CHAPTER VI
CHILD-LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
How did the boys
and girls live in this quaint old land so many hundreds of years ago?
How were they dressed, what sort of games did they play at, what sort
of lessons did they learn, and what kind of school did they go to? If
you could have lived in Egypt in those far-off days, you would have
found many differences between your life of to-day and the life that
the Egyptian children led; but you would also have found that there
were very many things much the same then as they are now. Boys and
girls were boys and girls three thousand years ago, just as they are
now; and you would find that they did very much the same things, and
even played very much the same games as you do to-day.
When you read in
your fairy-stories about a little boy or girl, you often hear that they
had fairy godmothers who came to their cradles, and gave them gifts,
and foretold what was going to happen to the little babies in after
years. Well, when little Tahuti or little Sen-senb was born in Thebes
fifteen hundred years before Christ, there were fairy godmothers too,
who presided over the great event; and there were others called the
Hathors, who foretold all that was going to happen to the little boy or
girl as the years went on. The baby was kept a baby much longer in
those days than our little ones are kept. The happy mother nursed the
little thing carefully for three years at all events, carrying it about
with her wherever she went, either on her shoulder, or astride upon her
hip.
If baby took ill,
and the doctor was called in, the medicines that were given were not in
the least like the sugar-coated pills and capsules that make
medicine-taking easy nowadays. The Egyptian doctor did not know a very
great deal about medicine and sickness, but he made up for his
ignorance by the nastiness of the doses which he gave to his patients.
I don't think you would like to take pills made up of the moisture
scraped from pig's ears, lizard's blood, bad meat, and decaying fat, to
say nothing of still nastier things. Often the doctor would look very
grave, and say, "The child is not ill; he is bewitched"; and then he
would sit down and write out a prescription something like this:
"Remedy to drive away bewitchment. Take a great beetle; cut off his
head and his wings, boil him, put him in oil, and lay him out. Then
cook his head and his wings; put them in snake-fat, boil, and let the
patient drink the mixture." I think you would almost rather take the
risk of being bewitched than drink a dose like that!
Sometimes the
doctor gave no medicines at all, but wrote a few magic words on a scrap
of old paper, and tied it round the part where the pain was. I daresay
it did as much good as his pills. Very often the mother believed that
it was not really sickness that was troubling her child, but that a
ghost was coming and hurting him; so when his cries showed that the
ghost was in the room, the mother would rise up, shaking all over, I
daresay, and would repeat the verse that she had been taught would
drive ghosts away:
"Comest thou to kiss this child? I suffer thee not
to kiss him;
Comest
thou to quiet him? I suffer thee not to quiet him;
Comest
thou to harm him? I suffer thee not to harm him;
Comest
thou to take him away? I suffer thee not to take him away."
Plate 6.
Granite Statue of Ramses II.
Note the hieroglyphics on base of statue.
When little Tahuti
has got over his baby aches, and escaped the ghosts, he begins to run
about and play. He and his sister are not bothered to any great extent
with dressing in the mornings. They are very particular about washing,
but as Egypt is so hot, clothes are not needed very much, and so the
little boy and girl play about with nothing at all on their little
brown bodies except, perhaps, a narrow girdle, or even a single thread
tied round the waist. They have their toys just like you. Tahuti has
got a wonderful man, who, when you pull a string, works a roller up and
down upon a board, just like a baker rolling out dough, and besides he
has a crocodile that moves its jaws. His sister has dolls: a fine
Egyptian lady and a frizzy-haired, black-faced Nubian girl. Sometimes
they play together at ninepins, rolling the ball through a little gate.
For about four
years this would go on, as long as Tahuti was what the Egyptians called
"a wise little one." Then, when he was four years old, the time came
when he had to become "a writer in the house of books," which is what
the Egyptians called a school-boy; so little Tahuti set off for school,
still wearing no more clothes than the thread tied round his waist, and
with his black hair plaited up into a long thick lock, which hung down
over his right ear. The first thing that he had to learn was how to
read and write, and this was no easy task, for Egyptian writing, though
it is very beautiful when well done, is rather difficult to master, all
the more as there were two different styles which had to be learned if
a boy was going to become a man of learning. I don't suppose that you
think your old copy-books of much importance when you are done with
them; but the curious thing is that among all the books that have come
down to us from ancient Egypt, there are far more old copy-books than
any others, and these books, with the teachers' corrections written on
the margins, and rough sketches scratched in here and there among the
writing, have proved most valuable in telling us what the Egyptians
learned, and what they liked to read; for a great deal of the writing
consisted in the copying out of wise words of the men of former days,
and sometimes of stories of old times.
These old
copy-books can speak to us in one way, but if they could speak in
another, I daresay they would tell us of many weary hours in school,
and of many floggings and tears; for the Egyptian school-master
believed with all his heart in the cane, and used it with great vigour
and as often as he could. Little Tahuti used to look forward to his
daily flogging, much as he did to his lunch in the middle of the day,
when his careful mother regularly brought him three rolls of bread and
two jugs of beer. "A boy's ears," his master used to say, "are on his
back, and he hears when he is beaten." One of the former pupils at his
school writing to his teacher, and recalling his school-days, says: "I
was with thee since I was brought up as a child; thou didst beat my
back, and thine instructions went into my ear." Sometimes the boys, if
they were stubborn, got punishments even worse than the cane. Another
boy, in a letter to his old master, says: "Thou hast made me buckle to
since the time that I was one of thy pupils. I spent my time in the
lock-up, and was sentenced to three months, and bound in the temple." I
am afraid our schoolboys would think the old Egyptian teachers rather
more severe than the masters with whom they have to do nowadays.
Lesson-time
occupied about half the day, and when it came to an end the boys all
ran out of the school, shouting for joy. That custom has not changed
much, anyway, in all these hundreds of years. I don't think they had
any home lessons to do, and so, perhaps, their school-time was not
quite so bad as we might imagine from the rough punishments they used
to get.
When Tahuti grew a
little older, and had fairly mastered the rudiments of writing, his
teacher set him to write out copies of different passages from the best
known Egyptian books, partly to keep up his hand-writing, and partly to
teach him to know good Egyptian and to use correct language. Sometimes
it was a piece of a religious book that he was set to copy, sometimes a
poem, sometimes a fairy-tale. For the Egyptians were very fond of
fairy-tales, and later on, perhaps, we may hear some of their stories,
the oldest fairy-stories in the world. But generally the piece that was
chosen was one which would not only exercise the boy's hand, and teach
him a good style, but would also help to teach him good manners, and
fill his mind with right ideas. Very often Tahuti's teacher would
dictate to him a passage from the wise advice which a great King of
long ago left to his son, the Crown Prince, or from some other book of
the same kind. And sometimes the exercises would be in the form of
letters which the master and his pupils wrote as though they had been
friends far away from one another. Tahuti's letters, you may be sure,
were full of wisdom and of good resolutions, and I dare say he was just
about as fond of writing them as you are of writing the letters that
your teacher sometimes sets as a task for you.
When it came to
Arithmetic, Tahuti was so far lucky that the number of rules he had to
learn was very few. His master taught him addition and subtraction, and
a very slow and clumsy form of multiplication; but he could not teach
him division, for the very simple reason that he did not properly
understand it himself. Enough of mensuration was taught him to enable
him to find out, though rather roughly, what was the size of a field,
and how much corn would go into a granary of any particular size. And
when he had learned these things, his elementary education was pretty
well over.
Of course a great
deal would depend on the profession he was going to follow. If he was
going to be only a common scribe, his education would go no farther;
for the work he would have to do would need no greater learning than
reading, writing, and arithmetic. If he was going to be an officer in
the army, he entered as a cadet in a military school which was attached
to the royal stables. But if he was going to be a priest, he had to
join one of the colleges which belonged to the different temples of the
gods, and there, like Moses, he was instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and was taught all the strange ideas which they had about
the gods, and the life after death, and the wonderful worlds, above and
below, where the souls of men lived after they had finished their lives
on earth.
Plate 7.
Nave of the Temple at Karnak.
But,
whether his schooling was carried on to what we should call a
University training or not, there was one thing that Tahuti was taught
with the utmost care, and that was to be very respectful to those who
were older than himself, never to sit down while an older person was
standing in the room, and always to
be very careful in his manners. Chief of the older people to whom he
had to show respect were his parents, and above all, his mother, for
the Egyptians reverenced their mothers more than anyone else in the
world. Here is a little scrap of advice that a wise old Egyptian once
left to his son: "Thou shalt never forget what thy mother has done for
thee. She bare thee, and nourished thee in all manner of ways. She
nursed thee for three years. She brought thee up, and when thou didst
enter the school, and wast instructed in the writings, she came daily
to thy master with bread and beer from her house. If thou forgettest
her, she might blame thee; she might lift up her hands to God, and He
would hear her complaint." Children nowadays might do a great deal
worse than remember these wise words of the oldest book in the world.
But you are not to
think that the Egyptian children's life was all teaching and prim
behaviour. When Tahuti got his holidays, he would sometimes go out with
his father and mother and sister on a fishing or fowling expedition. If
they were going fishing, the little papyrus skiff was launched, and the
party paddled away, armed with long thin spears, which had two prongs
at the point. Drifting over the quiet shallow waters of the marshy
lakes, they could see the fish swimming beneath them, and launch their
spears at them. Sometimes, if he was lucky, Tahuti's father would
pierce a fish with either prong of the spear, and then there was great
excitement.
But still more
interesting was the fowling among the marshes. The spears were laid
aside on this kind of expedition, and instead, Tahuti and his father
were armed with curved throw-sticks, shaped something like an
Australian boomerang. But, besides the throw-sticks, they had with them
a rather unusual helper. When people go shooting nowadays, they take
dogs with them to retrieve the game. Well, the Egyptians had different
kinds of dogs, too, which they used for hunting; but when they went
fowling they took with them a cat which was trained to catch the
wounded birds and bring them to her master. The little skiff was
paddled cautiously across the marsh, and in among the reeds where the
wild ducks and other waterfowl lived, Sen-senb and her mother holding
on to the tall papyrus plants and pulling them aside to make room for
the boat, or plucking the beautiful lotus-lilies, of which the
Egyptians were so fond. When the birds rose, Tahuti and his father let
fly their throw-sticks, and when a bird was knocked down, the cat,
which had been sitting quietly in the bow of the boat, dashed forward
among the reeds and secured the fluttering creature before it could
escape.
Plate 8.
"And the Goose Stood Up and Cackled."
Altogether, it was
great fun for the brother and sister, as well as for the grown folks,
and Tahuti and Sen-senb liked nothing so well as when the gaily-painted
little skiff was launched for a day on the marshes. I think that, on
the whole, they had a very bright and happy life in these old days, and
that, though they had not many of the advantages that you have to-day,
the boys and girls of three thousand years ago managed to enjoy
themselves in their own simple way quite as well as you do now.
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