This distinction between male and female was, of course, sexual as well as social. The male role in sexual reproduction was seen as the actual creation of new life, which was then implanted in the female. Fundamentally, children were viewed as extensions of their father’s life force; the mother’s role in determining their nature was decidedly secondary. Instead, women seem to have had a dual role: they aroused the man and stimulated his creative act with their beauty and sexual attractiveness, and then they nourished the life that his creative power produced. The fact that the female was not credited with the creative side of fertility, which is commonly attributed to women in most other ancient cultures, may perhaps be due to the unusual geography of Egypt. Rather than a female earth, fertilized by rain from a male sky, Egypt’s agricultural fertility came from the annual flooding of the Nile River. The earth, therefore, was seen as masculine, its fertility perhaps stimulated by the nude, star-spangled figure of the sky goddess above it. This reversal of the more common view of the earth as female and the sky as male may have had profound effects on the ancient Egyptians’ views about gender (Roth 2000).
Sexual acts were not often represented in formal Egyptian art, although depictions of sexually aroused men were comparatively common. Gestures of affection were quite frequently shown in couples. In some cases these were mutual, but more often it was the woman who was shown embracing, supporting, or affectionately touching the man. Simpson has shown, however, that this is a general pattern, which seems to reflect power relations more than gender; kings were shown to be similarly affectionate with relation to gods (1977). In this, as in other ways, the man was seen to be superior in status to the woman, despite the equal importance and complementarity of their roles.
Subtle depictions of sexual congress occurred in the ‘‘divine conception’’ scenes in temples and later in birth houses attached to Graeco-Roman temples. There the couple was depicted seated on a bed, while the male extended the life hieroglyph to the nose of the female, and she often supported his elbow. Over time, these figures tended to be separated by increasing amounts of space, and in later birth houses, the life sign could become extremely long.
One hieroglyphic sign depicting the sexual act was preserved in the tomb of Khety at Beni Hassan, and showed the man, with red-brown skin, lying atop a woman, whose skin was light gold, facing him, on an ebony bed. This sign was quite clear on the wall, although it was depicted in the late nineteenth-century publication as a break (Newberry 1893: pl. 14). Since this sign appears to be a generic hieroglyphic ideogram, the form the intercourse took was presumably the norm. Other depictions of sexual intercourse, in much less conventional positions, occur on the Turin Erotic Papyrus and assorted inscribed potsherds from the New Kingdom. There, men with sexual organs as long as their arms approached or penetrated scantily clad and uncomfortably positioned women. Even more generously endowed men were represented in sculptures of the late period, some of which were possibly of religious significance or to be used as amulets.
It has been suggested that the Turin papyrus served as a manual or a bill of fare at a house of prostitution (Manniche 1987: 107), but in fact the institution of female prostitution was not well attested until the later periods of Egyptian history, when it occurred in the Greek-influenced story of Setne-Khaemwas and possibly other texts. During the pharaonic period, the two characters in literary works who offered to pay for sex were in both cases women. In the story of the unfaithful wife in papyrus Westcar, the wife of the high priest sent a box of clothing to a man of the town to engage his attention (Simpson 1973: 16), while in the Tale of Two Brothers, the wife of Anubis offered to make her brother-in-law fine clothes if he would sleep with her (Simpson 1973: 95). Interestingly, when she repeated the proposition to her husband, as coming from his brother, no remuneration was mentioned. Given that cloth may have served as a kind of informal currency, and that it was a product produced by women, mention of it in these contexts suggests a stereotype.
Male homosexual interest and sexual relations, though not well attested, were mentioned in several literary works. Such a violation of gender roles, in view of the cosmological importance of gender distinctions, was clearly seen as violating the norms. In the myth recounting the contest of the gods Horus and Seth for the throne of Egypt, Seth claimed to have taken the active role in homosexual intercourse with Horus, and this was apparently felt to disqualify Horus for the kingship; he was spat upon by the other gods (Parkinson 1991: 120-1; Simpson 1973: 120-1). No disgrace seems to have attached to Seth for his part of this activity, however, presumably because he claimed to have taken the male role, and therefore did not violate societal expectations. Horus’s (alleged) transgression was in taking the female role, not merely in participating in homosexual intercourse. Nevertheless, in at least some contexts, homosexual activity was seen more as a subject for humor than as a shocking violation of societal norms. A Middle Kingdom story about a king of the Old Kingdom, the long-reigning Pepi II, recounted his scandalous behavior with a general ‘‘in whose entire house was no woman.’’ The story seems to represent the attempts of outraged citizens to discover and discourage such activities as laughable, and in one case, thwarted by court musicians (Parkinson 1991: 54-6).
There were no textual allusions in the ancient Egyptian corpus to female homosexuality outside ofdream books and protestations ofinnocence put in the mouths of the dead (Manniche 1987: 22). This may be due to the fact that most literature was produced by men. Nor is transvestitism attested, perhaps because the clothing and hairstyles of men and women were in many periods too similar to serve as a marker of gender. In one interesting statue, however, Sobeknofru (1760-1755 bce), a reigning queen at the end of the Twelfth Dynasty, was shown wearing a man’s kilt over the traditional close-fitting woman’s dress (Callender 2000: 170-1).
World History
