy heart.
I place it upon its seat in thy body. I cause thy house to prosper.5
Now the body was ready for drying. Natron, a naturally occurring
compound of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and sodium
chloride, basically baking soda and table salt, was shoveled onto
the body until it was completely covered. Given the human body’s
large mass and approximately 75 percent water content, more than
600 pounds of natron and forty days were necessary to complete
dehydration. The abdominal and chest cavities were then washed
with palm wine and aromatic spices and packed with resin-soaked
linen that would harden to maintain the body’s original contours.
For less expensive mummifications, sawdust and onions placed in
small linen bags were used as body-packing material, and the face
This kind of vessel was used by embalmers

to pour resin into the cranium through the
nostrils, thus the two spouts. Drawing by
Rivka Rago.
An embalmers’ knife with Anubis, god of

mummification, perched on the handle.
Drawing by Rivka Rago.
The four canopic jars that held the internal organs of a mummy. The lids
in this set depict the deceased person whose organs were inside, but rep-
resentations of Horus’ four sons were more common. Photo courtesy of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Religion 55
was padded with linen in the cheeks and under the eyelids. (In one
instance, onions were even placed in the eye sockets.)
Last, the body was anointed twice from head to toe with oils
mixed with frankincense, myrrh and the same lotions used in daily
life—cedar oil, Syrian balsam and oil of Libya. (Wealthy Egyptian
ladies kept seven small alabaster vases of these oils on their bou-
doir tables, just as a modern woman might have a selection of per-
fumes.) A priest wearing a jackal mask recited a prayer while the
anointing oils were poured:
Thou hast received the perfume which shall make thy members perfect.
Thou receivest the source (of life) and thou takest the form of it to give
enduring form to thy members; thou shall unite with Osiris in the Great
Hall. The unguent cometh unto thee to fashion thy members and to glad-
den thy heart, and thou shalt appear in the form of Ra; it shall spread
abroad the smell of thee in the nomes of Aqert. . . . Thou receivest the oil of
the cedar in Amentet, and the cedar which came forth from Osiris cometh
unto thee.6
Next, bandages, which could come from the bedding of the

deceased or other linen scraps, were torn into strips as long as fif-
teen feet by four inches wide and rolled, prior to use, like modern
bandages, then applied according to a fixed ritual. First, each fin-
ger and toe was wrapped individually, with wealthy clients receiv-
ing gold covers for toes and fingers as additional protection—pure
gold was the metal of eternity because it does not tarnish. The head
was bound tightly to reveal the contours of the face: two bandages
wrapped the top of the head, two the mouth, four the neck, and so on,
as precisely dictated by ritual, while priests recited a prayer ensur-
ing the deceased’s ability to see and breathe in the netherworld:
Grant thou that breathing may take place in the head of the deceased in
the under-world, and that he may see with his eyes, and that he may hear
with his two ears; and that he may breathe through his nose; and in the
underworld.7
The arms, feet and torso were bandaged last. Magic amulets were
also usually placed within the wrappings to protect the mummy
until it was resurrected in the west.
When the mummification was complete, the family returned to
the west bank of the Nile with an entourage of friends, mourners
and dancers. Servants carried furniture, clothing and food to be
placed in the tomb and bore the mummy to its final resting place.
The mummy of Rameses the Great shows how well a body can be pre-
served for over three thousand years.
Women mourn a mummy while being ferried across the Nile. Hands to
their heads represent pulling hair, and throwing sand on the head shows
their sadness.
Next came the most important of all the resurrection rituals: the
“opening of the mouth” ceremony. Involving more than a dozen
participants, the ceremony was a play, perhaps the oldest in history,
that took place in front of the tomb on the day of burial. The ground
on which the play was to be performed was purified with water
Religion 57
from four vases representing the corners of the earth. An officiating

priest, reading from a papyrus roll, described how the rituals and
speeches should proceed. Actresses, often members of the family,
portrayed Isis and her sister Nephthys; males acted as the guard-
ians of Horus and a central character called “The-son-who-loved-
him.” After incense was lit and various gods invoked, a calf was
slaughtered to commemorate the battle in which Horus avenged
the murder of his father, Osiris. (In the continuation of the Isis and
Osiris myth, Seth’s conspirators, attempting to escape the avenging
Horus by changing into various animals, were caught by Horus
and decapitated.) Special animals were ritually killed, including
two bulls (one for the north and one for the south), gazelles and
ducks. One leg from the bull of the south was cut off and, along
with its heart, offered to the mummy.
The play ended with a ceremonial opening of the mouth as a
priest touched a special implement, shaped like a miniature adz
( ), to the mummy’s mouth as he recited:
Thy mouth was closed, but I have set in order for thee thy mouth and thy
teeth.
I open for thee thy mouth, I open for thee thy two eyes. I have opened
thy mouth with the instrument of Anubis,
A priest, designated by his leopard skin,

performs the “opening of the mouth” cer-
emony on a ka-statue with an instrument
shaped like a carpenter’s adz.
with the iron implement with which the mouths of the

gods were opened. . . .
You shall walk and speak, your body shall be with the great company of
the gods. . . .
You are young again, you live again.8
You are young again you live again.
The mummy was now ready for its resurrection in the West. The
tomb was sealed while friends and relatives sat together outside to
share a meal in memory of the deceased.
AMULETS
In the face of uncontrollable natural events, the average Egyptian
tried to protect himself with magical amulets. The Egyptian word
for amulet, meket, even meant “protector” and was supposed to
gain a god’s intervention for the wearer. These small images were
usually crafted with tiny holes so they could be strung and worn
around the neck.
Amulets could be made of stone (lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise,
feldspar, serpentine and steatite), metal (silver and gold were the
most valuable, but bronze was also prized), or wood and bone
(inexpensive substitutes for poorer people). Of all the materi-
als used, the commonest was a ceramic called faience, a paste of
ground quartz and water molded into a desired shape, fired solid
in a kiln, then covered with a glassy glaze that added color. Faience
amulets were produced by the thousands in factories throughout
Egypt. A master amulet of some durable material, such as stone,
was pressed into soft clay, which, when baked, became a hard
An amulet representing the Eye

of Horus, worn by Egyptians to
ensure their good health.
Religion 59
mold into which the faience mixture could be placed. Any number
of molds could be made from the master amulet, so thousands of
duplicate amulets could be easily produced. Holes were made by
rolling a string in quartz paste and pressing it into the mold; when
fired, the paste hardened into faience and the string burned away,
leaving a hole.
Amulets were designed according to strict rules. The MacGregor
Papyrus lists seventy-five amulets with their names and func-
tions. Another list inscribed on the walls of the temple of Dendera
specifies the materials from which each should be made. Egyptians
believed that an amulet made from the wrong material would be
ineffective but, if a person could not afford a carnelian amulet, then
a faience amulet glazed the same rust color would do.
Amulets invoked the gods; for example, a cat amulet carried the
protection of the cat goddess Bastet. One of the most common amu-
lets worn in ancient Egypt was the Udjat (“restored”) eye ( ),
associated with the falcon god Horus. According to myth, Horus
fought his evil uncle Seth to avenge the death of his father, Osiris.
During the battle, Horus’ eye was torn to pieces, but Toth, the god
of writing, assembled the pieces and restored his eye. Thus, amulets
depicting the characteristic markings around a falcon’s eye became
a sign of health and well-being. The most popular amulet of all was
associated with the god Khepri, who took the form of a beetle ( ).
Carved in the shape of a species of beetle called Scarabaeus sacer,
from which the modern word scarab comes, these amulets enjoyed
great popularity for a combination of reasons. The Egyptians were
fond of puns, and the hieroglyphs for beetle also meant “to exist,” so
if you wore a scarab amulet, your continued existence was ensured.
The scarab was also held in high regard because the ancient Egyp-
tians believed this beetle produced offspring without any union of
the male and female of the species. After fertilization the female
deposited her eggs in a piece of dung and rolled it into a ball which
provided their newborn with food. Since this birth was the only part
of this reproductive cycle Egyptians witnessed, they assumed the
beetle was somewhat like the god Atum who begot children with-
out a female partner. Further, after the beetle fashioned its dung ball,
it rolled it to a sunny place, which, to the ancient mind, resembled
the journey of the sun across the sky. The top of a scarab amulet was
carved to resemble the beetle’s body, the bottom was left flat for
an inscription, often merely the owner’s name which symbolically
requested “keep So-and-So in existence,” but frequently a god’s or
a pharaoh’s name was inscribed. Wealthy people set their scarabs
The top and bottom of an amulet in the

shape of a scarab beetle to ensure long life.
in rings so they could be used as seals. The top of a wine jar sealed
with moist plaster would be given a scarab imprint to keep thirsty
servants at bay; a broken seal could not be repaired undetected.
MONOTHEISM: THE ABERRATION

For almost all of Egypt’s 3,000 years of recorded history, the same
gods were an integral part of daily life. From the time an Egyptian
baby was born under the protection of Bes, until the time he died
and went West to Osiris, the old-time religion governed his life.
Through thousands of years of constancy only once were the old
gods of polytheism banished and replaced with monotheism. For
a brief seventeen-year span, every Egyptian, from high official to
peasant, was pressured to alter his beliefs.
Egypt had reached its greatest glory by the end of the Eighteenth
Dynasty—its temples were wealthy, its people prosperous, its army
unrivaled. Amenhotep III luxuriated on his throne at this best of
all times, proudly dedicating the greatest temple any pharaoh ever
built to the great god of Egypt, Amun. At his death it was assumed
that his son would carry on the traditions of his forebears. Yet, after
ruling only a few years, the new pharaoh changed his name from
Amenhotep IV (“Amun is pleased”) to Akhenaten (“It is beneficial
to the Aten”) and declared there was only one god, the Aten. In
history’s first recorded instance of monotheism, old temples and
thousands of priests were no longer supported by the pharaoh,
and Egyptians were told that the gods they had always worshiped
had ceased to exist. The effect on society was cataclysmic.
Partly to ease social tensions, Akhenaten moved Egypt’s capital
from thriving Thebes, the home of Amun, to an uninhabited spot
of desert in the middle of Egypt, telling his followers of a mysti-
cal vision in which the Aten himself had appeared and instructed
Religion 61
Akhenaten to build a new city on this deserted site. Akhenaten

called the city Akhetaten, the “Horizon of the Aten,” and swore he
would never leave.
Thousands followed their pharaoh into the desert to help found
the new religion and erected temples to the new god which, unlike
other temples in the country, were built without roofs so the god’s
light could shine in. Along with the temples, houses, palaces and
office buildings, a complete city was constructed. From his new
capital, Akhenaten wrote prayers to his abstract god without human
or animal form: there could be no statues of a god who was light
itself.
The concept of a single abstract deity that ruled the universe
was so far ahead of its time that few Egyptians understood what
Akhenaten preached. One prayer he wrote, known as “The Hymn
to the Aten,” has been compared with the 104th Psalm.
Splendid you rise in heaven’s lightland,

O living Aten, creator of life!
When you have dawned in eastern lightland
The god Aten shining on Akhenaten’s family. The solar disk at the top, the
Aten, radiates rays ending in hands holding the sign of life, the ankh.
You fill every land with your beauty.

You are beauteous, great, radiant,
High over every land;
Your rays embrace the lands,
To the limit of all that you made.
Being Re, you reach their limits,
You bend them (for) the son whom you love;
Though you are far, your rays are on earth,
Though one sees you, your strides are unseen.
When you set in western lightland,

Earth is in darkness as if in death;
One sleeps in chambers, heads covered,
One eye does not see another.
Were they robbed of their goods,
That are under their heads,
People would not remark it.
Every lion comes from its den,
All the serpents bite;
Darkness hovers, earth is silent,
As their maker rests in lightland.
Earth brightens when you dawn in lightland,

When you shine as Aten of daytime;
As you dispel the dark
As you cast your rays,
The Two Lands are in festivity.9
As part of his new religion, Akhenaten changed the concept of

life after death. No longer was death a continuation of this world;
gone was Osiris and the West. Only when the Aten rose in the east
could dead souls rise along with the rest of Egypt. Most Egyptians
found this shadowy sort of afterlife unsatisfying.
For a dozen years, Akhenaten kept his promise never to leave his
holy city. He abandoned the rest of the country to its own devices,
while the citizens continued worship of old, familiar gods. Finally,
angered, he dispatched teams of workmen throughout the land to
chisel out the names of other gods wherever they appeared on stat-
ues and temple walls. This was the last act of a revolutionary whose
revolution had failed. Soon after Akhenaten’s death, his holy city
was abandoned and Egypt returned to its old religion and rituals.
Its brief experiment with monotheism left no lasting imprint on
religion along the banks of the Nile. Not until the birth of Christ
would monotheism again have a significant effect on Egypt.
Religion 63
NOTES
1. Alan H. Gardiner, trans., Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, Third
series, vol. 1 (London: British Museum Press), 1935, 9–23.
2. Alexandre Piankoff, The Pyramid of Unis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1968), 71.
3. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (New York: Dover
Books, 1967), 198 –202.
4. Ibid., 112–14.
5. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Mummy (New York: Causeway Books, 1974),
197–203.
6. E. A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul,
1899), 185.
7. Ibid., 189.
8. Ibid., 195 –96.
9. After the translation of Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Litera-
ture, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 91– 92.
3
GOVERNMENT
AND SOCIETY
Religion was such a powerful force in ancient Egypt that it

determined both the structure of government and the organization
of society. Unlike our modern idea that government and religion
should be separate, Egyptians believed their ruler was a god with
unlimited power who spoke with divine authority.
Egyptians viewed the pharaoh as their protector, the guardian
of the country, and they believed that society’s order and pros-
perity depended on unquestioned obedience to him. Their belief
that the pharaoh alone could prevent untold terrors from engulf-
ing the land originated in a primeval myth about the great god
Ra who came to earth in human form to rule as the first pharaoh.
Egypt prospered during his reign as never before, producing crops
in such regular and enormous abundance that life settled into a
lazy routine. Free of cares, the people grew lax and neglected to
honor Ra for the bounty he had bestowed. Ra, angered by their
behavior, decided to teach his subjects a lesson they would never
forget. Using powerful magic, he created a blood-thirsty lioness,
the feared goddess Sekhmet, who roamed the land by day, terror-
izing its inhabitants, devouring thousands, and instilling fear and
respect among the survivors. With his goal accomplished, yet now
unable to contain the blood-crazed Sekhmet, Ra convened a council
of gods to devise a plan to save what remained of humanity. The
gods made vast quantities of red-dyed beer and spread the mixture
on the ground. Sekhmet, thinking it was blood, drank until she fell
into a deep, intoxicated sleep. When she awoke, no longer crazed,
Ra—being the most powerful god, after all—was able to change her
into Hathor, the goddess of love.
This tale held a moral clear for every Egyptian: Ra must be hon-
ored and obeyed. Although possessing the power to make the
people of Egypt prosper, he could, if insufficiently honored, just
as easily destroy them. Yet how could mere mortals communicate
their devotion to a god? The answer is contained at the end of the
Ra myth.
After saving the Egyptian people from Sekhmet, Ra continued to
rule as pharaoh until he grew weak—inevitable for any god who
assumed human form—and had to return to his home in the neth-
erworld. In his place, he sent his son, the god Horus, to rule over the
Sekhmet, the fierce lioness who almost

destroyed humankind because they
had not shown proper respect of the
gods.
Government and Society 67
land and protect its people. From that time on, each pharaoh was
called, as one of his five names, “the Horus So-and-So,” because
each was believed to be the living son and representative of Ra.
By honoring Ra’s divine son Horus, their pharaoh, Egyptians paid
homage to a father whose power provided all that was good in
their world.
THE PHARAOH
Just as Ra had done, it was up to every pharaoh to ensure that
proper order, or maat, was maintained. But the Egyptians’ view of
order was calculated strictly along class lines. If good fortune came
to a poor person, it was not considered a blessing or a credit to him,
but a sign that something was wrong with the world.
He who possessed no property now is a man of wealth. The poor man is

full of joy. Every town says: let us suppress the powerful among us. He
who had no yoke of oxen is now possessor of a herd. The possessors of
robes are now in rags. Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise are fas-
tened on the necks of female slaves. All female slaves are free with their
tongues. When their mistress speaks it is irksome to the servant. The chil-
dren of princes are dashed against the walls.1
Similar laments were common in Egyptian literature. As long as the

rich and powerful prospered while slaves and the poor remained in
their places, maat was maintained.
Besides ensuring order, pharaohs performed a unifying function.
Egyptians believed that their land had once consisted of a north-
ern and a southern kingdom until Narmer (Menes), a mighty hero
from the south, conquered the north, married its queen and, by
assuming the crowns of both kingdoms, unified Egypt into a single
nation. Even after 2,000 years as a unified country, the title “Lord
of the Two Lands” was a pharaoh’s most important designation. To
the Egyptian mind, their union existed solely in the person of the
pharaoh—Narmer and his successors—and it was to him, rather
than to country or flag, that all loyalty was owed.
Because Egyptians believed names held power, pharaohs pos-
sessed a number of other names and titles. (The designation “pha-
raoh,” however, is not an Egyptian one. It appears in no list of
pharaoh’s titles, only in the Bible. In the ancient Egyptian lan-
guage, per ah meant simply “the great house,” which the Israelites
applied to the person who lived in the palace.) A pharaoh’s titles
consisted of five Great Names. The oldest, the Horus name, dated
from the first dynasties when it served as the king’s only name.
Enclosed in a tall rectangle whose vertical stripes symbolized the
palace entryway, and surmounted by Horus’ symbol, the falcon,
this name asserted that Egypt’s pharaoh was Horus, the favorite
son of Ra. The next oldest title, “Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt,”
was represented by the vulture Nekhbet, the emblematic animal
of the south, and the uraeus (cobra) Wadjet, symbol of the north,
each standing on the hieroglyph for lord ( ). Because both were
female, this is often called the “Two Ladies Name.” The next title,
the “Horus of Gold” name, showed a falcon standing on the sym-
bol for gold ( ).
Last stood the nomen and prenomen, the only names enclosed
in cartouches—ovals of rope tied at the bottom to form endless
circles that probably symbolized dominion ( ). The prenomen
was the pharaoh’s coronation name, introduced by the phrase
“Lord of the Sedge and the Bee” (emblems of the south and the
north, respectively) often translated as “King of Upper and Lower
Egypt” ( ). The nomen, his birth name, was introduced by the
phrase the “Son of Ra” ( ). For example, the nomen Tuthmo-
sis meant “Born of Toth,” the god of wisdom; Amenemhat meant
“Amun Is Foremost”; Tutankhamen meant “The Living Like-
ness of Amun.” A descriptive name followed each complete title.
Because Egyptians believed in the magic of names, these titles
not only asserted facts but established them as well. The full tit-
ulary of the conquering pharaoh Tuthmosis III ran as follows:
The Horus “Strong Bull Risen in Thebes,” the Two Ladies “Enduring of
Kingship like Ra in Heaven,” the Horus of Gold “Powerful Crowns,” the
King of Upper and Lower Egypt “Establishing the Being of Ra,” the Son
of Ra “Born of Toth, Beautiful of Forms.”2
This was not a set of names to be taken lightly.

As both a god and the embodiment of Egypt, a pharaoh wielded
far greater power than any other monarch in history. Were he to
ask his subjects to build an impossibly massive tomb, they would
toil for decades to make the impossible real, receiving no pay, just
enough food to sustain them. They believed praise from their pha-
raoh when he joined his ancestors in the netherworld would be their
ample reward, just as later people devoted vast time and resources
to raising cathedrals to the glory of their God and to ensure their
personal salvation.
A pharaoh was regarded with awe and fear. Ordinary citizens

prostrated themselves in his presence, and upper classes knelt and
bowed until their heads touched the ground, waiting for permission
to stand. Those closest to the pharaoh might, as a singular honor,
be allowed to bow from the waist, but this was an innovation of
the more “democratic” New Kingdom. All except his most favored
courtiers feared looking directly on the pharaoh’s face, and no one
spoke unless he granted them that right.
His authority was boundless with every government position
filled by his appointee, at least in theory. In fact, given the hun-
dreds of appointments a pharaoh had to make, it was often expedi-
ent simply to replace a father with his son. In this way, more and
more government positions became hereditary over time and out-
side a pharaoh’s control. As the pharaoh’s authority waned, so did
Egypt’s power, as exemplified by the First and Second Intermediate
Periods. When strong pharaohs regained control, they consolidated
their power base by reverting to the practice of making their own
appointments.
As the lineal descendant of the conqueror Menes, the pharaoh
owned Egypt3—all of it: the land, the livestock and the people—
and governed by a feudal system like that of Medieval Europe. Pri-
vate property did not exist in such a system because one person
controlled everything. The king alone granted the right to manage
a farm, town or pond, and whoever received that right exercised it
on the king’s behalf—what was produced belonged to his lord and
master. So it was in the beginning in Egypt: whoever tilled an acre,
fished the Nile or mined for gold did so with the pharaoh’s permis-
sion. Yet, over centuries, the landholdings of the pharaoh gradu-
ally diminished. If a farm had been worked by a family for several
generations, tradition eventually ceded them a title that could be
upheld by the courts, creating a new category of land separate from
a pharaoh’s estates, although he could levy whatever tax he wished
on these farms. Pharaohs themselves contributed to the decrease in
their own estates by transferring land in perpetuity to certain tem-
ples by designating plots “pious foundations,”4 a practice which
enriched the temples but diminished the pharaoh’s landholdings.
They further decreased their estates by using land as incentives to
service, awarding acreage to those who pleased them. Once land
came into the possession of a private citizen he controlled its use
and bequeathed it to whomever he pleased. Decreasing royal land-
holdings added private property to the economy, sometimes, but
not always, subject to a pharaoh’s national tax. What began as a
pharaoh’s literal ownership of the country slowly evolved into his

right to tax and otherwise distribute the produce, so that, by the
end of the New Kingdom, although the pharaoh remained Egypt’s
largest single landholder, temples collectively controlled more land
than he did, and even more acreage was held by small farmers.
Because a pharaoh represented the soul of Egypt, determining
a successor assumed great importance. Although succession fol-
lowed bloodlines, pharaohs could marry whomever they wished
and as often, and they used marriages to foreign royalty to seal
international treaties. While harems assured pharaohs an abun-
dance of royal heirs, they also created abundant confusion about
who would succeed the reigning king. To sort out the priorities of
potentially scores of heirs—in the case of Rameses the Great, more
than fifty sons—one wife was designated the “great royal wife,”
possibly referring to the queen of the north Narmer had married
to become Egypt’s first pharaoh. Her children were accorded privi-
leged status, and her name, at least from the New Kingdom on,
was enclosed in a cartouche like the pharaoh’s. Steeped as the
pharaohcy was in warrior tradition, males were accorded priority,
although, if no suitable male was available, a female pharaoh was
considered better than none at all. The eldest male son of the great
royal wife thus had first call on the throne. If the great royal wife
produced no sons or (in rare cases) if her sons proved unsuitable, a
son of a secondary wife, a lesser son, would be designated the next
pharaoh, based on his presumed ability.
Since the eldest son of the great royal wife was generally guar-
anteed the throne by his parentage, he could marry whomever
he chose, but a “lesser” son, like Tutankhamen, had to marry the
“daughter of the god,” the eldest daughter of the great royal wife,
his half-sister, to earn title to the throne. (The incest taboo seems
universal and certainly existed in Egypt. Full brothers rarely mar-
ried full sisters.5) In fact, whoever married this “daughter of the
god” automatically became pharaoh, whether he was royal or not.
In this way new dynasties began—as in the case of the Nineteenth,
when Rameses I, the vizier of the previous pharaoh, married the
pharaoh’s daughter and assumed the throne—or old dynasties
continued—as in the case of the commoner Ay who married Tut-
ankhamen’s widow to ascend to his pharaohcy. That Rameses I is
counted as the first pharaoh of a new dynasty while Ay is consid-
ered part of an ongoing dynasty demonstrates how arbitrary sort-
ing rulers into dynasties can be.
Egyptians abhorred change. Until a family had provided several

generations of rulers, a new dynasty reigned insecurely. When a
foreign king governed the country, as during the Hyksos era of the
second Intermediate Period or during the later reign of Persian kings,
people became restive, at times to the point of revolution. During
the First Intermediate Period, when several aspirants claimed title
to the pharaohcy, people grew despondent—even the art they pro-
duced during this time was crude. A female pharaoh, too, however
pure her lineage, could unsettle the Egyptians. Despite the fact that
Hatshepsut had been the “daughter of the god” under one pharaoh
and the great royal wife of another, her male successor set out, with
popular support, to destroy all images and references to her. Yet,
by the time Alexander the Great, a Greek who liberated Egypt from
the domination of the Persian kings, Egyptians so hungered for a
pharaoh that they embraced the fiction of this foreigner’s legiti-
macy and crowned Alexander king.
GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
Although central to the Egyptian system, a pharaoh could not
manage the country without a substantial, professional government.
Something in the Egyptian character found governance congenial,
almost as though taking orders and enjoying tedious record keep-
ing were national traits. No society ever employed such a high per-
centage of civil servants, and no society so often and so publicly
praised its government officials, rather than complaining about
them. Egypt’s successes, especially as demonstrated in its massive
construction projects, indicates that the country generally enjoyed
an efficient, effective government.
Evidence from early times, such as the Fourth Dynasty, shows son
after son of a reigning monarch bearing titles of high government
positions. Generally, for example, a prince was designated as the
overseer of works, the chief engineer of the pharaoh’s pyramid and
mortuary temple. This suggests that Egypt’s government originally
consisted of the family of the pharaoh, although this changed as its
population and power grew. By the end of the Old Kingdom and
through the remainder of Egyptian history, nonroyals, nominated
by the pharaoh, invariably bore the titles of government officers.
From then on, royal children who did not inherit the throne gener-
ally became high priests and priestesses rather than officials in the
civil government.
Government organization at the time of the New Kingdom.
The evolved government consisted of four major branches. One

managed the royal court and pharaoh’s estates; another, the armed
forces (discussed in Chapter 10); another, the religious hierarchy;
and the remaining branch, managed the civil government. Each
consisted of a pyramidal hierarchy (or, in the case of civil govern-
ment, of two pyramids) that established a chain of authority and com-
mand and provided a structure by which a pharaoh could impose
his wishes on all the citizens of his sprawling country. Government’s
overriding principle was that an Egyptian citizen should receive his
distant pharaoh’s orders from a local person whom he knew and
respected. This neat structure could become confused when mul-
tiple titles were awarded to the same individual, effectively placing
him in more than one branch of the government at once.
Civil Government
Civil government was headed by a tchety, conventionally trans-
lated “vizier,” the highest civil official after the pharaoh. Two
viziers, one for the north and another for the south, split the job
and presided over separate central bureaucracies and governors of
their respective sections of the country. The godly pharaoh stood
far above practical details of management, so viziers bragged about
how the least important citizen could approach them with his prob-
lems, and how they oversaw the construction of magnificent tem-
ples and pyramids. Such boasts were exaggerations. The vizier did
not serve as a sole judge to adjudicate complaints—a complex legal
system took care of such matters. Nor did most viziers possess the
necessary architectural and construction skills to personally super-
vise the construction of large buildings. The truth behind the boasts
is that the tchety held ultimate responsibility for the justice system
and for securing the talents required to build whatever a pharaoh
commanded. The vizier was responsible for all civil business, which
he conducted through ministers, most importantly treasury, tax col-
lection, judicial appeal and regional governors, who, in turn, man-
aged numerous functionaries.
Headed by an official whose title translates as “overseer of the
house of gold,” the treasury collected crops and animals as payment-
in-kind for taxes and handled their accounting and management.
Beneath this minister, an overseer of granaries and an overseer of
cattle supervised numerous bureaucrats who managed facilities for
provisioning the army, feeding workers on national projects and
maintaining surpluses against lean years.
Taxes were levied and collected by another department whose
many members roamed the country assigning an individual obliga-
tion to every citizen. Levies were not based on how much an acre
had produced that year, which would have encouraged farmers to
hide part of the crop to lower their tax. Instead, a careful record
was kept of how high the Nile rose during its annual inundation
using “nilometers,” stone markers set along the river’s course.
The height of that year’s flood determined what, compared with
the previous year, each farm should have produced regardless of
what it did produce, and set a tax rate which generally hovered at
about 10 percent6—not an onerous amount by modern standards.
Those who did not hand over their levied amounts were beaten or
imprisoned.
The treasury and tax departments were considered so important
that their heads reported directly to the pharaoh, like the vizier.
Both departments employed thousands of scribes to compute and
record every transaction.
Regional government consisted of forty-two areas of the country
called nomes, corresponding to our states, presided over by a local
governor called a nomarch. Nomarchs maintained order in each ter-
ritory and ensured that its assigned portion for national projects
was supplied, whether in the form of taxes or labor. As the local
official with ties closest to the national government, nomarchs exer-

cised great authority in their territory, sometimes acting almost as
local kings. Below each nomarch stood town mayors, village chiefs,
constabularies and district councils, or kenbets.
Kenbets,7 appointed by the area nomarch from the most respected
citizens in each community, functioned as Egypt’s legal system,
deciding most disputes, which generally concerned property. Most
criminal cases and inheritance controversies also fell within their
scope. Since the government did not operate through laws (no leg-
islative body existed), kenbets functioned less as judges of a codi-
fied legal system than as investigative committees to uncover the
truthfulness of allegations. They took depositions from those who
knew the character of a person bringing suit, searched voluminous
archives for old records that might bear on the case, then rendered
a decision.
If the decision did not satisfy both parties, the suit could be resub-
mitted, but an unusual device was employed to end perennial liti-
gation. The kenbet could relay the evidence to the statue of a god
who would render a verdict, either by communicating to a priest
or, more often, while carried on priests’ shoulders by stopping in
front of one of the litigants to indicate the god’s favor. Usually the
“divine” authority of such a verdict ended the dispute.
Kenbets used several remedies to rectify wrongs. They could
order property seized and transferred to the injured party. They
could inflict physical punishment such as beatings (usually a hun-
dred blows with a stick) or mutilation (cutting off an ear or nose).
Although no prisons existed in Egypt, the kenbet could sentence
offenders to fixed periods of heavy labor in mines or quarries and
could also exile serious criminals.
Since Egypt functioned with two capital cities, Memphis and
Thebes, each maintained a Great Kenbet which served as a higher
court for the lesser kenbets of the respective northern and southern
territories. Each vizier held a seat on the Great Kenbet of his area,
along with the top officials of the state, church and army. Capital
offenses were assigned to the Great Kenbets alone, but, since these
councils consisted of busy men of great responsibility, capital cases
could not have been as frequent as in our day.
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION
Since only the pharaoh could directly intercede with the gods
through his father Ra, one of his hereditary positions was to serve
as the high priest of the land. In theory, he was the only one who
could minister to the temple idols. In practice, with so many tem-
ples spread through the country, the pharaoh designated agents to
act as priests on his behalf. Each temple, therefore, had its own high
priest, who was appointed by the pharaoh.
As Egypt thrived, so did its priestly establishment. In addition
to a principal temple for each god, important gods had subsidiary
temples spread throughout the country. Furthermore, every pha-
raoh built a cult temple to minister to his own immortal soul. Fol-
lowing his lead, thousands of little chapels sprang up to preserve the
memory of any dead citizen whose estate could afford the upkeep.
Although no accurate estimate exists for the number of centers
of worship, certainly they amounted to thousands, if not tens of
thousands by the end of the New Kingdom. Not all were staffed by
priests—sometimes the relatives of a deceased person maintained
his small temple—but many employed full-time employees. Over
time this priestly establishment came to number in the tens of thou-
sands, drawing heavily on Egypt’s national resources for clothing,
food, buildings and maintenance. An estimate for the Twentieth
Dynasty identified one-fifth of the population working in one way
or another for a religion which controlled one-third of all the coun-
try’s land.8
Such a large bureaucracy required extensive management and
supervision. Leading the religious establishment was the over-
seer of the temples and prophets of all the gods, a government
official who functioned not as a priest but as the civil overlord of
an institution that controlled great national wealth. So entwined
were Egypt’s civil and religious affairs, however, that, in addition
to his civil post, a vizier often held the position of overseer of the
temples. Ranked directly below the overseer stood high priests—
one for each god of Egypt. During the New Kingdom, however,
a single god, Amun, so eclipsed the others that the status of his
high priest approached that of the overseer of temples. The high
priest of each god managed all the temples dedicated to his deity
through a chief priest in each.
Individual temples employed their own bureaucracy.9 Priests in
general were called “god’s servants”; the chief priest was desig-
nated as the “first god’s servant.” In the case of a large temple, like
that at Karnak, a second, third or even fourth god’s servant served
under him. They supervised clerics divided by function into two
categories. “Scroll carriers” maintained and read the sacred texts
of the temple. Wab priests, who cared for cult objects, such as idols
and their clothing and ritual instruments, were required to maintain

an extreme state of purity. They had to be circumcised,10 shave their
bodies every other day from head to foot, bathe twice during the day
and twice each night, wear only “clean” (non-animal) clothing—
linen robes and papyrus sandals—and avoid certain foods, such as
pork, fish and beans. Both groups served one-month stints of tem-
ple duty, then enjoyed three months of rest before working again.
They were organized into squadrons of ten or so, and served under
the command of a “god’s father.” All were male, but women could
serve as priestesses who sang and danced for a god. In addition,
every temple employed a staff of craftsmen to make linen robes and
sandals for the priests, repair the temple and cook for both the idol
and the staff.
All temple workers received daily allotments of food and drink.
In addition, priests were paid a proportion of the products from
temple lands and, in some instances, even ceded farms from temple
estates. Since a priest could serve several gods, ambitious men or
women could multiply their incomes substantially in the name of
their religion.
THE ROYAL COURT

The pharaoh’s staff constituted a major segment of society in a
country whose ruler controlled immense amounts of land, offi-
ciated at innumerable official ceremonies and personally commu-
nicated with heads of foreign states. Hundreds of functionaries
managed royal estates, and thousands of families worked his land.
Under the supervision of a governor of the palace, another special
group of officials oversaw the affairs of the king’s two official res-
idences. Each palace compound housed a troop of royal guards,
a kitchen staff including serving women, musicians and dancers,
groundskeepers, carpenters and other artisans, horsemen, and
even zookeepers for the exotic animals most pharaohs enjoyed.
A separate diplomatic staff of hundreds of emissaries and scribes
conducted foreign affairs from offices in a separate structure inside
or nearby the royal compound.
One special group lived inside the palace to care for pharaoh’s
personal needs. An overseer of royal clothes would supervise a
chief bleacher, chief washer and chief rober; an overseer of wigs
supervised upper and lower wig makers (rich women often
wore a wig under an outer wig); a royal sandalbearer cared for
the royal footwear;11 a royal hairdresser, a royal barber, and royal
bathers carried out their individual responsibilities; a team of royal

doctors specializing in various ailments—with magicians for ail-
ments beyond the ability of regular doctors—monitored the royal
health. When a pharaoh marched out to preside at a temple, he was
accompanied by a convoy of fan bearers, sedan carriers, servants
to clear the way, standard-bearers, bodyguards, court officials and
various royal personages—an entourage that could, depending on
the occasion, include as few as fifty people or as many as several
hundred.
Even the royal harem had its own administration, governed by
an Overseer of the Secluded who managed both the scribes and
attendants who served the needs of the women, in addition to a
group of doorkeepers who were responsible for their management.
The doorkeepers arranged nightly appointments with the pharaoh,
as he desired. Teams of musicians trained the women to entertain
their king by singing to the musical accompaniment of their sisters
in seclusion. Royal children were housed in a separate section of
the palace apart from the adults and raised by tutors, called royal
nurses, who generally were female relatives of the child’s mother or
of an important government official, such as the vizier.
It would be interesting to know the amount of provisions needed
to sustain a royal court but, unfortunately, the only surviving infor-
mation pertains to a Second Intermediate Period pharaoh whose
household would amount to a fraction of New Kingdom extrava-
gance. Even this diminished court consumed 2,000 loaves of bread
and 300 large jugs of beer daily.12
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Modern classifications of an upper, middle and lower class based
on income have no parallel in ancient Egyptian society where
money did not exist. As in the later feudal systems of Medieval
Europe, Egyptian society was composed of three distinct classes:
royalty, free people and chattel, ranked according to their auton-
omy. At the top stood royalty, a tiny percentage of the population
who wielded all official power through the pharaoh. Underneath
them lay a large group of free citizens consisting of government
officials, priests, soldiers and civilians. The fact that movement
was common among these four professions shows that they occu-
pied the same tier of the social hierarchy. The sons of a free farmer
sometimes entered government service, sometimes became priests,
sometimes enlisted as soldiers and sometimes followed in their
father’s footsteps. Beneath these free citizens lay two groups with
little or no freedom—slaves and serfs.
Royalty
Royal status depended on a blood relationship with the reigning
pharaoh. His brothers and sisters, full aunts and full uncles and
mother and father automatically belonged to this class. Rarely did
unrelated commoners attain membership in this group. Exceptions
include Tiya, the principal wife of Amenhotep III, whose marriage
raised her to royalty, and the similarly named Tey, elevated when
her husband Ay took the throne, although, in general, a pharaoh’s
numerous wives were considered nonroyal. One could also attain
royal status by marrying the eldest daughter of pharaoh’s great
royal wife. In the absence of a better claimant to the throne, her
husband, regardless of his parentage, became the royal heir appar-
ent, but otherwise gained no royal status by the marriage.
Royal status conferred privileges, including the right to lifelong
support by the state, but, except in the case of the pharaoh, carried
no automatic power. The extended royal family, who lived together
in various palaces, were not required to work, although nothing
prohibited them from doing so. A pharaoh’s grown sons, one of
whom might ascend the throne, were likely to be awarded govern-
ment positions as training for such an eventuality. This held true
not only for the heir apparent, but for other male children as well,
because circumstances, such as an heir’s death or unsuitability, could
always change the order of succession. In other cases, a pharaoh
might award positions to family members as a way of manipu-
lating institutions not entirely under his control. During the New
Kingdom, for example, a pharaoh’s chief wife or daughter gener-
ally became the god’s wife of Amun, an appointment that gave
the pharaoh direct control over that god’s powerful and wealthy
priests.
Free People
Free Egyptian citizens—both male and female—possessed two
defining rights: they were free to travel and free to enter into con-
tractual agreements. Although they enjoyed no other rights of
modern societies, their right to make contracts permitted members
of this group at least to own property and marry. Serfs and slaves
were also permitted possessions, but they could not transfer them
without a contract—only the free class could acquire and sell ani-
mals, property and buildings as they wished. Though most free
people eked out a subsistence living, some accumulated wealth
and grew into citizens of substance, and a few even earned high
positions in government.
Whether rich or poor, any free person had the right to the joys of
marriage. Marriage was not a religious matter in Egypt—no cere-
mony involving a priest took place—but simply a social convention
that required an agreement, which is to say a contract, negotiated
by the suitor and the family of his prospective wife. The agree-
ment involved an exchange of objects of value on both sides. The
suitor offered a sum called the “virginity gift,” when appropriate,
to compensate the bride for what she would lose,13 indicating that
in ancient times virginity was prized in female brides. The gift did
not apply in the case of second marriages, of course, but a “gift to
the bride” would be made even in that case. In return, the family of
the bride-to-be offered a “gift in order to become a wife.” In many
cases, these two gifts were never delivered since the pair soon
merged households. However, in the event of divorce, either party
could later sue for the agreed gift. A third sum, called the “alimen-
tation,” consisted of a periodic subsidy from the bride’s family to
compensate for the additional expense of a second person in the
household, and it was given with stipulations of how the wife must
be treated in return. The remainder of the contract consisted of a
kind of ancient prenuptial agreement, specifying what property
belonged to the woman and what belonged to the man, as well as
stating who would inherit what on the death of either party.
In some cases a written contract was executed before witnesses,
in others only a verbal agreement took place. Either satisfied the
official requirement for marriage, although, human nature being
what it is, a party to celebrate the happy event generally followed.
The new husband and wife presided at this affair, rather than being
the guests of either set of parents.
After recovering from the merriment, the couple began married
life with the presumption that their union would last until death.
Of course life did not always work out so well; even in ancient
times divorces, although not common, did occur. Since neither
church nor state had joined the pair, no authorization was required
for their separation. All that severing involved was living apart.
Yet, given marriage’s contractual obligations, divorce for most cou-
ples involved a legal declaration of the dissolution of the marriage,
which freed them to marry again. The original marriage contract
also contained stipulations about the contractual gifts and other

matters. If a husband initiated a divorce, he forfeited the entire gift
to the bride, or in some cases an amount double that gift. If the
wife instituted a divorce, she returned half of the gift to the bride.
Regardless of who began the proceedings, the husband was obliged
to continue paying the wife’s alimentary money, providing full
financial support until she married again. Not without its modern
counterparts, this clause certainly held some marriages together
that otherwise would have dissolved. Other contracted sums were
generally assigned to the children.
The status of women in Egypt was incredibly advanced for the
time. They held full equality under the law and could enter into
contracts, own property and be brought to justice for crimes in
exactly the same way as a man. They became second-class citizens
in terms of jobs, however. Occupations were strictly gender linked,
as they have been in most societies until recently. Men fought, ran
the government and managed the farm; women cooked, sewed and
managed the house.
Chattel
Little evidence indicates what percentage of the population con-
sisted of free people. Although surely the numbers varied over time,
a guess would put the percentage at something less than half of
Egypt’s people. The lowest rung of society was composed of slaves
and serfs whose lives were completely controlled by other people.
Slaves differed from serfs in that they could be individually bought
and sold; serfs belonged to the land, hence changed masters only as
the land changed hands. As long as they were commanded to per-
form legal tasks, both serfs and slaves were expected to obey their
masters without question or complaint. While neither group could
enter into legal marriage, a contractual arrangement that simply
involved inheritance rights on its dissolution, this fact carried more
technical than practical significance. Since they owned little that
could be assigned to survivors in any case, serfs and slaves could
enjoy most aspects of marriage, such as cooperative living and rais-
ing children. Since marriage in ancient Egypt was a social rather
than religious institution, their unions closely resembled “legal”
marriages in practice.
During every period of Egyptian history serfs far outnumbered
slaves. Serfs originally comprised all the people of Egypt except for
a tiny percentage of powerful elite that formed a hereditary caste.
Since individuals remained serfs unless good fortune changed

their situation, only slowly did their high proportion decline. A serf
could be elevated through the intervention of a master who, in
recognition of a special talent or ability, might assign the person
to a managerial position on an estate—serf status was tied to occu-
pation as well as birth. Marriage, too, was a way out of serfdom.
Since free persons could not marry serfs, union with a serf required
that he or she first be freed.14 While one can imagine many parents
looking askance at their child marrying a serf, others recognized
the worth of a young serf as the mate for their child. In the early
times of civilian armies, valor in war could also earn a serf his own
land and freedom. Through one or another of these means, the per-
centage of serfs decreased over time, swelling the ranks of the free
class until, by the height of the New Kingdom, serfs had probably
declined to less than half of the population.
Slavery did not exist in the early days of Egyptian civilization.
(The pyramids were not built by the slave labor shown in film epics.)
Slaves originally consisted only of foreigners captured in war and
increased in number during the New Kingdom as Egypt acceler-
ated successful campaigns to foreign lands. Because the caste was
hereditary, its population grew as slaves taken in battle gave birth
to children in Egypt. Apparently free Egyptians could also descend
to this class because of debts or perhaps as legal punishment.15
Members of the slave class, who could be bought, sold and rented
to others, formed the very bottom of the social scale.
The pharaoh before Rameses conducted an extensive military
campaign into Canaan, including the upper valley of Galilee,
returning with many prisoners. He began constructing a city in the
delta which his son finished and named Pa Rameses. By traditional
Egyptian practice, slaves would have been employed on such
a large project, likely including those captured in Canaan. That
Hebrews were enslaved by Egypt and forced to work constructing
cities, including the one the Bible calls “Rameses,” is entirely con-
sistent with the Exodus story.
NOTES
1. This example from the First Intermediate Period was translated by
Alan Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (New York: Oxford University Press,
1961), 109–110.
2. Modified from Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, 51.
3. See B. G. Trigger, B. J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A. B. Lloyd, Ancient
Egypt: A Social History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 216.
4. Kemp’s phrase, from Trigger, Kemp, O’Connor, and Lloyd, Ancient

Egypt, 85ff.
5. See J. Cerny, “Consanguineous Marriages in Pharaonic Egypt,” Journal
of Egyptian Archaeology 40 (1954): 23–29. This situation changed, however,
when the Greek Ptolemies took over during Egypt’s final days. Cleopatra,
for example, married her own full brother.
6. The guesstimate of Kemp, in Trigger, Kemp, O’Connor, and Lloyd,
Ancient Egypt, 226.
7. Ibid., 214.
8. Ibid., 202.
9. Ibid., 301–309.
10. Very likely the Hebrews adopted this practice as a result of their
stay in Egypt.
11. It seems the sandalbearer symbolized royal authority. The ancient
Narmer Palette, which portrays the original conquest of the north, displays a
prominent sandalbearer as part of every depiction of the pharaoh.
12. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, 152.
13. For this and what follows, see Schafik Allam, Some Pages from . . .
Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt (Cairo: Prism Books, 1985), 41ff.
14. Ibid., 30.
15. See Trigger, Kemp, O’Connor, and Lloyd, Ancient Egypt, 315.
4
WORK AND PLAY
Egyptians lived in an economic environment completely different

from ours. Money did not exist, the idea of a workweek had no
meaning and the concept of leisure time was unknown to most of
the population. Surprisingly, however different the context and
specifics might have been, work and play in Egypt’s ancient cul-
ture closely resembled that of modern societies—at least until the
nineteenth century, when machines took over the world.
WORK
Egyptians worked for food and goods rather than for money
which was unknown until the Ptolemies introduced it during
Egypt’s final days. Since for most of Egypt’s long history no
currency existed for exchanging commodities at set values, essen-
tial goods were generally manufactured by the user or members
of his immediate family: pots, for example, were produced by
women in their homes. Commodities, such as bronze plow blades,
which could not be made in the average home, were secured, not
by purchase from a store, but by barter, which could be a complex
procedure involving intricate negotiations. The man who made
the plow blade might have enough food, pots and clothing from
other barters, so something he desired would have to be bartered
from a third party—a kilt exchanged for a stool, say; then the stool
for a plow blade. An ancient record of one such transaction docu-
ments the trade of an ox for one fine tunic and two ordinary ones,
plus ten sacks of grain and some necklace beads.1 Needless to
say, such acquisitions occurred less frequently than today and only
when motivated by strong need.
In an attempt to introduce order to exchanges, items were conven-
tionally valued at amounts of copper or, for more precious objects,
silver. The main measure was a weight called a deben, which could
be divided into ten qites. Exchange values varied over time, but
by the Late Period, when ten copper debens equaled one of silver,
95 grams of silver per silver deben had become standard.2 These
standards allowed Egyptians to assign a relative value to commod-
ities. As a rough measure, a bushel of grain equaled one deben of
copper. A small farm (perhaps an acre by our measure) could be
purchased for two or three debens of silver, which approximated
the cost of an ox as well. A slave cost a little more. A pot of honey, an
Egyptian treat, was valued at one qite of silver. Because the aver-
age Egyptian owned no silver at all and little copper, such valua-
tions served more to indicate which exchanges were fair than to
effect a transfer. These standards enabled a farmer to appraise his
neighbor’s land as being worth, say, about one ox, or from twenty
to thirty bushels of grain.
Since most work was motivated by a need for sustenance rather
than a desire for acquisitions, it followed rhythms radically dif-
ferent from our own. For us each day of the week has a different
character. For most Americans, Monday is the first day of work,
Friday is the end of a work period and Saturday begins two days
of nonwork activity. Most of us sleep later on weekends, dress dif-
ferently and have more control over our time than during the pre-
vious five workdays. Life marches to these seven-step patterns,
punctuated by recurring holidays that serve as bonus free days
along with special periods of two weeks or more for vacations of
our choosing.
Nothing similar existed in ancient Egypt. Egyptians had no week-
ends. Most worked every day, with few exceptions. Special holy
days of the year called for all the inhabitants of a given area to lay
down their tools and gather at a local temple to watch a procession
of idols, after which they feasted on bountiful free food supplied
by the temple. The most festive of these holy days was Opet, when
the idols of Amun, Mut and Khonsu traveled from Karnak Temple
to Luxor Temple to celebrate their marriage; the Five Yearly Days,
Work and Play 85
which celebrated the end of one year and hopes for a successful next
year; and birthdays for each god of Egypt. For practical reasons,
most of these holidays occurred when the Nile was in flood, mak-
ing farming impossible in any case. During the rest of the year, one
day followed another in much the same way. No regular day of rest
existed until it was introduced much later by the Jews in Palestine
and borrowed by later Christians. Indeed, names for individual
days of the week did not exist in the language, nor did that seven-
day grouping we call a week. The character of work periods was
instead determined by what nature demanded—weeding, repair-
ing canals, plowing or harvesting. No calendar told a farmer how
to schedule his time when he woke each morning.
Calendar
The year was divided into three seasons, marking nature’s
rhythms, each consisting of four thirty-day months. “Inunda-
tion” began the year around our September, when the Nile over-
flowed and flooded the farmland. “Emergence,” which referred to
the reappearance of the land from the receding water, was plant-
ing time, and was followed by “harvest.” Each season called for
work appropriate to environmental circumstances. During inunda-
tion, when the waterlogged land could not be worked, the farmer
repaired his tools and house. Emergence began with reconstruct-
ing the canals that brought essential Nile water to the fields, after
which came plowing, planting, then tending the crops as they grew.
During harvest, farmers reaped and processed the crops before
storage. Of course, three seasons of four thirty-day months added
up to only 360 days, which left five days unaccounted for. This
yearly five days provided Egyptians with the closest they ever got
to a sustained holiday: no one worked during the long new year’s
celebration.
Despite being nameless, each day was marked in calendars as
representing specific theological events thought to have occurred
on that particular day. Thus, the first day of the second month of
emergence was considered the day Ra had lifted up the sky, whereas
the twenty-sixth day of the first month of inundation marked the
time Sekhmet’s ferocious eyes first caught sight of her human prey.
These mythical events lent every day a quality, marking it as auspi-
cious, if some fortunate event had occurred, menacing, if the con-
trary, or neutral. Egyptians took these matters seriously, planning
important events to coincide with auspicious days and taking extra
care on menacing ones (see, for example, the list on the next page of
the days of the second month of the season of emergence with their
lucky and unlucky characters).
As to the intervals of a day, Egyptians invented the hour—the
same twenty-four equal day divisions we use today. These intervals
were measured either by marks down the side of a candle or by lines
on a bowl that showed the water remaining after steady dripping.
Although appointments could be set and kept by such devices, the
average farmer needed no more indication of time than the position
of the sun or the moon, and none of his countrymen understood
divisions finer than an hour. The word for minute—let alone the
ultra precision of a second—did not even exist in the language.
Farmers
Farmers, the vast majority of the population, repeated the same
pattern year after year, but with greater regularity than elsewhere in
the world where rainstorms, snow or swings of temperature made
agriculture less predictable. Each time the Nile receded, Egyptian
farmers returned to the fields to plow after having spent the previ-
ous month readying their tools. Plowing was relatively easy in the
still-moist ground. If a farmer had cattle, two would pull while he
leaned his weight on the plow to ensure deep furrows, while a son
guided the team in a straight line; otherwise, he would enlist two
men to take the place of the cattle. After the furrows were dug, the
farmer followed with a mattock to break up the large clumps of
dirt lifted by the plow. Then it was time for the women to scatter
the seeds from wicker baskets, slung by a cord over their shoul-
ders, into the furrows. Later, encouraged by strewn grass or straw,
a herd of sheep would be driven onto the land to bury the seed with
their hooves, allowing it to germinate hidden from hungry birds
and rodents.
Next came a season of nurture to ensure bountiful crops. Dirt dikes
and canals needed continual repair to assure a constant water flow
to every young shoot. Farmers alternated work in their fields with
regular stints at the Nile, raising bucket after bucket of river water
up the bank to spill into the system of canals used by neighboring
farms. The shadoof, a cantilevered pole, made this work easier than
walking every bucket up the bank, but no less monotonous. When
not participating in his community water chore, a farmer had weeds
to clear, rats to fend off and birds to shoo—the reason the family cat
often accompanied his master to work.
Egyptian Calendar: Emergence, Month 2
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3

Very Favorable Very Favorable Very Adverse
The gods and goddesses The day the gods receive The day of the going
are in festival. The day Ra. The hearts of the forth of Seth and his
of Ptah’s lifting the Two Lands are festive. confederates on the
heavens of Ra with his eastern horizon, and of
hands. the navigation of Maat
to the place of the gods.
Make a holiday. ... Do not go out of your
house on any road today.
Day 4 Day 5 Day 6
... ... The day of the raising of
the djed-pillar of Osiris.
The gods are sad and
their faces downcast
when they remember
Osiris.
Show your heart to your If you see anything on ...
local gods. Propitiate this day, it will be good.
your spirits. Exalt your
crew on this day.
Day 7 Day 8 Day 9
Very Favorable Very Favorable Very Favorable
... The day the gods and The day the god enters
goddesses are in festival. to distribute the ration of
all the gods of Ker-aba.
Make invocation Make a holiday in Anything you see on this
offerings in your house Latopolis. day will be good.
to the spirits. Make
abet-offerings to the
gods and they will be
accepted on this day.
Day 10 Day 11 Day 12

Very Adverse Very Favorable Very Favorable
The day of the going The day of the feast of ...
forth of the Udjat-eye for Neith, of taking the writ-
singing in Heliopolis. ing material that is in her
The day of elevating the house and of the going
goddess of the sanctuary forth of Sobek to guide
of Mnevis. Ra raises Maat her majesty.
again and again to Atum.
... You will see good from Anything you see on this
her hands. day will be good.
Very Adverse Mostly Favorable ...
The day of the The day of seeing the The gods go forth for
proceeding of Sekhmet rebel and killing him by him in heaven. His two
to Latopolis. Her great Seth at the prow of the hands hold the ankh
executioners pass by the great barque. and was-scepter which
offering of Latopolis on he offers to the nose of
this day. Khenty-Irety at the time
of his reckoning.
Do not go out of your Do not go out at dawn ...
house on any road today. on this day.
... Very Favorable Very Adverse
The day of the The day of keeping those The day of the going
awakening of Isis by the things of the wabet of forth of the seven
majesty of Ra... when Osiris which have been executioners. Their
the son Horus saves his placed in the hands of fingers are searching
father. He has eaten Seth Anubis. for the Akhet-eye in
and his confederates. the towns of Iyet and
Latopolis.
... ... ...
Mostly Adverse Very Adverse ...
The day of the mourning The day of the The day of the birth
of the god. proceeding of the of cattle. They go
goddesses of heaven to the place where
southward to the road... the meadows are in the
neighborhood of the
foremost god.
Do not go out alone in ... ...
daytime.
Work and Play 89

... ... The gods are descending
into the river.
Anything you see on this Anything you see on this Anyone who approaches
day will be good. day will be good. the river today will not
live. Do not sail a boat
on this day.
Very Favorable ... ...
... The day of the going The day of the feast of
forth of Min to Coptos. Sokar in Rostau before
He is guided to it, that of Onnophris
boasting of his beauty. (a form of Osiris) in
Isis sees that his face is Abydos.
beautiful.
Anything you see on this . . . ...
day will be good
Very Favorable Very Adverse Very Adverse
Onnophris is pleased The day of the instigation House of Ra, House of
and the spirits are joyful. of fighting, of the creation Osiris, House of Horus.
The dead are also festive. of rebellion, and of
making an uproar among
the children of Geb.
... Do not do anything on Do not talk with anyone
this day. on this day.
As soon as the grain ripened, about three months later, local

officials appeared to measure the field to set its taxes. Only then
did the whole family arrive to harvest the crop before it spoiled or
was eaten by animals. Some cut the grain heads with a short sickle
held in one hand while the other hand held the grain steady; others
gathered the loose heads into piles, tied them with lengths of straw,
then loaded them on donkeys for transport to the local threshing
area. The long wheat stems were left standing in the field for later
harvesting as straw for the livestock.
At the threshing area, the whole community assembled to sepa-
rate usable seeds from unusable stems and chaff. First oxen were
The shadoof, a pivoting pole with a weight on one end

and a bucket tied to the other, was used to raise water
to irrigate farmland.
driven round and round to break the seeds free while the men
turned the mixture over to ensure every seed received a hoof. After-
ward, the same pitchforks carried the straw away, leaving only the
finer grain and its hulls (chaff) on the threshing floor. Using wooden
scoops, the men lifted this mixture above their heads, letting it spill
back to the floor so the wind could blow the lighter chaff away. In
the end, only the seeds remained, and these were distributed to
each family in proportion to its production. As the year closed, a
short new year’s hiatus signaled that it was time, once again, to
start repairing the tools—and to begin another year just like the
one before.
Scribes
Those who worked at jobs less controlled by nature followed
rhythms set by their masters or by supply-and-demand principles.
Government workers were allowed to rest every tenth day. Crafts-
people worked according to demand.
Scribes, the largest group of workers after farmers, included cad-
res of thousands of bureaucrats, private individuals hired to han-
dle accounts and correspondence for large estates, and freelancers.
Because no public school system existed, the average Egyptian
could neither read nor write. The sons of scribes, higher officials
and occasional precocious farm children attended local temples for
Work and Play 91
The top scene in this tomb painting shows heads of wheat being bun-
dled; the bottom scene shows the lower stalks cut and bundled for animal
fodder.
instruction in letters. Except for separate classes convened for royal

or otherwise socially prominent girls, all scholars were male. Each
set out in the morning carrying a small basket of bread and beer
from home and returned again in the late afternoon.
Beginning instruction consisted of copying hieroglyphic signs
over and over until they were committed to memory. Because
papyrus was too expensive for this repetitive task, thin slabs of
erasable limestone or wood boards with replaceable gesso sur-
faces were used instead. After learning his ABCs (or, in this case,
his vultures, feet and baskets), a worthy child graduated to papy-
rus and longer classic texts—generally consisting of moral plati-
tudes. These skills were not easily mastered. In addition to twenty
single-syllable picture signs, over one hundred two-syllable (pr, wr,
etc.) and an equal number of three-syllable signs (nfr, etc.) had to

be committed to memory, along with almost the same number of
“determinatives”—endings indicating whether a word’s meaning
had to do with an activity, an animal, an abstract thought and so
on. With the language, which included a grammar and three tenses,
mastered, a student had learned only one of the three forms of Egyp-
tian writing. In addition to hieroglyphs—the picture symbols we
most often associate with Egyptian writing—a more cursive form
called hieratic was employed for handwriting, and a more abbrevi-
ated version called demotic was used for quicker notes.
When all three symbol systems had been committed to memory,
a pupil who showed aptitude could move to advanced courses
in mathematics and basic building practices, both of which were
taught through practical examples rather than abstraction rules.
Problems such as computing the number of bricks needed for a
wall of a certain dimension, the amount of provisions a specified
number of troops needed for an expedition of given duration or
the number of men required for moving an obelisk of a given size
prepared graduates for high civil positions in the army or on gov-
ernment construction projects, although most students progressed
no further than mastering the reading and writing appropriate for
more mundane occupations.
Such repetitive instruction surely bored most children. Letters
abound from fathers who, looking toward the rewards of a good
job following their son’s graduation, urge them to persist, criticiz-
ing those who play hooky in local bars and brothels. Since a num-
ber of dated and corrected student exercises survive, it seems that
assignments were a principal teaching tool. Instead of grades pro-
viding motivation for good work, one father reminded his son that
“a youngster’s ear is in his back; he only listens to the man who
beats him.”3
Despite the difficult course of instruction, some students gradu-
ated to don the dress of the scribe’s trade—a long skirt, rather than the
normal short kilt. They carried foot-long scribal palettes—rectangles
of wood with two depressions in one end and a slot in the other.
The slot held writing brushes; the depressions served as pots for
mixing black and red ink. Black was used for the body of a text, and
red indicated chapter headings or an especially important phrase.
As a scribe, a young man enjoyed opportunities for advancement.
Certain orders of priests required scribal skills, as did the quarter-
master corps of the army and a host of government jobs above the
lowest level. The vast majority of scribes, however, filled the ranks
A business document from the Twentieth Dynasty shows one of the main
Egyptian scripts, hieratic on top, transcribed into more familiar hiero-
glyphs on the bottom. In this example both were read from right to left.
Scribe’s Palette. An ancient wood palette lies on the table in front of the
scribe. A pair of circular indentations at the top held round blocks of black
and red ink. At the top of the palette on the right you can still see some of
the string used for carrying the palette. The rectangular depression in the
center held reed writing brushes.
of clerks or simple accountants for the duration of their professional

lives.
Craftsmen
Those who made objects, whether utilitarian or artistic, earned no
great status in Egyptian society, however wonderful their creations
might seem to us today. Lists of offerings to various temples refer to
furniture and statues in the same citations as grain, beer and cattle.
A clearly prejudiced scribe, comparing his life with that of crafts-
men, wrote:
I have never seen a sculptor sent on an embassy, nor a bronze founder

leading a mission: but I have seen the smith working in the furnace mouth.
His fingers are like a crocodile’s claws; he stinks worse than fish roe.4
To be sure, life was hard for such workers. Since only the most
basic tools were available to them and producing finely made
goods required infinite patience. But in his description the scribe
exaggerates the miseries of the work and ignores the genuine ben-
efits craftsmen enjoyed. They could take pride in their work and
in the knowledge they possessed to create it, as one sculptor noted
proudly on the walls of his tomb:
I am an artist who excels in my art, a man above the common herd in

knowledge. I know the proper attitude for a statue . . . I know how a woman
holds herself . . . the way a man poises himself to strike with the harpoon,
the look in an eye at its moment, the bewildered stare of a man roused
from sleep . . . the tilt of a runner’s body. I know the secret of making inlays
that fire cannot melt or water dissolve.5
Self-esteem was important because of the lack of public recognition

accorded to artists and craftsmen: artists, let alone furniture mak-
ers or builders, never signed their works. Only a score of artists’
names are known from all the eras of Egypt’s history, and then only
from the discovery of their own tombs or the excavation of their
homes, except in the singular instance of one tomb painting of a
banquet scene in which the owner included portraits of his painter
and sculptor to thank them for their work.6
In addition to painstaking labor, knowledge of materials was
essential for each craft. No directions on papyri explained how to
make things because that information was transferred from master
to apprentice as part of an oral tradition. In this way, knowledge of
Work and Play 95
a craft was passed—usually by father to son—from generation to

generation.
Craftsmen enjoyed little independence. The jeweler needed metal
and stones for his creations and the carpenter needed various
woods; however, gold, silver and semiprecious stones, along with
most desired woods, were all royal monopolies. To obtain the sup-
plies they needed, most craftsmen worked for estates that manufac-
tured an array of goods, or a temple or, if fortunate, the royal
workshop—larger organizations that could secure the raw mate-
rials required.7 While the estate carpenter could obtain his chisel
from the estate smithy more easily than he could on his own, he
was also subject to rigid supervision and told what to produce.
A goldsmith, for example, was given raw ore only after it had
been carefully weighed; the completed gold object was weighed
again to ensure that no precious metal had been stolen during the
process. Under the vigilant eye of an overseer, a covey of scribes
recorded every object and judged its suitability. The wonder is that
lovely objects were produced in such abundance, for innovation
and aesthetics had little place in this bureaucratic process.
At least the arrangement gave the craftsman security—regular
pay in the form of food and drink and, in most cases, shelter. Because
leaving one employer to find work with another was almost impos-
sible, craftsmen depended on the good will of their patron. The
bounty of their reward varied with his generosity, whether he was
a nobleman, a chief priest or the pharaoh. Luckily for the crafts-
man, patrons believed that the treatment of their workers would be
known to the gods and affect their own reception in the next world,
In messages meant for divine eyes, tomb after tomb records how
generously owners dealt with underlings.
Businesspeople
A small portion of the populace earned their living as indepen-
dent businesspeople, working on their own by bartering for needed
materials without the intervention of a patron. Because the number
of such independent workers is difficult to estimate—no general
census was taken in ancient Egypt and this group would not be
included in lists of temple or estate employees—we can only refer
to scenes depicting what look like modern Middle Eastern mar-
ketplaces filled with single individuals offering various goods for
sale. It may be that every village of some size contained a num-
ber of independent workers selling in a central location. Still, given
that wealthy patrons were supplied by their own workshops and

nonwealthy clients had little disposable surplus to barter, living
must have been precarious for such people. It is even probable that
the majority of those shown in market scenes, rather than being
individual businesspeople, had been sent by large estates to dispose
of their own surpluses.
International trade was also under government control, and all
brokers of commerce between countries were state employees.
(Travel outside the borders of Egypt was all but unheard of for
ordinary citizens.) The reason for the monopoly was that supplies
of certain foreign commodities, such as copper, tin and tall timber,
was so necessary to the Egyptian economy that their acquisition
could not be left to private initiative. Moreover, the greater the gov-
ernment control of foreign trade, the more it could be used, backed
by the might of the Egyptian army, as an instrument of politics to
favor friendly foreign governments and punish others.
Miners and Quarrymen

By any accounting the worst occupations in Egypt were those of
quarry and mine workers. The work was so exhausting and the con-
ditions were so dusty, dank and dangerous that mine stints were
sometimes used as jail sentences for serious crimes.
Until sandstone (which can bear greater stress) came into vogue
in the New Kingdom, limestone was the material of choice for large
construction projects. Quarries for both these soft stones were plen-
tiful in Egypt, but freeing the blocks of either material involved
dusty, dirty work using copper or bronze chisels and picks which,
blow upon blow, chipped away the stone. Work proceeded from the
top layer down, since swinging a pick downward was less fatigu-
ing than swinging upward. Luckier workers toiled in open pits;
the less fortunate worked underground. For a subterranean stone-
worker, extracting the first blocks required crawling in spaces just
large enough to wriggle through. His body covered in stone dust,
he labored in a dark and eerie world peopled by shadows made by
his flickering oil lamp, constantly at risk of being crushed by rocks
or falling prey to endemic lung disease.
Yet the work of the quarryman was easy compared to the work
of those who mined precious gold and turquoise, following seams
wherever they led through holes deep in the ground. Time was not
taken to enlarge mine shafts with timber supports, so the miners were
forced to crawl through spaces that seldom allowed room to stand,
Work and Play 97
swinging picks all day on their stomachs in order to chip precious

gifts free from hard rock. As employees of a government monopoly,
working for food and drink, they were not allowed even the small-
est grain of gold or minuscule turquoise gem for themselves.
Herders
Tens of thousands of cattle, goats and sheep were the respon-
sibility of herdsmen who roamed the plains of Egypt caring for
their charges, while other herdsmen settled on farm estates with
smaller herds. Both carried long staves to enforce their commands,
although the real affection they felt for their herds is illustrated by
the names they bestowed on their animals: “Beauty,” “Golden” and
“Brilliant.”8
A herdsman lived with his herd, guiding them to fresh grazing
areas, defending them against hyena and crocodile predators, carry-
ing the sick and injured on his back. When a cow gave birth, he was
at her side, cooing affectionately and, when necessary, easing the
calf from her womb; when a stream had to be forded, he shouldered
those calves too small to walk safely across. Just as today, cattle were
rounded up, lassoed and branded; of course, in Egypt, what was
burned on the cattle’s right shoulder was a hieroglyphic sign.
Marshmen
Egyptians called their Delta Mehit—papyrus marsh. Although
sufficient dry land existed in this area for tens of thousands of cat-
tle to graze, almost a third of it remained under water throughout
the year, providing work and shelter for an unusual group of peo-
ple. Marshmen hunted, fished or gathered papyrus, and, in con-
sideration of their moist work conditions, wore either no clothing
at all or tied a simple wrap of cloth around the waist and through
their legs.
Papyrus—the material on which all official writing was done—
constituted a necessary commodity in Egypt. A natural marsh grass,
as tall as ten feet high, all stem except for a halo of tendrils at the
top, papyrus grew abundantly in the Delta environment. Its har-
vest provided not only a living for marshmen, but the material for
their boats and homes as well. Thanks to the pockets of air inside its
cellular stem, cut papyrus served as a fine material for boats, which
were made by lashing together enough lengths to create a kind of
punt which could be poled through the still, shallow water. When
Cattle fording a stream with one herdsman in front carrying a calf

too young to cross by itself. This would also encourage the calf’s
mother and the rest of the herd to follow the calf across.
Harvesting papyrus for paper. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
the same papyrus was stood upright, laced together and plastered
with mud, it provided material for a simple shelter for the marsh-
man and his family.
Each day a marshman punted through natural stands of papy-
rus, cutting stems below the waterline, then stacking them onto his
Work and Play 99
boat. These bundles would be delivered to papermakers who sliced

the stems lengthwise into thin strips, then cut them into foot-long
lengths before placing them in layers, first side to side horizontally,
then side to side vertically. When beaten with a wooden mallet,
the two thicknesses compressed to paper-thin dimensions while
exuding a sap that acted as a natural glue when dried. The end
result was a sheet of paper-like writing material called papyrus—
the origin of our word “paper”—that was trimmed and smoothed
with a polishing stone before use. Sheets could be glued to make
continuous scrolls of any length desired, which in some cases mea-
sured more than a hundred feet long.
Marshmen, who also caught fish by spearing them in the shallow
Delta waters and trapped birds in large nets in the same marshes,
enjoyed a degree of unsupervised independence unusual in highly
structured Egypt.
PLAY
Long hours of incessant work allowed little playtime for farm
workers; others enjoyed only a few free days granted by their
employers from time to time. Most play, therefore, involved chil-
dren, independent marshmen or people rich enough to have estates
with overseers. Yet abundant evidence points to the playful spir-
its of all Egyptians, even those without the leisure for pure play.
Whenever workers are shown in tomb scenes, they are described
in hieroglyphs as encouraging one another, bantering with fellow
workers and singing.
Recreation
Since tomb walls served as pictorial records of what the deceased
wanted to recreate in his next life, they tell us what the owner
enjoyed in this life as well. Most common are scenes of banquets,
hunting and fishing. At least the class of people who could afford
decorated tombs found some of their fondest pleasures in sport.
Much like today, fishing and hunting were pursued more for the
pleasure of the catch than for the food. Marshes provided a favorite
arena for the activity. Often couples are portrayed enjoying the out-
ing together, both simply and practically dressed—probably a relief
from the formal attire usually worn by this class. Some scenes show
a husband drawing a bead on a duck with his bow while his faith-
ful wife holds the next missile ready. Others reproduce a couple
posed in the same attitudes but substitute a curved throwing stick

as the weapon, and yet others show the husband poised to hurl
his harpoon at underwater prey, also under the admiring gaze of
his wife.
Desert hunting provided the thrill of the chase. Egyptians, mounted
in chariots, usually in groups of three or four to corral their prey,
pursued speedy game such as rabbits, antelope or gazelles with
bows or spears. Even the most dangerous animals—fierce lions and
leopards—were hunted in a desert more verdant than it is today.
Sometimes a tied cow was used as bait, and hunting dogs, swifter
over short distances than chariots, were employed as well. Indeed,
Egyptians are the first people on record, though not necessarily
the first in fact, to domesticate the dog, a greyhound-like species
known today as the saluki. More certain and surprising is the fact
that they first domesticated cats and used them as hunting animals
in the marshes.
Children practiced with bows, spears and throwing sticks by
the hour to gain enough proficiency to hit live targets, and adults
honed their skills regularly as well. Bullfighting was the one known
Egyptian spectator sport. The Egyptian version pitted bull against
bull rather than man against beast, but referees with short sticks
watched, ready to step in to prevent fatal injury to either animal.
Besides sports, other Egyptian amusements included sailing for
its own sake with no objective other than to enjoy the cool breeze of
the Nile. Music provided another favored entertainment. Festive
scenes on tomb walls almost always depict an orchestra, generally
with dancers swaying to its rhythms. Old Kingdom bands con-
sisted of harp, drums, oboe and flute, with a variety of mandolins
and lyres; a double flute was added by the New Kingdom. While a
type of straight bugle existed, its shrill tones only issued commands
for troops and never figured in musical ensembles.
Harps, ranging from half the size of a man, and played kneel-
ing, to taller than man-sized and played standing, consisted of
four to seven cat-gut strings in the smaller versions and as many as
from ten to twenty-two in the larger. All were tied to an oversized
sounding board which used stretched leather to amplify the sound.
Blind harpists, probably because their handicap gave them better
memories for the lyrics they sang, are often depicted. Flutes or,
more correctly, reed pipes, were blown from their ends rather than
their sides as with the modern flute. Surviving examples include
instruments with from three to fourteen holes; another common
type joined two pipes together, probably producing a semblance of
Work and Play 101
harmony. Mandolins, thin oblong sounding-boxes with from six to

eight strings attached to a long arm, were held vertically like gui-
tars; a pick was used to strum the instrument.
Percussion instruments were many and varied. Drums consisted
of a sort of tom-tom several feet long, slung over the shoulder with
a cord and played with drumsticks. Used not only to set a beat for
a band, this style of drum was employed by the military to give
Egyptian troops their marching cadences. Other drums were shal-
low in depth and struck with the hand. Both the tambourine and the
forerunner of castanets, a pair of five-inch sticks clicked rhythmically
in one hand, were also popular. A special percussion instrument
called a sistrum was made of metal in the shape of the head of the
cow goddess Hathor, patron of music. Her horns were elongated
so several wires on which metal disks were loosely strung could be
attached crosswise, producing a metallic rattle sound when shaken.
Dancers’ rhythmic clapping added more percussive sounds to a
performance. Only women, most often naked or with only a sash
around their waist, danced at banquets. They are often depicted
Accompanied by his wife, a man hunts birds in a

marsh using a throwing stick.
A female band with (from right to left) a harpist, a lyre player, a lute player,
a double reed player, a player of a smaller harp and a clapper.
Female dancers wore weights at the ends of their long hair, used as part
of the dance movements. This scene appears to illustrate various steps in
a dance.
bending backwards in gymnastic-like contortions as their long hair,

tied at the ends with weights that swayed to the music, touched
the ground. One scene shows part of a troop of dancers, their hair
pulled high to simulate the tall, white pharonic crown, posing in
the familiar attitude of a pharaoh smiting his enemies while others
in the group acted the role of victims. Given the dancers’ slim bod-
ies and noticeable breasts, this dance must surely have been per-
formed for comic effect. In a solemn dance performed for funerary
processions, dancers with caps hiding their hair slid their right feet
forward, with arms, palms up forming a circle over their heads, then
slid their left feet ahead while their right arms moved to a forty-five
degree angle and the left descended behind the body. Step by slow
step the dancers made their way to the tomb, followed by singers,
mourners, friends, relatives and servants.
Work and Play 103
No notation to record Egyptian music existed, but lyrics were

written out and some have been found. Their bittersweet tales gen-
erally encourage enjoying the moment because of life’s fleeting
nature. One New Kingdom song advised,
Men’s bodies have returned to the earth since the beginning of time
And their place is taken by fresh generations.
As long as Ra rises each morning
And Atum sinks to rest in Manou,
So long will men beget and women conceive
And through their nostrils they will breathe;
But one day each one that is born must go to his appointed place.
Make a happy day, Oh priest . . .
Pass thy day in happiness . . .
Think on the day when thou must fare to the land where all men are as one.
Never a man hath taken his possessions with him to that land,
And none can thence return.9
Another, of similar sentiment, counseled,
Follow thy heart and thy happiness as long as thou art on earth.
Consume not thy heart until there cometh for thee that day
When man begs for mercy,
Unless the god whose heart beats no longer hears them who call upon
him.10
Although both these songs were inscribed in tombs, their philoso-
phy was also commonly embraced by the living. In the Late Period,
most festive banquets ended with a fake mummy in a small coffin
paraded around the diners and making, in a more graphic manner,
a similar point about human mortality.
Games
Games existed in great variety, from sedate board types to more
physical ones, with most of the latter being played by children.
They loved their version of tug of war in which one team’s captain
grasped the wrists of the other captain while, behind, each team
formed a human chain to try to pull them apart. “Your arm is much
stronger than his! Don’t give in to him!” one team urged its cap-
tain on a tomb wall from 4,000 years ago. Another favorite game
resembled the buck-buck game played by modern-day Boy Scouts.
A standing group of from six to eight boys formed a line by link-
ing their arms over their shoulders. The object of the game was
for the other members of their team to leap on top—not an easy
feat—and settle on all fours. Then the other team had its turn. One
Wrestlers employing several different holds.
scene illustrating this game included the score: two children suc-
ceeded. Another game consisted of seating two children back-to-
back with their arms grasping the ankles of their outstretched legs.
The object was for a third child to jump over this human obstacle, a
challenge complicated by the obstacle’s attempts to trip the jump-
ers. Although the seated children kept their eyes closed, the jumper
was required to yell a warning as he ran toward them. Also popular
was the universal odds and evens in which two players shot out
as many fingers as they wished after yelling either odd or even; a
count of the combined fingers determined the winner.
Wrestling, beloved of both men and boys in ancient Egypt,
achieved a great degree of complexity and required long train-
ing. Tombs of Middle Kingdom nobility in modern Beni Hassan
show hundreds of vignettes of paired wrestlers—with only a rib-
bon around their waists—illustrating as many different holds and
throws, from half-Nelsons to hip-rolls. A match began, as in our
own day, with two opponents coming at one another in a semi-
crouch, reaching for a first hold.
Marshmen and other boating people substituted a kind of joust
for wrestling in which, as spectators rooted for their favorite, the
crew of one small punt tried to knock the other crew in the water
with long poles. Other games taught military skills, as one in which
contestants wielded short sticks simulating swords or battle axes
and used small boards fixed to one lower arm to ward off an oppo-
nent’s blows. Others involved aiming arrows and spears at targets.
Given the Nile’s proximity, swimming, of course, was a favorite
pastime for all children.
Girls and young women enjoyed their own varieties of games.
Many involved balls carved from wood or made by sewing leather
around a packed wad of straw. Juggling two or three balls was pop-
ular, as was a simple game of catch. To make tossing a ball more
interesting, one girl rode piggyback on another and threw the ball
Work and Play 105
to a similarly mounted rider, attempting to keep three balls moving

at once. Perhaps the first girl to drop the ball became the “horse”
in the next round. In another, more gymnastic, exercise, two par-
ticipants stood back-to-back with outstretched arms while two oth-
ers grasped their arms and leaned back almost horizontally with
their feet resting against each other. The entire ensemble then spun
around as often as they could until overcome by dizziness.
More sedate activities included four board games known from
examples found in tombs—an indication of how much they must
have been enjoyed. The oldest, called mehen, consisted of a serpent
etched on a board whose body, divided into segments, coiled to
the center. Pieces representing three lions and three lionesses were
found in a drawer in the board along with a red and a white ball.
Since no instructions were included, its rules are unknown, but
most likely it was an antecedent of such modern games as Chutes
and Ladders, in which a piece moves from square to square, some
with rewards, others with penalties, and the objective is to reach
the end before one’s opponent. How moves were decided is a ques-
tion, since dice did not exist. Other board games did come with
either ivory or wood wands, each about eight inches long, some
Girls playing a game where

two boys spin them around
until the girls drop.
Two men playing the game of senet. The two scenes showing dif-
ferent positions of the pieces may indicate the beginning and end
positions of the game.
A paddle-doll.
with round ends, others with foxlike heads. One side of the wand
was curved, the other flat and inscribed with three bands of lines.
The way in which the wands fell when they were thrown probably
decided the move.11
Equally old was a game of many squares and multiple pieces that
looks remarkably like our checkers. The top and bottom of a game
box from the early New Kingdom gives us information about two
other board games.12 One board layout, called senet, consisted of
three rows of ten squares each. The other, called tjau (“robbers”),
consisted of three rows of four squares at one end of the board from
which eight more squares formed a line toward the other end. This
“tail” row was bordered by a hound facing a lion above and a lion
facing two gazelles below. Six dome-shaped ivory game pieces
were found inside the box, along with six spool-shaped pieces,
three pairs of game wands and a pair of knucklebones. How these
games were played remains unknown, but they appear to be games
of position much like Go or Parcheesi.
Toys
Children have always played with dolls, and Egyptian children
were no exception. Some of these beloved playthings were stuffed
with cloth; others were carved from ivory or wood. One unusual
type was made from a carved piece of wood, thick or even bulbous
Work and Play 107
at the bottom, decreasing to a tiny top with shoulders and arms

barely indicated. Because of their shape, excavators call them
“paddle-dolls.” They are often found with bead-hair covering the
“head.” More familiar were dolls, sometimes with movable arms,
accurately carved from wood. Models in wood or clay of cats, dogs,
donkeys, mongooses, hedgehogs and pigs show Egyptian chil-
dren’s love of animals. War toys, such as a two-inch-high painted
wood chariot, existed as well. For babies, there were rattles, either
simple pottery bulbs with handles or more engaging models of ani-
mals with pebbles inside, which soothed infants as they do today.
Mechanical toys, operated by strings, are sometimes found.
One catlike wood animal has a mouth that opens and closes with
the pull of a string. A toy crocodile performs the same motions.
Another toy consists of a man bent over an inclined board while
holding something in his hands—either rubbing clothes on a wash-
board or kneading bread. Whatever the object, he moves it up and
down the board whenever a string is pulled. A “dancing dwarves”
toy consists of three dwarves in a line who spin when activated by
a string.
NOTES
1. Cited by Pierre Montet, Everyday Life in Egypt During the Days of
Ramesses the Great (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981),
168.
2. See B. G. Trigger, B. J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A. B. Lloyd, Ancient
Egypt: A Social History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983),
328.
3. Quoted by Montet, Everyday Life, 256.
4. Quoted by Montet, ibid., 158.
5. Quoted by Montet, ibid., 159.
6. Shown in The Theban Tomb Series, edited by Norman DeGaris Davies
and Alan H. Gardiner (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1915) vol. 1,
p. 8.
7. Bernd Scheel claims that no independent craftsmen existed with
their own workshops. See his Egyptian Metalworking and Tools (Aylesbury,
England: Shire Publications, 1989), 59.
8. See Montet, Everyday Life, 124.
9. Modified from Montet, Ibid., 96 – 97.
10. Ibid., 97–98.
11. See the description in William Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1959), vol. 2, p. 26.
12. Currently in New York’s Metropolitan Museum collection and
described in Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, 25 –26.
5
FOOD
The variety and ready availability of food in America today would

amaze ancient people. The fact that meat can be enjoyed on a regu-
lar basis even by lower economic groups, and that expensive dishes,
such as steak and lobster, have been tasted by the family who cleans
the mansion, as well as its owner, is truly a modern phenomenon.
During the European Middle Ages most peasants had never tasted
meat—as was also the case for poor farmers in Eastern Europe and
Spain as late as the beginning of the twentieth century. The farther
back in time we go, the greater the disparity between the dining
habits of the wealthy and those of the poor, in addition to the mea-
ger choices available to both.
Between Egypt’s agricultural bounty and her power to command
the resources of neighboring countries, she was truly an anomaly
of the ancient world: literally thousands of years would pass before
anyone would again eat as well and enjoy such variety as the
ancient Egyptian. Considering the country’s huge population by
the standards of the time—as much as three million at the apex of
the New Kingdom—this fact becomes all the more striking. Despite
so many mouths to feed and lacking any mechanized farm equip-
ment, its economy produced sufficient excess that Rameses the
Great could donate half a million cattle to various temples over his
sixty-seven-year reign, in addition to gifts of other food in propor-

tionate amounts.
Rich and poor did not set exactly the same tables. Most farmers
dined infrequently on meat and never tasted expensive imports. A
cow in ancient Egypt cost the equivalent of an entire year’s income
for a craftsman or the annual harvest of a small farmer.1 The aver-
age citizen would not waste such a precious commodity on dinner.
On the other hand, a goat—valued at only a sixteenth of a cow—
might be an appropriate menu choice for a special occasion, such as
a wedding or a birth, even for a poor person. Everyday protein was
obtained from fish or other nonanimal sources.
Just as we use the phrase “meat and potatoes” to describe a
basic meal, ancient Egyptians referred to the staples of their diet
as “bread and beer.” One list of troop provisions specified twenty
bread rolls per soldier per day; the number of jugs of beer were not
mentioned.2 Since bread and beer were manufactured from grain,
the greatest source of energy and nutrients for the Egyptian lower
classes came from cereal products.
Egypt’s two indigenous grains, barley and emmer wheat, both
grown in flat fields, flourished in the country’s hot climate and, once
the canals that supplied them with water had been constructed,
required little care. When ripe, the top of the plants were harvested
using a crescent-shaped scythe with a row of sharp flint triangles
embedded in the wood and held in place by dried resin. The cut
heads were gathered, spread on a community threshing area, then
trodden by cows, goats, donkeys or even pigs to free the grain
from the stalks and split open the hulls. The stalks were removed,
then the mass was winnowed—thrown several times in the air.
The heavier grains fell back to the threshing floor, while the lighter
“chaff” (hulls) blew away.
After collection, the grain was stored in beehive-shaped silos until
needed. Then, several handfuls were placed on a stone quern with
a gently curved surface for milling. A stone shaped like our rolling
pin with a curve to match the curvature of the grinding surface was
rolled back and forth, grinding the grain into flour, which was caught
in a container at one end of the quern. In the early days, this was
women’s work, but it evolved into an industry capable of produc-
ing great quantities, with men milling the grain in huge cylindrical
pestles which they stood alongside, working mortars fixed to the end
of poles. The flour produced was made into dough by adding water
then kneaded and leavened with a pinch of day-old dough that had
naturally bred yeast. After it rose, the dough was shaped for baking.
Food 111
The man at the right pours dough into bread molds. Later (on the left) he
removes the bread from its mold to stack it. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
Bread came in a multitude of forms from crescent, round, oval,

pyramidal, disk and hexagonal shapes to exotic shapes of women,
animals and birds for special ceremonies or magical use. These
could be baked in a variety of ways. Sometimes tall ovens were
used; other times a flat stone heated by a fire beneath it acted as a
sort of griddle for flat bread. There were also conical stoves, simi-
lar to Indian tandoori ovens, on whose inner surface dough was
placed for fast grilling, or heated pottery molds. Additives, such
as honey, anise or cumin, were sometimes used to flavor the basic
wheat and barley breads.
So important was their bread to ancient Egyptians that they gave
it up during times of mourning,3 a custom similar to the Christian
period of Lent, a meaningful sacrifice only because of the food’s
importance. Otherwise bread figured in every meal—from a farm-
er’s breakfast of bread and perhaps milk to the most elegant feast set
by a mighty pharaoh. Both commoner and king ate toasted bread,
enjoyed it as a stuffing with roasted animals and fowl and partook
at the end of the meal of sweet cakes made by adding honey to the
bread. In their use of grains, the main difference between farmers
and the upper class was that the latter washed his meal down with
wine, the former with beer.
Beer, produced from the earliest days of Egypt, is generally con-
sidered to be an Egyptian invention.4 Although beer’s chemistry is
complex, simple, natural procedures produced acceptable versions.

Grain and malt in solution produce alcohol; carbonation caused by
the fermenting action of the yeast is a by-product. When ancient
Egyptians exposed moistened, unmilled grain to the air in warm
conditions, it germinated and, after crushing, became malt. By bak-
ing bread of coarse flour lightly enough to prevent the heat from
destroying the yeast, then crumbling the loaves into water and
adding some of the malt for flavor, they produced—after allowing
time for the yeast in the bread to ferment the mixture and strain-
ing it through a sieve—beer of about 7 percent alcohol.5 Both bar-
ley and wheat beers were brewed in this manner, sometimes with
such additives as date juice for a sweetener or red dye for special
holidays.
Beer contained nutrients and, thanks to the sanitizing action of
the alcohol, was safer to drink than still water which could harbor
any number of harmful microbes. It was also, of course, intoxicat-
ing if drunk to excess. Abundant tomb scenes depict the results of
overindulgence (though wine was the more likely culprit in these
upper-class tombs), but sober people deplored the condition. A
scribe named Ani described its effects and warned against visiting
a house where liquors were served.
Boast not that you can drink . . . a jug of beer. Thou speakest, and an unin-
telligible utterance issueth from thy mouth. If thou fallest down and thy
limbs break there is no one to hold out a hand to thee. Thy companions in
drink stand up and say “Away with that sot.” If there cometh one to seek
thee in order to question thee, thou art found lying on the ground and
thou art like a child.6
Bread and beer did not exhaust the Egyptians’ uses of grain: it
was also stewed to produce gruel, baked as groats to accompany the
main course of a meal, and even used as a religious symbol. Mum-
mies sometimes wore a necklace braided from wheat leaves, and
often tombs contained full-sized beds spread with mud in which
barley had been planted in an outline of the god Osiris. When it
sprouted, even in the dark tomb, it symbolized both the regenera-
tion of the god as well as the hopes of the deceased for his own
rebirth.
Other than grain, the poorer classes depended mainly on fish,
supplemented by wild fowl for their protein, both of which cost only
the time required to catch them. Fish abounded in both the Nile and
in Egypt’s one true lake, located in an area called the Fayum today.
Food 113
Ancient records note that the tax on a single year’s catch from this
lake would amount to $1 million today.7 Only a small percentage of
saltwater fish were consumed; the majority came from fresh water.
Once a year, as the Nile’s floodwaters receded from the land, fish
became trapped in the mud and could be gathered by hand in great
numbers, but for the rest of the year Egyptians employed a variety
of fishing methods. For sport, fish were speared or hooked, but
seines were employed for larger catches, as well as smaller nets,
thrown, set in place or even lashed between two boats as a trawl.
Catfish of various species were popular for their flavor as well as a
kind of local fish called Nile perch, which could attain sizes above
100 pounds.
Because Egypt’s warm climate caused rapid spoilage, fish gener-
ally were salted, pickled or split open and sun-dried until used.
Recipes included simple roasting and boiling or stuffing with bread
and spices. Fish roe counted as a delicacy, as did newly hatched fry,
cultivated for the purpose in artificial ponds. Fishcakes made from
shredded flesh also constituted a treat. One recipe from Ptolemaic
A man in a papyrus skiff fishes with a hook and line. His lunch
sits in front of him. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
times called for a marinade of oil, onion, pepper, coriander and other
herbs spread over a large fish as it baked,8 a recipe which could
please any modern-day fish lover. The Nile also yielded turtles,
clams and even crocodiles. Crocodiles could be caught on hooks,
trapped in nets or speared. Some tomb paintings record brave lads
in the act of crocodile wrestling.
Thanks to a large population of birds native to Egypt’s marshes,
fowl provided variation in the diet of both rich and poor. Since Egypt
lay on the main migratory route between Europe and lower Africa,
hundreds of thousands of fowl, tired and easy to catch, alighted
each season in Egypt both before and after their long flight across
the Mediterranean. Egyptians showed their passion for birds by
creating twenty-four separate hieroglyphic signs for various spe-
cies, with many more represented by signs in combination. Ducks,
geese, pigeons and doves were regularly consumed along with
countless smaller species. The upper classes hunted fowl as a sport
either with a bow and tiny-tipped arrows or with special throwing
sticks in the form of a slight “s” shape. Nets were employed for food
gathering; large ones were either thrown or set off with the pull of
a string, and individually sized traps were tripped by prey. Egypt
was also renowned for inventing bird “incubators,” which allowed
both pigeons and doves to be raised in cotes where, in addition to
housing eggs and the birds themselves, their dung could be gath-
ered for fertilizer. Chickens found their way to Egypt from western
Asia around the time of the New Kingdom but were far from com-
mon during much of ancient times.9 Ancient Egyptians had to make
do with pigeon, goose or duck eggs for their breakfasts.
Vegetables form a large part of the diet of most farming coun-
tries, and Egypt was no exception. Its farmers grew onions and
garlic, which they used extensively, along with radishes, lettuce,
celery, leeks, parsley, several kinds of squash, cucumbers and
various beans, including fava beans, chick peas, lentils, peas and,
possibly, lima beans.10 Aquatic plants also found their way to the
table. Egyptians were fond of the lotus plant for its perfume and
attractive large flower, but they also ate its root and the beans of
a related species that taste like nuts. Papyrus, a water weed in the
swampy Egyptian environment, which provided material for writ-
ing, was also gnawed for the sweet sap in its stem.
A special place in the Egyptian diet was reserved for sweet fruit.
Figs were enjoyed for both their fruit and juice, which could also be
fermented into a fig wine. Abundant grape vines yielded grapes,
wine and, when sun-dried, raisins. Melons were harvested, includ-
Food 115
ing the special summer treat of watermelon. Of course, plentiful

date palms provided their sweet fruit, fresh or dried. In fact, the
hieroglyphic symbol for dates also signified sweetness in general,
as in a “sweet person” or “sweet act,” while the sign for “one year”
was a stripped palm rib, since these trees grew one new frond
each month. Another species of palm, the dom palm, supplied a
tasty nut that could be eaten raw or ground into flour. More exotic
fruits included jujubes, pomegranates and perseas, with juniper
beans and almonds imported as exotic foods for the wealthy. A few
unclear references suggest that apples may have existed although
they formed no great part of the diet.11 The olive, though not sweet,
was a common cultivated fruit enjoyed both for itself and for its
oil. Chocolate pudding was simulated by grinding carob beans into
milk which then jelled.
There was nothing bland about the Egyptian diet. The availability
and variety of spices used in Egyptian cuisine of the period would
impress any modern cook. The liquorish taste of anise found con-
stant use, along with the “sweet” flavor of mint. Cumin was much
used, especially as a coating for fish, but dill, marjoram, rosemary,
thyme and sage each added its distinct taste and perfume. Mus-
tard plants yielded their seeds, although they were not ground
with vinegar into the mustard mixture we use today, and safflower
existed as well. Celery seeds were commonly used for seasoning.
Grapes are picked from an arbor at the top of this scene. Six men to the
right tread the grapes to release their juice while holding on to a pole
overhead so they won’t slip. Below, the men twist poles at opposite ends
of a sack to squeeze the last drop of juice from the grapes while one man
stretches between the poles to hold them apart and maintain the tension.
The bottom vignette shows the collected juice poured into jars to ferment
into wine while a scribe records their production.
Of course, salt brought out the flavors of whatever it was sprinkled

on, but pepper was not yet cultivated in Egypt. For the wealthy,
two imports added exotic flavors—cinnamon and coriander.12
Although the average Egyptian could not afford meat regularly,
he consumed milk in greater quantities than was common in most
cultures. The lactose intolerance of many Asians and Semites did
not seem to affect the Egyptians who, until they were weaned at
three, drank milk as their only food and continued to consume it
throughout their lives. Cows, goats and even asses supplied sub-
stitutes after a mother’s milk had ceased. No evidence of butter
or cheese exists, although it seems likely that cheese, which easily
could have accidentally occurred as a byproduct of old milk, was
available.
Additional dishes appeared on the tables of the well-to-do. The
wealthy considered beer the beverage of working people and pre-
ferred the smooth taste of wine for themselves. Grapes—either as
low pruned bushes or as trellised vines—grew abundantly, espe-
cially in the Delta region famed for its vintages.
Demonstrating the extent to which Egyptians favored this drink
are the numerous tomb paintings that depict the harvesting and
pressing of grapes to extract their juice. Egyptians used the age-old
method of trampling grapes with bare feet in vats large enough to
hold from four to six people, a process which, unlike heavy presses,
does not add the bitter, acidic flavor of crushed stems. To prevent
falling into the grape mixture, workmen grasped ropes tied to a
beam above the vat. Sometimes they were encouraged in their work
by children beating a rhythm with sticks.
As the juice began to flow, it ran into a container set below a spout
near the bottom of the vat, although some liquid would remain even
after vigorous dancing on the grapes. The residue, called must, was
shoveled into a cylindrical cloth bag up to four or five feet in length.
Sticks attached to each end of the bag were vigorously twisted by
several men to squeeze the last drop of juice through the cloth
fibers. To prevent the torque of the twisting motion from bunching
up the sack, a boy sometimes stretched horizontally from one stick
to the other—hands on one, feet on the other—holding them apart.
Alternatively, one end of the sack was fixed to a pole so only the
other end turned.
Since grapes carry natural yeasts on their skin, fermentation was
instigated simply by setting the juice in a warm environment—no
difficulty in steamy Egypt. The juice was poured into pottery jars
that stood about two feet tall, in which the conversion of grape
Food 117
sugar to alcohol took place. After fermentation, the opening was

sealed with a conical stopper of mud and straw and left to dry hard
in the sun. If any sugar remained, however, continued fermentation
would generate a gas that would burst a sealed container. To elimi-
nate the problem, a small hole drilled in the stopper or the neck of
the jar was left uncovered until it could be safely sealed. The mud
stopper was stamped with vintage information that included the
vineyard that had produced it, the year of production and the qual-
ity of the contents, which ranged from “good” to “very good” to
“very, very good.” Sometimes the name of the producer was also
included, as we do today with fine wines.
The tomb of Tutankhamen gives further evidence of the Egyptian
appreciation of wine: included among the great treasures found at
this famous burial site were twenty-six amphorae of wine. Jar labels
indicate their origin to be from the Delta region, which boasted the
finest vineyards in Egypt. The fact that only four of the two dozen
had contents labeled “sweet” indicates that Tut preferred his wine
dry. Twelve jars differed from the others in having long necks incor-
porating long handles. Since these were Syrian style jars, it may be
that the wine inside was imported, but because jars were commonly
reused, we cannot know for certain whether Tut drank domestic or
imported blends. Vintages were indicated by citing the year of a
pharaoh’s reign without mentioning which pharaoh. One jar bore
the vintage “year thirty-one,” although Tut is known to have ruled
only nine years. Either this wine was a rare old vintage from the
time of his grandfather (Tut’s father reigned only seventeen years)
or it was in a reused jar with its old label still affixed.13
The unanswered question about Egyptian wine is whether it
was red or white. Abundant scenes show the color of the grapes
which range from dark purple to light rose, but grapes of any skin
color yield the same white juice. What determines the color of the
wine is whether the juice ferments in its skins, which produces red
versions. What type Egyptians made is not known, although later
Greek writers remarked on the dark color of Egyptian wine.
Other kinds of wine were produced in smaller amounts from
the juice of figs, perhaps of dates, and certainly of pomegranates.
Grape juice was also drunk as an unfermented syrup by boiling
the juice down to a very sweet drink. Since wine turns to vinegar
when exposed to the air, Egyptian knowledge of this acidic liquid,
by accident if not by design, was unavoidable because the clay
containers in which wine was stored admitted air through their
pores—in fact, wine jars found in tombs today all contain nothing
but dried residue. Whether Egyptians used vinegar in cooking or

in salads is not known.
Unlike poorer classes, the well-to-do dined regularly on meat;
however, even the richest did not eat meat every day, as indicated
by a list of food delivered to a minor pharaoh who received bread
and beer daily, but not meat.14 Vast herds of cattle of several species
roamed the grassy Delta to satisfy the carnivorous appetites of those
who could afford them. Temple and tomb scenes show one spe-
cies of long-legged cow with wide-spreading, lyre-shaped horns,
perhaps akin to the early longhorned cattle of Texas. Other scenes
depict a squatter, shorter-horned species. In color both types ranged
from brown to red to dappled. Perhaps the tall type was raised pri-
marily for its meat; the shorter, for milk. Miniature models show
cattle stables housing from four to six cattle in adobe enclosures
with a manger built into one wall and stacked bales of hay. Minia-
ture workmen in these models hand-feed the cows to fatten them
before butchering.15 Demonstrating their fondness for beef, tomb
owners commissioned butchering scenes for their tomb walls, all
showing a steer on its back with its four legs trussed together. First
the legs were hacked off, then the head was removed with long
knives and, finally, the body was cut into various chops and hung
to bleed out and cure.
Herodotus records the preparation of a cow sacrifice:
[T]hey take the paunch of the animal out entire, leaving the intestines and
fat inside the body; they then cut off the legs, the ends of the loins, the
shoulders, and the neck; and having so done, they fill the body of the
steer with clean bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other
aromatics. Thus filled, they burn the body, pouring over it great quantities
of oil.16
He then tells how priests and temple attendants feasted on the meat
when it was done. Altogether the recipe sounds delicious, including
the oiling of the skin to keep it moist and tender. We may assume
that what was good enough for the temple staff was enjoyed by the
wealthy at their banquets as well.
Pigs were plentiful in Egypt, although their use as food is con-
troversial. These animals were associated with the evil god Seth,
the mortal enemy of Horus embodied by the pharaoh. For this
reason, many of the Greeks who visited Egypt during its later days
believed that Egyptians did not eat pork. Yet it is known that Seth
was worshipped by some Egyptians; indeed, some pharaohs were
named Seti after this god. Either the Egyptians worshipped Horus
At the top Egyptian wide-horned cattle, similar to Texas longhorns, travel

by boat. Below is a squatter, shorter-horned breed. One boy at the bottom
holds a cow securely by her foreleg while a second boy milks her.
This scene from an Old Kingdom tomb shows the various stages of butch-
ering the front legs of a bull.
to whom the pig was anathema, or they worshipped Seth who

favored the pig. In either case, the Greeks reasoned, religious stric-
tures would prevent the killing of pigs and consumption of pork.
Still other commentators claim that Egyptians shared the Hebrew
belief that pork was unclean, therefore unhealthy, even suggesting
that the Hebrews may have acquired their aversion to pork during
their stay in Egypt.
What were all the pigs doing in Egypt then, if they were not
eaten? Since the parasite in pork that causes trichinosis is so tiny
that the connection between undercooked pork and disease was
only discovered in the nineteenth century, it is unlikely that either
the ancient Egyptians or Hebrews would have known about its
health dangers. As to the reports of the Greeks, they were based
on a failure to understand the Egyptian religion or what it meant
to associate an animal with a god. Egyptians saw no contradiction
in revering both Horus and Seth, for each was a powerful god,
despite the fact that these two divinities might have warred against
each other. The fact that Egyptians identified a certain animal with
a god did not stop them from enjoying a meal of the beast. For
example, one special steer was singled out to become the emblem
of the god Apis and pampered all its life, then mummified after
death. In addition, pharaohs referred to themselves as the “Strong
of Bull So-and-So.” Yet Egyptians relished beef, regardless of the
fact that they worshipped one member of the species and viewed
their godly pharaohs as sharing bovine attributes.
So it was with pork; Egyptians of most classes loved it. The only
truth to the Greek reports is that priests, who followed severe
dietary strictures, avoided touching a pig, let alone eating one.
Since the Greeks reported herds of hundreds of pigs and described
how they were fattened, they should have known as much. If fur-
ther proof were needed, numerous scenes in tombs, going back to
the Old Kingdom, show processions of people carrying food. Pigs
figure prominently. Indeed, the Roman author Athenaeus, who lived
Food 121
for a time in Egypt, recorded one way the Egyptians ate pork that
may be the earliest reference to a sandwich.
[E]ach diner is served with a loaf of pure wheat bread molded flat, upon
which lies another loaf which they call oven-bread; also a piece of swine’s
flesh.17
Both goats and sheep, called “small cattle,” were eaten by the
Egyptians, despite the fact that rams were associated with the god
Amun and worshipped in various temples. Sheep of two varieties
existed. The most common species grew a pair of horns that curled
around almost in a circle. A different species had straight horns
that spread several feet wide and was portrayed as the head of the
ancient ram-god Khnum. However, this second species is seldom
depicted as an animal, so it may have become extinct early in his-
toric times. Sheep were certainly domesticated in the earliest days
of Egypt, and they roamed in large herds throughout the country;
one record refers to a flock of 5,800.18 These utilitarian animals sup-
plied wool, in addition to their milk and meat. Goats also existed
in great numbers. One record lists a herd of either 9,136 animals or
31,256, depending on the interpretation of a difficult passage. Since
pictured goats all have short hair, Egyptians must have used these
animals for milk and meat, but not for wool.
In addition to these meats available in regular supply, wild ani-
mals provided food on a more irregular basis. Ancient paintings
show that many species of animal roamed what is now a desert
adjoining the cultivated land, supported by a climate moister than
today’s arid one. Gazelle, antelope, ibex, hartebeest, oryx, addax,
wild donkeys and deer were avidly pursued by hunters. In early
days, before horses were imported into Egypt, hunts consisted
of groups of men either driving their prey into a netted area or a
smaller number of men hunting with dogs. Egyptians were possi-
bly the first people to domesticate the dog from a wild species that
resembles the modern saluki hound. They followed a pack of these
rangy dogs and finished off with bows and arrows whatever prey
the dogs hamstrung. Lone hunters sought smaller game, such as
rabbits or hedgehogs.
When the horse and chariot came to Egypt after the Second Inter-
mediate Period, dangerous game became part of the quarry, includ-
ing lions and leopards. In addition, speedy ostriches, fierce wild
cattle and even mammoth elephants fell to Egyptian sportsmen.
Hyenas, too, are shown both hunted and trussed by ropes, and
hand-fed in a pen. Their flesh is bitter and they have never been
known to be raised for hunting or domesticated as pets, so it is dif-
ficult to imagine the use Egyptians made of them. Nor were they
ever sacrificed by the Egyptians.
Egyptians also kept working animals. Oxen pulled carts and, occa-
sionally, helped haul heavy stones, although humans performed
most of that labor. Donkeys carried smaller loads, including rid-
ers, and helped thresh grain. There were pets as well. In addition to
dogs, Egyptians loved cats, which they were the first to domesticate
from a similarly sized wild feline. Monkeys provided amusements
for both children and adults, and most homes kept birds for their
songs.
The end of a meal called for something sweet. Pure sugar, which
we obtain from sugar beets or sugar cane, did not exist in ancient
Egypt, but honey did. Egyptians learned to cultivate bees and
even how to use smoke to drug them so the honey could be col-
lected without paying the price of stings. Some writers contend
that honey was a royal prerogative based on the fact that an ancient
royal title for the pharaoh was bity, “He of the Bee.”19 This theory
is contradicted by the ease and negligible cost of producing large
supplies of the sweet nectar that would naturally be desired by
many, as well as by the difficulty of enforcing such a restriction in
the case of wild bees. Additional sweetness came from fruits and
their juices. Sweet pastries and cakes existed as well. One recipe
comes from the tomb of Rekhmire, a vizier during the New King-
dom, who must have relished a particular cake—by inscribing the
recipe on the wall of his tomb he assured himself pieces of it for
eternity. First “tiger nuts” (tubers of cyprus grass which grew
wild in the marshes) were ground into flour. The flour then was
mixed with honey and baked.20 Where one recipe survives, there
must have been others.
When Egyptians prepared for death they covered their tomb
walls with scenes of whatever they enjoyed most during life, believ-
ing that the gods, seeing these pictures, would provide more of the
same in the next life. The most common of all scenes are meals. Most
show only a husband and wife eating while they gaze at each other,
but many show festive banquets, replete with guests. Egyptians
loved to eat and adored feasting with their friends. What they
loved in life, they wanted to take with them to the next world, so
food is often found mixed with other objects in tombs. Ducks, geese
and various grains have been identified.
Food 123
A typical, lavish banquet consisted of a group sitting on the floor

or at individual round tables. Often they reposed on low chairs or
stools under which lay a basin for washing their hands, sometimes
with a pet cat or monkey beside it. Men and women ate together,
both dressed in flowing linen gowns that reached the floor. The
women held lotus flowers in one hand for the perfume and wore a
perfume cone on their head made of a fatty substance that released
a pleasing aroma as heat from the head slowly melted it during the
course of the evening. Heaps of food completely covered the small
tables. There were breads of several shapes and varieties, whole
roasted trussed fowl and joints of meat, several kinds of vegetables
and assorted fruit. The mountains of food seem impossibly high as
depicted and each item is shown whole and individual, none on a
plate or in a bowl. This is because the owner of the tomb wanted
no ambiguity about the food he desired for eternity, so each bit is
depicted unequivocally, if not realistically.
At an actual banquet, rather than a pile of food, various courses
would have been served one after another in containers. Plates
were not used, but ceramic bowls or, more likely at such formal
affairs, blue glazed and painted faience dishes would have held the
food. Cups of similar material stood ready for wine and were con-
tinually refilled from large pitchers carried by circulating servant
girls. Other servant girls whisked away each bowl from a finished
course, replacing it with the next. Supplemented with a knife for
cutting mouth-sized morsels, the primary eating utensil was the
eater’s hand, which explained the water pitcher below each chair.
As dish after dish arrived at the table and cups were replen-
ished, an orchestra of lute, harp and drum accompanied one or more
Servants attend guests at a banquet; a band plays on the left.
singers. Professional dancing women, naked except for a slim waist

sash, moved energetically to the music, their activity emphasized
by round weights at the ends of their long hair. With so much to eat
and especially to drink, accidents were expected. Paintings show
servant girls holding basins beneath the mouths of celebrants who
have eaten or drunk too much. Except for that, the party sounds
like fun even today.
The Egyptian diet proved ample and reasonably healthy for most
of the population. A calculation of the daily food intake in Ptol-
emaic times, which was not the most bountiful era, arrived at 3,780
daily calories for the average adult from grain alone.21 Considering
that the American average for all food hovers around 2,000 calories
today, this statistic seems remarkable. The only reason Egyptians
were not all obese is that their occupations generally involved hard,
physical labor which burns calories. Their situation resembled
American farmers before mechanization, who ate more at breakfast
without weight gain than the average person today consumes in
two days. Actually, the Egyptian diet was healthier than a simple
calorie calculation implies. Their calories did not come from sugars,
greasy gravies or fried foods, but entirely from natural products.
Herodotus ranked Egyptians as the healthiest people in the world
(after the Libyans). Since he lacked an understanding of nutrition,
this merely tells us that Egyptians presented more vigorous, trim
figures than his Greeks. From the thousands of statues and paint-
ings of Egyptians that survive, it does seem that every man stood
slim and well muscled, every woman slender and gently curved.
They portray creatures of perfect eating habits.
Remembering that only a rare person would choose to have him-
self portrayed as other than perfect, however, such likenesses must
be taken with a dose of skepticism. After all, these paintings and
statues generally depict people in the prime of their life, despite
the fact that they existed in tombs which generally held old bod-
ies. Surely there were old Egyptians and obese Egyptians, not to
mention diseased Egyptians. Occasionally such imperfections are
depicted, even in the same tomb that elsewhere presents the owner
as an Adonis or a Venus. The purpose of Egyptian funerary depic-
tion was more to show how the deceased wanted to look in the
next world than how he looked in this one. Nevertheless, the rare
statues showing age, double chins, rolls of belly fat and dwarfism
clearly prove that not everyone attained perfection. It seems that
most Egyptians presented more vigor and trimness in their appear-
ance than their contemporaries, as eyewitnesses attest, but with
Food 125
exceptions and without immunity from the inexorable ravages

of age. Credit for their general good appearance goes to exercise
and diet.
The greatest problem with this diet was its effect on the teeth,
evident in severe wearing and signs of dental abscesses in mummy
after mummy. Making bread from grain swept off the ground intro-
duced quantities of sand in the final loaf, an abrasive that would
wear away granite, let alone the dentine of teeth. A diet of such
bread eventually ground the teeth away, exposing their roots to
decay. On the other hand, normal cavities were rare because of the
absence of pure sugar.
Egyptian Food
Meat: beef, lamb, pork, goat, gazelle, antelope, ibex, hartebeest, oryx,
addax, wild donkey, deer, rabbit, hedgehog, ostrich, duck, goose,
pigeon, dove, smaller birds
Vegetables: onions, garlic, radishes, peppers, lettuce, celery, leeks,
parsley, peas, squash, cucumbers, fava beans, chick peas, lentils,
lima beans(?), papyrus, lotus root and nuts
Fruit: figs, grapes and raisins, melons, dates, dom nuts, jujube, pome-
granates, persea, carob, juniper beans, almonds, olive, apples(?)
Spices: salt, anise, mint, cumin, dill, marjoram, rosemary, thyme,
sage, mustard seeds, celery seeds, safflower, cinnamon, coriander
NOTES
1. Kurt Baer, “The Low Price of Land in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of the
American Research Center in Egypt 1 (1962): 25 – 45.
2. Noted in William J. Darby, Paul Ghalioungui, and Louis Crevetti,
Food: The Gift of Osiris (New York: Academic Press, 1977), vol. 2, p. 502.
3. Ibid., 503.
4. Only ancient Sumer offers a challenge to this claim. Whether beer
was first brewed in Sumer or Egypt is still argued—the timing was close,
whichever country won the race. One difference in beers of these two
ancient countries is that Egyptians strained theirs as we do before drink-
ing, Sumerians instead sipped theirs through a straw.
5. A. Lucas and J. R. Harris, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries
(London: Histories and Mysteries of Man, 1989), 10–11.
6. Darby, Ghalioungui, and Crevetti, Food, vol. 2, p. 583.
7. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 337.
8. Cited in ibid., vol. 2, p. 399.
9. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 302.
10. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 653 –95.

11. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 697–99.
12. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 791–807.
13. See Leonard H. Lesko, King Tut’s Wine Cellar (Berkeley, Calif.: B. C.
Scribe Publications, 1977), 23.
14. Cited in Alan Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1961), 152.
15. One such model is reproduced in H. E. Winlock, Models of Daily Life
in Ancient Egypt: From the Tomb of Meket-Re at Thebes (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1955), fig. 17.
16. Quoted in Darby, Ghalioungui, and Crevetti, Food, vol. 1, p. 139.
17. Quoted in ibid., vol. 1, p. 191.
18. Quoted in ibid., vol. 1, p. 221.
19. Claimed at least for early times in Ibid., vol. 2, p. 430.
20. Cited by Salima Ikram, “Food for Eternity: What the Ancient Egyp-
tians Ate and Drank,” part 2, “Greens, Bread, Beverages & Sweets,” KMT 5,
no. 2 (Summer 1994): 55.
21. Cited by Darby, Ghalioungui, and Crevetti, Food, vol. 1, p. 54.
6
CLOTHES AND OTHER
ADORNMENTS
What did an Egyptian man wear under his kilt or an Egyptian

woman under her dress? Probably nothing. Garments designed for
modesty would have to wait for people more obsessed with sex
than the ancient Egyptians who were practical to the point of work-
ing naked in hot, swampy terrain. Yet they loved clothes. A New
Kingdom architect’s tomb contained seventeen sleeveless tunics,
twenty-six shirts and fifty triangular loincloths to assure his fash-
ionable appearance in the Next World.1 The loincloths, simple linen
triangles with strings at two corners, were worn by draping the
point down the back and tying the strings around the waist before
pulling the point through the legs to tuck in the string at the front.
Most likely no additional layers covered them, since similar loin-
cloths are pictured as the sole attire of other workers.
Of course, loincloths represented the low end of the Egyptian
wardrobe. When attired for formal occasions, Egyptians could out-
dress anyone with lovely, elegant gowns worn by both genders—
the original unisex clothing. White—the whiter the better—was the
color of choice in most eras; color was added by numerous acces-
sories. Dresses fit close to the body to reveal any imperfections of
figure, which may be why Egyptians maintained the slim shapes
depicted in their portraits. Heads were adorned, and cosmetics
generously painted the faces of both women and men. As in every
other culture, differences in style proclaimed differences in social

status.
MATERIALS
Fine linen remained the most used fabric throughout all the eras
of ancient Egypt. Because it “breathes,” linen worked well in the
warm Egyptian climate where insulation was seldom needed, and
it could be loosely woven into a gauze that allowed air to circulate
around the skin. In addition to being cool, it was strong and glowed
with an attractive sheen. Cotton did not arrive in Egypt until Roman
times. Wool clothing existed, but since it was forbidden in temples2
and tombs and since most surviving clothing comes from burials,
actual articles of wool material are rare.
Egyptians cultivated thousands of acres of waving flax, the plant
that yields linen. Through trial and error they learned that har-
vesting the crop at different stages of ripeness resulted in different
kinds of fiber. When the flax stem was green, its soft fiber could be
spun into the finest thread; when yellow, stronger fiber would hold
pleats well; when brown, tough fiber could be woven into ropes
and mats. The fibers inside the stem, however, did not form easily
into thread, for they were surrounded by pectin, a stiff, woody core
that required several stages of liberation.
The entire plant was first pulled up by the root and taken to a
home or small factory where the work of producing thread took
place. After drying, the stems were vigorously “rippled,” pulled
through a comb-like device that sliced them into long ribbons
which were soaked for two weeks in vats of water to dissolve the
unusable surrounding pectin. Even after soaking, some bits of
the pectin would still adhere to the fibers which were first dried,
then beaten with wood mallets before being scraped over a sharp,
lipped tool. Then the fibers, freed of unwanted material, had to be
combed straight. Single fibers were attached end to end by being
twisted to form twin strands that could be rolled into balls and
placed in containers until spun into thread. Some of these hold-
ing containers amounted to little machines. One consisted of a
heavy limestone bowl nine inches in diameter—large enough to
hold two balls of the rolled fiber—with a pair of loops at the bot-
tom through which the fiber ran. This device maintained tension
on the fiber while holding the balls in their container.3 Another
device used a hole in the lid to guide the fiber under the tension
provided by the lid’s weight.
Clothes and Other Adornments 129
Spinning, which straightened and strengthened the fibers, meant

exactly what the word says. Egyptian spindles consisted of a wooden
shaft, four inches or more in length, to which a whorl—a two-to-
four inch disk—was attached nearer the top than the bottom. The
fiber was tied to a groove at the top of the shaft (later to a hook),
then the spindle was rolled vigorously down the spinner’s thigh
which set it spinning, stretching the fiber by its weight while twist-
ing it for strength. This produced thread of a consistent diameter.
Generally, Egyptian thread was two-ply: the ends of two fibers
spun once were attached to the spindle and twisted together. Single
Egyptian threads were spun counterclockwise, the natural rotation
of flax, while added plies were spun in the opposite direction to
prevent the unwinding of individual threads. As thread was pro-
duced it was wound into a figure-eight skein on pegs attached to
the wall or the ground.
Plain white linen was preferred during most Egyptian eras; for
added whiteness, fabric would be exposed to the intense Saharan
sun to bleach it. Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty, however,
favored colored fabrics, and women during all eras who could not
afford fine linen colored their fabric to disguise its cheapness. Of
course, colored fabric required colored threads. Egyptians produced
blue, black, brown, red and yellow threads and some, such as green,
were created by double dyeing with separate colors (blue and yel-
low).4 Colored thread made patterned fabrics possible in addition
to solid colors, and, alternatively, white fabric could always be hand
painted with figures and hieroglyphs.
After the thread had been produced, it could be woven. The origi-
nal Egyptian looms, dating from prehistoric times, were horizontal—
simply two wood beams anchored to the floor by short pegs.
Working such a loom required kneeling, and the length of the fab-
ric that could be woven was limited by a weaver’s reach. By the
New Kingdom, vertical looms—consisting of two beams anchored
to the ends of a tall, upright wooden frame—had come into wide
use. These looms could be worked while sitting or standing to pro-
duce longer lengths of cloth with less discomfort for the weaver
and allowed such techniques as tapestry weaves (where the thread
is wrapped around the loom back) to be developed.
Whatever type of loom was used, weaving followed the same
principles. Rows of threads were looped around the length of the
beams at the top and bottom, forming long warp rows. A cross-
ing thread (the weft) was passed over then under successive warp
threads, beginning at the bottom of the loom and working up to
Scenes of spinning and weaving.
the top. Rather than laboriously running the thread under and over
each warp thread individually, Egyptians invented a time-saving
method.5 Alternating warp threads were attached by loops of string
to a wooden stick (known today as a heddle rod) as long as the width
of the loom and resting on the remaining warp threads, creating a
space between each set. This permitted the crossing weft thread to
be attached to the end of a dowel that was thrown through this val-
ley in one motion, completing a row of the fabric with a single pass.
For the next pass, which had to reverse the over and under of the
previous row, a second rod, attached to the remaining warp threads,
raised them above the others. A wide paddle (a weaving sword)
could now be shoved between the two warp sets to force a space.
Then the weft rod was thrown back across, creating the second row
of the cloth. In this manner, the weft passed over and under different
warp threads every two rows, forming a tightly woven fabric.
Cloth could be woven finely indeed. An example from as early as
the Second Dynasty of 160 warp threads and 140 weft threads per
square inch6 would have required both extremely fine thread and
the use of a “beater stick,” a narrow wood strip that extended the
width of the fabric. After passing such a strip through the valley
after a weft row had been laid down, the weaver beat it vigorously
against that row, pressing it close against previous rows.
Fabrics up to seven and a half feet in width have been found,
showing that looms at least that wide were in use. Single pieces of
fabric up to seventy-five feet in length have been recovered from
tombs, for which the warp threads must not have been cut to the
length of the loom but merely held in place, probably by weights.
Once a loom-full of weft rows had been completed, the piece was
moved down to bring fresh warp threads onto the loom for contin-
ued weaving. Side fringe along the fabric was created by leaving
loops of weft thread loose at the edge of each row instead of pull-
ing them tight; end fringe by leaving lengths of warp thread. Both
were common on Egyptian cloth. More elaborate kinds of fabrics
were also produced. Examples of toweling, where little loops of weft
are pulled loose between the warp threads, date as far back as the
Middle Kingdom. Beautiful embroidery of colored thread sewn
into figures and patterns on finished cloth were found in the tombs
of two Eighteenth-Dynasty pharaohs, Tuthmosis IV and Tutankha-
men. Needles of bone, copper and bronze were used for sewing,
aided by stone thimbles with a dimple on top to catch the needle.7
Tapestry, found among the clothing in the same two royal tombs,
is created when patterns formed of different colored thread show
on both sides of the fabric: rather than weaving each color under
and over alternating warp threads, it was simply looped around
the warp threads to be covered. The resulting slits between each
patch of color and the adjoining area were sewn together after the
weaving was complete.
Despite Egyptians’ love of linen, it took second place to wool on
chilly winter nights. Excavated in Egypt from as far back as pre-
historic times, wool was used primarily by those who could not
afford more costly linen but also by the well-to-do as capes and
stoles to fend off cold. Spinning wool was a more complex opera-
tion because the hairs of sheep were much shorter than the several-
feet-long flax fibers. A few hairs at a time had to be twisted using a
spindle, then more added at the top, but staggered, to permit a new
hair to interlace with others already spun. Once produced, how-
ever, wool thread was woven in the same way as linen.
Sheep, goats and cattle also provided skins for clothing and other
uses. Rawhide became thongs for attaching metal to wood for tools
and weapons, and, before the introduction of nails and glue, for
attaching one piece of wood to another in carpentry. Leather not
only formed the reins of chariots, the quivers of arrows, the braces
bowmen wore to protect their forearms against the snap of the
bowstring, but also headbands, belts, bags, dog collars, chair and
stool seats, covering for boxes, material to write on and tents. One
remarkable use of leather was the cut-out kilt. This kilt was made
by carefully slicing a hide to form a web of interlocked strands,
sometimes as narrow as a string or even a thread, with one area
left solid at the seat and another for the waistband. From pictures
of wheat harvests it seems that these delicate garments were com-
monly worn during such work. Such a kilt would be both cool and
modest. Egyptians also learned to appliqué leather, tan it, dye it and
paint on it, resulting in some lovely work. Because gazelle hide was
favored for its softness and color, scenes of gazelle herds in pens
that were once interpreted as attempts at domesticating this wild
animal might be better considered portrayals of penned leather
stock.
Clothing manufacture constituted a cottage industry in which,
after women had spun, woven and sewn enough clothing for their
families, they bartered any surplus for supplies. Tomb paintings
and miniature models also depict men sewing and weaving in
workshops with two or more looms, as would be the case on a large
estate with many people to dress, at a temple with its groups of
priests or, especially, at the royal court.
KINDS OF APPAREL
The simplest, most common clothing for males was the Egyptian
kilt, a rectangular piece of fabric that was wrapped tightly around
the waist then tied in the front with cords or belted. It extended
from the waist to just above the knee. One end was wrapped over
the other, but the front of the fabric, where the ends crossed, was
still loose enough to permit the legs to move in a normal stride.
Sometimes the bottom end of the overlapping part of the fabric was
cut away in a pleasing curve, or the fabric could be cut into an arc
to produce a curved slit in front rather than overlapping all the way
down. A special addition for this revealing front was first added
by a pharaoh but worked its way down the governmental hierar-
chy over time: a tapering ribbed flap fell from the waist to show
beneath the parted front curve of the kilt. Alternatively, one end
of a wide sash could descend down the front of the kilt. Kilt fabric
Above, a kilt with a flap in front. The

steps required to wrap a kilt and flap
are shown above it. Drawing by Rivka
Rago.
was also pleated to form regular vertical lines, another reason for
favoring linen, but leather examples, both solid and cut into net, are
known. Beginning in the New Kingdom, kilts grew long enough to
reach mid-calf, becoming male skirts. The fabric was usually cut
very full to form numerous gathered folds, although it still clung
close enough to the body to reveal its outlines.
Males, from pharaohs to farmers, wore simple kilts—as often
as not with bare chests—when working, resting or fighting. To
dress up a little, or to fend off a late afternoon chill, a shirt—either
a short-sleeved jersey or a shoulder-strapped band around the
chest—was added. A stole of fabric might be also thrown over the
shoulders to cross the chest. One peculiar kilt variation featured a
stiffly starched front that stood out a foot or more in an inverted
“v.” Of course this projection would have interfered with physical
labor, which was the whole point: to demonstrate that the wearer
was an overseer or a scribe who never needed to sweat. A similar
A long kilt with starched

front worn by an official
to show he did not do
any physical work.
principle led overseers and government officials to don the long

skirt style—demonstrably less practical for vigorous work than its
shorter relative. Kilts did, however, even show up at formal eve-
ning occasions, but these were covered by an ankle-length overskirt
of diaphanous linen and topped by a shirt.
The most common woman’s attire was a sheath held up by shoul-
der straps, a long, narrow dress that began at the ankles and rose
to just under the breasts. Often a band of contrasting material bor-
dered the top, or the top was sashed. This almost bare-breasted ver-
sion sometimes substituted wider straps that covered the breasts
more completely. A longer version enveloped the whole body, like a
tunic, leaving sleeveless armholes and a slightly scooped neck. Still
another version added short sleeves to a tied keyhole neck. In every
case, however, the apparel followed the slim shape of the body and
reached down the leg to the ankles. These democratic dresses were
worn both by the lady of the house and by her female servants.
At banquets, however, the lady of the house would never be mis-
taken for a servant, although she might be confused with the man
of the house, for both males and females wore the same sort of fine
dress, something very like the saris still worn throughout India.
The fabric consisted of nothing but a rectangle, four times as long
as its width, with the manner of draping creating the garment. One
corner of the rectangle was tucked into a waist cord at the side,
and the whole fabric was wrapped completely around the waist
once. Next, pleats were formed by tucking the fabric judiciously
into the waist cord. The fabric was wrapped around the back again
before returning to the front where it was tossed first under the far
shoulder then over the other shoulder from behind. With the free
end now falling down the front, it was tossed over the shoulder
it had previously gone under, brought back under the other arm
and finally tied in the front to the fabric’s other end, the one previ-
ously tucked into the waist cord.8 The effect could be lovely indeed.
Overall, it appeared that a shawl had been tied around the hips
over an underskirt, while another shawl with a peak training down
the back had been thrown over the shoulders, covering one arm to
the elbow but leaving the other arm half bare. Attention would be
drawn to the waist where all the wrapping came together at the tied
ends of the fabric, from which lovely folds fell to the ankles.
A sheath dress shown as a pattern on the left and as it looked

when worn on the right. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
The tunic dress shown as a pattern on the left and as it looked

when worn on the right. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
Steps to create the basic Egyptian wrapped dress, completed in the right
figure. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
A variation of the wrapped dress that covered both arms. Drawing

by Rivka Rago.
Variations of draping produced different looks. Instead of going

under the far arm from the front, the fabric could be thrown over
that arm from the front, then over the other shoulder from the back,
to tie at the waist. This produced a garment that covered both arms
equally to the elbow with less emphasis on the waist. Another vari-
ation sent the fabric under the near arm from the front and over the
opposite shoulder from the rear, leaving half the chest bare.
In addition to sheath and sari-like apparel, a third kind of dress,
mainly but not solely for women, used two separate rectangles of
fabric. One piece was about seven feet long, the other two thirds
that length; both were twice as long as their widths. Together they
formed a skirt-and-shawl ensemble. The larger piece was gathered
at the waist to form the skirt, and the shorter piece was thrown
around the back of the shoulders while the ends were gathered
together and tied at mid-chest. Less closely following the outline
of the figure, this outfit often consisted of material so finely woven
that the body’s outline could be seen through it. A common varia-
tion enlarged the shawl into a cape. In the case of this larger sec-
ond piece, the skirt too would be longer and fuller, and, rather than
A skirt and cape dress worn

by a queen, as her vulture
headdress indicates. Draw-
ing by Rivka Rago.
gathering such a large skirt at the waist, its top would be grasped
at each side to form ends that could be knotted beneath the breasts.
This created folds outlining the hips and waist. The cape was pulled
over the shoulders and tied together with the skirt, which thereby
covered both arms to the elbows and formed what looked like a
single garment. Both these variations later became characteristic
attire for women in other nations. The most usual ancient Greek
dress for women consisted of the Egyptian skirt and shawl worn
over an undertunic for Greece’s cooler climate; classical Roman
women commonly wore the Egyptian skirt and cape variation,
again over a tunic.
A fourth style of dress consisted of a full length envelope of fab-
ric, more suited to men than women. A five-foot-high by seven- or
eight-foot-wide rectangle was sewn together along the short ends,
forming a doubled piece of cloth. The top was sewn straight across.
A scoop was then cut in the top center for the head, and slits were
made at the top of both sides for the arms. This left the only large
Back view of a gown

and sash dress. Draw-
ing by Rivka Rago.
opening at the bottom, so the dress would be pulled down over the
head until the head and arms stuck through their appropriate holes.
It formed a very full robe, similar to a choir gown of today, but it
was seldom worn in this simple manner. It was usually pulled to
the body by slitting the sides so the front half could be pulled to the
back and pinned at the waist, while the back half was drawn around
to the front and secured with a sash. The sash was wide enough to
drape the back from the waist to the bottom of the buttocks and long
enough to wrap twice around the body, tie in the front and still leave
an end long enough to fall to the top of the feet. When a woman
wore this type of dress, the back unsewn half was hand gathered
into ends that could be tied at the waist; the front half simply fell
in multiple folds. As a variation, instead of tying the back together,
a sash narrower than the male version could circle the body just
below the breasts and secure the back flap across the hips.
Despite their abundant folds and turns of fabric, Egyptians often
dressed up what was already elaborate by adding colorful waist
sashes whose ends dangled in the front to mid-thigh. The sash could
be a simple ornamental cord, strands of colorful beads or a solid
piece of patterned fabric. Its ends might be further embellished with
religious symbols, such as the cow face of the goddess Hathor, or by
secular motifs, such as lotus flowers. Sometimes the simple strapped
tunic worn by most women was elevated by a web of bead netting
worn as an overdress. At other times, beads or buttons (never used
to close openings) were sewn to the dress in patterns.
Of course pharaohs as well as certain government officials wore
special attire to indicate their rank. In addition to distinctive crowns,
a bull’s tail descending from the waist in the back of a kilt could be
worn only by the king. Originally, the pharaoh alone was permitted
to sling a leopard skin—complete with its head—over his shoul-
der, but that emblem was later adopted by his highest official and
finally by high priests. All priests wore distinctive garb: a simple
robe of white linen that fell full to the ground, clearly distinguished
from the form-fitting clothing of the laity. This outfit was adopted
by high officials as well, who often held priestly status in addi-
tion to their government positions. Children wore nothing at all
until they were old enough to walk under their own guidance, then
both sexes wore a simple kilt until eight years old or so when they
donned the same apparel as the adult of their sex.
Varieties of Egyptian sandals. Egyptians did not wear shoes.
No outfit would be complete without shoes or, in the Egyptian

case, sandals. Their design was so practical that they are still worn
today throughout most of the world. To a foot-shaped sole, a thong
was attached where the big toe and its neighbor come together.
Another strip was anchored to the sole’s sides about two-thirds of
the way back. The wearer slipped his foot into the sandal, inching
along until the front thong worked its way between his toes and the
rear strip gripped the foot in front of the ankles. Such sandals, made
of either rushes or leather, were produced in quantity for both gen-
ders. Those made of rushes were frequently padded for comfort.
Sometimes a third strip joined the toe strap to the ankle strap which
fixed their positions and made stepping into the sandal easier. The
ankle strap could also be widened so it would not cut the flesh.
Occasionally another crossing strap was added between the front
of the sandal and the ankle strap to form an almost-shoe; a heel
strap might be sewn on as well.
JEWELRY
Colorful accents for the Egyptian’s white attire took the form of
abundant jewelry for both sexes. Necklaces, bracelets, armbands,
anklebands, earrings and finger rings, worn generously by both
men and women, solved that problem. So enamored were the
Egyptians of their jewelry that even colorful dresses were dressed
up by heaps of baubles, which increased in amount and complexity
as the centuries passed.
Although earrings were unknown to Egyptians until they saw
them on the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, it was
love at first sight, and both women and men wore them from then
on. Two types were common: rings or studs—each was attached
through a hole in the earlobe. Even statues sculpted without ear-
rings generally portrayed this hole. The ring style was usually made
of metal; gold was common. Ranging from thin wires to hollow
tubes three-quarters of an inch in diameter, these circles left a gap
for insertion. In some cases, gold foil covered a baser metal to lend
a gold look. Earrings were also carved from shell, bone, carnelian
and red jasper, or molded of faience, and might be inlayed with tur-
quoise or lapis lazuli. Ear studs were mushroom shaped with only
the flat end showing through the front of the ear so the stem could
hold them in place through the lobe. Faience examples are com-
mon, although gold, either solid or as gilt, is also known. Examples
from Tutankhamen’s tomb show that intricate pendants might be
hung from them as well. An unusual type of earring consisted of

metal coils with several twists that dangled from the ear. Ear plugs
also surface from time to time, and female mummies sometimes
exhibit the dangling lobe holes caused by such large insertions.9
When it came to jewelry for their necks, Egyptians threw subtlety
to the wind. They wore anything from chokers, to single-strand
necklaces, to multiple strands, to pectorals, to pendants and broad
collars up to ten inches wide. Besides their decorative function,
necklaces served amuletic and status purposes. Both sheet gold in
the shape of flies—military symbols for Egyptians—strung on bead
strands and heavy gold circle chains were awards for special ser-
vice to the country and proudly worn by the recipient. Amulets in
the shape of one god or another comprised the numerous rows of
necklaces. A string of hippopotamus charms, symbolizing the preg-
nant hippopotamus goddess Tawert, for example, might be worn
by a pregnant woman to call for protection from this goddess of
childbirth. Metal, faience or stone shaped like oyster shells ensured
health, as did figures of the dwarf god Bes. Cowrie shells, either
Servants help their master select a broad collar for

some festivity.
the real thing or carved facsimiles, warded off the evil eye. Young
children often wore a fish amulet as protection against drowning.
Indeed, fifty or more different emblems protected against as many
misfortunes.
The most characteristic Egyptian neckpiece was the broad col-
lar. This consisted of multiple strands of beads, tubes or amuletic
figures which terminated in solid ends anchoring the strands. Ties
emanated from the end pieces to knot around the back of the neck,
forming a collar that covered much of the chest and extended over
the shoulders. Because the collar could be weighty, a counterpoise
generally trailed down the back to balance and hold the piece in
place.
Smaller chokers formed of several bead strands tied tightly around
the neck enjoyed great popularity with women in the Old King-
dom, although they fell from favor thereafter, to be replaced by
looser neckwear. A single strand dangling an amulet or colorful
stone was popular during the earliest times. Gradually, elements
were added until the strand was covered, and several strands of
different lengths could be worn at once to create the necklace of
one’s desire. Pendants, a single amulet hanging at the end of a cord,
evolved from the New Kingdom on into pectorals to decorate the
mid-chest. Pendants could be rectangular plaques telling a little
story, say a scarab holding the sun in its front paws flanked by two
kneeling, worshiping gods beneath a cornice suggesting a temple,
or they could be massive breastplates shaped like a falcon, a vul-
ture or a ba-bird, the symbol of the soul. Some of the finest jewel-
ers’ work in gold and inlays was invested in such pieces which, not
infrequently, hung beneath a broad collar.
Nor were the limbs forgotten. Beginning in the New Kingdom,
broad bands circled the biceps above bracelets ringing the wrist. Such
bracelets consisted of flexible strands of beads or, more common
later, rigid bands. Whether they were of rows of beads, carnelian or
other stones, or bands of bronze or gold, perhaps with inlays, they
added flashes of color. Originally, bead strands were simply tied to
the arm, but later the ends were fixed to clasps that snapped together.
The other, rigid, type was hinged on two sides, one of which was
held by a pin that could be drawn out to remove the band. Ankles as
well were circled by bands of similar construction.
Not one but multiple finger rings—made of stone, faience or
metal—added to the decorative scheme. If of faience or stone, they
would be pierced through and attached to a metal ring or encased
in a bezel. The idea behind both methods was to allow the center
piece to turn over, revealing its back. The most popular ring
shape was the sacred scarab beetle, which symbolized existence
to the Egyptians. Thus, the wearer’s name might be inscribed on
the base to wish the owner long life symbolically. Alternatively, a
god or the pharaoh (a living god) might be inscribed on the base
with a request that he or she preserve the wearer. Since hard stones
were difficult to carve, the most commonly used material was
soft steatite, a grayish white stone glazed in lovely blue or green.
Rings were also frequently made of faience which, although easily
molded into complex shapes, broke if struck. It may be that these
fragile rings were party favors, such as wedding gifts from a newly
married couple to their guests.
The waist was also adorned: a woman’s girded by draped strings
of beads or amulets; a man’s cinched by a close fitting belt. Need-
less to say, a wealthy man or woman fully encased in finery could
bear several pounds of jewelry.
HAIR AND HEADDRESSES

Even with every other part of the body adorned, hair was not for-
gotten. Not satisfied with the lovely black color of their hair, Egyp-
tians devised complex cuts, wigs, ribbons, fillets and diadems to
dress their hair up to the standards of the rest of their attire.
There were several hairdos for men. Workmen wore short hair
left in bangs across the forehead, then shaped to the head halfway
down the neck. This produced a rounded look. Early depictions
also show tight curls, but straight hair is portrayed as a norm later.
In an alternative cut for men, the back was clipped straight across,
and the hair was pushed behind the ears, framing the head and
lengthening the face. This could be combined with a ladder cut to
create three or four horizontal rows. This square cut grew more
complicated in the New Kingdom, when the back fell to shoulder
length, sometimes including tight curls, or perhaps plaits, that ran
the length of the hair. About the same time, a new cut came into
vogue, angling from the nape of the neck to a longer front that
spilled to just below the shoulder.
Women always wore their hair longer than men—at least to their
shoulders, but generally trailing a foot or more down their backs.
Bangs and a center part were popular, in both cases with the hair
lining the face over the ears, instead of behind the ears as a man
would wear it. The ends were cut in a straight line. As with men,
fancy ladder cuts creating horizontal rows were often seen, but
The side lock of youth worn by a

prince, given the cobra on his head.
He is drawn looking older than he
was because of his high status.
curling in tight spirals, or perhaps thin plaits, was also common

through all eras.
Children before the age of puberty wore a distinctive cut. All the
hair of male children was shaved on one side and in back leaving
only one long side lock reaching below the shoulder. Female chil-
dren cut their hair to a mid-neck length except for the same side
lock that fell below the shoulder—the Egyptian sign of childhood.
These side locks were sometimes braided into three or so large
strands twisted together.
Serious hair decoration called for complex wigs, though, strangely,
Egyptians did not try to fool anyone into thinking the wigs were their
own hair. Statues often show a line of natural hair peeking out below
a wig. Since owners of statues had the last word about how they
were portrayed, they must have been proud of their wigs, suggest-
ing that these were expensive, prized articles. Wigs were composed
of human hair which, in the case of a long wig, would represent as
much as a decade’s worth of growth from someone’s head.
Princess Nofret from the Old

Kingdom wearing a wig to
simulate thick, curly hair.
Her straight natural hair
shows beneath the head-
band in front.
One unusual early female wig, shown on the Third Dynasty

statue of princess Nofret, consisted of a big head of bobbed hair cut
straight all around and standing out a good three inches when it
reached the bottom of the neck. In general, longer wigs extending
at least to the shoulders were most common. One version consisted
of thirty or more long, dangling coils of hair emanating from a cen-
tral part and tied at the end. A variation separated the coils into
two lappets, each tied with ribbon to form a large mass framing
each side of the face. Long hair arranged into ten or so ladder-cut
rows counted as a second type; a third type combined the first two:
rows of coils laddered into layers. Two wigs could also be worn
together, for example, a shorter wavy wig over a longer coiled wig.
Male wigs followed female styles except that they were shorter—
shoulder length or a little more—and usually lacked the center part.
Beeswax seems to have been the substance that kept the cuts and
curls in place, both on wigs and natural hair. Patting an Egyptian
head would have felt like rubbing a large, warm crayon.
Facial hair was all removed, with two exceptions. During the
early Old Kingdom, numerous statues of men show thin mustaches
seldom seen after that time. Pharaohs always wore beards on cere-
monial occasions, but private citizens never did. Statues and paint-
ings of pharaohs, however, invariably show lines running from the
beard to the ears, clearly indicating the ties of an artificial beard.
Presumably the beard recalled an early pharaoh who sported an
actual growth, but the tradition persisted long after the style had
gone out of general favor. The fake beards consisted of two varie-
ties: one was woven coarsely to show horizontal rows; two tresses
were braided together in the other. Both versions consisted of five
inches or more of beard that tipped forward at the end.
Hair and wigs were adorned in various ways. A simple ribbon
around the head, often tied in a bow, sometimes with long ends
trailing down the back, retained favor throughout all eras. This
developed into a plain fillet, or circle, of leather or gold. The Middle
Kingdom achieved a height of artistic excellence in hair ornamenta-
tion. One example, belonging to a princess named Khnumet, was
an airy, openwork gold diadem of tiny flowers on almost invisible
wires interspersed with six Maltese crosses, all accented by touches
of lapis lazuli, turquoise and carnelian. The dainty flowers would
have seemed to float through her hair. Simpler, but no less elegant,
was a sheet-gold diadem of Princess Sithathoriunet that was orna-
mented with inlayed rosettes. A gold cobra rose from the front, two
tall gold plumes rose in the back and two pairs of gold “ribbons”
trailed behind. Worn with this confection were hundreds of quarter-
inch gold tubes that lined her long curled hair to complete an allover
golden look. Men also indulged in diadems, as proven by a gold cir-
clet from Tutankhamen’s tomb with a rearing inlayed cobra in front
flanked by a vulture head. Gold ribbons trail behind while ribbons
on each side of the head end in rearing cobras. Probably the height
of fantasy headgear was a Middle Kingdom example consisting of
a gold plate worn on the top of the head. From it hung twenty-five
Pharaoh’s false beard of

authority showing the chin
strap that tied it in place.
Gold diadem found in Tutankha-

men’s tomb.
long rows of overlapping rosettes, originally inlayed with carnelian,

turquoise and glass. Placed over the hair (or wig), it sent stream after
stream of glittering rosettes cascading past the shoulders.
Despite Egypt’s fiery sun, hats were rare. Except for pharaoh’s
crowns, only simple kerchiefs for men are ever depicted. Two pri-
meval royal hats, one representing the original northern kingdom,
the other the south, served as crowns throughout Egypt’s history.
The crown of the south, known as the White Crown for its color,
consisted of a tall cone with a ball-like protuberance at the end.
The Red Crown of the north flared to a flat top about seven inches
high, but the back swept up in a narrow projection a foot above
the rest. Where the flat top joined the rear projection, a wire-like
appendage angled forward to coil in a front spiral about as high
as the rear piece. Since even a pharaoh could not take his crowns
with him to the next world, no examples of either type have been
found, leading to speculation about their material and construction.
Only statues and paintings give any indication of their appearance
and often show a combined crown incorporating both. Pharaohs
during the Old Kingdom, however, are generally portrayed in a

special kerchief, called the nemes, worn by the famous Sphinx as well.
Paintings and statues indicate that it consisted of two parts. First a
gold circlet with the royal cobra rising from the front was placed on
the head. Then a kerchief was held over the head and its front part
was tucked into the front of the circlet. When the remainder of the
kerchief dropped, it fell naturally into creases on either side of the
face and spilled down the back past the shoulders. The two ends
were pulled over the shoulders and sometimes cut into lappets. In
a longer version, the back was gathered and wrapped in a sheath
of the same fabric as the rest of the kerchief to form a column. The
kerchief material generally was striped.
With the advent of the New Kingdom a fourth crown eclipsed the
previous three. Called the Blue Crown, or, less accurately, the War
Crown, it consisted of a kind of helmet. Its round back section joined
in a line with a round front of slightly smaller diameter. The front
part was divided by a ridge into two halves. A gold cobra and band
lined the helmet front and another gold band lined the back. Circles
or pits dotted the headdress. Its material is not known, although
dyed, embossed leather is a possibility. At the same time a special
The tall crown of the south

was called the White
Crown because of its color.
The unusually shaped crown

of the north was called the
Red Crown because of its
color.
Nemes cloth headdress worn

only by pharaohs.
This Blue Crown became the

most common crown during
the New Kingdom.
crown came into vogue for the chief royal wife. More a headdress
than a crown, it consisted of a gold vulture lying on top of the head.
The vulture’s head reared above the wearer’s face while its wings
elegantly cradled her head.
COSMETICS
Brightly made-up Egyptian males would have shocked us with
the quantity and brightness of their “face paint,” and the women
were not outdone. Eyes of both sexes wore a surrounding thick line
that trailed out to the temple, causing the eyes to stand out brightly.
Originally the favored color was green, thought to have health-
giving properties, but black grew more common after the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty. The composition of both colors is known: ground
malachite, in the case of the green version; ground galena, in the
case of the black. These were mixed into a paste, probably with the
addition of some fat,10 and stored in cosmetic jars until used. Small
sticks of wood, bone or ivory were dipped into the jars and used as
applicators for drawing the lines.
Women reddened their lips with a brush dipped in a paste of red
ochre and fat. Although not certain, it seems from the bright red
on the lips of some male statues that men followed this fashion as
well. Rouge consisted of red ocher again, probably with fat to make
it adhere, and was applied with a pad. It is likely that henna, used
today in Egypt to color the palms of hands and soles of feet red, was
employed by the ancient Egyptians to dye their nails.
Makeup must also be removed in some way. Since Egyptian cos-
metics were composed of fat that would not wash off with water,
Egyptians concocted a cleansing cream. Powdered limestone mixed
with vegetable oils gently abraded away the makeup.
Lovely cases held stone or faience cosmetic jars in individual
compartments. Such cases usually included space for that essential
cosmetic aid, the mirror, which in Egypt always followed the same
shape. The reflecting part consisted of a highly polished metal circle
slightly flattened at top and bottom. A tang inserted into a holding
handle, often of wood, sometimes of metal, ivory, faience or even
stone, usually modeling an object, such as a papyrus column. The
Egyptian word for mirror literally translates as “see-face,” which
states its purpose well.
Considering that Egyptian cosmetics used fat as their base, they
must have quickly turned rancid, hence requiring something to
mask the odor. Perfume formed an essential component of every
lady’s beauty collection; it was added to cosmetics and used on its
own. Egyptian versions, however, differed from modern perfumes

whose alcohol bases aid the dispersion of the scent. Egyptians never
learned to distill alcohol. Their method was to soak some fragrant
material in fat or oil which would absorb some of the odor, then
wring out the fragrant oil through a cloth, much as they did with the
must of grapes. The fragrant oil could then be applied to the body.11
Analyses of ancient remains suggest that iris roots formed the fra-
grance of one perfume and balsam another, but other additives
included cinnamon, cardamom, myrrh, honey, even wine and the
flowers of the henna bush, sometimes in complex mixtures.
In addition to smearing perfume on various body parts, women
employed a special perfuming device at banquets and parties. A cone
of fat impregnated with perfume was placed on their heads which,
when melted slowly by body heat, released its aroma throughout
the evening. In addition, incense would burn throughout a party
to freshen the air. One famed incense was frankincense, a resin that
seeps through the trunks of special trees that grow only in southern
Arabia and Somalia. The search for frankincense explains continued
expeditions to Punt, as the Egyptians called Somaliland. A quantity
was recovered from Tutankhamen’s tomb that still gave off a pleas-
ant odor when burned 3,000 years later.12 The other famous incense
was myrrh, which served as a perfume as well. A resin, like frankin-
cense, it grew only in the same areas. Both produced fragrant fumes
at parties, and both sanctified idols in temples.
Before dressing and applying cosmetics, a question arose about
unwanted hair, a problem solved as in our day by razors and twee-
zers. These appliances originally were made of copper until harder
bronze became the metal of choice when its secret arrived in Egypt
after the Middle Kingdom. Razors resembled a modern surgical scal-
pel; tweezers were formed exactly the same way as our own. For the
sake of the face, a whetstone to hone the razor’s edge was a neces-
sary accessory. Some leather and some wooden cases survive as the
original Dopp kits for carrying all three hair removal instruments. Of
course, with the Egyptians’ intense interest in hair, combs abounded.
Rows of long teeth were carved from wood or ivory to create a comb
that differs from the modern version only in that it was held verti-
cally to achieve greater pulling power than our horizontal types.
NOTES
1. Cited in Philip J. Watson, Costume of Ancient Egypt (New York: Chel-
sea House, 1987), 20.
2. One requirement for priests was that all their hair had to be shaved.
Perhaps wool was forbidden in temples because it was regarded as a kind
of hair.
3. Pictured in William C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, vol. 2, The Hyksos
Period and the New Kingdom (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1959), 411.
4. For a discussion of dyes and mordant, see A. Lucas and J. R. Harris,
Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (London: Histories and Mysteries of
Man, 1989), 150–54.
5. Explained by Hero Granger-Taylor in The British Museum Book of
Ancient Egypt, ed. Stephen Quirke and Jeffrey Spenser (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1992), 188.
6. Noted by Flinders Petrie, Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt (London:
T. N. Foulis, 1909), 147.
7. Pictured in Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, 412.
8. Detailed by Mary G. Houston and Florence S. Hornblower in Ancient
Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian Costumes (London: A. & C. Black, 1920).
9. See Cyril Aldred, Jewels of the Pharaohs (New York: Praeger, 1971), 144.
10. This is Lucas’ argument in Lucas and Harris, Ancient Egyptian
Materials, 83.
11. Ibid., 85–97.
12. Ibid., 92.
7
ARCHITECTURE
Although pyramids and temples from ancient Egypt still impress

us thousands of years after they were built, all that remains of
the homes where people were born, grew to adulthood and died
are occasional low mounds of mud outlines. Temples and tombs
endure because Egyptians made a sharp distinction between their
religious architecture, constructed of permanent stone for eternity,
and all other buildings, even palaces and fortresses, which were
built of less durable adobe.
NONRELIGIOUS BUILDINGS
Ancient Egyptians had to contend with enormous temperature
swings. At noon on a summer day, in this country surrounded by
desert, the temperature could reach 120°F; nevertheless, because
the Sahara does not hold its heat, temperatures could fall into
the upper thirties on winter nights. In addition to sheltering people
from both heat and cold, residential architects had to provide some
sort of sanitary devices as well as storage facilities for preserving
food. Because rainfall was infrequent and slight enough, plentiful
sun-baked mud (adobe) served adequately for the main construc-
tion material, as it has in the American southwest.
Homes
Thousands of years before air-conditioning or central heating was
invented, Egypt developed a solution to its temperature extremes
by evolving a housing plan that remained viable from its creation
in the time of the Old Kingdom to the end of its history. The basic
Egyptian house for all but the very poor consisted of a high rect-
angular enclosure wall with an entry door at the narrow end that
faced north, if possible, to take advantage of the prevailing breeze.
Inside, the compound was divided into three facilities. Just past the
entry door lay a garden with a central pool of cool water that also
irrigated trees and shrubs planted around it. Next came a roofed
area raised on columns open at the front to catch breezes and pro-
vide shade for family and guests, after which came apartments for
the owner and immediate family, walled and roofed for privacy and
to seal out nighttime cold. These three elements—an open court-
yard, a columned portico and private apartments—made up the
architectural plan of all Egyptian houses, however large or small
they might be and however many times these elements might be
multiplied to incorporate additional three-part shelters for servants
and, in a palace, for a harem.
Refinements to this basic structure could include stairs leading to
a roof terrace where poles supported an awning—shade for family
or guests—to catch breezes not felt at ground level. Some of these
terraces incorporated ingenious scoops which trapped daytime
breezes and circulated them through vents to the apartments below.
To minimize the heat, windows in inner rooms were placed high
to let the hottest air exit as it rose. Windows were small in area—
light was not desired when the sun shone so hot and bright—and
unglazed, merely slatted with wood to keep birds out. Bedrooms
incorporated raised alcoves for sleeping and adobe benches along
one or more walls for sitting and supporting objects; niches in the
walls held small oil lamps. Closets had not yet been invented. Bath-
rooms, which adjoined the bedrooms of more expensive houses,
consisted of a latrine wall enclosed on three sides for privacy, with
a channel running to the outside of the enclosure. A screened area
beside this section held wooden stools with holes in their seats
above a bowl. Poor farmers simply used outside areas near their
houses for sanitary purposes.
Farm houses included an area behind the private apartments that
held stables for animals along with silos to protect grain from pred-
ators, thus adding a fourth division for farmers to the three-part
Architecture 157
Egyptian house. The silos were domed structures of adobe brick that
stood six feet high with a door halfway up for access to the grain
inside and a trapdoor in the roof for filling the silo. A modest house
would have four or more such granaries. Larger dwellings might
also include a separate slaughterhouse where cows and other ani-
mals were butchered and their meat was hung to cure. By the time
of the New Kingdom, cellars were added, providing additional
spaces for storage and for work such as weaving and baking that
could be performed in cool, subterranean conditions.
As in modern urban areas, housing in crowded cities grew upward
rather than spreading outward: thriving Thebes and Memphis con-
sisted of homes that typically rose three or even four stories above a
narrow base and employed common walls to form row houses with
granaries erected on rooftops. Houses formed orderly grids along
roads or alleys that fed into main thoroughfares which crossed in
the center of the city (the hieroglyph for a city is two roads crossing
in the center of a circle: ).
In size, Egyptian homes were comparable to those of our time.
While a mansion could be as large as 25,000 square feet and con-
tain thirty rooms or more, more modest homes used about 2,000
square feet for their six to twelve rooms. The poorest class, how-
ever, lived in shelters of less than 1,000 square feet and four rooms.1
Complex mansions began with a huge open court and grand por-
tico, after which came servants’ quarters. Apartments for the owner
were positioned in the center of the compound with harem quarters
adjoining. Each quarter had its own open court, pool and a sepa-
rate portico, in addition to living apartments, so each section of the
compound reproduced the standard three-part plan. Private pas-
sages led to each separate quarter so that an owner would never
have to walk through the servants’ rooms at the front to reach his
living compound. A kitchen, granaries and offices—all separate
structures—lay to the rear.
The main construction material for all housing, for both the
rich and the poor, was adobe, a word that derives from the origi-
nal Egyptian name which was similarly pronounced. Made from
inexhaustible Nile mud, mixed with sand or straw for bonding
and to prevent shrinking as it dried, the moist mixture was placed
in rectangular wood frames, about nine by four and one-half by
three inches2 (larger for government buildings), to form bricks. The
frame was lifted away to allow the mud to bake hard in the sun.
The enclosing walls of the compound and supporting and divid-
ing walls of the residence were all constructed of adobe bricks,
including the stairs to the roof terrace. Roofs, however, were made
from logs—generally the wood of date palms—laid in a row and
covered with smaller slats running in the opposite direction, all of
which would be plastered with Nile mud to prevent water seep-
age. The plastered logs became the terrace, although they remained
visible below as the top rooms’ ceilings. Columns for the portico
were also wood—either a single substantial palm trunk or a bundle
of slimmer sycamore trunks bound together. In both cases the top
would be carved into a stylized capital that depicted either palm
fronds or lotus buds. Doors were wooden planks, attached, not at
the side wall by hinges, but at the bottom with a metal spike which
turned in a hole in a block of stone; a metal post anchored the top to
a wood door beam. Doors were sealed with bolts, made of metal or
wood, that slid into clasps.
Thanks to infrequent rain, the life span of adobe was ade-
quate for residential housing. To counter the occasional sprinkle,
roofs sloped slightly to produce a natural runoff of water into
Egyptian doors were an-

chored by spikes at the top of
one side and bottom rather
than by hinges.
Architecture 159
drainspouts attached to the lowest corners. Likewise, windows

and doors often carried wooden hoods to force dripping water
away from those openings, and the walls forming the compound
enclosure were rounded on top, since flat tops would have held
water and soon decomposed.3 In poor homes, floors were made
of packed earth; in more elegant ones, floors consisted of adobe
bricks plastered over, like all the walls of the house proper. Inte-
rior walls were painted with a white background on which bright
painted designs or scenes from religion or nature provided the
home’s main decoration.
Furniture was scanty, even for the rich, consisting of chairs, often
set on a dais, low stools, beds, boxes for clothing and jewelry and
small, portable oil lamps. Tables, generally round, were sized for
individuals rather than families. Beds, also small, were simple
wooden frames on legs with twine lashing for a mattress and a
separate curved headrest which supported the head at the neck.
Ovens—consisting of baked clay drums, one-and-one-half feet
wide at the base and equally tall, but narrowing to half that diam-
eter to force the heat to the top—were located away from the resi-
dence area. They were plastered over with Nile mud for insulation
except for a hole near the bottom which provided draft and per-
mitted the fire to be stoked. More costly homes included a built-in
fireplace, located in the outer court, shielded on three sides by walls
to keep its heat away from the family. Most homes incorporated a
small shrine in the portico for prayers and offerings to the family’s
favorite god, since Egyptians rarely attended temple services.
Ancient Egyptian residential architecture contributed to a gen-
teel living style. A family could sit beside their pool, taking in the
beauty of shrubs and low sycamores, or be joined by friends in the
A basic ancient headrest. Since

it raised the head several
inches, Egyptians must have
slept on their sides.
shade of the columned portico for talk or food. Conversation and

eating finished, they could retire to the privacy of their own rooms.
Owners often painted good luck wishes around the compound’s
main entrance, such as, “May Amun-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of
the Two Lands, give life, prosperity, health, joy, favor and love,”
or, “Mayest thou enter into this house, being healthy.”4 What more
could be asked of any home?
Palaces
Kings lived in style with hosts of retainers. Unlike modern coun-
tries with royal heads of state, Egypt did not maintain a national
palace into which succeeding rulers moved. Although palaces
covered acres of land, they too were constructed of adobe to last
only a generation or so, allowing the next pharaoh to build a new
residence to his own specifications. Each ruler constructed not just
one new residence but several for the different places he needed
to reside—the twin capitals of Thebes and Memphis at the very
least. Unhappily, none of these grand palaces has survived, so what
we know of them is based on tomb pictures and on the few floors
and crumbling walls that today comprise the remains of the two
best preserved examples. These belonged to a father and his son,
Amenhotep III and the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, built during
the Eighteenth Dynasty, the apex of Egypt’s wealth and power.
Akhenaten’s palace may well have been the grandest ever con-
structed in Egypt.5 A hundred-foot-wide thoroughfare, the Royal
Road, divided the palace proper from the royal residences, joined
by a bridge over the road. This bridging of structures was an inno-
vation in Egypt, perhaps modified from Assyrian buildings that
also spanned thoroughfares. On the east side of the road lay the
formal palace, called the House of Rejoicing of the Aten, including
the state reception rooms, some government offices and servants’
quarters; on the west stood the residence area for the pharaoh, his
immediate family and personal retainers.
The private residence of the king on the west side ran for 100
yards beside the Royal Road and stretched back for at least 150 yards
more. Servants’ quarters (or, perhaps, residences for royal guards)
were discretely passed on the right before entering a square garden,
150 feet on a side, that occupied the northern side of the compound.
South of the garden lay the private apartments of the royal family
inside their own walled structure. Its three areas consisted of per-
sonal servants’ quarters filling the west half, a separate structure
A sketch of the plan of Akhenaten’s grand palace complex (after Badawy and Kemp and Garfi). The Royal Road
runs horizontally, just above the center; the private apartments of the king and his family lie above the road, offices
for high officials lie below the road. Below the offices is the official palace; to its right is a huge festival hall.
in its southeastern corner of six rooms plus bathroom, presumably

for the six daughters of the king, and the pharaoh’s private rooms.
Separated from the children’s area by a court and a wall, a large
columned hall divided the king’s suite of two rooms on one side,
with a bathroom and latrine, from an open area with an altar on the
other side. Additional courtyards and rooms for family recreation
filled the middle part of these private apartments. The rest of the
compound, its easternmost third, consisted of magazines for stor-
ing food and an artificial pond in the northeastern corner 40 feet
in diameter. A family of eight could live most comfortably in this
145,000-square-foot home.
Across the bridge on the other side of the Royal Road stood the
formal, state palace of the pharaoh, a huge structure that stretched for
at least 700, if not 1,000, feet along the Royal Road and ran back
from it for at least 600 feet more. It comprised several distinct areas:
a palace, a festival hall, servants’ quarters and vast suites of rooms,
generally considered harems,6 lining the Royal Road.
The only entrance from the road led into a pair of courtyards
back to back, dividing what early excavators considered the harem
into two roughly equal parts. The northern half centered around a
sunken garden with a pond, flanked both east and west by rows
of fifteen rooms. North and south of the sunken garden stretched
more halls and still more rooms. One hall in the north section con-
tained a floor sublimely painted with scenes of a fish-filled pool
surrounded by marsh grasses and fowl. At least fifty rooms in the
southern half bordered four large courtyards, making this struc-
ture seem far too large for harem purposes, especially for a king
with only two known wives in addition to his queen, Nefertiti. An
absence of bathrooms confirms the point. More likely this vast com-
plex of suites, north and south, consisted of offices for various high
and middle grade government officials. If so, they worked in grand
surroundings, though some labored in mere cubicles.
Deeper into the compound, behind the “harem” lining the Royal
Road, lay servants’ quarters to the north and the palace proper to
the south. The servants’ quarters, which covered an area at least
30,000 feet square, consisted of roomy suites composed of a bed-
room, bath and living room bordering a courtyard. Although never
completely excavated, such servants’ suites would probably number
fifty or more.
The state palace, south of the servants’ quarters and west of the
harem, consisted simply of eight grand courtyards and one august
hall. Uncharacteristic of Egyptian palaces, this part was constructed
Architecture 163
of stone. One hall, the farthest north, which ran the entire 500-foot
length of the building, incorporated a magnificent dais on the long,
45 feet by 30 feet wall, with a roof supported by twelve massive col-
umns fronted by a ramp for access. Larger-than-life-sized statues
of the king and his queen lined the three innermost sides. Presumably
this space was used for huge gatherings to hear the king speak from
the dais. A door behind the dais led through a long transverse hall
of columns where representations of trussed ducks hung on the col-
umn sides and carved foliage decorated their tops, above a floor
of pure alabaster. This hall opened into a central courtyard with
ramps from the three other sides for chariots to ride into any of
seven additional courtyards. Each courtyard averaged 100 feet on a
side, but only the central one contained carved stele—two dozen of
them—with scenes of the royal family at worship. Porticos flanked
the eastern companion of the central courtyard, leading to the Win-
dow of Appearances, where the pharaoh and his family would
present themselves to citizens below and distribute gold rewards
for special service.
South from the state palace stood another, separate, square struc-
ture, 300 feet on each side. In this huge hall, square pillars were
used to support a ceiling gaily painted to look like vines against a
yellow background; its walls were tiled in plant patterns in accor-
dance with the nature religion of Akhenaten. At the far end of this
hall two narrow rooms bordered a sunken area. It may be that this
structure served as the coronation hall for Smenkare, who briefly
succeeded Akhenaten before Tutankhamen.
Although some functions of the many of parts of Akhenaten’s pal-
ace are not understood today, enough remains to impress with its
size and grandeur. The two massive compounds combined accom-
modations for servants, probably offices for government offices,
private rooms for the king and his family and awesome spaces for
public events.
Although not quite as large as the palace of his son, Amenhotep
III’s palace at Malkata across the river from Thebes is more easily
understood.7 Inside a 1,000-by-1,500-foot compound, lined with pas-
sageways for patrolling guards, lay a variety of separate structures.
The pharaoh’s apartments faced the Nile behind gardens which ran
the length of the south face of the enclosure. Interior walls of these
living quarters were painted with ornamental designs, along with
scenes of hunting, flora, fauna, ladies of the court and the pharaoh.
Beside it stood the harem, a separate building one fourth the size
of the king’s quarters, with a separate structure behind serving
as the royal kitchen. Also along the south face, next to the palace,
stood a building to house the palace guard. In the center of the
compound, on the east side of the palace proper, another separate
structure held offices, as well as housing for servants and the work-
men who maintained the compound. This building was 600 feet
long by about 150 feet wide. Entrance to the whole compound, for
all but the highest personages, was through the northwest corner
where the official rooms—grand audience hall, throne room and so
on—were situated. Behind these, trailing south, a hall of columns
150 feet long and lined with offices for high officials led to the pri-
vate apartments of the pharaoh. Far to the rear of the enclosure
(north) stood a grand festival hall, 500 feet square, where the anni-
versaries of Amenhotep’s coronation were celebrated. Just outside
lay an artificial lake, two miles around, for private outings on the
royal barge.
After this Eighteenth Dynasty magnificence, palaces changed.
By the Twentieth Dynasty the palace of Rameses III at Medinet
Habu, although probably not his main residence, was no larger
than the accommodations Amenhotep III provided for his royal
A sketch of the palace compound of Amenhotep III at Malqata.
Architecture 165
guards. Rameses III’s palace was surrounded by truly massive

defensive walls, suggesting that this pharaoh feared powerful
enemies. Egypt’s fortunes had begun to decline.
Offices
Extensive buildings must have existed to accommodate the thou-
sands of government officials who managed the country, but such
utilitarian structures were not the sort of thing anyone preserved.
One of the few examples whose plan could be reconstructed from
residual remains was the office of the main tax collector in Akhenat-
en’s city of Akhetaten. It consisted of a rectangular walled structure
120 by 190 feet which included special provisions for storing and
protecting grain and animals, the forms in which taxes were paid.
For security, a gatekeeper lived beside the two entrances to serve
as a watchman. A large area beyond the entrance was walled to
hold horses and donkeys; another was divided into magazines for
storing tons of grain. After being accepted and recorded here, the
animals and grain would have been shipped to larger facilities for
permanent storage. The gatekeeper’s family lived in a typical large
house toward the rear of the compound, and their servants resided
in separate quarters along the back enclosure wall. Fully half of the
area inside the compound remained open to facilitate the comings
and goings of taxpayers with their goods.
This example of a “home office” was not typical of government
buildings which generally consisted of walls surrounding smaller
cubicles where government functionaries labored—the records
office in Akhenaten’s city of Akhetaten consisted of a rectangle
almost 300 feet long by 50 feet wide, inside of which over forty
rooms averaged 10 feet by 20 feet. Workers commuted to these
offices from their homes.
Fortresses
Egyptian military architecture ranged from simple towers to forti-
fied cities. The Egyptian outpost in Kush, called Semna, which com-
bined a walled town and a fortress, serves as a typical example.
Built in the New Kingdom on Middle Kingdom foundations,
Semna represented centuries of experience with military architec-
ture. Egyptians had often warred against fortified cities throughout
the Middle East, experiencing at first hand those devices that made
capture difficult. Most of the countries Egypt attacked had built and
rebuilt their forts after numerous captures, correcting mistakes and

improving defenses. They had to defend against only a limited rep-
ertoire of assault methods—arrows and javelins hurled at defenders,
attempts to scale walls with ladders, sometimes digging under or
through walls or using battering rams to break through fortress
gates. Since both attacking Egyptians and defending Hittites or
others learned the same lessons, fortresses throughout the Middle
East came to resemble each other, looking exactly like Medieval for-
tresses from Western Europe, which faced the same kinds of attacks.
In the Semna example, one side of the fort followed the Nile for
about 340 feet; the other three sides created a square shape for the
fort except that a hill at the northwestern corner forced that wall
inward, making the fort outline suggest a fat “L.” Made of adobe
bricks anchored together by reed mats every few courses, the for-
tress walls were thirty feet thick to give them strength to withstand
battering rams. Narrow parapets, crenellated on the side facing
outward to protect archers from enemy missiles as they fired their
arrows, ran along the top of the walls. A five-foot-deep by fifteen-
foot-wide dry moat surrounded the wall on all sides except the
one along the river to delay an army hoping to scale the fort, while
exacting a price through weapons fired from atop the walls. Two
landward entrances to the fort were guarded by flanking high tow-
ers allowing archers to take aim on three sides at anyone trying to
enter. Here a bridge spanned the moat, since there had to be a way
for friends to get inside. More towers projected from the wall at
regular intervals so an enemy attacking at any place could be fired
on from three sides. At the Nile side stairs ran from the wall to the
river, protected from missiles by a heavy stone roof, to allow sup-
plies to reach the fort even while besieged or, if necessary, to allow
the defenders to escape. Inside the fortress two main streets crossed
at the center where a temple stood. Homes for civilians lined the
streets, separated from a military zone consisting of large barracks
for the troops, a command headquarters and magazines for supplies
enough to withstand a siege. Access to the parapets was provided
by ramps and stairs. A system of drains running outside the fort
disposed of waste and rainwater.
Other Egyptian forts included narrow, winding alleys inside the
main gates to concentrate any attackers who tried to make their
way through, so that archers could pick their targets with little
chance of missing. In general, most of the modern principles of
military architecture had been worked out by the Egyptians of the
New Kingdom, if not before.
Architecture 167
TEMPLES AND TOMBS

Even though buildings for the immortal gods or for a mortal
Egyptian’s eternal life were constructed of permanent stone, they
owed much to the design of the Egyptian house.
Temples
Temples were called the “House of the God So-and-So” because
they were viewed as residences for a god. Indeed, anyone familiar
with the three elements of an Egyptian house will recognize the
same parts in every temple. First, inside a rectangular enclosing
wall, came a large courtyard, open to the sky, followed by a broad
colonnaded court, roofed but open at the front. Behind stood a col-
lection of small walled rooms with ceilings where the statue(s) of
the god(s) resided. Conventionally these parts are called the fore-
court (or peristyle court), hypostyle hall and the holy-of-holies.
The greatest difference between temples and houses, in addition
to the use of stone for temples, was that the floor of each succeeding
area rose as their ceilings progressively lowered. Passing through
Typical Egyptian temples consisted of the three parts shown in this draw-
ing, the bottom half of which is cut away to reveal the interior. After pylons
(right) came an open courtyard (in this case with a covered ambulatory).
Up stairs or a ramp came a large area with a roof raised on tall columns,
the hypostyle hall. Last, after another ramp stood private chambers for
the temple god and his sacred objects, an area called the holy-of-holies.
Here rooms were windowless, small and with low ceilings to make them
mysteriously dark.
a temple brought the believer into successively more intimate and

darker environments, as access became more restricted. Only priests
could enter the holy-of-holies, for example. One other difference
between a temple and a house was found at the front (although
later copied in palaces). Here, one of the architectural signatures of
Egypt formed the temple entrance—a pair of pylons. These gently
sloped, instead of perfectly vertical, walls rose from twenty feet to
over a hundred feet on either side of an entrance door. Long poles,
fitted into niches in the pylons, gaily flew banners from their tops.
Such flagpoles were the hieroglyphic symbol for divinity.
Other temple-related buildings, such as priests’ houses, maga-
zines for storing food, bakeries and amulet factories, surrounded
the temples, making them hives of activity rather than solemn edi-
fices. All these parts were encompassed by a brick enclosure wall
that defined the temple precinct, to which an alley formed by two
rows of small sphinxes or other statues led the way.
The Twentieth-Dynasty mortuary temple of Rameses III, named
“United with Eternity,” across the Nile from Luxor, serves as a clear
example of a developed temple.8 It consisted of a walled rectangle
500 feet long by almost 100 feet wide—large enough to house a
modern football field with plenty of room around it. A great pylon
gateway at the eastern end served as the temple entrance. One-
hundred-foot-tall flagpoles were fixed to this pylon, which stretched
210 feet wide at its base and rose 75 feet in the air and anchored a
massive door in the center, 33 feet high by 12 feet wide. Inside were
two successive open courtyards rather than the usual single court.
The first, 125 feet deep, was bordered by columns on its north and
south sides supporting a partial roof to create covered ambulatories
on those two sides. A ramp at its west end led to a second pylon,
through which stood a second open courtyard as large as the first
but seeming smaller because its covered ambulatory ran around
all four sides. A ramp at its western end led to the roofed temple
proper. First came a large hypostyle hall, 60 feet deep by the 93-foot
width of the temple. Its central nave rose on eight massive columns
almost 30 feet high supporting a ceiling higher than the smaller (22
feet tall) columns to either side, thus allowing for stone windows in
the gap where the roof from the lower columns met that from the
taller ones. On its northern side stood four chapels, including one
for Rameses III himself. A “treasury” for storing temple equipment
occupied the south side of the hypostyle hall beside a small chapel
for the pharaoh’s namesake, Rameses the Great. Beyond this first
hypostyle hall stood a second, 25 feet deep, that reached as high as
Architecture 169
Plan of the temple of Ram-

eses III at Medinet Habu,
showing a great pylon at
the bottom with a series
of two open courts behind
it, then a great hypostyle
hall with two smaller ones
behind it, leading to the
sanctuary of Amun (with
four pillars indicated) at
the top.
the lower parts of the first hypostyle hall. Entry to a sanctuary for
Ra-Horackhty ran from its northern side, and an entry to a sanctu-
ary for Rameses III ran from its southern side. Behind this second
hypostyle hall lay a third almost identical to the second except for
being lined with statues of the gods Maat and Toth bearing faces of
Rameses III. At the end of this final hypostyle hall stood a sanctu-
ary (15 feet square) for Amun, the main god of the temple, flanked
by sanctuaries for his consort, Mut, and their son, Khonsu. A num-
ber of small rooms behind and beside these sanctuaries served as
temple storage.
Since temples endured, sometimes for hundreds of years, succeed-

ing pharaohs added embellishments, complicating their basic plans.
The extreme case is Karnak Temple which grew, thanks to addi-
tions made by twenty or more pharaohs, until it occupied an area
of 600 acres and consisted of seven separate temple complexes, the
most important of which were the complex for Amun, the one for
his wife, Mut, and a third for their son, Khonsu. The main temple
for Amun was approached through a corridor of statues of recum-
bent rams (the animal associated with Amun), followed by not one
but six sets of pylons. Behind the first (130 feet high), probably built
in Ptolemaic times, lay an almost 300-foot square forecourt, unchar-
acteristically lined down the center with a row of 60-foot paired
columns that supported a roof. One-third of an entire temple built
by Rameses III intruded into the right rear of this courtyard then
continued outside. In the front left of the courtyard, three chapels
erected by Seti II served as waystations for the sacred barques that
carried temple idols in processions.
The second pylon, built by Horemheb and Rameses I, was fronted
by two colossal statues of Rameses the Great. Beyond lay the grand-
est hypostyle hall in Egypt, extending 170 feet in depth by 340 feet
in width. Its central nave rose nearly 80 feet on twelve massive pairs
of columns, each almost twelve feet in diameter; its lower sides con-
sisted of a forest of sixty columns, each rising 46 feet tall. A small
court after the third pylon (added by Amenhotep III) provided
access from the right to a processional way that led to the temple of
Mut, 300 yards away. The court also contained two pairs of obelisks
(built by Tuthmosis I and Tuthmosis III). The fourth pylon (added
by Tuthmosis I) prefaced another hypostyle hall whose roof was
removed by Hatshepsut so she could erect two 90-foot obelisks.
The roof was later restored by Tuthmosis III who bricked in her
obelisks to hide them.
Then began the most holy section of the temple where no one
other than priests and the pharaoh could enter, a warren of struc-
tures that became more crowded over the centuries as pharaoh
after pharaoh added his personal homage to Amun. The fifth pylon
(added by Tuthmosis I) was followed after a narrow columned
hall by a sixth small pylon (built by Tuthmosis III). Beyond, and
all enclosed, lay the most holy sanctuary. First came two columned
rooms where offerings were prepared, then, in the center, the rea-
son for all this building: the shrine of Amun-Ra.
There was more. Behind the sanctuary stood another entire tem-
ple built by Tuthmosis III to celebrate his military successes. Even
Architecture 171
farther back Akhenaten had built a temple for his god, the Aten.
Outside the main temple to the left stood a small temple to Ptah
and a large temple to Montu, the original god of Thebes. Beside
the main temple, on the right, reposed an artificial lake 250 feet by
400 feet.
Measured either by its area or the mass of its stone, Karnak Tem-
ple is the largest religious structure ever built. The fact that it first
rose in the Middle Kingdom and endured until the end of Egypt’s
independence, a span of more than a thousand years, helps explain
its size. Almost every pharaoh throughout that time paid for the
successes he enjoyed or the ones he wished for by heaping bounty
on this one temple complex. According to one accounting, more
than 90,000 priests were associated with this temple, although it
must be understood that many of these managed and worked on
the vast temple estates throughout the country and did not reside
at Karnak.
The fluttering banners in front of the temples provided a festive
atmosphere. Their tall masts, sometimes more than 130 feet high
(the first pylon at Karnak) soared above the pylons. Since no Egyp-
tian timber grew that tall, masts of the famed cedar from Lebanon
had to be imported for this purpose, then clad in a sheet of metal,
most often electrum (an amalgam of silver and gold). The poles were
attached to the pylon by metal cleats near the top, while anchored
at the bottom in a metal box fixed to both the pylon and the ground.
Pylons were constructed of either stone or adobe bricks, and they
were hollow inside to leave space for internal stairs to the top. Pairs
of doors, as tall as forty feet, fit between the pylons. Temple columns
were always made of stone, formed of drums stacked on top of each
other until they reached the required height. They rested on a stone
base slightly wider than the column, and the column top was carved
to represent palm fronds, lotus buds or, less commonly, a papyrus
cluster. Unusual types of columns included fluted examples with
a simple rectangular top (forerunners of the Greek Doric style), or
human shaped, in the form of a pharaoh or of the god Osiris.
Stone walls in and around the temples provided fine surfaces
for carving, and they were adorned with images of gods. Temple
walls were also covered with scenes of pharaohs smiting their ene-
mies, which led early excavators to doubt that these were religious
buildings, not realizing that Egyptians believed their victories in
battle were ordained by the gods and evidence of their gods’ might.
Shrines in the holy-of-holies often included altar-shaped stone
structures in the center or front. These were not for sacrifices, which
Egyptians seldom performed, but for resting sacred litters until

the god’s statue was placed on board. Idols were generally made
from metal—bronze, silver or gold. Temples almost always bor-
dered water—the Nile or a canal—for easy transport by boat of the
massive quantities of stone used in their construction. Unlike reli-
gions such as Islam, in which temple orientation is important and
prescribed, Egyptian temples pointed in a variety of directions.
In addition to the three-part temples described, Rameses the Great
built a unique structure at Abu Simbel. This temple was carved into
a stone mountain, so the outside served as the forecourt, and the
hypostyle hall and holy-of-holies stood behind each other inside
the cavern.
Two other kinds of temple were erected during special eras, both
associated with the worship of the sun. The Sun Temples of the
Fifth Dynasty were mere rectangular open courtyards with a large
platform at the far end on which a squat obelisk, called a benben,
stood. According to one theory, the pyramidal top of the benben
symbolized rays emanating from the sun. It seems that obelisks,
whether the benben sort or the more familiar slender shafts, were
all associated with the sun.
The other unusual temple formed part of the religious revolu-
tion of Akhenaten that celebrated the visible sun, the Aten. Enough
remains of the Great Aten temple in Amarna to indicate its general
design.9 An eight-foot-thick enclosure wall, measuring 2,350 feet
long by 900 feet wide, surrounded the temple. The formal entrance,
along the short end facing the Nile, was surrounded by the usual
pylons, but in this case it was not as wide and was decorated with
more poles and banners (five on either side) than usual. Another
entrance on the long north face included a ramp for animals. Inside,
worshippers faced a separate, large stone structure, the Gem Pa Aten
(Finding the Aten), fronted by its own pair of pylons. To the left
stood a separate portico of stone colonnades, and to the right was
a field of 920 limestone offering tables laid out in a dense rectangle
running away from the entrance. The Gem Pa Aten, which stretched
back for 600 feet, consisted of a covered portico, open in the center,
leading to six successive open halls, each lined with hundreds of
offering tables. The two final halls contained a high altar and sur-
rounding chapels, each with an altar or offering tables.
Behind the Gem Pa Aten came a vast field (1,000 feet by 850 feet)
densely covered with brick offering tables. An empty area at its
end provided space for slaughtering hundreds of animals. The final
quarter of the temple contained a sanctuary surrounded by its own
Architecture 173
Sketch of the plan of the Great Temple

of the Aten, built by the monotheist
Akhenaten. Entrance through a pylon
is at the bottom. The Gem Pa Aten
comes next, flanked by offering tables
on the right and pillars on the left.
What is shown as a large open space
was actually covered with hundreds
of offering tables. At the top is a tem-
ple inside the temple.
wall with an entrance through pylons, leading into a wide court that
introduced another entire temple surrounded by more walls. This
temple inside a temple contained more courts filled with offering
tables, surrounded by small chapels with separate offering tables.
The idea behind this unusual temple was to provide a consecrated
place for offerings to the sun god, making this temple different in
several ways. Instead of a dark, mysterious place, it was open and
bright. Instead of small numbers of professional priests, this tem-
ple invited all believers inside. Rather than serving as the home of
an idol, it provided facilities for making offerings, which could be
This drawing reproduces a few of the mastabas that line the Giza plateau.
Most housed the body of one family.
done in private chapels, inside an open building or in a vast court

outside. Where a believer made his offerings depended on his rank,
but all practiced their ritual under the open sky so the sun could look
down on its gifts. Animals were sacrificed, as the area for slaughter
inside the enclosure shows, as was bread. Egyptologists found vast
quantities of molds for bread outside the temple walls.
Tombs
In the beginning, before the pharaohs, Egyptians simply buried
their dead in pits in the sand. When jackals and tomb robbers rav-
aged such pits, Egyptians learned that sand did not protect the
body or the goods buried with it. Because preservation of the body
was essential for an afterlife, more substantial protection had to be
invented. Wood coffins were tried, which kept the animals away but
not the human thieves. The next step was to encase the grave inside
a solid structure. The first containers, called mastabas, the Arabic
word for the benches they resembled, were simple adobe rectan-
gles whose walls angled toward the center. Inside, compartments
held the owner’s goods, while the body lay in a simple pit below
ground, covered with logs on which sand was piled to represent
Architecture 175
either the heaped sand burials of distant ancestors or else the pri-
meval mound of creation. Everyone who could afford the cost of
such a tomb, from wealthy government officials up to pharaohs,
built a mastaba for himself.
As pharaohs increased their power, they created a special kind of
tomb, beginning in about 2700 b.c., when a pharaoh named Zoser
added another, smaller, mastaba on top of a first one, then another
and another until six were stacked in a 200-foot-high facsimile of a
wedding cake. Called the Step Pyramid, this new kind of tomb set
pharaohs in pursuit of more and more imposing burial places. The
next breakthrough came with the first king of the next dynasty.
The pharaoh Sneferu stacked eight mastabas on top of each other
300 feet in the air, then filled the steps with dressed stone to form
smooth, slanting sides. This was the first true pyramid. The sides,
however, formed an angle too steep for its soft limestone cover,
making the structure unstable, so the pyramid was abandoned
before the burial chamber inside was completed.
Step Pyramid of Saqqara. The blocks composing this early pyramid were
angled inward, rather than leveled, to prevent its collapse. Photo courtesy
of Pat Remler.
Sneferu continued his experiments with a second pyramid whose

sides climbed at the sharp angle of 54 degrees. The angle abruptly
changed to 43 degrees about half way to the top, however, marking
the point at which cracks developed inside the burial chamber and
at the pyramid base so the weight of the building had to be reduced.
Despite the lower than planned height of this Bent Pyramid, it was
a truly massive building that stood 310 feet tall from a base 620
feet on each side, with a volume three times Zoser’s Step Pyramid.
Because his second attempt proved unstable, Sneferu built a third,
even larger pyramid with the new 43-degree slope that ascended
343 feet from a base 722 feet on each side. This structure counts
as the earliest true pyramid that survives intact today.10 Together,
Sneferu’s two completed pyramids incorporate more tons of stone
than the famous Great Pyramid.
Sneferu’s son, Khufu, capped the Pyramid Age with the largest
tomb ever built. Although today it has lost 40 feet from its top, it
originally rose 481 feet in the air, on a base 756 feet square, rising
at a 51-degree angle. Inside, a magnificent passageway leads a third
of the way up the pyramid to a granite chamber 34 feet by 17 feet
by 19 feet high, in which a polished granite sarcophagus held the
Silhouetted against the sky, the change in angle of the Bent Pyramid is
clearly visible. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
Architecture 177
mortal remains of this pharaoh. Complex devices, such as passage-

ways that led to dead ends and massive stone plugs that sealed the
true route to the burial, sadly proved to no avail. The pyramid was
picked clean in ancient times.
This was only the first of three startling pyramids built at Giza.
Khufu’s eldest son, in a short reign of eight years, began a pyramid
he did not live to finish, but his half brother Khafra took up the
pyramid challenge again at Giza with a massive effort beside his
father’s Great Pyramid. Since it stands on higher ground, Khafra’s
pyramid rises even higher than its neighbor, although it originally
stood 10 feet shorter. Its gleaming casing of white limestone, trans-
ported by boats from quarries across the Nile, still covers the top.
The mass of the limestone blocks that form the interior were cut
from the surrounding Giza site. Probably in the course of freeing
all the stone for the Great Pyramid, quarrymen struck a seam of
harder rock which, as the more easily worked stone was quarried
around it, emerged as a small hill. Khafra had this rock outcrop
carved in the shape of a 200-foot-long recumbent lion bearing his
own face—the famous Sphinx.
Khafra’s son, Menkara, raised the last of the famous Giza pyra-
mids. Much smaller than its neighbors at an original 218 feet in
height, it is distinguished by a lovely casing of hard red granite
transported from Aswan, 500 miles to the south. The casing cov-
ers only the bottom quarter of the pyramid, however, for Menkara
died unexpectedly after a reign of twenty-eight years, leaving his
pyramid and mortuary temple incomplete.
Pyramids continued to be built through the Middle Kingdom,
although they were made from softer adobe with only a veneer of
stone. Whether stone or adobe, all the pyramids were robbed. Some-
thing new had to be designed to prevent thieves from tampering
with the body. During this time government officials in the middle
of Egypt began excavating grand tombs inside stone hills. The idea
spread south, and the southern pharaohs, who began the New King-
dom, continued the practice with their tombs excavated first in the
hills and then deep under the ground of the Valley of the Kings. If a
mass of stone could not protect their bodies, perhaps a secret hiding
place would do the job. So that thieves would not pick up the scent,
mortuary temples where offerings and prayers were made to the
departed pharaoh were separated from the tomb proper, sometimes
by miles. The subterranean tombs were referred to as per djet, the
eternal house, following something like the three-part plan of a
house for the living, although modified for a very different use.
This nineteenth-century draw-

ing shows Arab explorers climb-
ing up the Grand Gallery with its
towering corbelled ceiling.
Architecture 179
An outside entrance was first plastered then covered with dirt

and rocks to hide its location after the body was safely placed
inside. Inside, a short hall led to a pair of wooden doors opening
to a corridor that descended for a hundred feet or so. A square pit,
twenty feet deep or more, was dug in this corridor, not as a device to
foil robbers, but to catch the water from occasional thunderstorms
so it would not flow farther. At the end of this corridor came the
first room, called stja neter (way of the god).11 Doors sealed this
chamber from a larger “waiting room” (wesekhet iseq), whose walls
were covered with religious texts and pictures to ensure resurrec-
tion in the next world. Here the opening of the mouth ceremony
was performed on the dead body to enliven it magically. Through
another door stood the great columned room of the tomb, the per
nebu (house of gold), in the center of which, surrounded by veiled
shrines, lay the sarcophagus for the deceased. Doors closed off a
small room where ushabtis (worker statues) were stored, ready to
answer the call of the gods to work in the next world so the tomb
owner need not lift a finger. The final room, through the last pair
of doors, called the per hedj en pa neferu (treasury of the beautiful
things), held clothing, jewelry and furniture for the departed one.
The series of rooms resembled the open beginning of a house (the
waiting room), followed by the columned second part (house of
gold), then the smaller, sealed apartment at the rear (the treasury of
beautiful things).
Over time, additions complicated the basic design. The corri-
dor to the tomb might bend and turn, sometimes including stairs.
Rooms for more and more personal possessions were added to
the sarcophagus room, or behind the treasury or even leading
off the entry corridor. The original single columned hall might be
multiplied into two or three. In a few cases, simplification reduced
the tomb proper to a single large room with an alcove. Devices to
foil robbers included huge stones blocking the corridors, corridors
that led to dead ends and secret rooms whose entrances were
sealed, plastered and painted to look like the rest of a solid wall.
For decoration, the limestone walls of a tomb were smoothed
then covered with a thin coat of plaster. In the beginning of the
New Kingdom, this plaster was painted white, but by the Nine-
teenth Dynasty yellow had come into favor. In any case, the corri-
dors of a pharaoh’s tomb were covered with painted scenes, usually
maps of the route to the next world, indicating all the obstacles and
ferocious beasts to be encountered along the way. The walls and
columns of the larger “gold hall” contained scenes of the pharaoh
and his wife beside various gods, but the ceiling sometimes repre-
sented the heavens with painted stars.
Wealthy nonroyals dug subterranean tombs as well, although
they differed in certain respects from those for royalty. Instead of
being separated from the tomb by a distance, their mortuary cha-
pels sat directly above. Behind a first room and columned hall
above ground, a corridor ran below to a shrine for a statue of the
deceased.12 Scenes that adorned the tomb walls of the nonroyal pre-
sented secular rather than religious themes. Typically the owner is
shown, surrounded by his family, enjoying a feast, hunting marsh
fowl or overseeing workers in his fields—any event he fondly
remembered and wished to repeat for eternity. Inscriptions told the
gods of his accomplishments so that he could earn the respect in
the next world that he had enjoyed in this one. A final difference
appeared in a series of tombs for artisans and builders at Deir el
Medina near Thebes. Above each of their chapels sat a small pyra-
mid, previously the prerogative only of royalty.
NOTES
1. See Alexander Badawy, A History of Egyptian Architecture: The First
Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, and the Second Intermediate Period
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 25 –27.
2. Somers Clarke and R. Englebach, Ancient Egyptian Construction and
Architecture (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Books, 1990; reprint of Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1930), 209.
3. Badawy, A History of Egyptian Architecture, 46.
4. Ibid., 126.
5. The most recent survey is by Barry J. Kemp and Salvadore Garfi,
A Survey of the Ancient City of El-Amarna (London: Egypt Exploration Soci-
ety, 1993).
6. Considered harems by, for example, Badawy, A History of Egyptian
Architecture, 82 ff.
7. Ibid., 47–54.
8. Ibid., 224 –25.
9. See Kemp and Garfi, A Survey, 50 –57.
10. Technically, the prize for the oldest surviving true pyramid could be
awarded to a subsidiary pyramid next to the Bent Pyramid at Dashur,
although it is a relatively small affair.
11. Badawy, A History of Egyptian Architecture, 385.
12. Ibid., 407–22.
8
ARTS AND CRAFTS
Egyptian artists would be surprised that we consider their work

art. Craftsmen toiled in anonymity, signed none of their works and
attained no fame during their lifetimes. Their society recognized no
difference between fine art forms, such as painting and sculpting,
and “lesser arts,” such as pottery or cabinetry. Practitioners of any
of these skills were regarded as simple workers on a level with, say,
carpenters.
Art was produced cooperatively in workshops, in a kind of assem-
bly line. One worker chiseled a statue’s arm, another smoothed the
curve of its cheek, while still another etched the line of a toenail—
all working at the same time on one statue. In the case of a painted
wall, one crew filled in a single color, followed by the next crew
with a second color, and so forth, until a last crew added the fine
details. With rare exceptions, no artist could point to anything and
boast, “I made that myself.” Art was a team project supervised by
an overseer responsible—much as a modern-day general contrac-
tor schedules workers and monitors production—for the quality of
the work, but certainly not the level of creativity.
Because recognition of an individual artist’s work was unheard of
and regard for creative endeavors was low, artists felt no pressure
to innovate. Even for the few recognized for their superior work, it
was their craftsmanship rather than their imagination that earned
This sketch of a tomb painting shows three

men working together on an over life-sized
statue using scaffolding to reach the top parts.
them praise and rewards. When Egyptians found a style of portrai-

ture they liked, all their artists repeated it over and over, creating an
art of canons—set proportions, gestures and subjects—which they
refined for thousands of years. Long practice on the same restricted
themes made them experts at their craft. What could be more pleas-
ing, for example, than the enigmatic smile beaming from the Sphinx
and many another statue made throughout Egypt’s history? Egyp-
tian art allows us to trace a lovely expression, a gesture or a fig-
ure grouping from its inception through its proliferation at various
social levels. An innovation originally designed to please a pharaoh
was soon copied for the enjoyment of ordinary citizens—much as
designer clothes today are knocked off for the masses. What began
as one artist’s unique accomplishment soon became the province
of all.1
Egyptian artists developed their methods with different goals in
mind from those of artists who work today. Statues, carvings or
paintings, first and foremost, were created for utilitarian purposes,
Arts and Crafts 183
rather than to generate enjoyment for the viewer or to excite his

admiration. Some of the finest art, in fact, lay in tombs intended
to be sealed for eternity from the eyes of any living person. Since
most Egyptian creations were commissioned by individual citizens
to serve their needs in the afterlife, artists were forced to maintain
a certain realism in their work. A statue for a tomb owner might be
more handsome, lean and muscular than the subject was in life, but
it had to resemble that person.
Scenes in his tomb that depicted feasting, hunting and so on had
to portray those activities clearly to the gods on judgment day.
(Egyptians fashioned animals with particular care, as well, because
of their reverence for the god represented by each creature.) The
need for accuracy and realism, however, did not destroy the beauty
of Egyptian art: the more pleasing the portrayals, the better its utili-
tarian purpose was served.
Sculpture and painting in particular were commissioned for rea-
sons that do not exist in modern societies. In ancient Egypt only a
pharaoh commissioned art for a purpose we would find familiar—to
enhance a building or monument and thereby gain admiration for
the donor. Commoners commissioned artwork to ensure the after-
life they desired. Their religion instructed that a portrait statue of
the deceased, his “double,” be placed inside the tomb to receive the
food offerings required for his next life. Commoners also had scenes
painted on the walls of their tombs for a different, although still
religious, purpose—to show the gods what they enjoyed so that
similar pleasures would be available to them throughout eternity.
SCULPTURE
Sculpture, the preeminent Egyptian art form along with architec-
ture, evolved from humble origins. Before 3000 b.c., crude animal
figures, of which only a few survive, were carved clumsily in soft
stone or barely molded from clay. Then, just before the dawn of
the First Dynasty, a remarkable series of royal palettes and mace
heads, vigorously carved in low relief, appeared. For the first time,
figures of people and various animals, especially a large bull,
were represented with sinews and muscles in the act of moving.
The skills required to achieve such depictions were not discovered
suddenly but evolved from centuries of stone carving. Egyptians
had mastered the hardest granite and dolerite by the fourth millen-
nium, shaping it to a desired form as if it were pliable clay. Some
pieces were clearly modeled on clay vessels; even the tied string
that sealed the lid was reproduced in stone. Another, in fragile

schist, copied every reed of a woven basket. Vases and cosmetic
jars—from half an inch to several feet in height—were produced
from every available kind of stone in sophisticated styles and pro-
portions which demonstrate that stonework served as the basis for
Egyptians’ sculpting techniques.
Sculpture in the round, however, did not achieve real competence2
until the Third Dynasty. The first known masterpiece, a seated,
life-sized limestone statue of the pharaoh Zoser, posed magisteri-
ally on his throne in a ceremonial robe, his head covered with the
nemes kerchief and his chin adorned with a fine beard, was carved
for his Step Pyramid enclosure. Offerings were made to this statue
from outside—behind a wall pierced with two holes at the level of
the statue’s eyes, symbolically allowing it to observe the gifts being
presented. The statue retains great dignity even today, despite the
fact that its eyes, doubtless carved of valuable rock crystal, were
gouged out in ancient times.
Aptly, ancient Egyptians revealed their attitude toward sculpture
by calling its makers “enliveners.”3 To the Egyptians, Zoser’s statue
symbolized the important religious concept that a statue could
function in the place of the individual portrayed. Offerings left for
the pharaoh’s statue would, magically, serve him, even though he
had left his tomb to travel to the next world. The pharaoh had pro-
vided future dynasties with a model that could be emulated by any
commoner with the means to do so.
A bull, representing the might of the

pharaoh, in low relief on a Predynastic slate
palette.
Arts and Crafts 185
In the Fourth Dynasty, literally hundreds of almost-perfect stat-

ues in the round demonstrate that tomb portrait statues had become
commonplace within the higher levels of society. Notable among
many others, a pair of life-sized, seated limestone statues of prince
Rahotep and his wife Nofert, although heavy in the legs and trunk,
present sensitive facial portraits. Rahotep sports a narrow mus-
tache above a determined mouth; Nofert wears a serene expression
despite a fat wig that allows a bit of her own hair to show below.
Both look out through translucent rock crystal eyes that seem eerily
real. While the limestone of such statues is relatively easily worked,
the hard granite used for the larger-than-life statues of the pharaoh
Khafra, the builder of the second Giza pyramid, is not. Khafra is
represented with a well-modeled torso, again on too-massive legs,
and a sensitive face, framed by a wonderful device: a falcon cradles
Khafra’s head with its outstretched wings, underlining the point
that here is a man with power behind him. From the same Giza
plateau come scores of bodiless sculpted limestone heads, called
“reserve heads,” as lifelike and individual as could possibly be.
Excellent bas reliefs also became common during this exceptional
era. The least tomb hieroglyph counts as a minor masterpiece, and
wall scenes are tours de force. Competent artists were sufficiently
abundant by this time that mere courtiers and government officials
could embellish their tombs with outstanding, rather than merely
adequate, carving. Monumental statuary, embodied by the colos-
sal Sphinx, appeared for the first time as free-standing work—as
in the case of the two-foot-tall head of the Fifth Dynasty pharaoh
Userkaf, which is all that remains of a more-than-twice life-sized
seated statue. The first metal sculpture was produced in the Sixth
Dynasty. Inscriptions record an earlier copper statue of a Second
Dynasty king, but a corroded, striding, larger-than-life (almost
six feet tall, as reconstructed) Pepi I and his two-foot-tall son are
the oldest metal statues yet found in Egypt. Since copper does not
flow readily into molds, these pieces were formed of copper sheets
nailed to a wooden core. Finer work lay ahead, when the more eas-
ily cast bronze arrived in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom.
The collapse of central authority during the First Intermediate
Period disrupted the training of artists and resulted in crude work
throughout most of that era, but with the return of a stable central
government in the Middle Kingdom came a resurgence of inter-
est in art. Strikingly, pharaohs’ statues began to portray faces with
lines of age and expressions of concern, as opposed to the idealized
portrayals of the Old Kingdom: for the first time real people look
back at the viewer. A previous delicacy of expression was replaced

by a better sense of proportion and composition, as exemplified by
statues of seated scribes, knees held to their chests, in a posture
which appropriately earned them the name “block statues,” while
the nuances of older bas reliefs gave way to more elegant, simpler
forms. In a continued democratizing trend, more citizens began to
commission fine artists to produce work for their tombs, including
charming wood and clay models—produced by the hundreds in
sizes ranging from less than a foot to over two feet tall—of servants
bearing offerings, soldiers arrayed for battle, houses and workers
engaged in various occupations, such as cattle feeding, or bread
and beer making. These models were placed in tombs to enable the
gods to recognize what pleasures the deceased looked forward to
in the next world.
As fine artwork continued to proliferate during the New King-
dom, pictures replaced these tomb models at the same time that
monumental statuary attained superhuman scale. When Egypt
conquered the “vile Asiatics” to establish the New Kingdom, the
This nineteenth-century photograph

shows the obelisk now in New
York’s Central Park in its original
location in Alexandria, Egypt.
Arts and Crafts 187
mighty conquests of its divine pharaohs were underscored by

wall carvings depicting the pharaoh as ten or twenty times the
size of ordinary people. Egypt’s augmented position in the world
demanded more impressive artistic symbols.
Exemplifying this trend, obelisks, imposing gifts from pharaohs
to adorn temples, emerged as a new art form. Consisting of one
massive piece of solid rock—unlike the stone bricks of our national
obelisk, the Washington Monument—the granite spires of the
Egyptians passed 100 feet in height and approached 400 tons in
weight. Lines of hieroglyphs covered all four faces; and the point,
sheathed in electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, shined like the
sun. The hieroglyphs, of course, all describe how wonderful the
pharaoh was to donate such a mighty monument.
Not all New Kingdom statuary aimed for the colossal or monu-
mental. Although the buildings of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut
were designed to awe, her triangular face carved on wall reliefs
and statuary conveyed a benign dignity, the concern of the mighty
ruler for her subjects. After Hatshepsut’s “feminine” statuary,
Amenhotep III’s pair of 60-foot-tall, 350-ton megalithic seated
statues so impressed ancient Greek visitors that they called them
the Colossi of Memnon. Outdoing all his predecessors, Rameses the
Great erected a 65-foot-tall, 1,000-ton statue at his funerary temple,
and followed it with a rock-cut temple at Abu Simbel whose four
gigantic images of the pharaoh were designed to erase all thought
of conquest by any enemy approaching Egypt from the south. Alto-
gether, New Kingdom Egypt produced more monumental sculp-
ture than any other people at any time, anywhere.
Increased contact with art styles of other countries during this
period influenced Egyptians to portray clothing and coiffures more
sensuously. Lines in painting, bas relief and sculpture became more
fluid, a style which culminated in an artistic revolution under
the reign of the heretical monotheist Akhenaten. Images of the
pharaoh and his family produced during this period portray them
with grotesque jaws jutting to sharp points, craniums elongating
into bulbs, necks lengthening impossibly, and chests of both men
and women showing evident breasts before sloping to wasp waists
then swelling again into elephant thighs that decrease to slender
ankles. It was also the first time royalty were ever portrayed in inti-
mate vignettes: Akhenaten kisses a child in his lap; his wife Nefer-
titi holds another daughter who tugs at her earring, for example.
Traditional generalized scenes of Egyptian art were replaced by
eternalized moments in time—slices of life—as if the pharaoh were
This stone head of one of Akhen-

aten’s daughters shows the
elongated head, jutting jaw and
slanting face characteristic of art
during his reign. Photo courtesy
of Pat Remler.
an ordinary mortal. This revolutionary change in the principles of

artistic depiction lasted only for the lifetime of this one king.
When Rameses became pharaoh, his love of the colossal resulted
in an unequaled spate of building, which severely strained the
resources of the country. Religious wall carvings began to show an
obvious haste in execution, as the loving care previously lavished
on them gave way to a debased style that sacrificed elegance for
dramatic effect. But out of this arose a new technique—sunk relief—
which was faster to carve, eliminating the need to chisel away the
entire background surface, and, in the stark Egyptian sunlight,
emphasized outlines by causing them to create deep shadows.
Sometime after Rameses’ death, when the court moved north to
the Delta, pharaohs’ tombs ceased being built in the Theban Val-
ley of the Kings. Although royal burials continued in the Delta, its
high water table destroyed much art of the Late Period. What sur-
vives, mostly in the form of statuary, demonstrates the Egyptians’
Arts and Crafts 189
Sunken relief models shapes by carving an image below the background

level, as opposed to raised relief in which shapes rise above the back-
ground. Sunken relief can be very effective when the bright Egyptian sun
causes strong shadows. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
continued facility for carving all types of stone but without their
earlier fine aesthetic.
As fine art became democratized, its quality declined—a trend
exemplified particularly by Egyptian bronze statues. Bronze was
brought to Egypt in the Middle Kingdom primarily for weapons,
but gradually it became a favored medium for statues as well. The
material, particularly well suited to casting, flowed into a mold’s
every crevice to produce replicas exact to the thinnest line, and the
cheapness of the material allowed everyone to purchase bronze stat-
ues of his favorite god(s). Egyptians learned to cast bronze statues
using the lost-wax method. First they carved a figure in wax, then
coated the wax with moist clay. After firing, the wax melted and ran
out a hole left for the purpose, while the clay skin hardened into pot-
tery. When molten bronze was poured through the same hole that
had allowed the wax to escape, it solidified into an exact replica of
the original wax image. Early single-piece ceramic molds, shattered
to release their bronze statues, had evolved by the New Kingdom
into reusable molds, formed of separate halves, which could be
used to produce countless replicas. During the remaining thousand
years of Egypt’s existence, hundreds of thousands of bronze statues

of various gods were produced. Generally they stand less than a
foot high, but decrease in size to as small as an inch or so, with the
same themes repeated so often that excavated examples bore even
museum curators. Much finer are specially commissioned bronzes,
sometimes inlayed with gold or with components in semiprecious
stone, created for wealthy patrons.
The appearance of Egyptian statuary differs markedly today from
its initial state. Originally wood or soft stone statues were covered
with a thin coat of gesso—a plaster-like material composed of chalk
and glue that dried to a smooth, white coating—and provided a
perfect surface for painting. The figures we see now, most of which
retain only faint traces of their previous colors, would have been
so brightly painted, given the primary hues favored in the Egyp-
tian palette, that we would find them garish by modern standards.
Even hard stones that took a smooth polish were fair game for
highlights of paint or gilt. While eyes and lips might be colored
appropriately, jewels, belts and head wear provided opportunities
for serious embellishment.4
PAINTING
Egyptian painting began as a medium separate from sculpture,
but the two came together in temple and tomb reliefs that required
both subtle three-dimensional modeling and a brightly painted
finish.
Early drawing, elementary stick figures scratched on rocks in
about 7000 b.c., depicted people, animals and birds. By 4000 b.c.,
drawings with the same stick figures, but now with boats, began
to appear on pottery vessels. Sometime before 3000 b.c., the oldest
Egyptian mural had been installed in a house in southern Hieracon-
polis; enigmatically, it portrayed several groups of men engaged in
land-and-sea battles.
Given paint’s fragile nature, it is remarkable that a masterpiece
of color as old as the early Fourth Dynasty has survived. Never-
theless, beside the pyramid of Meidum, deep inside the tomb of
a courtier named Itet, stands a damaged wall painting of his sons
netting birds in a marsh. Miraculously, a row of two ganders and
a female goose have survived intact, their sure lines and strong
color preserved, with every feather still in place and as fresh as the
day they were painted. Nothing else as wonderful survives from
this dynasty, but the Fifth Dynasty, a period in which permanent
Arts and Crafts 191
Two geese from an Old Kingdom tomb whose colors remain fresh and
bright today.
stone bricks replaced adobe in the tombs of non-royals, provides

hundreds of wonderfully painted bas reliefs in numerous tombs at
Saqqara and elsewhere.
A representation of the tomb owner, either seated as a statue
before a table heaped with food, or carved in high relief striding
from the rear wall toward the main room, provides the focal point
of each tomb. Most striking, however, are the painted processions
of servants bearing produce from the owner’s farms portrayed on
adjacent walls. In the finest examples, every animal has been drawn
with such precision as to be a minor masterpiece. Other walls show
crop harvests, wine making, cattle herding, stone vessel carving
and hunting. One outstanding example, the tomb of Ti at Saqqara,
depicts a marsh as an infinite row of tall reeds, creating a back-
ground of vertical lines that emphasizes the shapes of the wild fowl
and fish in the foreground. Another wall shows a carefully drawn
herd crossing a stream with submerged sections of their legs indi-
cated by paint alone, while the portion of their bodies remaining
above water is depicted in carved relief.
Such scenes teach us a great deal about how ancient Egyptians
lived. These snapshots from life that began in the Fourth and Fifth
dynasties culminated in hundreds of intricate pictures in Theban
tombs during the New Kingdom. Although less finely carved—
not every sinew and feather is detailed—New Kingdom tomb art
is the first to tell a story solely with paint, eliminating altogether
Scene of a marsh from the Fourth-

Dynasty tomb of the royal hairdresser
Ti. The strong vertical lines of the
reeds make an effective background
for birds above, and the large figure
of Ti, fishermen and fish below.
the narrative hieroglyphs traditionally carved around a scene.

These New Kingdom works portray whatever the dearly departed
wanted to remember and experience again in the next world: the
joys of family life, including dining with his loved ones, the plea-
sures of the hunt for either fowl or animals and information about
the person’s everyday life; how beer, wine, bread, fabric and boats
were made or how beef was prepared; what his day on the farm
consisted of, such as overseeing reaping, threshing or surveying;
and references to any official honors he had received during his
life. These tomb paintings all provide a fascinating record of life
from long ago and, at times, outstanding examples of a painter’s
skill.
The tomb of Ramose, an Eighteenth-Dynasty mayor of Thebes,
stands as a superior example of classic Egyptian painting.
Despite consisting only of black outlines, both Ramose and, most
Arts and Crafts 193
engagingly, his wife look out with classically beautiful faces that
profoundly touch the viewer. A row of mourners illustrated in
full color on another wall express their grief as they tear their hair
and wail. Greater detail is evident in the tomb of Rekmire, a vizier
under Tuthmosis III, with its scenes of craftsmen at work, officials
collecting taxes and foreign dignitaries being received at court, in
addition to such expected scenes as a hunt and a banquet.
Surprisingly, one servant girl pictured in this tomb, who is pour-
ing a libation at the banquet, stands three-quarters rear toward the
viewer, a pose seldom seen in Egyptian art. Closer inspection shows
her to be performing an impossible feat. Although her legs are not
crossed, the foot farthest from the viewer overlaps the closer foot.
Such strange depictions illustrate what unique principles form the
basis for Egyptian art. Unlike later Greek art and that of other cultures
that follow its traditions, Egyptian art never attempted to record a
moment in time, never contrived to fit three-dimensional figures
into the two dimensions available to a painter, never attempted to
fool the viewer into thinking the real thing lay before him. The aim
of Egyptian artists was simply to record an event for eternity, not
capture a fleeting moment; to present a situation unambiguously,
not show how it looked from a single point of view. Egyptians
usually portrayed generic rather than specific situations because
they wanted an object or gesture to be understood and identifiable.
Superimposition, with nearer objects covering what lay behind
them, was assiduously avoided to prevent any misinterpretation
of an obscured object. Perspective, portraying objects more distant
from the viewer as smaller than those closer to him, never entered
the realm of Egyptian art. A building would be shown from the
front and from the top all in the same composite view because, if
only one side were depicted, the rest of the building would be hid-
den and therefore, by Egyptian standards, nonexistent.
People were almost always shown in exactly the same attitude:
from the side, but with shoulders turned toward the viewer so
both arms could be seen, and in a striding position so both legs
and feet would appear. When it was important to show the per-
son actually doing something, say, carrying a bundle or cutting
down a tree, the shoulders still had to turn and both arms still
appear in their entirety, a principle which sometimes resulted in
comical distortions. More peculiar, even the outerside of a foot
was drawn as if seen from the inside so that the arch, an essential
feature, would be visible. Painted figures are generally depicted
with two identical hands—either two left or two right, but seldom
one of each. The rare exceptions to this canon always pertain to

people considered unimportant, such as the rear view of a servant
girl noted above. Animals too were carefully delimited to show
their most salient features, although, being less important than
humans, they were sometimes permitted to romp and turn more
“realistically.”
Early on Egyptians established a canon for representing human
proportions. The body was divided into eighteen equal squares,
from the soles of the feet to the top of the forehead.5 If the draw-
ing or statue were full-sized, each square would be one “span,”
that is, the width of a palm. Two squares measured off the face and
neck, ten covered the bottom of the feet to the waistband of a tunic,
achieving a long-leg look, shoulders spread six squares wide, and
so on. Children were generally represented as much smaller than
life; even adult children came up only to their father’s knee. In royal
portraits, the pharaoh might be many times the size of his wife,
who stood at about the height of a five-year-old—the same height
as enemies and even friendly troops in battle scenes that included
the king. The obvious principle was that size corresponded to social
importance.
When representing a figure in motion the require-

ments of Egyptian art often produced comical
distortions as in the impossible arms of this man har-
vesting.
Arts and Crafts 195
Perhaps because of their desire to present the essential features of

real things accurately, Egyptian artists found it difficult to fantasize.
Their attempts to portray the mythical creatures who populated the
next world produced unimaginative results: they simply combined
one known object with another—the body of a man, say, with the
head of a snake or even a knife.
Despite an entirely different intention and a traditional lack of
imagination, Egyptian artists often conveyed a feeling that still
touches us today, an especially surprising fact given the limited
materials available to them. Egyptians employed a palette of only
a few, mainly pure, colors. Black, white, blue, red, yellow and
brown came directly from a bowl; green, pink, orange and gray
were mixed from two of those basic colors. Almost no other colors
appear, except gilding with gold. That these colors were produced
primarily from natural minerals accounts for the vividness that wall
paintings retain thousands of years later. Brown, red and yellow
came from different oxides of iron, white from powdered chalk or
gypsum, and blue from frit: finely ground blue glass. Black, how-
ever, since it was derived from soot, sometimes turned brown or
reddish over the centuries.
What was mixed with all these powders to make them flow onto
a wall and adhere? These were certainly not oil paints—discovered
only during our Renaissance—nor watercolors, but a kind of tem-
pera: the carrying medium was a sticky substance that dried hard
in air. Although chemical analysis still leaves doubt about whether
the medium was glue, gum from the acacia tree or albumen (egg
whites),6 we have good evidence about how a wall was prepared
and the steps involved in painting it.
First, the stone wall was rubbed smooth with blocks of sandstone.
If the wall was cracked or pitted, it was initially evened out with a
coating of straw and mud. A final thin coating of gesso—powdered
gypsum mixed with a glue—provided a smooth canvas that
held paint well. Workers then stretched strings coated with powdered
red ochre and snapped them against the wall, like a modern-day
chalk line, to produce a grid that ensured properly proportional
figures in adherence to Egyptian principles of art. Then a team of
master draftsmen drew the outlines of figures and scenes in red.
If the walls were to be raised in bas relief, carvers next cut away
the background so the figures stood out about a quarter inch or so;
masters then cut details into the figure outlines. The painters came
next, filling in the figures with solid colors. Finally, a master painter
went over the work and corrected any mistakes with black outlines.
The grid that represented the

Egyptian art canon.
In many cases, a final coating of protective material was applied

over the color to seal out dampness. In some instances, beeswax was
used; other times, a varnish consisting of an unidentified tree resin.7
Large brushes made of date palm ribs beaten to separate the fibers
into bristles were used to paint backgrounds. Smaller brushes with
diameters as fine as 1/16th of an inch made of rushes chewed on
one end to separate the fibers into usable points were used to paint
details. Small brushes have been found that have been chewed
so often that only three or four inches remain of what began as a
foot-long tool. Paints were stored in individual three- to four-inch
pottery cups, suggesting that each painter used only one color at a
time.
As with every society, fashions—even artistic fashions—changed.
Early in the Eighteenth Dynasty, for example, light gray back-
grounds were generally chosen to set off painted subjects; later a
bright white background gained favor, with yellow as an infrequent
alternative. Yellow had become the primary background choice by
the Nineteenth Dynasty. As time passed, the time-consuming carv-
ing necessary to produce bas reliefs became less common, and it
was replaced, as in the tomb of Tutankhamen, by paint alone.
Arts and Crafts 197
ARCHITECTURE
In addition to erecting the most massive stone building in the
world (the Great Pyramid) and the largest place of worship (Kar-
nak Temple), Egypt contributed several new forms to architecture:
columns, pylons and at least three kinds of decoration. These inno-
vations are discussed here; for the development of architecture, see
Chapter 7.
Egyptians were the first people to erect stone columns—a fact
of no great surprise since they were the first to build with durable
materials. The first stone building, the pharaoh Zoser’s Step Pyra-
mid, included an entrance court lined on each side with two rows
of near-columns. These columns were ribbed and formed of stone
drums stacked one on top of the other—the harbingers of the great
Greek fluted columns—although these served no architectural pur-
pose, only an aesthetic one. Nor were they true columns because
horizontal supports anchored them to the wall. The same archi-
tect carved other near-columns; these were only half-round, form-
ing part of a wall in the face of a temple inside the enclosure, but
faceted—the models for the freestanding, true fluted columns that
had arrived in Egypt by the Middle Kingdom. That this was no acci-
dent or mistake is proven by their repetition in three other locations
in Zoser’s complex. Why the architect faceted his near-columns is
not known.
Earlier wood examples certainly provided inspiration as demon-
strated by the drooping, ribbed leaves at the tops of these stone col-
umns. One possibility is that he copied wood poles tied together in
bundles that were used at the time in house construction. This prob-
ably explains the engaged columns in the entrance court, which are
ribbed like a bundle of trunks; however, this theory does not account
for the carved leaves at the top. Perhaps these facets represented
the marks an adz would make as it sliced down a circular trunk.
Neither theory is plausible enough for us to feel we understand
why this architect—or the Greeks at a later time—decided to flute
otherwise circular columns. That it adds interest to the architecture
is certain, and, in the end, that may be the only explanation.
Whatever their origin, true, freestanding fluted columns—
predating Greek versions by a millennium and a half—had appeared
in Egypt by the Middle Kingdom, primarily in rock-cut tombs of
the governors of a central Egyptian province known today as Beni
Hassan. Interestingly, the Egyptians did not greatly favor this form
of column; they chose other types for more important buildings.
Generally they erected perfectly round columns, composed either
The main types of Egyptian capitals. From top left: a closed lotus bud,
an open lotus flower, palm fronds, and a representation of the goddess
Hathor.
of stone drums or a solid block of stone, each of which tapered up

to one of five different capitals. One characteristic capital depicted
upswept palm fronds; another represented papyrus flowers
opened as a tumbrel; two others showed lotus—one in closed buds
Arts and Crafts 199
and one in open flowers. Each of these four representations gen-

erally incorporated carved rope ties just below the capital. A fifth
capital depicted the head of the cow goddess Hathor on each of four
flat sides. Egyptians loved their columns and put them to use in
both houses and temples. The imposing Hypostyle Hall of Karnak’s
Amun temple, for example, has twelve seventy-foot-high columns
that form a central aisle, bordered by a forest of 80 slightly shorter
columns.
Karnak Temple also illustrates another Egyptian innovation—
pylons. Pylons, after first appearing in the New Kingdom, became
standard features of temple entrances thereafter. At the end of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten used their drama to provide a grand
entrance to his palace, but this is the only known private use of
pylons. Many Egyptologists think a door placed between a pair of
pylons symbolized the sun rising between two mountains.8 Perhaps
this demonstrates something about the imagination of Egyptolo-
gists; there is no good reason to believe ancient Egyptians viewed
their pylons in this way. A simpler explanation would be that pylons
gave an appearance of greater size with less work than other sorts
of entrances, while providing a large area for carved scenes.
A sixty-foot-high wall of bricks, especially without mortar, is at
constant risk of collapse unless the base is wider than the top and
This drawing shows the imposing pylons that form the entrance to Luxor
Temple. The flag staffs would have been over fifty feet tall.
the walls tapered. Taking such architectural precautions would

automatically produce a pylon. With such structures fronting a
temple, the whole building would appear to be equally tall, per-
mitting lower side and back walls without losing the impression of
size. Pylons were used solely to support flag poles at the front of
the temple and to anchor the entrance doors set between each pair,
a result which could certainly have been accomplished by different
means.
Egypt made three contributions to decorative architecture: the
cavetto cornice, torus molding and the kheker frieze. Cavetto
cornices add interest to the tops of walls by gently curving out-
ward. Even as early as Zoser’s Third Dynasty Step Pyramid com-
plex, wall tops often project, but without any curve. By the Fifth
Dynasty, the curve actually appears and, from that point on, a row of
horizontal ribs is etched into it at intervals, with the cornice at times
painted yellow. Prehistoric illustrations of reed shrines suggest
similar curved tops leading to the theory that this cornice replicates
in stone either the tops of reeds or palm fronds.9 At several inches
apart, the etched ribbing seems wider than that of a reed, although
yellow is typically used to indicate reeds in Egyptian painting. But,
while the ribbing of palm fronds is the correct width, it would be
unlikely that they would naturally all bend in the same outward
direction, and they would be painted green, not yellow. Cavetto
cornices, whatever their original model, served as signature deco-
rative elements on pylons and kiosks throughout most of Egyptian
history and thereafter in the architecture of other cultures.
Almost always cavetto cornices stand just above a torus mold-
ing. This simple molding consists of a rib with etched indications
of wrapping, strongly suggesting that some sort of rope material
served as the model.
The kheker frieze was a common decorative motif used at the top of
a wall of painted scenes. Probably it represents the large “thistle” of a
papyrus plant tied together at the top and bottom.
Arts and Crafts 201
Unlike cavetto cornices and torus molding, kheker friezes, al-

though common in Egyptian architecture, seldom appeared in
other cultures. Kheker friezes comprised rows of horizontal ele-
ments, shaped something like a flame above a round base. In this
case, the model seems clear. Papyrus plants send out a fan “flower,”
like a giant dandelion thistle. In prehistoric times, shrines were
constructed of standing papyrus reeds whose tops protruded
above the roof. The “flower” was gathered together for neatness
by tying the petals near their tops and again, separated by a bit of
space, twice more near the bottom. The bottom two ties formed a
rough circle; the top tie elongated the petals into a dart. This unusual
decorative motif appeared at the top of so many walls that a picture
of a single kheker became the hieroglyph for decoration in general.
CERAMICS AND GLASS

Egyptian pottery adequately served its purpose, but it never
achieved the quality of Egyptian sculpture, painting and architec-
ture. Bowls could convey charm, however, as in the case of small
predynastic “footed” ones which rested on two tiny human feet.
The most interesting pottery also dates back to such early times.
Two-color pots were produced by oxidizing iron impurities in the
clay which fired it to a red color, while the top of the pot lay bur-
ied under the fire’s ashes to carbonize black. The finished product,
which could be as thin as an eighth of an inch for a pot over a foot
tall, exhibits a distinct shine that came not from a glaze but from
being burnished with a smooth stone before firing.
Something like a potter’s wheel was invented during the Old
Kingdom, if not before. A heavy circular stone rested on a pivot
for turning by hand or foot, at a level lower than our modern ver-
sion. It spun more slowly, but produced round vessels of consistent
thickness. The kiln was also an early invention. In the Egyptian ver-
sion, a tall, conical brick structure held a fire at the bottom while a
shelf supported the unfired clay above the ashes. In this simple way
pots were produced—for cooking, storing and carrying—during all
ancient Egypt’s history. Because they were utilitarian objects, their
makers seldom paid much attention to their beauty.
When artisans turned their attention to ceramic amulets, how-
ever, they invested more imagination and care and produced
thousands of images—from the tiny to a foot in height—depicting
gods, the magical eye of Horus (for health), the djed pillar (of sta-
bility), the sacred scarab beetle (for long life) and even images of
servants, called ushabtis, which each person took to his tomb to

magically work for him during his afterlife. These figures, gener-
ally colored a rich sky blue, aqua or green, were not molded from
clay, but from a material of Egyptian invention. Called Egyptian
faience, it consisted of a core produced from finely ground quartz
coated with a glass-like glaze. Composed of a solution of natron and
quartz dust, it could be shaped by hand or pressed into a clay mold.
When fired, it solidified into a solid mass harder than soft stone.
The glaze consisted of natron again, mixed in solution with mala-
chite or another oxide of copper. The solution, which was washed
over the object to be glazed then heated to fuse with the silicon of
the quartz, produced a blue or green glass that was literally bound
to the object. Instead of washing the coloring agent over the object,
it could instead be mixed in with the quartz powder before firing.
When heated, it would rise to the surface as a self-glaze.
In addition to making delicate figures by the thousands, Egyp-
tians used their faience to manufacture small bowls and dishes of
rich blue. They even learned, by changing the oxide, to produce
red and yellow versions and to create objects in two and three col-
ors. One early experiment produced the first glazed tiles in history.
A room in a second tomb of Zoser, called the Southern Burial, was
found lined with rows of lovely green-blue tiles, about three inches
long by an inch and a half wide. A method to fix them to a wall
was lacking, however. The tiles were attached to the wall by a string
through a hole in the back of each.
Egyptian glaze not only shone like glass, it actually was glass,
so Egyptians must be counted among the very first glass produc-
ers. Some pure glass may have been manufactured as early as pre-
dynastic times, but evidence that the process was understood and
intentional remains unclear.10 Glass results from fusing sand with
an alkali and mixing in additives for color as desired. Sand existed
in inexhaustible supply in Egypt and natron, an alkali, was avail-
able from a place where it covers the ground so extensively that
the area is called the Wadi Natron. Egyptians were unable to pro-
duce temperatures high enough to make clear glass, hardly a mat-
ter of concern since all their glass was intentionally colored for use
as ornaments. Since glass blowing originated only later, in later
Roman times, Egyptians produced glass objects either by pouring
molten glass into molds or by dipping a sandy clay core into molten
glass, then, in a process called marvering, rolling the glass-covered
core over a stone to smooth its surface. After hardening, the core
Arts and Crafts 203
was scraped out. Alternatively, rods of glass, often of different col-

ors,11 could be wrapped around a core to form a vase or bowl. One
special treatment was to drag a tool up and down the still viscous
bands to produce attractive waves of color in the final product.
By the time of the New Kingdom, glass had become an industry
which turned out thousands of excellent inlays, beads, vases, bowls
and amulets. Strangely, production had declined by the Twentieth
Dynasty, two dynasties later, and disappeared entirely during the
Late Period, not to be resurrected until many centuries later by the
Ptolemies.
CARPENTRY
Egyptian carpentry dates from predynastic times when coffins
were constructed of lap-joined planks held together at the corners
with lashing tied through holes. By the First Dynasty, construction
had become more sophisticated, resulting in admirable work. One
box, about ten inches by four inches, consists of one large compart-
ment and another of the same size divided into four spaces.12 The
corners were lap-joined with the bottom rebated into the sides, and
all was fastened with leather tied through angled holes. A sliding
lid sealed the box. Even at this early time, carpenters had mastered
the craft of producing flat pieces of wood, then cutting and joining
them into a well-built box. Predynastic tombs contained boxes with
inlayed panels and mortise and tenon joints for the rails and stiles,
mitered corners and inlays of ivory strips or even faience plaques
attached by tree resin to a gesso base. Splendidly carved bull’s feet
with sinews and fetlock accurately depicted in ivory for use as the
feet of beds or chairs serve today as museum exhibits.
Carpenters had gotten off to a precocious start, barely ham-
pered by the absence of glue and of nails. Glue, made from boiling
down the bones and cartilage of animals, did not come into use as
an adhesive until about the Fifth Dynasty. By the Fourth Dynasty,
boxes with barrel or gabled lids, others with cavetto cornices and
some with curved sides, show that shaping presented no problem.
Sloping lids rising to a curved peak attained the height of com-
plexity in the Sixth Dynasty. Rope handles tied through side holes
aided carrying, or, in the case of larger boxes, copper loops on the
box bottom secured carrying poles that slid out when not needed.
Lids were locked by a string tied to a knob on the front, the top, or
both.
Plywood composed of six eighth-of-an-inch-thick pieces of im-

ported Syrian cypress, pegged together with grains running in dif-
ferent directions for strength, were used in a coffin as early as the
Third Dynasty. Later, even thinner veneer, as thin as one-thirty-
second of an inch, was used to cover cheaper material, sometimes
pieced together, to masquerade as more costly woods. One funerary
box from the Eighteenth Dynasty contained such a clever locking
mechanism that its excavator had to break it open. Afterward he
discovered that when the lid was pushed closed a tongue swung
down into a tenon, locking the box. No means for unlocking it had
been provided.13 Dowel hinges also existed by the New Kingdom,
along with such intricate design techniques as openwork carving;
inlaying with contrasting woods, ivory, faience, stone and glass; and
gilding using tissue-thin sheets of gold.
In addition to boxes in many styles and designs, carpenters pro-
duced wooden beds and small tables that stood on three or four
legs. Chairs tended to have low seats, less than ten inches above the
ground, and almost straight backs, often intricately cut out. Some
examples of folding stools have been found with leather seats that
could collapse for transport to the battlefield or the hunt.
All these objects were produced with simple woodworking
tools. Saws with two-foot-long blades attached to a wood handle
were pulled, not pushed as ours are today, which meant the far
end aimed high and was drawn down with two hands toward the
user. Pictures show upright logs lashed between poles with a saw-
yer working his way down to shape a plank. Several kinds of drills
existed. One type, more of an awl, was twisted by hand; another
was a drill driven by a bow that moved back and forth. After saw-
ing wood to its approximate measurements, an adz could be used
to achieve an exact size quickly. A chisel, driven by a round wood
mallet, worked the area even more finely before its final sanding
with blocks of sandstone the ancient equivalent of sandpaper. Nei-
ther wood planes nor lathes existed in these times; the Egyptian
carpenter compensated for the absence of these tools with his infi-
nite patience.
Although ancient Egypt did not grow the best woods, available
material proved adequate for carpenters when supplemented by
imports.14 Egypt grew no tall trees for tall ship masts, large coffins
and towering temple doors. For these uses, tall cedar from Lebanon
or cypress trees were imported. Tough, elastic ash was imported
from Syria for use in bows and chariots. Beautiful, hard dark ebony,
whose name derives from the ancient Egyptian word hbny, was
Arts and Crafts 205
imported from tropical Africa and Punt (Somalia) for the solid fur-
niture of the rich and for inlays and veneers for those on a bud-
get. From Palestine (Israel) came elm for strong chariot axles and
supports; yew from Persia was imported for coffins. Egypt was
not, however, without its own lumber. Acacia grew tall enough for
shorter ship masts and boat planking. Date palm trunks provided
roof beams, though its fibrous wood made it inappropriate for fur-
niture. Sycamore, which served many uses, from boxes to coffins,
proved to be one of the most useful native woods. The shorter tam-
arisk tree provided wood for boxes and some coffins, though much
pieced together. Wood from willow trees became knife handles and
parts of some boxes.
LITERATURE
Although probably less than 5 percent of Egypt’s population was
literate, Egypt, like any other great civilization, employed a large
bureaucracy to collect taxes, record business transactions and pre-
serve the country’s history—all tasks that required writing. Besides
being crucial for the business of the country, written work provided
the literate minority with both instruction and pleasure.
A common misconception about Egyptian writing is that hiero-
glyphs picture the subjects written about; that the appearance of a
bird or a rabbit in a text, for example, indicates a discussion of those
animals. Hieroglyphs are actually phonetic, like our own letters,
in which signs represent word sounds. When an ancient Egyptian
sculptor carved a hand followed by a rectangular reed mat and a loaf
of bread on a temple wall he was indicating the sound d, p and t,
spelling the word dpt, ancient Egyptian for “boat.” If he wanted
to make the meaning doubly clear, he could add the boat hiero-
glyph at the end of the word. Hieroglyphs used in such a manner
are called determinatives because they help the reader determine
the meaning.
The classical Egyptian alphabet served its people for 3,000 years.
Egyptians did not generally symbolize their vowels because a
reader familiar with the language would know which vowels were
meant without being told. The ancient Hebrew alphabet followed
the same design. Still, some of their signs could be used, if someone
wished, when writing a modern name. Thus the Egyptian vulture
sign is not an exact equivalent of our letter “a” but may be used in
its place. The arm hieroglyph may be used in place of our “e,” and
so on.
Classic Egyptian Alphabet
In addition to an alphabet of single sounds, other hieroglyphs,

called biliterals, represented two consecutive sounds. The hiero-
glyph of a house plan represented the combined p and r sounds,
pronounced something like per. Our word “pharaoh” comes from
an Egyptian word made up of two biliterals: (the bottom biliteral
was pronounced “aha” and meant “great”). Thus the per-aha was
the one who lived in the great house. Another group of hieroglyphs
represented three sounds—triliterals, such as the hieroglyph , pro-
nounced ah-n-kh, the ancient Egyptian word for life. A scribe used
about 500 common hieroglyphs in all, but several thousand others
were written occasionally or rarely.
Arts and Crafts 207
In addition to record keeping and religious writing, literature,

where the craft was as important as the content, existed as well. Wis-
dom literature, simply called “Instructions” by their authors, were
texts that first appeared during the Old Kingdom to guide younger
generations. Their aristocratic authors, princes and viziers, thus
instructed their sons how to attain and prosper in high offices. The
“Instructions to Kagemni” advise modesty.
The respectful man prospers.

Praised is the modest one.
The tent is open to the silent.15
This theme is repeated throughout wisdom literature; modesty,

calmness and restraint are all virtues to be cultivated and will lead
to advancement. Kagemni is advised further,
Gluttony is base and is reproved.

A cup of water quenches thirst,
A mouthful of herbs strengthens the heart.16
In a set of thirty-seven maxims, the vizier Ptahotep gives his son,

and us, a view of the moral system of the ancient Egyptians: one
should know one’s place.
If you are among guests

at the table of one greater than you,
Take what he gives as it is set before you.17
And reason, rather than emotion, should be followed.
The trusted man does not vent his belly’s speech,

He will himself become a leader...
The great hearted is god-given,
He who obeys his belly belongs to the enemy.18
Ptahotep also counsels against woman and greed. “In what-

ever place you enter, beware of approaching the women!” “Guard
against the vice of greed . . . The greedy has no tomb.” Mixed with
the advice of restraint—in lovers, eating and speech—runs the
belief that justice will prevail. In an equivalent of our “Crime does
not pay,” Ptahotep proclaims, “[c]rime never lands its wares, In the
end it is justice that lasts.”
The Egyptian sense of order, with everything and everyone in

its proper place led to the highly structured society reflected in
wisdom literature. Know your place and be restrained; the rich are
supposed to be rich, so do not rock the boat. The pharaoh Khety
counseled,
Don’t reduce the nobles in their possessions.

Beware of punishing wrongfully,
Do not kill, it does not serve you.
Punish with beatings and detentions,
Thus will the land be well ordered.19
In spite of the aristocratic tone, justice is always paramount.
Make firm your station in the graveyard,

By being upright, by doing justice,
Upon which men’s hearts rely.
The loaf of the upright is preferred
To the ox of the evildoer.20
By the time of the New Kingdom, a growing class of well-to-do

non-aristocrats required their own wisdom literature which
encouraged the same virtues as in the Old Kingdom texts, but
preached those values from the mouths of scribes, rather than kings
and princes. Any, a scribe of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, instructs
his son,
Don’t indulge in drinking beer, lest you utter evil speech,

and don’t know what you are saying.
If you fall and hurt your body,
none holds out a hand to you;
Your companions in drinking
Stand up saying: “Out with the drunk!”21
This is the way a working class man tells his son to stay out of
bars.
Although wisdom literature had the practical purpose of instruc-
tion, a large body of fiction literature was written for pure enter-
tainment. Since most Egyptians were unable to read and those
who could, in most cases, were unable to afford a papyrus for mere
entertainment, these short stories were probably read at gatherings,
much as Middle Eastern storytellers entertained the illiterate until
modern times. Egyptian short stories deal with magic and mystery,
Arts and Crafts 209
heroes and bravery, and almost always have happy endings. Prob-
ably the most famous is the “Tale of Sinhue.”22
Sinhue, an aristocrat and a loyal courtier of the Middle Kingdom
pharaoh Senusert I, flees Egypt for the northern lands of Syria-
Palestine when his pharaoh dies. He endures hardships, almost
dying of thirst and hunger, but is finally rescued by a Syrian prince
who recognizes Sinhue, having met him on an earlier trip to Egypt.
Sinhue’s skills and virtues enable him to prosper in his new land,
and the tale chronicles his rise to respectability. He marries a prin-
cess and becomes an owner of cattle and large tracts of land but,
as in any good tale, there is a villain. A local warrior, jealous of
Sinhue’s wealth and status, challenges him to mortal combat—the
equivalent of two gunfighters shooting it out. After preparing his
bow, arrows, shield and dagger, Sinhue marches toward his enemy
while a crowd cheers him on. The villain fires first from a distance
that allows Sinhue to sidestep the arrow and continue forward
until he draws close enough to fire back. Sinhue pierces his ene-
my’s neck. Moving in for the kill, Sinhue dispatches him with his
battle ax. As is traditional, Sinhue appropriates his rival’s cattle and
goods to become even more wealthy. He fathers numerous children
and enters his twilight years as one of the most respected men of
his adopted tribe.
In spite of Sinhue’s successes, however, he remains an Egyptian
at heart, realizing that, if he dies abroad and is not mummified, he
will lose his chance for immortality. When the son of the pharaoh
Sinhue originally served hears of Sinhue’s desire to return to Egypt
he sends an entourage to escort him home. The story proclaims
Sinhue’s joyful and triumphant return, as he is welcomed by the
new pharaoh and his children and is given land and a grand house
so he can spend his final days in comfort. Although the “Tale of
Sinhue” is intended as entertainment, it contains the clear message
that there is no place like home, especially if home is Egypt.
Because magic was such an integral part of their daily life,
Egyptians loved tales of wonder and mysterious beings. “The
Shipwrecked Sailor” is a fantasy similar to those in The Arabian
Nights.23
As a high official sails home to Egypt, despondent because of an
unsuccessful royal mission, one of his shipmates attempts to cheer
him by telling of a time when he too thought all was lost before his
fortunes changed. The sailor had been a crewmate of 120 others,
all skilled and brave, but a terrible storm sank their ship, killing
everyone but the sailor telling the story. A great wave washed him
onto the shore of an island. After recovering from his initial fright
of the unknown island, he explored it and discovered a tropical
paradise filled with figs, incense, vegetables, grapes, fish and fowl.
In the midst of his wonder at all this bounty, he hears a noise like
the roar of the sea that emanates from the mouth of a gigantic,
forty-five-foot-long cobra, wearing a pharaoh’s false beard made
of lapis lazuli.
Petrified, the sailor throws himself on his belly before the cobra.
The cobra bellows angrily, “Who brought you to my island?” When
the sailor is unable to reply, the cobra threatens to reduce him to
ashes. Finally the sailor stammers out the story of the shipwreck
and the loss of his comrades. Moved by the tale, the cobra assures
the man he has nothing to fear, even predicting that in four months
a great ship from Egypt will rescue him from the island. Then the
cobra gently carries the man in his mouth to his den where he tells
the shipwrecked sailor of his own woes—a tale of woe within a
tale of woe within another tale of woe. When the cobra was young,
he lived with his family, seventy-five in all. One day, when he was
away from his house, a meteor fell from the sky, setting his house
on fire and killing all his family. Like the shipwrecked sailor, he
alone was spared.
Four months later, as the cobra had foretold, a boat arrived to
rescue the shipwrecked sailor. At his departure, the cobra gives
him gifts of incense, perfume, elephant tusks, ivory, monkeys and
baboons. The man promises to repay these many kindnesses but
the cobra tells him they will never meet again, that the enchanted
island will return to beneath the sea.
Love poetry also existed in Egypt, becoming particularly popular
during the New Kingdom. As in all love poems, separated lovers
pine for their loved ones, extolling the pleasures of ecstasy (some-
times in graphic detail). Women are compared to the beauties of
nature, and couples scheme how to meet.
I will lie down in my house
and pretend to be dying.
When the neighbors come to see me,
perhaps my love will come with them.
She will make doctors unnecessary.
She knows what’s wrong with me!24
Egyptian poetry often refers to the Nile as the transport for a
lover to his adored. At other times it is a barrier, but even a raging
river and crocodiles do not deter a true lover.
Arts and Crafts 211
My love is over on one side,

the river between us.
The river is high now,
and there’s a crocodile on the sandbank.
I dive into the river and brave the current.
My heart is strong.
The crocodile seems small to me,
the torrents are like ground under my feet.
Her love makes me strong;
It makes a water spell for me.25
NOTES
1. A number of books on ancient Egypt beautifully illustrate the devel-
opment of its art; see, for example, Kazimierz Michelowski, Art of Ancient
Egypt (New York: Abrams, n.d.).
2. Occasional exceptions prove the rule, such as a fine, small, slate
statue of the Second Dynasty pharaoh Khasekhem.
3. Noted, for example, by Waley-el-dine Sameh, Daily Life in Ancient
Egypt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 55.
4. See Cyril Aldred, Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs 3100–320
B.C. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 24.
5. Illustrated, for example, in W. Stevenson Smith, Art and Architecture
of Ancient Egypt (New York: Penguin Books, 1958), 65.
6. See the discussion in A. Lucas and J. R. Harris, Ancient Egyptian
Materials and Industries (London: Histories and Mysteries of Man, 1989),
1– 6.
7. Ibid., 356 – 61.
8. For example, Aldred, Egyptian Art, 145– 46; and Jean-Louis de
Cenival, Living Architecture: Egyptian (New York: Grosset and Dunlap,
1964), 89–90.
9. Alexander Badawy presents both views in A History of Egyptian
Architecture: The First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, and the Second
Intermediate Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 79–81.
10. The evidence is critically assessed by Lucas in Lucas and Harris,
Ancient Egyptian Materials, 179–84.
11. For a discussion of the different colors, see Lucas and Harris, Ancient
Egyptian Material, 187–91.
12. Described by Geoffrey Killen, Ancient Egyptian Furniture, Vol. 2,
Boxes, Chests and Footstools (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips,
1994), 3 – 4.
13. Ibid., 38 –39.
14. See the thorough discussion by Lucas in Lucas and Harris, Ancient
Egyptian Materials, 429– 48.
15. For a complete translation of “The Instruction Addressed to Kagemni,”

see Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972), vol. 1, pp. 59– 61.
16. Ibid.
17. For a complete translation of “The Instruction of Ptahotep,” see Lich-
theim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1, pp. 61– 80.
18. Ibid.
19. For a complete translation of “The Instruction Addressed to King
Merikare,” see Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2, pp. 97–109.
20. Ibid.
21. For a complete translation of “The Instructions of Any,” see Lich-
theim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2, pp. 135 – 46.
22. William Kelly Simpson, The Literature of Ancient Egypt (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 57–74.
23. Ibid., 50–56.
24. For a different version of this poem, see John L. Foster, Love Songs
of the New Kingdom (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 72.
25. Ibid., 193.
9
TECHNOLOGY AND
CONSTRUCTION
Even with all our modern advances in engineering, ancient build-

ings like Rome’s Colosseum, the Inca’s Machu Picchu and Egypt’s
pyramids still have the power to awe. How could ancient people
accomplish these feats without modern machines or the engineer-
ing we take for granted today? In ancient times builders not only
erected grand monuments but also invented the means, the engi-
neering, by which they could be built, in the process creating their
marvels. By understanding the challenges confronting ancient
builders and their solutions, we gain appreciation for and insight
into the thinking and ingenuity of these people from long ago.
In particular, construction in ancient Egypt was complicated by
the composition of its land—much of it either soggy, marsh soil or
shifting sand. For this reason, Egyptians never developed the grand
system of roads that civilizations like the Romans did, although
this is not to say there were no roads in Egypt. Where solid ground
existed, Egyptians laid gravel, when available, or smoothed and
tamped the soil to create a surface suited to rapid chariot move-
ment for its army, foreign diplomats and merchants.
Still, the main highway of Egypt was a wide natural thoroughfare
called the Nile River. The river served as the most efficient means
of moving heavy objects over long distances, shifting the burden
from humans to the divine river. Still, transporting loads from
the Nile to a building site was a problem. Since wheels proved of

little use in transporting heavy objects across a marsh or sand, the
Egyptians invented sleds, which could glide over wet or soft soil.
Egyptian sleds had two joined wooden runners that curved up
at the front, and normally served their purpose well, even when,
in shifting sand, they required someone riding on the front of the
sled pouring water to help the runners glide. Nonetheless, trans-
porting objects that weighed many tons proved difficult. Rather
than a constant steady pulling motion, what was needed was
spurts of pulling power that could jerk the sled with force when
it stalled.
Egyptians found that nothing was better than man-power for such
tasks; indeed, one surviving picture shows 172 men pulling on four
separate ropes to drag a stone statue that must have weighed sixty
tons or more. Although oxen sometimes did haul heavy sleds, when
This illustrates part of a complete scene that shows 172 men hauling a
sixty-ton statue on a sled. One man on the statue’s lap beats time; another
at the statue’s feet pours liquid to ease the runner’s way. The hieroglyphs
say: “Giving the time-beat to the soldiers by the signal giver, crying Jhuty-
hotep [the man portrayed by the statue], beloved of the king.”
Technology and Construction 215
the load was truly great, nothing proved better than a team of men
pulling all together. Incidentally, although Egyptians bred tens of
thousands of horses, they used them only for transporting people.
Just as geography significantly affected construction techniques
in ancient Egypt, so too did the availability of a huge workforce.
Throughout history nations have sought to increase the efficiency
of individual workers so that fewer people would be required for
given projects, freeing up others for assignment elsewhere. Ancient
Egypt was an exception. Thanks to the “miracle” of Nile floods that
replenished their farm soil every year, abundant crops were reaped
regularly by the Egyptians, ensuring that food, the dominant con-
cern of most civilizations, was relatively easy for them to produce.
With fewer citizens required to feed the population, more were
available for other projects, such as construction and manufactur-
ing. If someone took a month to carve a stone jar, there were still
plenty of people available for other projects while that craftsman
was occupied.
A third important factor affecting construction techniques in
ancient Egypt was the fact that, since this civilization flourished
before humans learned to work iron, it had to make do without
iron or steel tools during most of its history. Throughout the five
hundred years of the Old Kingdom, the strongest metal Egyptians
knew of for tools was copper. Later, bronze was discovered; but
it took another five hundred years before iron became common-
place. Copper’s virtue, its relatively low melting temperature,
permitted it to be poured into molds of any shape. But its less
beneficial characteristic, extreme softness, meant that, when forged
into a tool with a sharp edge, it blunted with the first blow to
a hard object. Because bronze is much harder than copper—similar
to wrought iron but much easier to melt and mold into vari-
ous shapes—its discovery and increasingly common use during
Egypt’s Middle Kingdom made carving stone significantly easier
in that period.
Yet, as early as the Old Kingdom, Egyptians, equipped only with
copper tools, managed to construct the massive stone structures
of both the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. During this early time,
they quarried and carved huge blocks of granite, a substance harder
than steel; they raised blocks weighing as much as sixty tons up
a pyramid 480 feet tall; they constructed 200-feet-long ships with-
out nails; and they leveled their pyramids to a precision that cannot
be bettered today. They accomplished all this with only the most
primitive tools. How did they manage such feats? In some cases
the answer remains unknown, but in other cases detective work

reveals the solutions to these ancient mysteries.
BUILDING A PYRAMID
Because of their immense size, building pyramids posed special
problems of both organization and engineering. Constructing the
Great Pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu, for example, required that
more than two million blocks weighing from two to more than
sixty tons be formed into a structure covering two football fields
and rising in a perfect pyramidal shape 480 feet into the sky. Its
construction involved vast numbers of workers which, in turn, pre-
sented complex logistical problems concerning food, shelter and
organization. Millions of heavy stone blocks needed not only to be
quarried and raised to great heights but also set together with pre-
cision in order to create the desired shape. These problems became
even more complicated because of time constraints: since it was a
tomb, the pyramid had to be completed before the pharaoh, Khufu,
died. How did the ancient Egyptians overcome such obstacles?
In the case of Khufu’s Great Pyramid, they first selected a site,
a plateau of about fifty acres in the desert, then assembled more
than 25,000 workers and set them to transforming the desolate,
uninhabited terrain into a kind of boom town. The workers were
free citizens, signed up by recruiters who had roamed the coun-
try seeking healthy, patriotic men willing to work for a national
cause. They were certainly not the slaves that Hollywood so often
portrays. They labored for the gratitude of their pharaoh, a person
whom they believed would resurrect as a god, so a promise of free
food and shelter was merely a bonus. Most were farmers who were
accustomed to hard labor but had never traveled far from their vil-
lages. They came for a great adventure.
Before construction could begin on the pyramid, a sufficient num-
ber of houses, bakeries and breweries to sustain a workforce of tens
of thousands through decades of labor had to be built. That is, an
entire city had to be created. Workers had to excavate a four-mile canal
to the Nile so supplies could be floated from all over Egypt directly
to the work site, and they had to dig a harbor and construct docks to
receive the tons of supplies necessary for this workmen’s city.
There then remained a pyramid to be built. The first problem of
construction was aligning the future building precisely with the
four points of the compass, for when the dead pharaoh resurrected,
as the religion of the ancient Egyptians foretold, his new self would
travel to the Polar Star, situated directly north. To orient the build-
ing so the pharaoh would not miss his way, engineers relied on
their observation that the stars rotate around a fixed point in the
sky. That point is true north and the Egyptians determined its exact
orientation by one of two fairly simple methods.
Engineers could plant a stick so that it cast no shadow at noon.
If the stick’s shadow were then marked sometime before noon and
marked again the same amount of time after noon, true north would
lie exactly half way along a line connecting the two shadow marks.
If precision was important, as it probably was, the process could be
repeated for several days and the results averaged.
A second method entailed constructing a temporary wall with
as level a top as possible that faced approximately northward. If a
mark were made on that top where any given star was first sighted
rising in the night and a second mark made where the same star dis-
appeared later, a mark exactly half way between these two would
point directly north.
With true north determined, the land had to be readied for the
immense structure it would support. Since the pyramid would be
constructed of stone blocks merely resting atop other blocks, its
base had to be almost perfectly level; an even slightly tilted struc-
ture would tumble with the first earthquake. Pyramid engineers
accomplished their assignment superbly: the difference in eleva-
tion from one corner of the Great Pyramid to the next, a distance of
756 feet, is less than an inch; because of this stable foundation, the
structure has managed to survive the tremors of four millennia. We
would be hard pressed with all our complex modern instruments to
do much better. While no record describes how Egyptians accom-
plished such precision, the feat was most likely achieved by simple
means, probably by digging a shallow trench around the perimeter
of the future pyramid and filling it with water. The water’s surface
would have functioned as a gigantic carpenter’s level, with gravity
ensuring that the water evened to exactly the same elevation along
the entire trench. The surrounding land could then simply be dug
down to match the level of the water.
Clever Egyptian engineers even found a way to save the work
and time of installing several thousand blocks at the center of the
Great Pyramid by only excavating the stone at the perimeter of the
building site. They saw no reason to first level the natural mound
only to have to build it back up later. So the first few courses of
the Great Pyramid consist simply of a natural hill covered with an
outer casing of cut stones.
When it was finally time to begin serious building, the first row of
blocks was moved into position. But a problem had to be addressed
before a second row could be added: at what angle should the sides
of the pyramid incline as they rose to meet at the top? The angle
was not ordained by any religious dictate: various pyramids across
Egypt rise at different angles. Nonetheless, there were consider-
ations. If the angle was too steep, the building might collapse; too
gradual and the sides would meet too quickly, making it impos-
sible to form a pyramid of impressive height. Engineers for Khufu’s
pyramid set the angle at a middle ground of 51.84 degrees. Once
decided, the angle had to be maintained on each of the pyramid’s
four rising sides, or they would not meet together in a point at the
top. To ensure consistency, engineers most likely constructed a
wooden template in the form of a right triangle whose hypotenuse
inclined at the proper angle and placed it on top of each completed
row to determine the proper indentation for the next.
The engineers had to build quickly if the Great Pyramid were
to be ready by the time their Pharaoh died. We know that Khufu
The eroded remains of a mud brick ramp used to haul stones to the top of one
of the pylons (gateways) to Karnak Temple. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
reigned for about twenty years so the pyramid had to be completed

in less time than that. The math indicates that, with about 2,000,000
stones to place and at most twenty years to position them, given a
work-year of 350 days and a work-day of ten hours, approximately
30 blocks were placed per hour. That is, one block was delivered to
its position in the pyramid every two minutes. That is a very tight
schedule.
How could thousands of two-ton blocks be raised hundreds of
feet in the air in a manner that allowed such rapid delivery, given
that Egyptians used people, not animals, to haul heavy loads?
Some theorists believe Egyptians used a kind of hoist. But, since
the sides of a pyramid slanted inward, a straight pull to the top—
necessary for a hoist—was impossible. Separate hoists on every com-
pleted row would involve untying a stone from its hoist when it was
raised up one level and retying it to the hoist on the next level up.
The tying and retying would take time, making it impossible to lift a
block up ten or twenty levels within a two-minute-per-block sched-
ule. Multiple hoists on each level could allow multiple blocks to be
lifted at the same time, of course, but this would necessitate hundreds
of hoists and thousands of people hoisting. While this might work at
the pyramid’s lower levels, as the building narrows to a point near
the top, there would be less and less space available for hoists.
Another theory proposes that a ramp was used to haul blocks up
pyramids. Such ramps certainly were employed by the Egyptians
since ramp remains still survive near some ancient construction
sites. It is unlikely that a ramp was used for Khufu’s pyramid,
however. As with hoists, a ramp might work for the lower part
of a pyramid, but would cause difficulties for the higher levels.
The problem is one of physics. The steeper the angle of an incline,
the more effort necessary to move an object up that incline. So, in
order for a relatively small number of men, say ten or so, to drag
a two-ton load up a ramp, its angle could not be more than about
eight percent. Geometry tells us that to reach a height of 480 feet,
an inclined plane rising at eight percent would have to start almost
one mile from its finish. It has been calculated that building a mile-
long ramp that rose as high as the Great Pyramid would require
as much material as that needed for the pyramid itself—workers
would have had to build the equivalent of two pyramids in the
twenty-year time frame.
A modification of the ramp theory has also been proposed. It con-
jectures that a ramp was attached to the pyramid and followed its
sides, as a road might circle up a mountain. Resting against the
Single Ramp. One theory for how heavy blocks were raised up the pyra-
mids claims that they were dragged up a long ramp such as is pictured in
this drawing.
pyramid, such a ramp would not need to be self-supporting and

could therefore be less massive and require less material than a
straight ramp. But this idea is also problematic. While the mass of
an Egyptian pyramid consisted of piled rectangular blocks, an out-
ermost coating of finer limestone blocks with angled outer faces
filled in the steps to create a true, smooth pyramid. Such a coating
remains visible today at the top of the pyramid next to Khufu’s
on the Giza plateau. According to the modified ramp theory, the
ramp covered the outside of the pyramid, so the blocks that form its
smooth sides could only have been put in place after the ramp was
removed. That is, workmen would have to begin at the top and work
down as the ramp was disassembled because, once the ramp was
removed, there would be no way to transport blocks to the top. But
a top-down sequence is impossible because each casing block rests
on the one below it, not the one above. Additionally, at the time the
first casing blocks were placed at the top, the ramp would still encir-
cle the pyramid, hiding its lower sides from view, a serious problem
given that the only way to ensure the pyramid’s 51.84 degree angle
of incline is by sighting along its corners, an impossibility if the
circling ramp was hiding the pyramid’s corners.
A radical new theory about how the Great Pyramid’s blocks were
raised has recently been proposed by Jean-Pierre Houdin, a French
architect.1 His idea also involves a ramp, but one on the interior, not
the exterior, of the pyramid. He believes that during the early stages
of construction a straight, external ramp was used to haul stones up
to about the first third of the pyramid’s eventual height. Since this
ramp would only rise a hundred feet or so, it would not need to be
very long or involve vast amounts of material. As the first part of
the pyramid was being built using this ramp, engineers created a
corridor inside, which followed the outer walls and rose at about
the eight-percent slope that would allow a small team of men to
advance a two-ton stone. Each new level would include an addition
to the corridor so it would ascend along with the building itself.
Then the remaining two-thirds of the structure could be built with
Corkscrew Ramp. A second theory claims the pyramids’ blocks were

hauled to the top of the pyramids on a ramp attached to the building as
illustrated.
blocks hauled up this inner corridor. As an added advantage, the

interior corridor-ramp was hollow which would mean that fewer
blocks were needed to create the pyramid. Mr. Houdin even specu-
lates that the blocks to finish the pyramid could have been those
recovered from the first, external ramp when it was dismantled. The
corridor could not be much wider than the blocks hauled through
it, however, or this spiraling hole in the pyramid might cause struc-
tural problems.
Nonetheless, rooms do exist in the pyramid. Intended as a tomb,
space had to be left inside for the burial of the pharaoh and the
treasures he intended to take with him to the next world. Corridors
were necessary, as well, to lead from the pyramid entrance to the
burial room so that the body could be transported there after death.
Three rooms are known to exist inside Khufu’s pyramid, along with
a network of corridors leading to them.
The reason that two extra chambers were built, in addition to
the one needed for the pharaoh’s tomb, was because no one knew
when the pharaoh might die. The first burial chamber was built
Notches such as the one illustrated may have been left at the corners of the
pyramid to allow blocks hauled on an internal ramp to turn a corner.
Remains of one of the notches needed to turn the blocks at the corners of
an internal ramp may be visible today near the top of the pyramid. Photo
courtesy of Pat Remler.
as soon as the plateau was leveled so that, even if the pharaoh

died as soon as work began on his pyramid, he would still have a
place ready for his eternal rest. This chamber is a rectangular room
carved into the bedrock at the center of the pyramid below the low-
est level of blocks. The pharaoh did not die early, however, so this
chamber was never completed. After about six more years, with
the pharaoh still living, work began on a second burial chamber. It
too is in the center, directly above the first chamber, but this time
it is constructed inside the pyramid proper. Today it is referred to
as the “Queen’s Chamber” since the earliest Egyptologists thought
that multiple rooms must indicate that more than one person had
been buried in the building. Today, however, we know that each

of Khufu’s queens had her own small pyramid near her husband’s
massive one. Finally, as the building neared completion, a third
chamber was constructed about three-quarters of the way up the
pyramid. Again, it is located in the center, directly above the other
two and would count as a large living room by modern standards
at thirty-by-fifteen-feet. This room was completed with perfectly
smoothed walls. A granite coffin still remains inside. Unfortunately,
nothing else, and certainly no body, was found inside when the first
modern explorers entered.
Children building with blocks know that special treatment is nec-
essary if they leave open spaces inside their creations, otherwise
the construction collapses. Egyptian engineers faced exactly this
Chephren’s Pyramid. Today this pyramid looks

“stepped” because the smooth white outer cas-
ing stones used to produce a smooth face were
removed and used for building later structures.
problem when they built rooms inside their massive block struc-
tures. The limestone blocks they used were easier to mine than
harder stone but so weak that a long block, say fifteen feet in length,
would crack and break under its own weight. Even harder granite
which could easily span fifteen feet without breaking would none-
theless fracture from the weight of the massive stone pyramid press-
ing down above it. Egyptian engineers found two different solutions
to the problem of spanning a distance with stone inside a pyramid.
Their first solution was to invent what today we call a corbelled
arch. Instead of stones piled to form vertical walls, engineers over-
lapped each course of stones a little further into the room, but not
by much, merely a few inches. As the wall rose, the room became
narrower as course upon course lapped further into the room. The
walls ascended until they had grown close enough together that
only a narrow ceiling needed to be spanned. Even soft limestone
could cover such short distances. Of course this device created
rooms that, if they were appreciably wide, had extremely high ceil-
ings. We see such a dramatic effect in the Grand Gallery of Khufu’s
pyramid (see pg. 178).
The original outer limestone casing is still visible at the top of Chephren’s
pyramid. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
Engineers did not apply this solution to the pyramid’s final burial
chamber, the one where Khufu presumably was buried, however. It
has vertical walls even though its ceiling is fifteen feet wide. How
was this managed? In the first place, the fifteen-feet-long blocks
that span the ceiling are hard granite, not the softer limestone that
would crack of its own weight. Still, thousands of tons of pyramid
rise above this ceiling, altogether a weight that would fracture even
granite. What the Egyptians did was to divert the weight above
the room away from the room’s ceiling to rest it on the solid sur-
rounding portion of the pyramid. This they accomplished with a
set of massive granite blocks forming a gigantic inverted “v.” A row
Relieving Chambers. To remove the stress from

the ceiling of the pharaoh’s burial chamber in the
Great Pyramid, architects built a series of small
chambers above its roof. The inverted “v”-shaped
rafters at the very top distribute the weight of the
pyramid away from the burial chamber and onto
the body of the pyramid.
of these v-forms above this chamber follows the long walls of the
room, so the weight from the pyramid above rests on these massive
supports. The ceiling of the chamber bears no weight at all.
Year after year stones were quarried by gangs of men, carved into
oblong blocks by other gangs, then hauled up ramps (presumably
inside the building) to be set in place by still other gangs. One block
arrived every other minute for sixteen years or more. An outer coat-
ing of the finest limestone, polished gleaming white, completed an
extraordinary, gigantic pyramid that reflected the sun and moon as
a beacon for all to see and wonder at.
STONEWORK
How were the ancient Egyptians able to quarry the millions
of tons of stone and shape it into the millions of blocks used to
build the most massive stone building in the history of the world?
The answer has to do with their love for the material. They adored
stone, working it into beautiful, finely polished shapes that lov-
ingly revealed whatever natural colors and veining lay inside the
rock. The attraction began before 4000 b.c. and continued through-
out the long history of their civilization. Egyptian stoneworkers
even had a kind of patron saint, the god Ptah, the god of creation.
Whether creating tiny vessels less than half an inch high or soar-
ing obelisks 100-feet tall, Egyptians attained complete mastery over
the art of working with stone, from soft limestone to hard-as-steel
granite. Lacking hardened steel tools and diamond-hard abrasives,
their stonework depended more on infinite patience than efficient
machines. Their approach was to labor over a stone for days, weeks
or years, getting to know it intimately.
Even if Egyptians had the time, stone cannot be carved without
tools, tools of a substance hard enough to cut stone. Stone comes
in many varieties of hardness, from limestone, at the soft end, to
granite, so a tool that cut soft stones might be inadequate for the
harder ones. Special tools were required to quarry a stone from its
bed, while other tools shaped the freed stone into a finished prod-
uct, and still others produced a fine finish. Before bronze was avail-
able, Egyptians found ways to quarry and shape limestone, used to
construct the original pyramids, and even granite, used at places in
the pyramids and for the coffin of the Great Pyramid’s owner, the
pharaoh Khufu.
The reason the pyramids were built on the Giza Plateau was
because the site itself provided their material—it was a pure
limestone hill. What tools cut the limestone blocks from the bed-
rock? Ordinarily, copper chisels would lose their cutting edge
after one strike, but recent analyses of ancient Egyptian tools have
revealed how the Egyptians overcame copper’s natural softness.
In the first place, Egyptians were fortunate in that their copper
ore was not pure—it contained percentages of tin mixed in. Since
bronze is simply copper with tin added, Egyptian “copper” was
partial bronze; that is, it was harder than copper alone would
have been. Analysis shows that it was, in fact, within 15 percent of
the hardness of bronze.2 Second, Egyptians had discovered that if
the edge of a copper tool is hammered after it cools, a more dura-
ble edge is produced. Even so, limestone can be hard enough to
blunt such chisels after a few blows, requiring continual sharpen-
ing. But just as freshly cut wood is softer than after it dries, lime-
stone freshly cut from under the earth, before it dries in the open
air, is exceedingly soft. It is soft enough for Egyptian copper chis-
els to do their job. We know that copper chisels were employed
Dolerite Pounding Stones. These are some of the original stones used to
pound out a block of granite from its surrounding rock. Photo courtesy of
Pat Remler.
in quarrying stones for the pyramids, but they probably were not
the only tools.
When Egyptologists examined an ancient waste site near the
Pyramids’ limestone quarries, they found tons of limestone chips
and powder, as expected, but also thousands of pieces of flint.3 It
appears that Egyptians also quarried limestone with flint chisels.
Flint is an unusual material, extremely hard, even slightly harder
than granite, yet easily flaked to create a knife-sharp edge. If flint
were chipped into the form of a chisel and hit against a hard object
with a stone hammer, however, it would likely shatter. But, if struck
instead with a softer wooden mallet, the wood would absorb some
of the blow yet still transfer sufficient force to the flint to drive it
into limestone without shattering. Since flint is harder than copper,
The floor of the quarry where limestone blocks

were cut for the pyramids. Stubs remaining from
quarried blocks are still visible. Photo courtesy of
Pat Remler.
it holds a sharp edge longer, and, if a bit of its edge should chip off,
it would leave another sharp edge behind. Flint chisels appear to be
the primary tool used to quarry Egyptian limestone.
Flint (or copper) chisels could also have shaped the freed lime-
stone into the block shapes composing the pyramids, but there
was a better tool to speed the rough shaping process. Examples of
copper Egyptian saws have survived, although in ancient pictures
they are usually shown cutting wood. A different version of a saw,
however, one without teeth, could be employed to cut a limestone
slab into a block of desired dimensions. After sand was placed in
a groove in the stone, the toothless copper saw, moving back and
forth over the sand, would abrade a quick cut through the stone
because sand is composed primarily of tiny, sharp pieces of quartz,
an extremely hard stone. In fact, such quartz pieces are the coating
for most ordinary sandpaper today. The same process could even
saw through hard granite, although much more slowly, given its
hardness.
Sawing would take too long to free a block of dense granite
from its granite bed, however, and flint chisels would take years to
painstakingly chip a large piece free. A different means had to be
found to quarry this stone. Fortunately, a partially quarried slab of
granite, an obelisk that fractured before it was finished, still remains
in an ancient quarry near Aswan. It seems that a line of workmen
stood along the piece to be quarried, each holding a ten-pound
ball of hard dolerite rock. Each man would simply bend and drop
his rock over and over, letting the weight of the rock do the work
of fracturing the granite into powder. Eventually a trench would
form. The men knelt in this trench, continuing their pounding until
they reached the desired depth. A second trench to the same depth
would be pounded on the opposite side, probably by a second team.
Then, either smaller dolerite balls pounded holes into the underside
of the stone or flint chisels picked similar holes. When these holes
reached far enough under the block, strong wooden levers could
crack it free. Of course, this process would take weeks or months,
so granite was a prized stone primarily used for religious or royal
purposes.
So much for securing a suitable chunk of granite, but how would
the piece be carved into a desired shape? The saw-grinding-sand
method could be used to remove whatever big chunks were
unwanted, but other processes were necessary for finer carving.
Flint picks, or copper or bronze picks, shaped the piece much as
a modern sculptor does with his chisel. Then the object would
This unfinished obelisk is the largest Egyptians

ever attempted to quarry. It cracked during exca-
vation, so it was never finished. Remains of the
trenches the workmen hammered down by drop-
ping heavy stones can still be seen all around the
obelisk. Photo courtesy of Pat Remler.
be painstakingly sanded smooth, erasing the marks of the picks,

either by rubbing with sand or by rubbing with a piece of sand-
stone, which is essentially sand in a compact form. These meth-
ods, although tedious, can shape the hardest stone into any shape
desired. It only takes time.
Jars of various shapes were the most common stone objects in
ancient Egypt. To create the shape of a jar out of stone, however,
the stone must be hollowed out. Ancient Egyptians ingeniously
adapted the bow—the first human machine—to this task. First the
bowstring was wrapped around a stick. Then, the lower end of
the stick was fitted into a metal sleeve; the upper end was fit into
Drawing of the drill Egyp-

tians invented to hollow
hard stone. Hanging bags
filled with stones or sand
provide downward pres-
sure and stability. At the
top is a crank to turn the
drill. The cutting mecha-
nism is an imbedded
piece of flint flaked to a
razor edge.
a depression carved into a palm-sized stone. The depression was

lubricated, making it easy for the stick to spin. A craftsman held
the stone in place and moved the bow back and forth, making the
stick spin, while the weight of the “capstone” applied force to the
metal sleeve at the bottom end. When sand was placed on the object
to be hollowed, the motion of the bow spun the sleeve in the sand,
abrading the stone to be drilled out.
Such bow drills, without the metal sleeve or sand, became fire
makers when rapidly spun in a depression in a piece of wood. The
friction of the wood tip against the piece of wood created enough
heat to ignite dried grasses placed alongside. Another variation for
such drills was to carve a y-shaped fork in the end of the stick in
which a crescent-shaped piece of flint was lashed. As the drill spun,
the flint would grind out a larger hole in the stone vessel than the
narrower metal sleeve. Egyptians even learned to tie a pair of stones
to the top of these drills to save effort. As the drill spun, the stones
would fly around the drill both stabilizing it and exerting pressure
on the bit through their weight.
METALLURGY
Metal is a hard material, difficult to melt and not easy to find, all
of which caused problems prior to the invention of modern exca-
vating machines and furnaces. Egyptians naturally worked metals
in the easiest ways at first but learned how to perform more sophis-
ticated operations through cleverness and trial and error.
Producing a metal object involves, first, melting metallic ore, sec-
ond, transferring the still molten metal from the fire and, third, pour-
ing it into a prepared mold to give the metal its desired shape.
Even soft copper does not turn from raw ore into a liquid until
heated to at least 1000 degrees.4 This is several times the tempera-
ture produced by a normal fire, so Egyptians had to invent fur-
naces capable of producing such temperatures. They dug a pit in
the ground and lined it with stones so the heat would be concen-
trated and reflected back to the center. Favorite sites for these kilns
were areas where continual wind naturally fanned the fire. For fuel
they used charcoal, which burns at much higher temperatures than
wood does. Still, the charcoal fire of a backyard barbeque does not
attain temperatures sufficient to melt metal. Something had to heat
the charcoal to an even higher temperature. Since oxygen is the nec-
essary catalyst for any fire, the more oxygen, the hotter the fire, so
Egyptians used blowpipes to force oxygen into the burning char-
coal to raise its temperature to the necessary 1000+ degrees. These
“pipes” were simply hollow reeds with clay fixed to the end in the
fire so that the tip of the reed would not burn. Instead, the heat
turned the clay to pottery allowing the blower’s breath to raise the
fire’s temperature as it passed into the burning charcoal.
At least two people would need to blow continually to pro-
duce sufficiently high temperatures, but Egyptians later invented
a machine that allowed one man to generate the necessary oxy-
gen. Leather covers were securely attached to each of two large,
flat bowls with a hole in their sides from which a hollow reed ran
into the charcoal. The worker stood on both of these contraptions
These scenes show the steps in smelting ore. First metal ore in a pot is
placed in the fire, then the intensity of the fire is increased by forcing
oxygen through bellows. At the end, the vessel with its liquid metal is
removed using two crossed sticks.
holding a string tied to the leather top. As he raised one foot he

uncovered a hole in the leather and, by pulling the leather up by its
string, drew in air to fill the container. At the same time, his other
foot came down on the membrane of the second container, forcing
its air out into the furnace. With this bellows device one man could
work the smelter just by marching in place, first one leg and then
the other continuously forcing oxygen into the fire.5
The steps for producing a metal object began with mining ore.
After the raw ore had been mined, it was crushed into powder. The
powder was poured into a pottery container and placed in the sort
of furnace described. Several hours of heating liquefied the ore.
Now—assuming we began with copper ore—the container held
pure copper at its bottom with lighter impurities, called slag, float-
ing on top. The container could be transferred from the heat using a
pair of wooden sticks, freshly cut so their moisture would prevent
them from burning from proximity to the boiling metal. The con-
tainer could then be carefully tipped to pour the molten copper into
any desired mold, leaving the lighter slag behind.
Egyptians used two kinds of molds. Sometimes they simply
pressed a shape in wet sand. When molten copper was poured
into this depression, it flowed to take the depression’s shape. Other
times they made a mold of clay and heated it to turn it into pottery
which has a much higher breaking temperature than even molten
metal. Liquid metal poured into the pottery mold would flow into
Foot Bellows. As a workman raised one foot he pulled up on the string to

force air into one container while his other foot stepped down on the other
container to force air into the furnace. Below, workmen remove molten ore
from the fire.
its shape, and, if the mold had separate halves, the mold could be
removed from the cooled metal and reused.
This technology is sophisticated and the art of making a mold
that would produce an intricate statue or utensil is complex, so
Egyptians used metal in a different way at first. They simply poured
molten copper into a slight, flat depression in sand to form a copper
sheet. The sheet then was beaten with hammers to make it thin-
ner and larger. Such sheets could be bent by hand or hammered to
form a pot or other utensil, held together, if desired, with a metal
pin. Using this technology a metal statue was produced near the
end of the Old Kingdom that stands almost six feet tall. It consists
merely of copper sheets pressed and nailed onto a wood core. Yet,
by the end of the Old Kingdom, molds were being used to produce
fine metal statuary, which became more sophisticated in the Middle
Kingdom and common by the New Kingdom.
The first molds produced statues with solid cores. A wax model
of the desired statue was carved then coated with clay. Since plenty
of beehives existed in Egypt to satisfy Egyptians’ sweet urges, wax
was abundant. When the clay was heated in a fire, the wax melted
and ran out while the outer clay turned into hard pottery, preserving
the features of the wax model. This is known as the lost wax method.
Molten copper, bronze, silver or gold could be poured into the pot-
tery form. When the metal cooled, the pottery shell was broken and
the metal statue freed. Later, craftsmen realized that a pottery mold
with back and front halves did not need to be broken to free the
metal inside, so this mold could be reused to produce many identi-
cal statues. Early statues required a lot of metal, however, since they
were metal throughout. Since metal was hard to mine and difficult
to melt, molded objects were expensive. By the Middle Kingdom,
craftsmen learned how to produce hollow objects, thus saving pre-
cious material. All that was required was to form the rough shape
of a statue in very sandy clay before covering the clay with wax
that could be easily and finely carved. The whole was then covered
with another layer of regular clay with a hole somewhere, usually
at the bottom. When this assemblage was fired, the outer coat of
clay hardened, the sandy clay dried and the wax ran out through
the hole. Molten metal was poured into this same hole to create a
metal statue inside of which was clay that would crumble and fall
out, if chipped at with a stick.
Masterpieces of sculpture were produced in this manner, from del-
icate miniatures to others over three feet tall, proudly displayed in
museums today. Indeed fragments of statues have been found whose
complete originals would have towered above a man. To allow for
more complex designs, parts sometimes were cast separately and
later attached to the body. Thin ribbons of gold sometimes were
pressed into indentations scratched in the metal to introduce glow-
ing designs or hieroglyphs. One special statue of the god Amun, in
pure gold and displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, is as
lovely as anything humans have ever produced in metal.
SHIP BUILDING
Ancient Egyptian life centered on the mighty Nile River, which
provided precious water for irrigation while serving as the most
convenient highway for travel. Prevailing winds on the Nile blow
in the direction opposite to the current’s flow which means a boat
can sail upstream and float downstream. Oars and man-power
only sped the process. In addition, the upper quarter of Egypt, the
delta area, was a maze of rivers, streams and marshland that made
boats more practical for travel than walking. It is no surprise that
boats are pictured in the oldest images ever found in Egypt, per-
haps from as long as six thousand years ago, but what is surprising
is that, although sharing a long border with the Mediterranean Sea,
Egyptians came very late to sea travel.
The first Egyptian boats were constructed of reeds, especially
papyrus, a free material, abundant throughout the country. Since
reeds are hollow, they float, which meant constructing a boat
involved merely tying a bundle of cut papyrus together. A man
with a pole could stand on such a skiff and propel himself. Such
vessels were used by citizens throughout the long history of Egypt,
since, with material available for the taking, they cost only a little
time and effort. Probably every family living in the delta region had
its own family boat.
This sort of craft tipped too easily for sailing on a large river, such
as the Nile, but with a little more work reeds could be laid and tied
in such a way as to produce a vessel with sides. A seated sailor
would provide sufficient stability to prevent capsizing such a boat
in normal river use. Crafts made from nothing but fragile reeds,
however, posed problems for attaching a mast, since the weight and
pressure of a vertical mast-pole would push through a fragile reed
hull. To counter this problem, Egyptians joined two smaller poles
at their tops and lashed their bottoms to opposite sides of the boat,
forming an inverted “v.” Not only was the weight less than that of
a single, more substantial pole, but the weight was distributed so
no part of the boat had to support as much. An added bonus is that
this mast, attached to the boat in two places, stands more securely
than a single pole could. Attach a rectangular sail of linen or one
A team of carpenters work on a wooden boat, using a woodworking tool

called an adz, to shape the wood.
woven from flattened papyrus and a pleasant sail along the river
would result. The popular archaeologist, Thor Heyerdahl, even
constructed a large vessel of papyrus in just this way and sailed it
with a crew for more than three thousand miles across the Atlantic
Ocean.6 Nonetheless, there are no indications that Egyptian reed
boats ever attained such great size as Heyerdahl’s, or were ever
used to transport heavy objects or sail the open ocean. The con-
struction of the original small, fragile vessels did, however, teach
shipwrights valuable lessons they employed on larger craft.
Egyptians constructed their larger boats out of wood. But, using
the principles learned from their reed vessels, the resulting ships
presented an appearance quite unlike modern versions. For hun-
dreds of years we have constructed ships on the model of an ani-
mal’s body; that is, their structure consists of an internal assemblage
of “bones” to which a less substantial “skin” is affixed. Thus, mod-
ern ships start with a keel at the bottom, like our spine, to which
substantial ribs are attached, like, well . . . like our ribs. This skeletal
structure forms the ship’s shape so that its hull can simply be joined
to the “skeleton” creating its external appearance. This keel-plus-
ribs assemblage provides the solidity a ship needs, so the “skin,”
hull, of a modern ship could not support itself without its internal
structure.
Egyptian ships were different—they consisted of nothing but
the outer shell. This meant that, rather than bending the hull mate-
rial to the shape of internal ribs, Egyptian hull planks were carved
into an appropriate inward-arc and affixed to nothing but each
other. How were these planks joined together? Using the knowl-
edge gained from their reed boats, Egyptian shipwrights tied their
planks together, producing what is appropriately termed a “sewn”
ship. Holes were bored into adjacent planks, and then ropes were
thread through the holes to tie the planks together. This is not as
foolhardy as it may seem. Nails would have caused a problem since
wood swells and shrinks as it gets wet then dries, enlarging the area
surrounding any nail and loosening it over time. This, in turn, loos-
ens the planks, creating space that lets water into the vessel. The
ropes used by Egyptians shrank when wet and drew the planks
more tightly together.
An Egyptian ship constructed in this manner would appear rea-
sonably familiar to us from the outside with sides curving up to a
pointed bow. The stern would look a bit different, however, because
it too generally rose and was pointed, giving the whole a giant
canoe-shape. Inside, however, crosswise struts instead of modern
ribs lent some support to the hull. The mast might not be the single
upright we are used to but instead an inverted “v,” consisting of
two poles attached at their tops and then to opposite sides of the
hull. Of course, with a pointed stern there is no place to attach a
rudder, so huge oars were fixed to opposite sides of the stern. Used
in tandem, they turned the ship as a canoer at the rear of his craft
turns by simply angling the blade of his oar. There might be a cabin
on the deck but there was no living space below. Altogether, this
ancient Egyptian craft would look like a proper ship but with a few
elegant differences.
How do we know so much about ancient Egyptian ships? True,
there are numerous pictures of vessels on temple walls and in tombs,
even a few illustrations of ships being built, but these pictures do
not record small details such as how the wood was held together.
The reason that ancient Egyptian ships are so thoroughly under-
stood is because good fortune presented a complete vessel to Egyp-
tologists fifty years ago.
While a young archaeologist, Kamal el-Mallakh, was helping
clear sand from around the Great Pyramid he noticed that part of
an ancient wall enclosing the pyramid was fifteen feet closer to the
pyramid on its south side than on the other sides. Curiosity aroused,
he speculated that the reason must be to hide something under that
portion of wall. He convinced the authorities to clear away part of
the wall which revealed forty-one limestone slabs, covering a large
pit cut into the natural rock. The limestone blocks had been sealed
with plaster, creating an air-tight environment that preserved a ship
in the pit for more than four thousand years.
It had been completely disassembled into carefully stacked
pieces, more a boat-kit than a vessel. In all it consisted of 1,224
parts: Experts toiled for years to put it together, thereby discover-
ing how ancient Egyptians constructed at least this one vessel. The
hull consists of cedar planks almost six inches thick, with some as
long as seventy feet. Both the stem and bow ends rise high in the
air, ending in a knob of planks which spread out like a fan similar
to the ends of a reed boat where the reeds spread apart after the
last compressing lashing. Sometimes Egyptians even carved a rep-
lica of this lashing on a wooden ship’s stern. The planks are joined
together with thick ropes, complimented by wooden pegs. The boat
has no keel or ribs, although crosswise struts do provide some sta-
bility. Wood pieces and poles form a cabin on the deck toward the
rear. Reconstructed, the boat was 144-feet long, slim and elegant
of line. But there was no mast and only six pairs of oars, which
Cheop’s Ship. This 4,000-year-old ship may have

been used to ferry the mummy of the pharaoh
Khufu from the east bank of the Nile (realm of
the living) to the west bank (realm of the dead).
The illustration shows the massive planks out of
which this 144-feet-long ship was constructed.
certainly were too few to propel such a large craft. In all likelihood
the oars were used only for steering, so the ship would need to be
towed to its destination. This indicates that it was a ceremonial ves-
sel intended for some religious purpose such as magically carrying
the pharaoh through the sky to the North Star.7
Although much was learned about Egyptian ships from Khufu’s
buried example, clearly, this was not a normal, working ship. Text
and drawings from various temples and tombs, however, provide
details about functioning vessels.
A working ship might have a single mast, rather than the inverted
“v” composite type, since, not being made of reeds, it could sup-
port it. Sails were generally rectangular, to catch as much breeze as
possible, and they were attached rather high on the mast so their
Hatshepsut’s Boat. One of the ships returning from an expedition to Soma-

lia, the ancient land called Punt. Notice the thick rope running from the
front to the back of the ship just below the mast. This “hogging truss” was
necessary to strengthen ocean-going craft.
bottom ends would not catch in the water when the ship heeled.
These masts could be tilted back to be laid horizontally, and the sail
could be lowered for travel against the wind when oars replaced
sail power. Most working ships lacked the irrelevant soaring
ends fore and aft that terminate in knobs of the ceremonial boat
of Khufu. Large vessels generally incorporated one additional,
unusual feature, however, to keep them rigid from stem to stern
since they lacked the keel that performs this function in a modern
vessel. Huge ropes, and often several such, ran from the bow of
the boat to the stern on elevated struts above the deck, tying the
front of the ship to the back. Called “hogging trusses” today, these
devices included a pole stuck crosswise between the twisted ropes
that could be turned to tighten or loosen the pressure.
Egyptian ships carried both commodities and people through the
length of the country. Unlike a modern ship, however, cargo was
not stored in holds under the deck since the hull was not strong
enough to support its extra weight; instead, the load was carried
on the deck, which necessitated buttressing the deck with numer-
ous struts to the hull to distribute the weight as widely as possi-
ble. Since truly enormous granite statues and obelisks dot the land
of Egypt, and granite was only quarried at modern Aswan in the
extreme south, some gigantic transports must have ferried these
megaliths to their eventual sites in the north.
One such scene, pictured at the Dier el Bahari Temple of Queen

Hatshepsut, shows two obelisks, end to end, carried on a single
ship towed by thirty smaller vessels that are being propelled by
oarsmen. This massive craft, properly called a barge, clearly was
a huge ship. Hatshepsut’s known obelisks range from 60-feet—
normal sized—to 100-feet megaliths. Most likely, the obelisks she
was proudest of, which certainly would be the 100-footers, would
be the ones chosen for this depiction on her temple walls.
How large would a barge need to be in order to transport two
100-feet-long solid stones? The vessel might have been over two-
hundred-feet long to fit cargo of that length on its deck. The ship
would additionally need to support a weight of almost 500 tons, the
estimated poundage of two slabs of granite almost 100-feet long.
No wonder thirty towing vessels are pictured dragging this behe-
moth, powered by as many as 16 pairs of oarsmen each. Almost a
thousand sets of arm muscles must have strained at the load, for
this would be a ship that would turn the eyes even of modern peo-
ple accustomed to mammoth tankers and cruise ships.8
It is surprising that, despite their undeniable ability to construct
large ships, ancient Egyptians were not great seafarers. They pre-
ferred sailing on their river, generally relying on foreign nations to
ferry trade goods to them. Indeed, they never developed the navi-
gational skills to sail across open sea. The major foreign import car-
ried on Egyptian vessels was a commodity needed in abundance
for their own ships. As mentioned earlier, the land of Egypt was
poor in native wood, lacking tall trees, and large ships need long
Ship with sail. This working boat with a large sail was used to transport
goods up and down Egypt. The thick strands composing the sail probably
indicate it was woven from slices of papyrus.
planks and tall masts that can only be hewn from tall trees. Fortu-
nately, a hundred miles or so along the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea from Egypt lies modern Lebanon, famed in ancient times for
its abundant tall cedar forests. Egyptians regularly sailed transport
ships to Lebanon to return with loads of lumber for their ship-
wrights. This would not be a difficult voyage, since the ships could
hug the coast all the way with no great navigational skill required.
Ocean-going ships would need to be stronger than those intended
for travel along a placid river, however. A scene on Hatshepsut’s
Temple walls depicts five vessels built for a trip to Somalia, the
fabled ancient Land of Punt, which lay south down the Red Sea
from Egypt. That this particular sea voyage was a rare event, in
contrast to the more regular trips to Lebanon, is proven by the fact
that Hatshepsut chose to memorialize it on the walls of her temple,
while Lebanon trips are rarely pictured anywhere. But her pictures
do show one accommodation that ocean voyages demanded: The
hogging trusses, mentioned previously, are depicted in these ocean
scenes as even more substantial than those shown on river trans-
ports, a necessity to make the hull strong enough to withstand the
battering of ocean waves.
ERECTING AN OBELISK
Even after solving the myriad problems of quarrying, carving,
and transporting a solid slab of granite obelisk up to 100 feet in
length to its site, one final difficulty remained. Transported in a hor-
izontal position, the stone needed to be raised to the vertical when
it reached its intended position. It might weigh as much as 250 tons.
Since ancient Egyptians had no cranes or hydraulic jacks, how did
they manage this feat?
While no certain answer to this question has been found by Egyp-
tologists, they believe that the combination of a ramp, strong ropes,
and abundant manpower could accomplish the feat. A long ramp
could be constructed that ended abruptly at the place intended for
the erect obelisk. It would have to be long so its incline would be
gentle enough that the massive weight of the stone on several sleds
could be dragged by man-power along it. The obelisk would be
hauled on this ramp until almost half of its weight teetered over the
ramp end. As everyone knows, once more than half of the weight
hung over this edge, the object would begin to fall. What the Egyp-
tians needed was a very controlled fall. Strong ropes held by scores
of men would gradually pull more and more of the obelisk over
the edge. Meanwhile, still more scores of men would pull on more
strong ropes that had been looped over the top of wood towers to
exert an upward force on the stone and slow its fall. If the fall were
gradual enough, still more ropes and men could guide the end of
the stone to the desired position on a base previously prepared. This
would have been a most anxious time. If the stone fell too quickly,
it might break, wasting months and months of hard labor spent
on freeing it from its quarry, carving it beautifully and ferrying it
to the site. Even if it settled intact but missed the intended spot on
its base, the whole erection process would have to be laboriously
repeated until it sat where it was intended.
Thus, an alternative theory has some supporters. It includes the
same ramp and the same principle of tipping the stone over the edge
of the ramp, but instead of the obelisk falling through the air, this
theory proposes that the bottom of the tipped obelisk would rest
on sand inside a large brick container built for a special purpose.
This container would have been constructed around the intended
obelisk base and then filled with local sand. When the obelisk rested
on the top sand, some bricks could be removed from the bottom of
the container to let sand out. As sand streamed from the bottom
of the container, the level of sand at its top would gradually lower
and the obelisk would descend along with it. In this scenario the
rate of descent could be controlled simply by the adjusting the rate
of removal of sand from the bottom hole. Perhaps ropes and men
hauling on them could be used at the end of the process when the
obelisk was just a few inches from its destination to make final,
precise adjustments.
Whichever method was actually used, it was certainly successful
since scores of obelisks have been found standing tall all around
Egypt, serving as visible proof of the industry and intelligence of
the ancient Egyptians.
NOTES
1. See “How to Build a Pyramid” by Bob Brier (Archaeology, May/June
2007, Vol. 60, No. 3), pp. 25–27.
2. See Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in
Ancient Egypt, by Denys A. Stocks (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 61.
3. Reported by W.M.F. Petrie in The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh
(London: Field and Tuer, 1883), p. 213ff.
4. The following is based on the experiments of Denys A. Stocks in
Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in Ancient
Egypt (London: Routledge, 2003). See pp. 34ff.
5. Ibid., pp. 37–40.

6. See Thor Heyerdal, The Ra Expeditions (New York: Doubleday, 1971).
Heyerdahl was struck by the fact that pyramidal structures existed both
in ancient Egypt and in Pre-Columbian America. He tried to show that
ancient Egyptians could have sailed from Egypt to America to teach Pre-
Columbian Indians how to build these uncommon shapes. On his second
sail, Heyerdahl made it. There are great problems with his theory, how-
ever. First, there is no evidence that Egyptians built such large ships out of
papyrus or sailed them on an ocean. Second, pyramids in America were
built no earlier than the seventh or eighth centuries a.d.; by which time
Egypt had not built such structures for almost three thousand years and
was no longer the rich and powerful nation of previous times.
7. See Bjorn Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs: 4000 Years of Egyptian
Shipbuilding (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1970) for details
about this and other ancient Egyptian boats and ships.
8. These calculations are based on Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs,
p. 128ff. He believes that the obelisks are pictured end-to-end just to show
there are two, whereas, they would have been transported side-by-side.
He also wonders if the two obelisks shown on a single ship represent
artistic license; in actuality, separate barges might have been used for each
obelisk. However, he vastly overestimates the probable size of the load,
since no completed obelisks as tall as 200 feet are known. Hence, our cal-
culations are based on 100-feet-tall obelisks, the largest ever successfully
erected in Egypt.
10
WARFARE
Pharaohs demonstrated their greatness by raising imposing build-

ings or by waging successful wars—then boasting over and over
again about their accomplishments. None ever bragged that his
reign was peaceful. Successful military campaigns increased a pha-
raoh’s prestige because they reinforced every Egyptian’s view of
his country as superior to others, and they served the economy by
ensuring a flow of foreign goods to Egypt. Today we view war as
justified only to correct great wrongs and consider hostilities that
begin without formal declarations “sneak” attacks. In ancient times,
aggression was acceptable, even expected; undeclared wars were a
way of life.
Wars recurred in ancient times because of the nature of military
operations. The Egyptian army invaded to seize whatever booty
was available, not to annex land. The army thus marched south
into Nubia for gold or north to Syria for cattle and slaves, but,
as soon as victory was achieved and the booty collected, every-
one returned home to Egypt. Seldom were garrisons of troops
stationed in conquered territories, and the government usually
remained, as before, in local hands. Before leaving, Egyptian lead-
ers exacted a promise from the invaded country to send an annual
tribute, but without a continued army presence there was little
incentive to comply. So each year the troops sallied out again to

force payments. This system of raid and retreat meant that Egypt
never built a true empire—it dominated its neighbors but did not
expand its territory.
Amazingly detailed accounts of battles, with numbers of casual-
ties, enemy killed, prisoners taken, even the names of the king’s
war horses have come down to us, thanks to the pharaohs’ custom
of carving boasts on temple walls to tell their people how brave and
mighty they had been. As a result, battles are better recorded than
any other Egyptian events. Today we might think it inappropriate
to paint scenes of slaughter and pillage on a church wall, but the
ancient Egyptian saw no conflict: war was condoned by their gods
as part of the divine order. There was even a god of war, Montu,
whose name some pharaohs adopted, becoming Montuhotep, or
“Montu is pleased.”
This warrior tradition went back as far as Egypt’s origin as a
nation. The oldest Egyptian historical record, the Narmer Palette,
shows the first pharaoh wielding a mace menacingly at a captive.
Egypt took its first steps toward becoming an international power
soon after Narmer unified the country: centralized government
controlled by a single king inevitably led to an army. In fact, it may
have been Narmer himself who first led troops beyond the borders
of Egypt, since a pottery fragment inscribed with his name has been
found in southern Israel.1 At first Egypt’s army ventured cautiously
beyond Egypt’s borders. Not until seven centuries after Narmer
could the pharaoh Sneferu boast that he had subdued the Bedouin
tribes on the adjoining Sinai Peninsula, pacifying it to exploit its
turquoise mines.
No records from this early period describe the original armies,
but undoubtedly they were composed of conscripted or volunteer
farmers who went to war when the Nile’s inundation made farm-
ing impossible, although Egypt’s ability to grow surplus food did
eventually support a standing army. While not a profession of great
status because of the long marches, difficult conditions and dan-
gers, soldiering attracted men for the captured booty which, after
the pharaoh’s share had been subtracted, was disbursed among the
troops. Before modern times war was fought hand to hand; a sol-
dier looked directly into his enemy’s eyes before killing him. In this
kind of battle, the king was expected to lead his troops in person,
unlike the president of the United States, who, as commander in
chief of the armed forces, makes his decisions at a safe distance
from the battle.
Warfare 249
ARMS
By the time of the Middle Kingdom, Egypt’s army was profes-
sional, disciplined and divided into units. Tomb models display
corps marching in orderly columns of ten. Archery divisions were
considered elite troops, and entire units of these were composed of
Nubians who were famed for their skill with the bow. (Egyptians
even referred to Nubia as the “Land of the Bows.”) Most archers
were right-handed so they held their bow with the left—the arm
generally protected from the snap of the string by a leather arm
guard—and drew the string with the right hand. The bow, consist-
ing of two basic parts, the body and the string, is the first tool in
history designed to concentrate energy. When an arrow is notched
on the string and drawn toward the archer, the bow’s body stores the
tension that will propel the arrow forward upon release. The bow’s
advantage over a mace or sword was its ability to kill at a consider-
able distance—how far depended on the amount of tension. If your
bow had greater range than your opponent’s, you could injure him
while standing safely out of his range, an advantage that led to the
world’s first arms’ race.2
The earliest Egyptian bows were made from the acacia tree, one
of the few native sources of wood available, and were simply con-
vex in shape. By putting a reverse curve at both ends of the bow—
shaping it like an upper lip—the string lay closer to the body of the
An archer uses a recurved bow.
bow, increasing the distance it traveled when drawn back and hence
the amount of tension. This invention armed Egypt’s oldest troops.
But an ideal bow would combine strength with flexibility, which
no single wood can do. Woods that bend easily store little energy;
those that store more energy break rather than bend. The solution
was to combine different materials in one bow, thus extending its
range. These “composite bows,” made of animal horn, animal ten-
dons, wood and glue, were constructed by first gluing together
woods from several types of tree to produce a core. The part facing
the string (called the belly) was strengthened with two sections of
strong animal horn, one on either side of the hand grip. The back of
the bow (the part away from the string) was covered with animal
sinews for flexibility and to prevent the wood from splitting. After
shaping the composite bow into a double convex form ) to add
power, its effective range became nearly a quarter of a mile.3
Of course, a bow is useless without well-made arrows. Because
the shaft had to be straight, light and strong, it was generally made
of wood, occasionally of reed. The arrowhead, which needed to
be hard, was made of flint or metal and was either leaf shaped or
triangular. The arrow shaft fit into a socket in the head, or else an
extension of the head (tang). To ensure that the arrow flew straight,
feathers of various birds—eagle, vulture or kite—fletched the end.
Because the archer fired many arrows during a single battle, Egyp-
tian leather quivers, holding from twenty to thirty arrows, were
worn over the shoulder to free both hands to load and shoot what
the Persians called “messengers of death.”
Slings were similar to bows in purpose. Originally designed
by shepherds to keep foxes from their herds, these simple weap-
ons composed of a rectangular piece of leather with two strings
attached could inflict damage at a distance. A stone was placed on
the leather, which became a pouch when the ends of the strings
were held together in one hand. The sling was swung round and
round to build momentum, then one of the strings was released,
which opened the pouch and sent the missile on its way. David
from the Bible aside, the problem with this weapon was accuracy,
but corps of slingmen served in conjunction with archers to rain
missiles on massed enemies.
For closer combat, the arsenal expanded. Javelins were medium-
range weapons, similar in principle to an arrow but propelled by
hand. They consisted of a wooden shaft (approximately five feet
long) with a metal tip fixed to it with either a socket or a tang. When
hurled by a skilled thrower, javelins could be lethal at more than
Warfare 251
100 feet. Spears, larger and heavier than javelins, were intended for
thrusting, rather than throwing.
The oldest hand-to-hand weapon was the mace featured on
Narmer’s Palette. This simple but lethal weapon consisted of a
stone fixed to the end of a stick whose short handle, about eigh-
teen inches long, allowed quick swings. The lethal end consisted
of a carved pear-, disc- or apple-shaped rock about the size of a fist
with a hole in one end for the handle, replacing a modern ax head.
Unlike an ax, however, the mace was designed to smash rather than
cut. Although it was an impressive weapon, it was replaced by the
battle ax when enemies began to protect their heads with metal
helmets. The close combat arsenal also featured lethal-looking but
overrated swords. Two basic kinds were employed. A straight ver-
sion was intended for stabbing so its metal blade was pointed at
the tip and honed sharp along both edges. A striking sword, on the
other hand, was sharpened only along one edge and curved, like
a sickle, to slice as it was pulled back. The problem with both ver-
sions was that they consisted of long pieces of bronze which ancient
metalsmiths could not forge strongly enough to do damage with-
out bending, chipping or breaking. Battle axes, which evolved over
the centuries in response to changes in warfare, were preferred for
hand-to-hand combat because they carried a smaller, thicker, more
durable metal blade. The first axes were cutting weapons, so their
blades were broad, and often curved for a larger cutting surface.
The blade was attached to a short wooden handle either by the tang
or the socket method and reinforced with cord so it would not fly
off during battle. Armor caused the axe’s undoing: cutting blades
made no dent in chests of mail or metal helmets. A more pointed
blade, better suited for piercing, was developed later.4
To counteract all these weapons, soldiers carried shields as bar-
riers between themselves and the enemy’s weapon. Always some-
thing of a compromise, they were either large and heavy, providing
excellent protection but slowing the soldier’s attack, or small and
light, affording little protection. A shield light enough to carry in
“Sickle” swords were used to

slice armor and flesh as they were
pulled back rather than stabbing.
Called the “epsilon” bat-

tle ax because its shape
was similar to that Greek
letter, it was designed to
cut rather than pierce.
The piercing battle ax

was designed to pen-
etrate through enemy
armor. Drawing by
Rivka Rago.
Warfare 253
one hand but strong enough to ward off an enemy’s blows eventu-
ally was developed by combining materials. Egyptian shields were
round-topped rectangles that extended from the chin to the knee.
Wood formed their core, hardened by a tough animal-hide cover,
a combination that made the shield difficult to penetrate while
keeping it light and maneuverable. Soldiers held shields in their
left hands to ward off arrows, axes and swords, while attacking
with a weapon in their right. Since each country’s shield shape was
distinctive, ancient representations of battles distinguish the good
guys from the bad not by the color of their hats but by the style of
their shields.
For over 700 years, the Egyptian arsenal hardly changed until the
unthinkable happened: a foreign army invaded Egypt and won.
There are no records of the invasion—the Egyptians never recorded
defeats—so Egyptologists have reconstructed a probable scenario.
The invaders, called Hyksos by the Egyptians, or “foreign
rulers,” arrived from the north and ruled Egypt for more than a
century (1663 –1555 b.c.). Although Egypt was a more advanced
civilization—the Hyksos were illiterate—with a population that
vastly outnumbered the invaders, defeat was inevitable because
this enemy brought a new superweapon with them: the chariot.
Until the Hyksos, the Egyptians had never seen a horse; no word
for this animal existed at the time in their language.
Three factors determined the outcome of any battle: firepower
(arrows, axes, spears and so on), defense (shields and armor) and
mobility. The chariot was never intended as a troop transport since
an army’s rate of march is constrained by its slow infantry. Rather,
the chariot was a mobile platform from which javelins could be
hurled and arrows shot. Pulled by two horses, these light, two-
wheeled vehicles provided a tremendous advantage against foot
soldiers. A weakness in the infantry lines could be reinforced by
chariot troops before the enemy could take advantage; a weakness
in the enemy lines could be overcome by horse-driven reinforce-
ments before reinforcing foes arrived. Even if endangered, a chariot
could quickly retreat to safety and fire from a distance. Chariots
held a pair of soldiers—a driver and an archer, or sometimes a jav-
elin thrower. A skilled driver controlled his horses with one hand
while his other held a shield to fend off enemy arrows, allowing his
partner to fire away in safety. In addition to the chariot, the Hyksos
may have introduced the composite bow into Egypt. Such a two-
fold advantage—in firepower and mobility—would give them an
unbeatable edge.
Egyptian chariots were light in weight

so they could maneuver quickly in
battle.
After their victory, the Hyksos ruled Egypt from the north, allow-
ing Thebes and southern Egypt to manage itself, but hostile parts
of Egypt could not coexist forever. Two artifacts tell the story of the
eventual expulsion of the Hyksos: a papyrus and a mummy.
Papyrus Sallier describes the end of the Hyksos domination when
the Hyksos ruler, Apophis, governed from his capital at Avaris in the
Delta and Seqenenre Tao II ruled in the south from Thebes. Accord-
ing to the papyrus, Apophis sent Seqenenre an inflammatory let-
ter stating that the hippopotami in Thebes (500 miles away) were
keeping him awake and had to be silenced. The papyrus breaks off
before relating the result, but Seqenenre’s mummy with five seri-
ous head wounds leaves little doubt about his violent end. (In the
photograph, two upper left arrows and the one on the lower right
point to probable ax wounds, with the arrow furthest right show-
ing where a blunt instrument, perhaps a mace, delivered a blow
that broke nasal and facial bones, causing a break in the skin, as
indicated by the arrow on the bottom left. In addition to these four
injuries, a sharp weapon, perhaps a spear, was thrust into the skull
below the left ear. With the exception of the blow to the nose, any of
the four other injuries could have killed Seqenenre.)
The probable outcome of the Hyksos challenge to Seqenenre is
that he marched north to fight Apophis and died in battle, most
likely far from professional embalmers’ workshops. (Although his
viscera were removed through the traditional incision on the left
side, little else was done to preserve his body.) The wounds sug-
gest a probable scenario for Seqenenre’s last moments. First he was
stabbed by a spear beneath his left ear that either killed or knocked
Warfare 255
This photograph of the head of the mummy of Seqenenre

shows multiple wounds, indicated by five piercings.
him unconscious, then four blows to the head were delivered while
he lay on the ground. Given the fact that three different weapons
were used to hasten his demise, it appears that two or three sepa-
rate enemies cooperated in dispatching him to the netherworld.
Writing boards found by Howard Carter in 1908 in the vicinity of a
Seventeenth-Dynasty tomb tell us that Seqenenre’s son (or, perhaps,
brother) and successor, Kamose, continued the struggle against the
Hyksos with a second military campaign against Apophis at Ava-
ris. It provides a clear end to the story:
When the sun shone forth on the land I was upon him like a falcon.
When the time for perfuming the mouth [lunch] came, I defeated him, I
destroyed his wall, I killed his people. I caused that his wife go down to
the river bank. My soldiers were like lions upon their prey, carrying off
slaves, cattle, fat and honey, and dividing their possessions.5
Initially, the text was believed to be a literary boast rather than a

historical document, but when a large stele uncovered at Karnak
repeated the tale of Kamose’s victory over Apophis, it counted as
some confirmation. The stele includes the detail that when Apo-
phis was surrounded in his walled city, he sent a messenger south
with a letter to the Kushite king, asking him to come with rein-
forcements so that they could defeat Kamose together and divide
Egypt between them. Kamose gleefully relates how he intercepted
the messenger and fought against “the horses of the Hyksos.”
The experience of the Hyksos wars so clearly proved the power
of the chariot that, ever after, chariot divisions formed the heart
of Egypt’s army. These forerunners of light tanks required skilled
woodworkers for their manufacture, a craft to which Egyptians
brought centuries of experience in working with imported woods.
Their skill at wood bending enabled them to make a spoked rather
than solid wheel, reducing the weight of the chariot to aid its
maneuverability. While elm, which bent easily, was used for the
wheels, ash formed the carriage because of its strength. The floor
on which the archer and his driver stood was woven from leather
that acted as a shock absorber in stabilizing the platform. Chari-
ots involved considerable investment. In addition to the expense
of imported woods and skilled craftsmen, stables of horses and
horse trainers had to be maintained. Egyptians bred their horses
only for war, so all the raising, feeding and training expenses
counted as military expenses. Because chariots also required con-
tinual maintenance—they broke easily despite the care that went
into their production—military campaigns included hundreds of
wheelwrights, chariot builders, spare horses and trainers. When
an army marched out with its chariot corps, it displayed the kind
of significant military investment only a superpower of the time
could afford.6
Whereas Narmer, the first king of Egypt, portrayed himself smit-
ing enemies with his mace, kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty are
shown terrorizing their foes in chariots. As evidence of their prow-
ess, they are often depicted controlling the chariot alone, without a
driver, and pharaohs are even shown managing their horses with
the reins tied around their waists so they could use both hands to
shoot arrows. Chariots had become a status symbol, the jet fighters
of the ancient world.
Warfare 257
Fortifications
Storming Avaris was a substantial feat because ancient cities, for-
tified by massive walls, typically could withstand sustained attacks
for years. Kamose’s brother Ahmose, for example, spent three
years laying siege to a fortified city in Palestine before it fell. Since
cities generally crowned hills and water supplies lay in valleys out-
side the walls, a city’s greatest survival problem during a siege was
the need for water. One solution was to dig a deep pit inside the city
leading to a tunnel running uphill to a well so the water could flow
to the pit by gravity. Food could be gotten from animals stabled
within the walls and some crops could be grown inside as well,
so the addition of a secure water supply meant a long wait for a
besieging army. Since Apophis felt he had the time to send a mes-
senger all the way to Nubia for reinforcements, Avaris must have
been such a well-fortified, well-provisioned walled city.
To allow defenders to rain missiles safely on besiegers from
the tops of walls—arrows, stones, boiling oil—battlements were
designed with what looked like rows of giant teeth, whose gaps,
called “embrasures,” provided spots where archers could fire at
the enemy, then quickly retreat behind the “teeth,” called “caps” or
“merlons.” Egyptian armies employed two strategies for attacking
a foreign city: penetration and siege. Penetration could be achieved
from above, from below, or through the wall, but none of these
methods was easy. To penetrate from above, ladders were brought
so the walls could be scaled. Naturally, the defenders attempted
to throw down the ladders and hurled stones on the men as they
climbed; at the same time, the attacker’s archers tried to maintain
a steady volley of arrows to chase the defenders from the para-
pet. Tunneling through a massive wall, on the other hand, was
time consuming and inevitably led to a considerable loss of men.
All manner of tools were used—axes, picks, spears—but battering
rams were the primary weapon. A metal tip at the end of a long
wooden beam was shoved into the wall and maneuvered up and
down, left and right, to dislodge stones and bricks, thereby creating
a breach through which the army could charge. The major problem
with the battering ram was that it exposed the men who worked it
to attacks from the wall. Before long a portable shelter was devised
under which the men could work, protected from the rocks and
arrows hurled from above. Some of these shelters fixed the batter-
ing ram to ropes hanging from their ceilings so it could be swung
into the wall repeatedly with minimum effort. Because penetration
An Egyptian army storms a fortress.

While they climb ladders to the top of
the wall defenders behind merlons shoot
arrows at them.
could also be attempted through the gates to the city, the doors
were usually covered with metal so they could not be set on fire;
however, troops could attack the hinges in an effort to remove the
doors completely. Penetration from beneath the wall was probably
the least dangerous of the three possible routes, but it could prove
disastrous. Miners would tunnel underground, often at night, to
surprise the enemy within their walls. Of course, if the defenders
discovered the tunnel, they organized an appropriate reception
committee.
The alternative to taking a fortified city by penetration was to
besiege it: surround the city and starve the defenders into submis-
sion. Although it was time consuming, it was generally the least
dangerous method. Sieges became such standard tactics that they
are described in detail in the Bible.
When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to
take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against
Warfare 259
Three men employ a battering ram protected by a shelter from enemy

missiles.
them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for
the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in a siege. Only the trees
which thou knowest that they benot trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and
cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh
war with thee, until it be subdued. (Deuteronomy 20:19–20)
CAMPAIGNS
After expelling the Hyksos, the Egyptian army grew large and
hierarchical, with commanders, generals, divisions, corps and so
on beneath its commander in chief, the pharaoh. The Eighteenth
Dynasty managed an unprecedented period of military successes
as its second pharaoh, Amenhotep I, began his reign with a military
expedition as far south as any expedition had ever gone—to the
third cataract of the Nile.
Navigating the Nile south of Aswan, Egypt’s southern border,
was dangerous because collections of huge boulders formed cat-
aracts hazardous to ships. Passage could be made only during
April, May or June when the water was low and the boulders were
revealed, allowing the boats to be controlled from the riverbanks
and guided around the rocks with ropes. The second cataract, the
“Belly of Rocks,” was the most dangerous at this time, with temper-
atures often reaching 120°F by the time an expedition reached it. To
avoid the blistering sun, boats were towed by moonlight, or in the

early morning. In fact, the methods used by Amenhotep I’s army to
negotiate these cataracts were marveled at by British troops when
they used the same plan 3,000 years later on their way to Khartoum
in the nineteenth century.
The long, difficult trip to Nubia was an adventure expedition
members remembered for the rest of their lives. Fortunately, mili-
tary men often inscribed autobiographies on their tomb walls so the
gods and posterity could appreciate their accomplishments. One of
these was Ahmose-son-of-Ibana, a member of Amenhotep’s expe-
dition, whose account provides many colorful details of the 350-
mile journey.7 After navigating the cataracts and defeating some
local tribes along the way, the expedition reached Gebel Barkal, a
sacred mountain that resembles a cobra, where the final battle was
fought. Ahmose describes his bravery: “Meanwhile I was at the
head of our army; I fought incredibly; his majesty saw my brav-
ery. I took two hands and brought them to his majesty.” Ahmose
referred to the Egyptian military practice of cutting off the right
hands of dead enemies, after which, in a great ceremony, the hands
were piled high for military scribes to count formally the number of
enemy dead. Ahmose was rewarded for his bravery. “His majesty
presented me with gold. Then I brought away two female slaves in
addition to those that I had taken to his majesty, who appointed me,
‘Warrior of the King.’”
The outpost Amenhotep established at Gebel Barkal would later
become a great Egyptian stronghold, used by his successor Tuth-
mosis I, an even more accomplished military leader than Amenho-
tep I, who became the model of the pharaoh as warrior emulated by
subsequent kings. In the first year of his reign, when news arrived
that the Nubians were raising an army and had sent raiding parties
to the Egyptian border, Tuthmosis led his army, including, for the
second time, Ahmose-son-of-Ibana, south into Nubia. The expedi-
tion pushed deep into foreign territory, this time to the fourth cata-
ract, reaching a part of the Nile that amazed them: suddenly the
Nile flowed the “wrong” way—from north to south—all caused
by a sharp S-turn in the course of the river before it curves back
to resume its natural northern journey. Tuthmosis described it as
“water that turned one who wanted to go north into one who rather
went south.”8 If the army had used the river’s flow as an indica-
tor of direction, they would have found the sun rising in the west!
To complicate matters, this thirty-mile stretch of river contains the
Warfare 261
roughest water on the Nile. Despite the heat and the raging waters,
Tuthmosis pressed on. As a reward for successfully maneuvering
the fleet through the cataract, he promoted Ahmose-son-of-Ibana
to admiral. “I showed bravery in the King’s presence, in the bad
water, in the towing of the fleet in the reverse river. His majesty
appointed me overseer of the sailors.”
Once past this obstacle, the army camped on Mongrat Island, one
of the largest in the Nile (about the size of Manhattan) and where
the Nile calmed, allowing easy transit by night from their wooded
stronghold to the east bank in preparation for the attack on neigh-
boring villages. They fought a confederation of three tribes: the
Iwntyu Seti, the Nehsi and the “sand dwellers,” who were probably
Bedouins living near desert wells. All the accounts of Tuthmosis’
performance in battle agree he was ferocious: “Like a panther, his
majesty threw his first lance which remained in the body of the
fallen one . . . their people were brought off as living prisoners.”9 The
chief of the Iwntyu Seti was captured by Tuthmosis for transport
back to Egypt. Since by now it was July and the Nile was beginning
to flood, making passage impossible, the army probably used the
time to pillage the land, taking grain, cattle and anything else of
value as they proceeded south. At Kurgus, where a large boulder
known as Hagar el Merwa presents a natural landmark visible for
miles, Tuthmosis built a fortress of mud brick with walls eighteen
feet thick which would facilitate Egypt’s access to central Africa
and control the Nubians’ route to Egypt. He also erected a stele pro-
claiming Egypt’s control of the land which said that anyone who
opposed him would have his head cut off, his family murdered,
and “he would have no successor.”10 Egypt’s southern frontier had
been established.
When the floodwaters receded, the expedition, led by Tuthmosis’
“Hawkship,” returned to Karnak, where a crowd gathered to greet
the pharaoh and view the captured leader of the Iwntyu Seti, who
was hanging upside down from the prow of the flagship.
A later pharaoh, Tuthmosis III, deserved his reputation as Egypt’s
greatest military leader. Within a period of sixteen years he led four-
teen separate campaigns into Syria-Palestine, crossed the Euphrates
River and conquered the land of the powerful Mitanni. But the bat-
tle of Megiddo, one of Tuthmosis’ early campaigns, demonstrates
that he had to learn his craft. It also illustrates that although Egypt’s
army had become increasingly professional, military strategy was
practically nonexistent: firepower and a commander’s character
were the primary determinants of success in the field. If a leader

suffered a character flaw, as Tuthmosis did at the beginning of his
career, the results could be disastrous.
In the spring of 1468 b.c., as Tuthmosis marched north to do
battle with the nations of Syria and Canaan (who had grown inde-
pendent of Egypt), the ruler of Qadesh marched his army south
from the Orontes River to join forces against the advancing Egyp-
tians. Near Megiddo (called Armageddon in the Bible), a strategic
location because it controlled access to the north, Tuthmosis con-
vened a council of his commanders to hear spies report on enemy
strength and intent. Three separate approaches led to the city, one
of which his officers rejected because troops would have to pro-
ceed through a narrow valley single file (“horse behind horse”).
Despite their objection that a smaller force could easily ambush
the Egyptians with drastic effect, Tuthmosis chose this route so
the enemy could not say, “His Majesty set out on another road
because he has become afraid of us.”11 Tuthmosis was lucky; because
the enemy expected the Egyptians to travel by either of the other
two roads, it had stationed its forces elsewhere. The Egyptians
emerged safely from the valley and gathered forces for a dawn
attack which routed the enemy encampment in front of the city,
forcing them to retreat inside their walled city. Instead of destroy-
ing the disorganized troops, the Egyptian army stopped to loot the
camp, allowing the king of Qadesh and his troops to escape north.
As a military scribe put it: “[N]ow if His Majesty’s troops had not
set their hearts to plundering the possessions of the enemies, they
would have [captured] Megiddo at this moment.”12 By failing to
seize the moment, seven months of siege were required before the
city finally fell: Megiddo was admirably provisioned and its engi-
neers had dug through 65 feet of solid rock to excavate a horizontal
tunnel 10 feet high and 200 feet long to a well that supplied the city
with fresh water.
Two hundred years later, another young pharaoh named Rame-
ses II displayed similar carelessness and risked an even more fatal
outcome. He led one of the largest professional armies the world
had ever seen, with infantry numbering more than 20,000 men
wielding battle axes, spears and swords, along with a substantial
chariot corps. The Hittites, successors to the earlier Mitanni, at
this time controlled the city of Qadesh. Their main weapon was
a heavy, three-man chariot that carried a driver, a shield bearer
and a javelin thrower; in effect, an infantry on wheels, well suited
for close fighting after a charge. The Egyptian army was more
Warfare 263
diversified with chariot-riding archers who could do damage at

a distance and infantry who handled hand-to-hand combat. Both
armies supplemented their troops with foreign mercenaries when
they could, but coordinating these diverse troops required great
administrative skills.
On the ninth day of the second month of summer in the fifth year
of his reign, Rameses led 20,000 foot soldiers and his chariot corps
north to Syria. The soldiers, who were divided into four divisions
of 5,000, each named after a god of Egypt—Amun, Ra, Ptah, and
Seth—averaged 15 miles a day, covering the 450 miles through Pal-
estine to Qadesh in Syria in about a month. Like other pharaohs
of the period, Rameses had accompanied his father on campaigns
while still a youth and was experienced in the conduct of campaigns.
Already convinced that Qadesh could not stand against him, he
was fortified by the fact that the journey north met no resistance:
“All the foreign lands trembled before him up through Galilee.”13
When the troops entered Syria they saw vast areas of green mead-
ows, perfect for chariots, and wildflowers unknown in Egypt. In
the distance stood the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon, prob-
ably the first time most of his troops had ever seen frozen water.
Rameses camped within a day’s march of Qadesh, but, eager to
reach his goal, he rose early, donned his battle garments and led
the division of Amun toward Qadesh, while his other three divi-
sions stretched for miles behind him. As Rameses neared Qadesh,
two local tribesmen met the entourage and told him that the Hittite
king, Muwatallis, had learned of Rameses’ approach and had fled
north to Aleppo, 120 miles away. This seemed perfectly reasonable
to Rameses, so he pressed on to Qadesh, leaving his other three
divisions to catch up as they could. When the fortified city came into
sight, Rameses’ exhausted division pitched camp on top of a knoll.
The next day Qadesh and all its treasures would be his.
In the meantime, sentries caught two Hittite soldiers and beat
the truth out of them. The local tribesmen who reported that the
Hittites had run away had been Hittite spies sent to lull Rameses
into a false sense of security; in fact, Muwatallis was waiting with
40,000 soldiers on the far side of Qadesh. While the Egyptian troops
were settling in, repairing chariots, tending to tired feet, distribut-
ing supplies and feeding Rameses’ pet lion and while Rameses met
hurriedly with his officers to make emergency plans, Hittite chari-
oteers charged the lagging Ra division, cut it in half and almost
destroyed it. Other troops made straight for Rameses’ camp and
attacked the unprepared Egyptians. A barrier of shields enclosing
the Egyptian camp stopped the Hittite chariots only momentarily,

but then they burst through and sent the Egyptian troops in every
direction. Rameses called out:
Stand ye firm, steady your hearts, my army that you may behold my vic-
tory. I am alone, but Amun will be my protector, his hand is with me.14
Rameses rallied those immediately around him, jumped into his

chariot, said a prayer to Amun and charged. It never occurred to
him that he could lose. The surprise of his bold attack provided
just enough time for Egyptian reinforcements to arrive. After orga-
nizing the new arrivals and what was left of the Amun Division,
Rameses charged the Hittites six times. Finally, the enemy chariots
were forced to flee across the river back to their camp.
Muwatallis, waiting to move in for the kill with his horde of
infantry, was shocked to see his crack chariot companies retreat-
ing, some fleeing into the fortified city, others retreating across the
river. The Orontes River is narrow enough to throw a stone across,
but deep enough that chariots had to cross at shallower fords. In
their rush to safety, some headed directly across the river instead of
locating a ford. Accounts of the battle carved on Egyptian temple
walls showed one prince from Aleppo who swallowed so much
water trying to escape that he had to be held upside down by his
ankles to be emptied.
What was left of the division of Ra after their ambush by the
Hittites arrived to finish off the enemy stragglers. A rout had been
transformed into a victory. It was time to cut the right hands off the
dead Hittites so scribes could count the enemy casualties. Rameses
called his officers around him to chastise them for not being there
when he needed them. From his throne of gold he said,
What ails you, my high officers, my infantry, and my charioteers, who

know not how to fight? . . . Did you not know in your hearts that I am your
wall of iron? . . . I defeated millions of foreign counties being alone with my
great horses, Victory-in-Thebes and Mut-is-Content.15
Both armies spent the night preparing for final battle the next day.
The Hittites now outnumbered the Egyptians, but the Egyptian
chariots were the superior fighting machines. Egyptian chariots
carried bowmen which allowed them to strike at a distance; the
Hittites’ transported spear throwers who were good only for close
combat. All told, the armies were about evenly matched. When
the two forces faced each other, they hurled taunts and postured,
Warfare 265
but neither side initiated a fight—they had reached a standoff. The

Hittite troops were too well trained and numerous to be defeated;
Rameses had demonstrated his prowess. Muwatallis offered Rame-
ses a peace treaty: both parties would accept the status quo and
agree never again to attack each other. Rameses agreed and never
returned to Qadesh.
Not surprisingly, with one notable exception, Egyptian battle
records all describe land engagements since Egypt had no navy.
Hemmed in by deserts on the east and west and the Sudan in the
south, Egypt’s only water border was the Mediterranean to the
north, but the Egyptians, skilled in plying the placid Nile, never
developed open-water navigational or sailing skills and seldom
sailed the Mediterranean. Their ideal river conditions had spoiled
them. In fact, their extensive trade with both Greece and Cyprus
depended on sailors from those seafaring lands.
The only Egyptian record that describes a real naval battle was
fought by Rameses III against a mysterious group called the Sea
Peoples. This enemy comprised populations of different nationali-
ties who came from Asia Minor and later occupied various territory
around of the Mediterranean.16 One segment of the Sea Peoples
were called the Peleset, who gave their name to Palestine. They
wore distinctive feather-topped helmets; their primary weapon was
the long, straight sword; and they carried round shields. A smaller,
but important group of the Sea Peoples, called the Sherdens, gave
their name to Sardinia. They too carried round shields, but wore
horn-topped helmets.
Rameses depicted two battles with the Sea Peoples on the walls
of his temple at Medinet Habu: one on land, another on water.
According to the text accompanying the battle scenes, “[T]he for-
eign countries made a conspiracy in their islands . . . they were com-
ing forward toward Egypt.” A powerful confederation had set their
sights on Egypt which would have to fight for its existence.
The land battle, shown in traditional style, was a complete vic-
tory for the Egyptians, total defeat for the enemy. Two details are of
interest, however. Behind the enemy infantry and chariots, carts are
pictured carrying noncombatants—women and children. This sug-
gests that the Sea Peoples intended to settle in Egypt if they won.
That they were migrating is the reason different groups of Sea Peo-
ples settled in different Mediterranean countries after their defeat.
The other interesting detail is that the Sea Peoples are depicted
without an archery corps; they could engage in nothing but close
combat.
Although Rameses boasts that he destroyed the Sea Peoples on

land, the records show that a sea battle was also necessary, even if it
was not the sort of naval encounter we normally think of because
there was no maneuvering on open water. The conflict probably
took place in the Delta where the Nile branches out into the Mediter-
ranean. Since narrow streams provided no space to sail, ships on
both sides served merely as platforms for infantry. The temple wall
account of the battle shows several important differences between
the Egyptians and the opposing troops, any one of which could
explain Rameses’ victory. First, the Egyptian ships were fitted with
both sails and oars; those of the Sea Peoples had only sails, giving
the Egyptians the advantage of greater control and maneuverabil-
ity in close river fighting. Also, Egyptian archers were able to inflict
damage at a distance, but the Sea Peoples, lacking archers, could
only try to board Egyptian ships which maneuvered out of their
way while raining arrows on them. Finally, while more Egyptian
archers shot arrows from the shore, men with slings hurled stones
at the Sea People from the crow’s nests of their ships. The temple
walls show the outcome in graphic detail: no hand-to-hand combat,
only enemies pierced by arrows falling into the Nile.
CONCLUSION
The Egyptian armament and style of campaign served the country
well for a thousand years, allowing Egypt to dominate surrounding
countries during that time with superior manpower. Egypt’s con-
trol was finally reduced by new superpowers with more modern
methods who raised warfare to a science.
Assyria created the idea of an empire. Unlike the Egyptians and
their earlier contemporaries who simply raided and returned
home with their booty until it was time to raid again, the Assyr-
ians subdued territory, cowed the population with harsh measures
and installed governors to rule the conquered people. In this man-
ner they added troops to their army with every conquest. Where a
large Egyptian army might comprise from 20,000 to 30,000 troops,
Assyrian armies reached 100,000 men. Not surprisingly, Assyria
conquered Egypt in the seventh century b.c.
Assyria was overcome by Persia, a warrior society that con-
scripted every able-bodied man to fight for his country rather than
hoping for enlistments to create an army larger than comparable
populations could field against them. After borrowing the idea
of empire from Assyria, their superior army added territory after
The battle against the “Sea People” is the only naval engagement recorded by the Egyptians.
Note how closely the ships are concentrated. The enemy is depicted with round shields and a
headdress of standing feathers. Only the enemy is shown shot with arrows; only the Egyptian
troops carry bows.
territory, creating a hegemony that stretched from Egypt through

modern Turkey. Drawing on this huge conquered population, Per-
sia could field an army half a million strong.
Persia remained invincible until militant Greeks under Alexander
the Great used superior tactics to turn the numerical superiority of
the Persian army against it. No one had fought more often than the
Greeks, even if generally against other Greeks, which had permit-
ted them to develop advanced strategy. The Greeks concentrated
their inferior numbers on one part of a larger Persian force to rout
it, which panicked the remaining Persian troops.
Egypt endured through the rise and fall of one militant superpower
after another, rebelling when it could, joining forces with other coun-
tries in opposition, or simply biding time. It could not, however,
endure the invincible Romans who created an empire never equaled
before or since. They made Egypt their province and bled it dry.
NOTES
1. Yigal Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1963).
2. W. M. McLeod, Self Bows and Other Archery Tackle from the Tomb of
Tutankhamen (Oxford, England: Griffith Institute, 1982).
3. For a discussion of the composite bow, see McLeod, Self Bows.
4. For descriptions of existing ancient weapons, see W. V. Davies, Cata-
logue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum: VII Tools and Weapons
(London: British Museum Press, 1987).
5. After the translation of Alan H. Gardiner, “The Defeat of the Hyk-
sos by Kamose: The Carnarvon Tablet,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3
(1916): 95–110.
6. Because they were made of light wood, few chariots have survived
from ancient Egypt. A rare exception are those found in Tutankhamen’s
tomb described by M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, Chariots and Related
Equipment from the Tomb of Tutankhamen (Oxford, England: Griffith Insti-
tute, 1985).
7. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 11–15.
8. A detailed account of Tuthmosis I’s expedition is presented in “Fol-
lowing Thutmose I on his Campaign to Kush” by Louise Bradbury in KMT
(Fall 1992): 51–77.
9. Ibid., 56.
10. Ibid., 57.
11. Lichtheim, op. cit., 35.
12. Ibid., 32.
Warfare 269
13. A readable account of the battle of Qadesh is given by K. A. Kitchen

in Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Rameses II (Warminster, En-
gland: Aris and Phillips, 1982), 53–64.
14. Translated by Alan Gardiner, The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramses II
(Oxford, England: Griffith Institute, 1975), 11.
15. Ibid., 12.
16. See N. K. Sandars, The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterra-
nean (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978).
11
MEDICINE AND
MATHEMATICS
Physics, chemistry and biology were never studied by ancient

Egyptians since true science with its controlled experiments, care-
ful observations and testable results did not exist until long after
their early, superstitious times. Still, Egyptians approached inju-
ries and diseases more objectively than their contemporaries, and
mathematics, essential for the complex and precise buildings that
Egyptians erected, was taught in every school.
MEDICINE
Diseases
Although ancient Egyptians were shorter than we are—the
average male stood five feet, six inches tall as opposed to almost
five feet, ten in the United States today—in every other way they
resembled modern people and, consequently, were subject to most
of the same diseases. One scourge of countries with damp, hot
climates, schistosomiasis, which still afflicts 10 percent of Egypt’s
population today, seems to have been rampant in ancient times.
One study found remains of the eggs that cause this disease1 in
fifteen of twenty-three examined mummies.2 The cause is a para-
site, carried by snails living in the still waters of canals and in the
Nile’s riverbanks, that burrows through the feet of waders, enters
their veins, then swims to the body’s bladder and rectum to deposit
eggs. The worms finally migrate to the urinary tract, causing blood
in the urine (hematuria), and after the eggs hatch, they cause severe
anemia, urinary infection and liver ailments.
Since the ancient Egyptians never suspected that a virtually
invisible worm caused these problems, all they could do was try to
relieve the discomfort. Medical papyri specified a potion consisting
of the tail of a mouse mixed with onion, meal, honey and water, all
strained before using, then drunk for four days.
Egyptians also suffered from a high incidence of lung disorders.
Tuberculosis, in particular, was more common then than in mod-
ern times. This disease, which affects the lungs, sometimes destroys
bone as well and shows up in mummies as osteomyelitis of the
spine (Pott’s disease) because tuberculosis affects the disks between
vertebrae. Even more common was sand in the lungs which hin-
dered breathing (sand pneumoconiosis), to be expected in a desert
country where every breeze carried sand into the respiratory sys-
tem. As a result, persistent coughs plagued the Egyptians—their
version of the modern black lung disease of coal miners.
Dental problems were a major concern. Tooth decay was prevalent,
not because of a diet rich in sugars—Egyptians had no pure sugar
nor could the average person afford honey—but because teeth were
worn away until their pulp was exposed, making them vulnerable to
infection. A double dose of sand plus grit in the ancient diet, which
came from bread that was made by grinding a stone against another
stone to produce flour, caused the wear. Examinations of mummies,
both young and old, found severely worn teeth, even abscesses
that can prove fatal. Although Egyptians had specialists for many
medical problems, dentistry was not one of these; Egyptians with
these problems simply suffered. With dental infection so common,
foul breath was a major social problem, and Egyptians invented the
first breath mints: a combination of frankincense, myrrh and cinna-
mon boiled with honey and shaped into pellets.
Surprisingly, arteriosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries,
affected ancient Egyptians just as it does modern people, leading
to a restricted flow of blood both to the brain, which can cause
senility, and to the heart, which can cause heart attacks. Since
the primary cause of this disease is a buildup of fatty deposits on
the interior walls of the arteries, and since the ancient Egyptian ate
far less fat than found in modern diets, it had been assumed that
arteriosclerosis was a purely modern disease until examination of
the arteries of mummies revealed numerous cases.3 Because the
Medicine and Mathematics 273
ancient Egyptian diet included little meat or other sources of fat,

this affliction remains a puzzle.
Infections of various kinds were incurable before the discovery
of the penicillin family of medicines during our century. Malaria
plagued ancient Egyptians who lived near marshes and lakes—a
large percentage of the population—and neither its cause nor any
effective treatment was known before modern times. Cancer of soft
tissues is one disease that plagues modern people much more than
it afflicted ancient; less than a handful of documented cases have
ever been found in mummies. Without tobacco or artificial additives
for food and with fewer pollutants in the air, ancient people had
little to fear from this dreaded modern disease.
Medical Treatment
Egyptians took two approaches to their medical problems—
clinical and magical—with the type of illness determining which
was used. As long as the cause of a medical problem was known
to Egyptians, as in the case of broken bones and crocodile bites,
they treated it in a clinical manner. For example, the prescription
for a crocodile bite was to sew the wound closed before placing raw
meat over it. If, however, the affliction was something like a fever
whose cause was unknown, it was attributed to demons or mali-
cious magic and treated with magical cures. Some afflictions, to be
sure, fell entirely outside the understanding of the Egyptians and
were left to a specialist in what they termed “unknown diseases.”
Whether clinician or magician, most physicians came from the
ranks of priests. Because Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess, was
associated with medical arts, her priests were considered superior
doctors, although some were skilled in clinical, others in magi-
cal, medicine. A man named Nedjemou was chief of the priests of
Sekhmet as well as chief of the physicians; while another, named
Heryshefnakht, was chief of magicians, high priest of Sekhmet, and
royal physician. It is ironic that Sekhmet became the patron deity of
medicine since, in mythology, she had been feared for her temper
that almost destroyed mankind. The gods Isis, Horus and Toth were
also associated with healing. Isis was claimed as the patron both of
clinical and magical specialists because she had reassembled her
deceased husband, Osiris, after he had been hacked to pieces by
his evil brother Seth—rather fancy surgery—and, as the goddess
of magic, her supernatural powers were eagerly sought. Because
an important myth told how Horus’ eye was magically restored to
health after it was almost destroyed in battle, he, in turn, became

the patron of eye doctors. Toth, the god of wisdom, usually depicted
as an ibis-headed god (but sometimes as a baboon), was the fabled
inventor of writing and so was also called upon for clinical matters.
Ancient Greek authors tell us that Toth inspired a series of forty-
two encyclopedic books, of which thirty-six, according to Clement
of Alexandria, dealt with philosophy and general knowledge; the
remaining six concerned medicine. One volume covered anatomy,
another diseases, others surgery, remedies, diseases of the eye and
diseases of women. Because the Greeks identified Toth with their
own god Hermes these works became known as the Hermetic
books.
These famous books have disappeared, but quite a few ancient
Egyptian medical works survive. These works fell into the same
two categories—clinical and magical—as did the medical practitio-
ners. The most famous clinical writings, The Edwin Smith Surgical
Papyrus, which dates from approximately 1700 b.c., was a copy of
a much older papyrus from the Old Kingdom. The papyrus, which
deals intelligently with physical injuries, such as fractures and bro-
ken bones, indicates that whoever wrote it possessed extensive,
direct knowledge of these problems. Some Egyptologists speculate
that the original author was the revered Imhotep, architect of the
Step Pyramid at Saqqara, who, along with his duties as royal archi-
tect, served as royal physician. This position could have provided
him with firsthand knowledge of the breaks and fractures that must
have occurred to workmen during the construction of the world’s
first large stone building.
Forty-eight specific injuries are discussed in the papyrus, each
preceded by a title such as, “Instructions Concerning a Wound on
the Top of His Eyebrow.” This is followed by “The Examination,”
where the surgeon is told how to probe the wound and what to
look for. Each case ends with a “Diagnosis.” The physician is told to
state what the injury is, then whether he can treat it by saying one
of three things: “an ailment which I will treat,” “an ailment with
which I will contend,” or “an ailment not to be treated.” These diag-
noses divided his cases into those he could cure, those he hoped
to cure and those he could not. Fourteen cases described in the
papyrus were so severe the physician was instructed to say they
could not to be treated, including bulging tumors in the breast and
such severe fractures of the temple that blood flowed from the nose
and ears of a patient unable to speak. The intention of such a hope-
less diagnosis was not for the patient’s good, but to protect the
reputation of the doctor—business would suffer if he treated too

many patients who died.
The papyrus covers ailments from the top of the head to the spi-
nal column, although blank space at the end of the papyrus sug-
gests that, if the scribe had completed his copy, he would have
included injuries to the legs and feet. Three examples involving
exposed brains present enough detail to show the author had care-
fully observed this crucial organ. He calls the material surround-
ing the brain (the meninges) netnet, in hieroglyphs .The first
four symbols show how the word was pronounced (nt-nt), and the
final sign, called a determinative, indicates to what kind of thing
the word applied. In this case, the determinative is an animal skin,
which makes sense because the meninges is a kind of skin. Equally
accurate is the author’s description of the brain’s convolutions,
which he likens to “ripples which form on molten copper.”4 He also
made a start in understanding the functions of the brain, for he men-
tions the possibility that a severe head injury might affect the limbs,
one symptom of which could be a limp. While this does not prove
the writer understood how the brain controlled the limbs, at least
he had observed that one problem occurred with the other. (Actu-
ally, the papyrus states that the affected limb will be on the same
side of the body as the brain injury, which is incorrect because the
left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.) Despite this
good beginning, Egyptians developed specialists in eye ailments,
gynecological ailments and a few other medical problems, but not
those of the brain.
For the “cases to be treated,” recommended remedies are surpris-
ingly similar to modern treatments: bandages, splints, plaster, tape
and sutures to help the patient mend. Still, one curious discussion
deviates from the clinical approach. In a case concerning a crushed
forehead, magic is advised. A poultice of grease and ostrich egg was
to be applied to the wound, probably because the shell of the ostrich
egg resembled the frontal bone and the hope was that the bone
would knit to form a solid sphere like the eggshell. Before applying
the poultice a spell was to be recited:
Repelled is the enemy that is in the wound!
Cast out the [evil] that is in the blood,
The adversary of Horus [on every] side of the mouth of Isis.
This temple does not fall down;
There is no enemy of the vessel therein.
I am under the protection of Isis;
My rescue is the son of Osiris.5
Why would an author describe forty-seven cases so clinically and

then include one purely magic cure? Perhaps the scribe who copied
the original work inserted one example from a different book. In
any case, the spell provides an interesting literary first. In the pro-
cess of his copying, the scribe omitted a word. Where the missing
word belonged, he inserted a small red “x,” then wrote the word
above the line—the first, but far from the last, caret in history.
Although called The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, the work con-
tains no discussion of surgery. The practitioner is told only how to
remove bone fragments, dress the wound and so on, not what to
cut or saw. Examinations of hundreds of mummies indicate that
Egyptian physicians seldom practiced surgery, which would have
been a difficult undertaking using only bronze knives and lacking
anesthesia. Yet Egyptians did perform circumcisions. Such a scene
is shown on the walls of the tomb of Ankh-ma-Hor, overseer of the
works of King Teti from the Sixth Dynasty. Two adult men stand
as they undergo circumcision by two others. One of the patients
is held by a fifth man to whom the circumciser says, “Hold him
fast, don’t let him fall.” The only other evidence for surgery is what
appear to be surgical instruments carved on the back wall of Kom
Ombo Temple in Upper Egypt, although some doubt exists about
their purpose since the hieroglyphs around the scene make no
mention of surgery or refer to the tools in any way.
Papyrus was expensive enough that both sides were typically
used. The reverse side of the Edwin Smith Papyrus consists of a
second medical work based on principles of magic, consisting of
a hodgepodge of spells on such diverse topics as what to do for
a woman whose menstrual flow has stopped and treatments for
hemorrhoids. The most intriguing is titled “How to Transform an
Old Man into a Youth,” the forerunner of medieval alchemists’
elixirs of life. The Egyptian version consists of a wrinkle cream for
smoothing the skin made from a fruit called hemayet (a word still
untranslated). Whatever the fruit was, it was crushed, husked and
winnowed like grain, then placed with water in a new container
to boil. When the mixture reached the consistency of clay, it was
removed from the fire and spooned into a jar until it cooled, then
placed on linen to strain over a jar opening, after which it was stored
in a vase of costly stone. The spell promises that, if the cream is
spread on the face, it will remove wrinkles, blemishes, in fact every
sign of age, and ends with the assurance that “it has been shown to
be effective millions of times.”
While this side of this papyrus contains exorcisms of demons

and incantations to gods, it also hints at something very much like
modern germ theory. The first eight spells concern “The Pest of the
Year,” an epidemic that afflicted the Egyptians annually. Spells say
the disease came on “the plague-bearing wind,” could be carried
by flies, was lodged in food and beds or bed linens and entered the
body through the mouth and throat. Of course, the text does not
mention germs—malicious gods and demons, even Sekhmet, are
cited as causes of the plague—still, Egyptian doctors had made an
interesting observation about how diseases spread. For example,
while the title of one spell calls the cause of the disease “the demons
of disease, the malignant spirits, messengers of Sekhmet,” it sug-
gests that they come on the wind:
Withdraw, ye disease demons. The wind shall not reach me, that those
who pass by to work disaster against me. I am Horus, who passes by the
diseased ones of Sekhmet, [even] Horus, Horus, healthy despite Sekhmet.
I am the unique one, son of Bastet. I die not through thee.6
This spell had to be spoken by a man who carried a stick of des-

wood in his hand as he circled his house, thus drawing a circle
of protection around his abode; the stick, of course, was a magic
wand, a common tool of Egyptian magicians. These same words
could also be uttered while drawing a circle around a bed to protect
a sleeper from scorpion bites.
Another spell for a man who has swallowed a fly asserts that his
mouth will become as clean as a newborn calf who has never eaten,
and that the fly will pass out of him in his excrement without injur-
ing his stomach. The use of a special spell to rid the body of a fly
suggests that Egyptians realized flies carry disease. There was also
a general spell for cleaning everything, including beds. Altogether
this collection of spells against “The Pest of the Year” makes “dis-
ease demons” resemble modern bacteria.
Physicians of ancient Egypt grappled to understand the cause of
disease as well as they could. Although they never quite grasped
the ideas of bacteria or germs, they created a theory centering
around a noxious substance they called wechdu, which resided in
the lower intestine. They believed wechdu caused most diseases.
This substance could travel from the bowel through the vascular
system, they thought, coagulating the blood and changing it to pus.
Such “rising” of wechdu produced heat (fever) that could affect the
pulse rate.7 Wechdu also caused aging because its slow absorption
led to body decay. Since this foul substance caused disease, the
Egyptian cure was to get rid of it. When a fever or infection grew
serious, doctors prescribed an enema, or, simply as a preventative,
purges were recommended to rid the body of wechdu. The Greek
historian Herodotus noted during his visit to Egypt that these peo-
ple purged themselves as a health measure for three days of each
month. Today, we can see the errors in this view of disease, but the
theory shows a rational, clinical approach to trying to understand
and treat ailments.
Egyptian physicians had some knowledge of anatomy as well.
The Edwin Smith Papyrus illustrates that some of their knowledge
came from treating accident injuries: when a skull was severely
fractured in a construction mishap, the attending physician could
sometimes view the living brain. Additional opportunities for
study were provided by war and mummification. Since physicians
traveled with the troops, they could inspect internal organs and
bones while they repaired battle wounds. Constrained by the need
to move quickly from one battle victim to the next, however, they
were unable to perform the careful examination that could lead to
a precise anatomical description. Anatomy lessons learned during
mummification had even greater limitations. Since the brain, for
example, was intentionally pulverized inside the cranium before
extraction, any possibility of discovering its structure was elimi-
nated. On the other hand, although various internal organs were
removed whole from the body and could be thoroughly inspected,
embalmers, who occupied the lower end of the social scale, were
not physicians and lacked both the interest and training to contrib-
ute to medical knowledge.
Since Egyptians did not perform human autopsies because of their
religious belief in resurrection, much of their anatomical knowledge
came from animals. Most Egyptians would have witnessed animal
slaughter and had ready access to the local butcher shop. Hiero-
glyphs for various internal parts of the human body clearly show
that animal anatomy was the source for information about human
anatomy. The word for womb, idt, depicts the bicornuate (two-
horned) uterus of a cow (the next to the last symbol from the right)
rather than the unicornuate human uterus, a misunderstanding that
persisted up to the seventeenth century when dissection of human
cadavers became standard practice in medical schools.8 Even the
hieroglyph for heart, , is a bovine, not a human, heart. Since
mummification left the heart inside the body, a cow’s heart was
more familiar than a human one. The hieroglyphs for many other
human bodily parts—backbone, ribs, intestines—depicted animal
anatomy as well. While the physicians of ancient Egypt were recog-
nized as the most skilled of their time in the world, their knowledge
of human anatomy fell far short of modern standards. They did not
even have a word for the human pancreas.9
The Egyptians had no hospitals, only home care, but, since most
of their physicians were priests, people often sought healing at
temples where they were treated with a combination of medi-
cine, theology and magic, then sent home to recover. In addition,
several temples with reputations for effecting miraculous cures
became pilgrimages for the ill. Dendera in southern Egypt spe-
cialized in several types of miracle treatments. Water that dripped
from statues inscribed with healing spells was channeled to basins
so the diseased could bathe in holy water or drink it. Alternatively,
patients could recline in small, dark crypts with special lamps,
hoping to converse with appropriate gods in a dream to learn their
cure. A Greek who visited an Egyptian temple for this kind of cure
recorded his dream.
It was night, when every living creature except those in pain slept, but
divinity showed itself more effectively; a violent fever burned me, and
I was convulsed with loss of breath and coughing, owing to the pain pro-
ceeding from my side. Heavy in the head with my troubles, I was laps-
ing half conscious into sleep and my mother, as a mother would for her
child . . . was sitting without enjoying even a short period of slumber,
when suddenly she perceived—it was no dream or sleep, for her eyes
were open immovably, though not seeing clearly, for a divine and terri-
fying vision came to her from observing the god himself or his servants,
whichever it was. In any case there was some one whose height was more
than human, clothed in shining raiment and carrying in his left hand a
book, who after merely regarding me two or three times from head to foot
disappeared. When she had recovered herself, she tried, still trembling, to
wake me, and finding that the fever had left me and that much sweat was
pouring off me, did reverence to the manifestation of the god, and then
wiped me and made me more collected . . . everything that she saw in the
vision appeared to me in dreams. After these pains in my side had ceased
and the god had given me yet another assuaging cure, I proclaimed his
benefits.10
The temple at Deir el Bahri, also in southern Egypt, was another

famous pilgrimage site. Long after Queen Hatshepsut, its New King-
dom builder, had been forgotten, medical miracles were reputed
to take place on the upper terrace of her temple. On the terrace,

dedicated to two famous Egyptian physicians, Imhotep and
Amenhotep son of Hapu, the walls of a small “healing” room still
retain the graffiti written by those whose prayers were answered.
One reads, “Andromachos, a Macedonian, a worker for hire, came
to the good god Amenathen: he was sick and the god succored him
on that very day. Farewell.”11
Priest physicians who healed were called wabu: lay physicians
were called sunu. Careful regulation of the medical profession by
the government with stiff penalties for improper practice ensured
that, whether associated with a temple or not, all doctors were thor-
oughly trained. The difference between priest and lay doctors was
that the lay doctors could draw from all available sources for his
cures, not just those connected with a single god.
While both priest and lay physicians used a combination of clini-
cal medicine and magic, a third kind of healer, magicians, employed
only incantations, amulets and other magical cures. Unfortunately,
most surviving “medical” papyri come from this third class of
medical men, for magicians required the exact words to be recited
whereas the average doctor does not need his textbook at hand to
treat most ailments. As a result, our information about the Egyptian
medical profession is skewed toward its least scientific practices.
The most extensive magical work is the sixty-eight-foot-long
Papyrus Ebers, a disorganized collection of more than 800 magical
concoctions and spells to alleviate suffering—from how to stop a
baby from crying (make a potion with opium as an ingredient) to
how to speed up a woman’s labor (apply peppermint to her bare
posterior).
All these remedies are based on a belief in the magical principle
of similars, a kind of ancient homeopathy. In place of something
essential to health (like blood) a substance similar in color, texture
or function could be substituted (a potion of red plant dye, for
example). G. Elliot Smith, a physician interested in ancient Egyp-
tian medicine, who examined a grave of several small children
who had died more than 5,000 years ago, discovered that they had
eaten skinned mice just prior to their death. Egyptians believed the
life-giving Nile created mice because these animals mysteriously
emerged from cracks in the mud after the Nile receded each year.
Since life substitutes for life, according to the principle of similars,
mice were administered to these critically ill children in a desperate
effort to sustain their lives.
Following the principle of similars meant Egyptian remedies

used some unusual ingredients, such as the testicles of a black ass,
milk of a woman who has borne a son and cat’s dung, and listed
specific spells to enhance the potency of these ingredients.
Blindness, for example, called for two dehydrated pig’s eyes, with-
out indicating how they were reduced to that state (perhaps with
natron, as in mummification). Mixing the dried eyes with collyrium
(red lead) and wild honey produced a paste that was injected into
the ear of the patient while the physician said, “I have brought this
thing and put it in its place. The crocodile is weak and powerless.”
Repeating this seemingly inappropriate spell twice was supposed
to cure the patient of his blindness instantly. Numerous prayers to
gods who made people “see darkness during the day” suggest that
blindness was far from rare. If a patient had cataracts, a spell could
be recited over the brain of a tortoise mixed with honey which was
then applied to the eyes, unless the eyes were discharging matter,
in which case a ground-up statue would be mixed with the honey
along with leaves from the castor tree. The principle of similars dic-
tated that the solidity of the statue was exactly what was needed
to stop the running eyes. For coryza, a disease of the nose, a plug
made from fragrant bread and the milk of a woman who bore a
son was inserted in the nostrils. While the plug was prepared, the
magician had to repeat four times that foulness was rising from
the earth. Just as the spell would cause the foulness to come out of
the ground, so it would pull the foulness from the nose.
Egyptians never explained what gave potency to various ingredi-
ents, so it is not clear what was special about the milk of a woman
who had bred a son. It may be that Egyptians believed that this
milk was actually different from the milk of a woman who had
had a daughter, since even the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his
Healing of Animals, Book VII, Chapter 4, says that mothers of sons
are stronger than mothers of daughters. More likely, however, the
magic of similars again was at work. This milk was similar to that
of the goddess Isis, who was the mother of a son, Horus. Since she
was also the goddess of magic, such milk was perhaps believed to
include her magical potency. In any case, this special milk was first
stored in a vessel shaped like a woman holding a fragile child in her
lap. After incantations, the milk was transferred to a similar vessel
with a robust child figure, then the milk was ready to heal.
Magical treatments continued into the latest periods of Egyptian
history, although during the Greek occupation of Egypt (332–30 b.c.),
papyri included Greek ideas and words such as those in the London-
Leiden Papyrus. Written in demotic, a late form of the Egyptian lan-
guage, the main subject of the papyrus is magic and medicine. One
spell for curing a man with gout in his foot calls for magical words
written on tin or silver which is bound by a deerskin to the foot
of the man, who is then called “fleet skin” because the skin of the
nimble deer will render the lame foot well. The Greek addition is a
stipulation that this procedure should be done when the moon is in
the constellation of Leo, an astrological constellation unknown to
ancient Egyptians.
The principle of similars applied not only to functions but to
appearances as well: plants that resembled afflicted body parts were
often prescribed. Mandrake was considered both an aphrodisiac and
fertility drug because it takes the shape of male genitals; indeed, one
Arabic name for the plant is “devil’s testicles.” Paul Ghalioungui,
one of the great authorities on ancient Egyptian medicine, gives an
account of how the mandrake was picked in antiquity.
Mandrakes could be picked only on certain nights, by moonlight, or with

the morning dew. The picker stopped his ears with wax, tied the plant to a
dog, and ran away; the dog running after its master uprooted it and then
dropped dead, for the mandrake was said to utter out when torn away
such a horrible cry that anyone who heard it or touched it ran mad or died
on the spot.12
Egyptian magic was not pure mumbo-jumbo—several ingre-

dients used by the ancient doctors have been proven effective
today. Ground malachite, for example, was recommended for
open wounds, and when mixed with animal fat it created a green
eye makeup. In fact, this mineral contains cupric carbonate,
shown in recent laboratory tests to kill infectious bacteria such as
staphylococcus/anseus.13 The Kahun Gynecological Papyrus recom-
mendation that a pubic area infection be painted with green eye
cosmetic would actually reduce inflammation and permit the heal-
ing process to progress naturally. Honey, one of the most common
ingredients used by ancient physicians, especially on wounds, has
been shown to have significant antibacterial properties because it
is hyper-tonic, killing microorganisms by drawing the water from
them. Propolis, collected from bees, was used as an antiseptic until
the beginning of our century.14
Those skilled at gathering the plants physicians needed were the
ancient equivalent of our pharmacists. When the Greek traveler
Herodotus visited Egypt around 450 b.c. he was struck by the

degree of specialization.
The practice of medicine they split up into separate parts, each doctor
being responsible for the treatment of only one disease. There are, in
consequence, innumerable doctors, some specializing in diseases of the
eyes, others of the head, and others of the teeth, others of the stomach and
so on.15
The surprise in this list is the mention of teeth specialists. Since

no evidence exists of dental surgery—no filled teeth, no dental
bridges—Herodotus’ reference was most likely to dispensers of
potions to relieve tooth pain.
He was certainly right about the degree of specialization: one
entire medical papyrus was devoted to snake bites. Lethal cobras
and vipers were plentiful in Egypt; the serpent was such a common
danger in the ancient Middle East that the Bible makes it the arche-
type of evil. Ancient Egyptians believed that when they traveled
across the sky to the netherworld, snakes would try to stop them,
and magical spells would be needed to counter their venom. So
it is not surprising that magical papyri are full of spells to protect
the living from snake bites, and one is devoted to their treatment.
The Brooklyn Museum’s Snake Bite Papyrus16 is similar to The Edwin
Smith Surgical Papyrus in that it takes a nonmagical approach. Its
first section lists types of snakes, their distinctive features, the seri-
ousness of each bite, and the god associated with that snake.
Snake Characteristics Prognosis God

Viper Quail-colored, no horns Can be saved Horus
White henep White, four teeth May die Selket
Apep (cobra?) Red with white belly, Die quickly Was itself a god
four teeth
Today we know the action to take after a poisonous bite is to stop

absorption of the venom either by applying a tourniquet or by
cutting open the bite and withdrawing the poison, but neither of
these treatments appears in the snake bite papyrus. “Treatment with
the knife” is occasionally indicated, but merely to reduce swelling
and release fluids. Sometimes the physician is instructed to ban-
dage the wound with a poultice of salt or natron, which would
indeed reduce the swelling by osmosis just like the Glauber’s salts
(magnesium sulfate) used today, but it would not remove the poi-
son. Instead, the main treatment, listed twenty-seven times in the
papyrus, suggests giving the victim an emetic concoction of onions,
salt, sam-plant and beer which would induce vomiting but not affect
the venom circulating in the bloodstream. While physicians did not
understand the mechanisms by which venom killed, they were cer-
tainly familiar with its effects. Several treatments were designed
to “cause the throat to breathe” or “open the throat,” which was
a priority since cobra venom blocks impulses from the nerves to
muscles, paralyzing the muscles involved in respiration.
We do not know whether obstetrics was a medical specialty,
although a pregnancy test crops up in several papyri, usually under
the heading, “Another test to see if a woman will bear a child or if
she will not bear a child.” The woman urinated on two test patches
of emmer and barley seeds for several days. If either grew, she
was pregnant; if only the barley sprouted, she would have a boy;
if only the emmer, it would be a girl. This method was recently
tested and found to be partly effective.17 When emmer and barley
Assisted by two goddesses a woman gives birth sitting, the

traditional Egyptian way. Drawing by Rivka Rago.
seeds were watered with the urine of forty pregnant women, one
or both sprouted in twenty-eight cases while grain watered with
nonpregnant urine sprouted in only 30 percent of the cases—a
70 percent accuracy rate. It was not useful, however, in predicting
a child’s sex.
Egyptian women gave birth sitting down so gravity assisted the
baby’s exit, permitting less forceful contractions. Doctors probably
did not assist at childbirth. The woman sat on a special birthing
stool, generally made of bricks (giving rise to the Egyptian slang
phrase “sitting on the bricks” for giving birth), and the hieroglyphs
for birthing , pronounced meswet, show a woman sitting in such
a birthing position, as the head and arms of the baby emerge. A few
carvings of births exist on temple walls, usually to establish the
divine birth of kings and queens, but a physician is never shown.
The mother is attended by females, either because of her modesty
or because the process was considered so natural that it required
no physician.
MATHEMATICS AND MEASUREMENT

Egyptians built massive temples, palaces and pyramids without
the sophisticated mathematics engineers would use today, since
simple arithmetic was all the Egyptians knew. Their expertise
extended only to addition and subtraction, not even multiplication
or division. Lacking a theoretical understanding of numbers, they
substituted clever tricks and found practical ways to arrive at the
solutions they needed.
Multiplication was achieved by clever addition, called the Method
of Doubling. If a scribe wanted to multiply 18 by 7, he started by
writing 18 once, then below it doubled the number and continued
doing so, while to the left of each doubling he wrote the number of
times it had occurred. When the numbers in the left column added
up to 7, he knew the total of the right column would be the correct
answer, 126.
Doublings Sum
1 18
2 36
4 72
7 126 = answer
Division was accomplished by a similar procedure, just a bit more

complicated. If a scribe had to divide 184 bronze chisels among
8 workers, he treated the problem as a doubling (multiplication)
problem. After asking himself what he had to multiply 8 by to get
184, he began his doubling.
Doublings Sum
1 8/
2 16/
4 32/
8 64
16 128 = answer
He stopped at 128 because he knew the next doubling (256) would

be larger than the 184 he had to work with. He next asked, what in
the right-hand column adds up to 184 without going over it? The
answer is 128+32+16+8=184. He then put a slash mark next to those
numbers and added the left column entries beside them; that is,
he added 16+4+2+1 to get 23. Thus, 8 goes into 184 23 times: each
worker gets 23 chisels.
The Egyptians worked with a base of 10, using hieroglyphs only
for the number one and for numbers that are powers of ten:
Number Hieroglyph
1
10
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
Symbols were repeated to indicate multiples of their values, thus

the number 21,654 would be written: .
As to fractions, the Egyptians worked only with numerators of 1.
They had no 3/4 or 6/7. Rather, 3/4 was written as 1/2+1/4, and
6/7 was 1/2+1/4+1/14+1/28. Here too the scribe resorted to his
doubling techniques to draw up long tables he could consult rather
than redoing the tabulation each time.
Fractions were written by placing the hieroglyph that meant

“part,” represented by a mouth ( ), above the denominator so that
1/7 was (seven parts) and 1/10 was (ten parts). The only
hieroglyph with a numerator other than 1 was 2/3, written . The
fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 used special hiero-
glyphs based on the myth of Osiris. After Osiris was killed by Seth,
Osiris’ son Horus (the falcon) avenged his father’s death but lost
his eye in the battle. Fortunately, the fragments were collected and
restored by the god of magic, Toth. The distinctive markings of the
feathers around Horus’ falcon eye became the hieroglyphs for well-
being , and, when broken into components, represented special
fractions:
1/2
1/4
1/8
1/16
1/32
1/64
Of course, the Egyptians realized that these fractions added up to

only 63/64, instead of 64/64 or unity, so they claimed the missing
1/64 was supplied by Toth’s magic.
Egyptians used mathematics not for abstract intellectual exer-
cises, but only for practical problems: fields had to be measured,
quantities of grain recorded and supplies divided among workers.
This drawing shows how

hieroglyphic symbols for var-
ious common fractions came
from different parts of the Eye
of Horus.
Such problems required standards for size, weight and volume that
could be used with their arithmetic.
Since construction workers constantly had to measure, cut and
mark off distances, they used parts of their bodies—hands, palms,
fingers—for measurement. We call their basic unit the cubit: the
distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger (cubi-
tum is Latin for elbow). Although the length of a cubit or width
of a palm varied from worker to worker, such standards proved
adequate for many small projects. Major projects, such as temples
or pyramids whose thousands of blocks had to be uniform in size,
required greater precision. The royal cubit was set for this purpose
at 52.3 centimeters (20 5/8 inches), slightly longer than the average
Egyptian’s elbow to middle fingertip. This royal cubit was divided
into seven palms, approximately the width of four fingers without
the thumb. Palms were further divided into fourths, called “fin-
gers,” making twenty-eight fingers to the cubit. The smallest unit
Egyptian craftsmen used was 1/16 finger. Architects for major con-
struction projects supplied cubit rulers for their overseers to main-
tain uniformity.
Land was measured by ropes cut in 100-cubit lengths, called a
khet. An area one khet (100 cubits) on all four sides was a setat, the
basic unit of surface area, about 2/3 of a modern acre. Volume was
measured in hekats, which contained slightly less than a modern
liter. The standard unit for liquids was the hin, a small jar about
one-tenth of a hekat.
In a society that had no coin or paper money, commodities were
the means of exchange and were measured for each transaction. For
bread and beer, the staples of the Egyptian diet and of exchanges,
there was even a measure of quality, the pesu. A hin of diluted beer
was not worth as much as one that was full strength, nor was a
heavily aerated loaf of bread equal to a dense loaf. The pesu indi-
cated the number of jars of beer or loaves of bread obtained from 1
hekat of grain.
One equivalent of a mathematics textbook survives, The Rhind
Mathematical Papyrus, a fifteen-foot-long scroll. Copied in the thirty-
third year of the Pharaoh Apophis by a scribe named Ahmose, it
presents dozens of math questions and their answers, which lend
some insight into the kinds of problems Egyptians could solve.
Included were such simple matters as dividing 6 loaves of bread
among 10 men. Because the Egyptians did not use fractions with
numerators other than 1, they could not give the easy answer of
6/10 of a loaf. Each man got 1/2 of a loaf plus 1/10 of a loaf. If
there were 7 men for the 10 loaves, then the scribe got to use his one
fraction with a numerator other than 1 (2/3) so each man got 2/3 +
1/30 of a loaf.
In other problems the student was asked to calculate the relative
values of gold, silver and lead, or how much bread was needed
to force-feed a certain number of geese for a certain period. There
are even problems about the volume of a truncated pyramid. Over-
all, the impression conveyed by the Rhind Papyrus is of the utter
practicality of Egyptian mathematics. It served the purpose well,
even though, lacking a foundation in number theory, it contributed
little to modern mathematics.
THE EGYPTIAN CALENDAR

The Egyptian calendar differed slightly from ours. There were
only three seasons: inundation ( , akhet), the period when the
Nile overflowed its banks and covered the farms with water, last-
ing approximately from June 21 to October 21; emergence ( ,
peret), the time when the water receded, from October 21 to Febru-
ary 21; and summer ( , shemu), which lasted from February
21 to June 21. Each of these seasons consisted of four months of
thirty days each, so there were 360 days in the standard year. With
a 360-day calendar, however, periodic natural phenomena would
have occurred five days earlier each year until the season called
inundation would arrive when the land was dry. To correct the dis-
crepancy, Egyptians added five days at the beginning of every year,
and, in effect, devised the modern 365-day calendar.
New Year’s day, which was called “the opening of the year,” began
not with an arbitrary date like our January 1 but with an event—the
annual rise of the Nile—which occurred in roughly 365-day inter-
vals. This took place around our June 20 and coincided with the
first time the bright star Sirius appeared on the horizon at just
before sunrise. These two natural events marked the beginning of
the Egyptian year.
Ancient Egyptians also invented the twenty-four-hour day by
dividing the night into twelve hours and the day into twelve more.
Because the duration of daylight changes with the seasons, how-
ever, the hours of the day and night were of unequal and variable
length, a complication later corrected by the Greeks. The Babylo-
nians, who used a base 60 mathematics, performed more ancient
astronomical calculations than anyone else, so the Greeks chose
60 minutes as the hour divisions. Thus, our modern timekeeping
is based on an Egyptian invention, which was standardized by the

Greeks using a Babylonian mathematical system.
Living under a sky unobscured with industrial smoke or bright
city lights, ancient Egyptians became keen stargazers, using the
movements of the stars for their nighttime clock. They learned that
the hour of the night could be determined by observing where each
of their thirty-six major constellations appeared in the sky at that
time. If an ancient Egyptian priest wanted to determine the end
of the last hour of the night and a particular star appeared on the
horizon just before dawn, he might try to use this star to fix the end
of the twelfth hour of the night. But, because of the annual east-
ward motion of the sun, this star would rise earlier each day until
it no longer served as a usable indicator of the end of night. Priests
learned to select a larger object, the constellation next to this star
instead and use that as the indicator of the end of the last hour of
the night.
Despite Egyptians’ keen observations of the night sky, their
records contain no predictions of lunar or solar eclipses. They used
their astronomy for practical purposes and saw no reason to involve
themselves in abstract theories.
NOTES
1. M. A. Ruffer, “Note on the Presence of ‘Bilharzia haematobia’ in Egyp-
tian Mummies of the XXth Dynasty,” British Medical Journal 1 (1910): 16.
2. R. C. Nutley et al. “Palaeoepidemiology of Schistosoma Infection in
Mummies,” British Medical Journal 304 (1992): 355 –56.
3. Marc Armand Ruffer, “Arterial Lesions in Egyptian Mummies,” in
Studies in the Paleopathology of Egypt, Ray L. Moodie, ed. (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1921), 20 – 31.
4. James Henry Breasted, The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1930), 165 – 66.
5. Ibid., 220.
6. Ibid., 447.
7. Robert O. Steuer and J. B. de C. M. Saunders, Ancient Egyptian &
Cnidian Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 4.
8. Andrew Gordon, “Origins of Ancient Egyptian Medicine,” KMT
(Summer 1990): 29.
9. Kent Weeks, The Anatomical Knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians and
the Representation of the Human Figure in Egyptian Art (Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University Microfilms International, 1970), 75; James H. Walker, Studies in
Ancient Egyptian Anatomical Terminology (Warminster, England: Aris and
Phillips, 1996).
10. Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, eds. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Part XI (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1915), 221.
11. J. Grafton Milne, “The Sanatorium of Dier-el-Bahri,” Journal of Egyp-
tian Archaeology 2, Part 1 (1914), 96 –98.
12. Paul Ghalioungui, Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt (Amster-
dam: B. M. Israel, 1973), 143.
13. J. Worth Estes, The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt (Canton, Mass.:
Science History Publications, 1993), 66 – 68.
14. Ibid.; p. 69.
15. Herodotus, Histories, book II, A. de Selinecourt, trans. (New York:
Penguin, 1954), 86.
16. Serge Sauneron, Un Traité Égyptien d’Ophiologie (Cairo: L’Institut
Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1989).
17. Paul Ghalioungui, et al. “On an Ancient Egyptian Method of Diag-
nosing Pregnancy and Detecting Foetal Sex,” Medical History 7 (1963),
241– 46.
GLOSSARY
adobe—Mud, shaped into bricks and dried in the sun, used a material for
buildings.
Amarna Period—The reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, called the Amarna
Period after the modern name of the area where his capital was located—
Tel el Amarna.
amulet—A small object worn or carried for magical protection, often in
the form of a god.
anthropoid—Greek for “human shaped.” Coffins in the shape of a person
are called anthropoid coffins.
ba—The personality or soul of an individual, usually represented as a
human-headed bird.
Book of the Dead—A collection of magical spells written on papyrus
intended to help the deceased resurrect in the next world.
canopic jars—Four jars used to store the mummified internal organs of
the deceased.
capital—Architectural term for the carved top of a column.
cartouche—An oval circling the name of a royal person.
cataract—Boulders in a river that makes passage by boat difficult.
cenotaph—A burial or tomb that never contained a body but was con-
structed for ritual or religious purposes.
294 Glossary
delta—The triangular fertile area of land north of Cairo where the Nile
spreads wide before reaching the Mediterranean Sea.
demotic—A cursive form of writing the ancient Egyptian language used
towards the end of Egyptian civilization. From the Greek word demos
meaning “people” because it was generally used for secular matters.
dynasty—A method for categorizing a number of successive pharaohs
together, supposedly by family descent, although not always accurately.
Ennead—A group of nine gods central to Egyptian mythology: Atun, Geb
(earth), Nut (sky), Shu (air), Tefnut (moisture), Isis, Osiris, Set and Nepthys.
faience—A ceramic paste that when fired in a kiln hardens and glazes
itself and resembles modern porcelain. It was often used to make small
amulets, drinking vessels and ushabti figures. (See ushabti.)
gesso—A plastering material made from powdered limestone and water
used to produce a smooth coating on a wall or other object.
hieratic—An abbreviated form of hieroglyphic writing.
Hittite—A kingdom centered in northern Turkey which was the great
rival of Rameses the Great.
Holy of Holies—The most sacred part of an Egyptian temple, usually con-
sisting of one or more small dark rooms where sacred material and the
temple idol(s) resided.
hypostyle hall—A grand room in a temple with massive columns sup-
porting a high ceiling.
inundation—The season when the Nile overflowed its banks and water
covered the fields. In ancient times this took place in July–August.
ka—The spiritual double of a person. One of several aspects that each
individual was composed of (see ba).
mastaba—From the Arabic for “bench.” These rectangular chapels, mainly
for the nobility, were built over Old Kingdom burials.
Memphis—The capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, located near
modern Cairo.
Middle Kingdom—The period consisting of Dynasties 11 and 12 (2040–
1782 b.c.).
mortuary temple—A temple where daily offerings could be made to a
deceased person.
mummy—A dead body dried of its moisture to preserve it.
natron—A naturally occurring compound of chemicals used to dehy-
drate the body during the mummification process. Composed primarily
of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride—basically
baking soda and table salt.
New Kingdom—The period consisting of Dynasties 18 –20 (1570 –1070 b.c.).
Glossary 295
Nilometer—Device used to measure the height of the Nile when it rose.

Usually carved on a boulder at the river bank, sometimes Nilometers were
stone pillars inside a building on shore.
nome—Ancient Egypt’s equivalent of the states of the United States of
America. For administrative purposes, Egypt was divided into 22 nomes
for Upper Egypt and 22 nomes for Lower Egypt.
Nubia—The foreign territory south of the city of Aswan from which Egypt
got much of its gold. Today it is modern Sudan.
obelisk—A tall pillar with squared sides, usually of granite, with a small
pyramid (pyramidion) on top. Almost always, obelisks were erected in
pairs at the entrances of temples.
Old Kingdom—The period consisting of Dynasties 3 – 6 (2686 –2181 b.c.).
ostracon—A broken piece of pottery, often used in ancient Egypt in place
of scrap paper to write notes, drawings or lists on.
papyrus—A tall species of reed. Also the name given to writing material
made by pounding papyrus flat and gluing it together to form pages.
pectoral—A necklace in the form of a broad collar that covered the upper
chest.
polytheism—Any religion that worships more than one god.
Predynastic—The earliest period of Egyptian history.
pylon—Two large towers forming a gateway in front of a temple, usually
carved with scenes of the pharaoh in battle.
sarcophagus—A stone rectangular box that held the wood coffin contain-
ing the mummy.
scarab—A beetle that the Egyptians believed gave birth to its young with-
out mating and thus was associated with creation. Small stone scarabs
were often carved and worn as amulets.
sistrum—A rattle-like musical instrument used primarily in religious ritu-
als by priestesses of the goddess Hathor.
sphinx—A mythical creature composed of a human head on a lion’s
body.
stella—A round-topped stone carved with an inscription to commemo-
rate an event.
Thebes—The name the Greeks gave to the ancient Egyptian city of Waset,
the religious capital of ancient Egypt during the Middle and New King-
doms. It is called Luxor today.
ushabti—Small statues placed in the tomb that were intended to answer
for the deceased if he were called upon to do any work in the next word.
From the ancient Egyptian word usheb, which means “answer.”
wadi—A dried river bed.
ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aldred, Cyril. Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs 3100–320 b.c. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980). A broad, accurate and intel-
ligent survey of all forms of Egyptian art.
———. Jewels of the Pharaohs. (New York: Praeger, 1971). The standard
work on royal jewelry, including Tutankhamen’s.
Allam, Schafik. Some Pages from . . . Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt. (Cairo:
Prism Books, 1985). A quirky book that nevertheless contains spe-
cific information on marriage contracts.
Archaeology Magazine. (36 – 36 33rd St., Long Island City, NY 11106). This
magazine covers the whole ancient world but almost every issue
includes at least one article on ancient Egypt.
Arnold, Dieter. Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991). The definitive book on how Egyp-
tians quarried and worked with stone.
Badawy, Alexander. A History of Egyptian Architecture. Vols. 1–3. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1966–1968). The most detailed
account of Egyptian architecture with many examples.
Baer, Kurt. “The Low Price of Land in Ancient Egypt.” Journal of the Ameri-
can Research Center in Egypt 1 (1912): 25– 45. Explains the technical
aspects of ownership in ancient Egypt.
Benson, D. S. Ancient Egypt’s Warfare. (Ashland, Ohio: Bookmasters, 1995).
Contains accounts of major Egyptian battles along with descriptions
from the Egyptian records.
298 Annotated Bibliography
Betro, Maria Carmela. Hieroglyphics: The Writings of Ancient Egypt. (New

York: Abbeville Press, 1995). Descriptions of all the hieroglyphs
with good illustrations.
Bradbury, Louise. “Following Thutmose I on his Campaign to Kush.” KMT
(Fall 1992): 55–77. A detailed presentation of one ancient military
campaign.
Breasted, James Henry. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1930). Provides good information about
clinical medicine.
Brier, Bob. Ancient Egyptian Magic. (New York: William Morrow, 1982).
How the Egyptians practiced magic, including many spells.
———. Egyptian Mummies. (New York: William Morrow, 1994). The details
of Egyptian mummification.
———. The Murder of Tutankhamen. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998).
Presents the life and possibly violent death of the famous young
king.
Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. (New York: Dover, 1967).
A translation of a complete Book of the Dead along with the actual
hieroglyphs.
———. Egyptian Magic. (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1899). An older
book containing examples of magic spells seldom presented else-
where.
———. The Gods of the Egyptians. 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1904). This
reprint of an old book is dated but encyclopedic.
———. The Mummy. (New York: Causeway Books, 1974). A reprint of an
old book that remains useful for its details of the funerary customs
of ancient Egypt.
Cerny, J. “Consanguineous Marriages in Pharaonic Egypt.” Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 40 (1954): 23–29. Discusses all known cases of
nonroyal brother-sister marriages.
Clarke, Somers, and R. Englebach. Ancient Egyptian Construction and
Architecture. (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Books, 1990). (Reprint of Oxford
University Press, 1930). Some good information about building in
Egypt, though superseded in some cases by more recent books.
Clayton, Peter A. Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the
Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. (London: Thames and Hud-
son, 1994). A superior reference for all the kings and queens and
their dates.
Darby, William J., Paul Ghalioungui, and Louis Crevetti. Food: The Gift of
Osiris. 2 vols. (New York: Academic Press, 1977). Encyclopedic treat-
ment of food in ancient Egypt.
Davies, Norman DeGaris, and Alan H. Gardiner, eds. The Theban Tomb
Series. Vol. 1. (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1915). Abundant
pictures of tomb scenes.
Davies, W. V. Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum: VII

Tools and Weapons. (London: British Museum Press, 1987). Presents
clear examples of ancient Egyptian weapons.
De Cenival, Jean-Louis. Living Architecture: Egyptian. (New York: Grosset
and Dunlap, 1964). A general discussion of Egyptian temples and
houses.
Desroches-Noblecourt, Christiane. Tutankhamen: Life and Death of a Pha-
raoh. (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). Fine pictures of the life and
times of Tutankhamen.
Erman, Adolf. Life in Ancient Egypt. (New York: Dover, 1971). This reprint
of a century-old book still provides useful information and contains
abundant illustrations.
Estes, J. Worth. The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt. (Canton, Mass.: Science
History Publications, 1993). A solid survey of Egyptian medical skills.
Faulkner, Raymond. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. (San Francisco: Chron-
icle Books, 1994). An excellent recent translation of The Book of the
Dead, with lovely color illustrations.
Fletcher, Joann. Chronicle of a Pharaoh: The Intimate Life of Amenhotep III.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). A well illustrated, readable
biography.
Foster, John L. Love Songs of the New Kingdom. (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1992). Beautiful translations of love poems including the
hieroglyphs in some cases.
Gardiner, Alan H. Egypt of the Pharaohs. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1961). Provides much material about the history of ancient
Egypt, with some idiosyncratic comments.
———, trans. Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Third series, vol. 1.
(London: British Museum Press, 1935). Presents the actual words of
ancient Egyptians.
———, trans. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramses II. (Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 1960). A complete presentation of how Rameses
wished the public to view his largest military campaign.
Ghalioungui, Paul. Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt. (Amster-
dam: B. M. Israel, 1973). A solid book on the connections between
magic and medicine in Egypt.
Ghalioungui, Paul, et al. “On an Ancient Egyptian Method of Diagnos-
ing Pregnancy and Detecting Foetal Sex.” Medical History 7 (1963):
241– 46. A modern experiment to assess the reliability of an ancient
Egyptian pregnancy test.
Gillings, Richard J. Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs. (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1972). The best survey of mathematics in ancient Egypt.
Gordon, Andrew. “Origins of Ancient Egyptian Medicine,” KMT (Sum-
mer 1990): 26 –29. Presents the view that Egyptians studied animals
to learn about human anatomy.
Grenfell, Bernard P., and Arthur S. Hunt, eds. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Part XI. (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1915). Presents a vari-
ety of magical spells.
Hackett, John. Warfare in the Ancient World. (New York: Facts on File, 1989).
Stirring accounts of ancient battles and the techniques used by both
sides.
Hayes, William C. The Scepter of Egypt. 2 vols. (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1959). Covers the extensive Egyptian collection of
New York’s Metropolitan Museum with abundant details of objects
of daily life.
Herodotus. Histories. A. de Selinecourt, trans. (New York: Penguin Books,
1954). Still interesting for tidbits and an ancient Greek view of the
ancient Egyptians.
Houston, Mary G., and Florence S. Hornblower. Ancient Egyptian, Assyr-
ian and Persian Costumes. (London: A. & C. Black, 1920). Although
dated, this work shows how clothing was made and worn in ancient
Egypt.
Ikram, Salima. Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt. (London: Longmans,
2003). An excellent survey of the ancient Egyptian view of resurrec-
tion and mummification.
———. “Food for Eternity: What the Ancient Egyptians Ate and Drank.”
KMT 5 (Summer 1994). A good summary of the Egyptian diet.
Jenkins, Nancy. The Boat Beneath the Pyramid. (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1980). A readable account of the only complete pharonic
boat ever found.
Kemp, Barry J., and Salvadore Garfi. A Survey of the Ancient City of El-
Amarna. (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1993). The detailed
and up-to-date presentation of what Akhenaten’s city must have
looked like.
Killen, Geoffrey. Ancient Egyptian Furniture. Vol. 2 Boxes, Chests and Foot-
stools. (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1994). A scholarly
study on furniture with clear drawings that show the construction.
Kitchen, K. A. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Rameses II. (Warm-
inster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1982). An authoritative account of
the life of Rameses the Great.
KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt. P.O. box 1475, Sevastapol, CA
95473. Devoted entirely to ancient Egypt with readable articles in
every issue. Illustrated in full color.
Landstrom, Bjorn. Ships of the Pharaohs: 4000 years of Egyptian Shipbuilding.
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1970). Through excep-
tional illustrations and drawings, ancient Egyptian ships are ana-
lysed and explained.
Lehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. (London: Thames and Hudson,
1997). A comprehensive survey of all the pyramids with fine photo-
graphs and computer-generated diagrams.
Lesko, Leonard H. King Tut’s Wine Cellar. (Berkeley, Calif.: B. C. Scribe Pub-
lications, 1977). A comprehensive discussion of the largest ancient
wine cellar ever found.
Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1972–1980). The best collection of ancient
Egyptian stories, prayers and records.
Littauer, M. A., and J. H. Crouwel. Chariots and Related Equipment from the
Tomb of Tutankhamen. (Oxford, England: Griffith Institute, 1985).
A thorough description of the most complete chariot ever found.
Lucas, A., and J. R. Harris. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries. (Lon-
don: Histories and Mysteries of Man, 1989). Detailed and technical
discussions of how Egyptians made things.
McLeod, W. M. Self Bows and Other Archery Tackle from the Tomb of Tutankha-
men. (Oxford, England: Griffith Institute, 1982). Descriptions of Tut-
ankhamen’s bows and arrows.
Michelowski, Kazimierz. Art of Ancient Egypt. (New York: Abrams, n.d.)
A survey of the best in Egyptian art with glorious photographs.
Milne, J. Grafton. “The Sanatorium of Dier-el-Bahri.” Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 2, part 1 (1914): 96 –98. Lends an insight into ancient
“miracle” cures.
Montet, Pierre. Everyday Life in Egypt During the Days of Ramesses the Great.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). A survey of
everyday life during one of the great periods of ancient Egypt.
Moodie, Ray L., ed. Studies in the Paleopathology of Egypt. (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1921). A technical discussion of disease in
ancient Egypt, based on autopsies of mummies.
Numm, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. (London: British Museum Press,
1996). The latest and best book on medical practice in ancient Egypt.
Nutley, R. C., et al. “Palaeoepidemiology of Schistosoma Infection in
Mummies.” British Medical Journal 304 (1992): 355 –56. All that the
title promises.
Partridge, Robert. Transport in Ancient Egypt. (London: Rubicon Press,
1987). How the Egyptians moved objects, on both land and water.
Petrie, Flinders. Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt. (London: T. N. Foulis,
1909). A legendary early Egyptologist describes finds that relate to
Egyptian crafts.
Piankoff, Alexandre. The Pyramid of Unis. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1968). A thorough discussion of the oldest Egyptian
religious writing.
Quirke, Stephen, and Jeffrey Spenser, eds. The British Museum Book of
Ancient Egypt. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992). A solid, quick
reference book.
Remler, Pat. Egyptian Mythology A to Z. (New York: Facts on File, 2007).
Written for young adults, this book lists all the gods of Egypt and
describes them in detail. Good illustrations.
Robins, Gay, and Charles Shute. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. (Lon-
don: British Museum Press, 1987). A detailed discussion of the most
important Egyptian mathematical work ever found.
Romer, John. The Great Pyramid. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007). The most detailed discussion of this building, including some
new theories. Illustrated.
Ruffer, Marc Armand. “Note on the Presence of ‘Bilharzia haemotobia’ in
Egyptian Mummies of the XXth Dynasty.” British Medical Journal 1
(1910): 16. Shows that one medical problem was more common in
ancient times than it is today.
Sameh, Waley-el-dine. Daily Life in Ancient Egypt. (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1964). Some informative illustrations.
Sandars, N. K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean. (Lon-
don: Thames and Hudson, 1978). A discussion of these enigmatic
people with an attempt to discover who they were.
Sauneron, Serge. Un Traité Égyptien d’Ophiologie. (Cairo: L’Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale, 1989). Translation of the Egyptian treat-
ment of snake bites.
Scheel, Bernd. Egyptian Metalworking and Tools. (Aylesbury, England: Shire
Publications, 1989). A concise, illustrated discussion of metallurgy
in ancient Egypt.
Simpson, William Kelly. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972). A fine collection of short stories,
myths and religious texts of ancient Egypt.
Smith, W. Stevenson. Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt. (New York: Pen-
guin Books, 1958). A basic but extensive survey of all Egyptian arts.
Steuer, Robert O., and J. B. de C. M. Saunders. Ancient Egyptian & Cnidian
Medicine. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959). A techni-
cal work on the Egyptian theory of disease.
Stocks, Denys A. Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking tech-
nology in Ancient Egypt. (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
Discovers how ancient Egyptians worked stone through actual
experiments.
Trigger, B. G., B. J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A. B. Lloyd. Ancient Egypt:
A Social History. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Technical essays by authorities on various aspects of Egyptian
society.
Tydesley, Joyce. Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt. (London: Pen-
guin Books, 1995). An excellent account of the situation of women
in ancient Egypt.
———. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh. (New York: Viking, 1996). A good,
scholarly biography of the queen who became pharaoh.
———. Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen. (New York: Viking, 1999). Written
by an Egyptologist, this is a scholarly but readable biography of a
famous queen.
Walker, James H. Studies in Ancient Egyptian Anatomical Terminology.

(Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1996). The hieroglyphs
used by ancient Egyptians for various parts of the human body.
Watson, Philip J. Costume of Ancient Egypt. (New York: Chelsea House,
1987). Some good illustrations of clothing.
Weeks, Kent. The Anatomical Knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians and the Rep-
resentation of the Human Figure in Egyptian Art. (Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University Microfilms, 1970). A very technical discussion of the
understanding of anatomy in ancient Egypt as shown by the words
and drawings of the Egyptians themselves.
Westendorf, Wolfhart. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of Ancient Egypt.
(New York: Abrams, 1968). A chronological survey of Egyptian art
with fine pictures of the masterpieces.
Wilkinson, J. Gardner. The Ancient Egyptians, Their Life and Customs. (New
York: Crescent Books, 1988 [1854]). This reprint of the first book on
the everyday life of ancient Egyptians still contains the most exten-
sive illustrations from tomb paintings.
Wilkinson, Richard H. Readings in Egyptian Art. (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1992). A clear introduction to hieroglyphs and how they
were used in Egyptian art.
Winlock, H. E. Models of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: From the Tomb of Meket-
Re at Thebes. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955). Clear
pictures of ancient models that show what the real things must have
been like.
Woldering, Imgard. The Art of Egypt. (New York: Greystone Press, 1963).
A basic illustrated history of Egyptian art.
Yadin, Yigal. The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. 2 vols. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1963). Abundant pictures and descriptions of wars in
the ancient world, involving both Egypt and other countries.
EGYPTOLOGY WEB SITES

Thousands of Web sites deal with ancient Egypt, some good,
some not so good. Below are some of the best, but by following
links you will have access to hundreds of others.
http://www.aeraweb.org/ Mark Lehner presents the latest findings of his
excavations at the workmen’s village below the Giza Plateau.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/default.aspx The British Museum in
London has one of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian objects
in the world. Many of its most important artifacts are on-line with
informative descriptions.
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org Images of much of the superior Brooklyn
Museum collection.
http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/ Great photographs of ancient objects
and buildings.
http://www.egyptology.com Provides links to most of the better Web sites

along with topical articles.
http://www.egyptologyblog.co.uk Provides the latest news on digs and
theories.
http://www.gizabuildingproject.com This is a site for pyramid enthusiasts
with lots of images not seen elsewhere.
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/saqqara/homepage The University of Leiden
has excavated at Saqqara for more than a quarter of a century. The
site provides up-to-date information, especially the New Kingdom
tombs. Wonderful pictures of the Old Kingdom and later tombs at
the Saqqara cemetery.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/index.shtml This
Minnesota State University Web site offers extensive information
on topics about daily life in ancient Egypt.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi/ The University of Chicago’s
Oriental Institute and been working at Luxor for more than 75 years
and has accumulated a vast archive of images and records. This is a
wonderful source for details on excavations.
http://www.osirisnet.net/e_centra.htm Pictures and a good discussion of
most of the tombs of nobles at Thebes.
http://www.oxfordexpeditiontoegypt.com/ Click on “Database.” Oxford
University’s site displays the latest finds of their expeditions.
http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk The Petrie Museum at University College
London has a unique collection of daily life objects, many of which
are pictured on-line.
http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/ Web site for the Theban Map-
ping Project. Dr. Kent Weeks has spent 25 years mapping the Valley
of the Kings and this site provides descriptions and short films of
all the tombs.
INDEX
Abu Simbel, 29, 172, 187 Ankesenamen (queen), 25 – 27

Abusir, 11 Ankesenpaaten. See Ankesenamen
Abydos, 14, 28 Antony, Marc, 33
Adobe, 155, 157– 59, 177 Anubis (god), 37, 40, 54, 57
Ahmose (pharaoh), 18 –19, 257 Apprentice, 94 – 95
Akhenaten (pharaoh), 24 – 26, Archery, 263. See also bows
60 – 62, 160 – 63, 171, 172 – 74, Architecture, 155 – 80, 197– 201. See
187– 88, 199 also fortresses; houses; offices;
Alexander the Great, 33, 71, 268 palaces; temples; tombs
Alexandria, 33 Aristotle, 281
Alimentation, 79 Armageddon. See Megiddo
Amarna, Tel el, 24, 60 – 62 Armies, 247– 48, 257, 259 – 66. See
Amasis (pharaoh), 32 also military campaigns
Amenemhats (pharaohs), 15 –16, 68 Armor, 251
Amenhotep I (pharaoh), 19, 260 Arms, 249 – 56. See also battle
Amenhotep II (pharaoh), 23 axes; bows; chariots; javelins;
Amenhotep III (pharaoh), 24, 60, shields; slings; spears; swords
160, 163 – 64, 170, 187 Art, 16 –17, 21, 180 – 201; canon,
Amenhotep IV (pharaoh). See 182, 194, 196. See also literature;
Akhenaten painting; sculpture
Amulets, 51, 55, 58 – 60 Arteriosclerosis, 272 – 73
Amun, 16, 19, 23, 25, 28, 36, 37, 40, Arts and crafts, 181– 211; carpentry,
60, 75, 169, 170, 236 203 – 5; ceramics, 201– 3; glass,
Anatomy, 278, 279 – 80 202 – 3; stone vessels, 231– 33
306 Index
Assyria, 31, 160, 266 – 67 Chattel. See classes

Aswan, 2, 230, 241 Cheops (pharaoh). See Khufu
Aten (god), 24, 37, 60 – 62, 171, Chephren (pharaoh). See Khafra
172 – 74 Childbirth, 34
Athenaeus, 120 Children: critically ill, 280;
Avaris, 18 –19, 254, 257 depiction of, 145; hair of, 145;
Ay (pharaoh), 26 – 27, 70 royal, 77
Circumcision, 76, 276
Ba, 51 City, 157
Babylon, 32, 289 Civilization, 3
Banquets, 123 – 24 Classes, 77; chattel, 80 – 81, 84,
Barter, 83 – 84 193 – 94; free people, 78 – 79, 180;
Bathrooms, 156 royalty, 78
Battle axes, 252, 254 Cleopatra (pharaoh), 33
Beards, 21, 146 – 47, 184 Clothes, 127– 41; material for,
Bed, 204 128 – 32; men’s, 132 – 34;
Beer, 110 –12, 288 women’s, 134 – 40
Bees, 122, 236 Coffin Texts, 43
Benben, 172 Colossi of Memnon, 24, 187
Bes (god), 36, 37, 40, 142 Combs, 152
Bible, 67, 283 Composite bow. See bows
Book of the Dead, 47– 49 Copper, 186, 203, 215, 228 – 29,
Bows, 104, 231– 33, 249 – 50, 233 – 35
253 – 54 Corbelled arch, 225
Bracelets, 143 Cosmetics, 2, 151– 52
Brains, 52 – 53, 275 Cotton, 128
Bread, 110 –11, 288 Craftsmen, 94 – 95
Bronze, 189 – 90, 228 Crocodiles, 210 –11, 273
Brothels, 92 Crowns, 2 – 3, 148 – 51, 184
Bulls, 37, 100, 140 Cubit, 288
Businesspeople, 95 – 96 Cult statues, 38 – 42
Caesar, Julius, 30 Dance, 100 –102, 124

Calendar, 85, 289 – 90 Darius III, 33
Cambyses, 32 Deben, 84
Canopic jars, 53 – 54 Dental problems, 272, 283
Capitals, 167– 68, 171, 197– 99 Dessert, 122
Carpentry. See arts and crafts Diadems, 147– 48
Carter, Howard, 255 Diseases, 124, 271– 73
Cartouche, 68 Divorce, 79 – 80
Cats, 86, 100 Djed pillar, 201
Cattle, 97– 98, 109 –10, 118 Djoser (pharaoh). See Zoser
Cavetto cornice, 200 – 201 Doctors, 280
Ceramics. See arts and crafts Dogs, 100
Chariots, 18, 253, 256, 262 – 64 Doors, 158 – 59
Index 307
Dreams, 43 Glass. See arts and crafts

Dynasty: definition, 5, 70; Dynasty Goats, 97, 110, 121
III, 4, 184, 204; Dynasty IV, 6 –11, Gold, 55, 195
71, 185, 190; Dynasty V, 13 –12, Government, 65 – 78; civil, 72 – 74;
185, 190, 203; Dynasty VI, 12, religious, 74 – 76; royal court,
185, 203; Dynasties VIII-X, 76 – 77
13 –14; Dynasties XI-XII, 14 –17; Grain, 110, 112, 156, 284 – 85
Dynasties XIII-XVII, 17–19; Granite, 215, 216, 241
Dynasty XVIII, 19 – 28, 60, 164, Greece, 18, 32, 117, 120, 138, 187,
192 – 93, 196, 204, 256; Dynasty 193, 197, 265, 281– 82, 289
XIX, 28 – 29, 179, 196; Dynasty
XX, 29 – 30, 164, 168 – 69; Hair and headdresses, 144 – 50
Dynasties XXI-XXXI, 31– 33; Harems, 77, 162 – 63
Ptolemaic Dynasty, 33, 170 Hathor (god), 37, 40, 101
Hats, 148 – 51
Earrings, 141– 42 Hatshepsut (pharaoh), 21– 22, 71,
Ebony, 204 – 5 189, 242, 280
Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Headdresses. See hair and
274 – 78, 283 headdresses
Euphrates River, 19, 22 Hebrews, and pork, 120
Exodus, the, 73, 81 Herders, 97
Exorcism, 277 Hermaphrodite, 35
Herodotus, 1, 118, 124, 278, 283
Faience, 58 – 59, 141, 144, 202 Heyerdahl, Thor, 238
Farmers, 77, 86 – 90 Hieraconpolis, 2
Fayum, 17, 112 Hieroglyphs, 91– 93, 205 – 6
Fertility, 1 Hittites, 166, 262 – 65
First Intermediate Period, 12 –13 Hogging truss, 241
Fish, 113 –14 Holy days, 84 – 85
Flags, 171– 72 Holy-of-holies, 168
Flint, 229 – 30 Homer, 18
Flour, 110 Honey, 282
Food, 109 – 25 Horemheb (pharaoh), 27– 28, 170
Fortified temple, 29 Horses, 18, 215, 253, 256
Fortresses, 257– 59 Horus (god), 37, 40, 59,
Fowl, 100 –101, 114 66 – 67, 88, 201, 273 – 74,
Free people. See classes 281, 287
Fruit, 114 –15, 125 Houdin, Jean-Pierre, 221– 22
Furniture, 159 Hour, 86, 289
Houses, 156 – 60, 166
Games, 103 – 6 Huni (pharaoh), 5
Garden, 156 Hunting, 100, 121– 22
Gazelles, 16, 132 Hyksos, 18 –19, 30, 141, 253 – 54,
Gender roles, 80 256, 259; expulsion of, 18 –19
Giza, 6 –10, 175 – 77, 227 Hypostyle hall, 168, 170, 199
308 Index
Indo-Europeans, 18 Malachite, 2
Iron, 215 Malaria, 273
Irrigation, 86 Manetho, 5, 12
Isis (god), 37, 40, 41, 44, 57, 88, Marriage, 78 – 80
273, 281 Marshmen, 104
Israel, 18 –19, 29, 248 Mastaba, 174 – 75
Mathematics, 285 – 87. See also
Javelins, 250 – 51 numbers
Jerusalem, 32 Measurements, 288 – 89
Jewelry, 59 – 60, 141– 44 Meat, 118 – 22, 125, 157
Jews, 32, 85 Medicine, 271– 85; diagnoses,
274 – 75; treatment, 273 – 85.
Ka, 49 – 51, 57 See also anatomy; doctors;
Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, 282 obstetrics; pharmacists;
Kamose (pharaoh), 18 –19, 255 – 56 surgery
Karnak, religious complex at; Medinet Habu, 164, 165, 168 – 69
17, 22, 27, 75, 84, 170 – 72, Mediterranean, 2, 265
199 – 200, 256 Megiddo, 262
Kenbets, 74 Memphis, 4, 14, 160
Khafra (pharaoh), 8 – 9, 177 Menes (pharaoh). See Narmer
Kheker frieze, 200 – 201 Menkaura (pharaoh), 9 –10
Khufu (pharaoh), 6 – 8, 176 – 77, Merenptah (pharaoh), 29
217– 27, 239 – 40 Metal, 185, 233 – 36
Kilns, 233 – 34 Method of Doubling, 285 – 86
Kilts, 132 – 34 Middle Kingdom, 14 –17, 177,
Kitchen, 159, 164 185 – 86, 197, 209 –10, 236
Kush, 13, 17, 19, 31– 32, 165 – 66 Military campaigns, 22, 29,
259 – 66
Labyrinth, 17 Milk, 116
Language, 2 Miners, 96 – 97
Late Period, 28 – 30 Mirrors, 151
Leather, 132 Molds, 234 – 36
Lebanon, 171, 204, 243, 263 Money, 83
Leopards, 140 Monotheism, 25, 60 – 63
Life after death, 41– 47 Montu (god), 248
Linen, 128 – 31 Montuhotep I (pharaoh), 14 –15
Literature, 205 –11. See also art Montuhotep II (pharaoh), 15
London-Leiden Papyrus, 282 Montuhotep III (pharaoh), 15
Luxor, 168; Temple, 84, 199 Mortuary temples. See temples,
Lybia, 31 funerary
Mummification, 51– 58
Maat (god), 22, 37, 40, 48, 67 Music, 100 –103, 123 – 24
Maces, 183, 248 – 49, 251 Muwatallis, 263 – 64
Magic, 11–12, 209, 276, 277, Mythical creatures, depiction
280 – 82 of, 195
Index 309
Names, 2, 61– 62 Pharaohs, 65 – 71, 206; attire of, 21,

Napoleon, 22 140, 146 – 47; court of, 69 – 70;
Narmer (pharaoh), 2 – 3, 67, female, 21– 22, 64; harems of,
69 – 70, 256; caption, 248; 77; as high priests, 41, 74 – 75;
palette, 2, 3 names of, 2, 67– 68; palaces
Natron, 53 of, 160 – 65; pretenders, 13;
Nebuchadrezzar, 32 resurrection of, 3; succession of,
Nefertiti (queen), 24 – 25, 162, 187 70 – 71, 78. See also dynasties
Neko II (pharaoh), 29 Pharmacists, 282 – 83
New Kingdom, 19 – 31, 78, 109, Pigs, 118 – 21
129, 149, 165 – 66, 179, 186 – 89, Play, 99 –107. See also games;
191– 92, 196, 199, 203, 204, 208 music; recreation; toys
Nile, 1– 2, 114, 213, 236, 248, Plywood, 203
260 – 61, 266, 280; as a god, Poetry, 210 –11
33 – 34 Polytheism, 35 – 38
Nilometers, 73 Portico, 156, 158
Nitokerti (queen), 12 Predynastic, 203
Nomarchs, 73 – 74 Pretenders, 13
Nubia, 247, 260 – 61 Priests, 41– 43, 75 – 76, 168, 171,
Numbers, 286 – 87 173, 273
Ptah (god), 37, 40, 87, 227
Obelisk, 12, 22, 31, 172, 187, Ptahotep, 207
230 – 31, 242 – 44 Ptolemaic Dynasty, 33, 171
Obstetrics, 284 – 85 Punt, 22, 27, 152, 205, 241, 243
Offices, 165 Purges, 278, 284
Old Kingdom, 6 –13, 201, 207, 274 Pylons, 168, 170 – 72, 199 – 200
Opening of the mouth ceremony, Pyramids, 6 –11, 16; the Bent,
56 – 57 6, 176; construction of, 9 –10,
Opet, 84 161– 64, 216 – 27; the Great, 6 – 8,
Orientation of buildings, 217 176 – 78, 216 – 27; the Stepped, 4,
Osiris (god), 37, 40, 44, 44 – 45, 48, 161, 175 – 78, 197, 199 – 200; true,
55, 59, 88, 273, 287 5 – 9, 175
Ovens, 111, 159 Pyramid Texts, 12, 32, 45 – 47
Painting, 179 – 80, 190 – 96; Qadesh, 262 – 65

brushes, 196. See also art Quarrying, 227– 30
Palaces, 160 – 65 Quarrymen. See miners
Palestine, 19, 29, 31– 32, 265
Papyrus, 97– 99, 114, 237– 38 Ra (god), 11, 37, 55, 65 – 68, 85, 88
Papyrus Ebers, 280 Rameses I (pharaoh), 28, 70, 170
Papyrus Sallier, 254 – 55 Rameses II, the Great (pharaoh),
Pepi I (pharaoh), 12, 185 28 – 29, 56, 168, 170, 262 – 65
Pepi II (pharaoh), 12, 185 Rameses III (pharaoh), 29 – 30,
Perfume, 151– 52 164 – 65, 168 – 69, 188, 265 – 66
Persia, 32 – 33, 266, 267, 268 Ramp, 219 – 22
310 Index
Razors and tweezers, 152 Shishak (pharaoh). See Sheshonk

Recreation, 99 –103 Sieges, 258 – 59
Red Sea, 2 Silver, 84
Reeds, 237– 38 Sinai Peninsula, 2, 248
Religion, 35 – 62; life after death, Slaves, 80 – 81; cost of, 84
38, 43 – 51; organization of, Slings, 250
74 – 76; practice of, 38 – 43 Smenkare (pharaoh), 163
Resurrection, 3, 42 Snake Bite Papyrus, 283 – 84
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Sneferu (pharaoh), 6, 175 – 76
288 – 89 Sobekneferu (pharaoh), 16
Rings, 143 – 44 Society, 59 – 73. See also classes
Rome, 33, 202, 268 Soil, 1
Royal court, 76 – 77 Soul, concept of, 45 – 47
Royal monopolies, 95, 97 Spears, 251, 254
Sphinx, 168, 182; origin of, 9, 177;
Sahara Desert, 1– 2, 155 and Tuthmosis IV, 23
Sandals, 140 – 41 Spices, 115, 125
Saqqara, 191 Spinning, 129
Sarcophagus, 179 Statues, cult, 36 – 40, 46 – 47
Saw, 230 Stele, 163
Scarabs, 59, 144, 201 Sudan, 16
Schistosomiasis, 271– 72 Suez Canal, 29
Schools, 91– 93 Sun, depiction of, 33 – 34
Science, 271 Sun temples, 10 –11
Scribes, 43; and Books of the Dead, Surgery, 276
44; and taxes, 73 Swords, 249
Sculpture, 182 – 90. See also art Syria, 117, 247, 262 – 63
Sea People, 265 – 66
Seasons, 84, 289 Table, 204
Second Intermediate Period, 17–18 Tanis, 30
Sekhmet (god), 37, 40, 65 – 66, 85, Tauret (god), 36
88, 273, 277 Taxes, 73, 89
Semna, 165 – 66 Tchety. See vizier
Senuserts (pharaohs), 15 –16, Technology, 213 – 44
209 –10 Tel el Amarna, 23
Seqenenre Tao II, 254 – 55 Temples, 7, 28, 38, 155, 166,
Serfs, 72 – 73 167– 74, 280; architecture of,
Seth (god), 37, 40, 41, 44, 59, 87, 167– 68, 171– 74; fortified, 27;
119 – 20, 273, 287 funerary, 8 – 9, 22, 24, 46, 177;
Seti I (pharaoh), 28 and religious practice, 36 – 40;
Shadoof, 86, 90 sun temples, 11–12, 23 – 24, 172;
Sheep, 86, 97, 120, 121 wall scenes of, 21, 171, 248. See
Sheshonk (pharaoh), 31 also Abu Simbel; Karnak; Luxor
Shields, 251– 52, 265 Thebes, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23, 26,
Ships, 236 – 42, 265 – 66 60, 160, 163
Index 311
Titles of pharaohs, 67– 68 Valley of the Kings, 19 – 20, 177– 80

Tiye (queen), 24 Vegetables, 114, 125
Tombs, 4 –12, 155, 174 – 80; Vizier, 72, 75
architecture of, 174 – 80; and
temples, 14 –16. See also Valley Wadi el Malook. See Valley of the
of the Kings Kings
Torus molding, 200 Warfare, 73, 247– 68. See also arms;
Toth (god), 37, 48, 59, military campaigns; fortresses
273 – 74, 287 Waset. See Thebes
Toys, 106 – 7 Wax, 235 – 36
Treasury, 73 Weaving, 129 – 31
Trojan War, 18 Wigs, 76, 145 – 47
Tuberculosis, 272 Windows, 156, 159, 163
Tutankhamen (pharaoh), 20, Wine, 112, 116 –18
26 – 28, 31, 68, 70, 117, 131, Women, 207: attire of, 134 – 40;
147– 48, 152, 196 games of, 104 – 5; hair of,
Tuthmosis I (pharaoh), 19 – 20, 22, 144 – 45; status of, 79 – 80; work
260 – 61 of, 80. See also obstetrics
Tuthmosis II (pharaoh), 20, 22 Wool, 128, 131– 32
Tuthmosis III (pharaoh), 20 – 23, Work, 80, 83 – 99; of business
68, 170, 261– 62 people, 95 – 96; of craftsmen,
Tuthmosis IV (pharaoh), 94 – 95; of farmers, 77, 86 – 90;
23 – 24, 131 of herders, 97; of marsh men,
97– 98; of miners and quarrymen,
Udjat eye, 59, 88 96 – 97; of scribes, 90 – 91
Unas (pharaoh), 12; and Wrestling, 104
resurrection, 46 Writing, 205 –11
Usertsens (pharaohs). See
Senuserts Zoser (pharaoh), 4 – 5, 16,
Ushabtis, 179, 201– 2 175, 184, 202
About the Authors
BOB BRIER is Senior Research Fellow at the C. W. Post Campus of

Long Island University in Brookville, New York. Recognized as one
of the world’s foremost experts on mummies, he conducts pioneer-
ing research in mummification practices and has investigated some
of the world’s most famous mummies. He has studied pyramids
and tombs in 15 countries and has hosted award-winning televi-
sion specials for TLC. He is the author of over 100 articles and many
books, including The Murder of Tutankhamen (1998), The Encyclopedia
of Mummies (1997), Egyptian Mummies (1994), and Ancient Egyptian
Magic (1980).
HOYT HOBBS is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Depart-

ment at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in
Brookville, New York. He is author of Fielding’s Complete Guide to
Egypt and the Archaeological Sites (1983) and A Complete Guide to Egypt
and the Archaeological Sites (1981). His research interests include epis-
temology, logic, Egyptology and history.

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DAILY LIFE OF

The Vietnam War

The Greenwood Press “Daily Life through History” Series

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Ancient Egypt compiled a stunning list of accomplishments. Its

invented every method of joining wood known today. Medicine in

the chances that examples would survive. Several hundred rolls

of scientifically minded Egyptologists, sifting the sands, poking the

Old Kingdom (c. 2686 –2181 b.c.)

First Intermediate Period (2181–2041 b.c.)

Middle Kingdom (2040 –1782 b.c.) Resurrection of unified government;

Second Intermediate Period (1782–1570 b.c.) Hyksos control northern

New Kingdom (1570 –1070 b.c.) Conquest of Canaan, Lebanon and

Late Period (1069–332 b.c.)

Ptolemaic (332–30 b.c.)

When Herodotus, the world’s first historian, visited Egypt in the

2 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

By the dawn of the third millennium, a population of almost

for relatively brief periods of instability, the country remained a

The Narmer Palette, humanity’s oldest document of an event, depicts

4 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

Tradition credits Menes/Narmer with establishing Memphis as

series of pyramids, structural feats that became the signature of

THE NINE ERAS OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

6 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

OLD KINGDOM (2686–2181 b.c.)

Sneferu’s pyramid at Meidum is the first attempt at a pyramid with

to contain the cathedrals of Milan, Florence and Saint Peter’s in

PHARAOHS OF THE OLD KINGDOM

8 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

The world’s oldest boat, the “solar”

Great Pyramid. Since it stands on higher ground, Khafra’s pyramid

10 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

Some of the magical spells that cover

12 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

football-field-sized open courtyard brilliant in the sun. At one end,

FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (2181–2041 b.c.)

The bowman is ready. The wrongdoer is everywhere. There is no man

As the authority of the pharaoh weakened, government function-

14 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

MIDDLE KINGDOM (2040–1782 b.c.)

PHARAOHS OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

neglect. With central authority restored and a powerful pharaoh

16 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

Aerial view of remains of the unusual Middle Kingdom temple of Mon-

beginning a great new dynasty, whose kings alternated the names

and during his forty-four-year reign he began the subjugation of

SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (1782–1570 b.c.)

18 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

What serves this strength of mine, when a chieftain is in Avaris, and

Kamose describes Egypt as divided into at least two kingdoms,

NEW KINGDOM (1570–1070 b.c.)

20 Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians

PHARAOHS OF THE NEW KINGDOM

A statue of the female pharaoh Hat-