1 The face of the woman here given was taken separately,
and was subsequently attached to the figure of an Egyptian
woman whom Naville had photographed sitting beside a
colossal head. The nose of the statue has been restored.
Until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered which could be attributed to the primitive races of Egypt: even the flint weapons and implements which had been found in various places could not be ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the Egyptians continued to use stone long after metal was known to them. They made stone arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of the Pharaohs, but under the Romans, and during the whole period of the Middle Ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died out.[**]
** An entire collection of flint tools—axes, adzes,
knives, and sickles—mostly with wooden handles, were found
by Prof. Pétrie in the ruins of Kahun, at the entrance to
the Fayûm: these go back to the time of the twelfth dynasty,
more than three thousand years before our era. Mariette had
previously pointed out to the learned world the fact that a
Coptic Reis, Salîb of Abydos, in charge of the
excavations, shaved his head with a flint knife, according
to the custom of his youth (1820-35). I knew the man, who
died at over eighty years of age in 1887; he was still
faithful to his flint implement, while his sons and the
whole population of El Kharbeh were using nothing but steel
razors. As his scalp was scraped nearly raw by the
operation, he used to cover his head with fresh leaves to
cool the inflamed skin.
These objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore be less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. But if so far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages, we met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony with the general civilization of the period. A comparison of these customs with analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon the former, completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the successive stages through which the Egyptian people had to pass before reaching their highest civilization. We knew, for example, that even as late as the Cæsars, girls belonging to noble families at Thebes were consecrated to the service of Amon, and were thus licensed to a life of immorality, which, however, did not prevent them from making rich marriages when age obliged them to retire from office. Theban women were not the only people in the world to whom such licence was granted or imposed upon them by law; wherever in a civilized country we see a similar practice, we may recognize in it an ancient custom which in the course of centuries has degenerated into a religious observance. The institution of the women of Amon is a legacy from a time when the practice of polyandry obtained, and marriage did not yet exist. Age and maternity relieved them from this obligation, and preserved them from those incestuous connections of which we find examples in other races. A union of father and daughter, however, was perhaps not wholly forbidden,[*] and that of brother and sister seems to have been regarded as perfectly right and natural; the words brother and sister possessing in Egyptian love-songs the same significance as lover and mistress with us.
* E. de Rouge held that Rameses II. married at least two of
his daughters, Bint Anati and Honittui; Wiedemann admits
that Psammetichus I. had in the same way taken to wife
Nitocris, who had been born to him by the Theban princess
Shapenuapit. The Achæmenidan kings did the same: Artaxerxes
married two of his own daughters.
Paternity was necessarily doubtful in a community of this kind, and hence the tie between fathers and children was slight; there being no family, in the sense in which we understand the word, except as it centred around the mother.
Maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and the affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother alone. When the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to one husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many wives as he wished, or as he was able to keep, beginning with his own sisters. All wives did not enjoy identical rights: those born of the same parents as the man, or those of equal rank with himself, preserved their independence. If the law pronounced him the master, nibû, to whom they owed obedience and fidelity, they were mistresses of the house, nîbît pirû, as well as wives, himitû, and the two words of the title express their condition. Each of them occupied, in fact, her own house, pirû, which she had from her parents or her husband, and of which she was absolute mistress, nîbît. She lived in it and performed in it without constraint all a woman's duties; feeding the fire, grinding the corn, occupying herself in cooking and weaving, making clothing and perfumes, nursing and teaching her children. When her husband visited her, he was a guest whom she received on an equal footing. It appears that at the outset these various wives were placed under the authority of an older woman, whom they looked on as their mother, and who defended their rights and interests against the master; but this custom gradually disappeared, and in historic times we read of it as existing only in the families of the gods. The female singers consecrated to Amon and other deities, owed obedience to several superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow of a king or high priest) was called chief-superior of the ladies of the harem of Amon. Besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves purchased or born in the house, prisoners of war, Egyptians of inferior class, who were the chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he wished. All the children of one father were legitimate, whether their mother were a wife or merely a concubine, but they did not all enjoy the same advantages; those among them who were born of a brother or sister united in legitimate marriage, took precedence of those whose mother was a wife of inferior rank or a slave. In the family thus constituted, the woman, to all appearances, played the principal part. Children recognized the parental relationship in the mother alone. The husband appears to have entered the house of his wives, rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks were deceived by it. They affirmed that the woman was supreme in Egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands.
We had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first Egyptians were semi-savages, like those still living in Africa and America, having an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools. A few lived in the desert, in the oasis of Libya, or in the deep valleys of the Red Land—Doshirit, To Doshiru—between the Nile and the sea; the poverty of the country fostering their native savagery. Others, settled on the Black Land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first historical dynasty.