The AMAZING Lives of Ancient Egyptians That SHOCKED Historians
While it’s interesting to learn about all the different pharaohs and royals
that ruled over Egypt or conquered it, but what about the lives of everyday Egyptians?
In this video, we’ll be going deep into what lives for actual Egyptians was like, let’s begin:
Social Pyramid
Egyptian society was heavily divided among different classes, and it was nothing like
what we have today. Although today, there are rich people and there are not-so-rich people,
they generally have to follow the same laws and are equal in the eyes of the law, with
constitutionally equal rights. However, in Egypt, each class had its own laws and its own purpose.
Egypt had its own social pyramid, and at the top of the social pyramid were the pharaohs and gods,
these were divinely appointed or divine themselves.
They were above any laws and, in fact, set the laws themselves for the rest of the people.
They were generally respected and worshipped by all other classes of Egyptian society as well.
Below them were the nobility, these were people who controlled the majority of Egypt’s wealth,
or at least the majority of the wealth that the royals don’t already have.
Generally, the nobility kept close ties with the pharaohs of Egypt,
often asking them for favors including divine ones. While the nobility was subject to laws,
they were generally not as strict as they would be had they not been as influential.
Below the nobles are the professionals. These are the doctors, scientists, astrologists,
technicians, specialists, and accountants that actually ran the entire empire with their skills,
and were vital in the empire’s great success. Even those professionals who weren’t a part of any
nobility had a lot of respect from both people below them in class and above them in class.
Below the professionals were the artisans, sailors, and all those who were employed
in constructing the great state projects such as pyramids or tombs. It’s believed that even
the construction workers at the pyramids were very well taken care of, they had modest living
quarters and access to all the amenities you could have in ancient Egypt, and they had very healthy
diets, which even consisted of the then-equivalent of prime beef! Finally, at the bottom of the
social pyramid were the slaves, serfs, servants, farmers, and those who had no official contact
with Egyptian royalty at all. While life for them was certainly better than at every other empire,
they didn’t live the most dignified lives, and not much is known about their lives.
Their homes
While pretty much all Egyptians lived in some sort of swelling, it varied greatly depending
on the class they belonged to. Kings, queens, nobility, and even some professionals could
afford to live in dwellings made of stone. These were the most luxurious houses of ancient Egypt,
and many of them continue to stand to this day, as you’ll see in many of the
“lost” and ancient cities that have been discovered throughout Egypt. People below
this class mainly lived inside mud buildings whose quality really depended on their social status.
Most Egyptians lived on farms along the Nile, but there were also proper cities located all over
Egypt. Some people actually lived inside these cities and traveled to farms to work every day.
A lot of ancient Egypt’s elite residents also had dedicated worker’s quarters built inside
their homes, where slaves or servants could live with them and serve them whenever they wanted.
Although these servants were still working for someone, their living conditions were generally
much better than those who weren’t directly employed by the royals or the nobles.
One of the most well-preserved examples of an Egyptian living quarter is the
workman village of Deir el-Medina. These were workers who built royal tombs and pyramids,
so in the Egyptian social pyramid, they were one step ahead of slaves, farmers, and servants.
The workers at Deir el-Medina had multi-story terraced houses which
all had a huge door that was connected to the main street of the village.
Each house contained multiple bedrooms, a kitchen with its own mud-brick oven,
and they were even smart enough to construct the kitchen roof with a special type of matting
that would allow all the smoke and smell from cooking to escape the kitchen when they were done.
The houses also usually had multiple “public” rooms, where guests could be entertained,
and there was always a room for extra storage. Finally, the houses in Deir el-Medina also always
had access to the roof through stairs, which could also be used as a living space or a social place.
Keep in mind that while these workers had a higher class than slaves or servants, they were still the
second-to-last on the Egyptian social hierarchy, which goes to show just how wealthy the ancient
Egyptian empire was when even lower-middle-class individuals could live such dignified lives.
Gender Roles and Family
Egypt had one of the highest birth rates in the ancient world. This is thanks to the fertility of
the Nile river being able to provide ample food for a huge population, while in most
other empires, most children would die before the age of 5. The large population of ancient Egypt
played a huge role in putting Egypt in a powerful global position compared to other empires. Ancient
Egyptians also had a strong family system that emphasized having a large family,
in fact, family planning is said to have its roots in ancient Egypt,
although it revolved more around increasing the size of the family rather than decreasing it,
contraceptives might have also been invented in ancient Egypt.
Marriage was an extremely important and necessary part of Egyptian culture.
Every Egyptian woman whether she was a goddess or a slave was expected to get married eventually,
and she was considered incomplete without a husband. Boys and girls were both expected
to get married into their adolescence and have as many children as possible. Before they turned into
teenagers, boys were usually trained by their fathers in various trades and manual skills,
while girls were usually trained by their mothers to perform various household tasks.
Then they would be wed in their early teens or their pre-teens and the cycle would once
again begin. It wasn’t uncommon for ancient Egyptians to have great-great-grandparents,
since they were married so young.
Married men and women were expected to have different roles in a household.
Men were expected to work outdoors and in Egyptian art, they’re generally
always depicted as dark-skinned or tanned due to their exposure to the sun.
Women rarely ever left the house and were expected to do all the household work, and according to
some historians, were considered the leader of the house itself, which is why ancient Egyptian
women are usually depicted with pale skin as they’ve had very little sun exposure in general.
Because of the lack of women in public spaces, we generally know very little
about the lives of Egyptian women in general when compared to the lives of Egyptian men.
However, despite ancient Egyptian culture being patriarchal, legally, Egyptian women of the same
social status had the same rights as men, and they weren’t officially barred from doing anything.
Women were allowed to be doctors, teachers, laborers, servants, professionals, although
it was rare they would actually take up these jobs. As we all know, Egyptian women were also
allowed to be Pharaohs, and some of the most famous pharaohs in history have been women.
Religion
Ancient Egyptian religion is quite a complicated subject, and we still don’t know anything about
it, but we do know that almost all Egyptian residents were expected to follow this religion.
The ancient Egyptian religion had thousands of gods for almost all aspects of life. For example,
pregnant women would usually spend their time worshipping the goddess Taweret, who is considered
the goddess of fertility. Even the gods in Egypt had their own social hierarchy, at the top of
the social ladder were the “state” gods that were officially recognized by the pharaohs and nobles,
below them were the various regional gods that were specific to an area, rather than the entire
empire, and at the bottom of the ladder were demi-gods and supernatural beings, who weren’t
really recognized as gods but were an important aspect of people’s connection to the gods.
Generally, it’s believed that ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife,
but we don’t know whether they believed in an afterlife on earth as reincarnation
or in another world like heaven or hell. The mummification process was
considered an essential part of sending someone to the afterlife,
although very few Egyptians were actually able to afford the mummification procedure, and most were
just buried in the desert. The Egyptian concept of the afterlife is something that’s still
highly debated to this day, and perhaps, we might never know what they actually believed.
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