Children of the Pharaohs: Growing Up in Ancient Egypt
What was it like to grow up in Ancient Egypt? Did the Ancient Egyptians have familial bonds like our own…or was ancient life vastly different for a child?
In “Cleopatra as a Child: The Real Story,” I explored the life of Egypt’s last pharaoh — albeit, she was really a Greco-Egyptian pharaoh given her Ptolemaic heritage. Cleopatra’s childhood “was filled with love: Egyptian culture valued children, with mothers looking after them constantly into young childhood. Cleopatra likely had a nurse, when her royal parents were serving in official capacities, but she would have had a lot of contact with her parents.”
Beyond this affectionate love, Cleopatra had toys, pets, games, and dancing in her life. She took care of her siblings and, around the age of 5 or 7, began her education and helping with royal tasks in order to learn what was expected of her. Her education included math, science, reading, writing, languages, and the vast system of Egyptian religious beliefs and rituals that she would help maintain. At some point, Cleopatra attended school at the Mouseion in Alexandria — where she was taught by the best scholars in the Hellenistic world.
But what was life like for Ancient Egyptian children before the Ptolemaic family took over? Was it the same as Cleopatra’s childhood? Let’s dive into the evidence.
Welcome to Kemet
Well, first off: it wasn’t called Egypt. Children knew their land as “Kemet,” meaning “the black land” or “the land of the black people.” It was a reference both to the color of skin but also the color of the rich soils along the banks of the Nile River.
Beginning around 3150 BCE, Ancient Egypt as a pharaonic culture lasted until about 30 CE. It was an extensive land, with borders shifting at times based on war and changes in leadership. There were also periods of civil unrest and political upheaval, but on the whole, Ancient Egypt was a relatively stable culture throughout its over 3,000 year existence.
Familial Relationships are Central
Ancient Egyptian society is built upon the nuclear family concept: a father, a mother, and children. Even the religious system — the gods — are built on this model: Ra and Mut as the divine father and mother. Tomb inscriptions and a variety of writings demonstrate that Egyptians took pride in their family relationships. They traced their lineage through the male and female lines.
This centrality of the family meant that children were highly valued. Both male and female infants were doted upon and celebrated at childbirth. Infanticide was not practiced. Rather, infants were carried along and doted upon by their mothers for the first three to four years of life — nursed and carefully watched to keep away from the dangers of life along the Nile River.
Children, in turn, were expected to grow up with respect for their parents, pride in their families, and to care for their parents in their old age. This last part was especially important, to the point that a child could be partly or totally disinherited for failing to care for their parents’ if they were old and helpless. It was a family cycle of birth, life, and death in which each generation was dependent upon the others.
Additionally, children were expected to be respectful, modest, reserved in speed, and moderate at the table, among other values. These values are found in a variety of philosophical writings, including those of the viziers Hardjedef (c. 2600 BCE) and Ptahhotep (c. 2400 BCE), suggesting a consistency in social values across time.
These expectations were not gendered, as evidenced by numerous statues and engravings which detail children and parents’ relationships. In these, male and female children are depicted in equal sizes and positions (such as on the statue base of Djedhor, below). This means that children of both sexes were equally important in the family.
Education
Around the age of five, children were considered to have survived the dangers of infancy. At this point, the family became more sure that their child would make it to adulthood. Children would begin to follow their parents and help around the house in traditional gender roles. For boys, this meant helping in their father’s occupation and household tasks, usually through simple chores before progressing into an apprentice-like model. For girls, this meant shadowing their mothers, assisting with the care of their siblings and home, and learning simple tasks such as sewing and basic cooking.
As children grew older, they began to engage in more complex tasks. These could include agriculture, animal husbandry, making household goods and clothing, and even making beer and bread. Girls focused increasingly on the house and home, while boys became more and more an apprentice to their fathers. In Ancient Egypt, children were expected to have a “hereditary calling” — not a system of inheritance, but more an expectation that children would follow in their parents’ footsteps unless they showed a natural inclination for a higher calling like the priesthood (and had the means to pursue it).
For children of middle and upper classes — from the scribes through the nobility — school became part of their daily life. Schools might be independent or attached to a temple, though there is no information on educational organizations prior to the Middle Kingdom period. If a family was wealthy, children might have private tutors instead of attending a school.
Formal education did allow some girls, though scholars are not sure how widespread this practice was or if it waned in and out of fashion. The historical record indicates that girls became doctors, officials, and pharaohs, so we know that girls attending school — and graduating — did occur, but the historical record (with Ancient Egypt’s penchant for “correcting” it when a pharaoh did not like what they were reading) is far from complete.
Fun Times
Despite all this time learning, children had ample time for fun. Ancient Egypt was rife with fun times, and this is demonstrated by a variety of tomb paintings, archaeological finds of toys and figurines, and inscriptions. Even when poor, children found time for play. And gender was no issue — as tomb paintings have shown, boys and girls played together.
Beyond toys, children also engaged in outdoor sports with their families. These included hunting, fishing, and archery — methods of feeding the family as well as leisurely enjoyment. Tomb paintings also show activities like stick fencing, wrestling, races, and swimming.
Children also learned to play musical instruments, which were a primary feature of Ancient Egyptian life. Whether played at rituals, banquets, or simply a quiet night at home, music was found throughout Egyptian life for 3,000 years. Their early instruments included reed and wood flutes, floor harps, bone and ivory clappers, hand rattles, and drums played with fingers and hands. By the New Kingdom period, other instruments had joined the ensemble: harps, trumpets, lutes, oboes, and lyres — introduced from and inspired by contact with other cultures throughout the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, to date, we have not found any evidence of a notation system, so we have no idea how the Ancient Egyptians recorded and passed down their musical knowledge, other than as an oral tradition.
Finally, one of the most popular Egyptian past times were board games. Numerous examples have been found of the boards and pieces from Ancient Egypt, from games such as senet and astragali as well as dice games. Some of these games had religious significance as well, and might have been used to help understand concepts such as the journey into the afterlife.
Senet was a two-player game with moves determiend by casting sticks or bones (instead of dice, as we do today). Players started at one corner and zig-zagged across each row and down to the next to the far bottom right of starting, making moves to advance, pass, and block their opponent much like one might in chess or checkers today. Tiles with symbols indicated hazards or special marks that must be reached before a piece could finish. The goal was to cross all your pieces across the final square. Notably, senet is found in numerous tombs, including those of Queen Nefertari and King Tutankhamun (who had five game boxes!). The game likely has some connection with the journey to the afterlife, with the game moves symbolic of the steps one takes in the rituals of the afterlife (which were also fraught with obstacles).
If you feel like playing Senet, download this PDF from the Museum of Science in Boston on how to make your own board and learn all the rules!
Other games were popular throughout the ancient world, allowing Ancient Egyptians to play with visitors from other cultures. One such game is mehen, played by several players on a coiled game board, using pieces that look like tiny lions and small balls. Evidence of the game goes back to 3000 BCE, first appearing in the tomb of Rahotep, but its popularity died out around 2300 BCE. The game is also found in Cyprus and Bab ‘edh Dhra, where it was played after it died out in Egypt. Unfortunately, the game’s rules and gameplay remain a mystery.
Childhood’s End
A child’s life in Ancient Egypt ended in two ways: growing to adulthood, or death. The maturation into adulthood happended in what would be the teenage years — sometime after the onset of menses and when society determined the child had reached the maturity and skill level for independence and marriage. This likely differed across Ancient Egypt’s 3,000-year existence and was based upon gender and social class, at least in some ways, so I won’t go into a full explanation here.
The other ending was far more tragic: death. Mortality rates for children were high, especially during the first five years of life. According to Dr. Heba Magdy, research indicates that nearly 30% of children died before the age of five. Yet the evidence we have — of child mummies, and the rituals surrounding a child’s death — suggest that children were loved deeply and mourned by their families. The centrality of nuclear families meant that every child’s loss was great, even when Ancient Egyptian families may have average 5, 10, and even 15 children per generation.
Children’s burials differed based on age. In Dr. Magdy’s study, researchers found that infants were more likely to be buried inside clay vessels (both decorated and undecorated), often in pits underneath the house floors, until the New Kingdom period when infants were placed in cemeteries or tombs with other dead relatives. For children over the age of one year, their bodies were buried in the sand or in coffins, though finding their graves is still very rare. Sometimes, children might be buried with a relative, including with their mothers. This lack of burials suggests that either (1) we simply have not found many graves, (2) children’s bodies have decomposed in the sand faster than adults, or (3) there may be another method of burial of which we are unaware.
Regardless of burial, children were heavily mourned and lamented — in the same way as adults. Poems and epitaphs were written, and inscriptions and representations on royal tombs show their funerals. One of the most poignant is The Death of Meketaten, daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti, which is detailed on Akhenaten’s tomb. It is best seen in sketch form, as the relief was later defaced:
Such mourning was not confined to royalty (or highly emotive royalty such as Akhenaten). Another rather large piece of evidence that children were mourned is a funerary stela on display at The British Museum, depicting the deceased child Merysekhmet seated on the lap of his mother. Made around 1400 to 1350 BCE, this stela is a permanent monument to Merysekhmet, confirming how much his parents loved him and mourned his young death.
From texts to toys, monuments to musical instruments, the evidence is clear: childhood in Ancient Egypt was a time of great love and joy. Children were respected and nurtured, hoped for and cherished. As the center of Egyptian life, the nuclear family was nurtured as the future of Egypt’s great empire…and children as the key to their future. But childhood was rife with dangers, and the ever-present fear of death meant that a parent’s love could soon become a parent’s grief, immortalized — at times — in stone.
Sources
Brewer, Douglas J. and Teeter, Emily. “Chapter 7: Ancient Egyptian Society and Family Life.” Egypt and the Egyptians (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Girl Museum. “Ancient Girls.” https://www.girlmuseum.org/project/ancient-girls/
Feucht, Erika. “Juvenile Misbehaviour in Ancient Egypt.” History of Juvenile Delinquency (1990): 61–70.
Magdy, Heba. “Children’s Burials in Ancient Egypt.” Journal of Association of Arab Universities for Tourism and Hospitality, Special Issue (December 2014).
