Birth in Ancient Egypt: Timing, Trauma, and Triumph? Evidence from the Dakhleh Oasis. (original) (raw)
Change And Continuity: Birth Practices From The Middle Kingdom Through The New Kingdom
2020
Birth and fertility were central concerns in everyday life and a focus of popular religious practices in Egypt. Much of the previous scholarly literature on Egyptian fertility practices had approached the subject from conception through birth and early childhood. Still others had narrowed their focus on certain material or contexts. However, neither of these approaches had addressed the extent of change and continuity of birth and fertility practices through time. Given that the period from the Middle Kingdom (2000-1650 BCE) through the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE) is roughly a thousand years, with significant religious transformations, a chronological focus is necessary to understand the development of popular religion. The dissertation addresses birth and fertility practices in ancient Egypt in light of the social and religious changes during the Middle Kingdom through the New Kingdom. This work focuses primarily on the archaeological record of birth and fertility beliefs from tombs, temple, and domestic contexts, as well as discuss birth-related texts, such as medical-magical spells. Through this study, it is clear that there was a clear development of birth practices over time. These rituals did not occur in an exclusively female sphere of influence, with objects associated with men, women, and children. In addition, the customs did not undergo a "democratization," meaning an expansion of previously elite traditions to common people. The material had association with non-elites from the beginning. Likewise, while objects such as nude female figurines and certain amulets occurred all over Egypt, others belonged to regionally specific domains. This work, by examining the temporal and archaeological context of material pertaining to birth and fertility, sheds light on a major aspect of popular religious beliefs.
2019
This conference contribution will be published in the near future as proceedings of the colloquium (edited by Prof. A. Abdelhalim / D. Budde). The following article is part of the ongoing Ph. D. research concerning the complete royal and divine birth cycles from ancient Egypt. In the publication presented, the author focuses on the birth cycles predating the later periods and puts them in context. For the case of Hatshepsut as well as Amenhotep III., we can state that both birth cycles are closely connected with the Heb-Sed and therefore one perspective would be to interpret it from a rebirth point of view. In addition, both birth cycles were destroyed during the Amarna period, and later restored between the end of the 18th Dynasty and Ramesses II. This is surprising, since Hatshepsut had fallen under the damnatio memoriae. Interesting enough, her birth cycle was reinterpreted to serve the cult of Ahmose Nofretari, whose temple, the Mn-js.t, lies on the processional way in front of the Ḏsr-Ḏsr.w connecting it with Karnak. Finally, we observe that the birth cycles of Hatshepsut and Amenhotep III. do not only differ in details, but specifically in their place of depiction. While Hatshepsut’s birth cycle was erected in a portico with a large open courtyard in front of it, Amenophis’ III. birth cycle was in a closed room only accessible for the ones who could enter and pass by the sanctuary of the Luxor Temple. It demonstrates that these birth cycles were not copies of one another, but were each time changed to serve in detail a different purpose.
2006
To what extent can the folklore of modern Egypt be traced back across time to ancient Egypt? This dissertation aims to answer this question through a case study of concepts and practices related to human reproduction across 5000 years of Egyptian history. The continuity of such concepts and practices has been suggested by many authors, but none have done systematic research to prove their assertions. This work traces these concepts and practices back in time, from contemporary anthropological sources, to medieval authors like Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Hajj, back through the hagiographic literature documenting the battle for the faith of Egyptians between early Christians and pagans, to classical ancient Egyptian texts, art and archaeological sources. Attention is paid to systematic similarity diachronically, and suggestions are made as to the reason for their continuity, in spite of such major changes like language and religion. Among the topics covered are treatments for humidity in the womb as a cause of female infertility and male impotence caused by magic. Rituals carried out until today at sacred sites including ancient temples, churches and mosques are examined. The origins of the contemporary Egyptian post-natal ritual carried out on the seventh day after birth and related rituals are sought in Islamic, Coptic and ancient Egyptian sources. Finally, actions taken to prevent insufficient lactation and barrenness are explored. It is hoped that this study will inspire and encourage other scholars to incorporate material from all time periods of Egyptian history into their research in order to enhance the insights possible. This is a copy of my PhD dissertation from the University of Chicago
Lives of Women in Ancient Egypt [Master Thesis]
Markéta Svobodová - Sexual Passages in the Lives of Women in Ancient Egypt: Birth and Fertility of the Woman according to Ancient Egyptian Sources, Master Thesis, Charles University in Prague, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, 2016. The thesis seeks to explain the sexual passages of women related to fertility, such as menstruation, pregnancy and birth, in the ancient Egyptian world. The passages related to fertility have strong connotations with death in the Egyptian mythological context. The aim of the thesis is to understand this relationship, often metaphorically conveyed in iconography or in the netherworld literature. The thesis collects material from various sources, archeological, textual, iconographical, not only Egyptian, but also Greek and Roman. The methods used vary from cognitive linguistics and semiotic analysis to religious anthropology. Menstruation, pregnancy and birth in ancient Egypt are explained not only on the level of the understanding of the body of the Egyptians, but also in terms of what role they play in iconography and mythology. Furthermore, the relationship between birth and death is made with regards to fertility. The basic findings of this thesis consist of illustrating a dichotomy between the feminine nurturing principle of and masculine creative principle which appear in different contexts related to birth and death: in iconography, on the level of bodily fluids, or in mythological creation.
Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod 2022 - The Value of Children in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian Society Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, 2022
By treating children as a commodity, this chapter endeavours to provide an alternative means of accessing the position of children in ancient Egyptian society. The author first considers how much it would have cost to raise a child in New Kingdom Deir el-Medina, and then explores why the ancient Egyptian people were ready to take on this investment. Although couched in economic terms, the goal of the author is to use this approach in order to study the subject in an objective manner. Ultimately, it is clear that the Egyptian people valued their children beyond what they could have hoped to gain through their economic investment. This allows the author to demonstrate that children had value immediately at birth in Egyptian society, without leaning on modern values and biases.
Social reproduction and empire in an Egyptian century
Radical Philosophy, 2019
Focusing on the context of Egypt, we look at different historical moments during which debates on care work and motherhood cropped up and ask what these debates tell us about broader questions of capitalist reproduction. We imagine this article as an addition to work that has posited the intersecting nature of global structures that produce racism, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy. We believe that increased empirical attention to the everyday workings of social reproduction in postcolonial contexts can shed light on the ways social reproduction theory is imagined, and what it would mean to resist unpaid labour. We have chosen to structure this article around two vignettes—spanning the 20th century—to highlight how social reproduction was embedded within debates around colonialism, capitalism, and gender. Echoing Frantz Fanon, we deeply believe that capitalism must be differently contextualised in the colony/postcolony, and it is from this point that we begin.
2023
This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies. The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time. Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.
Signs of creation: Sex, gender, categories, religion and the body in ancient Egypt
2011
Few images from ancient Egypt more poignantly express the extraordinary differences between modern and ancient notions of the sacred than the juxtaposition of Mary and babe, or Christ on a cross, with ithyphallic Min (or Mut!) or Hapi with liquid streaming from his breasts. For ancient Egyptians, creation discourses intersected with the imagined sexed body, genitalia and all: myths, beliefs, iconography and even the writing system itself employed sexed signs to capture and convey ideas regarding the primordial moment, the daily regeneration of the world, the creation of the people who populate it, and the rebirth of the dead--concepts patterned upon human reproduction. In reality, everyone is created from the union of man and woman or, more accurately in today‘s modern world, the union of egg and sperm; biologically speaking, that is a universal truth. Indeed, nothing is more ―natural‖ than our biological sexed bodies and the role of human sexed body parts in conceiving, bearing and nurturing offspring. But as M. Foucault and many others have pointed out, even social features long assumed to be natural and unchanging—madness, gender, sexuality, the body—can more profitably be viewed as cultural constructs worthy of historical exploration. The way sexed bodies are avoided, explained or celebrated differs dramatically across time and space as does the degree to which biological realities are recognized in sacred discourse. The Egyptian discourse of creation, and the role of sexed signs (phalli, breast, womb-vulva, pregnant woman) and one gendered sign (the egg) in creating, crystallizing and conveying ideas regarding creation and existence, is the object of this study. By deconstructing sexed and gendered creation signs, I believe we can gain a better understanding of how human reproduction functioned as a foundational metaphor in Egyptian creation discourses, the power of signs in Egyptian culture, the construction and flexibility of ancient categories, the relevance and limitations of the concrete and imagined body, and the stability and/or fluidity of cultural constructs such as sex and gender.