Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

In the furniture of the houses the Egyptians displayed considerable taste; and there, as elsewhere, they studiously avoided too much regularity, justly considering that its monotonous effect fatigued the eye. They preferred variety both in the arrangement of the rooms and in the character of their furniture, and neither the windows, doors, nor wings of the house, exactly corresponded with each other. An Egyptian would, therefore, have been more pleased with the form of our Elizabethan, than of the box-shaped rooms of later times.

In their mode of sitting on chairs they resembled the modern Europeans rather than Asiatics, neither using, like the latter, soft divans, nor sitting cross-legged on carpets. Nor did they recline at meals, as the Romans, on a triclinium, though couches and ottomans formed part of the furniture of an Egyptian. When Joseph entertained his brethren, he ordered them to sit according to their ages. Egyptians sometimes sat cross-legged on the ground, on mats and carpets, or knelt on one or both knees; these were rather the customs for certain occasions, and of the poorer classes. To sit on their heels was also customary as a token of respect in the presence of a superior, as in modern Egypt; and when a priest bore a shrine before the deity he assumed this position of humility; a still greater respect being shown by prostration, or by kneeling and kissing the ground. But the house of a wealthy person was always furnished with chairs and couches. Stools and low seats were also used, the seat being only from 8 to 14 inches high, and of wood, or interlaced with thongs; these, however, may be considered equivalent to our rush-bottomed chairs, and probably belonged to persons of humbler means. They varied in their quality, and some were inlaid with ivory and various woods.

Those most common in the houses of the rich were the single and double chair (answering to the Greek thronos and diphros), the latter sometimes kept as a family seat, and occupied by the master and mistress of the house, or a married couple. It was not, however, always reserved exclusively for them, nor did they invariably occupy the same seat; they sometimes sat like their guests on separate chairs, and a diphros was occasionally offered to visitors, both men and women.

Many of the fauteuils were of the most elegant form. They were made of ebony and other rare woods, inlaid with ivory, and very similar to some now used in Europe. The legs were mostly in imitation of those of an animal; and lions' heads, or the entire body, formed the arms of large fauteuils, as in the throne of Solomon (I Kings, x. 19). Some, again, had folding legs, like our camp-stools; the seat was often slightly concave; and those in the royal palace were ornamented with the figures of captives, or emblems of dominion over Egypt and other countries. The back was light and strong, and consisted of a single set of upright and cross bars, or of a frame receding gradually and terminating at its summit in a graceful curve, supported from without by perpendicular bars; and over this was thrown a handsome pillow of colored cotton, painted leather, or gold and silver tissue, like the beds at the feast of Abasuerus, mentioned in Esther, or like the feathered cushions covered with stuffs and embroidered with silk and threads of gold in the palace of Scaurus.

Seats on the principle of our camp-stools seem to have been much in vogue. They were furnished with a cushion, or were covered with the skin of a leopard, or some other animal, which was removed when the seat was folded up; and it was not unusual to make even head-stools, or wooden pillows on the same principle. They were also adorned in various ways, bound with metal plates, and inlaid with ivory, or foreign woods; and the wood of common chairs was often painted to resemble that of a rarer and more valuable kind.

The seats of chairs were frequently of leather, painted with flowers and fancy devices; of interlaced work made of string or thongs, carefully and neatly arranged, which, like our Indian cane chairs, were particularly adapted for a hot climate; but over this they occasionally placed a leather cushion, painted in the manner already mentioned.

The forms of the chairs varied very much; the larger ones generally had light backs, and some few had arms. They were mostly about the height of those now used in Europe, the seat nearly in a line with the bend of the knee; but some were very low, and others offered that variety of position which we seek in the kangaroo chairs of our own drawing-room. The ordinary fashion of the legs was in imitation of those of some wild animal, as the lion or the goat, but more usually the former, the foot raised and supported on a short pin; and, what is remarkable, the skill of their cabinet-makers, even before the time of Joseph, had already done away with the necessity of uniting the legs with bars. Stools, however, and more rarely chairs, were occasionally made with these strengthening members, as is still the case in our own country; but the drawing-room fauteuil and couch were not disfigured by so unseemly and so unskillful a support.

The stools used in the saloon were of the same style and elegance as the chairs, frequently differing from them only in the absence of a back; and those of more delicate workmanship were made of ebony, and inlaid, as already stated, with ivory or rare woods. Some of an ordinary kind had solid sides, and were generally very low; and others, with three legs, belonged to persons of inferior rank.

The ottomans were simple square sofas, without backs, raised from the ground nearly to the same level as the chairs. The upper part was of leather, or a cotton stuff, richly colored, like the cushions of the fauteuils; the base was of wood painted with various devices; and those in the royal palace were ornamented with the figures of captives, the conquest of whose country was designated by their having this humiliating position. The same idea gave them a place on the soles of sandals, on the footstools of a royal throne, and on the walls of the palace at Medeenet Haboo, in Thebes, where their heads support some of the ornamental details of the building.

Footstools also constituted part of the furniture of the sitting-room; they were made with solid or open sides, covered at the top with leather or interlaced work, and varied in height according to circumstances, some being of the usual size now adopted by us, others of inconsiderable thickness, and rather resembling a small rug. Carpets, indeed, were a very early invention, and they are often represented sitting upon them, as well as on mats, which are commonly used in their sitting-rooms, as at the present day, and remnants of them have been found in the Theban tombs.