Rare written and pictorial sources mark some bodily differences against a general background of depicting all individuals regardless of age as youthful. That general mode of depiction perhaps corresponds to the Egyptian word nefer, “beautiful,” specifically the extending of the body to a taut physical ideal of youth after puberty (cf. Berlev 2000). On this principle, even prepubescent children appear as adults: the difference in age is marked, not by the different bodily proportions of children in growth, but instead by smaller scale, nudity, and a sidelock of hair. For later stages in life, the marks of prosperous maturity (belly folds) and of old age (wrinkles, white hair) are rare in formal depictions (cf. Sweeney 2006).
Perhaps the most numerous exceptions are depictions of adults with shorter body, flatter skull, and bandy legs, for whom the written sources give the Egyptian word nemi translated as dwarf(Dasen 1993). Archaeological evidence for inclusion of dwarves in royal court life goes back to the turn of the fourth to third millennia BC. Beside the tombs of two First Dynasty kings at Abdju, Semerkhet and Qa'a (about 2900 Bc), skeletal remains were identified as of dwarves among the courtiers buried there. In the double row of courtier tombs around the burial chambers for King Semerkhet, two contained bones identified as of dwarves, and one of these was marked with name-stones inscribed with an image of a dwarf and the name Neferit in hieroglyphs (Figure 2.6). Written and pictorial sources suggest integration into social and economic life, as well as reverence for the dwarf as powerful liminal force among humans. The form and name nemi is used in some later sources for Ptah, god of metalwork and craft creation at Mennefer/Memphis. Several depictions show dwarves as goldsmiths or in the treasury, and there are votive dwarf figurines of both sexes around 3000 and 1800 BC. The features emphasized on figures suggest that sometimes the dwarf may have been revered specifically for the combination of child-stature body with a face lined with marks as in old age. The same body proportions and bandy legs are a regular feature of images of a divine force with leonine face, named Aha in second-millennium BC sources and Bes in the first millennium BC-AD (see following text, Infant burials in houses).
Reverence for physical difference is a theme in Chapter 25 of the Teaching of Amen-emipet, a literary composition known from early to mid-lirst-millennium BC copies:
Do not mock the blind, or torment the dwarf,
Do not inflict hardship on the lame.
Do not torment one who is in the hand of the god, Or become angry with him for his slips.
People are clay and straw—god is the builder.
Figure 2.6 Limestone stela inscribed with depiction and name of the dwarf Neferit, from subsidiary burial M at the tomb of the First Dynasty king Semerkhet, Abdju, about 3000 bc. W. petrie, Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1900, pl.60.
The need for such teaching can be seen in other sources. Around 2400 bc, several chapels of officials have depictions of a puberty game or ritual where boys shackle and vilify a traveler or nomad, depicted in one example as a hunchbacked man (Fischer-Elfert 2005). In this moment, the visibly different body becomes an object of othering to mark the passage from boyhood to manhood. However, the scene does not show how the shackled man was treated outside the ostensibly cruel game; the rite could imply criticism of the cruelty of the children, as something they have to grow out of, rather than approval (Figure 2.7).
World History
