Among the figurines made not for wearing, but as separate material form, those depicting the young woman are prominent across the three millennia, though still with its own specific history, and always within a changing array of other figures that would affect, if not determine, meaning. In the third millennium BC, the naked female figurine is one of a series of animal and human forms, generally made of faience and found in temple deposits. In the late Middle Kingdom (1850-1700 Bc), now mainly preserved in burials, the range continues, though small male figures now tend to be of dwarves and boys (hand to mouth), and the female figurine seems more prominent. In this period, the figurines are often depicted tattooed, and with the arousing and protective jewelry known from depictions and burials, such as the cowry girdles. A wider range of sculptors were involved in production, with different materials: faience, pottery, wood, limestone, and ivory. These vary from schematic painted wood with masses of hair as linen threads with Nile-silt pellets (Morris 2011) to a realistic and expertly sculpted ivory figurine wearing metal earrings - the earliest examples of earrings in Egypt (Bourriau 1988). On many, the genitalia are emphasized, and small versions in mud may reduce the form to a trapezoidal block marked only as reproduction. A spectacular version with leonine mask, evoking childbirth-protector deities, had held copper serpents; in the same tomb find were wood and faience female figurines, faience animals and plants, and papyri for good health (see section “Who Owned Healing Papyri?" with Figure 6.8).
After 1450 Bc, clay or stone figurines of the naked female wear jewelry and ornate heavy wig, lying on a bed, often with child alongside. The motif also moves to eye paint containers and dominates a new version of the spoon for ladling or sprinkling, in the wider variety of materials: most often, the bowl of the spoon, sometimes as duck or fish, is held by a naked swimming girl, and sometimes, the handle becomes a new artwork, as in openwork motifs of girl playing music. This form is popular across the eastern Mediterranean (1400-1200 Bc), particularly in ivory, and is revived in dark soft stones in first-millennium production, with the distinctive shorter round hairstyles of 750-525 BC.
The lyrical imagery of these works evokes the imagery in love songs preserved on Egyptian papyri 1300-1100 BC. However, in the longer history of the form, safe birth seems the main focus for the figurine, including in palace production of the finest images. Infant and maternal mortality affected every class: the bedroom of the palace of Amenhotep III preserved images of childbirth protectors, and chairs from palace furniture in royal and court burials of 1400-1350 BC include Bes and Ipy/ Taweret. Much of the ancient material we classify as art belongs to the battle for safe birth at the highest level (Allen 2005). There is no high/low division in these sources, no religion/superstition divide as some modern writing assumes. Here, the social setting must be considered, from modern parallels that reveal the practicality of caring for mother and child. The art of healing implies wealth; birth protection might always involve the luxury of time, not available to everyone in a farming and pastoral economy. For late twentieth-century Nile Delta villagers, Morsy comments on the social class of birth defense and notes how confinement rituals after birth protection in two directions, for mother and child and for the society around (Morsy 1980, 156):
In the village of FatiHa, the ideal of confinement of women after birth (practiced only in families whose economic resources permit the temporary release of women from their work obligations) is exercised, not simply as a way of protecting others from their contaminating power, but primarily as protection for women themselves and their newborn infants, all of whom are believed to be particularly susceptible to harm, including death, during the post-partum period
In the ancient Egyptian record, in its different variants, the imagery of fertility and birth protection recurs intermittently throughout the record of votive offerings and burial equipment, including burials of men and women and children and adults, though with a tendency to the female and infant worlds (Figure 6.5).
In one period, 1850-1750 BC, more burials contain more birth equipment, which also appears most varied at this time, with carved hippopotamus tusks and special
Figure 6.5 Aha/Bes and Ipy/Taweret on a chair inscribed for the king's daughter Satamun, from the burial of Yuya and Tjuyu, parents of queen Tiy, about 1375 bc. Davies, T. 1907. The Tomb of louiya and Touiyou. Constable, London.
Rods decorated with forces of protection, redeployed as additional strategy for securing eternal life (Chapter 7). Finds from second-millennium BC settlement sites indicate that these strategies belong also, or primarily, within at least wealthier town life. The only surviving mask for the living, with lionlike features of childbirth-protector Aha/Bes, was buried in a pit in one of the medium-sized houses at Lahun (1800 bc; see Chapter 2). Recent finds of the same date at Mennefer/Memphis include a fragment of a limestone lamp or incense altar sculpted as a dwarf, in a substantial house where an infant had also been buried (Jeffresy 2012). The modern line between funerary and domestic and living and dead becomes difficult to maintain in this world of protection.
World History
