Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

 
Many have a passion for knowing a lot about the life of the ancient Egyptians and the details of their daily lives, because most of the light is shed on the details of life after death for the ancient Egyptians, and this gives the impression that the ancient Egyptian only cared about death, and this is not true
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The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time.

In reality, ancient Egyptians loved life, no matter their social class, and the ancient Egyptian government used slave labor as every other ancient culture did without regard to any particular ethnicity. The ancient Egyptians did have a well-known contempt for non-Egyptians but this was simply because they believed they were living the best life possible in the best of all possible worlds.

 

 

Life in ancient Egypt was considered so perfect, in fact, that the Egyptian afterlife was imagined as an eternal continuation of life on earth. Slaves in Egypt were either criminals, those who could not pay their debts, or captives from foreign military campaigns. These people were considered to have forfeited their freedoms either by their individual choices or by military conquest and so we're forced to endure a quality of existence far below that of free Egyptians.

The individuals who actually built the pyramids and other famous monuments of Egypt were Egyptians who were compensated for their labor and, in many cases, were masters of their art. These monuments were raised not in honor of death but of life and the belief that an individual life mattered enough to be remembered for eternity. Further, the Egyptian belief that one's life was an eternal journey and death only a transition inspired the people to try to make their lives worth living eternally. Far from a death-obsessed and dour culture, Egyptian daily life was focused on enjoying the time one had as much as possible and trying to make others' lives equally memorable.

 

Mystery of a 7,000-year-old woman


Sports, games, reading, festivals, and time with one's friends and family were as

 much a part of Egyptian life as toil in farming the land or erecting monuments and temples. The world of the Egyptians was imbued with magic. Magic (heka) predated the gods and, in fact, was the underlying force that allowed the gods to perform their duties.

Magic was personified in the god Heka (also the god of medicine) who had participated in the creation and sustained it afterward. The concept of ma'at (harmony and balance) was central to the Egyptian's understanding of life and the operation of the universe and it was heka that made ma'at possible. Through the observance of balance and harmony people were encouraged to live at peace with others and contribute to communal happiness. A line from the wisdom text of Ptahhotep (the vizier to the king Djedkare Isesi, 2414-2375 BCE), admonishes a reader:

"Let your face shine during the time that you live.

It is the kindliness of a man that is remembered

During the years that follow".

 

 

Letting one's face "shine" meant being happy, and having a good spirit, in the belief that this would make one's own heart light and lighten those of others. Although Egyptian society was highly stratified from a very early period (as early as the Presynaptic Period in Egypt of c. 6000-3150 BCE), this does not mean that the royalty and upper classes enjoyed their lives at the expense of the peasantry.

The king and court are always the best-documented individuals because then, as now, people paid more attention to celebrities than their neighbors, and the scribes who recorded the history of the time documented what was of greater interest. Still, reports from later Greek and Roman writers, as well as archaeological evidence and letters from different time periods, show that Egyptians of all social classes valued life and enjoyed themselves as often as they could, very like people in the modern-day.

 

Amenhotep II - Thutmose IV from the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt

 

Population & Social Classes

The population of Egypt was strictly divided into social classes from the king at the top, his vizier, the members of his court, regional governors (eventually called 'nomarchs'), and the generals of the military (after the period of the New Kingdom), government overseers of worksites (supervisors), and the peasantry. Social mobility was neither encouraged nor observed for most of Egypt's history as it was thought that the gods had decreed the most perfect social order which mirrored that of the gods.

The gods had given the people everything and had set the king over them as the one best-equipped to understand and implement their will. The king was the intermediary between the gods and the people from the Predynastic Period through the Old Kingdom (c. 2613-2181 BCE) when the priests of the sun god Ra began to gain more power. Even after this, however, the king was still considered god's chosen emissary. Even in the latter part of the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE), when Amun priests at Thebes held greater power than the king, the monarch was still respected as divinely ordained.

 

 

 

Upper class

The king of Egypt (not known as a 'pharaoh' until the New Kingdom period), as the gods' chosen man, "enjoyed great wealth and status and luxuries unimaginable to the majority of the population" (Wilkinson, 91). It was the king's responsibility to rule in keeping with ma'at, and as this was a serious charge, he was thought to deserve those luxuries in keeping with his status and the weight of his duties. Historian Don Nardo writes:

"The kings enjoyed an existence largely free from want. They had power and prestige, servants to do the menial work, plenty of free time to pursue leisure pursuits, fine clothes, and numerous luxuries in their homes".

The king is often depicted hunting and inscriptions regularly boast of the number of large and dangerous animals a particular monarch killed during his reign. Almost without exception, though, animals like lions and elephants were caught by royal game wardens and brought to preserves where the king then "hunted" the beasts while surrounded by guards who protected him. The king would hunt in the open, for the most part, only once the area had been cleared of dangerous animals.

 

 

 

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Members of the court lived in similar comfort, although most of them had little responsibility. The nomarchs might also live well, but this depended on how wealthy their particular district was and how important it was to the king. The nomarch of a district including a site such as Abydos, for example, would expect to do quite well because of the large necropolis there dedicated to the god Osiris, which brought many pilgrims to the city including the king and courtiers. A nomarch of a region that had no such attraction would expect to live more modestly. The wealth of the region and the personal success of an individual nomarch would determine whether they lived in a small palace or a modest home. This same model is applied generally to scribes.

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