not yet fully developed in the Middle Kingdom, and all the women described in this book were found as skeletons.
Particularly in more popular works, it is often stated that ancient Egyptian women had special rights compared to women from other ancient cultures.2 This impression may date back to the late nineteenth century, when most Egyptologists had undergone a broad classical education. They compared Egyptian women with those of classical antiquity and of European societies in their own time, where women indeed had few rights. In contrast, on many monuments Egyptian women appear next to their husbands and almost equal in size, while texts reveal that in court cases women and men had identical rights. Despite this, however, there is no doubt that ancient Egypt in the late Middle Kingdom, the period covered by this book, was a fully patriarchal society. Among the three hundred rulers during some three thousand years of ancient Egyptian history up to about 300 BCE, there were only a few female rulers with the full royal titulary3 (Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Neferneferuaton, and Tawesret). There are several cases where a king’s mother ruled for her son in his infancy. This too has been taken as evidence that women had special power in ancient Egypt. Such instances of maternal coregency prove almost the opposite, however: a mother ruling for her son is typical of a patriarchal society, where the mother often plays an important part in family life.4 In religion too the dominant role of men is visible. Indeed, in the burial equipment of the Middle Kingdom and later, women were identified with the male underworld god Osiris. It was only in the Ptolemaic Period that they were identified with a female deity.5
What remains true is that women in ancient Egypt had the same legal rights in court cases as men. There were some women with a certain amount of economic power, and women were fully present in the public sphere, not hidden away in the house as in classical Athens, for example. The Egyptian evidence can be compared with that for women in Mesopotamia, where there were also a few female rulers and where there was even a female poet at the end of the third millennium BCE (something ancient Egypt cannot offer, as no named poets are known for certain there).
THE LATE MIDDLE KINGDOM
After the First Intermediate Period, when Egypt was divided into two political units, the country was reunited around 2000 BCE under the Eleventh Dynasty king Mentuhotep II. This marks the beginning of the period Egyptologists call the Middle Kingdom. Until the end of the Eleventh Dynasty the royal cemeteries of the ruling family and its court were at Thebes, in the south of the country. Here the king built a huge mortuary temple with the tombs of the courtiers around it, including those of the royal women6 and the highest officials. Mentuhotep II reorganized the administration of the country, launched a building project renovating many temples in Upper Egypt, and began military campaigns against Egypt’s neighbors.
At the beginning of the ensuing Twelfth Dynasty, around 1975 BCE, a new residence was founded: Itjtawy (“seizer of the two lands”), in the north of the country, about sixty kilometers south of modern Cairo at the border of Upper and Lower Egypt, in a region the Egyptians considered to be the middle point of their country. Near this capital, at a place today called Lisht, were built the pyramids of the first two kings of the new dynasty, Amenemhat I and Senusret I. Around these pyramids a huge cemetery developed where the national ruling class of the early Twelfth Dynasty was buried. Amenemhat II, the third king of the dynasty, chose Dahshur as the new site for his pyramid, but Lisht remained an important cemetery till the end of the Middle Kingdom in the late Thirteenth Dynasty.
The Eleventh Dynasty and the first part of the Twelfth Dynasty constitute the most decentralized period of ancient Egyptian history. Certainly, in all periods people of wealth lived not only in the royal residence but also in important towns, and there were temples and tombs all over the country. In the first half of the Middle Kingdom, however, there were many wealthy and powerful local governors in different parts of Egypt who were able to quarry huge rock-cut tombs decorated with paintings and reliefs. The burial chambers of these monumental tombs have most often been found looted, but the few remains in them show that these regional governors were buried with a rich array of objects, most of them from the local workshops of a funerary industry.7 In this period, tombs were often equipped with wooden models showing carpenters, potters, ships, servants, and the production of food. Coffins were decorated on the inside with long religious texts known as Coffin Texts.
In about the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty, after the reign of Senusret II, major changes in the political landscape of ancient Egypt are visible. These mark the beginning of the late Middle Kingdom. First of all, the large provincial tombs of governors disappeared, and there were no longer cemeteries for the local ruling classes who worked for them. People were still buried in the provinces, and there are still some quite rich tombs of people not belonging to the local government. The early Middle Kingdom governor tombs are a most important source for coffins with religious texts. As a result of the disappearance of local governor court cemeteries, decorated coffins are much rarer in the late Middle Kingdom and seem to be restricted to just a few cemeteries, most of them in one way or another connected to the royal court. The wooden models so typical of the early Middle Kingdom also disappeared in the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty. Evidently this reflects a shift in religious beliefs. The wooden models seem to indicate that a major concern of the deceased was to secure the eternal food supply and the supply of material goods. With the disappearance of these wooden models, other aspects clearly became more important for the eternal afterlife.
In the late Middle Kingdom, local governors are still attested, for example on seals and temple statues, but it seems that they had diminished resources. The wealth of the country was now concentrated at a few places connected with royal activities. One was the region between Memphis and the Fayum. It was here that the royal pyramids were built, and most likely the royal residence, and here also were the burials of the highest court officials. In the Fayum several temples were erected, the most famous being a complex next to the pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara, known in later periods as the “labyrinth.” Another focal point was Abydos. This was the center of the cult of the underworld god Osiris. Here, king Senusret III built a huge tomb where he may have been buried, although he also had a pyramid in the north at Dahshur. Statues and stelae of officials were placed in the temple of Osiris. In the cemeteries next to the town, officials erected small chapels equipped with stelae and statues. These officials wanted to be, at least symbolically, close to the offerings made to Osiris. The third center of the late Middle Kingdom was Thebes. Here there was a royal palace, where it seems the kings spent a considerable amount of time. Officials followed the king, and there is good evidence for a flourishing late Middle Kingdom cemetery in Thebes. Although most tombs were found heavily looted, the available evidence indicates many richly equipped burials.
Preserved from the late Twelfth Dynasty are a large number of undisturbed burials of royal women, buried close to the pyramids of the kings. These burials were especially well equipped with jewelry of the finest quality. They also included a set of royal insignia identifying the deceased with Osiris. The late Middle Kingdom was without question the classical period of Egyptian gold work. The pectorals and other items found are of the highest aesthetic and technical quality. Such workmanship reaches a high point under Senusret II and his successor Senusret III, while under Amenemhat III a decline is already detectable. Although some of these burials were close to the pyramid of Amenemhat II and to those of Senusret II at Dahshur and Lahun, it seems that all these women were buried after Senusret II and therefore belong to the late Middle Kingdom.
After the Twelfth Dynasty with its long reigns, the Thirteenth Dynasty, by contrast, had many short-reigning kings. In terms of culture, there is no visible break. Few royal pyramids of this period have been excavated, which might be one reason there are so few comparable royal “jewelry tombs.” From the Thirteenth Dynasty, however, at least one burial of a royal woman is known, showing the same pattern of burial goods as for the royal and high-status women of the Twelfth Dynasty.
In addition to these burials of royal and high-status women, excavators have found and recorded several other burials of women from all around the country, which are also richly equipped with jewelry, though often with few other burial
