Red and black earth crossword. Red earth, Black earth. Ancient Egypt: Legends and Facts (Barbara Mertz). Nubia and the desert

The later population of the Giza plateau resembles the Taza type. Dr. Derry, one of the medical specialists in ancient Egypt, has argued that this type also resembles the ruling class of the Twenty-First Dynasty originating from Libya.

I don't want to go into a dispute about two different races that lived in Egypt. This dispute is inextricably linked to other issues, such as which "race" brought to Egypt its classical culture. Even if we agree that people of different physical types lived in Egypt, it is impossible to determine which of the two groups of the population has the exclusive right to attribute to itself the monumental architecture of Egypt, writing, complex social organization. An older physical type, the short, thin-boned Predynastic Egyptians, may be referred to as the swarthy "Mediterranean type" of the Abyssinians and Somalis. We can give them the conditional name "Hamites", although this word is more suitable for designating a group of languages than for describing peoples (anthropological terminology may well be revised - a lot of confusion has accumulated in it during the existence of anthropology). Perhaps later Egyptians can be classified as Semites, keeping in mind that the definition of "Semitic" primarily refers to linguistics. It is best, however, to simply note that among the Egyptians there were two different types, although for a modern person they might seem the same: brown skin, dark hair, dark eyes. No group of people has ever been "pure" unless they were in total isolation; if she aspired to "purity", it would mean ethnic suicide due to incest. Like all of us, the Egyptians were probably half-breeds. In the north they might have been Arabs or of Semitic blood; in the south, Nubian elements may have been strong.

Therefore, racial discrimination became absurd. Discrimination, of course, was, but not on the basis of skin color. Like the Greeks and many other peoples, the Egyptians called themselves "people." Other peoples were not human, but only barbarians. When Kush (Nubia) is mentioned in any text, he is always referred to as "wretched Kush". "Don't worry about the Asians," the prince of the Thirteenth Dynasty tells his son. - They are only Asians." Later, disdain for foreigners was replaced by bitter experience. Some of the "mere" Asiatics invaded and conquered Egypt; later they were replaced by the once quiet, "pathetic" Kush. Then came the turn of the Greeks, Persians and Romans. However, the conquests and occupations did not shake the Egyptians' belief in their own superiority. In this they were no worse or better than us; we still have a long way to go before we are able to understand that greatness does not belong to a nation, that only an individual can deserve it, and that all people are brothers in their weaknesses and frailty, as in many other things.

Red and Black Earth

Symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt

1. TWO COUNTRIES

The world in which our Egyptian baby appeared is rather narrow, especially in physical sense- The valley of the Nile is about six hundred miles long and only ten miles wide. In the time of the pharaohs, Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley and a triangular delta, where the river split into several branches that flow into the Mediterranean Sea. These two parts of Egypt differed in their physical geography, and therefore the Egyptians always divided their country into two distinct regions. Before the First Dynasty, when Egypt entered the historical stage as a single state with a single king, the Delta and the Valley appear to have been separate kingdoms. Since no written evidence of that era has come down to us, we can guess the existence of pre-dynastic kingdoms only from indirect sources, and this information is extremely fragmentary.

The kings of Egypt wore two crowns on their heads - literally. The "double crown" consisted of the crown of Upper Egypt and the crown of Lower Egypt. Other details point to the dual nature of this monarchy: two goddesses, Nekhbet in the south and Buto in the north, guarded the king; his title included the words "King of Upper and Lower Egypt" and "Lord of the Two Lands". We can go on, but this evidence is quite enough to state with certainty that there was once a political division between Upper and Lower Egypt along with the topographic one.

The Egyptians called their land "The Two Countries". The state was divided into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, which roughly corresponded to the Valley and the Delta (the Nile carried its waters from south to north, so that Upper Egypt on the modern map is lower than Lower Egypt). The expression "Middle Egypt" is sometimes found in books in relation to the region between Cyprus and Assiut, but such a division into three parts has only recently arisen. Apparently, the ancient Egyptians loved contrasts, they sharply separated Upper Egypt from Lower Egypt, and the Red Land from the Black Land.

The "Black Land" was Egypt proper, and anyone who has visited the Nile Valley will easily understand why the Egyptians chose this name, compared to the Red Land of the Desert. On both banks of the Nile stretches a strip of fertile black soil, annually fertilized by the floods of the river. The black earth ends suddenly, as if the finger of a deity drew a border, commanding: on this side is life, the greenery of growing bread; on the other side, the death and barrenness of the lifeless sands. Barren lands surround the valley in the west, east and north and pass into two huge deserts - Libyan and Arabian.

The Egyptians hated the desert. Only miserable Bedouins lived there, nomads who did not know the gods; anyone who got into the desert saw only unbearable heat, hunger and thirst. However, without the Red Land, Egypt would not be Egypt as we know it. It was on the barren plateaus of the Red Land that the Egyptians mined gold, from which they made objects that aroused the envy of the rulers of other powers of the Middle East, and which gave the power that wealth brings. In the desert and on the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptians mined copper - the raw material for tools needed in the construction of the pyramids, and for weapons - with its help, Nubia and Egypt's eastern neighbors were conquered. In the sands behind the cliffs that border the Black Earth, the Egyptians built temples and tombs that have survived to this day to tell us about the splendor and grandeur of Egypt. The fertile black soil so favored by the Egyptians provided short-lived things, and the desert preserved even such short-lived things as cloths and papyri - and even human flesh. Ancient Egypt was a product of both the Black Land and the Red Land, although the people of Egypt called themselves "Kemit", meaning "blacks".

The Delta region belonged entirely to the Black Earth - flat, covered with greenery and often swampy. And this means that we can learn much less about this area than about the Valley area. The vast majority of items on display in museums have been discovered in Upper Egypt; The Delta, on the other hand, represents a "blank spot" in our knowledge of Egyptian culture, and this "blank" needs to be filled, especially now that a new dam is raising the water level over the ancient cities of the Delta, making them inaccessible to excavation.

Many of these cities played a very important role in the time of the pharaohs. In the western part of the Delta was the ancient capital of Buto, "the seat of the throne." The capital was located among the swamps, and its goddess, the cobra, later became one of the two protective forces that guarded the king. To the south of Buto was Sais with its sacred lake, the abode of the goddess Neith. Further east, near the center of the Delta, was Busiris, where Osiris lived before he moved to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Located southeast of Busiris, Bubastis should be of interest to all cat lovers, as it was here that Bast, the goddess with the head of a cat, was worshiped. To the northeast of Bubastis lay Mendes, where the sacred ram was venerated, and directly to the east of that city was Tanis, on the plain south of Lake Menzala. This city was not as ancient as Sais or Buto, but it had quite interesting story. Scholars are still arguing whether Tanis was Avaris, the fortress of the Hyksos invaders, and Pi-Ramesses, where the slave ancient Jews built a treasury city for their enslavers.

It is perhaps not entirely fair to accuse the Egyptologists of believing Ti to have come from Nubia on the sole ground that the statue's majestic, commanding face has a black surface, but I cannot rid myself of this suspicion. Naturally, not one of the pundits who made such a statement admits that this particular circumstance influenced his opinion. He will not agree that the black color pushed him to this conclusion on a subconscious level. He will certainly begin to talk with the air of a connoisseur about the Negroid features in the images of Ti, about the prominent position of the Nubians in the palace hierarchy of that time, about the popularity of Nubian hairstyles. The last argument is irrelevant at all, even if it is true; As for the Negroid features of the head in the Berlin Museum, this is a very subjective opinion. Anthropologists - specialists in physical appearance - do not detect traits that characterize the Negroid race. To top it all off, we got data about Ti's parents - objective and indisputable. We do not have the queen's mummy, but we do have the mummies of both her parents, Yuya and Tuya, found by Theodore Davies in 1905.

Theodore Davis was an American millionaire traveler and explorer with a fanatic fascination with ancient Egypt. Like Carnarvon, but twenty years later, he went to excavate in the winter, when the climate in Egypt is relatively mild. Davis entered into an agreement with the Egyptian government, according to which he received the right to explore in the Valley of the Kings. Without his personal permission, no one had the right to excavate there. Davis financed all the work, but what he found became the property of the Egyptian government.

To a person who is not obsessed with a passion for Egyptology, such an agreement will seem beneficial to only one side. Davis willingly admitted this - but anyone who has experienced the excitement of archaeological research would consider that permission from the Egyptian government would be more beneficial for Davis. Although the American had amassed a magnificent collection, the very excitement of the search and the joy of the finds more than paid off all his expenses.

Davis, who even his friends called "rude and eccentric", was incredibly lucky. Of course, it should be remembered that he was excavating at a time when the Valley of the Kings had not yet been thoroughly excavated, but even taking this into account, one cannot but call some of his finds simply amazing. He discovered tombs belonging to Thutmose IV, Hatshepsut, Siptah (of the Twentieth Dynasty), and a cache containing a still controversial mummy that has been successively attributed to Queen Ti, Akhenaten, and Smenkhkare. Yes, Davis had a very difficult character, but for Egyptologists his work is simply invaluable. Research was carried out not only thanks to his money, people were driven by the hot enthusiasm of the American. After Davis' death, his collection moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it can be viewed by the general public.

In February 1905, Davis' research team was working on the site between the tombs of Ramesses III and Ramesses XI, not far from where the fabulous wealth of Tutankhamun would be discovered twenty years later, by another amateur millionaire, Davis' former assistant Howard Carter. Davies did not expect that a royal tomb could be found in this area - there was too little space. But nothing can be said for sure about the Valley of the Kings.

On February 5, Davis workers discovered the top step of the tomb. Davies sent for Weigall, inspector of antiquities of Upper Egypt; about a week later, the entire staircase was cleared, and the upper part of the passage to the tomb was opened before the researchers. Here the enthusiasm of the explorers faded as the seals on the door were broken. Someone - no doubt robbers - has already been here.

The researchers went inside, and here they were in for a pleasant surprise. The burial chamber was just outside the door; there were no passages and additional chambers in the tomb. The first thing that caught my eye was a wooden sarcophagus, broken and without a lid. Three coffins were found in the sarcophagus, inserted one into the other. The lids of all three coffins had been removed and lay next to the sarcophagus, as if they had been abandoned in a feverish haste. The mummy lay in the smallest coffin, the mask from the face was torn off.

The mummy belonged to “an elderly man of spectacular appearance and regal dignity. His delicate features and superbly preserved head evoked the image of Lincoln."

So wrote the columnist who entered the cell with Davis. On the left side of this sarcophagus was another. Its lid was also thrown off; in a gilded coffin lay the mummy of a woman. "Her face was serene and expressive, her eyes wide apart, her eyebrows lowered low, her mouth looked surprisingly expressive and sensual."

The cell was packed full of marvelous things. Caskets and furniture, a well-preserved chariot. Gilding and blue faience ornaments have been preserved on small inner coffins. The robbers managed to break through the entrance to the tomb, but apparently they were scared away before they could cause significant damage. The most valuable thing was that the inscriptions on the coffins and other objects were not damaged. This made it easy to identify the mummies. They belonged to Yuya and Tuya, the parents of Queen Ti.

With all the variety and beauty of the objects found in the tomb, both mummies are of main interest for the topic of our book. I have seen photographs of these mummies; the above description of them is fair enough, especially if you allow yourself some flight of fancy. I have to admit, I lack imagination. It is difficult for me, looking at the wrinkled face of the mummy, at the hard brown skin, compressed lips, sunken cheeks, to imagine that all this belonged to the first lady of ancient Thebes. However, the bones of the head, so to speak, the basis of beauty, nevertheless allow us to draw some conclusions. The eyebrows of the woman, apparently, were rounded and high, her teeth were even and white, her face had a charming oval. But the picture created in the mind disappears when looking at the mummy's repulsive face.

But the mummy of Yuya, Ti's father, does not make a repulsive impression. Even vice versa. Yuya, during his lifetime, the head of the war chariot detachment (hence, perhaps, the chariot in his tomb), was, apparently, tall man with strong-willed features and a strongly prominent hooked nose. Elliot Smith, an expert on mummies from this period, after examining both mummies, found that Yuya's skull was uncharacteristic of Ancient Egypt. Smith suggested that Yuya could be a Semite. As for Tuya, his wife, according to Smith, she is a typical Egyptian of that time.

I don't know if Yuya was a Semite or not. Some Egyptologists consider it as such - usually in order to confirm this or that theory. There is no indication that this man migrated to Egypt from somewhere, except for the fact that his name was spelled differently. At times, such discrepancies appeared when the Egyptians were not sure how to write some foreign name correctly. But I don't think that's proof enough. If Yuya really did come to Egypt from some other country, he must have done so at a very young age; it took a long time to climb the bureaucratic ladder so high. I cannot refute or confirm Smith's opinion in any way. In many matters he showed himself to be an outstanding scientist, but sometimes he was too carried away by his own theories, and there is nothing more harmful to objective research than "a favorite horse."

However, although we do not know whether Yuya was a Semite or an Egyptian, one thing we can say with some certainty is that he did not come from Nubia. And if he is not a Nubian, but his wife is a typical Egyptian, there is no reason to attribute the Nubian origin of their daughter.

4. PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE

From the Egyptians, which they were not, let's move on to the real Egyptians. We will find that we can describe common types without even referring to works of art. They were shorter than us: the women were about five feet, the men, as a rule, no more than five feet five. And again, as always, we note special cases: for example, Amenhotep II was six feet tall. The skin of the Egyptians had a brown tint; anyone can guess this without mummies, having spent at least a short time under the mercilessly scorching Egyptian sun. Among those Egyptians whose hair had not yet become gray, it was usually a dark color - black or dark chestnut; they could be both straight and wavy. For the most part, the Egyptians were a small people. Describing women, Smith often mentions small, graceful hands and feet. Most of the facial features are regular, the noses are narrow, although some mummies can be found, as I would call, the nose of "thutmosids". George Washington had a similar nose.

Anthropologists distinguish between two physical types in the population of ancient Egypt. The pre-dynastic Egyptians were not the same as the Giza people of the Third and Fourth Dynasties. The earliest Egyptians are graceful, short, with small thin faces. Men are slender, since the skeletons of women and men are indistinguishable - the massive bones of the skeleton inherent in modern men have not been found. The only exception is the people of Taza, one of the very early pre-dynastic cultures. These people had square heads, more massive bones, stronger skeletons (the word "strong" is not very suitable for describing skeletons, but it was used by one of the excavators, hence the definition).

I don't want to go into a dispute about two different races that lived in Egypt. This dispute is inextricably linked to other issues, such as which "race" brought to Egypt its classical culture. Even if we agree that people of different physical types lived in Egypt, it is impossible to determine which of the two groups of the population has the exclusive right to attribute to itself the monumental architecture of Egypt, writing, complex social organization. An older physical type, the short, thin-boned Predynastic Egyptians, may be referred to as the swarthy "Mediterranean type" of the Abyssinians and Somalis. We can give them the conditional name "Hamites", although this word is more suitable for designating a group of languages than for describing peoples (anthropological terminology may well be revised - a lot of confusion has accumulated in it during the existence of anthropology). Perhaps later Egyptians can be classified as Semites, keeping in mind that the definition of "Semitic" primarily refers to linguistics. It is best, however, to simply note that there were two distinct types among the Egyptians, although they might appear the same to modern man: brown skin, dark hair, dark eyes. No group of people has ever been "pure" unless they were in total isolation; if she aspired to "purity", it would mean ethnic suicide due to incest. Like all of us, the Egyptians were probably half-breeds. In the north they might have been Arabs or of Semitic blood; in the south, Nubian elements may have been strong.

Chapter 2
Red and Black Earth

Symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt

1. TWO COUNTRIES

The world in which our Egyptian baby was born is rather narrow, especially in the physical sense - the Nile Valley is about six hundred miles long and only ten miles wide. In the time of the pharaohs, Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley and a triangular delta, where the river split into several branches that flow into the Mediterranean Sea. These two parts of Egypt differed in their physical geography, and therefore the Egyptians always divided their country into two distinct regions. Before the First Dynasty, when Egypt entered the historical stage as a single state with a single king, the Delta and the Valley appear to have been separate kingdoms. Since no written evidence of that era has come down to us, we can guess the existence of pre-dynastic kingdoms only from indirect sources, and this information is extremely fragmentary.

Many of these cities played a very important role in the time of the pharaohs. In the western part of the Delta was the ancient capital of Buto, "the seat of the throne." The capital was located among the swamps, and its goddess, the cobra, later became one of the two protective forces that guarded the king. To the south of Buto was Sais with its sacred lake, the abode of the goddess Neith. Further east, near the center of the Delta, was Busiris, where Osiris lived before he moved to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Located southeast of Busiris, Bubastis should be of interest to all cat lovers, as it was here that Bast, the goddess with the head of a cat, was worshiped. To the northeast of Bubastis lay Mendes, where the sacred ram was venerated, and directly to the east of that city was Tanis, on the plain south of Lake Menzala. This city was not as ancient as Sais or Buto, but it had a rather interesting history. Scholars are still arguing whether Tanis was Avaris, the fortress of the Hyksos invaders, and Pi-Ramesses, where the slave ancient Jews built a treasury city for their enslavers.

In the late period of Egyptian history, Tanis became the capital; it was in this city that the French expedition led by Pierre Monte discovered very important royal tombs. In the vicinity of the city, the Ramesside kings erected palaces and buildings for all sorts of pleasures. One of the sources of these pleasures, no doubt, was the fine wines from the vineyards surrounding Tanis, as well as from Inet, located south of Tanis.

The northeastern part of the Delta was in ancient times well known for its wines. There were excellent pastures for the huge flocks that belonged to the king and the temples. However, most of this area, in all likelihood, was occupied by ordinary marshes, on which grew tall, more than a man's height, papyrus and reeds. The reeds provided good hiding places for geese and ducks, as well as other game, including ibises and herons. It is possible that hippos were also found in the Delta in those days, although these animals are no longer there in our time. The cities and villages of the Delta were most often built on hills - both on natural hills and on man-made hills. Now the Nile has two main channels in the Delta - Damietta and Rosetta. At the time of Herodotus, there were at least seven mouths, between them there were channels, canals and lakes.

It is a pity that we do not know more about the Delta - about its beautiful palaces and temples, about its famous vineyards, about its herds, game and fields. We have to be content with a bird's-eye view. Let us try to compensate for the paucity of information about the Delta that has come down to us by a more detailed study of what has come down to us about Upper Egypt. In order to get to know this area better, it is best for us to board the ship. Now this is the most pleasant way to see Egypt; in ancient times it was the only way. We will set sail on our imaginary journey on a pleasant summer morning, just before dawn, in the fifty-first year of the reign of the Lord of the Two Lands, Usermaatr Setepenr Ramesses Meriamon, who later generations will call by the more convenient name of Ramesses II. We received permission from the king to take part in the trip, and such permission is required, since the ship and its cargo belong to the king, like almost everything in Egypt - grain, temples, animals and people. This journey is not of a commercial nature and is not made for the sake of profit. The ship delivers wine from the royal vineyards in Egypt to the temple of the god Khnum in Elephantine to the priests, who may be more pleased with the wine than the god himself. During the journey, the ship must make several stops to unload jugs of wine in the cities especially beloved by the king.

As we yawn and lean on the railing to glimpse the outlines of the pyramids of Giza, the sky is already a light blue. The sails above our heads were stretched and taut; ships going to Memphis can take advantage of the current, but we have to rely only on the north wind. Fortunately, the wind almost always blows exactly in the right direction, and we pick up speed, quickly leaving behind Memphis - the White Wall, the first capital of a united Egypt, which has stood on the border of the Two Lands since the time of Menes the unifier. In the distance, we can see the pillars of the entrance to the Temple of Ptah, towering high above the green tops of palm trees and tamarisk, making the temple even more beautiful.

The sky has already completely cleared up, and finally the shining disk of the sun, Ra-Harakhte, rises on falcon wings from behind the horizon line. Its rays illuminate the huge step pyramid located near the old cemetery in Saqqara. Across the river, to our left, the black holes of the limestone quarry at Masara are visible on the pale golden rocks. It was from here that the stones came that were lined - to make the surface even - the faces of the pyramid at Giza. Since then, many pharaohs took limestone slabs here for their tombs and temples.

As we sail past the pyramids at Dashur, the sun has already risen high; the slopes of the pyramids under direct rays appear golden. Further along the river will be Lisht - as it will be called much later - with a large number of pyramids, small in size, already collapsed. At Medum we see the last of the great pyramid tombs of the Old Kingdom. During our journey, it still looks like a pyramid, but this will not last long. Stone will soon be borrowed from it, and by 1960 it will look like a tall square tower.

Near Medum we shall have to stop and tie up the ship for the night. Nothing in the world - except a threat to the life of the monarch or his own mother - will not make the captain sail in darkness. First, there are too many sandbanks in the waters of the river. Secondly, spirits roam the night. Some of them bring death - "those whose faces are turned back." Perhaps someone else is wandering in the darkness.

The captain invited us to dine with him on deck. It's quite pleasant here, a cool night breeze gently blowing in your face; a star twinkles high in the sky. The captain apologizes for the treat - the uncomplicated food of sailors - but we find it more than appetizing. Roast duck, onions, radishes, fresh baked bread from the village where we anchored, dates, apricots and figs. And - it can't be! - wine from the Internet!

The captain is surprised and a little hurt when we ask about the wine, although we do it very tactfully. Yes, this is wine from the Internet. But no one expects a captain to travel 600 miles with real nectar on board and not taste it. He shrugs, a gesture that must have been born with the human race. You can always take a little wine, everyone knows this, this is a custom. He is an honest man; he will not sell a quart of cargo to the side in order to share the profits with the scribe, who must calculate the king's expenses at the end of the journey. He doesn't do those things! Yes, this is not necessary, since Usermaatra (may he live and prosper and be in full health!) does not let down tricks of this kind. In the past, the captain remembers, they got away with such things. Good old days... But for the sake of one or two jugs, no one will raise a fuss. This is an excellent wine, isn't it?

We agree and empty another mug, with a sense of certainty that if anyone is hurt for the disappearance of the wine, it's not us.

The next day we enter the Faiyum. If we could see farther - and because of the palms we can see little - we would see wide lakes surrounded by green fields, temples, cities and palaces. The most amazing structure of the Faiyum is the Labyrinth, as the Greek Strabo would call it a thousand years after the time of our journey. This building is known to the captain as the temple of Amenemhat, the ancient king; it consists of two thousand rooms carved into a stone monolith. Faiyum is a large oasis connected to the Nile by a canal that will be called Bahr Yusuf, or Joseph's canal, in memory of the man and the events that left their mark in the Bible. However, in the Egyptian written sources, both are not noted. Is it because Joseph never existed and owes his appearance to the poetic imagination of the ancient Jews, or because the Egyptians preferred not to notice strangers and barbarians in their midst? If the latter is true, then it is quite possible that Joseph's descendants are still toiling in the swamps of the Delta, trying after work to collect some straw for their huts. Maybe while we are sailing down the river, Moses is clearing the way for the people following him, and the priests of the royal court in Tanis see a strange omen during their sacrifices. But ... all this is our fantasy. If we are on this ship, in the fifty-first year of Ramses' life, we are able to find out how everything really happened. If the devil were to offer any Egyptologist the opportunity to make such a journey in exchange for his soul, he would certainly agree to such an exchange.

Already a hundred and eighty miles south of Memphis, we turn into the docks of Beni Hassan to leave a few jugs of wine here. This is our first big stop. The local prince loves wine from the Delta, and besides, he is a close friend of the king. During the battle of Kadesh, he emptied more than one jar with the king. The city is located on the east coast; above the city, in the rocks, are tombs that are considered ancient even at the time in question. For archaeologists of future generations, these tombs will present many joyful discoveries. The prince is not in the palace now - he went hunting in the desert, so we will not be invited to dinner. The captain wants to quickly continue the journey, and therefore, as soon as the prince's porters complete the transfer of jugs, he orders to raise the sails again. The next day, passing along the river, we see that the rocks on the east bank have given way to a fertile valley. The team gathers at the side, looking around the shore; the sailors talk quietly and touch the amulets that hang around their necks with their fingers. But there is nothing special to see here - only ruined walls and piles of stones. Once upon a time there was a large city, the possession of the largest heretic of Ancient Egypt, who rejected the most important of the gods. He got what he deserved, that criminal Akhenaten. Now it is forbidden even to say his name.

As the ship passed Akhetaten, which today is known as Tell el-Amarna, we notice a general state of tension. The captain comes out of his hiding place and stands at the bow, carefully surveying the river. All sailors sit at the oars. Then we see the rocks re-grow on the east bank. They form a sloping stone wall; flocks of birds fly out of countless cracks in the rock, screaming through the air. This place is one of the most dangerous on the river, here a gust of wind blowing from the rocks may well throw a ship on a sandbar. And now the oars under the water stumble upon the sand. Energetic commands follow immediately, and the rowers skip over the rocks, passing the shoal just a few inches away. But there are still twenty miles of dangerous territory to go, and when we finally pass the bottlenecks at Gebel Abu Feda (this name, of course, the captain never heard), we think only of stopping. The captain was trying his luck by passing the dangerous stretch so late - as soon as we dropped anchor and prepared the evening meal, dusk fell.

The next day we are eighty miles from Beni Hassan and two hundred and fifty from Memphis, and are slowly approaching Assiut. The journey has been going on for more than ten days, and we have not yet gone halfway to Elephantine. Assiut is a large city, its rulers were once close to becoming kings of Egypt, and the prince of Assiut is still one of the influential nobles. If we reach the city before sunset, we should find time to visit the tombs of the ancestors of this nobleman, located in the rocks.

Date palms and sycamores, pomegranates and peaches, fields of wheat and flax - we pass this fertile region, leaving Assiut behind. Two weeks after sailing from Assiut we reach the sacred city of Abydos. Osiris himself was buried here. The marinas of Abydos are full of ships. Among them are several barges with stone for the great temple of Ramesses being erected in the city; however, most of the ships are occupied by pilgrims on their way to the place of worship of Osiris. A funeral ship with a gilded mummy box on deck passes right in front of our ship, and the captain, forgetting all respect for the dead, unleashes a stream of curses on sweaty sailors. Then he steps aside and says a prayer or two to the Great Temple. One day he will have to go on such a journey, on a ship similar to the one on which Osiris once sailed - of course, if by this time enough money can be raised for such a trip.

When we reach Khu (which the Greeks will call Diospolis Parva), the sailors start talking louder than usual. We are carried by a fast channel, and they have to sit on the oars not only in places where the river narrows, but also at numerous turns. And here also begins a great bend in the river, leading the Nile for thirty miles almost due east, after which the river changes direction again to flow another thirty miles to the west.

The last city on our journey to the east is Dendera, where the Temple of Hathor is located. In the twentieth century A.D. e. many are ready to go a long way to visit the temple in Dendera, but they will see only an ugly, later version of the miracle that opens up to the eyes of those sailing on our ship. We see a tomb erected by the great commander of the Eighteenth Dynasty according to a plan that has been preserved since the time of Khufu.

In order to safely pass the cities of Koptos, Kus and Nagada, rowers have to work hard. Then - a turn to the west, after which the obelisks and pylons of Thebes began to grow in front of the bow of the ship, scarlet in the light of the golden sun. The capital of the king of Egypt at that time was in Tanis, but for the burial of monarchs they are still brought here, to the former capital of the king-gods - to the "hundred gates of Thebes", with their huge temples - Karnak and Luxor. Having sailed a little further, we can see both temples; in front of brightly painted pylons scarlet banners flutter in the morning breeze, golden tops crown the shafts of the banners. As we approach the docks on the east bank of the Nile, we have a panorama of Western Thebes, the "city of the dead." We see stone figures sitting in front of the beautiful mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. Behind this temple stands the temple of the current reigning Ramesses, still unfinished and looking surprisingly new against the backdrop of weather-eaten rocks. However, unfinished, it looks good, even in comparison with other rich temples that lined up along the rocks on the western shore. One of these wonders catches the eye - a temple with a curving row of columns and sloping slopes; the terraces of this temple are green with trees. As the captain tells us, this temple is dedicated to Amun, Hathor, and the Thutmoseid kings; and he should know this, he travels a lot and visited many temples. We politely nod - but we, who have arrived from another time and another country, still know more than a captain living in the time of Ramses Usermaatr. This temple belongs to Hatshepsut, the woman who dared to take the royal throne. Her name is not mentioned in the lists of kings, her cartouches and her images on the walls of the temple are cleaned or smeared. In the future, archaeologists will need a lot of time to bring back the memory of her.

Symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt

1. TWO COUNTRIES

Many of these cities played a very important role in the time of the pharaohs. In the western part of the Delta was the ancient capital of Buto, "the seat of the throne." The capital was located among the swamps, and its goddess, the cobra, later became one of the two protective forces that guarded the king. To the south of Buto was Sais with its sacred lake, the abode of the goddess Neith. Further east, near the center of the Delta, was Busiris, where Osiris lived before he moved to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Located southeast of Busiris, Bubastis should be of interest to all cat lovers, as it was here that Bast, the goddess with the head of a cat, was worshiped. To the northeast of Bubastis lay Mendes, where the sacred ram was venerated, and directly to the east of that city was Tanis, on the plain south of Lake Menzala. This city was not as ancient as Sais or Buto, but it had a rather interesting history. Scholars are still arguing whether Tanis was Avaris, the fortress of the Hyksos invaders, and Pi-Ramesses, where the slave ancient Jews built a treasury city for their enslavers.

We agree and empty another mug, with a sense of certainty that if anyone is hurt for the disappearance of the wine, it's not us.

In the book of the famous American researcher Barbara Mertz, some legends of Ancient Egypt are debunked, but real facts turn out to be much more interesting than fiction. You will learn everything about the life of the ancient Egyptians, their philosophy, sciences, attitude to life and death, monuments of culture, architecture and writing. The lively and vivid language of the story will plunge you into the depths of the ancient center of civilization and let you feel the mysterious atmosphere of the distant past.

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Red earth, Black earth. Ancient Egypt: Legends and Facts (Barbara Mertz) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Part one

THE WORLD OF THE LIVING

People of two lands

She can sail away - she who enters the darkness.

She sneaks in.

Her nose is behind her, her face turned back.

She is a failure in why she came!

Have you come to kiss this child?

I won't let you kiss him!

Have you come to mutilate him?

I won't let you hurt him!

Have you come to pick him up?

I won't let him be taken from me!

Kneeling on the bare dirt floor, the woman hummed softly so as not to wake the sleeping baby in her arms. The only room of the hut was in darkness, only one corner was lit by the embers smoldering in the brazier. A sudden burst of flame illuminated for a moment the bent figure, the woman's long, jet-black hair, and the dark eyes turned toward the door. Those eyes were full of fear and challenge at the same time. The hut is bolted from the inside, but the woman felt the darkness press against the door. From this darkness, the one that "turned her face back" can burst into the room and steal the breath from a sleeping child.

I see this picture when I read the lines of a song written several thousand years ago in ancient Egyptian. The night witch, about whom the woman sang, is the most terrible character in the folklore of any nation - with a head that rotates freely around her neck, a shapeless creature, as indicated by the word "sail away." Like an ancient Scottish prayer against ghosts, ghouls, and demons that strike in the night, the words of the Egyptian song contain a hint of a diabolical danger, all the more terrifying because it has no external appearance.

There is another similarity between the Scottish prayer and the Egyptian song. Today we remember this prayer when we want to joke, to portray imaginary fear; when we say the words, we look over our shoulders in mock fright, and then laugh, but in the past, this prayer, like the Egyptian song, did not cause laughter at all. The creator of prayer did not practice versification at all; prayer was a spell against the forces of evil. In both the Scottish prayer and the ancient Egyptian song, the description of the threat comes first, followed by the incantation. In the Egyptian song, the defense took the form of heightened denial: "I won't let you kiss him!... I won't let you maim him!" - and was accompanied by a list of magical plants, which I did not give. In the Scottish prayer, the call to the protective forces is shorter: "God protect us!"

I won't make the comparison any further, it doesn't really matter - I just wanted to show that at all times and in all countries people have experienced and still experience fear of the darkness and what may come from it. The Egyptian song is touching because it was created in defense of the child. Any person is most vulnerable to Fate precisely by the defenselessness of their children. A baby is helpless when he comes naked and screaming into our world, which is in many ways hostile to him. Our book is devoted to the daily existence of the ancient Egyptians, and it is most reasonable to start the story precisely from the beginning of life - that is, from the moment of birth. We have cast the necessary spell and now we will move on to the birth of our fictional hero.

1. BIRTH

Once upon a time, there lived in Egypt a woman who attracted the attention of none other than the great sun god Ra. Perhaps this attention was caused not so much by the charms of the woman herself, but by the desire of Ra to have a descendant to whom he could entrust the throne of the ruler of the Egyptian lands. This woman was the wife of a humble priest of the god Ra named Rauser. Her name was Redjet, and here:

“Once Redgett felt labor pains, and her agony was strong. And so the great Ra said to Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, Heket and Khnum: “Go and free Redjet from those three children that are in her womb and who will rule over all the earth.”

The reader who knows the history of Ancient Egypt will immediately recognize in Isis and Nephthys the two great goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon; the first was the wife, and the second was the sister of Osiris. Meskhenet was also a goddess, she patronized childbirth - which was very useful for this occasion. Khnum, the only male god among those mentioned, was also related to childbearing. Khnum was a potter, he molded the bodies of newborn babies from clay on his divine potter's wheel. Heket, on the other hand, helped the birth of the sun god every morning, so it is quite understandable why, when the children of the sun god were born, Heket was instructed to take birth.

The goddesses dressed up as dancers, and the proud Khnum had to transform into their porter. Having thus assumed the form of earthly people, all five went to the priest's house. They found the future father in a confused state of mind, which is quite eloquently narrated by the Egyptian author: Rauser sat motionless, his clothes were in disarray. What happened next aroused in me the deepest sympathy for this priest. Although Rauser was desperately worried about the fate of his wife, he found the strength to talk politely to the wandering dancers: “As you can see, my ladies, the mistress of the house is in labor, and her birth is difficult.”

The dancers got to work. “Let me take a look at her. We know how to make childbirth easier.”

The future father could not refuse their proposal - Ra, looking at all this from his golden boat, would not allow this. However, we think that Rauser agreed of his own free will. There were no professional midwives in those days. In primitive societies, including medieval Europe, the woman in labor was probably assisted by another woman from the same house or village. Only if the birth was difficult, a local healer was called to help. Therefore, even a dancer could claim that she masterfully takes birth, so her husband's consent is quite understandable. In the state he was in, he would have accepted help from anyone. One way or another, but the priest gave his permission to the five guests, and they closed themselves with the woman in labor in the house. “Then Isis stood in front of her, Nephthys behind her, and Heket helped at birth.” They may ask how she helped - massage or magic? Both are possible, it is also possible that the main thing in this help was the words of Isis, addressed to the child striving to get out: “Do not be too strong in her womb, even though your name is User-kaf.” The word "strong" in the ancient Egyptian language sounded like "user", so the words of Isis contained a play on words associated with the name of the child. In our time, a play on words (pun) is considered the most primitive form of humor - but in those ancient cultures, where words and the thing they denote are magically connected and, as it were, have the same power, a magical effect was attributed to the play on words. And so the speech of Isis turned into a command that would be fulfilled, even if it were not uttered by the goddess.

"Then this baby slipped into her arms." The child had a very impressive appearance: his body was decorated with gold, and his hair was the color of lapis lazuli. The birth of kings was usually accompanied by miracles and omens, but it is possible that such incredible features of appearance are just a figurative expression: one can also find “pearl teeth” or “ruby lips” in our literature. The mother's loving gaze could well have mistaken the swarthy-golden body for shining gold. Lapis lazuli is a dark blue stone; the child appeared to have dark hair.

The goddess washed the child, cut off the umbilical cord and placed the newborn "on a box of bricks." After that, Meskhenet, who behaved surprisingly indifferent, despite the fact that she was the main expert in childbearing, blessed the child, and Khnum "gave health to his body." The same procedure was done with the second and third child - including a very important pun command.

Having completed their task, the goddesses - still dressed as dancers - left the "delivery room" and saw that Rauser was still sitting in front of the door. “Let your heart rejoice, Rauser,” they encouraged the priest, “you have had three children.” He replied: “What can I do for you women? Let your porter take this sack of grain. Accept the grain as payment and order it to be made into beer."

This story - part of a long and intricate legend - is the most detailed description of childbirth in ancient Egypt that has survived to this day. The remaining sources contain very little clear information, however, summing them up, we can still get an idea of \u200b\u200bhow the ancient Egyptian mother gave birth to a child. She sat or lay on a seat made of bricks. Since such "obstetric chairs" have not survived to this day, it can be assumed that they were built only as needed and dismantled after use. The inscriptions say that the woman in labor was "on the bricks." From the hieroglyphs, we can conclude that the position in which the birth took place resembles the one in which the birth takes place today - the sign for designating a woman in labor is an image of a woman sitting with her legs up. The hieroglyph "to give birth" is a drawing of a woman with a rounded belly, kneeling; below her body, the arms and head of a baby are visible. We also have at our disposal several rather naturalistic (from an aesthetic point of view) small figurines depicting the process of birth in almost the same way as a hieroglyph. Along with the figurine of a woman in labor, there are figurines of women supporting her in front and behind, as well as a godparent standing in front of her, ready to take the child in her arms.

And that's pretty much all we have left. One potential source of information on this subject is the medical papyri, although they contain some information on gynecology, they do not say a word about childbirth and obstetrics.

It seems astonishing that the ancient Egyptians, having given us so many details about their lives right up to the very hour of their death, left so little information about these two very important subjects. However, the apparent abundance of materials is actually illusory - there are many of them only in comparison with what has been preserved from other pre-Greek cultures. Just think about this fact: any Egyptologist is quite capable, doing research, to study every single document in his field, all primary sources - and at the same time he will still have time to study the works of other Egyptologists and write one or two of his own. A scientist who studies the history of his country is not able to do anything like that even when studying a period of thirty years - let alone three thousand. He will not even be able to get acquainted with all the primary sources: novellas and stories of both famous writers and minor ones, with posthumous wills, reports from court sessions, legal documents, personal and business letters, texts of contracts and codes of laws, scientific treatises and so on.

I write about this not out of secret gloating towards the Egyptologists, whose sources are so meager, but only to express regret. Books about ancient Egypt often mislead the reader by presenting hypotheses as established facts and stating conjectures as confidently as if they had already been proven. Meanwhile, the proposed hypotheses are often by no means indisputable - since there are simply no documents that could restore the true picture in all details. It is for this reason that there are so many clauses in books that can be trusted: “possibly”, “apparently”, “probably”. For purely stylistic reasons, scholars avoid writing "maybe," but these words can precede a good half of the text of any book on ancient Egypt, including this one.

Now we are not in a position to say with certainty whether the legends about some "lost science" about occult forces have any basis in them - not a single document about this has come down to us. We do not even know whether such treatises existed at all or whether they simply did not survive for four thousand years. Egyptian culture was written, but it did not analyze itself, and there are no general overviews. The Egyptians were busy people: they had to sow fields, harvest crops, lay irrigation canals; they had to build pyramids, fight battles, supply everything, in their opinion, necessary tombs. The Egyptians wrote down only what they considered necessary for themselves, and not what would be of interest to people in the distant future. It is not surprising that we know so little about childbearing in ancient Egypt; it is surprising that in our time we still have the amount of information that we have.

2. PEOPLE IN ART

So, a little Egyptian appeared in our world. His habits, beliefs, manners, we will describe on the following pages. Now we will limit ourselves to only one question - what was the appearance of this child?

But before describing the Egyptians as they seem to us, it would be interesting to look at them with my own eyes. How would they like to look? What was their physical ideal?

Paintings and sculptures can give an idea of this. It is striking that for centuries the same physical types have been depicted by the Egyptians - from about the year 3000 BC (with a possible deviation of several centuries in one direction or another) until the first century of our era. The ladies are slender and so thin that in profile their bodies from the waist to the knee look almost flat. Rounded hips clearly did not cause admiration; another thing - though small, but well-formed breasts. Some mummies of old women, deprived of their natural adornments by old age, were stuffed with wax or sawdust in the thoracic region to create the necessary bulges. In one mummy, described by Elliot Smith in his classic book on mummification, the body of an elderly lady had a completely new shape, given to it with the help of bandages and resin in a technique reminiscent of papier-mâché. The breasts were embroidered1 superbly, they were crowned with copper tips. This mummy is simply unique; admiring Smith claims that she resembles an exquisite statue of Venus.

The appearance of men - from kings to commoners - also corresponds to our idea of \u200b\u200bthe perfection of the body: broad shoulders, flat stomach, narrow hips. It is clear that those who commissioned their statue to the sculptor or their image on the walls of the tomb to the artist wanted to see their bodies just like that.

However, there were several exceptions to this rule. Most of them are widely known, certainly known to every Egyptologist, precisely because they are exceptional: an old blind harpist with a wrinkled face and drooping shoulders; a weary shepherd with leather-covered ribs; a dwarf sitting proudly next to his normal-sized wife. Some of these works are truly exceptional - in that they are outstanding examples of artistic craftsmanship.

I especially love the sculpture that we now call "Sheikh al-Beled", which means "head of the village." This nickname has its own, very curious history.

The statue was found by Auguste Mariette, one of the greatest French Egyptologists of the 19th century. For me, the names Marieta and Maspero are inextricably linked, like bacon and scrambled eggs: Maspero was the founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, and it was he who established the rules that made it possible to preserve much of the treasures of ancient Egypt for modern Egyptians. Mariet was his successor, both in office and in dedication. On duty, Mariet oversaw all the archaeological work taking place in Egypt, but sometimes he also carried out his own excavations. One morning, his workers fled in fear when the head and shoulders of a statue emerged from the ground. The statue was cleaned, lifted to the surface, and a dozen Arab throats exhaled in one voice: "Sheikh al-Beled!"

Any visitor to the Cairo Museum - its collection was created precisely by Maspero and Mariet - approaching this statue, it is easy to understand why the statue reminded the workers of the headman of their village. Even this figure reminds me of someone. The human-sized wooden statue is carefully fitted into joints. She depicts a middle-aged man, rather portly, with a round face, in whose expression good nature and firmness of character are combined. The man stands in a pose common to Egyptian sculptures - one leg is put forward a step. One hand is freely lowered, the other is bent and compresses a long staff, which gives the figure a special significance. The depicted person was definitely invested with power and belonged to a noble family. His face is surprisingly alive; it seems that he is looking at the viewer, but not with the usual blind expression of statues, but with calm interest. The expressiveness of the look was given by the skill of the sculptor. The eye sockets are outlined with copper stripes, and the eyeballs consist of pieces of opaque quartz depicting squirrels, rock crystal as the iris, and black resin in place of the pupils. The statue is believed to be four thousand years old. It was preserved thanks to the miracle of the dry Egyptian climate. This "sheikh", whose real name was Ka-aper, is much broader at the waist than at the shoulders; he definitely cannot be considered a model of male beauty, which is not the case with most other statues. As I said, he is an exception, but even so, the "sheikh" is handsome in his own way. He is plump, but not fat. It's nice to look at him. Actually, other exceptions, like Ka-aper, cannot be called repulsive either. I know neither hunchbacks, nor cripples, nor disgustingly fat old women (the famous queen of Punta, with her nightmarish figure, was not an Egyptian; the barbarians did not receive such honors as the inhabitants of the great Egyptian land). It seems that no one in Egypt had warts on the nose, no scoliosis, no crooked teeth.

Queen Punta

From an image in the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri

Scientists who have studied Egyptian art have explained the reason for this constancy of artistic canons. It was based on the mass consciousness of the Egyptians, facing the entire universe, as well as the very purpose of art, which performed more magical than aesthetic functions. We'll talk more about this later. However, I suspect, not without cheerful malice, that some Egyptian merchant came to the sculptor's workshop not only in order to have his exact posthumous image. Why leave forever a double chin and a solid tummy, if the sculptor is quite capable of creating a posthumous image similar to Apollo?

Of course, we should not take the depictions of the Egyptians as literally accurate. At any time, there was no people without the crippled and freaks - and even simply ugly people. And yet some Egyptologists, gullible guys, accept any image as true.

3. THE PROBLEM WITH QUEEN TI

The history of mankind is not at all a set of firmly established facts; it is, in fact, a collection of opinions and theories, sometimes with serious justification, and sometimes representing only more or less probable conjectures. If the historian writing a book does not limit himself to a certain period of time, he will not be able to explain all the evidence, correctly assess all the facts, and give all possible explanations for each of the issues discussed. Usually there are so many of these questions, and the evidence is so few and sparse! Nevertheless, from this meager evidence, researchers are trying to recreate the true picture - and sometimes it is very interesting to watch this.

We have already made one such attempt, trying to imagine the appearance of the ancient Egyptians. But this question is not among the most important from the point of view of the history of human culture; it can not be called very complex. Either you know what people looked like or you don't. Either you have mummies and skeletons at your disposal, or you don't. Or these people painted own images or not.

The images painted by the Egyptians help to represent the people of Ancient Egypt. However, these testimonies are not among the most reliable. Skeletons should be considered the most objective and convincing evidence; they can be used to determine height, build, sex and age. The mummy presents us with even more data - hair color and structure, skin color, body weight. However, even these facts can be interpreted in different ways. Read the account of the scholarly discussion of the supposed skeleton of Akhenaten and you will be in doubt as to whether the pundits are talking about the same skeleton.

As for evidence in the form of images and statues, they are often highly subjective. The Egyptians did not seek to portray the true appearance. However, archaeologists—often quite good ones—often mistakenly discuss the Egyptians not as they were in reality, but as they appear in statues and drawings. Recently, I was simply shocked by two popular books dedicated to Ancient Egypt, which deal with Queen Ti, a commoner who became the wife of the king and the mother of the heretic Akhenaten. In one book she is described as blue-eyed and fair-haired, in another as a black woman.

Strictly speaking, it does not matter whether Queen Ti was a blonde, a brunette, or her skin was covered with a pattern of purple polka dots, but still such discrepancies are very unpleasant. The authors portrayed Ti, not guided by the flight of their own imagination, but on the basis of the works of professional Egyptologists. How could they differ so much in descriptions?

The answer is obvious: pundits drew their conclusions on the basis of the surviving images. Let's start with the fair-haired queens of Egypt. As far as I know, there were never fair-haired queens in Egypt. The famous lady of the Fourth Dynasty, who was considered blonde or red-haired, was simply depicted with a yellow headscarf on her head. There are no other similar descriptions in Egyptian history.

Most likely, the legend of the fair-haired queen was born as a version. Beautiful theories are often quite tenacious. Most Egyptologists believe that Queen Ti came from Nubia. This means that she could not have blue eyes. I think I even know the reason for the origin of the version of the origin of the queen - this reason is simple and rather curious.

The Berlin Museum houses the famous head, which is considered a sculptural portrait of Queen Ti. This is a wonderful work of art, an excellent "portrait", which conveys not only the appearance, but also character traits. The person that the sculptor depicted is not one of the people with whom you would want to live permanently; you would not want him to be among your enemies. Perhaps this impression is unfair to the long-dead queen, but the feelings evoked by the sculpture cannot be dismissed either. Due to the fact that the portrait is executed masterfully and remains in memory, the impression from it is strong and long. The queen's head is carved from ebony.

The mummy belonged to “an elderly man of spectacular appearance and regal dignity. His delicate features and superbly preserved head evoked the image of Lincoln."

But the mummy of Yuya, Ti's father, does not make a repulsive impression. Even vice versa. Yuya, during his lifetime the head of the war chariot squad (hence, perhaps, the chariot in his tomb), was, apparently, a tall man with strong-willed features and a very prominent hooked nose. Elliot Smith, an expert on mummies from this period, after examining both mummies, found that Yuya's skull was uncharacteristic of Ancient Egypt. Smith suggested that Yuya could be a Semite. As for Tuya, his wife, according to Smith, she is a typical Egyptian of that time.

4. PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE

From the Egyptians, which they were not, let's move on to the real Egyptians. We will find that we can describe general types without even referring to works of art. They were shorter than us: the women were about five feet, the men, as a rule, no more than five feet five. And again, as always, we note special cases: for example, Amenhotep II was six feet tall. The skin of the Egyptians had a brown tint; anyone can guess this without mummies, having spent at least a short time under the mercilessly scorching Egyptian sun. Among those Egyptians whose hair had not yet become gray, it was usually a dark color - black or dark chestnut; they could be both straight and wavy. For the most part, the Egyptians were a small people. Describing women, Smith often mentions small, graceful hands and feet. Most of the facial features are regular, the noses are narrow, although some mummies can be found, as I would call, the nose of "thutmosids". George Washington had a similar nose.

I don't want to go into a dispute about two different races that lived in Egypt. This dispute is inextricably linked to other issues, such as which "race" brought to Egypt its classical culture. Even if we agree that people of different physical types lived in Egypt, it is impossible to determine which of the two groups of the population has the exclusive right to attribute to itself the monumental architecture of Egypt, writing, complex social organization. An older physical type, the short, thin-boned Predynastic Egyptians, may be referred to as the swarthy "Mediterranean type" of the Abyssinians and Somalis. We can give them the conditional name "Hamites", although this word is more suitable for designating a group of languages than for describing peoples (anthropological terminology may well be revised - a lot of confusion has accumulated in it during the existence of anthropology). Perhaps later Egyptians can be classified as Semites, keeping in mind that the definition of "Semitic" primarily refers to linguistics. It is best, however, to simply note that there were two distinct types among the Egyptians, although they might appear the same to modern man: brown skin, dark hair, dark eyes. No group of people has ever been "pure" unless they were in total isolation; if she aspired to "purity", it would mean ethnic suicide due to incest. Like all of us, the Egyptians were probably half-breeds. In the north they might have been Arabs or of Semitic blood; in the south, Nubian elements may have been strong.

Red and Black Earth

Symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt

1. TWO COUNTRIES

Many of these cities played a very important role in the time of the pharaohs. In the western part of the Delta was the ancient capital of Buto, "the seat of the throne." The capital was located among the swamps, and its goddess, the cobra, later became one of the two protective forces that guarded the king. To the south of Buto was Sais with its sacred lake, the abode of the goddess Neith. Further east, near the center of the Delta, was Busiris, where Osiris lived before he moved to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Located southeast of Busiris, Bubastis should be of interest to all cat lovers, as it was here that Bast, the goddess with the head of a cat, was worshiped. To the northeast of Bubastis lay Mendes, where the sacred ram was venerated, and directly to the east of that city was Tanis, on the plain south of Lake Menzala. This city was not as ancient as Sais or Buto, but it had a rather interesting history. Scholars are still arguing whether Tanis was Avaris, the fortress of the Hyksos invaders, and Pi-Ramesses, where the slave ancient Jews built a treasury city for their enslavers.

We agree and empty another mug, with a sense of certainty that if anyone is hurt for the disappearance of the wine, it's not us.

There are still a few hours before dusk, but the captain decides to stop in Thebes until tomorrow morning. He is condescending to his team and therefore allows the sailors to go ashore. We also decide to take advantage of this opportunity and set off to pay our respects to Amon: the ram, which the sailors bring with them, is probably intended for the evening service in the sanctuary of Amun. After the religious ceremony, you can go sightseeing. We simply must see the nightlife of this great city of the distant past. We don't have time to look at the tombs on the west bank, even if we were allowed to. The Valley of the Kings is guarded, and therefore all we can see is a stone wall of cracked rocks. Visitors are clearly not favored here - even tourists.

Unfortunately, the sailors showed no less interest in nightlife, although not from a purely historical point of view. The next morning they look sleepy, and two sailors did not come on board at all. The captain curses their ancestors, hires two new sailors, one of those who loiter around the pier, and we set off again, only an hour behind our schedule.

The sailors have ten or fifteen miles to work with oars, but we - tourists on vacation - can lean on the railing and admire the obelisks of Karnak receding into the distance. The colossi of Amenhotep III are the last to disappear from view. Soon we pass Hermontis, situated on the same plain as Thebes. Here lived Montu, the god of war. Then we turn and head south, driven by a fairly strong breeze. After many days of heavy rowing, it seems that the ship is flying. Just two days after leaving Thebes, we pass two cities on opposite sides of the river - El Kab with the remains of an ancient wall and Hierakonpolis. A little further on is Idfu, one of the sanctuaries of Horus. As in Dendera, we see from the ship a completely different temple than the Ptolemaic temple now standing on this site, which every year attracts clouds of tourists; before our eyes is the original, planned by the great Imhotep himself, the one who erected the Step Pyramid. His plan was carefully treated by all the kings who lived after him.

Two more days pass and we are approaching Silsila, the city dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god. In these places, there are good reasons to treat crocodiles with respect. The limestone plateau of the northern part of Egypt here changes into a sandstone plateau, which means that sandbanks, underwater rocks and whirlpools appear in the river. The river becomes dangerous. Many ships in these places crashed or ran aground - and therefore Sobek's prayer will not be superfluous. But, peering into the water, we do not see a single crocodile; there have been very few of them lately. But, as the captain grimly remarks, the crocodile is usually not noticed until it is too late.

One more small turn and we see a group of islands near Kom Ombo, which will become one of the favorite places for tourists in a few thousand years. After the islands the river runs straight for twenty-five miles until it reaches Elephantine. At the end of our journey, the scenery is especially beautiful. Elephantine Island is visible straight ahead; on it rises a temple surrounded by several houses. Limestone hills alternate with granite rocks, fragments of massive boulders are also visible above the surface of river waters.

On the island stands the prince's house - his earthly home. The "Palace of Eternity" is being erected for him in the north of Egypt, so that the prince will lie near his royal master. There are other tombs on the island, high up in the rocks on the far western tip from us; in the sunlight we see their black rectangular inlets cut right into the rock. If we wish, we can climb the rocks and go inside. The "Palaces of Eternity" are empty. Perhaps the prince of Elephantine, who is also vizier of Kush, is sensible enough to choose a site for his tomb in the capital, where the cemeteries are guarded against thieves. His predecessors, the owners of empty tombs, did not care about the protection, because they were not used to thinking about their protection. Explorers and adventurers, they went to the afterlife in the same way as they once went to the wild jungles of inner Africa - alone, by no one known way. If we want, we can read the description of their exploits - it is carved on the walls of their tombs. Some words sound a little strange, they are outdated, but any literate person can read them. Elephantine has a lot to see: granite quarries and two tunnels through which the waters of the Nile pass. To the south, on the island of Sehel, there is a “nilometer” that measures the height of the water level, which is very important for the welfare of the whole country.

2. NUBIA AND THE DESERT

Elephantine Island is located on the border of Egypt and Nubia; thresholds mark this boundary. To get to Nubia, we have to walk several miles along the coast and only then board a ship, which is dragged through the rapids. We go on board in front of a large island, which in due time will be called Philae.

The next part of the journey is less interesting; the land is scarce, and the growing crops are not so green. However, there are still monuments on the banks. In about half a dozen places we see temples built in the traditional style - at least half of them erected by Ramesses. Its most majestic building was Abu Simbel, which we reach on the eighth day after leaving Aswan. Two huge statues of Ramesses, sixty feet high, have already been completed. These statues stand on one side of the entrance to the temple, and now ant-like small black figures on the scaffolding trim the faces of the two statues on the other side of the entrance. The temple itself is carved into the rock. One of the passengers on our ship is a scribe who is to land at Abu Simbel to see to it that the inscriptions in the temple are correct. The scribe has a bag full of scrolls with texts to be copied. The scribe tells us that the king wants to record once again his great victory over the Hittites, a daring people living far to the north. A scribe is a middle-aged man who has already begun to gain fat, as, indeed, many scribes. His face expresses the cold courtesy of an experienced bureaucrat of all eras. But we do notice a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth as he talks about the pharaoh's famous victory. We know a thing or two about the battle of Kadesh, but we are as tactful as the scribe.

The statues at Abu Simbel seem too big and somewhat squat. Indeed, the facade of the building is clearly overloaded with these four colossi, as well as the complex sculptural group located above the doors and a row of monkeys carved from stone at the very top. However, beautiful or not, the statues look very impressive. As the captain said, the temple will live no less than the pyramids of Giza.

After another two days of our journey, we reach the second rapid, where the river breaks down over black shiny boulders, wet with spray. Behind this obstacle is the final goal of our route, and it is already visible: on both sides of the river there are massive fortresses with battlements and towers on the rocks. We are carrying a message with us to the head of the Semna fortress, located on the western shore of the bay - there we are met by a whole crowd, consisting mainly of the inhabitants of the fortress. The life of the garrison is boring, and therefore they are always happy to see visitors from their native places.

On Semna it is worthwhile for us to complete our mental journey, since this fortress ends southern lands, which were in the possession of the Egyptian kings for so long that Egyptian customs and manners were adopted here. Although there are Egyptian temples and fortresses much further south, the path to them is blocked by rapids, and almost all coastline all the way to Sudan is barren rocks and boulders. In addition, we are traveling five centuries before the appearance of the pyramids at Napata and Meroe, which will be erected by the descendants of the "wretched Nubians", as Semna's garrison leader just called them. This is a friendly, hospitable person; we will not tell him that in a few centuries the "wretched Nubians" will move north to seize the Egyptian throne.

So, we examined most of the Black Earth, almost without leaving the side of the ship. Traveling by water is always pleasant; but when we now set off for the Red Land, we will only have to rejoice that our journey is only a mental one. So, we are heading to the desert - and for this we need all the strength of the spirit.

Deserts - Libyan in the west and Arabian in the east - are located slightly above the level of the valley. In prehistoric times, the river cut its way through a plateau composed of limestone in the north and sandstone in the south. By the time of the pharaohs—that is, the period we are now considering—the valley of the Nile already lies at the bottom of a gorge whose edges rise several hundred feet above it.

If we had gone into the desert to the east with a group of Egyptians, we might have come back to the valley of the Nile in the region of Koptos, which lies on the eastern bend of the river, where the Nile comes closest to the Red Sea. Here they could equip a donkey caravan - camels will not be known in these places for a long time - to go along the small gorge of Wadi Hammamat, going due east.

There are many similar canyons and gorges on the eastern plateau. There are several wells on our path, which has existed for several centuries. Even so, the journey is eerie. The earth is barren and dead, like the surface of the moon, they go parallel to the banks of the Nile high mountains, and at one point we have to cross a pass that rises 2,500 feet above sea level. The sun bakes incredibly, and the spring flowers that appear after the winter rains do not live long. Wiping the sweat, we remember the cool gardens of Koptos spread around the prince's palace and wonder with surprise what kind of madmen go to this purgatory. The answer to this question lies, in particular, in the ancient name of Koptos. This city was called Nebet - "Golden Place".

Some of the gold that enabled Egypt to rise among other nations comes from Nubia, but most of it comes from the desert to the east of Egypt. Some gold remained in this place even before the 20th century AD. e. Then a corporation was created to develop ancient mines; this idea had to be abandoned, since the profit did not cover the cost of extracting gold from the ore, this problem did not bother the Egyptians: if they wanted to do something, they applied to it all the forces that we cannot afford. A brilliant example of this is the pyramids. It is possible, however, that the Egyptians worked out the rich ore and abandoned everything else.

In the museum in Turin there is one very interesting papyrus - the oldest treasure map in the world. Perhaps it was compiled precisely at the time in which we went on our imaginary journey through Ancient Egypt. The map shows the location of some of the gold mines in the eastern desert. Archaeologists cannot say with certainty what kind of mines they meant - they could very well be those that lay along the Hashamanat trail. These mines - the mines of Fuahir - were located almost at the door of Egypt. At some abandoned mines, far from the trails, the remains of the ancient camps of gold miners are still preserved, which are pens for cattle and for the human cattle that worked in the mines, as well as barracks for soldiers who drove slaves to hard work. Apparently, only criminals and prisoners of war were sent to these godforsaken places. Such punishments were suitable for any, even the most serious crime.

Ancient map of the gold mining area

In the deserts one could find not only gold, but also semi-precious, ornamental stones - garnet, agate, chalcedony, jasper, rock crystal, carnelian - translucent dark red quartz. All these stones were used for jewelry. Apparently, the ancients never saw beryls and emeralds, they were found in the Arabian desert only in our days.

Hard stone was also brought from the desert. It is known that all stones are hard, but some are harder than others. The limestone and sandstone of the mountains surrounding the valley were soft stones, most of the temples were built from them. But for special structures, such as the sarcophagi designed to protect the bodies of the kings and the statues of the pharaohs to forever keep the appearance of the pharaohs, more durable materials were required. Granite was mined in Aswan, quartzite was mined in quarries northeast of present-day Cairo, and "behen fine stone," a variety of quartz prized for its mirror-like surface, was brought from the mines along the Wadi Hammamat route. The stone was also mined in the desert; today we even know exactly where. Marble, porphyry, slate, basalt - the list of mined stones is very large.

Beneath its repulsive surface, the desert is just a chest of jewels. But the Egyptians had another reason why they decided to go to the desert. Through Wadi Hammamat, caravans could reach the Red Sea, and from the ports the Egyptians sent trading expeditions south along the coast of Africa. There was a country that the Egyptians poetically called "the land of the gods." From these places monkeys and ivory, gold and ebony, panther skins, ostrich feathers, frankincense and myrrh arrived in Egypt. We do not know exactly where this exotic country was located, but there is an assumption that it is close to modern Somalia.

Following our mental jump from the island of Elephantine to the city of Koptos, we will make another one - to the north, to the Delta, in which the Nile seems to spread its green arms to the west and east. To the east of the Delta lies the desert, which stretches all the way to the Sinai Peninsula. These lands are one of the sources of the prosperity of Egypt and the road to distant countries.

The Sinai Peninsula is rich in copper. All Egyptians had copper things. It is quite reasonable to assume that the Egyptians got copper from Sinai, but this is only an assumption; Surprisingly, we have no proof. The mines in Sinai, Maghar and Serabit al-Khadim certainly belonged to the Egyptians, since it was the Egyptian inscriptions scratched on the rocks surrounding the mines, but turquoise was mined there, not copper. There are ancient copper mines in Sinai, but there is no evidence that they belonged to the Egyptians. Copper, which was so important for Egypt, could have been brought from the eastern desert - after much research, Egyptian inscriptions were found there, but we do not know anything about Sinai.

Roads cut through the sands and rocks of Sinai led to Asia. From the East, the Egyptians received zinc and silver, petrified resin, lapis lazuli and jadeite, as well as the famous Lebanese cedar. During the time of the empire, when Egypt waged wars of conquest or fought off invaders, the Egyptians received slaves, hired soldiers, cattle and various booty from the east. Unfortunately, the roads lead in two directions - both Egyptian troops and troops from Asia could pass through them. It was not easy for the Asiatics to pass, for the Egyptians guarded these roads; by posting military garrisons at a few wells, they could quite easily control the movement to and from Egypt of "wretched Asiatics". However, at times a small trickle of strangers turned into a turbulent stream. The hated Hyksos, coming from Asia, subjected Egypt to a national humiliation, which was overcome only after the commander-king of the Eighteenth Dynasty drove the foreigners into the deserts from which they had come. Even from the conquerors, the Egyptians adopted new and useful ideas, and at all times they maintained constant contacts with other countries of the Middle East - Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, the Hittite power, which stimulated the development of Egyptian culture and was reflected in the history of Egypt. Other great civilized powers with which Egypt maintained trade relations included an island in the middle of the "Great Green" - Crete. Later, the Egyptians got acquainted with the Mycenaean culture.

The desert to the west of Egypt, the Libyan, deserves less praise. It contained few valuable minerals, mainly diorite and amethyst. The best thing about it was - a chain of oases, stretching almost parallel to the Nile. There were six large oases in total, five of which were part of Egyptian possessions. Kardah, the "southern oasis", was the most important of them - it was famous for its wine, as was Bahriyya, the "northern oasis". For economic activity Perhaps the most beneficial was Wadi Natrum, a source of potassium oxide, a salt that the Egyptians used in embalming. Far to the northwest of Wadi Natrum lay Siwa, the only oasis that was not under Egyptian control until relatively late in ancient Egyptian history. It was here that Alexander the Great arrived in order to become the recognized king of Egypt, Amon himself.

The water that allows the oasis to exist is stored in lakes and comes from underground sources, including thermal ones. Strange as it may sound, there is even an excess of water here, and numerous mosquitoes spread malaria. Perhaps that is why in the time of the pharaohs the oasis served as a place of exile for political opponents and criminals. The isolation of the oasis made it a safe prison and without barriers - one who got there could get back only by bribing the soldiers of the patrol to look the other way until the fugitive loaded the caravan of donkeys with water and food. The link here doomed to slow death everyone whom the king wanted to get rid of.

The Egyptians called the oasis the word "wahe", this is one of the few words that have passed into English language(another word was "adobe" - "unfired brick", from the Egyptian "djebat" - "mud brick"). At first, the oases, apparently, were inhabited by tribes of nomads, whom the Egyptians called "tjemehu" and "tjekhenu". These people needed somewhere to live, and there were no other habitable places in the area; just a few days of migration to the west, the endless sands of the Sahara began. Other nomads lived further north, near western edge Delta. They were very primitive compared to the Egyptians, who had to constantly send punitive expeditions here. Bearing in mind the conditions in which the nomads lived, we hardly have the right to condemn the tribes of the Libyan desert for attacks on the villages in the Delta or on any oasis. Nomads never posed a serious danger until they received the support of other wandering tribes in the 12th century BC.

Having made our imaginary journey without rising from our chair, we got to know more of Egypt than most ancient Egyptians could do. Even if they were travelers who traveled all the way from Koptos to Memphis or from Amarna to Elephantine, they could still see only the same landscape that did not change for centuries - the Nile and its valley, high cliffs, desert and arable land. In the best days of the empire, the Egyptians could see with their own eyes the exotic overseas countries. The common people used to go there as soldiers, but if they did not leave their bones in the impure land of Asia or Kush, then when they returned, they did not like to remember the time spent away from their native land. For them the world was small, well predictable; every Egyptian wanted his world to remain like this in the future.

"Beloved dearly by her father and mother"

Children and animals

1. CHILDREN

When an Egyptian nobleman went hunting, he took his whole family with him. The person shown in Fig. 3 of our book, bore the name Nebamon and was an official of the Eighteenth Dynasty; squatting at his feet is his daughter; his wife, beautiful and rather inappropriately dressed, stands behind him in such a position that, if it were in reality, the light boat of papyrus would surely capsize. Over the shoulder of Nebamon are several lotuses collected by his child; we can almost hear the high-pitched, childish voice, "They're so pretty here, daddy!" In one hand, the Egyptian holds live ducks, which serve as bait, in the other he clutches a throwing club, shaped like a snake. There is even a domestic cat here, who grabbed a duck by the wing to prevent it from flying away. Under the skiff calmly float like fish lined up in a row; on the left we see both flowers growing in the swamp and tall reeds.

A similar story is found on the walls of the tombs very often. Another nobleman, named Menna, had three children, two girls and a boy, and the whole family - his wife, boy and girls accompanied him on expeditions, the purpose of which was, in all likelihood, not only prey, but also general entertainment.

Perhaps the Egyptian fathers were more pleased with the appearance of sons for practical reasons - only boys could play the role of Horus, faithful to the duty of the son, in the mournful hour of the funeral ceremony. However, there is no reason to believe that fathers loved their daughters less than their sons. If little girls were taken duck hunting, it speaks of an affection that very few fathers today dare to show.

One of the most tender fathers in ancient Egypt was Akhenaten, the husband of Nefertiti, the great heretic. Akhenaten did not have a single son from Nefertiti, and, in all likelihood, this caused him immense grief. But even if this is so, Akhenaten did not leave a single mention of this. All seven of his daughters were his pride, and, apparently, he spoiled them desperately. Wherever he went, Akhenaten invariably took them with him - both to the temple to honor the Aten, and to state dinners, and to ceremonies in honor of particularly distinguished statesmen. When Akhenaten and Nefertiti went on a ride in their chariot, the daughters invariably followed them in their own chariots or in one that belonged to their parents. In one image, Akhenaten can be seen turning to his wife for a tender kiss; one of the daughters riding with them in the chariot took advantage of the fact that their parents were distracted to spur the horses with a stick. Akhenaten lost one of his daughters when she was very young. On the walls of the royal tomb where this child was buried, he left lines full of such inconsolable grief, the likes of which cannot be found in any other tomb.

Akhenaten was unique in how openly he expressed love for his children, but he was certainly not the only Egyptian parent who had tender feelings for children. The aesthetic canons followed by Egyptian art generally forbade the depiction of family scenes. However, from exceptions to this rule, such as the depiction of hunting, as well as circumstantial evidence, we know that family relations were close and warm. Among the lofty epithets on the funerary stelae, there are also the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter: "Beloved dearly by her father and mother."

While the children were small, they led a rather carefree lifestyle. What were they playing? Most likely, stones, sand, fragments of broken dishes, because in those days, parents did not burden their children with all sorts of educational toys. Some of the ancient toys have survived to this day - these are miniature weapons and some rather ingenious mechanical devices. One of them is a row of little dancing dwarfs standing on a platform; they are raised and lowered with a rope. It was an expensive toy and was apparently intended for the son of some nobleman, who, perhaps after playing with it for five minutes, put it to gather dust in order to return to his favorite sand pies. Another mechanical toy shown by us in the photo was a cat. The jaws of the cat moved with the help of a rope.

Egyptian dolls can be found in many museum collections, but most likely they were not children's toys. This can be said with certainty about the small naked female figures that served as funeral magical talismans; they were found in tombs. Other dolls are very primitive and represent wooden blocks turned into blades, roughly painted, with a hat of clay curls. Since they were also found in tombs, it is possible that they also had magical significance.

Apparently, the children loved to swim. Rich people boasted of artificial ponds in their gardens; the common people had at their disposal the Nile or some man-made canal. The youth played ball. This ball resembled a modern baseball. The balls were sewn from animal skins and stuffed. The boys were popular racing and wrestling, girls - dancing and playing "their house". Images of some games have been preserved on the bas-reliefs of the tombs; four children are playing on one, two have climbed onto the backs of the other two and are throwing the ball. The goal of the game is easy to guess. Apparently, the game brought a lot of joy, especially dexterous and agile. In another game, one boy stands in the center, four or five surround him, holding hands. The game was called "Go around four times", but we do not know its rules.

2. PETS

Pets brought a lot of joy to both adults and children. Apparently, Egypt is the birthplace of the domestic cat. The wild ancestor of our alley cats (sorry, "domestic shorthair") was probably a small animal with dark stripes or spots. The Egyptians discovered the usefulness of this wonderful creature very early, and perhaps in connection with the cultivation of crops. Where there are granaries, there are rodents, and no mousetrap can compare with a cat. With the self-confidence inherent in this beast, the Egyptian cat soon moved out of the barn and into the house, taking his favorite cat's place under the owner's chair.

Cat under its owner's chair

One goddess revered by the Egyptians had the head of a cat, which in itself is not a sign of special reverence, since many animals were associated with one or another god. And not all cats, contrary to popular belief, were considered sacred animals in Egypt, but such cats lived in Bubastis, where the main sanctuary of the goddess with a cat's head was located. Cat mummies have also been found; some were probably sacred animals, and some were just pets. It seems that Egyptian sculptors liked the grace of the flexible cat body - a great many figurines depicting cats have survived to this day, from very small ones that could be carried with you as an amulet, to large ones, almost life-size. In the latter case, the graceful lines of the back and sides, as well as the proud, spotted muzzle, are sculpted with amazing grace. In all surviving images and sculptures, the cat looks smooth and well groomed. Cats were indeed treated with tender care, at least from the spell to expel poison from the body of a cat stung by a scorpion. Like spells for human illness, this spell calls for magic to help. “O Ra, come to your daughter,” it begins, “who was stung by a scorpion on a desert road. Her cries are directed to you; hear them on your way! She tried to suck the poison out of the wound, but, alas, the poison penetrated her limbs. Ra replies that he is ready to help the cat, and then each part of the cat's body is given under the protection of a separate god: “O cat, your head is the head of Ra; O cat, your nose is the nose of Thoth…” and so on. After that, a much more practical recommendation is given in the spell - to apply a tourniquet.

Cat on the hunt

Yes, it is certain that the Egyptians were very fond of cats. They even gave their daughters the pet name "little cat", equivalent to our "kitten". We should mention that the word for cat was "miu" in Egyptian.

Dogs, apparently, were domesticated quite early, as it was in many countries of the world. By the time dogs appeared on Egyptian bas-reliefs, there were already several different breeds. Dogs of one of these breeds were long-bodied, with long legs, and resembled the American Greyhound. Perhaps they have something to do with the African Saluki dog breed, which is still used for hunting. Another type of dog resembles the short-haired terrier - except for a strange ball at the end of the tail; such a ball is not found today in any of the breeds and, perhaps, was an ornament that the dog owed to its owner. But among the dogs that I have seen in ancient Egyptian images, I like the little dogs with crooked paws, a rounded body and a long muzzle of a dachshund, although with sharp ears, and not hanging, like our dachshunds.

Dogs can often be seen in paintings and bas-reliefs - in the form of domestic animals and hunting companions, but their sculptural figures are almost never found. Perhaps this is due to the fact that dogs were not deified - with the exception of those cases when the god Set was depicted as a dog, also reminiscent of Greyhounds.

Three breeds of Egyptian dogs

Dog lovers these days claim that their four-legged friends show more love for their owners than cats. Perhaps the Egyptians felt the same way; at least they gave their dogs the same names as family members. Professor Y.M.A. Janssen compiled a list of dog names, and it is long enough to conclude that many dogs had names. This is very significant, since the name among the Egyptians also had a magical meaning. It seems that the most famous dogs of antiquity belonged to the young pharaoh of Thebes in the pre-Middle Kingdom period. His name was Vaankh, and five dogs are depicted on his funerary stele next to him. Perhaps he hoped to keep the affection of his dogs in the next life. Near each image of a dog its name is written. Three dogs were named the same, in translation this nickname sounds Gazelle, one had the nickname Black, one - Kitchen Pot. The last nickname looks strange, but it's easy to explain. The kitchen pot is full of food, and in all likelihood, this dog loved to eat.

Monkeys were also pets. Several images have survived showing these animals sadly squatting under the owner's chair - in a place usually occupied by a domestic cat. One more hilarious picture shows monkeys holding children's hands. One of my favorite images shows a cat, a goose and a monkey. The monkey spins merrily on the crossbar of the chair; the cat and the goose are embracing in a friendly way, the cat is clasping the goose's neck with its paw. The bird seems to doubt his friendly intentions - there is fear in the eyes of the goose, its paws are above the ground, as if it was about to take off. I really wanted to bring this scene in the book, but some other ancient vandals beat off the cat's head and ruined the whole picture. Only the tops of the ears and the tips of the mustache remained - which, however, is enough to say with confidence that the jaws of the pussy are not closed on the neck of his excessively frightened neighbor.

The Egyptians domesticated many other animals, but we cannot now tell how much they were attached to them. The Egyptians used horses, but relatively few. Near the tomb of Senmut, a close friend of Queen Hatshepsut, the mummy of a kobyshyg was buried. This nobleman must have loved animals, since his beloved monkey was buried with him. The kings of Nubian origin from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty were very fond of horses. An unfortunate Egyptian prince whose city had been besieged and conquered nearly lost his head when his conqueror Piankhi, the first king of the Nubian dynasty, discovered that the horses in the prince's stall were emaciated from a long siege. Piankhi stated that the suffering of the horses caused him far greater pain than anything else - including, presumably, starvation among the inhabitants of the besieged city and the death of many soldiers from both armies. I myself love animals, but still I think this addiction is somewhat excessive. However, in ancient Egypt it is difficult to surprise anyone with such views.

The list of animals people felt attached to on horseback may have ended, but I am convinced that Egyptian children also enjoyed playing with other animals, especially cubs. The Egyptians did not use camels; Donkeys carried weights. Goats, pigs and other livestock were raised for meat. Baby gazelles and mountain goats were tamed, and until they grew up, children probably showed some interest in them. Apparently, ducklings and goslings amused them, but not chickens - chickens were not known in Egypt.

3. Grow up

Small children did not have to worry about clothes - they ran naked. However, teenagers already had to wear the same clothes as their parents - skirts for boys, simple linen dresses for girls. The girls' hair lay loose or were tied in a bun, but the boys wore a very unusual hairstyle - they shaved their heads, with the exception of a braided pigtail descending from the crown to one side.

Such a pigtail can be quite clearly seen on the bas-reliefs; it was found in one of the mummies belonging to a boy of about eleven years old. The long plait of the mummy was not cut off, but it is known that when the young men reached a certain age, the plait was cut off at the appropriate ceremony, after which the circumcision took place. One of the texts mentions the mass circumcision of 120 men and says that not one of them refused and was not deleted from the list! Similar mass ceremonies marking the achievement of puberty are known in many cultures; from a young man during such an initiation into a man (initiation) they expected firmness of spirit and patience with pain. We have no information that this ritual was associated with a certain age, but we know for sure its meaning. "Pigtail of youth" is often mentioned in Egyptian texts. After the ceremony, the boy was no longer considered a teenager or, as it is fashionable to say now, a teenager. He became a man ready for adult duties. In the Middle East and today, physical maturation is earlier than in Western countries, so Egyptian children most likely entered adulthood at an age that may seem outrageously early to us. Funerary autobiographies are extremely stingy with information about the age at which the author of this biography began his career, but it is believed that the choice and training of a profession and marriage occurred after ten years.

Teen pigtail

An adult could start a family. A man needed sons who, after the death of his father, would perform all the required funeral ceremonies and provide his spirit with food and drink. This is one of the main reasons why the Egyptians got married. Often the marriages of children were arranged by parents, but in Egypt there was no such isolation of women that is accepted in the modern Middle East, and in principle a boy and a girl could marry for mutual love.

Egyptian love lyrics appeared at a relatively late period in the history of Ancient Egypt, but we have no reason to believe that the state of mind so colorfully described by this poetry could only be experienced after, say, 1500 BC. e. The lines of ancient poetry may seem funny to someone - but only to those who themselves have not experienced the described feelings.

It was believed that the young man should show his feelings first; before he does this, the girl must behave modestly and shyly.

I met Mekhi - he was driving along the road

Together with your friends.

I don't know where to turn from his path;

Should I, as if by chance, go after him?

I look, instead of the road, I entered the river.

I don't know where to put my foot!

Looking at the unsuspecting object of her adoration, the girl does not dare to show her love; trying to remain calm and indifferent, she does not see where she is going. But now she finds out that she is loved, and expresses a passionate desire:

Oh if you would come to me

Like a king's stallion

Chosen from all other horses,

The best in the stable!

The young man experiences the same torments and delights that excite the heroes of modern novels. When his lover returns his love, he plunges into wild dreams:

The love of my beloved

On that shore;

A river separates us

And the crocodiles that hide

On the sandbanks.

But by entering the river, I will overcome the waves.

My heart will not waver in the stream.

Water is like earth at my feet, its love will keep me safe.

Love, like an amulet, will help overcome the water!

When the girl leaves him, the young man becomes despondent:

For seven days I did not see my beloved,

And I got sick.

My body is heavy; I forgot about myself.

If the best doctors come to me

My heart cannot be healed by their means.

And the priests won't help me.

My illness has no name.

When I see her then and I'll get better.

When she opens her eyes, my body will look younger.

When she speaks, I will be strong.

When I embrace her, she will drive the evil out of me.

But she's gone - it's been seven days now.

There is no eroticism in these poems; they express romantic love, although many experts seem to believe that such emotions can only take place in our culture. There is no doubt that lovers ultimately desire physical union - but that is not the only thing that interests them. Both chagrin and plaisir d "amour are perfectly expressed in the verses. The mere presence of an object of love is enough for a girl or a young man to experience an upliftment, and a kiss sends them to heaven. A certain young man enthusiastically says:

When I kiss her and her lips are open

I'm happy without beer!

In other words, drunk with love. There is a common belief that the Egyptians did not kiss, but only rubbed their noses. The lines above, I believe, clearly show that the matter was not limited to noses. A kiss implies a rapprochement of faces, the most protruding detail on the face is the nose, and therefore in some reliefs one can really see those standing “nose to nose”. The canons of art did not allow Egyptian artists to show the face in the close contact required for a kiss; the nose-to-nose position was the maximum they could allow without overlapping parts of the image and thereby violating generally accepted rules. I am quite sure that Akhenaten kissed his wife: he was an iconoclast, a heretic, and the beauty of Nefertiti undoubtedly excited him. Some of the Amarna bas-reliefs show the royal couple in rather romantic poses. In one case, Nefertiti's head is thrown back, and it is quite obvious that lips, not noses, should meet. In other bas-reliefs, the queen pursed her lips for a kiss. Since the Amarna artists were given more freedom in depicting people, it may be that they were trying to reflect an existing custom that could not previously be made the subject of an image.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti

The Egyptians even believed in something that many do not believe in our times - in love at first sight. Ramesses II fell in love with his bride, a princess from the state of Mitanni, the moment he saw her, "because she was the most beautiful of all." And in one of the most beautiful Egyptian legends ... However, let's tell it in order.

“A long time ago, in the old days, there lived a king who had no sons. And then his majesty turned to the gods with a request to give him a son - and the gods decided that he would have one. That night he lay down with his wife and she became pregnant. And so, when the time of pregnancy passed, a son was born. The wife went to Semi Hathor to find out his fate. Hathor said: "He will die either from a crocodile, or from a snake, or from a dog."

The people who were near the child heard this and conveyed these words to his majesty. This news filled the king's heart with great sorrow. And his majesty ordered a stone house to be built on a deserted place and filled with servants and all the best from the palace so that the boy could not leave the house.

When the boy grew up, one day, while on the terrace, he saw a dog running after a man walking along the road. And he said to his servant: "What is this thing that follows a man walking along the road?" He replied: "It's a dog." And the boy said: "Let someone bring me the same one." When the servant conveyed these words to His Majesty, the king said: "Bring him a small dog so that he does not grieve." And the servants brought the boy a puppy.”

When the boy grew up, he began to be burdened by being in the palace, and he persuaded his father to let him go, saying that the gods would still carry out what was written in the family. Dressed in traveling clothes, the king's son set off on a journey and eventually ended up in Naharin, where he learned about an extraordinary event. The king of Naharin had only one daughter, for whom he built a special house. The windows of this house were seventy cubits above the ground. The king called the sons of all the princes of Syria to him and announced to them: "To the one who jumps to the window of my daughter, I will give her as a wife."

The newly arrived royal son was kindly greeted by the Syrian youths: he was handsome, besides, everyone was touched by his sad story: hiding his origin, he said that the new stepmother made his life in the house unbearable. He asked the Syrians why they were jumping in front of the high tower all day long, and they told about the king's condition. And he said to them: "Oh, if my legs do not fail me, I would also jump with you." And when they again went to jump, which they did every day, he stood aside and watched. And the daughter of the king of Naharin saw him.

Several days passed, and the king's son also went to jump with other young men. When it was his turn, he jumped to the window of the king's daughter! She hugged him and kissed him. Witnesses went to her father to tell him about this ... and the king asked: "Is he the son of one of the princes?" They answered him: "He is the son of a nobleman from Egypt and ran away from his stepmother."

At these words the king of Naharin flew into a great rage and said, “Should I give my daughter to a fugitive from Egypt? Let him return to his home!” And the young men returned to the Egyptian prince to say: “You must return to where you came from!” But the young girl hugged him and said: “I swear to Ra-Harakhte, if he is taken from me, I will stop eating, stop drinking, I will immediately die!” And a messenger came to the king and reported what the daughter had said. Then her father sent soldiers to kill the prince on the spot. But the girl said: “I swear by Ra, if you kill him, I will die as soon as the sun goes down! I won't live another hour more!"

The king of Naharin was forced to yield to his angry, stubborn daughter; in addition, he was impressed both by the youth's beauty and his regal manner. In the end, the prince and the girl who fell in love with him at first sight got married. When the prince told his wife about the fate that the Seven Hathors had predicted for him, she asked him to get rid of the dog; but he replied that he had raised the dog from the time when it was still a puppy, and could not part with it. Thanks to the vigilance of his devoted wife, the prince escaped the first threat - the snake; but then his own dog frightened him, and, running away from his pet, he fell into the mouth of a crocodile. But then the beast promised the prince to let him go, on the condition that he would fight the spirit of water, with whom the crocodile fought in vain for several months ... "

At this decisive moment for the prince, the ancient manuscript breaks off; this is one of the most annoying gaps in all ancient Egyptian literature. We can only guess whether the prince escaped death from a snake and a crocodile only to become a victim of a dog raised by him, or whether his dog came to his aid. I hope more for the second version - not only because I am an optimist, but also because the Egyptians were optimists; most of these fairy tales have happy endings. The astute reader will surely recognize many familiar details in this story - unfortunately less well known than it deserves.

The sudden love of a princess for a prince is a common emotional element in Western fairy tales. A prince in disguise, a princess in an inaccessible castle whose hand is the reward for prowess, a sad fate foretold, the boy's father's attempt to avoid that fate by hiding his son—all of these are found in a dozen well-known European tales. ancient legend makes you wonder where the true origins of our folklore are. From the beginning of the Christian era, when this tale was written down, until the 19th century, when it was found and translated, not a single person on earth could read The Doomed Prince, as this ancient manuscript is titled. How did stories from it get into such European fairy tales as "Rupunzel" or "The Princess on the Glass Mountain"? Maybe we are dealing with some general, deep psychological characteristics of a person?

Like it or not, the Egyptians' views on love were in many ways similar to ours. Their views on marriage, which, of course, is completely special character, we will explore in the next chapter.

mistress of the house

Noble Egyptian

1. EGYPTIAN WOMAN

Someone - I think it was Dr. Margaret Murray - once said that the state of civilization of a country can be judged by the position of women in it. The higher the culture of the people, the more respect he has for the female half of the population.

As much as I would like to support this idea, I have to admit that even the most cursory study of the facts does not confirm this postulate at all. To take a simple example: the flowering of creative genius in Athens during the reign of Pericles propelled Greece into the ranks of the great civilized states - but perhaps none ancient culture did not keep women in such a miserable position as in the days of Sophocles, Socrates and Phidias. They didn't even leave Kinder, Kuchen und Kirche; women were looked askance even when they appeared near the temple. Conversely, a number of societies in which women occupied a high position are very primitive.

The example of Ancient Egypt does not show that the greatness of the country corresponded to the privileged position of women. Although they were better than in many other countries, they did not have the “equal rights” that modern women demand for themselves. They could not master any profession, as well as master any craft, with the exception of purely female ones. There were no carpenters, sculptors, or scribes among the women, although some ladies, at least in the royal family, could read and write. There were no priestesses among women, but some temples had their own staff of women. Most of them are referred to as "singers" - they sang in the choir and danced for the amusement of the gods. The "singers" accompanied themselves with the help of a sistrum. Sometimes these women were considered as the concubines of the god, although there is no evidence of the sacred prostitution that took place in some other cultures.

Women could be singers, dancers, or musicians, and in this capacity, as shown in the images, they often entertained guests at private dinners. But these girls—most of them young and beautiful—may not have been paid professionals, but only slaves or domestic servants—although one story describes a group of itinerant female musicians as very similar to a modern orchestra. However, the main residence of the woman was the house and family.

If you are a man of high position, you should run your own house and love your wife as you should. Fill her stomach and clothe her body; cover her skin with oil. Let her heart rejoice all the time while you are alive, she is a fertile field for her master. You must not argue with her in court; don't piss her off. Share with her what falls to your lot; this will keep it in your house for a long time.

This is how a wife should be treated, according to Ptahotep, a sage from the time of the Old Kingdom, who left a book of advice to posterity. It is rather difficult for us to imagine this person crossing a crocodile-infested river in order to get to his lady of the heart, or sinking into deep despondency when she goes to her parents for a week. Ptahotep wrote his advice during the Old Kingdom, and love songs appear only after a millennium, but one should not think that during this thousand years the Egyptians began to look at women differently. And in the time of love songs there were wise men who gave pure practical advice:

If you are a young man and take a wife and bring her into your home, remember that you were born and raised by your mother. Do not let your wife curse you, complain to the gods and they would hear her ... Do not burden your wife with guardianship if you know that she is in perfect health; don't tell her, "Where is it? Bring it to us!" when she [already] put this thing in the [most] convenient place. Keep quiet and watch - only in this way you will know her abilities.

The last sentence indicates the deep insight of this wise old man; Few of the men realize how annoying their wives are the constant "edifications" about doing household chores.

There is a big difference between the above quotes from different eras. Perhaps it indicates that in more recent times women have acquired more rights than at the dawn of Egyptian history. They definitely had property rights; dozens of legal documents on the purchase or acquisition of property have survived, in which women dispose of houses and land at will, without reference to the permission of a husband or father. Ms. Murray called this state of affairs "advanced," and in this ancient Egypt stood several steps above, for example, Victorian England. Ptahotep's words that a husband should not argue with his wife in court suggest that even in those days the wife had equal rights with her husband.

Ptahotep's words do not contain a grain of romance, but one very gratifying element can be seen in them. Although the husband was certainly the master of the house, his headship should be established by justice and attention, and not by brute force. It seems that the ancient sage does not say anything about assault for the reason that he does not consider it possible to even mention such rude behavior, but it probably still took place. However, in Egyptian culture, a lot is said about tenderness and courtesy, including in the relationship between husband and wife. Relations were clearly different from those in the modern Middle East; they can be called sophisticated, even refined.

We know very little about the marriage ceremony. Most authorities believe that the wedding was very modest; some even claim that it did not exist at all. Perhaps the man simply built a house and invited a woman into it, and when she moved to him, then the wedding took place. Most likely, there was some kind of documentary registration of marriage, but we do not have evidence of religious rites.

Polygamy was allowed, but not universally accepted. There was a certain difference between the status of a wife and a concubine. The first, or chief, wife was called the "mistress of the house" (it always gives me pleasure when merchants address me in this way; I am going to greet one of them in Egyptian one day). Marriage was not considered to be for life, divorce was quite possible, but usually the husband and wife believed that they would continue their marriage in afterlife, and therefore some figurines from the tombs depict a husband and wife sitting embracing, with a smile turned to eternity.

When a woman became a mother, her social status rose. It was believed that sons were supposed to honor and love their mothers, and the inscriptions on the tombs of the end of the Old Kingdom and the entire period of the First Interregnum, listing the merits of the deceased, usually contain a mention that he loved his mother. Strangely enough, these inscriptions do not speak of love for a wife. A man has been revered for his love for his parents, children, brothers and sisters - but never, as far as I know, for his love for his wife. This is a serious omission, and it is difficult to explain it.

We saw what the rights of a woman were. What are her responsibilities? One of the main ones is “to be a fertile field for your master”, that is, to give birth to children, preferably sons. Although other duties are rarely mentioned, it is natural to expect a wife to provide comforts for her husband, cook meals, keep clothes in order, look after the house, perform motherly duties. If the husband was a farmer, the wife helped him in the field; the wives of officials and "businessmen" often managed their husbands' affairs when they were away. In poor houses, women were engaged in grinding grain, baking bread, preparing beer, weaving, sewing clothes. And no one expected them to fix electrical appliances, clean drains, discuss political issues, drive a car, make a good dry martini - or become experts in nutrition, child psychology, design, bridge, and the theory of universal education.

Compared to women in many other cultures, Egyptian wives had very little to complain about. They were respected as mistresses of the house, their husbands were required to have a good disposition towards them. The children were attached to their mother and treated her with respect. Her property rights were protected, and at least one third of the property acquired by the spouses during the marriage was due to the wife in divorce. Although children were highly desirable, I have no record of a single case of divorce due to the infertility of the wife - in many nations even now this is a sufficient reason for divorce (note in parentheses that in polygamous societies this problem is solved more easily).

There was only one serious crime against marriage - infidelity. Since no code of ancient Egyptian laws has come down to us, we are forced to use indirect sources on this issue: based on several narratives, it can be judged that adultery - at least on the part of the wife - was a dangerous game. There is a story about a great magician and his unfaithful wife. This woman seriously tempted fate, thinking of cheating on her husband in such a dangerous profession; he, of course, immediately learned about everything. The wife's lover was thrown into the pond among the crocodiles, who, presumably, did not treat him very kindly. The unfaithful wife, by order of the king, was buried alive. In another story, a sinful wife, who planned adultery, but had not yet committed it, was killed by her husband, and her body was thrown to be eaten by dogs.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence of what happened to unfaithful husbands, but it is indisputable that promiscuity - before marriage and after it - was condemned by society. The sages of antiquity have left judgments on this matter. Ptahotep wrote: “If you want friendship to last for a long time, in a house where you are allowed as a son, brother or friend ... do not approach a woman ... Do not do this ... this is a true abomination.” A later sage, Ani, warns: “Be on your guard with a woman who has come from afar and is not known in the city. Don't stare at her when she passes by; do not seek to know her - a woman who is far from her husband, like a deep pool, the whirlpools of which are boundless ... This is a great crime, [worthy of] death.

There is a common truism that marriage between brother and sister was customary in ancient Egypt. I am always suspicious of "conventional opinions" and it is with great satisfaction that I report from my own research that this widely held notion is unfounded. A few years ago, my conclusions were confirmed by the research of Professor Yaroslav Cherny; his name deserves to be mentioned not only because he questioned the prevailing opinion, but also because he did an enormous - and extremely laborious - work to come to the final conclusions. The professor had to study hundreds of inscriptions, looking for the smallest crumbs of information about marital relations. The fact that during the Eighteenth Dynasty, if not earlier, the word "sister" meant the same as "wife" was very difficult to work with, and in love poems it also replaced the word "beloved." It was possible to say with certainty that the husband and wife were also brother and sister only in cases where the parents of the husband and wife were named, and the same for both, and this was rare. Nevertheless, Professor Cerny found enough examples to come to certain conclusions - and these conclusions were overwhelming. During the Middle Kingdom, he found only a few possible cases of brother-sister marriage, but one of them relies only on the assumption that the word "sister" was not used in the meaning of "wife" until the Eighteenth Dynasty. In other cases, the name of the mother was the same - quite common at that time. Professor Czerny did not find a single case in the Eighteenth Dynasty in which marriage between brother and sister could be said with certainty. From this, of course, we are not entitled to conclude that this did not happen at all, since we do not have data on all Egyptian marriages; but if marriages between relatives and byshi were allowed, they were infrequent, contrary to popular theory.

Ordinary Egyptians did not usually marry their sisters. The kings definitely did it - not always, but often. Why?

2. QUEEN

From this point of view, the question of the role of the queen in the succession to the throne should be carefully discussed. In presenting my views, I cannot help feeling somewhat embarrassed. In my book, I aim to provide the reader with all the information on those issues on which Egyptologists have not developed a common point of view, but in this case I disagree with all Egyptologists so thoroughly that I cannot move on without explaining the reasons for my disagreement.

The traditional theory claims that the queen could not rule, but it was through her that the right to inherit the throne passed. This right passed from mother to daughter, and only the one who married the heiress - whether he was the son of the king or not - had the right to legally occupy the throne. You can find this point of view in most of the books in Egypt. This opinion is so widespread that it is almost impossible to understand when and how it arose. At any rate, in the 1890s, when Sir James Fraser published The Golden Bough, he wrote: "Mr. William Petrie assured me that all Egyptologists recognized the postulate of succession to royal power through the female line."

Sir James occupies me in this case because he, along with other anthropologists, just then discovered matriarchy in primitive society. In their judgment, most, if not all, primitive communities were ruled by women. The mother goddess, a symbol of fertility, was the main goddess, and the mother woman was the head of the family, perhaps even among a whole tribe. All this happened at the dawn of history, before the advent of writing; by the time ancient civilizations arose, men rebelled and took over. But traces of the old order of things have survived in religious practice, in the right of inheritance, in terms of kinship, and so on.

At first glance, this theory seems reasonable. The physical connection of the child with the mother is obvious, and the role of the father is sometimes obscure. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were tribes in Australia in which they were unaware of the role of men in conception. Spirits brought children. The Europeans found this naive notion highly amusing. Fraser told in his book the touching story of an Australian man whose wife gave birth to a child after being away for a year. The Australian couldn't understand why the Europeans he worked for kept making fun of him.

It must be admitted that the role of men in conception is really not obvious. Some married women do not get pregnant at all, and some girls, denying that they have contacts with men, "suddenly" become pregnant. The time interval between conception and the first signs of pregnancy is quite large; only after five months the embryo begins to show signs of life; only the movement of the fetus indicated to the Neolithic woman with all certainty that she was pregnant. A primitive woman could not associate her pregnancy with anything other than eating, sleeping, or planting; it is not surprising that among primitive peoples sexual contact was not associated with pregnancy before a more complex concept of physiology arose. We may well agree that primitive man did not know who his father was.

But from the recognition of the fact that in primitive society birth was associated exclusively with a woman - and this fact, we note, is not supported by a single evidence from prehistoric cultures - far enough from the assertion that this society was dominated by matriarchy. Even if prehistoric man knew only his mother, it is not at all necessary that this is why he wanted to see her as the leader of the tribe. Physical and political strength does not need to be based on origin.

The harsh truth is that a man is always stronger than a woman. In prehistoric times, before the cultivation of agricultural crops, people were engaged in hunting. It was the men who brought the food on which the existence of the family or tribe depended. Childbearing in those days was not a woman's advantage, but her weakness. Every year for several months she moved with difficulty, slowly and clumsily. The child, as in our time, chose a time for birth that was convenient for him, but it could be extremely inconvenient for a woman if the birth took place during nomadism, war, or in the midst of harvesting. Even assuming that the primitive woman was physically a little stronger than the current pampered women and was physically incapacitated for less time during pregnancy, she still needed some time for a child; I just see her slender husband kicking his feet as the tribe moves farther and farther away, looking impatiently at the sun moving across the sky and hurrying his wife. It should also be remembered that childbearing is a dangerous thing. Perhaps the death rate among Neanderthals was not as high as in the 19th century, when the scientists of the doctor brought the bacilli of puerperal fever from the anatomists to the maternity wards, but some primitive women did die in childbirth. Maybe this is my opinion and biased, but it seems to me that a pregnant leader is not a gift for any tribe, especially for a wandering in search of prey.

It can be considered proven that women gained independence only with the advent of agriculture. The first farmers appear to have been women, and some astute Neanderthal husbands must have noticed the connection between the fertility of the land and their own wives. This could lead to the deification, if not of women, then of the feminine. But the oldest figurines, which are believed to symbolize mother goddesses, belong to the Paleolithic, and not to the Neolithic, that is, we return to the caveman - with tears in his eyes and trembling lips, bending over his wife, when she with a smile holds out her son to him ...

No, it doesn't make ends meet. If based on facts, it will have to be discarded as a completely untenable theory of primitive matriarchy. And since there is no matriarchy, the basic thesis on which the theory of the transfer of power in Egypt through the female line is based also disappears.

Indeed, if we study history closely, we find that female inheritance has been constantly interrupted by "exceptions to the rule." There are too many of these exceptions, and no one has given intelligible explanations for these exceptions. I will not bore the reader with a detailed listing of them, but if someone has studied Egyptian history, he may immediately recall several such exceptions (the most famous of them are Ti and Nefertiti, Akhenaten's mother and wife). One or two exceptions can confirm the rule, but the abundance of exceptions requires the search for a new rule. I would explain the rules of succession to the throne in ancient Egypt with the simplest principle - the king transferred his power to the eldest son of his main wife. If the main wife had only daughters, the right of inheritance passed to the daughter, but in this case a groom was selected for her, presumably from the sons of the king from the second wife or from the concubine. This man became king. Since women could not rule, the heir to the dynastic throne had to find a husband, but if the king's son succeeded, he had all the rights.

I must say that this scheme of succession to the throne is not very popular among Egyptologists. The reason is that the once put forward hypothesis of inheritance through the female line has never been seriously studied; no one doubted the theory of marriages between sisters and brothers, up to a thorough study of the issue by Professor Cerny. Of course, because the professor destroyed one traditional idea - about inheritance through the female line - it does not follow that the other - about matriarchy - is also wrong, but nevertheless the professor created an encouraging precedent.

Since in our reasoning we have reached the women on the throne, let's talk about them in more detail. Their role is unique. In all periods of Egyptian history, the queens were the "first ladies" of the country. Even during the First Dynasty, there are tombs of queens as large and elaborately decorated as those of the kings. Pyramid kings built small pyramids for their wives as well; a comparison of the size of the pyramids immediately suggests that, no matter how high the position of the queen among other women, compared with the king, this position was much more modest. The full titles of the queens in the inscriptions suggest her high status. One of these titles is difficult to translate literally, but if you try, without deviating too much from the text, to convey its meaning, you can offer the following translation: "She for whom everything that she says is done." Quite impressive if true. According to legend, the Old Kingdom ended with the sole reign of the queen. Whether the rule of woman was the cause of the decline, or merely a symptom of it, we cannot say.

Although queens had been in high positions since the dawn of Egyptian history, by the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty their influence had grown considerably. Apparently, the women on the throne of the Theban house, which united Egypt after the Hyksos invasion, were outstanding personalities; they were deeply revered by their husbands, sons, and even grandchildren. In addition, these women had real power. It is possible that the queens of earlier dynasties acted as regents in the presence of infant sons or during the absence of their husbands, but none of them were as famous as the women of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The zenith of women's influence came with the reign of Hatshepsut, a female king who wrested the throne from her young nephew. She ruled Egypt for over twenty years. It seems that Hatshepsut ended very badly, but this did not prevent the emergence of new queens in the future. A century later, Amenhotep III married a poor commoner, Ti, whom he devotedly loved. From the letters of foreign monarchs dating back to that time, it is clear that Ti participated - quite significantly, although unofficially - in the government of the state. At first she achieved primacy in the harem, and then took a higher position than the royal daughters and noble ladies. Her son Akhenaten not only treated his mother with deep respect, but also granted great rights to his wife. According to the statues that have come down to us, Nefertiti was very beautiful, so Akhenaten is not difficult to understand; but, according to the same evidence, Ti did not shine with beauty. However, perhaps she had what we call sex appeal.

Hatshepsut was not the only woman to rule Egypt. Apparently, on the throne in different time at least three other women were seated. Two of these figures are so obscure that it took a long time to prove that they ever existed at all. There is no record of their deeds. Another queen, Tausert, is sometimes referred to with the title "king". It ended the Nineteenth Dynasty, while the two queens mentioned above completed the Sixth and Twelfth. But we also know very little about Tausert; the curious thing is that Tausert may not have been the daughter of a king, and this looks especially strange - after all, just as a woman it was especially difficult for her to claim the throne. Hatshepsut was undoubtedly a great female usurper. Her transgression of tradition lies not only in the fact that she dared to rule Egypt, but also in the fact that she ruled, calling herself king. Egypt was to be ruled as monarch by a man; the title, the inscriptions of praise, and all the ceremonies were reserved for men, so deeply rooted in traditions and attitudes that it was much easier for a woman to adapt to the existing order of things than to make changes corresponding to her sex.

In the post-imperial period, some women on the throne acquired rights that may have conferred substantial political power. The new rights of the royal daughters-virgins were certified by the title of "wife of God"; during the New Kingdom, this title became purely religious and belonged to all queens. Apparently, the title spoke of the queen's intimate relationship with the god Amun, who, according to legend, was the father of her royal son. The princesses of a later time, who bore the same title, could also be considered the brides of Amon-Ra, but their marriages were not blessed with offspring. They did not marry, did not take earthly husbands and lived in Thebes, where they had some power as the high priestesses of Amun. Since the capital of Egypt at that time was located in the Delta, this allowed the king to have his own "viceroy" in the south - all the more valuable because this "viceroy" ruled on behalf of the king, and not on his own. Since the "wife of God" could not have children, she adopted the princess, who inherited power after her father; this girl, in turn, assumed the title of "wife of God" when her foster mother died.

The title "wife of the god" may have conferred some privileges due to its associated relationship with Amun, but the title "mother of the god", which is sometimes found next to the name of the queen, in all likelihood means "mother of the deified king." The king was a god at the same time in several ways; he was not only Horus, but also the son of the god Ra, and later Amon. The Egyptians did not care for such an apparent contradiction. Ra and Amon they most likely considered manifestations of the same supernatural power, and Amon was definitely the divine father of the king; two unrelated sets of bas-reliefs show his paternity quite clearly. Although the god visited the queen in the form of her mortal husband, he naturally warned her of his true name, which pleased her greatly.

Queen or commoner, the Egyptian woman led a relatively pleasant life, and we do not need to resort to questionable theories like the hypothesis of primitive matriarchy to explain the high position of women in society. The Egyptians were a civilized people in the broadest sense of the word, they were polite, friendly, fair. There is no need to explain why they treated their women well; rather, it requires an explanation of why other peoples do not have this. The notion of primitive matriarchy seems to have originated in the 19th century, at a time when women were looked upon as sexless angels and treated as unintelligent children; perhaps the matriarchy hypothesis was one of the attempts of the bearded pundits of Victorian England to see in other cultures something similar to their customs.

"Dress Her Back"

Necklace

1. CLOTHING

It seems that the passion for clothes in women is innate, it cannot be cured (this also applies to men, although they do not want to admit it). At all times and in all countries, women have taxed the income of their men, designed to ensure their beautiful appearance. Needless to say, the fashions in different countries were very different; some of the styles of even recent times look ridiculous now, and the “high fashion” outfits of other cultures may seem simply ridiculous.

Egyptian make-up and women's outfits are so alien to us that they seem to be completely exotic. It is noteworthy that only one material was used for clothing - canvas; wool was considered unclean from a ritual point of view, and cotton and silk were not known for a long time. However, the canvas also made it possible to create quite a variety of outfits. Egyptian weavers were skilled, and they produced the most diverse fabric - from a simple, ordinary linen to a thin translucent gas.

Common clothes of women of the Old Kingdom

The Egyptian version of our all-occasional "black dress" was a tight-fitting dress from just above the bust to the knees. Wide ribbons were held on the shoulders of the dress, leaving a large neckline. It is these outfits that are most often seen on statues and painted reliefs, although they may not be immediately visible to the untrained eye, due to the conventions of Egyptian art, which greatly distorted the female anatomy. Usually one breast was depicted in profile, and the second was guessed only by a neat round nipple in a conditionally chosen place. Ribbons of clothing were depicted "full face", they resemble the ribbons of bathing suits that are now out of fashion. Sometimes it is difficult to see any clothes at all on statues and drawings, except for a pair of ribbons and a line marked in place of the necklace. Obviously, the dresses were sewn so that they fit the figure as tightly as possible, and, perhaps, at the same time they chose thin material. Such fashion is quite suitable for slender and graceful, but I ask myself the question: how did the portly ladies feel in such outfits? Maybe they threw on cloaks, which came in handy on chilly evenings. At the choice of the owners, the cape could be worn on one shoulder, throwing the other edge over the arm, or simply cover both shoulders, like a shawl or stole.

Exquisite women's dress of the New Kingdom

With the complication of the social system as a whole, wealthy people have a new fashion. It was an outfit made of the lightest fabric, gathered into small folds. A cape was thrown over the shoulders, the ends of which were tied on the chest; this created the effect of broad shoulders. The fabric of the cape was also gathered into folds. Alas, no images of obese ladies have been preserved. These outfits were not only translucent, but also not fastened in front from the chest to the ankles, they fell freely, unless the waist was pulled together by a bright sash embroidered or trimmed with gold. The ends of the sash descended almost to the ground. Under the dress, a modest lady could wear an undershirt, as was worn in Europe in the recent past, but some of the ladies seem to have worn nothing at all.

Perhaps there has never been a time in history when men dressed as uniformly as they do now, when changes in clothing are limited by the number of buttons or the width of the lapels. Interest in changing styles, similar to women's, is not often shown by men; I suspect that the Egyptian men, on the other hand, were discussing Setnakhte's new collar with interest, and were keenly interested in Amenhotep, where he had obtained a new pleated skirt. The skirt - sometimes very short - was the main garment for men; pants were the lot of the distant future. The skirt had several types. Most often, it was a linen triangle, knee-length, which wrapped around the waist and was fastened in front with a knot or belt, or simply overlapped and plugged into the belt. Later, the ancient Egyptian Beau Brummel decided to wear a pleated skirt; his rivals lengthened the skirt and gathered the long ends into a series of pleats, giving a sort of pleated apron in front. Other rivals, on the contrary, shortened a piece of fabric and raised its two ends in front to the waist; an open gap formed in front covered a piece of denser matter, which served as a sheath for the phallus.

The most exquisite men's clothing resembled a woman's outfit: light, long and pleated. A man could also wear a two-piece robe: a pleated skirt and a shirt with wide pleated sleeves. Such a shirt did not have a collar, and it was tied around the neck.

Men's skirts - various types:

a B C- commoners; g - a nobleman, in a shirt and a transparent upper cape; d- the king, with an exquisite sash and a blue crown

Costume of a nobleman from the time of the New Kingdom

There were several varieties of clothing, depending on the occupation of the owner. Workers in the field - both men and women - wore only a loincloth or a short skirt. Skilful acrobats and small fragile girls who served guests at receptions wore only narrow belts and beads. Even the men's work clothes were more varied; some of them can be called uniforms. The vizier wore a flowing, non-pleated outfit, descending from the level of the armpits to the knees; this robe was held on by narrow ribbons. Sailors, apparently, preferred to wear clothes that are somewhat strange to us, made of coarse mesh with a leather patch at the back, which protected the skin during rowing. The most picturesque was the robe in which he wore priest-sem: the skin of a leopard, thrown over in such a way that the bared mouth lay on the chest.

Seme Priest Outfit

Most Egyptians went barefoot, but when a man wanted to dress up, he wore sandals. Even the poorest could afford papyrus sandals, but of course these sandals could not last long; leather ones were more practical. The gold and silver shoes found in the graves were most likely used only for funerals. She would have been extremely uncomfortable in the hot Egyptian climate, although even then people could endure a lot for the sake of beauty.

Our understanding of the Egyptian costume is mostly drawn from drawings and sculptures. The dry hot climate of Egypt kept many fragile materials in excellent condition, however, to our regret, the mummies were buried without clothes. We have only a few samples of the clothes that the Egyptians actually wore, and these samples complement the ideas that we can form from sculptures and drawings.

Perhaps we would never have known how varied and sophisticated the wardrobe of the Egyptian pharaoh was if Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter had not opened Tutankhamun's tomb. Golden coffins and masks, caskets and Jewelry overshadowed less impressive, but no less important subjects. Among them were the outfits once worn by Tutankhamen, carefully packed in boxes and chests so that the pharaoh could look as majestic in the afterlife as he was in life. Jewelry belonging to some queens and princes has survived to our times, but not a single sample of their clothes; we won't get them until we find some untouched tomb - if we find it at all.

One of the first objects discovered by the excited researchers of the tomb of Tutankhamun was a brightly colored chest with scenes of the royal hunt and the king's participation in battle depicted on its walls. These images are so magnificent that you involuntarily forget that the casket also had a purely utilitarian purpose. It served for storage; many things are packed in it: four pairs of sandals, a headrest, outfits, a glove, an archer's glove, headdresses, loincloths and various pieces of cloth. Carter's description of how he dismantled the contents of the box after removing it from the tomb serves good example for archaeologists in the study of antiquity, and also explains why it took Carter five years to clear four small rooms.

Opening the chest for the first time, Carter found a pair of sandals at the very top; to their left lay a folded bundle, in which Carter's experienced eye immediately recognized the royal attire. The surface of this attire was covered with a mesh of earthenware beads assembled into squares. Every second square was filled with gold glitter. Along the edges of the clothes there was a border of small colored glass beads, also assembled into patterns. These patterns could still be disassembled, although the threads that held the beads in place had long since decayed, and the slightest movement could cause them to come off.

Carter himself later found it hard to believe that he had extracted this unique outfit from the chest, having managed to preserve the pattern. Strictly speaking, Tutankhamen's tomb was not intact - in ancient times it was visited by robbers, and although they did not take much with them, they still pulled out all the contents from boxes and chests in search of easy-to-carry booty. The outfit in question was thrown to the floor; the priests, who returned the tomb to its original form, did not neatly fold the king's clothes - they simply rolled it into a bundle and put it in the chest.

The fabric, which looked strong at first glance, crumbled under Carter's fingers as he tried to gently touch it. To see the next layer of clothing, the top layer of fabric had to be sacrificed. Carter was faced with a choice - fabric or pattern. A pattern was chosen - quite wisely. Transferring the bead pattern fragment by fragment, Carter restored its intended appearance.

Sandal of Tutankhamen

Only when this painstaking work was completed did Carter begin to examine the contents of the chest. Luckily, the sandals were in good condition and they were taken out without any problems. Under the dress and sandals, there were three more pairs of sandals, similar in appearance to those rubber ones that are worn on the beach in our time. One strap started at the thumb and connected to another strap that covered the instep of the leg. On one pair of Tutankhamen's sandals, the central strap is made in the form of a lotus. The trunk of this lotus is lined with the smallest precious stones, the flower is trimmed with strips, gracefully curved and decorated with inlay. The third pair of shoes were slippers. They had no heels, their socks were made of leather, and the sides were lined with small gold sequins.

Under the sandals, Carter found with deep regret a decomposed mass that could not be restored. As he suggested, it used to be seven different robes tied in a knot; they were covered with sequins and roses made of precious metals.

Two more outfits, hastily tied into a knot and placed in one of the boxes in the annex to the tomb, withstood the test of time somewhat better. According to Carter, they were ceremonial attire. The outfits looked like long loose chasubles with hand-woven patterns and fringes. One was embroidered with a dwarf palm, desert flowers, and animals, which ran along the border and along the gate. The other was covered with multicolored woven roses, flowers and cartouches; at the gate there was a pattern in the form of wings of a falcon spread out to the sides.

As far as I know, no bas-reliefs have been found that depict the king in this kind of outfit. There were no images of slippers that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. In some statues, men and women are dressed in embroidered dresses or robes with a woven pattern, but there are very few such images. This makes us wonder how reliable our ideas that have arisen on the basis of such sources are. Perhaps the conventions of Egyptian art not only determined the poses, but also limited the artists in depicting clothes. We cannot say with certainty that the sculptures accurately reproduce the details - for example, the ribbons on the shoulders of women's clothing. Based on this, some authorities suggest that women's dresses did not fit the figure as tightly and were not as simple as it appears in the drawings. Of course, we can't say anything about this with certainty, but I don't see any reason why dresses can't be simple and tight. The Egyptians did not have complexes about nudity. However, they cannot be considered nudists, as some naturist magazines claim, since nudism in the modern sense of the word involves a deliberate violation of generally accepted norms. Usually the genitals of adult men and women were hidden under clothing, but the rest of the body was left naked, unless weather or convenience prevented this.

2. HAIRSTYLES

I have reason to believe that, along with artistic canons, the Egyptians also had strict canons regarding hairstyles, although it must be admitted that there were many types of hairstyles. Men were just as attentive to fashion in this area as women. The hair of the ladies was usually long, although during the early dynasties there were also "male" short hairstyles. Most often, thick and wavy hair fell freely down from under a ribbon on the head or a wreath of flowers; but to some this hairstyle seemed too simple. At times, women braided their hair into many thin braids or divided it into ringlets tied with gold ribbons. Sometimes the hair appears tousled and is reminiscent of the bouffant hairstyles of today. But the Egyptian lady had hair in her hair, not air - when her own curls were missing, she put strands of someone else's hair. If she did not like black or chestnut color, she could dye her hair red with henna.

In the "classical" time of the Old Kingdom, men often wore simple short hairstyles, similar to those that are common today. Popular was a haircut on the forehead, long, shoulder-length, hairstyle, from cool curls, curled in strict rows. The Middle Kingdom is characterized by a hairstyle in the form of a “kerchief” with bangs falling on the forehead, which faded along the edges of the forehead. During the New Kingdom, a new hairstyle spread throughout the country - at least among the nobles. She had two layers. The upper one consisted of thin, long, sausage-sized curls; the bottom layer consisted of rows of shorter curls or curled curls hanging down to the shoulders.

Hairstyles of the Ancient and Middle Kingdoms:

a B C- hairstyles for men ancient kingdom; G, d- women's styles under the Old Kingdom; e- a typical male hairstyle during the Middle Kingdom; and- women's hairstyle under the Middle Kingdom, front and back view

Hairstyles of the New Kingdom:

a- styles of men; b– women styles

During the Eighteenth Dynasty, this curled male wig had two varieties - long and short. The short type, sometimes called (totally unreasonably) "Nubian style", was also worn by women in Akhenaten's court. For this reason, some of the sculptures from Akhenaten's period are very difficult to identify. It is believed that the emergence of masculine style in women's fashion is one of the "decadent" features, the appearance of which some scholars attribute to the heretic Akhenaten and his family. We are also somewhat in a state of decline in our time, so the popularity of such hairstyles among our youth perhaps confirms this thesis. However, the ladies of the Fourth Dynasty - a period of classical royal power that did not stain itself with any unworthy features - also wore men's hairstyles. Maybe the fashion for clothes and hairstyles has something to do with the progress or regression of culture, but so far no one has proven this.

Combed up hairstyle of a female mummy

I already wrote about my suspicions that the reliefs do not tell us everything about hairstyles. This suspicion is confirmed by the found mummy of a middle-aged woman. On her head, a hairstyle that is extremely unusual for Egyptian women has been preserved. Of course, over the past time, she has lost her original appearance, but judging by her current state, this lady combed her hair up and curled it in waves over her ears and in nipple-like curls at the top of her head. This does not fit at all with our ideas about the appearance of the Egyptians, and I do not remember anything like this in any of the images that have come down to us.

Many exquisite hairstyles - both women's and men's - were wigs from someone else's hair. Samples of such wigs have survived to this day. In some statues and images, you can, if you try, see the real hair of the owner under the wig.

As a rule, facial hair in Egyptian men was rare. Sometimes the men wore a small neat mustache or a short beard, something like a goatee. But the Egyptian townspeople, like the villagers, usually shaved cleanly. The long, firm beards worn by kings during ceremonies were artificial.

3. JEWELERY AND COSMETICS

Although sometimes dresses and outerwear were woven from threads of different colors, usually the Egyptians preferred white clothes, the colors of which were present in the form of ornaments. Egyptian jewelry is just a miracle; the craftsmanship of early jewelers deserves the highest praise. Inlay, chasing, filigree, gilding and silvering - in Egypt they knew almost all the techniques known to modern jewelers. They achieved exceptional skill in making patterns from small gold spherical granules fused with a gold base. They also knew how to make something like cloisonné enamel, but instead of enamel, they set precious stones or faience in cells surrounded by gold.

Only semi-precious stones were used for jewelry; with the exception of pearls, from which only a few things are made, none of the precious stones were known to the Egyptians, although emeralds are found in the desert located to the east of Egypt. Carnelian, turquoise, garnet, feldspar, rock crystal, and lapis lazuli were the most commonly consumed; however, the most common material for jewelry was earthenware, an artificial material made from quartz mixed with an adhesive and poured into a solid mold. Faience was covered with glaze of various colors so that it took on the appearance of jewelry stones; turquoise was apparently the most popular color.

The main metals for jewelry were copper and gold, copper - for commoners, gold - for people of noble birth. Gold was used as it was found, without processing to increase the purity, so that the standard of gold in different products is different. Due to the impurities of silver or iron, gold had different shades - from gray to red-brown. The most common of these natural compounds was electrum, consisting of silver and gold, and having a pale yellow color, as well as a slightly greater weight than gold. The Egyptians apparently used electrum in the form in which it was mined in the desert from gold-bearing veins. It seems that only one kind of dyed gold was created artificially; This gold has a nice pink hue. It is considered the product of one of the "lost Egyptian sciences" that many people are diligently searching for in our time. However, in this case there is nothing to look for - such gold was also created by modern scientists. This color is due to iron impurities.

In the images, the ornament is extremely poor; fortunately, we do not need to refer to ancient images in order to get an idea of the ornamentation of gold jewelry. It's amazing how much jewelry has come down to us from the time of ancient Egypt - even though most of it was taken as booty by tomb robbers. In addition to the famous collection from Tutankhamen's tomb, we have at least half a dozen sets of jewelry now in various museums.

Among the finds, ornaments can most often be seen on wide flexible collars. The collars themselves were made from concentric beads, some of which were shaped like animals, flowers or leaves. The collar covered the front of the body from the neck to the middle of the chest, and since the beads were of bright colors, the collar was an important part of the outer garment. Instead of a collar, they also wore beads or pendants. Beads made from simple beads strung on a string have been found in such quantities that they can be purchased for private property when museums with collections of Egyptian objects hold a sale, but the beads usually sold are of an unattractive appearance. The best, of course, remain in the storerooms of museums. Hanging ornaments, on a string or a gold cord, depending on the wealth of the owner, are both amulets in the form of gods or magical hieroglyphs, as well as exquisite products made of cloisonné enamel, the relief on which depicts some kind of scene. The Egyptians also wore bracelets - either flexible, from several rows of beads, or solid, made of copper and gold. Women and boys, and perhaps even men, wore earrings. The hair was supported with diadems or a narrow bandage. Ribbons or rings embroidered with gold held long curls. Jewelry also includes belts, leather bracelets, rings of all kinds - the list is endless.

The most beautiful pieces of jewelry ever found belonged to a princess of the Twelfth Dynasty, Khnumit. I managed to find only a few good photographs of these lovely little things, but even photographs cannot convey all their beauty. My crude drawings may make it worse, but they allow you to imagine the placement of jewelry on their wearer. The crown shown is made of gold with inlays of lapis lazuli, red-orange carnelian, red jasper and green feldspar. Another crown, the most fragile ever worn by princesses or princesses of any country, consists of very thin threads of gold, on which are scattered the smallest red and blue flowers. The golden threads are caught together in places by cross-shaped clasps of four papyrus flowers. The design is extremely simple. The princess beads are a simple gold chain with various pendants. Some of these pendants, such as the large stars and the butterfly, are covered with fine gold granules, in which the Egyptian craftsmen were exceptionally skilled. One item is unusual - a medallion hanging on threads from two flowers covered with an openwork pattern of granules. On a pale blue background is a miniature bull with black spots; the picture is enclosed in a golden frame and covered with a thin plate of rock crystal.

Jewels of Princess Khnumit

Khnumit jewelry is considered non-Egyptian, perhaps because of its exceptional beauty. But the very technology of their manufacture is typically Egyptian and shows the high degree of skill that jewelers achieved during the Twelfth Dynasty - and which subsequently was never surpassed. Miniature images for Egypt are really not typical; the opinion has been expressed that the bull is of Cretan origin, but I clearly recognize in it one of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, it is difficult to say what was on the mind of the princess when she ordered this item. Perhaps the image of the bull had some personal meaning for her?

Several other decorations of princesses of the Middle Kingdom are kept in different museums. Later time is also represented quite widely. The most extensive and most famous collection, no doubt, remained from Tutankhamun.

As we look through the collection of Tutankhamen's jewelry in the Cairo Museum, stand by stand, we must remember that it is only part of what was buried with the pharaoh. Since the jewelry is small and very valuable, it was the first thing the tomb robbers looked for, and Carter was sure that most of the jewelry had been taken. The neat inscriptions on the boxes listed their contents, and from these inscriptions, Carter deduced that the jewelry boxes had lost at least 60 percent of what they contained. This is also confirmed by the fact that Carter found clothes with gold rings tied to it on the floor of the tomb, which testified both to the very fact of the robbery and to the fact that the robbers were prevented - perhaps by the protection of the necropolis.

Breast decoration of Tutankhamun

Earrings, pendants and pectoral decorations of Tutankhamun amaze with a variety of colors not noted in more early periods. The pendant decoration shown in the figure is typical. It looks better than other decorations, although it is overloaded with details. Of course, I cannot convey in my drawing the brilliance of the pendant, the delightful play of color and the splendor of the general ornament. This sketch cannot be used to judge the craftsmanship of the ancient Egyptian goldsmiths, but the reader can at least get an idea of the appearance of the pendant without being distracted by its other features. Although the design is somewhat intricate, similarly intricate things have been found in the tombs of the Twelfth Dynasty. Some of the pectoral decorations that belonged to the princesses seem to include everything in the world - with the possible exception of the kitchen tub. And some of Tutankhamen's jewelry compares favorably with the rather simple jewelry of earlier times. The scabbard of Tutankhamun's dagger is exceptionally beautiful by any measure; the same may be said of some of his rings, and of one of his diadems. The weighted design of the pendants and badge is more than offset by the craftsmanship of the jeweler and the variety of colors and materials. The colors may seem a little too bright to the reader when we describe them - dark blue lapis lazuli, orange-red carnelian, turquoise, red garnet, green feldspar - but they all blend together wonderfully, especially thanks to the thin gold stripes separating the stones. Apparently, there is no point in comparing the decorations of the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties. I can say on this occasion that I would like to admire the jewelry of Tutankhamun, but I would prefer to wear the jewelry of Princess Khnumit - if, of course, I could afford it.

Crowns of kings:

a– Red crown; b– White crown; in– Double crown; d - Blue (combat) crown; d- headdress "nemset"; e- headdress "afnet"; and- atef crown

Although Tutankhamun and the princesses left us several diadems - or simple crowns - none of the official crowns that we saw in the images have survived to this day. The king wore either a high White crown, or a basket-like Red crown, or a crown in which both previous ones were combined. The blue (battle) crown may have originally been a battle helmet. The atef crown is very intricate, looks heavy, it was obviously not easy to wear it on the head. For unofficial occasions, the king had a linen headdress resembling a women's scarf, the ends of which, however, were tied not at the chin, but at the back of the head. The crowns of the queens were just as intricate, although we can only judge them from bas-reliefs and statues. The high Blue Crown of Nefertiti is well known from the sculptural portrait; the queen preferred this particular type, since it covered her hair (I had a suspicion that she had no problems with her hair), but this type of headdress for queens, generally speaking, is not typical. The most widespread was the crown in the form of a vulture, made of gold and lined with pieces of colored stones in an amazing technique that looks like cloisonné enamel. At the top of the crown there could be high feathers and the moon disk of the goddess Hathor, cast in gold. There were other crowns, some so complex that one can only wonder how a fragile female neck could bear their weight.

End of introductory segment.