Every-Day Life in Egypt Four Thousand Years Ago

 •  7 min. read  •  grade level: 10
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In order that we may better apprehend what life in Egypt was like in the time of its highest glory – that is, during the reign of Rameses the Great – we give some few details, concerning which there can be no uncertainty.
Amongst the rich, private life was not altogether unlike that which prevails in our own times. We have only to look at the accompanying picture to see how the ladies passed what might now be termed afternoon tea, were the dainties not so substantial! Etiquette and its compliments reigned. The maidservants (slaves, of course) waited on the guests, and saw that all fared well; and very good fare did the company enjoy – though, if the artists are to be believed, they sometimes drank more wine than was good for them. The ladies passed their pleasant compliments on each other, were charmed – or said they were – with their friends’ jewels, and they chatted together pleasantly, and in elegant manner smelt their sweet lotus nosegays.
The clumsy young man is not a novel production, for he figures upon a monument in Thebes, older than the time of Moses, oversetting an ornament upon a fancy table, and causing the young ladies to make sly jokes at his expense.
The country gentleman appears before us with his pronounced taste in dogs, of which there were many varieties. They are to be seen to the life upon the monuments, long-legged and long-backed, pets and hounds. The eye of those old Egyptian gentlemen for fine and well-bred cattle is proverbial, and very careful inventories of their stock did they keep, so that, some three thousand to four thousand years after their time, we know all about the numbers on their farms, whilst the old pictures present to us the finer points of the animals admirably.
The sportsman figures frequently on the tombs – those marvelous picture galleries of past life. Here is a gentleman with his throw-stick. He has craftily pushed in his light papyrus boat amongst the rushes, and has risen up in the cover to the surprise of the various birds. He is having good sport; different sorts of duck have fallen to his hand, and his cat is retrieving for him. This sportsman’s puss deserves all commendation, for he is bringing in one bird with a gentle mouth, and holding two others with his paws. Either the Egyptian cats were more civilized than ours, or the Egyptians were more advanced than we are in the art of training them. The decoy duck sits on the prow of the boat, placidly accepting the wiles of the sportsman. The drooping papyrus rushes on his shoulder should not be overlooked, for it would seem that the sportsman had covered his head with them in order to screen himself from the birds he has surprised. There are two butterflies hovering about the rushes, and their introduction indicates the eye for nature that characterized the ancient artists.
A favorite sport was that of capturing wild animals. These were trained and domesticated. In this respect their art excelled ours, for pet lions, leopards, and hyenas are not at present in accordance with our notions of civilization. They had acquired a power in dealing with these creatures which we do not possess. The picture shows us the servants bringing home the captured game from the chase.
The builder in those days used tools of the finest and most scientific kind Such have been dug up from their long burial of ages, and are in our ‘hands. And who in our days is he that can square huge stones of the hardest granite, stones twelve and twenty feet long, and face them so precisely that each surface shall not be out the thickness of a visiting card? Or, who is he of modern builders who can show a wall of monster stones, all so truly laid that the long joint of a furlong’s length shall not be out from end to end more than the breadth of a straw? In their style those old builders and architects are without rivals.
But more astonishing still is the work of the sculptors, for, seizing upon a mountain side, they would carve out of its living rock the portraits and the forms of kings, not life-size, but more than ten times life-size, figures in which each toe is as big as a man’s body, and in which the dimple around the mouth is as large as a great dish! Yet, when the work was finished, the very man sat before the spectator, a life-like likeness, refined and grand. And some declare that these sculptors did not even sketch out their work, but carved it right off out of the rock, a feat most marvelous, as artists know.
Harps, trumpets, pipes, and various instruments, accompanied by song, helped to soften and to soothe the spirits of the ancient Egyptians, and charmed as music does now.
Games were played very much as they are played today. Rameses the Third is represented within his palace home, playing drafts with one of the ladies of his court, and in royal style patting another under the chin. Possibly these ladies may be his daughters. One brings the king some flowers, another brings him fruit.
That most marvelous instrument of a hundred games, the ball, was in request then as now. Here are some girls tossing and catching three balls each. Dances were entered into with no small zest, and had their choice and dainty steps.
The physicians of those old days were paid by the government, and there were then even more specialty doctors than now; indeed, medical science in this respect seems progressing towards the ideas of bygone ages, and towards the wisdom of the Egyptians.
The lawyer drew wills, the surveyor measured the land, while the scribe’s hand was in everything.
Perhaps the most touching memorial of those old days are the toys. Dolls and cherished figures of boats and animals were handled by the little ones, as children love now to do. Cherished they were, for these playthings have been dug up out of tiny tombs, where they were laid together with the little ones, who had handled them.
It is well to picture to ourselves Egypt in the time of the Exodus. We are almost apt to regard these ancient people as barbarians, and to forget that they were highly refined and cultivated.
A very remarkable feature of Egypt is, the many things of daily life which remain to this day even as they existed thousands of years gone by. As we might expect, the resemblance of present to past, is found largely in country districts. The country does not change so rapidly as do towns, and in an eastern land the climate also seems to be very much the same now as it was generations ago. In the country, therefore, we need not be surprised to find in present use, the selfsame pattern of plow as we find painted upon the ancient monuments. Also all that seems necessary to plowing is a scratching up some three inches of soil, the rest of the work being abundantly performed by the waters of the Nile. No manure is required, the deposits of the river effect the end desired.
The two pictures given overleaf of the modern and ancient shadoof, show how similar is the mode of irrigating the soil to what it was in ancient times.
In the region above the cataracts in Nubia, the resemblance of the present to the past is most striking. The very attitudes of the people are often precisely the same as they were thousands of years ago. The favorite dishes are served as they were in the day of Rameses. Indeed, the pictures of everyday life represented on the ancient monuments, might seem to be life studies of the forms and faces and character of the people of today – the scant, or nominal clothing of the children, the food upon the table, the posture of the servants, are as they were in the days of the great Pharaohs of Moses’s time. Sheltered from modern civilization by the barrier of the cataracts, and hemmed in by barren mountains, life in Nubia goes on very much in the same way that it did four thousand years ago.