In many cultures the treatment of dead children and the locations for disposal of their remains differs from those of adults, often corresponding to the position of the deceased within a society based upon their age and stage of life. For example, premature and still-born infants may not be considered fully human and therefore will not be eligible for burial.986 In Egypt and Nubia this distinction seems not to be complete because buried and even mummified foetuses have been found.987 Ancient societies experienced high infant mortality rates988 as well as an elevated risk of death through childbirth.989 In a study of reproductive health of women conducted in the 20th century in the Giza governorate,990 early marriage, lack of education, and poor socioeconomic conditions were found to have a profound effect on female morbidity and mortality. A survey of 462 women revealed an extremely high death rate for young children, with 249 miscarriages, 41 stillbirths, and 497 child deaths, of which 58% occurred in the first year of life and 37% before the age of five.991 In ancient Egypt, where gynaecological issues were not fully understood,992 the concern to prevent miscarriage and the recognition that bleeding is one of its major symptoms is recorded in medical texts.993 Miscarriage was one of the many physical traumas blamed on the intervention of the dead (mwty. for example, two knots of linen were used to ‘repel [the] (evil) activity (?) of a dead person or a god [by] the magic power of Anubis.’994
Death as a result of complications during childbirth, such as haemorrhage, sepsis, and hypertensive diseases (toxaemia and eclampsia), must have been fairly common, as in modern rural Egypt where many births still take place in the house with the assistance of a traditional birth attendant or daya.995 Miscarriages, stillborns and children that die immediately after birth are buried directly in the sand or under the wall of houses, stables, or the local mosque.996 Burial of infants less than one year old within houses is known from all periods of ancient Egypt. sites include Nubian forts (Middle Kingdom), Elephantine (Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period), Deir el-Medina, Hermopolis, Tell Basta, and Amarna (New Kingdom).997 The reason for sub-floor interments is not clear; while in some cases it could be for the cultic benefit and protection of the child who would not have been weaned998 and whose defencelessness would have made it particularly vulnerable to attack from malevolent forces, at Elephantine neonates were buried in unoccupied houses.999 Suggestions for similar burials among other cultures include the domestication of death, emotional comfort for the bereaved by the proximity of the dead within the house, conceptual links to the continuity of a settlement, or the retaining of the soul within the walls so that the young could be reborn:1000 if an infant died in a Coptic Christian family prior to baptism in the early 20th century, for example, it was buried beneath the floor of the house to ensure that the mother would have another child.1001
The Eastern Cemetery at Deir el-Medina was divided into age-related sectors: infants were buried at the base of the hill, with adolescents and adults in the slope above.1002 Maternal mortality may have been responsible for the discrepancy between the number of males and females interred in this cemetery. Meskell1003 suggests that more women were buried there because they could not afford to build western necropolis-style sepulchres, though given the general scarcity of tombs built exclusively for women, one might expect them to be incorporated into the burial place of their husband or family (unless they predeceased them). If, as Pierrat-Bonnefois contends,1004 the Eastern Cemetery was not intended for the burials of individuals from the village itself, but rather represents an overspill of other local burial grounds, then the location of the necropolis for the majority of 18th Dynasty workmen and their families has yet to be found.
In the 18th Dynasty at Deir el-Medina infants were buried in amphorae, baskets, boxes, and plain coffins, sometimes accompanied by grave goods.1005 There seems to have been no workshop or individual artisans responsible for producing containers specifically for dead juveniles. Ceramic vessels, amphorae, wooden boxes and baskets were all made initially for domestic use: in some cases the baskets were too small for the body of the child, so the end of the container was cut to allow the legs of the corpse to protrude.1006 The presence of food, pottery and jewellery suggests that the children were considered to be full social persons, an interpretation supported by the use of anthropoid coffins for some infants elsewhere in Egypt and Nubia (such as the Ramesside example of Paneferneb from Aniba),1007 as continued to be the case in the Greco-Roman period.1008 As with adult burials, the interment of the young was most likely determined by the family’s means - thus the burial of children of similar ages in coffins or baskets may be economically rather than symbolically based.
Although it is often assumed that vessels and objects interred with the deceased indicate a belief in an afterlife, it is also possible that at least some items were deposited in graves to remove them from circulation due to negative associations.1009 This may be true of the flints used to cut the umbilical cord found in some infant burials:1010 the fact that the child came into
Figure 54: Deceased child, named Taia, justified, beneath an adult’s chair. Her youth is indicated by the sidelock, although her dress suggests that she was adolescent; in contrast, young children in this tomb are shown naked. Tomb of Sennedjem (TT1), Deir el-Medina, 19th Dynasty.
Contact with the knife and subsequently died may have meant that it was considered unsuitable for further use.1011 The lack of toys but inclusion of protective amulets suggest that in death children were treated as and experienced the same journey to the next world as their parents and siblings and that they were equally (if not more) vulnerable to its dangers.
In the 19th Dynasty children were interred in the Western Cemetery at Deir el-Medina where they were given quite meagre burials. In general anthropoid coffins seem to have been limited to the offspring of the highest elite and royalty,1012 including the foetuses from the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62), the son of Amenhotep II from KV 32, three infants from KV 43
Figure 55: Mortuary stela depicting a deceased couple and child (‘her daughter, Irynefert (i), justified’as recipients of offerings from their family. Tomb chapel of May (Maia), Deir el Medina, 18 th Dynasty. Turin 1579. © Fondazione Museo Antichita Egizie di Torino - used with permission.
(Thutmose IV), and Prince Ahmose-Pairy from the Deir el-Bahri cachette.1013 A 19th Dynasty anthropoid coffin with scenes of ‘daily life’ belonging to Tairitsekheru1014 contained the mummy of a very young child who was titled ‘the Osiris’,1015 which indicates that she was considered to be a blessed member of the afterlife community.
It would seem that ailing children were cared for in life and buried with dignity, at least at the Eastern Cemetery in the 18th Dynasty. One of the best-provisioned graves in the necropolis was that of a four year old girl with hydrocephalus (tomb no. 1375). The child was buried in a sycamore wood coffin, and interred with stone, bronze, and ceramic vessels, amphorae, lamps, jewellery, a wig, cloth, oil, food and beer.1016 Other tombs for disabled or diseased children include 1373 (a four year old boy with scoliosis),1017 1372b, c (four and six year old children with dwarfism/achondroplasty), and 1390 (a severely deformed three year old boy named Iriky). Malnutrition and parasitic infections such as schistosomiasis resulted in a weakened immune system and greater susceptibility to disorders (scurvy, inflammation, ulcers, anaemia), as evidenced in Middle Kingdom burials at Elephantine.1018 Kamp1019 points out that little scholarly attention has been paid to the consequences of ill health for the children themselves or for the society of which they were a part, but the careful burial of sick and disabled children in Thebes implies that they were not rejected or treated differently to those without obvious signs of ill-health.
Other than Prince Ahmose-Sipair,1020 no mortuary cult of children or adolescents is known, though a faience ancestor-style bust with the hairstyle of a child now in the Petrie Museum1021 may have been one of many. Beyond these limited examples, it seems that young children in general were not intended to be individually remembered. Bruyere did not mention any constructed masonry or external monuments marking the locations of graves in the Eastern Cemetery,1022 nor did he find offerings or evidence of funerary or mortuary rituals conducted in their vicinity. Thus, while young children were buried with dignity, they were not accorded any form of permanent memorial or cult comparable to that of elite adults, except when they were depicted in tombs or on stelae where they could be remembered with their parents (Figures 54 and 55).
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