The Tale of Horus and Seth
Within the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, sandwiched between two sheets of protective glass is a heavily damaged and brittle length of papyrus, from the ancient town of Lahun. Dating from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, approximately 1700 - 1850BC, it relates a portion what has become known as the Tale of Horus and Seth.
Although this fragmentary sheet is not the only version of the tale, it does represent the earliest known extant account. The narrative tells of the rivalry between two of mythology’s earliest divine protagonists and their battles for supremacy following Seth’s murder of Horus’ father, Osiris.
In the later Contendings of Horus and Seth, Seth attempts, through deceit, to force his sexual attentions upon Horus in order to demonstrate his dominance over his enemy, (Lichtheim 1976, 219) however, his tone in the Petrie Museum papyrus is more cajoling, employing the candid flattery, “how beautiful your buttocks are,” (Collier & Quirke 2004, 21). Furthermore, it is suggested that Seth is desirous of something more than the mere sexual abasement of his opponent as it is stated that carnal knowledge of Horus will be “sweet on his heart”(Collier & Quirke 2004, 21).
It is evident from the physical remains of ancient Egyptian culture, as exemplified by sculpture, painting, written texts and even the forms taken by many of the hieroglyphs with which these texts were written, that the Egyptians took a generally pragmatic attitude of sexual matters, given their proximity to the natural world and its cycles of procreation and decay, apparently created by and subject to the will of the gods. Indeed, a number of gods are depicted in ithyphallic form, while deities of both genders frequently reveal their sexual natures in art and literature. At certain historical points phallic objects were often carried in religious processions or presented to the gods as votive tokens.
However, despite this apparent lack of prudery the Egyptian attitude towards alternative, non-reproductive, sexual experience was substantially different to that which is often evident in the cultures of Classical Greece and Rome, consequently much of our understanding of alternative sexualities in Pharaonic Egypt is dependent upon considerable theoretical interpretation of the evidence. This coupled with the ambivalent and sometimes censorious depictions of such matters by the Egyptians, themselves, (Parkinson 1995, 67-70) means that until Egypt’s incorporation into the Classical world through the intervention of Alexander the Great, much of the evidence is tentative.
The Tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep
The Fifth Dynasty tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, dating from 2380-2320 BC provides a perfect early example of this ambiguity. Discovered at Saqqara in November 1964, the intimate depictions of the two male tomb-owners, chief manicurists to the king, began a lengthy and still-ongoing debate in scholarly circles.
In attempting to interpret iconography of the two men, Egyptologists have described them, variously, as brothers, (Moussa & Altenmuller 1977) twins, (Baines 1985) lovers, (Reeder 2000) and most recently, it has been suggested by Dr David O’Connor that they may have been conjoined twins (Wilford 2005).
Certainly, the iconography of the tomb echoes depictions of husbands and wives in tomb decoration of the period with Niankhkhnum taking Khnumhotep by the hand and the intimacy of the embraces shared by the men portrayed at various points in the tomb, although it should be noted that the wives and, indeed, the children of the tomb owners are depicted at certain points. However, Dr O’Connor acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times, "The semi-public nature of their tomb chapel suggests their gay relationship was accepted as normative by the elite of a particularly famous and illustrious civilization"(Wilford 2005).
The Tale of Neferkare
Despite a reign of some eighty-eight years, remarkably few representations of the last ruler of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, King Neferkare Pepy II (2290-2196 BC) have survived. Within the Petrie Collection there is a piece, which has been attributed to this king: a small alabaster head. However, in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo there are also papyrus fragments which relate an episode from the tale of a King Neferkare, although much later in date, possibly from 1298-656 BC, the tale they tell may be considerably older. One of the extant fragments relates to secret nocturnal trysts between the king and his unmarried general, Sasenet, with the king only leaving, “after his Person had done what he desired with him”(Montserrat 1996).
Unfortunately, so much of this tale is missing that we cannot even guess at its ultimate denouement, although it remains interesting to speculate whether there might, indeed, be links between the fictional Neferkare’s nocturnal preferences and the historical Pepy II.
Queen Hatshepsut
Moving into the New Kingdom, the reign of Hatshepsut is instructive in considering the attitudes towards gender roles at the highest echelons of society. The daughter of King Thuthmosis I, Hatshepsut became the chief wife of her half-brother, Thuthmosis II, reigning at his side as queen for 14 years until his premature death. Thereafter, Hatshepsut, otherwise destined for a life of widowhood, became regent to her young nephew and step-son, Tuthmosis III. However, by the second year of the co-regency, Hatshepsut’s position was already developing and by Year Seven, her assumption of the role King of Upper and Lower Egypt was complete: official statuary and relief work reveals her adoption of the masculine attributes of kingship from kilts and headdresses to the false beard and titles such as ‘The Female Horus.’ It is an extremely unusual strategy which none of Hatshepsut’s peers in similar circumstances either before or after found necessary to emulate.
Although we have no way of knowing whether this repositioning of gender was restricted to monuments or whether the practice was also carried into Hatshepsut’s life, either public or private, her masculine depiction must, nevertheless, have been viewed as a shockingly subversive act by many of the country’s elite. Their reactions may be indicated by a graffito dating from Hatshepsut’s reign, (Wente 1984) in the cliffs overlooking her striking beautiful mortuary temple at Deir-el-Bahri. Evidently executed rapidly by a draftsman of some ability, the graffitist shows a king, wearing the traditional nemes crown, bending over as the passive participant in a sexual act.
In total, Hatshepsut reigned alone for some fifteen years before her death, after which, Tuthmosis III acceded to the throne. Later in his reign strenuous efforts were made to remove Hatshepsut’s name and image from her monuments and her memory from history.
Although there is no evidence that Hatshepsut was lesbian and potentially compelling evidence to the contrary, this may, nevertheless, be a useful juncture to consider the evidence for lesbianism in ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, it is even more vague than in the case of male homosexuality.
In the New Kingdom, particularly, elite women are frequently portrayed in the painting and sculpture of private tombs enjoying exclusively female company surrounded by nude or scantily clad serving girls. The frequent incorporation of the naked serving girl motif into the design of cosmetic utensils and unguent jars further heightens the impression of increased female interest in the feminine form, although it should be remembered that Egyptian men also wore cosmetics and such items may have been a purely masculine preserve.
Akhenaten
The consideration of depictions of the royal family during the reign of Amenhotep IV is always fraught with uncertainty and conjecture. Suffice to say from the fifth year of this king’s reign, he had begun to worship the sun’s disk, Aten, in preference to any other god and subsequently altered his name to Akhenaten. The following year he took his court and family to a desolate site by the banks of the Nile in Middle Egypt where he founded his new capital city, Akhetaten, ‘The Horizon of the Aten.’
Perhaps, most fascinatingly, within this re-imagining of religion and kingship, Akhetaten also began to be depicted in an entirely different manner to that of his royal predecessors. Statues and reliefs portrayed him with protuberant breasts and rounded, feminine hips and it is often difficult to differentiate between the king and his queen, the famously beautiful Nefertiti. Certain colossal nude statues portray him without genitalia and while many Egyptian deities, such as the creator, Atum, or the Nile god, Hapi, may have hermaphroditic aspects, they are intrinsically fecund. Furthermore, such a representation of the king is without known precedent in Egyptian history and stands in stark contrast to the impressively masculine persona portrayed by Hatshepsut.
Although a number of theories have been advanced addressing Akhenaten’s appearance, suggesting medical complaints, genetic abnormalities, and trans-sexuality, (Brant 1997) none of these hypotheses adequately consider the effect of such circumstances on his ability to father the six daughters with which he is frequently depicted.
Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign Nefertiti vanishes from the historical record and appears to be replaced by a co-regent, Smenkhkhare, who is depicted as male and, it has been suggested, may have been the king’s lover. Although, as with so many aspects of the Amarna period, the circumstances appear to have been pored over at great length, the facts are elusive and Smenkhkhare could equally have been a son by a lesser wife or indeed Nefertiti herself in kingly guise a la Hatshepsut. It really is impossible to reach a firm conclusion without greater evidence (Montserrat 2000, 172-3). Whatever the circumstances, Smenkhkhare died shortly after Akhenaten and under the reign of Tutankhamun, the old gods were re-instated ending Akhenaten’s seventeen-year experiment in monotheism.
Alexander the Great
With the exception of the aforementioned record of the Tale of Neferkare, some six hundred years of Egyptian history pass before the arrival of Alexander III of Macedon, Alexander the Great, in his campaign against Persia. Having successfully ousted the Persian force from Egypt, Alexander accepted the gratefully offered and otherwise vacant position of King of Upper and Lower Egypt, transforming the ancient Mediterranean fishing town of Rakhotis into Alexandria, and discovering his own divinity through the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa before dashing off in pursuit of the Persians once more. All of this and considerably more beside was achieved with the aid of his constant companion and probable lover, Hephaestion.
Alexander was the product of a typically elite Hellenic upbringing, based upon the Athenian fashions of socially accepted and institutionally promoted homosexuality and the Dorian proclivities of his ancestors (Lane Fox 1986, 56-7). He allegedly modelled his life upon that of the legendary hero Achilles, (Lane Fox 1986, 59-62) whose constant companion, Patroklos, was, similarly, believed to have been Achilles’ lover.
Although the Classical sources relate some fascinating tales regarding the increasingly decadent and promiscuous excesses of the Macedonian Ptolemies who ruled Egypt in the three-hundred years following Alexander’s death, it is really only the sad tale of the dissolute Ptolemy IV Philopater, which need concern us here. Obsessed with a Greek courtesan and her brother, the famed athlete, Agathokles, Philopater allowed his lovers increasing power until they eventually murdered Philopater and his queen, intending to rule through the young prince, Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
Although too late to save the king or his queen, the Alexandrian mob, ultimately took a hand, as was frequently their wont during this period of Egyptian history and the ambitious Agathokles died at their hands (Shipley 1999, 207-8).
Antinous
Following the death of Kleopatra VII in 30 BC, the triumphant Octavian, later the Emperor Augustus, seized Egypt as his personal property and it remained in the possession of the emperor until Rome’s eventual fall. In 130AD, the Emperor Hadrian, arrived in Egypt as part of his lengthy tour of the provinces. Although married to a noblewoman, Sabina, who remained in Rome, Hadrian was devoted to his young favourite and travelling companion, Antinous.
Hadrian was fascinated by Greek culture and art and particularly by the mystery cults of Greece and the East. Consequently, when the beautiful Antinous drowned in the Nile during their Egyptian visit, commentators at the time and scholars since have seen more sinister explanations than mere accident (Lambert 1997, 128-42). It has been suggested that Antinous sacrificed himself in an effort to re-invigorate and lengthen the life of the fifty-four year old emperor. Whether the act was accomplished by way of coercion, agreement or force remains a moot point; suffice to say that such was Hadrian’s grief or gratitude; he founded a city, Antinoopolis, ‘the City of Antinous,’ on the site of the drowning and had the Roman Senate create Antinous a god in his own right.
As the last god of the ancient world, the numerous statues of Antinous, erected throughout the empire tended to portray him either as a beautiful ageless youth or in the forms of the Egyptian god, Osiris, or the Greek god Dionysos. In modern museums the downcast face, slightly brooding expression, and broad chest of Antinous are instantly and internationally recognisable.
The sources do not comment upon whether such ‘immortality’ represents adequate recompense for his youthful sacrifice, they do, however, ironically, relate that Hadrian lived only a further eight years beyond Antinous, in poor health and with little taste for the life that remained (Lambert 1997, 174-5).
Mummy Portraits
Some of the most fascinating examples of private art to survive from Roman Egypt are the mummy ‘portraits,’ painted in wax onto a wooden board, these astonishingly direct and life-like depictions were originally bound into the wrappings of the dead, although the majority have long since become detached. The Petrie Museum has an largely unrivalled collection of these objects, which frequently portray young males ‘as being at the apogee of their sexual desirability’(Montserrat 1993).
One of the most effective of these portraits, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo comes originally from Antinoopolis in the mid second-century AD and is traditionally known as the ‘Tondo of the Two Brothers.’ It is a dual portrait of two young men painted across two separate but joined boards. Although there are clear facial resemblances, the differing skin colour of the subjects suggests, either that they are the product of a mixed Greek/Egyptian, marriage (Doxiadis 1995, 211-2) or that they were not, in fact, brothers. From information contained in the portrait, one scholar has suggested that the men may have been priests in the cult of Antinous (Doxiadis 1995, 212). The possibility also remains that they may have been lovers, in which case we are in a similar situation to that presented by the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, some two thousand years earlier.
While the foregoing suggests that attitudes towards sexuality and gender were essentially normative throughout Egyptian history, it should be remembered, firstly, that our evidence comes only from the upper strata of society and secondly, what we now describe as art and literature had very specific meaning and purpose to both the artisans who produced it and to those who commissioned it (Baines 1994). Many aspects of society and experience were not recorded for a variety of reasons ranging from their irrelevance to the potential for their depiction to prove ‘harmful’ in a magical context. There can be no doubt that sexual experience was not restricted to the purely heterosexual, however, as has often been the case, the public persona is rarely related to one’s sexuality. It is most evident, however, that the study of sexuality and gender within the discipline of Egyptology, although a relatively recent area of research, has raised some fascinating questions, which require further consideration and discussion if we are to truly appreciate the reality of life within this most ancient of cultures.
Select Bibliography
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Baines, J., 1994. On the Status and Purposes of Egyptian Art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 4(1), 23.
Brant, W., (1997). The Gender Heresy of Akhenaten, in Gender Blending, eds. B. Bullough, V. L. Bullough & J. Elias New York: Prometheus Books.
Collier, M. & S. Quirke (eds.), (2004). The UCL Lahun Papyri: Religious, Literary, Medical, Mathematical and Medical, Oxford: Archaeopress.
Doxiadis, E., 1995. The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, London: Thames & Hudson.
Lambert, R., 1997. Beloved and God, London: Phoenix.
Lane Fox, R., 1986. Alexander the Great, London: Penguin.
Lichtheim, M., 1976. Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume II: The New Kingdom, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Montserrat, D., 1993. The Representation of Young Males in 'Fayum Portraits'. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 79, 215-25.
Montserrat, D., 1996. Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt, London: Kegan Paul International.
Montserrat, D., 2000. Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt London: Routledge.
Moussa, A. & H. Altenmuller, 1977. Das Grab des Nianchchnum und Chnumhotep, Mainz: Deutsches Archaologisches Institut.
Parkinson, R. B., 1995. 'Homosexual' Desire and Middle Kingdom Literature. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 81, 57-76.
Reeder, G., 2000. Same-Sex Desire, Conjugal Constructs, and the Tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. World Archaeology, 32(2), 193-208.
Shipley, G., 1999. The Greek World After Alexander 323-30 BC London: Routledge.
Wente, E. F., 1984. Some Graffiti from the Reign of Hatshepsut. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 43(1), 47-54.
Wilford, J. N., (2005). A Mystery, Locked in Timeless Embrace in The New York Times New York.
