The lives of ordinary people are accessible to us via the town of Hetep-Senusret beside the pyramid complex of Senusret II at the site of Lahun. Mistakenly named ‘Kahun’ by Flinders Petrie, who excavated there in 1888-9, h was closely associated with the funerary crdt of Senusret II. Laid out in a single architectural plan like the much smaller New Kingdom walled villages at Amarna and Deir el-Medina (see Chapters 9 and 10), Hetep-Senusret was founded to accommodate the king’s workers and their families. It is likely, however, that it included among its inhabitants many who were not connected with the funerary cult. It has been estimated, on the basis of the capacities of grain silos throughout the town, that a population as high as 5,000 could have been supported. The modem site, however, is barely distinguishable from the surrounding desert, since the mud brick has been almost entirely removed, leaving only the foundations and lower courses of the buildings.
The material from Lahun is particularly precious because it derives from the living world rather than the necropolis (although Middle Kingdom setdements have been excavated more recently at Abydos, Memphis, and Elephantine, allowing the Lahun material to begin to be viewed in a much broader geographical and social context). Unfortunately, much of the material left behind at Lahim, when it was first abandoned in the 13th Dynasty, was thrown into huge rubbish pits by the post-Middle Kingdom occupants of the site. Thus a great deal of the precious context of the material was destroyed long before the site was excavated. Nevertheless, some houses were left comparatively undisturbed, and these have the potential to provide glimpses into the lives of the kinds of individuals who tend not to feature in the surviving textual and funerary material. to Percy Newberry’s collection of seed types during Petrie’s expedition, it has even proved possible to recreate the vegetation of the area (despite a certain amount of contamination by Graeco-Roman botanical material). There were flowers such as poppies, lupins, mignonette, jasmine, heliotrope, and irises (as well as weeds), and vegetables, including peas, beans, radishes, and cucumbers.
The material from Lahun also includes such intriguing finds as a ‘firestick’ for lighting fires (probably the only surviving Egyptian example), the earliest known mud-brick mould (identical to those used by Egyptians today), a set of doctor’s instruments, and many other tools used by farmers and professional craftworkers. There was also a rich variety of pottery, and a large number of papyri (some still unpublished), the contents of which shed light on many areas of religion and daily life. Among the most interesting of the texts from Lahun is the so-called Gynaecological Papyrus, which, as its name suggests, comprises the oldest surviving collection of remedies for women’s ailments.
World History
