overnment

The Ancient Egyptian civilization produced the first government to rule an entire nation.
The Sumerians, who were the only other people to have a literate and urban
civilization by 3000 BCE, lived in small city-states, each numbering no more than a few
tens of thousand people. The unified kingdom of Egypt, on the other hand, covered an
entire country thousands of square miles in size and with millions of inhabitants.
The Pharaoh was the ruler of Ancient Egypt, both politically and religiously. The
Pharaoh held the title ‘Lord of the Two Lands’, meaning that he ruled all of Upper and
Lower Egypt; and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’, meaning that he represented all the
gods on all the Earth. In Egyptian eyes, the pharaoh was a god himself, who stood
between heaven and earth. His personal welfare and the welfare of the entire people
were bound tightly together.
Pharaoh was in charge of the army, and would go to war when his lands were
threatened – demanding valuable gifts from the conquered people if victory was
obtained.
To help the Pharaoh in governing the land, an elaborate organization of officials,
scribes and overseers – the world’s first civil service – developed, bringing the reach of
government down to the lowliest villager. Egypt was divided into nomes, which were
administrative regions (up to 42 of them), each governed by a nomarch. Pharaoh
himself was surrounded in his palace by high officials, ministers and courtiers. For
much of Ancient Egypt’s history the Pharaoh was served by a powerful chief minister
called a Vizier. He represented the Pharaoh in the administration of the land, treasury
and legal system. Temples were used as places of worship and also as granaries and
treasuries where grain and goods were stored.

Society
As in all societies of the ancient world, peasant farmers made up the bulk of the
population. However, the land was owned by the Pharaoh, or by one of the temples,
which were immensely wealthy, or by a noble family. Peasants were also subject to a
labour tax, and were at times required to work on public projects such as irrigation or
construction works.
Craftsmen seem to have had a higher status than farmers. Most of these probably
worked for temples or the state. Scribes and officials were of high rank in ancient
Egyptian society. Within this elite group were also priests, physicians and engineers;
and from them were drawn the leading priests, ministers and courtiers.
At the very top was the royal family, below which was a powerful class of hereditary
landowners (nobles). Slavery was known in ancient Egypt, but its extent is unclear.
Most slaves seem to have been used as domestic servants in wealthy households
rather than as agricultural workers. By law, slaves were able to buy and sell, like other
people, or work their way to freedom.
Women seem to have had a comparatively high status in Egyptian society. Like men,
they could own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive
inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property
jointly. Some women enjoyed huge status as high priestesses. On the other hand, as
in virtually all ancient societies, public office was almost always reserved for men.
Walking around Beyond Beauty, the new exhibition organised by charitable foundation the
Bulldog Trust in the neo-Gothic mansion of Two Temple Place in central London, you would be
forgiven for thinking that the ancient Egyptians were insufferably vain.

Many of the 350 exhibits, drawn from the overlooked collections of Britain’s regional museums,
consist of what we would call beauty products, of one sort or another.

There are dinky combs and handheld mirrors made of copper alloy or, more rarely, silver. There
are siltstone palettes, carved to resemble animals, which were used for grinding minerals such as
green malachite and kohl for eye makeup.

Ancient Egyptians of both sexes apparently went to great lengths to touch up their appearance

There are also pale calcite jars and vessels of assorted sizes, in which makeup, as well as unguents
and perfumes, could be stored. Then there is a scrap of human hair that suggests the ancient
Egyptians commonly wore hair extensions and wigs.

And, of course, there are lots of striking examples of Egyptian jewellery, including a string of
beads, decorated with carnelian pendants in the shape of poppy heads, found in the grave of a
small child wrapped in matting.

In short, ancient Egyptians of both sexes apparently went to great lengths to touch up their
appearance.

Moreover, this was just as true in death as it was in life: witness the smooth, serene faces, with
regular features and prominent eyes emphasised by dramatic black outlines, typically painted onto
cartonnage mummy masks and wooden coffins.

Yet, for modern archaeologists, the ubiquity of beauty products in ancient Egypt offers a
conundrum.

On the one hand, it is possible that ancient Egyptians were besotted with superficial appearance,
much as we are today. Indeed, perhaps they even set the template for how we still perceive
beauty.

But, on the other, there is a risk that we could project our own narcissistic values onto a
fundamentally different culture. Is it possible that the significance of cosmetic artefacts in ancient
Egypt went beyond the frivolous desire simply to look attractive?

Sensibly sexy

This is what many archaeologists now believe. Take the common use of kohl eye makeup in
ancient Egypt – the inspiration for smoky eye makeup today. Recent scientific research suggests
that the toxic, lead-based mineral that formed its base would have had anti-bacterial properties
when mixed with moisture from the eyes.
In addition, the heavy application of kohl around the eyes would have helped to reduce glare from
the sun. In other words, there were simple, practical reasons why both men and women in ancient
Egypt wished to wear eye makeup.

It’s the same with other ancient Egyptian ‘beauty products’. Wigs helped to reduce the risk of lice.
Jewellery had powerful symbolic and religious significance.

Dancing girls and prostitutes used to tattoo their thighs as a precaution against venereal disease

A fired clay female figure, depicting an erotic dancer, excavated at Abydos in Upper Egypt and now
in the exhibition at Two Temple Place, is embellished with indentations that were meant to
represent tattoos. Of course, in ancient Egypt, tattoos probably had a decorative purpose.

But they may have had a protective function too. There is evidence that, during the New Kingdom,
dancing girls and prostitutes used to tattoo their thighs with images of the dwarf deity Bes, who
warded off evil, as a precaution against venereal disease.

“The more I try to understand what the Egyptians themselves understood as ‘beautiful’”, says
Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, “the more confusing it becomes, because everything seems to have a
double purpose. When it comes to ancient Egypt, I don’t know if ‘beauty’ is the right word to use.”

To complicate matters further, there are eye-catching exceptions to the general rule whereby elite
ancient Egyptians presented themselves in a stereotypically ‘beautiful’ fashion.

Consider the official portraiture of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senwosret III. Although his naked
torso is athletic and youthful – idealised, in line with earlier royal portraits – his face is careworn
and cracked with furrows. Moreover his ears, to modern viewers, appear comically large – hardly
an attribute, you would think, of male beauty.

Yet, in ancient Egypt, the effect wouldn’t have been funny. “In the Old Kingdom, kings were god-
kings,” explains Tyldesley, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. “But by the
Middle Kingdom, kings [such as Senwosret] recognised that things could crumble and go wrong,
which is why they look a bit worried.”

“The big ears are telling us that this king will listen to the people,” she adds. “It would be wrong to
take his portrait literally and say he looked like this.”

Queen of the Nile

Why, then, do we continue to associate ancient Egypt with glamour and beauty? “We still find
ancient Egyptian civilisation very seductive,” agrees Tyldesley, who believes that this is due to the
afterlives of two famous Egyptian queens: Cleopatra and Nefertiti.

Ever since antiquity, following the Roman conquest of Egypt, Cleopatra has been known as a
paragon of beauty. Meanwhile the discovery, in 1912, of the famous painted bust of Nefertiti, now
in Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, turned a little-known wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten into a pin-up of
the ancient world.
Yet, says Tyldesley, who has written a biography of Cleopatra and is researching a book on
Nefertiti, there is irony to the fact that these two Egyptian queens now resonate as sex symbols.

Cleopatra had a big nose, a protruding chin, and wrinkles – Joyce Tyldesley

For one thing, explains Tyldesley, “Cleopatra has given us the idea that ancient Egyptian women
were all beautiful, but we don’t actually know what she looked like.”

In her coinage, Tyldesley says, “Cleopatra had a big nose, a protruding chin, and wrinkles – not
what most people would call beautiful. You could argue that she appeared on her coins like that
on purpose, because she wanted to look stern, and not particularly feminine. But even Plutarch,
who never met her either, said that her beauty was in her vivacity and her voice, and not in her
appearance. Yet we have decided that she was beautiful and that she has to look like Elizabeth
Taylor. I think that the idea of Cleopatra, rather than Cleopatra herself, has influenced us.”

As for Nefertiti, Tyldesley points out that her bust is not typical of ancient Egyptian art: “It’s an
unusual statue in that it’s got all the plaster on and it’s colourful – a lot of the artwork we have is
more stereotyped and less personal-looking than that.”

Moreover, the moment when the bust was unveiled in Berlin – in 1923 – was crucial to its
reception. ‘Egyptomania’ was in the air, following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun the
previous year, and Nefertiti’s angular, geometric appearance chimed with fashionable taste. “She’s
very modern-looking, very Art Deco,” says Tyldesley. “So everybody seemed to like her. It’s hard to
find anybody who didn’t think that Nefertiti was beautiful.”

During the ’20s, the bust of Nefertiti also benefited from the power of the mass media to turn her
into a star. “A hundred years earlier, without newspapers or the cinema, that wouldn’t have
happened,” says Tyldesley. “She would have gone into a museum and nobody would have made
the fuss they did.”

She pauses. “I wonder whether the fact that Nefertiti was put on display in Berlin as a major find
actually influenced what we saw. After all, beauty, as we know, is in the eye of the beholder.”

Alastair Sooke is Art Critic of The Daily Telegraph