Red Land, Black Land

393 Pages·2008·5.24 MB·English

by  Barbara Mertz

Red Land, Black Land
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
Second Edition
Barbara Mertz

For my mother and father
Contents
Foreword to the First Edition
Foreword to the Second Edition
Ancient Egyptian Chronology
List of Black-and-White Illustrations
Part I The World of the Living
1. People of the Two Lands
Childbirth
The People in Art
The Problem of Queen Tiye
The People in Actuality
2. The Red and Black Lands
The Two Lands
Nubia and the Deserts
3. “Beloved of His Father and Mother”
Children
Household Pets
Growing Up
4. Lady of the House
The Egyptian Woman
The Queen
5. “Clothe Her Back”
Clothing
Coiffures
Jewelry and Cosmetics
6. “Come, Tell Me How You Live”
Towns and Houses
Furniture and Household Equipment
Food and Entertainment
7. “Be a Scribe, Put It in Thy Heart”
Education
Birds, Bees, and Flowers
The Hekanakhte Letters
The Scribe and the Bureaucracy
8. “I Fought Incredibly”
The Army
Forts and Fortifications
9. “I Know the Movement of a Figure, the Stride of a Woman”
Painting and Sculpture
Photographic Insert
Amarna Art
The Artist
The Architects
10. Sorcerer, Scientist, and Priest
Magic, Science, and Religion
Egyptian Magic
11. “The Useful Things That Are Established Forever”
Mathematics
Astronomy
How to Build a Pyramid
Boats
Medicine
12. “The God Is Satisfied with His Offerings”
The Official Religion
Temples and Rituals
The Contendings of Horus and Set
The Religion of the People
13. So Who Wants to Be an Ancient Egyptian?
Part II The World of the Dead
14. “An Excellent, Equipped Spirit”
Attitudes Toward the Dead
Heaven and the Soul
15. “My Body Shall Be Enduring”
Mummification—General
Mummification—Egyptian
16. “A Goodly Burial in the Necropolis”
Tombs and Mortuary Temples
Sarcophagi, Coffins, and Other Bare Necessities
All the Comforts of Home
Funerary Ritual
17. “On That Day of Judging the Deficient”
Books of the Dead
The Last Judgment
Reading List
Sources of Quotations
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by Barbara Mertz
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword to the First Edition
This is not a book about ancient Egyptian culture; it is a book about ancient
Egyptians. It might even be subtitled “How to Be an Ancient Egyptian,” for, if
properly studied, it will teach the reader how to make papyrus, how to build a
pyramid, and how to dress, dine, and furnish a house in the Egyptian manner,
among other matters of equal interest. The objects of our study are, for the most
part, anonymous, but they are, or were, people—human beings—Egyptians. I
have tried, therefore, to talk about them as people, not as featureless statistics or
as the vague blur of humanity underlying such academic topics as Egyptian
Literature or Egyptian Architecture. The reader will not find a chapter on
Egyptian Literature in this book, although a good many literary works are
discussed. He will not find a chapter on Architecture either, but houses, temples,
and tombs will be described. We do have a longish chapter on Egyptian
Religion; however, the chapter on Costume is almost as long, although it
concerns itself with a subject which is decidedly frivolous compared to theology.
Yet I suspect that a well-to-do Egyptian lady, like her descendants in other
countries and other ages, sometimes spent as much time thinking about her
clothing as about her gods.
I apologized, in another book, for what might strike a sensitive reader as a
frivolous approach to ancient Egypt, but I do not really believe that an apology is
necessary. The popular view of Egyptian civilization as dignified and austere is
incorrect. It comes from the massive temples, the grisly mummies, the crumbled
and ruined tombs. Yet the temples were once bright with paint and aglitter with
gold; the mummies were men, women, and children who enjoyed life so much
that they went to unusual extremes in the hope of perpetuating it; the tombs were
Houses of Eternity, equipped with “every good and pure thing” for the
enjoyment of life everlasting. We are not insulting the Egyptians or falsifying
their view of the world if we catch a glimpse of them telling bawdy stories about
the gods, getting drunk, writing sentimental poems to their sweetheart, or
lecturing their bored children. If we laugh at them just a little, it will not
diminish them; and if we fail to see that we are also laughing at ourselves, we
are missing the best part of the joke.
Foreword to the Second Edition
In the forty-plus years since this book was written, it has been read by a good
many people. I owe a great debt to these readers, some of whom went on to
become professional Egyptologists, for helping to keep the book in print and for
nagging me (in the kindest possible manner) to revise it. Since the original year
of publication, hundreds of new books and thousands of new articles have
appeared. The additions to one category are particularly striking: in the 1960s
there were no books on the subject of Egyptian women. There are now quite a
number of them, not to mention innumerable articles.
I won’t claim I’ve read all the new material, but I have read a good deal of it.
I have made many trips to Egypt and talked with a number of obliging
Egyptologists. And yet, I still stick to what I said in the foreword to the first
edition. The refinements, the new information, the new interpretations of old
data, really haven’t changed the picture as I see it. One may stress the differences
between cultures such as our own and that of ancient Egypt, or one may insist on
the fact that people ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, are basically much
alike, with the same ambitions, dreams, and fears. It seems to me that in today’s
world it is all the more necessary to focus on the second approach.