Entertainment and Persona Appearance
Social Entertainment
According to New Kingdom tomb-scenes at Thebes, hosting and attending parties and banquets were important and pleasurable activities of the wealthy which they hoped to continue to enjoy in the afterlife. Male and female guests are shown sitting together or separately, and hospitality included a meal followed by entertainment provided by musicians, singers and dancers.
As a man of senior status at Thebes, the imaginary Khary regularly entertained his friends and colleagues at such events. When their guests arrived, Khary and Perenbast met and greeted them. The guests then prepared themselves for the meal, washing their hands and feet with water poured from ewers brought to them by the servants, and cleansing their hands with an absorbent substance (soap was unknown at that time). Then, taking ointments from cool alabaster containers, the servants anointed each guest’s head, sometimes placing scented wax cones on top of their wigs; these would melt during the course of the party and the guests would be surrounded with a pleasant perfume. The atmosphere in the room was scented with myrrh and frankincense, enhanced by the heady aroma of flowers and garlands used as decoration. In addition, each guest was presented with a floral necklet and head circlet, and an individual lotus flower which was worn on the forehead.
When the guests were comfortably seated on high chairs, the servants brought wine: men were often served with a one-handed goblet made of bronze, gold, silver, glass or faience, while women drank from a special cup into which a servant poured wine from a small vessel. The guests continued to be served wine throughout the meal, and tomb-scenes provide ample evidence of drunkenness at these parties. Usually they depict servants and entertainers in an inebriated state, but there is little doubt that sometimes the tomb-owner and his guests also indulged themselves to excess.
The meal consisted of selected meats, vegetables, bread, cakes, and fruit as well as wine and beer, and included imported beverages and foreign delicacies from Syria and Western Asia. Since the Egyptians ate with their fingers, they washed their hands frequently with water that servants poured from a ewer into a basin positioned on a stand in the dining room. Some of the household pets were present at these banquets, tethered to the legs of their owners’ chairs. Khary’s guests conversed with each other, discussing the major events of the day, admiring each other’s clothes and jewellery, and commenting on their host’s fine house with its elegant furnishings, and the excellence of his food and drink.
Before and after the meal, Khary’s visitors were entertained by professional musicians and dancers.1 The Egyptians loved music, and it featured in many aspects of their lives. In the temple, musicians accompanied Perenbast and her fellow chantresses in their regular performance of liturgical hymns and chants that were part of the daily rituals and festivals. These performers were members of the temple staff, closely associated with the priesthood, and received special instruction and training in music and singing.
Although no buildings have been found that can be identified as theatres in the modern sense (the theatre seems to have been a Greek innovation), it is known that the Egyptians performed sacred dramas at some of their temples.2 Musicians and singers played a prominent role in these enactments of major events in the gods’ lives. Singing also featured at the burial ceremony, and was employed as therapy for the sick in the temples. Apart from a formal role in religious functions, singing and music were also a popular and integral part of everyday life. People working in the fields, at building sites, or on the river had their own special songs, handed down from one generation to the next, which lifted their spirits and provided rhythm for their communal activities.
Copper mirror, razor (bottom left), two pairs of tweezers, and selection of alabaster, anhydrite and faience containers for ointment and kohl. Unprovenanced, or from Kahun and Amarna. Middle and New Kingdoms. Manchester Museum.
As members of the upper classes, Khary’s family and their guests did not play musical instruments or dance at home themselves; instead, they employed non-religious musicians and female dancers to provide entertainment. Some tomb-scenes show the owner, alone with his wife, listening to a harpist, while others depict troupes of musicians and dancers entertaining guests at parties. Individual musicians and troupes of entertainers who performed in private houses all came from the lower classes, and acquired their skills in order to earn a living.
The musicians, singers and dancers took their places in front of Khary’s seated guests. We have no details of how Egyptian music was played or sounded, but tomb-scenes and the relatively few musical instruments that have survived provide some information about the range of their music. Some instruments were probably used to give a solo performance, but musicians also accompanied singers. Men and women participating in religious and secular ceremonies played the harp, lyre, lute, double pipe, flutes made of wood, bone or ivory, and the reed pipe or double pipe. Trumpets and drums were employed to marshal army troops and supply the rhythmic and musical background for military marches; on other occasions, male and female musicians used drums, ivory or wooden clappers, circular or square tambourines and hand-clapping to mark rhythm and provide a lively beat.
Stringed instruments included lutes, lyres, and harps, which varied considerably in terms of shape, size and number of strings. Some instruments were large but others were hand-held; many were made of wood covered in leather, and had strings of catgut. The earliest examples of harps are depicted in scenes in Old Kingdom tombs at Giza; however, the lyre (which had five, seven, ten or eighteen strings), and the lute (which resembles a modern guitar) were imported to Egypt from Western Asia during the Hyksos Period (c.1550 BCE). Other musical instruments included large bead collars and metal or faience sistra which were shaken as rattles. The sistrum was an important instrument in temple ritual, and art depictions show it being carried by queens, noblewomen and temple chantresses.
A new type of literature appeared in Egypt during the New Kingdom which Egyptologists call ‘love-songs’ or ‘love poems’.3 Men and women express their deepest emotions in these sophisticated compositions which frequently describe human love in terms of the physical beauty of the landscape – the trees, flowers, gardens and stretches of water. Many of these songs were probably presented as unaccompanied pieces, perhaps followed by an instrumental performance. They may have contributed to entertainments held at the king’s Court or in the houses of wealthy courtiers and officials. Sentiments expressed in these poems delighted Khary’s family and his guests:
My heart quickens,
When I think of my love for you,
It does not let me act sensibly,
It leaps out of its place.
It does not let me get dressed,
Nor wrap my scarf around myself;
I do not paint my eyes,
I am not even anointed.’
(Love Song. Author’s translation)
Musicians and singers performing at Khary’s parties were often accompanied by dancers and acrobats. They wore scanty clothing, and performed sinuous and rhythmic actions with great elegance and style. Away from these indoor venues, the residents of Thebes and other large cities doubtless enjoyed the noisy songs and dances of street entertainers.
Dancing played an important role in religious as well as secular activities. Magicians danced to imitate gods and take possession of their powers, and dancing was included in temple rituals, festivals and funerals when dancers often wore special costumes and masks to impersonate particular deities.
Personal Adornment
Personal appearance was very important to the ancient Egyptians, and Khary’s family and guests spent a great deal of time and effort preparing themselves for parties and other social occasions. As previously mentioned, clothes worn by men and women of the upper classes were usually made of fine, white linen, although sometimes fabrics were coloured with natural dyes to produce yellow, red or blue cloth. Garments worn during the New Kingdom were elaborate: often, the linen was finely pleated, and clothing was layered, with one almost transparent tunic placed over another.4 Sandals were made from rush, papyrus or leather.
Many children of all classes went without clothes or shoes until they reached puberty, and in the New Kingdom they were quite often dressed in scaled-down versions of their parents’ garments and footwear. Mothers and nursemaids carried their babies in shawls which they wrapped around themselves. Female servants attending guests at Khary’s parties were often scantily dressed in a loincloth, although some wore dresses made of geometric-patterned, multicoloured textiles. Men working as agricultural labourers in the fields of the estate had linen loincloths, while their wives were wore simple linen dresses.
Evidence survives in tomb-scenes, inscriptions, statues, wigs and hair ornaments to indicate that the Egyptians paid great attention to their hairstyles. In order to ensure cleanliness, many men and women shaved their heads with copper or bronze razors, but others retained their natural hair, sometimes dyeing it with henna. Prescriptions preserved in the Medical Papyri show that they tried to prevent baldness and obliterate any grey hairs. Tomb-scenes show that members of the upper and middle classes whose hair was shaved or cut short often wore wigs outside the home, particularly for social occasions. Wigs were made of natural hair or hair mixed with vegetable fibres, and provided the wearer with some protection against the heat of the sun.
Natural hair and wigs were dressed in many different styles, often incorporating plaits, curls and fringes which were fixed with ivory or metal pins. By the New Kingdom, hair was usually worn long, descending well below the shoulders; Khary and the adult members of his family had fashionable, elaborate styles in which flowers, ribbons and ornaments were attached to their plaited and curled tresses. These hairstyles, whether adopted for natural hair or wigs, required constant attention. Like all wealthy people, each member of Khary’s family owned several wigs, and even planned to take a set of boxed wigs into the tomb for use in the next world. In contrast, Ipy (Khary’s son who had not yet reached puberty) had a simple hairstyle: a shaven head, and a single strand of hair known as a ‘Sidelock of Youth’.
The Egyptians possessed a wide range of toilette equipment;5 this included wooden combs, which were usually double-sided with coarse and fine sets of teeth. There were also mirrors made of metals, especially copper, set in wooden, stone or metal handles, carved or moulded in the form of a woman, flower, bird, column, or head of Hathor (the goddess of love and beauty). These mirrors were highly polished to give good reflective images. Wealthy women such as Perenbast and her daughters used fine toilette boxes to store their cosmetic containers: pots and vases made of different kinds of stone (alabaster was highly desirable), glass, ivory, bone and shell; copper and bronze tweezers; and alabaster ointment spoons to pour oils over the body.
The shape of the eyes was outlined with kohl, a black powder containing a mixture of antimony and other substances; this was applied to the eye with a kohl stick which was bulbous at one end. Other eye pigments such as malachite (green ore of copper) and galena (dark grey ore of lead), ground into powders and then mixed with ointment, were also applied to the eyes. All these eye-liners and paints were kept in small jars or tubes; made of stone, faience or wood, these usually have a simple, cylindrical shape, but others are more elaborate: some take the form of a lotus column or are carved to represent the figure of an ape or other animal holding a jar. Some containers even have up to five separate compartments, each intended to hold a different coloured powder.
Cosmetics and beauty care were firmly established features of everyday life. Eye make-up and associated equipment have been discovered in tombs dating from the Predynastic Period when they were already considered to be essential requirements for the afterlife. Eye-paint, probably invented to shield the wearer’s eyes from dust and the sun’s glare, was a very important cosmetic. However, it was only one item in an extensive range of products whose original purpose was probably to protect the face and body against strong sunlight and harsh winds.
Glass kohl tube (in the form of a lotus flower) and kohl-stick, used for applying eye make-up. From Gerzeh. Dynasty 18. Manchester Museum.
Archaeologists have discovered facial cleansing creams, such as the set of jars containing oil and lime found amongst the tomb contents belonging to three queens of Tuthmosis III. Red ochre was used as face rouge, or mixed with oil or fat to make a lip gloss. Plants were important ingredients in many cosmetic preparations, particularly henna which was used as a colourant for hair, hands, nails and feet. The Medical Papyri contain recipes for improving the appearance of the skin, and removing spots and wrinkles. One anti-wrinkle treatment recommended that the skin should be anointed daily with a mixture that combined frankincense, moringa oil, grass, fermented plant juice and other ingredients. Ointments and oils for anointing the body were based on animal fats and oils extracted from plants including the olive, sesame, and almond.
According to the Classical writer Pliny, one famous perfume known as ‘The Egyptian’ was produced in the city of Mendes and exported to Rome. He recorded that it had a long shelf-life (one perfumier kept a batch in his shop for eight years), and also lasted well on the skin. Perfume was extensively produced on a wide-scale commercial basis. For example, special enclosed nurseries were used to grow the two thousand lilies required to make each batch of another famous perfumed ointment called ‘Oil of Lilies’. Some residues of perfumed products have been found in tombs, but unfortunately, because of chemical changes in these substances, their original scents have not survived. Nevertheless, although we can no longer enjoy and appreciate the perfumes themselves, archaeologists have uncovered sufficient numbers of containers and appliances to demonstrate that cosmetics and perfumes were important to everyone. As well as their popularity for personal use, perfumes were widely employed in the temples to delight the gods. The recipe for one was inscribed on the walls of the temples at Edfu and Philae; known as ‘Kyphi’, it was apparently free from oil and fat, and contained wine, raisins and aromatic herbs.
Anhydrite, faience and alabaster kohl pots, and a small wooden comb with blue faience beads attached (perhaps good luck charms). The remains of kohl (eyeliner) are visible in one pot (front left). From Kahun. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum.
Everyone (but particularly the middle and upper classes) also paid great attention to personal hygiene. It is evident from the mummies that wealthy people underwent regular manicure and pedicure treatments. People of Khary’s social standing followed rigorous daily cleansing routines, washing themselves, and removing facial and body hair with razors, tweezers and depilatory creams. Deodorants were also popular – one prescription recommended rubbing ground carob into the skin. Fumigation pellets were chewed to freshen the breath, or placed amongst clothes to improve or mask unpleasant odours.
People of all classes wore jewellery; it was regarded as important personal apparel for the gods, the dead and the living.6 As part of the ‘Daily Temple Ritual’, the priests presented the gods’ statues with jewellery and insignia in order to give them special powers. Humans also wore jewellery to protect themselves against evil forces and to enhance their appearance. Egyptians believed that the design of a piece of jewellery and the intrinsic magical power of the materials from which it was made would protect the owner against a range of afflictions and disasters. Jewellery often incorporated sacred symbols such as the dung beetle, ‘Eye of Horns’, or the ankh-sign which represented life; it was believed that these amulets could combat disease, accidents, floods, famine, or attacks by wild animals. When worn in life, jewellery provided potent protection for its owner, and it acted in the same way after death when placed between the bandages of the mummy. To avail themselves of these benefits, wealthy people purchased jewellery to wear in life, and also prepared a collection of items for the tomb which were usually heavier and more traditional in style than those worn every day.
Amethyst amulet in the form of a scarab (dung-beetle). The scarab was especially popular because it was believed to symbolize renewal and rebirth. From Tell el-Yahudiyah. Middle Kingdom. Manchester Museum.
As well as providing magical protection, jewellery also displayed a person’s wealth and status. Some honours were presented by the king to reward individual bravery, and Khary and his son, the soldier Amenemhet, were proud possessors of the ‘Order of the Golden Collar’ and the ‘Order of the Golden Fly’. Gifts of jewellery also marked special royal occasions: a king would bestow personal ornaments on his bride on the occasion of their marriage, and Khary joined other courtiers in presenting valuable pieces to the king and queen when they celebrated a jubilee festival.
By the New Kingdom, a wide range of materials was employed in jewellery-making; these included metals, gem-stones, glass, shells, seeds, bone and flowers. Copper was used extensively, but gold was the most popular metal, acquired by all who could afford it; however, silver – which the Egyptians regarded as ‘white gold’ – was especially rare and desirable because it had to be imported from Western Asia. These precious metals were often set with semi-precious gem-stones which were chosen for their depth of colour rather than refraction of light. The most popular were camelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli; others included garnets, jasper, green feldspar, amethyst, rock crystal, obsidian and calcite. Jewellery was also set with glass, and artificial substitutes which were produced by backing calcite and rock crystal with coloured cements and faience. Jewellers used other natural materials – pebbles, shells, seeds, teeth and bone – which they pierced with bow-drills, polished, and then threaded to make necklaces and bracelets. They also produced large quantities of beads – especially those made of Egyptian faience.
The resplendent guests attending Khary’s party wore their finest pieces of jewellery to excite admiration and arouse their friends’ envy. Men and women adorned themselves with necklaces made of gold, natural materials and artificial substances; some pieces were simple gold chains or collars, whereas others incorporated representations of fish, frogs, lions, birds, gods, reptiles, shells or flies. The guests also wore gold anklets, bracelets, and armlets which, in many cases, were inlaid with semi-precious stones. Some of their gold rings incorporated an inscribed seal or scarab which could be used as a signet to mark possessions or authorize a letter or written instruction. Two or three rings were sometimes worn on the same finger, although it was also fashionable to place rings on the third finger of the left hand or even on the thumb. Earrings had been introduced to Egypt from Syria and Western Asia during the New Kingdom, and Khary’s visitors – keen to follow the latest trends – wore large, round, single hoops of gold which dangled from their earlobes.
Faience pectoral (chest ornament) to place on a mummy. The images show the Djed-pillar (symbol of rebirth) in the centre, flanked by two representations of the sign (s3w) meaning protection. The pectoral was supposed to provide these benefits for the deceased owner in the next world. From Sedment. Dynasty 19. Manchester Museum.
Mummy of a woman with a gilded stucco head/chest piece; the inlaid eyes are made of obsidian and calcite, and the mouldedjewellery is set with glass ‘stones Tombs were almost invariably robbed, and so by this period, jewellery was usually no longer placed with the burial but simply represented in this way on the head/chest cover. From Hawara. Roman Period. Manchester Museum.
Games and Entertainment
Egyptians enjoyed a variety of indoor and outdoor games.7 The kings prided themselves on their physical fitness and prowess: for example, temple scenes and inscriptions proclaim that Amenhotep II was a good athlete, a trainer of horses, skilled charioteer, powerful archer and outstanding horseman. The kings and the upper classes participated in target practice, and enjoyed hunting in the deserts, and fishing and fowling in the marshes. They were also spectators at wrestling and javelin-throwing contests. Scenes in Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan show the various wrestling holds and modes of attack which were practised; it was apparently permissible to take hold of any part of the head, body, neck or legs, and to continue to fight an opponent even after he had been thrown to the ground. Training for army recruits included wrestling and mock fights, but they do not appear to have engaged in boxing. Mock fights involved two sets of contenders: one group had to defend a temporary fort, which the others attacked with a battering-ram. Audiences also enjoyed weight-lifting contests and gymnastic displays.
Indoors, people entertained themselves with board games, and the names of some of these – ‘serpent’, ‘dog and jackal’ and senet – have survived. Senet is a particularly interesting game: although the rules remain unclear, the introduction to Chapter 17 in the Book of the Dead states that senet continued to be played in the afterlife. Vignettes (small illustrations set into the text) show the owner, often accompanied by his wife, sitting at a senet board; no opponent is present – presumably it was believed that the couple were playing against evil forces that were trying to prevent them from attaining eternal life.
Archaeologists have discovered a number of senet boards. Four were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb; these range from a miniature set to a fine, full-size example crafted in ebony and ivory. This forms part of a double-sided box which has a senet board marked on one surface, and a board for another game on the reverse. There is a small drawer at one end of the box for storing gaming pieces. Two other senet boards discovered at Kahun were used when their owners were alive. One board is marked out on the inside of a wooden chest lid; three horizontal rows, each containing ten squares, are painted in red on a white background. In the bottom row, the seventh square from the left is marked with an indistinct trace of Hieratic writing. However, the gaming pieces which once presumably accompanied this board were not discovered. The second board, made from a slab of limestone, is incomplete, although it is clear that it was marked out in three horizontal rows, each containing ten squares. The lines are lightly incised on the stone, and in the top row, in the first square on the left, the hieroglyph nfr (meaning ‘good’) is inscribed in black ink. A cross is marked in black ink in the square immediately below this in the middle row.
Although it is difficult to reconstruct exactly how the game was played, it is evident that a standard board had three rows, each containing ten squares, and that five of these might be inscribed with hieroglyphs. Each player was allocated five or seven pieces, usually made of faience and often conical in shape; the ultimate aim was to be the first to place a piece on the square inscribed with three signs (nfr) each meaning ‘good’ or ‘happy’, at the angle of the L-shaped section. The hieroglyph in the square before this, which represented water, may have indicated a ‘hazard’. In order to move the pieces forward, players threw knucklebones or casting sticks which determined the number of squares they could pass over. Although senet was a game of chance, and the players had little influence over the eventual outcome, it was universally popular in life and was also believed to have religious significance in the next world.
Archaeological evidence demonstrates that children enjoyed playing a wide range of games. Tomb scenes and objects from Kahun and Gurob show that older boys and girls juggled with balls, performed acrobatic dances, played with hoops, threw and caught balls, practised target-shooting, walked a tightrope, wrestled, and participated in a jumping game similar to leapfrog. They also played with dice, and were entertained with conjuring tricks: one involved the conjuror asking his opponent to identify the location of a ball which he had placed under one of four cups.
Wooden and leather balls were also uncovered at Kahun. Two of these were roughly shaped from wood; another ball, stuffed with dried grass, was made from six gores of leather which were sewn together, but one of the gores had evidently cracked and been restitched in antiquity. In another example, the stuffing had long since fallen out through the broken leather casing. There were a large number of whip tops – circular pieces of wood, flattened at one end and worked to an obtuse point at the other. Excavation also revealed tipcats: these wooden sticks, pointed at each end, were used to play a game in which the stick or ‘cat’ was hit into the air with a bat or stick, and then struck again before it landed on the ground. The aim of the contest was to hit the ‘cat’ as far as possible, and thus become the winner.
Children also played with simple toys; examples found in tombs and at Kahun show how youngsters on Khary’s imaginary estate would have entertained themselves. Some of the toys are made of painted limestone: figures from Kahun include a boy nursing a pet monkey, and two boys wrestling. There are also examples of quite sophisticated playthings: a collection of commercially-produced dolls came to light in a house at Kahun which probably belonged to the local toy-maker, who presumably manufactured the dolls for sale to the town’s residents. Made of painted wood, they have jointed limbs which move on pins and can be made to assume various postures. Pellets of hair piled up in one room were clearly intended for insertion into holes punched in the dolls’ heads. At other sites, archaeologists have found dolls in cradles; animal toys which include a crocodile with moveable jaws; puppets exemplified by a set of dancing dwarfs; and a model of a man washing or kneading dough which can be worked by pulling a string. Rattles and miniature weapons have also been discovered.
Wooden whip-tops and tipcats (bottom row); tipcats – wooden sticks pointed at both ends – are known in other parts of the world. From Kahun. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum.
Two painted wooden ‘paddle dolls’ (centre and right). Unprovenanced. Middle Kingdom. Wooden figurine (left). From the Ramesseum Tomb Group, Ramesseum, Thebes. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum. These ‘dolls’ were very different from the genuine toys found at Kahun. ‘Paddle dolls’ were probably placed in tombs as concubine figures to enhance fertility and rebirth and also perhaps to entertain the owner in the afterlife. The Ramesseum figurine was included in the funerary assemblage of a lector-priest who may have been a magician.
These toys have survived against all the odds: they have endured frequent use, and many (for example, the rag dolls) are made of fragile materials. One set of clay figurines discovered at Kahun is especially remarkable because the pieces may have been modelled by the children themselves. Representing a man, a small boat, and animals – a crocodile, hippopotamus, and an ape with blue beads inserted for eyes – they reflect the everyday world and limited horizons of these children. These simple toys – very different from the games placed in the tomb of Tutankhamun to entertain the king in his afterlife – offer a unique opportunity to see how the children of royal craftsmen amused themselves over 4,000 years ago.
Clay figurines, all made from Nile mud, which the children may have modelled as toys. This group includes (left to right) a crocodile (bottom left), an ape with beads inserted to represent eyes, a pig, an unidentified animal, and a model boat with two seats (one of which is pierced with a hole to take a mast) and the remains of a rudder. From Kahun. Dynasty 12. Manchester Musuem.