Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt by Carolyn Graves-Brown

Author:Carolyn Graves-Brown [Graves-Brown, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Ancient, General
ISBN: 9781441161222
Google: JXHOBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2010-05-07T23:56:41.150262+00:00

While one would assume that, as both men and women wore make-up, both sexes would have needed mirrors. Mirrors, however, were predominantly associated with women.73 They were included as funerary goods for men, but mirrors are rarely shown held by, or in front of, a man. Also, most mirrors were inscribed for women. Mirror dances are portrayed in tombs as being carried out by young women. It has been suggested that women may have been associated with mirrors because of the link between mirrors and Hathor.74 However, we cannot associate all things to do with women as sexual, and the link between women and mirrors may have been related to the more general link between women and grooming.

There are several depictions of women having their hair arranged, but none of men. While men and women both used eye make-up, there are no depictions of men applying make-up, but many of women doing so. This, together with the depiction of application of make-up in the Turin Erotic Papyrus, has led to the suggestion that make-up for women had sexual overtones.

The climbing or trailing plant usually identified as convolvulus appears to be associated with both women and fertility. It appears in the Turin Erotic Papyrus, and on depictions of women nursing young children on ‘Wochenlaube’ scenes. It is also shown on women’s coffins, such as on the Nineteenth Dynasty coffin of Iset, where it is held by the deceased (the coffin of Iset in Cairo Egyptian Museum JE 27309).75

Sexual coding also includes Bes, a deity, or rather group of deities, depicted as a dwarf with a leonine face and tail.76 In the past some Egyptologists have even associated Bes with prostitutes77 despite the fact that, as shown in Chapter 5, there is little evidence for prostitution in Pharaonic Egypt. While Bes may not necessarily have had erotic overtones, and the history of the group of deities shows various guises, usually Bes deities are protective and related to women and young children. In a limestone relief of c.2400 BC, a male figure is shown with a lion head in a register called ‘dancing with children’. In the Middle Kingdom, a leonine dwarf appears with the label Aha ‘the fighting deity’ on carved ‘magic wands’ used in childbirth. In the Eighteenth Dynasty and later he appears in amuletic form. These amulets were worn in life, mainly by women and children, but also appear in the tomb. He is shown on scenes of royal birth on the walls of temples, and is associated with bedroom furniture, appearing on beds, headrests, chairs, mirror handles and other cosmetic items. It is, however, not until later periods that the lion-maned dwarf god and his female counterpart are named as Bes and Beset.

In the New Kingdom, Bes is often shown connected with domestic buildings, such as at Deir el-Medina. In the houses he is painted on walls. Bes is also depicted as a tattoo, body paint or scarification (the medium is not certain despite the fact that these decorations

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