In view of the recent advertisement for the forthcoming demon conference in Swansea, I thought I would tell you a bit more about a couple of the items featured on our poster (put together buy Kasia Szpakowska and her demon team Felicitas Weber and Zuzanna Bennett). Here is the poster:
Part of what I am about to suggest, is of course speculative, that is, I can't prove it but I wonder if the two bed legs featured are part of a 'woman's bed' of the type mentioned at Deir el-Medina, for women to nurse their young babies. Whether that is the case or not, the legs are quite unusual in showing in paint Bes and Taweret with a snake. The left leg above shows Bes, and the right Taweret, the snakes are painted in red on the inside of the bed. They have the Egypt Centre accession number W2052a (the Bes leg) and b (Taweret). Their similarity suggests they are part of the same bed. W2052a is from the foot end, left side if you were looking from the head of the bed.
While W2052b from the head, right side. This would place the snakes on the
outer surfaces of the head and foot ends and Bes and Taweret on the
opposite outward facing edges.
Sir Henry
Wellcome purchased these bed legs, decorated with pictures of Taweret and Bes,
in 1906 from the collection of Robert de Rustafjaell. One is marked in pencil
‘Akhmim’ suggesting that it possibly came from this area.
Bed legs such
as those here are frequently constructed in the shape of lion legs. Just as the
lion was symbolically associated with the rebirth of the sun at dawn, a lion
shaped bed might confer refreshed awakening from sleep for the occupant.
The ancient
Egyptians saw the hours between sunset and sunrise as particularly dangerous, a
time when they may be at risk from malevolent forces. To protect themselves
from such powers positive deities were called upon. The two most common were
the hippopotamus goddess Taweret and the dwarf god Bes. It is possible that
beds were generally decorated with such deities, however, Taweret and Bes were
also particularly connected with women in childbirth.
Thus, these
legs may be part of a 'woman's bed' upon which a woman would have given birth and/or
rested shortly after birth.
At New
Kingdom Deir el-Medina, ‘women’s beds’ appear to have been purchased along with
birth amulets [Toivari-Viitala 2001, 178]. Unfortunately, we don’t know what
such beds were like, though there are clues in the ‘Wochenlaube’ scenes (see footnote) and in
model clay beds [Pinch 1983, 406, pl. V]. On both, snakes are shown. On the
clay models, the bed legs may take the form of Bes, and a snake is depicted on
either long edge of the bed. But only one complete bed exists which depicts snakes;
it is that of Sennedjem, which is Ramesside in date, and like ours has a painted decoration. Here two snakes are shown on the bed frame,
one on each side. Other depictions of snakes on actual, as opposed to model, beds do occur, e.g. a New Kingdom bed leg from Thebes has cobras entwined around the legs (EA 21574; Quirke 1992, fig 70). Depictions of Bes on actual beds are, however, much more
common (Graves-Brown 2010). Pinch (1983, 406, pl.V) shows that on depictions on ostraca of mothers nursing their babies, Bes appears on the bed legs.
On the
Wochenlaube scenes the snake has been identified as a protective fertility
snake by Brunner-Traut (1955, 24). There are also parallel scenes where Isis
and baby Horus are shown flanked by protective serpents.The pottery beds on which such serpents appear
are dated to Pinch (1993, 209) as late 18th Dynasty to Third Intermediate
Period.
The legs may well have come from a tomb, however, this does not preclude their use in everyday life. Birth items were particularly apt for the tomb as, for the ancient Egyptians, rebirth in many ways, mirrored birth.
Further Reading and References
Brunner-Traut,
E. 1955. Die Wochenlaube, Mitteilungen
des Instituts für Orientforschung, 3, 11-30.
Graves-Brown,
G. 2010. Dancing for Hathor. Women in
Ancient Egypt. London and New York.
Killen,
G., 1980-1984. Egyptian Furniture. 2
volumes. Warminster.
Pinch,
G., 1983. Childbirth and Female Figurines at Deir el-Medina and el-Amarna, Orientalia, 52, 405-414.
Quirke, S. 1992. Ancient Egyptian Religion. London,
Toivari-Viitala,
J., 2001. Women at Deir el-Medina. A Study
of the Status and Roles of the Female Inhabitants at the Workmen's Community During
the Ramesside Period. Leiden.
Footnote: Several ostraca are known from ancient Egypt shown
nursing women seated on beds, often with convolvulus and sometimes with snakes
depicted. Women may be shown having their hair done and a mirror may be
evident. Similar scenes also appear in the front rooms of some houses at Deir
el-Medina. These scenes, which seem to indicate some special area for birth or
post-parturition recuperation, are termed by Egyptologists ‘Wochenlaube’ scenes
(the term was coined by Brunner-Traut in 1955).
Hippos, were also for the ancient Egyptians symbols of greed, they were called 'water pigs', but also rebirth and regeneration. The obvious example of this, is of course Taweret, and I've blogged about her previously (you can follow the labels on the right here and click on Taweret).
Unfortunately we don't have such a beautiful faience hippopotamus in the Egypt Centre collection, though we do have a copy of one which we sell in our shop, so I shall just show you the picture of her here (right). Isn't she sweet?
