CHAPTER X. The Life of the Ancient Egyptians.

The ' manners and customs ' of the ancient Egyptians are made known to us by the histories of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus and others, and by ihe pictures on the monuments and papyri/

When a child was born in Egypt, the mother made an offering to the local divinity. The rearing of the child of poor parents cost very little, for their food was very simple, and their dress scanty and cheap ; frequently they wore nothing at all, not even sandals. The children of rich or well-to-do parents would have an abundance of toys and playthings, and would be dressed in the richest stuffs. The toys consisted of dolls, figures of animals, and the like: the British Museum possesses several specimens, and has recently acquired a curious example of a toy in the shape of a wooden cat with inlaid glass eyes, and a movable lower jaw well lined with teeth. The mother carried her child in a shawl tied round her. The children were educated

* For fuller information as to the life of the Egyptians, the reader is referred to the excellent work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ' The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,' 2nd edition.

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according to their station and their future position in life. They were kept in strict subjection by their parents, and respect to old age was particularly inculcated ; the children of the priests were educated very thoroughly in writing of all kinds, hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic, and in the sciences of astronomy, mathematics, etc. The Jewish deliverer Moses was educated after the manner of the priests, and the ' wisdom of the Egyptians' became a proverbial expression among the outside nations, as indicating the utmost limit of human knowledge.

Women of rank wore a skirt .made of rich stuff fastened at the waist, and over their shoulders a large loose robe, which was tied at the waist. They wore costly head-dresses, and their hair was usually plaited. Long hair was considered beautiful, and packets of hair are found with mummies, showing how much it was prized. In the later days of the empire they wore earrings, generally made of gold ; and the custom of wearing rings on the fingers was common and widespread. The necklace was a very favourite ornament with both sexes, and the reader will get a very good idea of its varieties by a few minutes' study of those exhibited in the first Egyptian room of the British Museum. Two very important articles of an Egyptian lady's toilet were the kohl vot, and the ointment vase. The former contained a substance, frequently antimony, with which the ladies were accustomed to paint a black line round their eyes, to make them appear larger, and

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SO increase their beauty. The Bible reader will not need to be reminded that Jezebel painted her eyes when she heard that Jehu was coming to Jezreel ;^ and this custom is referred to elsewhere in Scripture.^ The koJil was applied to the eyes by means of a little stick, thick at one end ; the British Museum possesses a large number of koJil pots, some pierced with as many as five holes, in which the various unguents of an Egyptian lady's toilet were kept. The Egyptian lady used a copper mirror, very highly polished ;, the handles were of different shapes, and frequently bore the name of the owner. Baths with the Egyptians, as with the Romans, were considered of primary importance.

The Egyptian gentleman wore a kind of apron, and a sleeved garment, which he fastened round his waist with a girdle or sash like the women. The dress of the priests and the sacred scribes was made of linen, but in other respects resembled that of an ordinary gentleman. The men always shaved, but locks of hair were left on certain parts of the heads of children. The dress of the king was most gorgeous, consisting of robes of the most beautiful stuffs and the richest ornaments. His headdress was a short wig, to the front of which was Lt Cached a serpent. Both sexes wore sandals, made of a sort ot wicker work or leather ; they were sometimes carried by attendants, and were always taken off in the presence of the king.

The monuments give us no information about the

^ 2 Kings ix. 30. - Jer. iv, 30 ; Ezek. xxiii. 40.

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marriage ceremony, but it appears that if a man married a second wife while the first was living, he was compelled to pay a heavy fine to the first wife, and her son inherited the property. Polygamy was certainly practised by some of the nobles and kings of Egypt ; but as a rule the monuments give us the idea that the Egyptians were very affectionate in their domestic relations, and so the peace of the house was not likely to be broken by the introduction of a second wife. The kings sometimes married foreigners^ for Rameses IL took a daughter of the prince of the Khita to wife. The Egyptian priests^ like the Jewish, were allowed to have one wife only. The wife was reckoned in genealogies, and a woman was not forbidden by law to rule over the kingdom. The marriage of brother and sister was a custom that obtained, and the Ptolemies are notorious examples of this practice.

The king, as being the representative of the god Ra upon earth, was the highest and most important man in Egypt. It was necessary that he should be a learned man, a warrior, and able to rule. He bore various titles of honour, *son of the Sun' being not the least among them. Royal names were enclosed in a cartouche

{ 1 and each king had a different appellation,

which was placed before the family name, and is generally called the prenomen. The king declared war and made peace, he was the god and father of the land, he judged cases in public, and in war he led the army. He took part in the processions of offerings to the gods.

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and was priest as well as king ; he made offerings to the gods personally, entreating them to give him a prosperous and happy reign. The Egyptian king, like the Jewish, was anointed, and his double crown was supposed to be given him by his favourite deities. In one scene Rameses II. is being crowned by Set, above whose head is written, ' I set up thy head-dress on thy head like thy father Amen-Ra ;'^ and on the other side of the king stands Thoth, holding a palm branch plentifully notched, indicative of a long number of years, while above him is written, 'I give thee duration of life of years like Tmu.'

The dignity of king was hereditary, but queens were allowed to rule when the lawful heir was too young. The first object of the king was supposed to be the welfare of his people, both temporal and spiritual. Minor matters of administration would be disposed of by his subordinates, but things of importance would come before him and be discussed with his leading advisers and councillors. When the king died, or ascended to heaven, as the Egyptians would say, the son of the Sun was dead, and hence universal mourning prevailed in the land. The temple services ceased, the whole of the business arrangements of the towns were unhinged, and a general fast was observed ; and just as the king during life surpassed every one else by his glory, so in death the beauty of his funeral and its appointments surpassed that of all others. The greatest

^ Wilkinson, iii. p. 361.

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care was taken of the mummies of the great kings, and the safest spots were chosen in the mountains and elsewhere for their places of burial. The mummy was taken by a procession which crossed the river in boats, and then wended its way to the west of Thebes,. Memphis, or wherever the tombs were. It was then lifted from the bier, and placed upright in the tomb, and ceremonies were performed before it by the priest or priests. The great cemetery, or 'land of life' as the Egyptians called it, was at Memphis, where the remains of thousands upon thousands of people have been found, for it was the burial-place of that region for thousands of years.

The Egyptians lived in houses which consisted generally ot two stories, built for tha most part of unbaked brick ; they built them side by side, and so formed streets. The houses of the wealthy covered a very large extent of ground, and appear to have been provided with a courtyard in the- centre, and rows of trees. Of a small house a good idea may be got from the model which is preserved in the British Museum. There are three small rooms in it on the ground floor, and a flight of steps leads through a gallery to a rectangular doorless upper chamber, in which is seated the figure of a man : in the courtyard is the figure of a woman kneading dough at a table. The doors, opening inwards, swung on pins in sockets, and were fastened by bolts or bars as well as by locks and keys, though these latter only appear in the last days of the empire. The floors were made of stone or clay, and Wilkinson thought that the roofs

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were supported by rafters of the date tree arranged close together.^ The tops of the houses were frequently used by the inhabitants to take the air in the cool of the evening ; hence we may decide that there was a railing round about the top of the house, to prevent a sleepy or dozing person from falling off. It will be remembered that to * make a battlement for thy roof '^ is a positive command laid down by Moses in the Pentateuch.

In the houses of the wealthy the walls would be beautifully sculptured and decorated, and we may conclude that the same art which rendered their tombs so brilliant with colours and so beautiful, would be used to make the interiors of their houses attractive and pleasing ; and their furniture was of the richest kind. From the monuments we gather that the leading members of the aristocracy had large estates, in which their mansions stood, and upon these were kept horses, cattle, poultry, and a large number of servants. The Egyptian landlord had his stewards, who kept an account of the revenues of his lord and transacted all his business affairs. Parts of these estates were laid out as gardens with pieces of ornamental water in them, and round about were planted rows of palm trees and vines.

The principal occupation of a great part of the people of Egypt was agriculture ; this being the case, we are not surprised to find that all its operations were again carried on in the fields of Elysium by the blessed dead.

* Wilkinson, ' Ancient Egypt,' i. p. 357. - Deut. xxii. 8.

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The king was the great patron of agriculture, and the figures deposited with the dead are always made with a hoe in one hand and a whip in the other. The growing of grain made Egypt rich, and the scarcity of food in countries where agriculture was less attended to would make foreigners flock there to buy corn and bread. We have already seen that Amenemha III. built a huge lake with sluices and canals attached in order that the country round about might be watered ; and the strictest attention was paid to the rise of the Nile, on whose inundation the hopes of a good year were centred. Nilometers were established at various points, and people were told off to watch them, and to give warning if the inundation was likely to prove destructive, or, on the other hand, to announce a plenteous and prosperous season. The rising of the Nile began about the middle of June, and as the waters rose they turned from green to dark red. When the water began to go back, great care was taken to prevent it from running out of the fields, by making dykes and embankments. The water remaining behind was in a short time absorbed into the fields, and its fertilizing mud was ready for the husbandman. The ground was then broken up with plough or hoe, the seed was sprinkled in, and its treading in performed by cattle driven there for the purpose. If the height of the inundation was 1 6 cubits, it was well for Egypt and her people ; but if only 12, a famine was the result.

The Egyptian kings kept a standing army, but made

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use of mercenary troops from the earliest times. The troops were armed with bow, spear, shield, dagger, knife, axe, sling, and sword. They wore helmets and coats of armour. The shield was frequently covered with leather outside, and the hand grasped it by means of a thong. The army was divided into sections, and each section had its own standard ; kings, princes, generals, and nobles drove in chariots.

The Egyptian laws were strict, but had been made with the welfare of the country in view. The punishment of murder was death ; adultery and treason were punished by cutting off the nose of the offender, and strangling was resorted to occasionally ; while the punishment of theft was flogging.

The Egyptians lived upon the flesh of various creatures, such as the bull, goat, geese, pigeons, ducks, as well as upon cheese, milk, and certain vegetables ; while the poor would eat the lotus, papyrus, and onion freely. At table they ate with their hands or with spoons. Wine, drunk out of a shallow bowl, was a common accompaniment of a meal, and was partaken of by both sexes. The vines were supported on a series of forked sticks, and were sometimes made to extend the whole length of one side of the garden. The monuments show that there was a pool or tank of water near the vineyard, that apes or monkeys were used to gather the grapes, and that the juice was pressed from the grapes either in a bag or in a foot press. That drunkenness existed is evident from the fact that one of the tombs in Beni- Hassan repre-

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sents a drunken man being carried home from a feast. There is another drink frequently mentioned on the monuments, and that is beer, made from the red barley. The sepulchral tablets make the deceased pray that cakes and jugs of beer may be brought to him in the nether world ; hence we may gather that it was much esteemed in Egypt.

The Egyptians were passionately fond of hunting, and the animals hunted were the hyaena, the gazelle, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus ; the first two were either shot with bow and arrows, or noosed, and the last were speared. Birds were caught in a trap made of network, or with a fowling stick ; and fish were caught with the rod and line or speared.

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