Although the liminal, transitional processes of pregnancy and birth largely lie outside the decorum of visual representation, especially in temples, they are potent motifs and metaphors in religious and literary sources and are at the heart of temple and mortuary rituals such as the ‘‘Opening of the Mouth’’ (Roth 1992; 1993b). Low fertility rates coupled with high mortality rates for mothers and infants (Robins 1994/5: 27-8; Toivari-Viitala 2001: 170-1, 184 n.13) go some way toward explaining the central position of fertility and birth at all levels of cultural expression and social experience. Birth, like death, was both dangerous and transformational.
A rich material culture associated with procreation is attested from a range of archaeological contexts from the Middle Kingdom onwards: wall paintings of‘‘birthing bowers’’ are attested in houses at Amarna and similar scenes are found in paintings and figured ostraca from Deir el-Medina (see figure 25.2; Pinch 1983), while objects such as birthing bricks, female figurines, and amulets have been found in domestic, temple, and funerary contexts (Pinch 1993; Roth and Roehrig 2002; Waraksa 2008). Concerns with fertility and successful birth are expressed in some letters (Wente 1990: 213) and texts on intermediary statues in temples (Clere 1995: 110-11; Eyre 2007: 231 n. 46). The prominence of spells and instructions relating to fertility, conception, pregnancy, and birth in medico-magical texts shows that the female body was incorporated into elite, male domains of knowledge (e. g. Collier and Quirke 2004: 58-64; cf. Meskell 2002: 65).
Much of the discussion of conceptions of childhood has centered on the treatment of children in mortuary contexts, which has been seen as evidence both for and against their integration into adult society (Meskell 1995; 1999; Patch 2007). In her study of child coffins Cathie Spieser (2008) emphasizes variability of status and other factors in determining burial treatment. Children were generally depicted with adult proportions, their youth signalled by smaller scale, nakedness, and sidelocks (Harrington 2007). Textual evidence, from terminology used for children (Feucht 1995: 503-57) to an Eighteenth Dynasty letter objecting to the removal of a servant girl from a household because she was still a child and should be treated as such (Toivari-Viitala 2001: 192), shows that childhood was a distinct social state.
There was, however, no simple dichotomy between childhood and adulthood. Biographical texts thematize stages of development for boys: ‘‘I was excellent as a weanling, clever as a child, discerning as a boy, intelligent as a humble youth. I was a
Figure 25.2 Ostracon from late New Kingdom Deir el-Medina showing a nursing woman (IFAO 2344). After Vandier d’Abbadie 1937: pl. 53.
Humble youth who sat upright in the school room’’ (Frood 2007: 109). It is not known how far transitions from youth to maturity were marked symbolically. The cutting of the sidelock may have been a significant event and there is ambiguous and variable evidence for male circumcision (Janssen and Janssen 2007: 76-82). Transitions for girls were perhaps even less distinct. The potent New Kingdom image of an adolescent girl and its close links with fertility, for which there is no male equivalent (Harrington 2007, 54), may point to girls ‘‘being sexual beings from an early age onwards’’ (Meskell 2002: 89).
A first marriage was probably a crucial socialization process for young men and women. For men and in some cases women, training for and taking up an occupation or office was also a marker of social maturity. Most evidence for training processes relates to scribal education (overviews: Fischer-Elfert 2001; Lazaridis in press) and apprenticeships among craft specialists (e. g. Bryan 2001; Cooney 2006), although some level of training should be assumed for all productive individuals. Occupations were usually inherited; normally a parent or older household member would be responsible for training whether in agricultural work or a particular skill or craft (Eyre 1987a: 195). For example, fathers and sons are attested among the fishermen and potters who worked for the Deir el-Medina community (Janssen 1997b: 40; Frood 2003a: 41). Father-son/master-apprentice training is presented as the ideal model for scribal education. Wisdom texts and teachings are often addressed from father to son, while dedications to teachers in scribal exercises from Deir el-Medina often indicate kinship or other linear master-apprentice relationships (McDowell 2000). In her study of a corpus of figured ostraca, probably from Deir el-Medina, Kathlyn Cooney (forthcoming) suggests a more diffuse model of training for artists and craftsmen. Repetitions of motifs in these ostraca point to a ‘‘community of practice’’ among a wider group of individuals, whose diverse skills advance the training of more junior members.
A similar model of community practice could apply to scribal education. ‘‘Schools’’ (lit. ‘‘rooms of instruction’’ or ‘‘rooms of writing’’) where groups of boys were taught together are referred to in literary and biographical texts (e. g. Frood 2007: 43, 109, 144, 208), and possibly attested archaeologically (Gasse 2000; Leblanc 2005). There is little evidence for beginning stages (McDowell 2000: 221-3), which may have used ephemeral media. The late New Kingdom papyri termed the ‘‘Late Egyptian Miscellanies,’’ which bring together a wide range of text-types (Caminos 1954), as well as some comparable material from Deir el-Medina (McDowell 1995; 2000), may derive from advanced stages of education when a student was apprenticed to a master (but see Hagen 2006; 2007). Other allusions to formal teaching include a First Intermediate Period biography where the protagonist is taught to swim with royal children (Lichtheim 1988: 29) as well as scattered references to priestly training. The Nineteenth Dynasty High Priest of Amun, Baken-khons, claims that, after leaving scribal school, he ‘‘was taught to be a wab-priest in the domain of Amun, as a son under the guidance of his father. He favored me, he perceived me because of my character, I followed him truthfully, I was initiated to (the position of) god’s father and I saw all his manifestations’’ (Frood 2007: 43-5). Here the father could refer to Bakenkhons’ biological father or to Amun. Comparable allusions to sacred training are found in biographies of master sculptors and craftsmen (von Lieven 2007: esp. 147-8). Initiation and access to advanced secret knowledge are crucial to personal advancement in such contexts (Kruchten 1989: 175-93).
There is little such evidence for the training or education of women. Most girls were probably trained in necessary domestic skills and crafts by older women in the household. The transmission of knowledge among women is perhaps evoked in Late Period texts concerning the adoption of girls by God’s Wives of Amun, a process which presumably resulted in training (Caminos 1964; Leahy 1996; Teeter 1999: 409-12). Evidence for female literacy is scattered and limited (Sweeney 1993; Toivari-Viitala 2001: 189-92), but some elite women were probably literate.
World History
