Is it Christmas already? Not quite yet, we still have some days to go, and yet today we are devoting ourselves to a topic closely connected with Christmas: Birth in Ancient Egypt.
We have often seen that the Egyptians did not rely exclusively on earthly medicine in many health-related aspects, but that a magical-religious aspect often played into medical procedures. At a time when the mortality of mothers and newborns must have been quite high, it is surely also a legitimate thought that divine help would not hurt in any case!
But one thing after the other:
As is well known, pregnancy precedes birth; the Egyptians associated the absence of menstruation with an existing pregnancy at an early stage, but of course they wanted to check this methodically. In addition, at all times (even without modern technical support) parents were probably very curious about the sex of the child. The Egyptians were once again trendsetters here: until the 18th century CE, a birth prognosis method was used in gynaecology that was developed around 1250 BCE!
A method of determining whether a woman will give birth: Barley and emmer, the woman moistens them with her urine every day in two bags. If they both grow, the woman will give birth. If the barley grows, it means a male child. If the emmer grows, it means a female child. If they do not grow, she will not give birth.
The hormones secreted in the urine during pregnancy may indeed have caused grain to germinate quickly, but whether the prognosis about gender provides correct information is doubtful. From an Egyptian perspective, however, the connection is obvious: barley, Egyptian it, is a masculine noun, while emmer, bd.t, is a feminine noun.
We have little direct information about the birth; there are some depictions, but always from the "royal" context: Hatshepsut's own birth, for example, is shown in her mortuary temple in Deir el-Bahari, but not without a "propagandistic" charge. Her father is the god Amun himself, who pretended to be her mother's husband (Zeus could learn a thing or two from Amun!). Finally, the birth is accompanied by numerous protective gods, which is of course only befitting a queen.
From a fairy-tale narrative in the papyrus Westcar we receive further information, which, however, can also be located in the magical realm: The birth of royal triplets, which are however born to a "bourgeois" mother, is accompanied by three midwives, who are Isis, Nephthys and Heket, who place themselves around the mother. The mother crouches on two so-called birth bricks, called Meschenet, which also had a divine character and from which the lifetime of the child already emerged at its birth.
Birth brick from Abydos
Wegner, Josef"The Magical Birth Brick" Expedition Magazine 48.2 (2006). Penn Museum, 2006
Generally, the birth took place in a special place, the "Wochenlaube" or birth arbour. It is assumed that the women retreated there shortly before the birth and remained there for a few days after the birth to recover. Men do not seem to have been necessary for this period; the story of the Papyrus Westcar explicitly tells us that the husband was barred by the divine midwives.
The newborn is given health by the god Chnum (who creates humans on his potter's wheel), but still there are diagnostic ways to determine if the child will survive the first days.
Another recognition: If you hear its [the child's] voice by being brittle, it means that it will die. If it gives its face downwards, that also means it will die.
In order to prevent further damage to the newborn, it was possible to use magical objects. Besides amulets, so-called magic knives were probably used, which were made of ivory and contained drawings of protective animal gods. Especially the hippopotamus goddess Taweret is often found in this context, as she generally protected the expectant mother and her child (female hippos are also extraordinarily unpleasant if someone devotes himself to their offspring).
Inv.Nr. 04.2.365
By the Greco-Roman period at the latest, the work of the midwife in Egypt had probably become professionalised, since it already existed as a profession among the Greeks at that time. Since the knowledge of childbirth was not limited to medical knowledge, but also contained magical-religious components, it was probably primarily women who knew exactly what they were doing who assisted the expectant mother, even though we are not aware of any training for this. Yet even the goddesses from the Westcar story assure the husband of the woman giving birth, "Let us see her. We know obstetrics!" And if even goddesses had to legitimise themselves in this way, the birth was hardly likely to have been left to "ignorants"....
Literature
- A. Nifosi, Becoming a Woman and Mother in Greco-Roman Egypt, New York, 2019.
- C. Leitz, Zwischen Zauber und Vernunft: Der Beginn des Lebens im Alten Ägypten, in: A. Karenberg, C. Leitz (Hrsg.), Heilkunde und Hochkultur I, Berlin 2020.
Cover Picture
Birth scene of Hatshepsut from Deir el-Bahari, from: E. Naville, The Temple of Deir el-Bahari, Part II, London 1897.
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