Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom, and of the - The Giza Archives

100 Pages·2001·2.62 MB·English

by  Henry George Fischer

EGY PTIAN
WOMEN
OF THE OLD KINGDOM
AND OF THE HERACLEOPOLITAN PERIOD
Henry George Fischer
Second Edition
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE OLD KINGDOM
And of the Heracleopolitan Period
Stela dedicated by Hat-kau, Brooklyn Museum of Art 86.226.29 (p. 3 n. 15, p. 56)
Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation
Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum of Art
EG Y P T I A N W O M E N
O F T H E O L D K I N G D O M
And of the Heracleopolitan Period
Second Edition, revised and augmented
by Henry George Fischer
Curator Emeritus of Egyptian Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York 2000
Cover image: detail of the Fourth Dynasty painted limestone slab stela of Nefret-iabet
from Giza; Paris, Musée du Louvre E 15591;
photograph courtesy of the Réunion de musées Nationaux
Design on title page: determinative of mn™t “nurse,” after Murray, Saqqara Mastabas, pl. 10
Typeset in New Baskerville
Designed by Henry G. Fischer and Peter Der Manuelian
Typeset and produced by Peter Der Manuelian, Boston, Massachusetts
First published in 1989
Second edition, revised and augmented in 2000
Copyright © 1989, 2000 by Henry George Fischer
All rights reserved
isbn 0-87099-967-2
Printed in the United States of America by
Sawyer Printers, Charlestown, Massachusetts
Bound by Acme Bookbinding, Charlestown, Massachusetts
to Eleanor
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Contents
Preface ix
List of Figures xi
List of Plates xv
1. Sources 1
2. The position of the wife and mother in
tomb chapels 3
3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women 19
4. Personal names 33
5. Some exceptional cases 37
6. Conclusions 45
Note on the erasure of the title z£t.nswt
“king’s daughter” 47
Abbreviations 49
Notes 55
vii

Preface
This monograph had its beginning in a conference organized by Barbara
Lesko at Brown University in November 1987. Along with the other papers
that were read, it was subsequently published in a volume edited by her, and
entitled Women’s Earliest Records: from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Scholar’s
Press, 1989).
With substantial additions and a greater number of illustrations, my own
contribution to the conference was initially reprinted by the Metropolitan
Museum’s Office Services Department. The present edition has not only been
much more extensively revised and augmented, but, thanks to the computer
skill of Dr. Peter Der Manuelian, has been greatly improved in appearance.
Using the same technology, he has also designed three of the figures.
In particular, greater attention is given to the special esteem accorded to
women as mothers, and further evidence is provided for the titles they held as
weavers and midwives. More has also been added to the discussion of names,
and important additions have been made in the section dealing with excep-
tional cases.
Although the period covered by this study is limited to the Old Kingdom
(Dynasties III–VIII, ca. 2700–2200 B.C.) and the succeeding Dynasties (IX–
XI), down to the Theban reunification of Egypt (ca. 2035), the evidence of
later periods has occasionally been cited for comparison, and especially that of
the Middle Kingdom.
Proper names are generally given in the most familiar form when they are
well known (e.g. Mereruka rather than Merer-wi-kai or the like). Consonantal
transliteration is used in Section 4, dealing with names, but accompanied with
translations, as is also frequently done in the case of titles. Transliteration of
this kind is again used for both names and titles in the notes. These have been
placed at the end because of their length, but also because they are primarily
addressed to Egyptologists. And it is hoped that this account of the role of Egyp-
tian women of the Third Millennium B.C. may be of interest to a somewhat
ix