Ancient Egyptians were beauty-obsessed individuals, and their expertise in maintaining their bodies was evident. This article explores the standards of beauty, fashion, and the influential roles women played in ancient Egyptian society.
Standards of Beauty
A good place to start with standards of beauty is the art of a time period. You can see how bodies were depicted in paintings and sculptures - especially those that don’t aim at realism. The body types in Ancient Egyptian art remained amazingly similar for over 3,000 years. So what was considered hot to the Ancient Egyptian? Thin was in.
Ancient Egyptian women strived to be thin with pert breasts, while men with broad shoulders tapering down to flat stomachs were considered handsome. Ancient Egyptians had no qualms about nudity. To be fair, it does get really hot there. But that doesn’t mean they ran around naked all day.
Egyptians’ eating choices also reflected their fascination with beauty. They devoured dates in massive quantities as they have antioxidants, protein, and fiber.
An Ancient Egyptian woman offering food to the deceased.
Fashion and Clothing
A variety of clothing styles for the different classes existed.
Children's Attire
For young children, the answer was nothing - not a bad idea, Mertz muses, given the heat and the propensity of toddlers to get dirty. “Older children wore clothing like that of their parents, a kilt, or skirt, for boys, a simple linen dress for girls,” Mertz writes. Linen was pretty much the only material used for clothing, although now and then wool was used.
Women's Dresses
Women were typically clad in an ankle-length dress with wide shoulder straps over the breasts. “The dress must have been designed to fit the figure as tightly as possible, and it may have been stylish to make it of thin material,” Mertz writes, adding, “A becoming style for the slim and graceful, but I wonder how plump ladies felt about it?”
In later periods, fashion got a bit more complex among the well-to-do. Another style that became all the rage had a sheer linen robe with accordion pleats and a small cape that crossed and tied in front of the breasts. It hung loose unless tied with a long sash at the waist.
There are also depictions of dresses made entirely of colored beads, intricately woven into elaborate patterns.
Read also: Impact of Beauty Standards on Ugandan Women
Men's Attire
Most men went shirtless but wore a knee-length kilt. It was secured by knots, sashes or simply tucked in.
Footwear
Most people went barefoot but had sandals for special occasions. Even the poor would have had a pair of sandals made from papyrus, though they didn’t last long.
Jewelry
The precious stones used to make bracelets (worn by women, boys and sometimes men), diadems, girdles, anklets and rings included carnelian, turquoise, garnet, feldspar, rock crystal, obsidian and lapis lazuli. But the most popular material was faience. If you read anything about Ancient Egypt, you’ll come across this word. Egyptian faience was composed of ground quartz, a colorant and other materials molded into a shape - most often a blue-green bead.
Copper (for the lower class) and gold (for the upper class) were the most common metals used. Both were readily available, thanks to mines in the desert and neighboring Nubia. These large necklaces were called pectorals. “The most common ornament was the flexible collar, made of concentric rows of beads, some of which might be shaped like animals or flowers or leaves,” Mertz writes.
Ancient Egyptian jewelry.
Read also: African Beauty Standards
Makeup and Cosmetics
Makeup may appear to be a modern phenomenon but contrary to popular belief, cosmetics were also considered essential in ancient days. It is no secret that ancient Egyptians were beauty-obsessed individuals. Ancient Egyptians were highly self-conscious about their appearance. In fact, they were so meticulous that they insisted on being well-dressed even after death.
Anyone even remotely interested in Ancient Egypt (or who has seen Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra) is familiar with kohl. Egyptians focused on the eyes, and kohl was the eye shadow of choice. It’s still popular, though it’s now made of soot. But back in the day, Egyptians ground up malachite to make green kohl, and galena to make shades of gray. They applied this eye shadow over the eyebrows and around the eyes using a tiny wooden spoon or a rod made of bone (or, in a pinch, their finger).
Even now women feel using kohl or eyeliners results in big, beautiful eyes just like how you might have seen in Ancient Egyptian historical art. Men and women used kohl to enhance their inherent attractiveness.
Red ochre worked as rouge and sometimes as lipstick. Lipsticks were created by combining vegetable oil with ochre and, in some instances, squashed beetles. However, ancient Egyptian beauty secrets like these caused more harm than benefit.
Ancient Egyptians did not put on makeup directly on their face. Instead, they would first exfoliate using Dead Sea salts. To further hydrate their skin, they took long milk baths and used coffee scrubs. Beauty for Ancient Egyptians wasn’t only about makeup. Because they prioritized hygiene and self-care, they considered hair unclean and uncivilized.
Women waxed using a sugar, lemon, and water combination to eliminate hair and maintain smooth skin. Honey and milk are considered essential components for any home made mask today. This stems from ancient Egyptian beauty secrets. Milk has lactic acid that hydrates and exfoliates the skin.
Egyptians used avocado slices to reduce puffiness beneath their eyes. Egyptians used henna, a coloring agent, to color their nails yellowish-orange. This is more common in asian culture today but is astonishing where the idea originated from. In addition to leaving a dye behind, it promotes growth and is a natural conditioner.
Ancient Egyptians preferred black and prominent brows which is now back in fashion.
The Egyptians were fond of oiling themselves, which, as Mertz points out, makes sense in a hot, dry climate. And to complete the package, people also applied scented oils, including myrrh and resin or floral bouquets, such as lily.
Hairstyles
“The girls let their hair hang loose or braided it into pigtails, but boys had an unusual coiffure - the head was shaved except for one long lock on the side, which was braided,” Mertz writes. This distinctive hairstyle was something men would wax idyllic about, feeling nostalgia for the carefree days of boyhood as the time “before I had cut off the sidelock.” Perhaps the act of cutting off the sidelock was a rite of passage into adulthood for Ancient Egyptian men.
Men in the Old Kingdom wore their hair short, not unlike today. Yes, both men and women did, and they were mostly made of human hair.
Facial Hair
“At certain periods neat little mustaches were worn, and sometimes beards seem to have been fashionable,” Mertz writes. But most often, men in Ancient Egypt were clean-shaven.
Influential Women in Ancient Egypt
The Ruthless Queens Who Changed Ancient Egypt
Women in ancient Egypt were ahead of their time. They could have their own businesses, own and sell property, and serve as witnesses in court cases. Unlike most women in the Middle East, they were even permitted to be in the company of men. They could escape bad marriages by divorcing and remarrying. And women were entitled to one third of the property their husbands owned.
Egyptian women were able to own land, had job opportunities, and were given great respect by the men surrounding them. So even ordinary women had some ability to affect ancient Egyptian society, according to a Brown University professor.
Artifacts spanning 4,000 years tell the story of women in ancient Egypt at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Both the hieroglyphics of the upper classes and excavated sites of the lower classes offer clues about the roles of women.
Here are some examples of elite Egyptian women:
- Hatshepsut: One of the first women to hold the rank of pharaoh, Hatshepsut began her rule in about 1,500 B.C.E. Hatshepsut took care of her people and built temples to the gods as well as other public buildings. In order to rule successfully and gain the support of the public, she had to take on many "kingly" characteristics. For example, in all surviving depictions of Hatshepsut, she is shown wearing traditional male garb, including a false beard. Her tactics worked, and she ruled Egypt for 20 years.
- Nefertiti: Nefertiti was another Egyptian ruler. Found in the chapel of Merya at Armana, this drawing depicts Queen Nefertiti accompanying her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaton, from the royal palace to the temple. The bust of Nefertiti, the Queen of Egypt, is legendary for its beautiful and mysterious depiction of the queen during the Amarna period.
- Cleopatra: Cleopatra became the most famous of Egypt's female leaders. She was extremely intelligent, and ambitious and spoke several languages - she even studied astronomy. Cleopatra constantly battled jealous, ambitious people who wanted to kill her and occupy her throne. For a time, she was removed from power and banished. When Caesar visited Alexandria, a large Egyptian city, Cleopatra saw her chance. She could not even enter the city to see Caesar because her jealous brother hired spies to kill her on sight. Craftily, she sneaked into the city rolled in a carpet. She was brought to Caesar, and the two developed a relationship. The couple had a son named Caesarion, and Caesar helped her recapture the throne. When Marc Antony became leader of Rome, he too, fell in love with Cleopatra. The two had children and together ruled the most powerful empires of the Mediterranean. Eventually, a rival defeated Antony's armies, and Antony drew a sword on himself in despair. As he was dying, he wanted to see Cleopatra one last time. He died in her arms. Later, Cleopatra killed herself by placing a poisonous snake on her chest.
The legendary bust of Nefertiti.
Roles of Women
A woman's role as mother and wife still came first in Egyptian society. But even ordinary women had some ability to affect ancient Egyptian society. Egyptian women could have their own businesses, own and sell property, and serve as witnesses in court cases. Unlike most women in the Middle East, they were even permitted to be in the company of men. They could escape bad marriages by divorcing and remarrying. And women were entitled to one third of the property their husbands owned.
Legally, women had many more rights than their counterparts in some modern societies. The line of inheritance was matrilineal, which meant that property and wealth was handed down from mother to daughter rather than from father to son. This was presumably because maternity (unlike paternity) could never be questioned. This meant that women could not only inherit assets, but they could have their own will and bequeath it as they chose. During their own lifetime, they could both administer and dispose of property as they wished. Women could own and run an estate or business even after getting married - in fact, while most tended to fulfil traditional household roles, there was no law to prevent them from pursuing all kinds of professions.
Possible occupations included scribe, priestess (usually in a temple dedicated to a female deity), teacher, weaver, dancer, musician, and even physician. Lower class women typically worked alongside their husbands in the fields.
Restrictions
There were a few jobs that women would not have held - these included administrator and civil servant.
Legal Rights
In terms of the law, a woman could serve as a an executor for wills, witness legal documents, sit on a jury, adopt children, and bring cases to court. She could even defend herself in court; which may have been necessary, because women could be sued and tried just like men (although punishments often differed).
Marriage and Family
Girls typically married young in Ancient Egypt - usually between the ages of 12 and 14. Husbands were often chosen by their families; however, women could not be forced to marry someone and had the right to refuse a proposal. While polygamy was common for pharaohs and not unusual for wealthy members of the elite, getting married was expensive and the vast majority of marriages would have been monogamous.
Women were expected to fulfil traditional marital and maternal duties in addition to any occupation they chose to have. This meant preparing meals, brewing beer (water was rarely drinkable in Ancient Egypt), caring for children, keeping the house clean, and laundering clothes in the river. Of course, wealthy women would have supervised these roles rather than performing them themselves.
Divorce
That’s not to say that divorce didn’t happen - in fact, it was relatively common and could be initiated by either partner. Before marrying, couples would enter a prenuptial agreement, and this typically favored the wife. If the husband asked for a divorce, he could not claim any property from the marriage and would have to pay maintenance for his wife and children. In either case, the wife was always given full custody, her original dowry, and any assets earned or inherited in her own name during the marriage. Unless previously owned by the husband’s family, she would also have been granted the marital home. Adultery was illegal for both partners. The most common punishment for unfaithful wives was to have their noses slit - a form of disfigurement chosen both because it was humiliating and because it was impossible to hide.
Childbirth and Fertility
The main purpose of marriage in Ancient Egypt was to produce an heir. In fact, infertility was one of the most common reasons for a man to divorce his wife. The Egyptians were so preoccupied with fertility that they are credited with one of the earliest pregnancy tests. A woman who suspected she was with child would urinate into a cloth bag that held both wheat and barley grains. If either plant germinated, the woman was pregnant. If the wheat grew first, the child would be female, and if the barley grew first, it would be male.
As an indicator of pregnancy, this test was actually fairly accurate: Modern studies have shown it to be successful in identifying between 70 and 85% of pregnancies.
Childbirth was a dangerous prospect for Ancient Egyptian women, with no real medical assistance available in the event of a problem. Instead, the woman would have been attended by female members of her family, who would have used amulets and religious statues to invoke the protection of various goddesses. There was a standard birthing position, too - women would have been helped to squat over a mat kept in place by four bricks, each of which was meant to represent a different goddess. Women went through this process many times, with the average family having between four and six children (and often many more). That’s not to say all of these babies survived to adulthood. Rates of infant mortality were high, especially given the prevalence of tropical diseases and infection.
Babies who did survive were carried around in a sling, and breastfed for up to three years.
Lower class girls were usually taught life skills by their mothers rather than given a formal education. However, upper class girls were often taught to read and write and about subjects such as history and politics. This would have been in preparation for them to run the family business, or to make a suitable wife for a powerful husband.
Birth Control
Women who were not ready to have children had options in Ancient Egypt, with many different forms of birth control cited in various medical papyruses. Two of the most popular included seed-wood soaked in ground acacia leaves and honey, and crocodile dung mixed with sour milk. Both concoctions would have been inserted into the vagina to act as a sperm barrier, and are likely to have been at least somewhat effective due to their acidic nature.
Abortions were documented, too, made possible by the drinking of herbal concoctions or the use of vaginal douches and suppositories.
Hygiene and Personal Care
Cleanliness was of sacred importance to all Ancient Egyptians, regardless of class or gender. As such, women would have bathed almost daily - either in the River Nile, or if they could afford it, in the privacy of their own homes in tubs filled by their slaves. By the time the New Kingdom dawned, bath houses became popular. They had separate sections for each gender and the water would have been supplied by slaves (running water only came with the arrival of the Romans). The most common soap was natron, or soda ash mixed with oil. In its undiluted form it could also be used as a kind of toothpaste.
For the elite, cleaning rituals would have involved animal fat, perfume, oil, scrubbing salts, and (as made famous by Cleopatra) milk. The Ancient Egyptians even had their own version of deodorant. Instead of being applied under the arms, however, it took the form of a cone of perfumed wax placed on top of their heads at social events. The wearer’s body heat would cause the wax to melt over time, releasing a pleasant fragrance to mask any unwanted odors.
Women who were menstruating would have been considered impure and excused from activities that had the potential to contaminate other family members, such as cooking. Certain sections of the temple would also have been off limits to women at this time.
The Ancient Egyptians were a resourceful bunch, developing the first known form of tampon from softened, rolled up papyrus.
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