Customer Reviews

Sexual Life In Ancient Egypt

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This slim volume by Lise Manniche sheds some light onto a topic seldom addressed in Ancient Egyptian studies. Manniche gleans a great deal of information from the slender remains surrounding this subject, but proves by the evidence, that the ancient Egyptians were no prudes, but like all peoples had a sexual side, sometimes joking and pruient, sometimes romantic - often concerned with fertility and health issues. It is illustrated with rare glimpses of objects that are often hidden away in museum basements and private collections due to their sexual nature.

It leads me to wonder how many of these objects were lost or destroyed by Victorian adventurers upon discovery - most of them are small: amulets and ostraca, showing the very personal nature of the topic. While ancient Egyptians seem to have been frank (consider their hieroglyphs dealing with parts of the body and the god Min), their remains are mainly concerned with their afterlife beliefs. Glimpsing this more humble human aspect was intriguing and satisfying.

On the positive side, Lise Manniche has her bases covered as far as evidence goes. In her book Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt she has found and photgraphed rarely seen artifacts, and she quotes texts from archaeological sites that are hardly ever used due to their content. This book is excellent for the Manniche's support alone.
In contemporary Western society we tend to look down upon the sexual practices of other cultures, excusing what we don't like as a "strange" cultural practice, and openly mocking what we feel comfortable with. I see a little of this in Lise Manniche's book. By taking two examples of homosexuality in ancient Egypt, she writes it off entirely, falling prey to Western sex hierarchies. She also fails to take into account that the authors of many texts she uses, and the artisans behind the sculptures are men. Regarding Egyptian love poetry she makes the comment that it is young men and women writing to each other, when it is more likely that it is older, more learned men, writing what they would have the ideal woman respond as. And the pictoral representations which she uses frequently are also idealized from a male perspective, a fact that I don't recall her mentioning with any emphasis.
Her sources are good, but her theories are highly suspect. I recommend reading this book after reading a book like "Archaeologies of Sexuality."