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 items. For comparison, these tombs are also discussed in this book. In terms of jewelry there are some similarities to the tombs of the princesses in the royal cemeteries. The rest of the tomb equipment, however, is often very different and even quite limited. Without the presence of jewelry many of the tombs would in fact appear rather poor. Nevertheless, the burials of these women, who did not belong to the royal court, attest to a wider spread of wealth in the late Middle Kingdom.8
BURIAL GOODS: AN OVERVIEW
In many cultures around the world people were buried with objects. These range from single items to the richly equipped tombs of the Egyptian New Kingdom or the similarly richly equipped burials in many periods of Chinese history. Burial goods are not found in all cultures. This is especially true for the modern (Western) world, where burial goods are not common at all, although the Christian and the Islamic faiths teach belief in an afterlife. Nevertheless, some kind of burial arrangement is found even in Christianity and in the Islamic world. In a medieval Islamic cemetery in southern Egypt personal adornments were still sporadically present, and the deceased were sometimes found wrapped in a decorated sheet of linen.9 In Europe people are placed in a coffin or urn and wrapped in a shroud or some other type of garment; even priests are buried