Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

How did the little girls amuse themselves in those far-off Egyptian days? The girl nature is the same the world over, and has not undergone any radical change since the very dawn of history. The girls, of course, played with dolls. These were made from cloth and were usually stuffed. Some of them had long hair. Figures resembling jumping-jacks, loosely jointed and manipulated with a string, were a means of merriment for the little ones. The nursery was also frequently brightened by the presence of flowers; and birds, some free and some caged, were common pets; cats, too, were everywhere, and the small donkey furnished much sport.

It may seem somewhat strange that in a land to which has often been attributed the invention of the art of writing, there should have come down to us no literature from the hand and brain of a woman. The secret of this is probably found in the fact that while women were respected and even esteemed as the equals of men, yet it was not considered worth while to educate them in a literary way. In some of the arts, however, such as music, women were skilled.

In modern Egypt the education of the women is sadly neglected. It does not compare with that given them in ancient times. Indeed, in Mohammedan countries, generally, woman is sternly thrust into a position of inferiority, even of degradation. The school provided for the instruction of the children in Egypt, as in all Mohammedan countries, is the kattub, which is to be found in most towns and even in some of the small villages. These schools are attached, when possible, to a mosque, and the instruction is religious rather than literary, for the teaching is limited to the Koran, and all instruction is in the Arabic language. The schoolmaster, who usually has an assistant, is himself very ignorant of all that the modern Western world would term "learning." Even the elements of a modern education are strangers to him. There are said to be about nine thousand five hundred of these kattubs in Egypt, and in them are enrolled one hundred and eighty thousand pupils. But the kattub is dark and unattractive. There are no seats or furniture of any kind. To an Occidental eye, the schoolroom is inconvenient in every respect, and withal quite unsanitary and forbidding. The teacher sits on a mat, cross-legged. In front of him are ranged two rows of children, both boys and girls, sitting sideways to the teacher. One would suppose, seated as the children are, that the dreary humdrum of the daily instruction was surely meant to go in at one ear and out at the other. But the pupils learn to repeat passage after passage from the sacred book of Mohammed. For the time is largely taken up reciting sura after sura from the Koran, and the most lengthy passages are well memorized, the master correcting the boy or girl whose tongue has slipped, or prompting one whose memory has failed him. As the singsong of recitation is rolled out in languid sweetness, the pupils sway their bodies back and forth, keeping time to the rhythm. There is no casting of eyes at the girls, no giggling, no crooked pins in use, in the kattubs. The pupils know the stern master is on serious business bent. Besides, he makes use of the principle of "the expulsive power" of preoccupation; for, while the memorizing and reciting of texts goes on, there are no idle hands for Satan to make busy. The teacher himself sets the example of industry, for his hands are engaged in weaving a mat, while his ear watches to detect the slightest lapse from correctness in the pupil's tongue. So, too, the boys and girls must be busied at some useful handiwork, such as plaiting straw. Thus, "technical training" goes hand in hand with the mental in modern Egypt. The number of girls in these schools, however, is comparatively small. There are hopeful signs in the matter of female education in the Egypt of to-day, for the government, seeing the need, has granted a double sum for every girl in attendance upon the kattubs.

Women of all lands have had an important place in the time of sickness and death. Egypt is no exception to the rule. There were doctors in this cultured land. Specialism was in vogue even in ancient Egypt. As the celebrated Greek historian again says: "Medicine is practised among them on the plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder and no more." There were eye specialists, headache specialists, tooth specialists, intestine specialists, and so on to the end of the category of diseases. Some of their treatises, comments upon cases, diseases, formulæ, methods of physicians, both of Egypt and of other lands, have come down to us. And yet, it must be confessed that exorcism held an important place in the Egyptian practice of medicine; and the women were among the foremost believers in this magical method of effecting cures. The Egyptian lady is suffering from a most violent attack of headache. She sends for the physician. He presently arrives, with one or more servants or assistants, bringing with them his book of incantations, and a case containing his materia medica, which consists of a goodly supply of clay, plants or dried roots of all sorts, cloths, models in wax or clay, black or red ink, et cætera. A diagnosis of the case is hurriedly made. Kneading some clay, with which various ingredients are mixed, this disciple of Æsculapius, or rather of Imhotep, repeats the appropriate incantation several times, places the ball of clay under the head of the sick, and leaves, feeling sure that the inimical spirit which torments her will not be able to gain possession against the powerful charm.

In case of death in any household, the mourning was pronounced and pitiable. The part which women played in Egyptian funerals was not unlike that among the Hebrews and other Oriental peoples. "They were," says Maspero, in his Struggle of the Nations, "not like those to which we are accustomed--mute ceremonies in which sorrow is barely expressed by a fugitive tear. Noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their necessary concomitants. Not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relations and friends did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief nor from disturbing the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate expressions of their sorrow." "O my father!" "O my brother!" "O my master!" "O my beloved!" would be heard from the female voices standing around the dead. There was no superstition which prevented a fond embracing of the body of the loved one who had just passed away. Tears flow in great profusion, hair and garments are rent, and the women beat their breasts, and then depart from the house of death. "With nude bosoms, head sullied with dust, the hair dishevelled and feet bare, they rush from the house into the still, deserted streets." Friends and sympathizers join in their grief as they pass along, and follow the procession of mourning. Since the Egyptian believes that the spirit can survive only so long as the body lasts,--a sort of conditional immortality,--the corpse must be embalmed. The method is determined by the rank of the deceased. If it be a princess who has passed away, the most elaborate and costly methods and materials must be used. Each toe and finger must be carefully and separately wrapped and cared for. Next comes the solemn funeral procession, with the noisy, heartrending hired mourners, the libations and offerings, the catafalque drawn by oxen, and at length the dead is laid away in the tombs. An important part of the Egyptian funeral is the banquet, in which the dead, through his representative, partakes; during the feasting, the almehs execute their death dances and sing their songs appealing to the living concerning death and the dead.

It is Nut, the goddess of heaven, who, during the journey of the soul, after it leaves the tomb appears from the midst of a sycamore tree, offering the spirit a dish containing loaves and a cruse of water, and if the soul accepts the proffered gift, he becomes the guest of the goddess. Beyond are dangers of every sort which only amulets and the most powerful incantations can dispel. If the soul can pass these--though many fall by the way--he is transported by the divine ferryman to the presence of Osiris, the great god. Maat, the goddess of Truth, stands by and whispers the proper confession into the ear of him whom Osiris questions, and the soul is passed on to the "Field of Beans," the place of the blessed, where feasts, dances, songs, and conversation are thereafter enjoyed.

Probably no Egyptian woman was ever more influential, for a period at least, than Queen Tyi, the mother of King Chuen-Aten, who is better known as Amenophis IV. His father, Amenophis III., was born, as the story goes, under conditions most auspicious. Ra, the great Sun god, who was considered to have been the father of all the Pharaohs, and the first sovereign of Egypt, as well as the creator of the universe, favored King Thothmes by giving to him the son for whom he prayed. Queen Moutemouait, wife of Thothmes, as she lay sleeping in her palace was suddenly aroused by seeing her husband by her side, and then immediately afterward the form of the Theban Amen. In her alarm she heard a voice telling her of the birth of a son, who should come to the throne in Thebes, and then the apparition "vanished in a cloud of perfume sweeter and more penetrating than all the perfumes of Arabia." The child whose advent was predicted became King Amenophis III., one of the most brilliant and successful kings of the eighteenth dynasty.

King Amenophis III. was wedded to a foreign wife, more than one in fact. Among the wives of his harem was Gilukhipa, or Kirgipa, a daughter of the house of Mitanni, between which and the Pharaohs of this epoch the Tel-El-Amarna tablets reveal so voluminous a correspondence. There was also in his harem a Babylonian princess, and, most famous of all, a lady, probably of Semitic extraction, whose name was Tyi. This Queen Tyi became the mother of the successor to Amenophis III. Under the influence of the queen-mother, the young King Amenophis IV. resolved on extensive religious reforms. He determined to dethrone or degrade the former deities of Egypt and exalt the "Sun Disc." Asiatic influence was paramount. He changed his capital from Thebes to the site of Tel-El-Amarna, and erected there both palace and temple. He changed his name to Chuen-Aten (Glory of the Solar Disc). But during his activity as a religious reformer, his empire was falling away by the sad neglect of the foreign affairs to which his father gave so large and successful attention. At his death his work fell to pieces, and his reformation swung back. Even his sons who succeeded him undid his work, and his name comes down to us as "The Heretic King," being caricatured by artists of the period which followed his ephemeral undertakings.

A modern Egyptian woman, or perhaps more accurately an Arab woman, digging into a mound in Middle Egypt, not far from the Nile, for the purpose of getting some material with which to patch her hut, pulled out a piece of baked clay with some queer inscriptions upon it, which turned out to be the cuneiform characters of the Assyro-Babylonian writing. Further excavations revealed the record hall of Amenophis IV., long buried under the ruins of his short-lived city. This collection of documents and correspondence in the Assyrian language, which was the Lingua Franca of those early days, are the source of our most accurate knowledge of the marriages, domestic relations and diplomatic history of this period in Egyptian history; indeed, of the history of the surrounding peoples as far east as the Mesopotamian valley.

At least two Egyptian women emerge in the Hebrew records, one of whom would indicate a low degree of morals, if we may judge of Egyptian women of high standing of the period by this one. It is Potiphar's wife who fell so deeply in love with Joseph, the handsome young Hebrew slave whom Potiphar had bought and made a servant in his own household, that she sought to use her wiles to entice the youth from rectitude. At length failing in her purpose, she charged him with attempting to use violence upon her, and had him imprisoned, only to find that the young man was to come forth stronger at last and find an honored place in the annals of Hebrew life in the land of Egypt.