Of course, every holy book and religious ritual teaches that giving birth and having offspring is a highly important human act on this earth. No wonder, then, that it would go in the same way in ancient Egypt.

Most ancient Egyptian women laboured and delivered their babies on the cool roof of the house or in an arbour or confinement pavilion, a structure of papyrus-stalk columns decorated with vines.

In the Yogi method, the best way to bear a child is in the water! I believe if we let the newborn child into the water immediately, they would feel happy and free and could more easily grasp their changing world perception.

The standard childbirth practice in ancient Egypt has long been known from papyrus texts. It looked more natural as the woman delivered her baby while squatting on two large bricks, each colourfully decorated with scenes to invoke the magic of gods for the health and happiness of mother and child.

Let’s read this interesting report by the brilliant Marie Grillot about an enchanting find and the story of constant upspring in Old Egypt!

On this ostracon, a maternity scene more than 3000 years old…

via égyptophile

Several figured ostraca* from Deir el-Medineh illustrate this extraordinary, touching moment of motherhood, more precisely of the mother breastfeeding her newborn. The gesture, the tenderness, and the concentrated attention paid to the nurturing function remain immutable across the centuries.

This scene, dating from the 19th – 20th dynasty, is reproduced on a piece of limestone 15 cm high and 11.7 cm wide. The three characters are drawn in red ocher while their complexion is painted in yellow ocher and their hair in black.

It takes place in a beautiful plant setting, under a canopy, supported by columns (only one is visible on the right, the left part being lacunar), covered with lanceolate leaves of bindweed or convolvulus. “The leaves of bindweed have a symbolic meaning with a sexual connotation: they are often present in scenes relating to love and the renewal of life”, explains Anne-Mimault-Gout (“Les artistes de Pharaon”).

Emma Brunner-Traut calls this kiosk “the birthing arbour” and thinks “that it was a temporary building, raised in the open air for the moment of childbirth and that the mother remained there for 14 days until her purification”…

This birth pavilion sheltered the difficult hours of suffering inherent in childbirth, just as it witnessed the intense emotion linked to the miracle of giving life… Its aim was also, most certainly, to benefit the young, give birth calmly, rest and protect her, as well as the child, from potential external risks or dangers. In “Carnets de Pierre”, Anne-Mimault Gout evokes the interesting idea that: “These pavilions were perhaps the ancestors of the mammisis of the Greco-Roman temples, the birth chapels”.

Sitting on a curved stool equipped with a comfortable cushion, the mother is shown, turned to the right and naked, adorned only with a large necklace. Her body, leaning forward, seems to envelop and protect the infant she is breastfeeding. Unfortunately, the time has partly tarnished and erased its representation…

Her undone, untamed hairstyle —typical of that of women giving birth in ancient Egypt—attracts the eye. The hair raised in a totally anarchic manner on the head probably reflects the fact that during these extraordinary days, all the attention was focused on the child, to the detriment of the care given to his physical appearance…

As if to remind her that her new role as the mother should not make her forget her femininity, the young servant in front of her hands her a mirror and a kohol case. These toiletry accessories are, according to Anne Mimault-Gout, “charged with an erotic connotation linked, through beauty, to rebirth”. Young, his thin, slender body is naked. Her hair is tied in a ponytail on the top of her head, falling in a pretty curl over her shoulder. For J. Vandier d’Abbadie, “this hairstyle and the pronounced elongation of the profile evoke the iconography of Syro-Palestinian divinities – in particular, Anat and Astarte -, that is to say, that these young girls with high heads would be young asian maids”…

In her fascinating study “Postpartum purification and relief rites in ancient Egypt” (all of whose rich analyses, unfortunately, cannot be cited here), Marie-Lys Arnette returns to the rites represented on these figurative ostraca of the Ramesside period representing “gynoecium scenes”, as J. Vandier d’Abbadie calls them… “The actions that these scenes depict are indeed rites since they are very close formally to the representations of offerings made to the dead or the gods and follow the same codes: The beneficiary is seated while the officiant approaches them, standing and holding the objects they are about to offer in their hands. These scenes concern the period following birth, and the rites which appear there must allow the purification and aggregation of the mother. It is a question of representing the reliefs, the sequence we can attempt to restore – in a necessarily incomplete manner because the analysis depends on scant documentation”…

These representations are very precious because they are among the only ones that allow us to understand the intimacy of women… But what was their goal? E. Brunner-Traut, in particular, “suggests seeing ex-votos there. We can indeed consider these objects as having been used, in one way or another, in cults linked to fertility, but it is impossible to specify this use further”…

This ostracon, which comes from Deir el-Medineh, is described by Jacques Vandier d’Abbadie in his “Catalogue of figured ostraca, 1937” under the number 2339. It is indicated as having previously been at the Fouad I Agricultural Museum in Cairo. It was then found in the collection of Moïse Lévy de Benzion, owner of a famous store in Cairo, who then offered it at auction under number 36 of his sale on March 14, 1947, in Zamalek. Robert Streitz, a Belgian architect based in Cairo, then purchased it. He kept it for several years before donating it in 1952 to the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre Museum. It was registered there under the inventory number E 25333.

Marie Grillot

*Ostraca (singular: ostracon): Shards, silver or fragments of limestone, or even terracotta, which were, in antiquity, used by artisans to practice. This type of “support”, which they found in abundance on the sides of the mountain, allowed them to make and redo their drawings or writings until they reached excellence and were finally admitted to work “in situ” in the residences of ‘eternity.

They are generally classified into two categories: inscribed (hieroglyph, hieratic, demotic, etc.) or figured (drawing, sculpture).

Sources:

Figured ostracon – E 25333 https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010004032 Jacques Vandier d’Abbadie, Catalog of figured ostraca of Deir el Médineh II.2, n°2256-2722, IFAO, Cairo, 1937 https://archive.org/details/DFIFAO2.2/page/n1/mode/2up Bernard Bruyère, Report on the excavations of Deir el Médineh (1934-1935). Third part. The village, public dumps, the rest station at the Valley of the Kings pass, Cairo, Printing office of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (IFAO), (Excavations of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology = FIFAO; 16), p. 131-132, 1939 https://ia600606.us.archive.org/30/items/FIFAO16/FIFAO%2016%20Bruyère%2C%20Bernard%20-%20Le%20village%2C%20les%20discharges%20public%2C%20la%20station%20de %20rest%20du%20col%20de%20la%20valley%20des%20kings%20%281939%29%20LR.pdfEmma Brunner-Traut, Die altägyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka) der Deutschen Museen und Sammlungen, Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1956 Jeanne Vandier d’Abbadie, Two figured ostraca, Bulletin of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (BIFAO), 1957, p. 21-34, p. 22-23, fig. 2, IFAO, Cairo, 1957 https://archive.org/details/DFIFAO2.2 https://archive.org/details/DFIFAO2.2/page/n69/mode/2up Emma Brunner-Traut, Egyptian Artists’ Sketches. Figured ostraka from the Gayer-Anderson Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Cambridge, 1979

The donors of the Louvre, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1989

Perfumes and cosmetics in ancient Egypt, exhibition catalogue, Cairo, Marseille, Paris, 2002, p. 99, 139, ESIG, 2002

Anne Minault-Gout, Stone notebooks: the art of ostraca in ancient Egypt, p. 36-37, Hazan, 2002

Guillemette Andreu, The artists of Pharaon. Deir el-Medina and the Valley of the Kings, exhibition catalog, Paris, Turnhout, RMN, Brepols, p. 113, no. 53, 2002

Guillemette Andreu, The Art of Contour. Drawing in ancient Egypt, exhibition catalog, Somogy éditions d’Art, p. 320, ill. p. 320, no. 168, 2013

Marie-Lys Arnette, Postpartum purification and relief rites in ancient Egypt, Bulletin of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (BIFAO), 114, 2015, p. 19-72, p. 30-31, fig. 2, IFAO, Cairo 2015

Hanane Gaber, Laure Bazin Rizzo, Frédéric Servajean, At work, we know the craftsman… of Pharaon! A century of French research in Deir el-Medina (1917-2017), exhibition catalogue, Silvana Editoriale, p. 36, 2017