The Ancient Egyptian civilization, famous for its pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and tombs, flourished for thousands of years. Pyramids, mummies, tombs, and other icons of aristocracy and the afterlife dominate our images of ancient Egypt. But love poems composed thousands of years ago may provide a more intimate glimpse of the lives of everyday ancient Egyptians. With Valentineâs day recently been and gone love is still on the mind and with that I thought, I would explore the world of romance in ancient Egypt through the art they produced to reflect romance.
Orientalist thoughts have led us to believe one of two views about the world of romance in ancient Egypt. The first that Ancient Egyptians where constantly lusting after one another, with pharaohs having massive harems of beautiful women and even the everyday man maybe having more than one wife. However, multiple marriages are not as commonplace as one might expect of you take this line of thought. The second that it is often implied that attitudes towards sexuality were somewhat naĂŻve and coy.
Furthermore, many current descriptions of ancient Egypt tend to assume that marriage in the pharaonic period was similar to the modern institution, there is surprisingly little evidence either for marriage or marriage ceremonies or for the concept of the married couple (as opposed to a man and woman simply living together). Romantic love was a popular theme for poetry, especially in the New Kingdom (1570-1009 BCE) when several works appear to praise lovers and wives alike.
As I have said above the New Kingdom saw a flourishing in this cosmopolitan atmosphere with Egypt being more influenced by those outside its borders and so these poems and songs began to be written down and expanded as a genre. The poems were written on papyri or ostraca and date primarily to the 19th / 20th Dynasty and seem to have been read aloud with musical accompaniment from harpists, and so might have been a form of entertainment for the banquet goes. A famous collection of love poems can be seen in the Chester Beatty Papyri.
The most elaborate of these series of songs is the song composed of a seven-stanza song which plays out a conversation between and young man and a young woman of their love in separation. This song follows are few commons features, the pair of lovers call each other brother and sister and sing of their love in separation a common theme amongst describing their feelings of joy, /loss at their particular romantic situation, or delivering monologues to their own heart.
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The song starts with the man taking the first verse. In this opening verse, the man sings of the womanâs beauty and wishes to approach her. At length, he describes the object of this affections as âwithout rival, most beautiful of all, she looks like the star-goddess rising at the start of the good new year⊠her hair is true lapis, her arm gathers goldâ.
In the second verse the women, separated, in her motherâs house she sings of longing for her love to arrive. Describing her longing for him to be there with her, âCome to me, let your beauty be seen, let father and mother be glad. Unfortunately, in the next verse, the man seems to abandon hope of reaching her seemingly lost saying that âRiver and road looked a like: I couldnât decide where to put my feetâ.
The song continues with the woman struggling with her desires exclaiming at the end of the verse âshe is a woman fallen by loveâ. In the next verse, we turn back to the man, having righted himself after getting lost he rejoices that he has seen the woman âoverjoyed, ecstatic, great when told. there she is these, look, she has comeâ.
As following this alternating between the pair, we return to the woman as she has now seen the man approaching the house, she begins to sing of her hope that her mother will share the same sentiments as she does, âHow my heart races for joy, brother, when I can see. If only the mother knew my desireâ.
Now we come to the final verse, will the two lovers finally get to meet? The final verse is given to the man and after seven days of separate, the man has become sick with only the woman being able to cure him âsickness has entered deep into me; I have grown heavy in my limbsâŠ.
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But these poems did more than just reflect the feelings of those speaking in them. The scenes they described as reflected in the tomb paintings. References to fishing and fowling, to plants, trees and above all rich colours. The poem from Chester Beatty I describes the woman as having hair of lapis, golden skin and fingers like dainty lotus blossoms.
Flowers and plant play a major hook in the so-called âFlower Songâ. Which has a woman describing the joy she has from seeing her love that she compares her feelings to being âlike a field of fragrant blooms, an abundance of blossoming buds⊠a lovely place for a stroll while you hold your hand in mineâ.
Portrayals of married couples in the statuary, paintings and tomb reliefs of high -placed men and royal craftsmen alike seem to radiate a similar tenderness to that of the poems above. The couples are usually depicted standing or sitting side by side holding hands and the wife often has an arm around the neck or shoulder of her husband. With the New Kingdom, alongside this surge in poetry, the loving relationships of kings and queen begging to be revealed.
A particularly famous example of this would be the relationship of King Tutankhamun and his wife Queen Ankhesenamun. This does also reflect the artistic style shift that came with the Amarna period but I wonât go into detail about that just now. However, a brief run-through of this style would produce some key characteristics.
The scenes as much more relaxed and informal compared to other artistic phase, faces have pronounced facial folds, narrow/slitted eyes, while the body itself consisted of a thin, attenuated neck, sloped shoulders, a heavy paunch, large hips and thighs, and rather spindly legs. In keeping with this more informal style, Ankhesenamun is always pictured with her husband, with it being noted that the artist has through this sought to emphasis the devotion to one another by proximity, hand gestures and facial expression.
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This relief is currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin shows King Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun and is often referred to as âa walk in the gardenâ. In this snapshot, the âtogethernessâ of the couple is there even though they arenât touching. This togetherness is achieved through the style, body shape and colours, which appear in the same amount in both individuals.
The Egyptians are credited with a lot. They built the pyramids, they mummified bodies and had giant elaborate tombs. As seen in this image from the Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt here at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Osiris is depicted as green-skinned, and he looks like a mummy! These are attributes unique to Osiris and they come from the story of himself and Isis.
Osiris was reigning as king, and his brother Set was not too happy about it. So, he killed Osiris, tore his body into a bunch of pieces and strew them all over Egypt. In her mourning, Osirisâ wife Isis traveled far and wide to gather all of the pieces of her husband to eventually put them all back together and had a child with him. That child was Horus, who would then go on to avenge his father and kill his uncle.
In American culture today, weddings are huge expensive parties that include entire families, huge cakes, and poufy dresses. This is not anything like marriages in ancient Egypt. Early marriages consisted of a woman entering a manâs house with whatever goods that they had agreed upon and the husband signing some paperwork.
Often marriages were arranged, but there is evidence that importance was placed on a loving couple, like love poems and songs found at the workers village of Deir el-Medina. Love poems from Deir el-Medina could be found on similar surfaces as those on display in Walton Hall, like these shards of stone and ostraca (shards of pottery). Sometimes shards like these were used like âscratch paperâ and discarded, leaving them for archaeologists to find.
Marriage was supposed to be everlasting for a good pair. If you were faithful to your spouse and a good spouse overall, you could find them waiting for you in the afterlife. If you were not good to them, you might not even get to the afterlife at all. But, Egyptian society was quite sophisticated, if things didnât work out in life, there were options for divorce.
If either the husband or wife was dissatisfied, they could initiate a divorce, and the settlement was seemingly as simple as the marriage. Some paperwork was signed, and assets were divided upon agreements during the marriage. One important pillar of marriage was fidelity. Overall, the Egyptians placed emphasis on being faithful and being a loving spouse.
But at least in the realm of the gods, there were cases of love that transcend our comprehension. Letâs be honest, who would really go all over and find pieces of their dead spouseâŠanyone? So, all in all the ancient Egyptians might seem to be a mysterious people but in the aspects of love and marriage they are really just like everyone else.
Perhaps one of the most enduring love stories from Ancient Egypt is the marriage between Ramesses II or Ramesses the Great (1279-1213 BCE) and his Queen Nefertari, also known as Nefertari Meritmut. Nefertari means âbeautiful companionâ and Meritmut means âbeloved of the mother goddess Mutâ. The origins of Nefertari and her relationship with Ramesses the Great are unknown.
However, we know that, like other kings of Egypt, Ramesses the Great had a large harem of wives but only one wife was bestowed with the title âchief queenâ. Ramesses and Nefertari were wed in 1312 BCE, and soon after, the new Queen gave birth to the first of eleven heirs. Ramesses the Greatâs affection for his first chief Queen can be seen painted on the walls of her lavish tomb at the Valley of the Queens.
The tombâs decorations emphasize Nefertariâs personality and intellect, with the Queen depicted conversing with officials and playing the game Senet. The paintings of her face still shine with radiance after thousands of years, and it is clear that the artist gave her features careful attention to accentuate her beauty. Scholars consider these decorations to be some of the best-preserved and most artistic decorations of any Egyptian burial site ever found.
As well as her lavish tomb, Ramesses the Great ordered the construction of temples to honor Nefertari at Abu Simbel. These colossal temples were built with the same love as her tomb and they were designed to fill any visitor with awe. Two groups of statues flank the templeâs exterior, with a large entranceway in between. What makes Nefertariâs temple so unique is that it remains one of the very few instances in Egyptian architecture in which both statues of the king and his queen are equal in size. In other temples, the Queenâs statue was never taller than that of their king.
Tutankhamun is perhaps the most famous king of Egypt and he is best known for his intact tomb discovered in 1922 by an excavation team led by Howard Carter. Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BCE) worked to restore stability in his realm throughout his brief reign, after his predecessor, Akhenaten, left the region in turmoil. He reigned alongside his wife Anksenamun (c.
Ankhsenamun is always pictured with her husband, though this was not uncommon for the time. What makes these depictions so unique is their devotion to each other by their proximity, hand gestures, and facial expressions. In the art that fills the young Kingâs tomb, we can feel the strength of their bond. Tutankhamun died just as he was entering adulthood, and mentions of his wife Ankhsenamun disappear from history shortly afterward.
Ancient Egyptian mythology is full of fantastical tales, one of which is considered the first tragic love story in history - the story of the goddess Isis and her brother Osiris. Isis and Osiris were the children of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Net.
Nut and Geb
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris and his brother Seth were fierce rivals. There are many differing accounts of the origins of this rivalry; some say that Osiris fought Seth or that he had an affair with Sethâs wife, Nephthys. Regardless of the cause of this rivalry, Seth enacted his revenge on Osiris by murdering him and mutilating his body, splitting it into 42 pieces that he scattered across the kingdom of Egypt.
Isis was left distraught at the death of her husband, and her sadness was compounded by the fact that she had not yet borne him an heir to carry on their mythological family line. So Isis and her sister Nephthys joined forces and searched the kingdom of Egypt for the 42 parts of Osiris. The now complete body of Osiris was wrapped like a traditional mummy, and Isis conceived an heir with the corpse of Osiris. As a result of this unlikely coupling, a son Horus was born who avenged his fatherâs death.
In 2012, at the burial ground of Saqqara, a team of archaeologists discovered a tomb dating back more than four millennia to Egyptâs Old Kingdom. The tomb contained the remains of a couple and their children. After the tomb was fully excavated and studied, it was found to be the resting place of a singer from the Pharaohâs retinue called Kahai, and his wife, a priestess Meretites.
As a result of their royal connections, the tomb was decorated to a higher degree than others found at Saqqara. The unique carvings on the tomb walls depict people singing and playing music. Uniquely, one scene shows the couple gazing into each otherâs eyes and Meretites affectionately placing her hand on her husbandâs shoulder.
One of the most controversial and influential Pharaohs to have ruled ancient Egypt was Akhenaten. He made considerable changes to the way Egyptians worshiped their gods during his reign and he pioneered an early monotheistic religion worshipping the sun god Aten. Unfortunately, his actions caused uproar in the land of the Nile and made him a martyr in the eyes of his descendants.
The events of the marriage between Nefertiti and Akhenaten are still debated by historians. We do know that during her marriage Nefertiti bore Akhenaten six daughters. What we do know is that, across ancient Egypt, archaeologists have discovered numerous carvings and inscriptions depicting scenes of Nefertiti and her husband performing daily tasks as a family, such as preparing food, dancing, and singing. However, Nefertitiâs tomb has still not been discovered. This lack of royal importance has led some historians to theorize that she may have died young or possibly fell out of favor with her King.
So, there we have it, some of the greatest love stories from ancient Egypt. Perhaps you can recognize your relationship in the devotion displayed between Ramesses II and Nefertari, or in the tragic mythological romance of Isis and Osiris. Whatever your own love story, remember that love and respect for your partner should be a priority.
On the Other Side of the Nile (Ancient Egyptian Love Poem)
Table: Key Figures in Ancient Egyptian Love Stories
| Name | Role | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Ramesses II | Pharaoh | Known for his enduring love for Queen Nefertari. |
| Nefertari | Queen | Beloved wife of Ramesses II, honored with a lavish tomb and temples. |
| Tutankhamun | Pharaoh | His tomb art reveals the strong bond with his wife, Anksenamun. |
| Anksenamun | Queen | Wife of Tutankhamun, depicted with devotion in royal art. |
| Osiris | God | Husband of Isis, his death and resurrection form a tragic love story. |
| Isis | Goddess | Wife of Osiris, known for her dedication in resurrecting him and avenging his death. |
| Akhenaten | Pharaoh | His family life with Nefertiti was depicted in numerous carvings. |
| Nefertiti | Queen | Wife of Akhenaten, known for her influential role and depictions with her family. |
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