EGYPTIAN PARTY. (From a Tomb at Thebes.)
Host and hostess receiving presents. Dancing girls. Slaves waiting on guests. Placing collars of lotus around their necks.
Slaves preparing bouquets. Scribe. Butchers cutting up ox. Carrying trays of meat. Man clapping hands and singing. Guitar player. Harpist.
Slave carrying head and haunch. Stick custodian rewarded.
After the skeleton, there was sung a doleful song in honor of Maneros, whose identity is clouded by traditional disputes.
Next, music and songs of more mirthful character were resumed. Sometimes jugglers, male and female, were hired for the occasion. They amused their audience with ball tossing, turning somersaults, leaping and wrestling. Occasionally, games, resembling our draughts or checkers, served to amuse those present (Ibid.), but as a rule the fumes of wine prevented any such quiet occupation, and the festival in many cases ended with a most riotous carousal.
The foregoing is probably a true picture of a banquet in ancient Egypt—except that, according to some writers, the diners were seated on the floor and ate from very low stools or tables.
Yet, in spite of all, the moral code of the early Egyptians was purer than that of contemporary nations. And commerce and war carried abroad the advanced thoughts, great learning and luxurious tastes of these ancient people, to be the foundations in after years of divers civilizations, amongst them our own.