In Tutankhamen's Egypt, the vizier's head cook dies suspiciously, and it looks like murder to Neferet and Bener-ib. Only, who would want to kill a cook, a man admired by all?
Perhaps he has professional rivals or a jealous wife. But she is the longtime cook of Neferet's family, a dear retainer above reproach. Was her husband the good man he seemed to be, or did he have the shady past our two sleuths begin to suspect?
They'd better find out soon before the waters of foreign conspiracy rise around Neferet and her diplomat father. If they can't find the killer, it could mean war with Egypt's enemy, Kheta -- and someone else could die. Maybe one of our nosy sleuths...
First of all, if one had to drop down into the Late Bronze Age, Egypt would be the best place to drop. In terms of health care and women’s rights, for example, they were far ahead of their contemporaries, but life would still seem primitive in the extreme, unless one was lucky enough to be an aristocrat. Let’s look at some of the differences between our times and Neferet’s that would immediately strike a time traveler.
One is the hierarchical nature of society, so different from our own democracy. The king was unimaginably rich and powerful. King Tut’s tomb contained goods that would have cost a thousand years of an ordinary workman’s salary!
High nobles lived in luxury in spacious houses with big gardens, had indoor baths and toilets (flushed by servants with buckets), ate meat-rich food off exquisite plates, and enjoyed well-fed, sedentary, secure lives.
The working class huddled with their average of ten children into poorly lit little houses, worked hard from sunrise to sunset, and could hardly afford to buy furniture. But they did at least have “weekends” off every ten days and plenty of festivals to supplement their bread-and-beer basic diet. People were very conscious of their class, but it wasn’t unheard of for the dissatisfied to stand up to their betters. Royal workmen sometimes went on strike, and every village had a council of citizens—including women—that ran their local affairs in a democratic way.
Nobody had money. Business was carried out by barter, sometimes using bronze or silver, but there was no coinage. Taxes were paid in labor or foodstuffs, and wealth was reckoned mostly in grain and cattle, hence land. Marriage consisted of the simple decision to live together, with both partners bringing to the marriage what they could. The Egyptians seemed to marry monogamously for love (they had some red-hot love songs!) and to be devoted family folks, but divorce was easy if things went bad. If a man’s wife was childless, he could take a concubine to give him heirs.
Women had essentially equal legal rights with men, could testify in court, leave and receive inheritances, run businesses, and even give orders to men subordinates. Yet people still sometimes took advantage of widows and orphans, and the very poor might have to sell themselves into temporary indentured servitude to pay debts.
Egyptian medicine was highly advanced for its day, with doctors consulting casebooks that showed what had worked against symptoms in the past. They were good at surgery, and medicines varied from solid “folk” remedies like willow bark for fever (it contains salicylic acid like aspirin) or honey as an antiseptic to strange magical procedures. Nowhere near as good as modern healthcare, but way better than that of the Middle Ages!
Still, it would strike our time traveler that Egypt was, as it is today, a tropical country with lots of diseases and a slew of horrible parasites carried by the river. If you were working class, you strained your body so hard that it showed up in the bones. If you were rich and sedentary, you might suffer from cardiovascular problems. The life expectancy was about 35 for ordinary people, but there were individuals who lived to be seventy, eighty, even ninety years old.—although there wasn’t much anyone could do for their cataracts or arthritis. As far as dentistry goes, the only thing to do about a rotten tooth was to pull it out if you could grab it. If you were rich enough, you could fill in the gap with a bridge attached with gold wires.
One thing that would strike a modern immediately was how slow life was and how much physical effort everything required except for the fortunate few who had servants. Most travel was by boat at five miles per hour, or by foot at three. Donkeys went no faster. It took days to get anywhere!
People like Neferet’s father, who traveled frequently to foreign parts, spent much of their lives in transit. Messages had to be sent by runners or horseback couriers—no phone calls or texts. Calculations and writing were done laboriously by hand in a system so complex that only 1% of the population had the luxury of mastering it, and it was literacy that gave a person status.
There was no running water; it had to be raised from wells. Light was provided by dim oil lamps, and “air conditioning” was just a vent in the ceiling, maybe with some servants to fan up a breeze. Even the king, the most powerful man on the planet, lived a life of far less comfort than an ordinary person today, although he had prettier jewelry. And for the ordinary man, every giant block of stone or heavy beam had to be cut without any power tools. Manpower was the secret of Egypt’s greatness. There was no unemployment, but life was pretty disposable.
In short, the Egyptians lived in a society of contrasts. While they seemed to have been free of racism, there were sharp social divides. Their engineering and craftsmanship have never been equalled, yet everyday life for most people was primitive. Their science was far more sophisticated than almost anything else around, yet little of that got translated into labor-saving gadgets. I would love to visit their world, but I sure wouldn’t want to live there permanently!
N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin used to write stories for fun.
These days she lives in France with her husband, two cats, geese, and chickens, where she gardens, weaves, dances, and plays the violin.
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