Drudges and Servants Antiquitys Working Women

A lecture given at Sydney University Continuing Education Program Dr Gae Callender While our focus on Egyptian womanhood is invariably on the middle and upper class Egyptian women as depicted in tomb reliefs and statuary, the bulk of the women who lived in Egypt in ancient times were the unsung workers of home and field. As these people were (as far as we know) Their funerary records do not communicate illiterate, they left no written records of the sorts of lives they led. with us, either, for their burials were seldom accompanied by grave goods, and all too often their skeletons, when found, have been merely labelled and put onto a dusty museum storage shelf. study at all. Ever since Egyptology has been the subject of books in our own era, it has been common for scholars to write about the history that concentrates on the upper and noble classes in ancient Egypt partly because those people were literate and it is easier to gain insight into their lives. Only in recent times have historians been moving away from this selective history of the elite classes to write about the less privileged working classes. Lower class men are more noticeable in the artistic and archaeological record, so more analysis has been carried out on their behalf. Their remains have been analysed and their appearance within the art of the time has been extensively studied, but the lives Most have not been given any sort of

of lower class ancient Egyptian women,1 who are not so noticeable in the pictorial aspects of Egyptian art, have been more hidden from us. We do have tomb models small statuettes of some women engaged in physical work: often depicted at the dreary task of grinding grain to make flour for the bread that was the staple Egyptian diet. Other images come from reliefs of Frequently, female workers in tombs more from the Old Kingdom than from the later periods of Egyptian history. womens work consisted of back-aching toil and they rarely had the freedom to choose a job that had variety or prestige as boys sometimes did. Instead, a girl was trained from a very young age to assist her mother in whatever duties she had to perform and all too often, that young girl was sent off at the age of ten years sometimes younger to be a servant in a wealthier household. (Sending the older children from home to begin a job or career was one way in which the poorer members of society coped with the feeding of all the children that they had.) Once she became part of an employers estate, the young girl would join other servants often a large number of them in helping with household chores. Their tasks could range from outdoor work (such as gleaning or of winnowing the grain), making kitchen pottery, cleaning the fish of her husbands catch, grinding grain, baking bread and, most
1

GIDDY, Lisa L., The Anubieion at Saqqra II: The Cemeteries, Egypt Exploration Society, Excavation Memoir 56 (London 1992) is one study that does look at the poorer classes. In the preface to the book, H.S. Smith points out that it is the fullest and most reliable publication of a cemetery of the poorer classes that we have thus far. Although the study really focuses on burials of the Late Period (the late 5th century BC), there do not seem to have been important changes for the poorer classes of Egyptians throughout the major periods of Egyptian history. 2

of all, weaving strips of linen to be made into garments and coverings. We do not know if they received wages for their work: our records are silent about this. Perhaps the servants food and shelter was considered payment enough. Sometimes, those richer families had large numbers of children although the older ones would be encouraged to marry and set up their own homes elsewhere. The First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom stelae do often have large numbers of relations depicted, though some of these people were not always children. paying homage to their parents. Stelae found in New Heqanakht, a Middle Kingdom settlements may also show a family of many children Kingdom farmer of whom we shall speak later, had five sons, in addition to a number of female dependants, some of whom may have been his daughters. Nonetheless, in addition to those family members, there were even larger numbers of servants attached to the families of the estates and wealthier homes. Even in the Old Kingdom such numbers of the 5th Dynasty middle-ranking servants could be large:

official, Uhemka,2 had at least ten female servants whom he depicted on the eastern wall of his tomb, and nine apparent male servants, in addition to other relatives and friends. Amongst the female workers named in Uhemkas tomb we can find a female hairdresser, a scorpion-catcher, an overseer of linen, a hemet-ka priestess, a servant and four seal2

Hans Kayser, Die Mastaba des Uhemka: Ein Grab in der Wste, Fackeltrger=Verlag Hannover (1964). Uhemka was a Scribe of the Archive (sS pr aA) and an Overseer of the house (imy-r pr) a steward. Uhemka held the title of rX nswt. The meaning of the title is a long-time subject of debate, but means "one who is known to the king". Many such title-holders can be shown to have royal descent. His wife, Hetepibes, was a rxt nswt. Her pet name was Ipi. The unusual thing about Uhemkas tomb is the large numbers of women with titles that are shown in it.

bearers.

Three other females appear as offering bearers on We never know whether or not these people

the north wall of the tomb and there are many more males in other scenes. stayed on his estate or if they came in to work each day; perhaps the women and some of the male servants were permanently established on Uhemkas property. Such workers would not have proper rooms set aside for their use (such as we expect should be provided for servants today). Instead, they would be expected to find a Conditions like this were nook such as under the stairs - in which to sleep somewhere about the farm. typical in practically all preindustrial societies. We do not have tomb scenes showing us the houses or families of these workers and we do not know where they lived: so much of our information about these drudges is missing from both the written and the archaeological evidence. Uhemkas tomb is an exceptional case where one or two children appear attached to a few of the female workers, but we do not know who the fathers of these children were, nor do we know whether or not the families of such women were actually resident on the estate. merut. It is possible that those servants who did live on the estate were the people we know as the Such people were included among the property of the From other illustrations in tombs estate owner in the same way that trees and ponds were part of his property. from the Old to the New Kingdom, we know that very young children accompanied their mothers when they went to work for the master. The work that these people did for the estate owners was usually segregated into male and female activities:
4

men

tended the cattle and livestock, helped in the butchery processes, worked in the vegetable garden and fields and usually made the beer. Others went fishing. Male artisans made statuary, made the furniture, smelted and poured and shaped metal objects and vessels and constructed buildings. Women might work in the fields as winnowers and gleaners during harvest time, but their usual work was indoors, where they spent a lot of time grinding grain, making bread, cooking for the more privileged members of the family, spinning and weaving the lengths of material needed for clothing and other purposes. Of all these duties carried out by female workers, the worst was grinding grain, because this activity put enormous strain on the shoulders and backs of the grinders. The skeletons of women who did this work show the early onset of arthritis in the shoulders and spine. also surfaced during a recent exhibition.3 Usually, women did this job, but one figurine of a male grinder has Water-carrying was usually done by women and that also took its toll and put further pressure on the spine and increased the chances of arthritis. The skeletons of females found in poor burials shows a high rate of arthritis before the age of 35, and, in sharp contrast to modern women, frequent cases of curvature of the spine, from crouching down to do the grinding. Nonetheless, the artists who depicted these scenes of workers on the estate usually presented them in positive
3

G. Robins [ed], Beyond the Pyramids. Egyptian Regional Art from the Museo Egizio, Turin, Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology (Emory, 1990), p.58, 78.

terms, so that they seem idyllic to us.

The reality was

different. And, as Gay Robins4 points out, whether this male-idealised picture of life on a large estate realistically reflected the division of labour between men and women in the lower levels of society is very uncertain. Tomb art aimed at showing the most advantageous aspects of life and work. We are also not sure about the finer details of the work that either sex carried out in ancient Egypt. While female weavers are depicted in the art receiving rewards for their work, weaving activities are never shown in the Old Kingdom and seldom in the New Kingdom.5 Although some weavers are shown collecting their wages, these people may have been professional women, if we are to judge by the types of rewards they were given. house! And again, it is not until Amarna times that we see anyone sweeping a floor, or cleaning a The men who did the laundry are also not depicted until late in the New Kingdom, so it is just as well that we have literature to help us fill in some of the missing scenes to enable us to view this ancient society. The women of the lower classes were like Egyptians everywhere in their likes and dislikes, of course. The lower classes really looked forward to having a meal with meat in it, although they seldom had such a treat. Fish and eggs were the main staples of life, and bread was probably eaten at every meal. Everyone drank beer which was made from stale bread soaked in water until it fermented
4 5

G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt, BM Press (London, 1993), 108.

It is in the Middle Kingdom that the tomb reliefs and paintings show us women spinning and weaving. 6

because the water was often unclean. Even today Egypt has occasional outbreaks of cholera, for the Nile was the sewer and drain as well as the source of drinking water for animals and humans. Wine, however, was a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthier members of society. There were few sweet treats: no sugar, of course, but if one could afford it, honey was eaten with relish. Dates were the sweetest fruit, but carob beans were ground into powder and used to make chocolate-tasting cakes and drinks. Herbal infusions were also drunk, and many of the vegetables we eat were also eaten by ancient Egyptians. Everyone liked to have a piece of jewellery, but whereas the rich had gold ornaments set with semi-precious stones, the poorer classes both men and women and their children would have a string of beads for the neck or around their wrists. Such items were often amulets magic charms to protect the wearer from harm but earrings and anklets were also popular and made from fired clay or faience. So life was not without its charms even for the lowest workers, but they were expected to work for very little compensation and their lives were much harder than the lives of many of our poorer members of society today.