Read an Excerpt
Red Land, Black Land
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
Chapter One
People of the Two Lands
May she flow away—she who comes in the darkness,
Who enters in furtively
With her nose behind her, her face turned backward—
Failing in that for which she came!
Have you come to kiss this child?
I will not let you kiss him!
Have you come to harm him?
I will not let you harm him!
Have you come to take him away?
I will not let you take him away from me!
Kneeling on the bare earthen floor, the woman chants softly, lest she wake the child asleep in her arms. The little one-room hut is dark except for the dim red glow from the brazier, where the cooking fire still smolders. A last expiring flame leaps up and shows the crouching form more clearly: a slender brown girl with long black hair and darkeyes—eyes that dart glances half-defiant, half-apprehensive toward the door. It is closed and barred, but she can feel the dark pressing in—the dark from which "she with her face turned backward" may enter furtively, to steal the breath of the sleeping child.
I see this picture whenever I read the lines quoted above. They are singularly moving lines, even in translation; the original text was written several thousand years ago, in the ancient Egyptian language. Surely the night-demon is one of the most dreadful specters in the folklore of any people, with her head twisted about on her neck, and with the suggestion of melting shapelessness in the words "flow away." Like the old Scottish prayer against "ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night,"this Egyptian spell carries a hint of diabolic danger which is all the more terrifying for never being made explicit.
There is another point of similarity between the Scottish poem and the Egyptian one. We quote the first as a joke nowadays, laughing and pretending to look nervously over our shoulders; but like its Egyptian counterpart, it was neither a joke nor an exercise in literature for its own sake. It was a charm—a prayer, if you will—against the powers of evil. In both examples we have first a description of the threatening forces. Then the counterspell is recited. In the Egyptian example, defensive measures take the form of powerful denials, made more potent by mountingrepetition—"I will not let you kiss him! I will not let you harm him!"—and also by a recipe of magic herbs, which I have not quoted. In the Scottish prayer the invocation of defensive powers is simple—"Good Lord, deliver us."
Well, we mustn't press the comparison too far; it has no significance, except to show that many people, in many times and places, have been afraid of the dark and of that which may come out of the dark. What touches me most about this Egyptian prayer is that it is designed for the protection of children. There is no sphere of life in which man feels his vulnerability to the caprice of Fate more poignantly than in that which threatens his children; and at no time in his life is he more helpless than when he comes into it, naked and squalling. This book concerns itself with the daily life of the ancient Egyptians, so it is fitting that we should begin when the Egyptian began—at birth. Having pronounced the proper protective incantation, we may proceed to bring our fictitious baby into the world.
Childbirth
Once upon a time there was an Egyptian lady who attracted the interest of no less a personage than the great sun-god, Re. Perhaps the god's attentions were motivated not so much by the lady's charms as by his desire to produce three offspring who would eventually rule the land of Egypt. Yet the lady was only the wife of a humble priest of Re; his name was Rauser, and hers was Reddjetet, and . . .
One day it happened that Reddjetet felt the pains of labor; and her labor was hard. So the majesty of Re said to Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, Hekat, and Khnum, "Go on and deliver Reddjetet of the three children who are in her womb, and who will exercise the kingship in the entire land.
The informed reader will recognize in Isis and Nephthys two of the great goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon; they were the wife and sister of Osiris. Meskhenet was another goddess—a patroness of childbirth, appropriately enough. Khnum, the only male in the party, also had a role in creation. He was the potter who fashioned the bodies of newborn children, in clay, on his divine wheel. Heket assisted at the birth of the sun-god each morning, so she was a logical person to supervise the birth of his children.
The goddesses disguised themselves as dancing girls, with the lordly Khnum as their porter, and all five of them set out for the priest's house. They found the purported father- to-be in a pitiable state, which is described with concise eloquence by the Egyptian author: he was "sitting motionless, his clothing in disarray." To me, the priest is a most sympathetic character. Although he was desperately worried about his wife, he took the trouble to speak courteously to the itinerant entertainers: "You see, ladies, the mistress of the house is in labor; and her labor is hard." The dancing girls took up their cue. "Let us see her. We know how to facilitate a birth."
The father could not refuse the offer; Re, looking down from his golden boat, would see to that. Still, we have a feeling that it was a natural suggestion. The function of midwife was not a medical specialty. As in most pre-industrial societies, including that of medieval Europe, a woman in labor was probably attended by the other women in the house or the village, with a local "wise woman" on call in case the situation became complicated. Even a dancing girl might claim special skill in obstetrics, and the distracted husband's response is perfectly understandable. At that point he would have been willing to try anything and anybody. He gave the five divinities his permission, and they locked themselves up with the lady.
Red Land, Black Land
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt. Copyright © by Barbara Mertz. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
