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 ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIA
ANALECTA
————— 289 —————

DUST, DEMONS AND POTS

Studies in Honour of Colin A. Hope

edited by

ASHTEN R. WARFE, JAMES C.R. GILL, CALEB R. HAMILTON,

AMY J. PETTMAN and DAVID A. STEWART

PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT
2020
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial preface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Harry Smith
A brief tribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Anthony J. Mills
Dr Colin A. Hope: a personal reflection . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Gillian E. Bowen
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

Bibliography of Colin A. Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxxi

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli

David A. Aston
Pottery of the Egyptian New Kingdom: a study. Eighteenth Dynasty Nile
clay storage jars from the Valley of the Kings . . . . . . . . . 1

Elizabeth Bettles
Pink in the Kellis mammisi and Kalabsha Temple: solar theology and
divine gender in Roman period cultic monuments . . . . . . . . 25

Jessie Birkett-Rees
Landscape modification in the South Caucasus highlands: the accuracy
of remote feature identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Laurence Blondaux
Conserving wall paintings in archaeological fields: a case study from
Kellis, Dakhleh Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Elizabeth Bloxam
Who were the quarry workers? Investigating the origins of stone crafting
in Egypt’s Eastern Desert  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Malcolm Choat
Earliest Christianity in the Great Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Andrew Connor
Two papyri from the Beinecke Library . . . . . . . . . . . 89
VI table of contents

Jessica Cox
Changing aesthetics: Petrie’s Decorated Ware in the Naqada II and III
periods  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa Darnell, with a contribu-
tion by Alberto Urcia
A settlement and its satellites in the desert hinterland of Moalla – new
light on ‘enigmatic’ Late Roman sites in the Eastern Desert . . . . 113
Delphine Dixneuf
Sourcing the commodity supplies to Pelusium between the mid-fourth
century and early fifth century . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149
Françoise Dunand and Roger Lichtenberg
Embalmers’ workshops in Kharga Oasis  . . . . . . . . . .159
Linda Evans
The Good Shepherd’s flock: insights from ancient Egyptian art . . . 177
Frank Förster
The king and the ‘murderer’: two sherd stories from the Abu Ballas Trail191
James C.R. Gill
A Bes-vessel from Bahariya Oasis, Egypt . . . . . . . . . .203
Robyn Gillam
Towards a phenomenology of Middle Egyptian landscapes . . . . .217
Caleb R. Hamilton
An early Egyptian king in the Western Desert margin . . . . . . 227
Frederick E. Hardtke
The long reach of the Nile Valley – the Egyptianisation of Siwa and the
western outer oases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241
Irmgard Hein
Painted pots from pharaoh’s palace . . . . . . . . . . . .257
Jennifer Hellum
The questions of the maidservant and the concubine: re-examining Egyp-
tian female lexicology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
Stan Hendrickx, Renée Friedman, Xavier Droux and Merel Eyckerman
Size mattered in Predynastic Egypt: a very large Decorated vessel in the
British Museum  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279
Caroline Hubschmann
The curation of ancient Egypt in the twenty-first century: how should the
present engage with the past? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305
 table of contents VII

Salima Ikram, Gaëlle Tallet and Nicholas Warner

A mineral for all seasons: alum in the Great Oasis . . . . . . . 317
Andrew Jamieson
The Egyptian branch of the Classical Association of Victoria and the
development of Egyptology in Melbourne . . . . . . . . . .335
Naguib Kanawati
Rise and fall of the Twelfth Dynasty noble family of El-Qusiya . . . 351
Olaf E. Kaper
The god Seth in Dakhleh Oasis before the New Kingdom . . . . . 369
Barry Kemp
Predynastic sherds from Malkata, Western Thebes . . . . . . .385
Maxine R. Kleindienst, Charles S. Churcher, Mary M.A. McDonald
and Ashten R. Warfe
Holocene evidence and a copper axe head from prehistoric Locality MD-022,
Kharga Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401
Christian Knoblauch
Between Egypt and Kerma: a strange Tulip-Beaker from Mirgissa . . 415
Paul N. Kucera
An oasis border in the fourth century CE: the evidence from Dakhleh . 425
Rudolph Kuper
The ‘Ahmed Fakhry Desert Center Dakhla’: chronology of a lost hope . 437
Anthony Leahy
A Twenty-sixth Dynasty high priest of Seth at Mut al-Kharab (?)   . . 445
Nicolle Leary and Alexandra Woods
Figural proportions for active figures: a case study. Drafting the fowling
scene in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan . . . . . . . 459
Fred Leemhuis
The letters of Ḥasan ‛Abd Allāh Aḥmad to his mother Ḥalīma ‛Uthmān
and others. Glimpses into the life of a divorced woman in the Qurashī
family of Qaṣr Dakhleh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries469
Rosanne Livingstone
Traditional Egyptian and Ptolemaic techniques used in the manufacture
of Roman period tunics: as evidenced on an example from Kellis   . . 481
Sylvie Marchand
A funny Bes vase! Early fourth century BCE, Ayn Manâwir, Kharga
Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493
VIII table of contents

Lisa Mawdsley
Burying the dead with textiles at the Naqada III cemetery of Tarkhan . 503

Mary M.A. McDonald

The Egyptian Western Desert and the Nile Valley in the fifth millen-
nium BCE: Baris B and the Tasian . . . . . . . . . . . .515

Robert S. Merrillees
An unwonted exchange: Egyptian antiquities from Beni Hasan and
Esna (?) in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia . . . . . . . . . .529

Karol Myśliwiec
Was there a sanctuary of Osiris in the ex-quarry west of the Djoser funer-
ary complex? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .545

Boyo Ockinga and Susanne Binder

The stela of the Overseer of Potters Aku in the Museum of Ancient Cul-
tures, Macquarie University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .557

Laure Pantalacci
A rare funerary practice from the late Old Kingdom in Balat . . . . 575

Amy J. Pettman
Evidence for production of double bread moulds in Dakhleh Oasis during
the Old Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .587

Sarah M. Ricketts
The Sheikh Muftah cultural unit: insights into social relations with Old
Kingdom Egyptians, Dakhleh Oasis and desert surrounds . . . . . 599

Heiko Riemer
Taking the long road: starting investigations on the Darb el-Tawil . . 615

Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo

Broken faces: investigating evidence of regionalism in mummy mask
fragments from the Kellis 1 cemetery  . . . . . . . . . . .635

Séamus Scorgie
Analysis of Second Intermediate Period ceramic material from Dakhleh
Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .645

Anthony Spalinger
Wrinkles in time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .659

Jeffrey Spencer and Patricia Spencer

Sherborne School’s Egyptian collection . . . . . . . . . . .667
 table of contents IX

Anna Stevens, with contributions by Pamela J. Rose

Death and burial at the Amarna Workmen’s Village: a community cem-
etery in context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .681
Pierre Tallet
Glimpses on the early cult of Seth in Dakhleh Oasis . . . . . . .705
Günter Vittmann
Wine for the gods of Dakhleh (Ostracon Mut 38/70) . . . . . . .715
Ashten R. Warfe
Why decorate a pot? Insights on social practice from mid-Holocene
Dakhleh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .739
Helen Whitehouse
The sun in the sign of Leo? A Nilotic scene from a funerary complex at
Ostia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .755
Rachel Yuen-Collingridge
The physicality of genre in the papyri: the expression and subordination
of content  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .765
 THE QUESTIONS OF THE MAIDSERVANT AND THE CONCUBINE:
RE-EXAMINING EGYPTIAN FEMALE LEXICOLOGY

Jennifer Hellum
University of Auckland, Auckland

Colin has been, since I first arrived in Australasia, a kind and

supportive colleague, which I have appreciated more than I can
possibly say. I hope this offering won’t go amiss, despite the subject
matter being very far from Colin’s own fields of expertise.

When the task of transcribing and translating the Egyptian language was a
new endeavour during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries,
the European intellectual sphere belonged to élite white men. Women and non-
whites were only rarely allowed entry. Members of that privileged society
included the group of scholars responsible for the lexicology of hieroglyphs.
These men were either independently wealthy or had patrons willing to support
their efforts. It was a milieu that fostered a certain understanding of class and
gender, and their translations betray a mix of Orientalism, sexism and classism,
the standard contemporary intersections of discourse when dealing with both
women and the Orient (Hellum forthcoming). Many of the translations have
consequently been modified to suit newly acquired knowledge and context in
the language and linguistics (e.g. Polis and Winand 2015), but the general
female lexicon has, with a very few exceptions, not been examined or modified.
This particular lexicon, comprised of those words which pertain to women and
their roles, is not particularly large. There are fewer than 100 words in the
English translation of Egyptian that describe women, from iAy.t ‘old woman’
(Faulkner 1962, 8; Wb I, 29.3) to dmDy.t ‘bone or limb collectors’ (Diamond
2008, 32). Some of the translations of these words are simply grammatical
gender equivalents, such as idy.t ‘girl’ (Faulkner 1962, 34; Wb I, 151.12), the
feminine of id ‘boy’ (Faulkner 1962, 34; Wb I, 151.10). Others are less obvious.
In this group, one finds translations such as ‘concubine’1, ‘maid servant’2,
‘divorced woman’3 and ‘harem’4. The terms chosen as translations in English

1
Xkr.t (Faulkner 1962, 205; Wb III, 401.6–11); Hbsy.t (Wb III, 66.23); anx.t (Berlev 1971, 25).
2
wbAy.t (Faulkner 1962, 58); wbAy.t is translated as ‘Dienerin’ or ‘Aufwärter’ in Wb I (292.7–8).
3
wDa.t (Faulkner 1962, 76; Wb I, 407.4).
4
ip.t (Faulkner 1962, 16–17; Wb I, 61.13); pr xnty (Faulkner 1962, 90; Wb I, 515); xnty (Wb
III, 307); pry.t (Wb I, 518.14); Xnr (Wb III, 297.8–14); Xnr.yt (Wb III, 297.5–298.1); Xnr.t (Wb III,
296.19–297.2); Xnt ? (Wb III, 301.10); pr Xnr (Wb III, 297.3–7; Lesko 1982, 175).
270 J. HELLUM

are markedly anachronistic in terms of function, even without taking the matter
of their appropriateness into consideration. The question, then, is what was it
that influenced the translators in their choice of interpretation? Etymology is a
factor, as is context. Both of those, however, provide evidence that the earlier
generations of translators, as élite white English males, were influenced in their
translations by their cultural views on what Edward Saïd (1978) later termed
‘Orientals’, on women, and on Oriental women.5
The context in which this enterprise as a whole was undertaken is particu-
larly relevant to the questions at hand. In some ways, Egypt had always been
a destination for conquest, from the Second Intermediate Period and the Hyksos,
c. 1650–1550 BCE to the British Occupation, 1882–1956 CE. The British did
not have the longest foreign rule in Egypt’s history, but they were the last, and
they were arguably the most extensive kingdom the world had ever seen. A
feature of the British Empire’s brand of colonialism was its paternalism toward
the colonials (Heatherington 1978). This was presented in Egypt as the belief
that the Egyptians were unfit for self-rule because they had such a long history
of foreign rule. Balfour explicitly stated this in a lecture to the House of Com-
mons in 1910 on ‘the problems with which we have to deal in Egypt’ (Saïd
1978, 31). Balfour’s argument was justified by the circular reasoning that if
Egyptians could have self-rule, the English would not have to be in the position
of ruling them (Saïd 1978, 34). This paternalistic attitude of condescension was
applied not only to Egyptian government, but to all facets of Egyptian society,
culture, life, and importantly here, history. Egyptian history was thought to
need ‘translation’ by the Europeans to make it accessible and understandable
to the rest of the world.
The habits, dress, and manner of Arab Egyptian women, in particular, came
into conflict with Victorian and European ideals of womanhood. They were
contradictory: they behaved modestly in public, yet were not nearly as demure
within their houses. These inconsistencies with regard to manner were com-
pared, if implicitly, to Victorian women, who appeared to be less changeable.
In 1836, Edward Lane published Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyp-
tians. With the help of his sister, Sophia, who gained access to the harims (Lane
1895), he was able to comment on the women, a society otherwise unavailable
to him. He wrote that Egyptian women of the time were ‘prone to criminal
intrigues,’ which mothers taught their daughters (Lane 1895, 185). They were
shameless about their bodies (Lane 1895, 188), they were alluring and sexual

5
This group included Champollion (1822), of course, but earlier also Johannes Becanus
(1580), Athanasius Kircher (1653), Johann Åkerblad (1802), Thomas Young (1823), and Count
Silvestre de Sacy (1824, 140–54). Other, non-European contributors less often acknowledged are
Horapollo (Boas 1950), Jabir Ibn Hayan (seventh century CE), Dhu al-Nun al-Misri (ninth century
CE), Ibn Wahshiyya (ninth/tenth century CE), and Abu Al-Qasim Al-Iraqi (thirteenth/fourteenth
century CE) (see el-Daly 2005 for these).
 RE-EXAMINING EGYPTIAN FEMALE LEXICOLOGY271

in their movements and their coquettishness (Lane 1895, 198), and they were
sexually precocious, as their marriages at as early an age as ten indicated (Lane
1895, 170). These observations and others of nineteenth century Egyptian
women are couched in the language of Victorian England, with mention of
‘orders’ of society, from lower to middle and upper (Lane 1895, passim), noting
the ‘happiness’ of certain servants (Lane 1895, 196), or discussing the fact that
women smoking is not considered to be unbecoming in Egypt (Lane 1895,
198). When examining the language used to translate the female lexicon from
ancient Egyptian, it seems clear that these attitudes are echoed in the attitudes
of early Western scholars toward ancient Egyptian women. The early English
scholarship on ancient Egyptian women and their lexicon reveals a complicated
network of Victorian viewpoints on English women and their place, on Orien-
tal women and their licentiousness, and on ancient Egyptian women. The trans-
lations of ancient Egyptian terms specific to women betrays this influence.
Herein lies one of the difficulties with much of the Egyptian female lexicon.
Either the translations describe unwarranted sexual activity, or the translations
for the feminine of equivalent masculine words represent positions that are
significantly lower in the social hierarchy.

The maidservant question

Many of the words in the translated ancient Egyptian female lexicon stand
as evidence for the British colonialist and paternalist attitudes toward the Egyp-
tians, modern and ancient. Words that describe gendered servant roles often
indicate the British class system, as well as an inherent sexism of the period.
The hierarchy of the servant positions in a well-to-do British household of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the butler down to the scullery
maid served as a model for the ancient Egyptian household (see Seely 1902,
8–27 for the servant hierarchy and labour for the British household of the early
twentieth century). The translations for the terms wdpw.yt/wdpw (Faulkner
1962, 73) and wbA.yt/wbA (Faulkner 1962, 58) show this in action.
In terms of chronology, Gardiner (1947, 43*) believes wdpw to be the
earlier expression of the two, wdpw was in use from the Old Kingdom to the
Roman period, the greatest number of attestations (41) being from the Old
Kingdom.6 WbA was in use primarily during the Middle and New Kingdoms,
with a few exemplars from the Old Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period
and the Late Period.7 The feminine terms have a more restricted time line.

6
http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnRefs?u=Weret61&f=0&l=0&ll=*51600&wt=y&lr=
0&mo=1&db=0&of=0; http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnRefs?f=0&l=0&of=0&ll=85551
9&db=0&lr=0&mo=1&wt=y&bc=Start.
7
http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnRefs?f=0&l=0&of=0&ll=44930&db=0&lr=0&mo=
1&wt=y&bc=Start.
272 J. HELLUM

Wdpw.yt is exclusively an Old Kingdom term with only one attestation (Cairo
20016: Lange and Schäfer 1902, 16; Faulkner 1962, 73). The 16 attestations
of wbA.yt date to the Old Kingdom (1), and Middle Kingdom (3), and Second
Intermediate Period (12).8
Both the wdpw/wdpw.yt appear to be relatively humble servants, providing
‘food services’ for the household, judging by their depicted utensils and deter-
minatives. In fact, Faulkner’s second entry in the wdpw lemma is ‘cook’, ref-
erencing Gardiner (1916, 92; 1947, 43*). The wbA, on the other hand, is some-
one of relatively high status, often having the title wbA nsw.t in the New
Kingdom Abbott Papyrus (e.g. Peet 1977, pls I, V, VI and passim). The holders
of this title in the Abbott Papyrus appear to be representatives of the king at
the proceedings for the Twentieth Dynasty tomb robberies.
Gardiner’s (1947, 43*) discussion of the term wbA/wbA.yt in Ancient Egyptian
Onomastica I notes the determinatives for wbA seem to ‘depict a ewer for water
and a napkin’. Gardiner sees this as a title indicating some connection with the
preparation of food, noting the phrase wbA dp irp ‘butler [sic] tasting the wine’
(1947, 43*). WbA has also been translated as ‘waiter’ (Wb I, 388). The wdpw.yt
of Cairo 20016 describes a small female figure depicted standing under a wom-
an’s stool. As Lange and Schäfer (1902, 16) note:

‘In der herabhängenden R. halt sie ein Gefäß an einem Strick, auf
der vorgestrecketen L. trägt sie eine Schale. An der Hand hängt ein
Spiegel im Futteral und eine Tasche. Über den Arm is ein Zeug-
streifen (Handtuch?) geschlagen.’ (bolding mine)

Examples of wbAy.t on stelae, such as BM 162 (Budge 1913, pl. 33) and Lei-
den V 3 = AP.7, also depict a female servant carrying the same types of utensils.
The servant figures of both genders appear in front of their masters/mistresses
and they are equipped with the same iconography. With the pictorial and written
evidence showing little differentiation in actual labour, it would appear that each
were doing fundamentally the same job, divided along gender lines. Despite the
similarity between depictions of wdpw.yt/wbAy.t and wdpw/wbA , however,
Faulkner translates the male as ‘butler’ and the female as ‘maidservant’. The
nineteenth/early twentieth century butler was the head domestic, the intermediary
between the family and the rest of the servants. The maidservant or serving-maid
was, in contrast, the lowest position in the household, with no power whatsoever.
Thus the wbAy.t and wdpw.t, the grammatical feminine of the wbA and wdpw, are
presumed by Faulkner to be at the opposite end of the servant-spectrum in an
anachronistic comparison with the British household of the nineteenth century.

8
http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnRefs?u=Weret61&f=0&l=0&ll=*45030&wt=y&lr=
0&mo=1&db=0&of=0.
 RE-EXAMINING EGYPTIAN FEMALE LEXICOLOGY273

The concubine question

In 1980, Del Nord published an article on the term xnr, which had tradition-
ally been translated as ‘harem’ (Nord 1980, 137–45). She argued that the con-
texts in which the term was found, both in literature and in art, did not agree
with the translation ‘harem’, but rather indicated a musical troupe, comprising
both males and females. As Nord (1980, 145) notes, ‘musical performers’ as
‘a translation which describes the actual activity of the group has the advan-
tage of not attributing … a sexual function for the xnr for which there is no
evidence.’ The word ‘concubine’ falls under the same argument. It is one that
in English is specifically sexual; a concubine is a ‘kept woman’, one who is
to be available for intimate relations on the whim of her keeper.9 There are a
number of Egyptian words and phrases given the translation ‘concubine:’
Hbsy.t/Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t-nTr (Wb III, 66.23), Xkr.t (Faulkner 1962, 205), Hsy.t
(Faulkner 1962, 177), and anx.t (Berlev 1971, 25; for a dissenting view see
Ward 1983, 72). By definition, each of these terms has been attributed a sexual
function in English. In an ancient Egyptian context, this is unwarranted. None
of the texts specifically mention or allude to a sexual aspect; they are, rather,
simply female titles or labels.
Ḥbsy.t is a particularly good example for illustrating the unnecessary modern
European sexualisation of a word related to females. It is used in texts from the
Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period, and appears to change its meaning
in that duration. The use of the term in the Late and Ptolemaic periods is as a
title for a woman in religious service or the wife of a priest. Möller noted that
more than half the known Late Egyptian instances of the term were ‘married’
to priests or temple officials (Möller 1918, 96). This was just prior to the dis-
covery of the Heqanakhte texts, when no Middle Egyptian examples were
known. The earlier, Middle Kingdom, meaning is considerably more ambigu-
ous. The word is found six times in the Heqanakhte letters, 11 times in four of
the Tomb Robbery papyri, and in a marriage contract from the Twentieth
Dynasty, on a Late Period stela, a Late Period sarcophagus, and in the Ptole-
maic P.Bremner-Rhind. The scribe of Heqanakhte spells the word as Hbsw.t five
times and Hbsy.t once, whereas the later attestations are all Hbsy.t. Heqanakhte
calls her Hbsw.t=i or ‘my Hbsw.t’, while the later papyri, particularly the Tomb
Robbery papyri, generally, although not always, use the term in a formula that
begins anx n(y)w niw.t FEMALE’S NAME tA Hbsy.t n(y) MALE’S NAME (e.g.
Peet 1977, pl. VII.2 vso, lines 2, 12, 25, 30).
The first commentary on the term Hbsy.t is in a short article by Goodwin in
ZÄS in 1873 (Goodwin 1873). He translates the word as ‘wife’. In 1918, Möller

9
Oxford English Dictionary Online: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/38426?rskey=xpoR4D
&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.
274 J. HELLUM

wrote a slightly more extensive article in the same journal on the same word.
The title of Möller’s (1918) article is ‘Hbs(.t), die Ehefrau’, again translating the
word as ‘wife’, although he proposes another possible meaning, ‘the veiled’ (die
Verhüllte), alluding to a modern contemporary Sudanese marriage ceremony.
Möller notes that Erman’s translation was ‘the one who clothes her husband’
(die, die ihren Mann kleidet), Müller’s was ‘betrothed’ (Verlobte) (Müller 1899,
4 fn.2), and Spiegelberg’s, following Goodwin, was ‘wife’ (Ehefrau) (Spiegel-
berg 1907, 7 fn.2). Spiegelberg, however, also translated the same word in P.
Mayer A as ‘courtesan’ (Spiegelberg 1891, 5). Finally, Möller notes that the term
Hbs.t-nTr can be found from the Saïte period, as ‘god’s wife’ (Möller 1918, 96).
He does not include a translation of Hbsy.t as ‘concubine’ by any scholar.
Faulkner (1962) does not include this term in his Concise Dictionary; however
he does include other words (Xkr.t and Hsy.t, noted above) which he translates
as ‘concubine’. The Wörterbuch includes a question mark after ‘Konkubine’ as
a possible translation in the lemma for Hbsj.t (Wb III, 66.23). Erman (1885, 222
fn.6), in the original German edition of Ägypten und Ägyptisches Leben in Alter-
tum, questions the translation of ‘Konkubine’ for Hbsy.t, noting that their hus-
bands are called ‘husbands’ or ‘Gatten’. He doesn’t question the existence of
concubinage, however, and sees it as ‘besonders … unter den niederen Ständen
vorgekommen zu sein …’ (Erman 1885, 222), thus especially a feature of the
lower classes. The English translation of the book, Life in Ancient Egypt, changes
Erman’s translation somewhat. Tirard, the translator (Erman 1894), uses ‘mis-
tress’ where Erman originally used ‘Konkubine’ and avoids the term ‘Konkubi-
nat’ all together by calling it ‘this state of affairs’ (Erman 1894, 154).
In 1922, four years after the publication of Möller’s article, Winlock dis-
covered the Heqanakhte letters in the tomb of Meseh in the vicinity of Deir el
Bahri. By chance, Battiscombe Gunn was in Luxor for a time during that
summer, and Winlock asked him to transcribe and translate the letters (Win-
lock 1922, 37). These letters contained five examples of the term Hbsw.t and
one of Hbsy.t (James 1962, Pls 4a and 6a). Gunn’s translation of Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t
was ‘concubine’ (Winlock 1922, 47–8). Due to the informal nature of the
publication, no commentary was provided, and the reader is left simply with
Gunn’s preferred term. The next English translation, by James, was largely
taken from Gunn’s notes (James 1962, v–vi) and keeps his translation (James
1962, 5, 12 fn.1, 14, 29). Baer (1963, 1) ‘reviewed’ James’ publication and
re-translated the letters with commentary. He kept the translation ‘concubine’
for Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t. Ward believed it to be a term essentially synonymous with
‘wife’ (Ward 1983, 73). The next publication of the letters was Allen’s in 2002
(Allen 2002), who used ‘wife’. In an early article, Eyre translates Hbsy.t as
‘concubine’ (Eyre 1984, 98). In another, he notes very clearly his belief that
‘the term Hbsyt certainly does sometimes mean ‘concubine’ in the generally
accepted sense of the term’ (Eyre 1992, 212), but also believes the term to
 RE-EXAMINING EGYPTIAN FEMALE LEXICOLOGY275

mean a woman in a secondary relationship, such as a second wife or in con-

cubinage (Eyre 1992, 212). Much later, he makes an argument for the ‘Hbsy.t-
wife (Eyre 2007, 238) as a younger wife, one ‘taken for pleasure’ (Eyre 2007,
237), basing this interpretation on the Heqanakhte letters. As late as 2013,
Hbswt was still, albeit insecurely, translated as ‘concubine (?)’ (Toivari-Viitala
2013, 5). Nord in a review of Der königliche Harim im alten Ägypten und
seine Verwaltung (Reiser 1972) notes that it is unlikely that Hbswy.t means
‘concubine’ (Nord 1975, 144). Ward states categorically that there was no
concubinage in Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms (Ward 1983, 68;
see also Robins 1993, 62), with the term Hbswy.t taking on the meaning of a
‘second wife’ in Late Egyptian (Ward 1983, 73; see also Graves-Brown 2010,
58–9 and Robins 1993, 61–2 who follow Ward).
Thus, translating Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t is a contentious issue. The commentators have
principally been men, European and, later, American. The first appearance of
‘concubine’ in print is found in Gunn’s translations of Heqanakhte, but it was
proposed as a possibility in the Wörterbuch in the original Zettelarchiv.10 The
Hbswy.t Zettel is undated, but it was written by Adolf Erman sometime between
1900–1921 (I. Hafemann pers. comm. December 2017).11 The use of ‘concu-
bine’ relates to the Eastern, Ottoman household, and may not, indeed likely
doesn’t, reflect the reality in ancient Egypt for the Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t. The word is
determined with S28 , or, later, V6 , both of which relate to cloth, clothing,
or weaving in some way. However, the English translations of Gunn, Faulkner,
James, Baer, and Eyre all take a decidedly carnal viewpoint. German translations
of the term, on the other hand, have little to no sexual suggestion in them. There
is often the assumption in either language, however, that concubinage was a part
of the household, and it would seem that this supposition was made without
reflection. The scholars who contest this are generally (although, as in the case
of Ward, not always) female.

Conclusions

The confusion between ‘butler’ and ‘maidservant’ and the continued appear-
ance of ‘concubine’ as a translation for Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t highlight how little is
known about the various household relationships and titles in ancient Egypt,
and how dependent we are upon a Western construct of that household. We
routinely translate different titles with the same English translations. Wdpw.yt/
wdpw and wbA.yt/wbA are both ‘butler’ or ‘waiter’; Hbsw.t/Hbsy.t are ‘concu-

10
http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/DzaBrowser?u=Weret61&f=0&l=0&wn=103900 Dokument
DZA 26.702.940.
11
This must have been prior to the discovery of Heqanakhte’s early Middle Kingdom letters
in 1922, because the date for Hbsy.t on the card is understood to be ‘nur Ende nR und spät in
Verwandtschaftsangaben’.
276 J. HELLUM

bine’ or ‘wife’. Many ungendered examples of this phenomenon exist, such as

mnty, mTn, sHp.w and iry-aA,12 all of which are translated ‘doorkeeper’ in Late
Egyptian. This stems from lack of a better understanding of the Egyptian
household, and is, often, the best that can be done, given context and etymol-
ogy. The mirroring of the English domestic servant hierarchy in Egyptian ter-
minology brings a Western understanding of servitude to ancient Egypt. It also
imposes that structure on the ancient society in much the same way that British
foreign rule was imposed upon nineteenth and twentieth century Egypt.
Just as routinely, there is a reliance on anachronistic translations, which
either betray a latent Orientalism or sexism or both. The only scholar to propose
a translation even tangentially related to the cloth determinatives noted above
was Möller with ‘die Verhüllte’, yet the Heqanakhte papyri contexts, for exam-
ple, could equally accommodate the translation ‘weaver’ or even ‘female valet’
or ‘laundress’. For the Middle Kingdom, at least, Ward’s understanding of a
‘second wife’ is also a very acceptable alternative.
Beside the Orientalism and colonialist attitude toward ancient Egypt is a
deep and entrenched sexist observation of the ancient Egyptian world. Indeed,
it is so entrenched as to have been taken for granted, even invisible on several
levels. The ancient Egyptian female lexicon, in particular, has suffered from the
imposition of anachronistic translations; however, this is not only a sexist issue,
and it does not only pertain to the lexicology of Egyptian women. It will only
be through a meticulous and rigorous re-examination of such terms as have
been briefly discussed here that we will eventually come to a more true repre-
sentation of ancient Egyptian vocabulary and, ultimately, culture.

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