 Okay, I'd like to start with our land acknowledgement. The Archeological Research Facility is located in Wichin, the ancestral and unceded territory of Chichenyo-speaking Aloni people, successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. We acknowledge that this land remains of great importance to the Aloni people and that the ARF community inherits a history of archeological scholarship that has disturbed Aloni ancestors and made attempts to erase living Aloni people from the present and future of this land. It's therefore our collective responsibility to critically transform our archeological inheritance and practice in support of Aloni sovereignty and to hold the University of California accountable to the needs of all native and indigenous peoples. So with that, I'd like to introduce our speaker today, Dr. Charlotte Rose, who's gonna be speaking on Change and Continuity, Ancient Egyptian Birth Practices from the Middle Kingdom through the New Kingdom. So Dr. Charlotte Barrel Rose is an independent researcher living in Concord, California, who specializes in the material culture of Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom, Egypt. She obtained her BA in Egyptology at Brown University and her master's degree in PhD and PhD in Egyptian archeology at University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Rose has regularly presented her research at major conferences such as the American Research Center in Egypt, American Schools of Overseas Research and the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. She has several years of museum experience as a researcher, public lecturer, tour guide and docent, most recently volunteering with the British Museum for their circulating artifacts project, CERCART, to track the circulation of objects in the antiquities trade to counteract looting. Her research interests include private religion, foreign relations, social class and gender. Dr. Rose's upcoming book on her dissertation research will be with real publishers in their Harvard Egyptological Studies series. So with that, I welcome Dr. Rose. Hello everyone, thank you for coming and I'm honored to be speaking to you today. Previous scholarship on various texts and objects pertaining to Egyptian fertility and birth practices have generally been either general studies or object-specific works. I, however, take a diachronic approach from the Middle Kingdom to the New Kingdom examining what changed or continued over time and why. Let's see, is there a way to switch this? Sorry, technical difficulties. Let's see, do I have a switch it? Sorry, technical difficulties, everyone. Just clicking. Aha, there we go. All right, now all the way. Here are the general dates to keep in mind and some important terminology. I distinguish between materials that are for fertility. That is the ability to produce offspring from conception to birth versus those materials that are specific to childbirth itself. Another important term is solar birth. It refers to the Egyptian mythical rebirth of the sun god each morning. In addition, there's the term apotropaea, which means that materials that were supposed to ward off evil forces. There were four main ancient Egyptian birth gods. The first is the Leonine god Aha, who's later known by his New Kingdom name of Bess. Likewise, a composite hippopotamus, pregnant goddess with a crocodile on the back is named Ipa and Rara in the Middle Kingdom. And she's better known to us by her New Kingdom name of Tawaret. There's also the frog goddess Heka as well as Hathor. Hathor, it's a major goddess with many different roles, particularly finery. So for her examination of the context where her objects occur, it's important to be able to distinguish which of the roles are in question. And here's a map of some of the main sites. An important thing to keep in mind for those who are not Egyptologists is that Egyptologists generally refer to directions based on the orientation of the Nile. Since the Nile flows south and north, when people say upper Egypt, it really means the south, whereas lower Egypt is basically Memphis and the Delta region. Likewise, Middle Egypt is the region right under the Fayum, down to Abidus, while the Fayum is the area of Lahun and Lyst. I examined a plethora of different sources from texts, material culture, and iconography. So Lyra includes Osterko from Dio Medina that depicted a birth arbor or Wilkelmabe in German. My work examined the objects with context, so my iconographic and textual analyses were in relation to the material culture. During the Middle Kingdom, there was a division between the atropaic solar birth iconography and the female and haphoric-centered imagery. There are a few objects that overlap, namely the objects showing birth deities, particularly Ahabbes and Epet Tawaret, as well as birth bricks. With the solar birth iconography, it works by equating the newborn child with the sun god who is reborn each day. Many of the atropaic images include some of our main deities of birth deities of Ahabbes, Epet Tawaret, and Peket, as well as a number of other figures that we later know are in funerary papyri, such as the one in this slide. The atropaea come in many different objects. The ones that are most typical are the birth ones. These ones, which are typically in ivory, mainly come from tombs, and they belong to elite female owners who bear titles such as Mistress of the House, Hereditary Princess, and King's Daughter. Indeed, one interesting example from Abidos has the titles of a late 13th dynasty king named Seneb K. We know that these ones are for childbirth because there is actual written formulae on them, explicitly saying they are for the protection of the children of the female owner. In a shortened form of the formula, has a line of saheru and sagera, and you don't know if it's the A.A., but yeah. Which means protection of the day and protection of the night. It's pretty interesting because we see for medical magical spells that have that exact type of formula, and it was explicitly for the protection of both male and female children. In addition to the textual record on these ones, we also have patterns of use, where basically on the curved end, as well as reworking and repairs. In this interesting case from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, we even have the ancient tongs being able to hold the wand together. These were likely dragged on the ground, presumably to form a protective circle around the pregnant woman, which be a similar type of protection that the cartouche was supposed to offer to the royal name. In addition, we have Middle Kingdom and Second Indian Period tomb scenes that show female wet nurses wielding these objects. Another object type of this iconography are the baby feeding cups. They are small spouted cups or vessels that are mostly in clay, found in domestic areas and tombs, particularly the tombs of young children. And several examples in limestone, in one it, whoops, in pionts have the atrophopic imagery. A study I did comparing the diameters of these cups to modern sippy cups, for instance, indicated that the diameters were similar with children as young as four months old being able to drink from them, which is consistent with the archeological evidence. Another type are certain types of animal figurines. These are mostly in caillons and generally come from tombs in Egypt or were temple votives in temples outside of Egypt. The most relevant figures are the standing lion, the baboon that's supposed to represent Thoth, the crocodile god Sobek, and felines. Particularly interesting is that the standing lion during this period had a lot of overlap with Epet to wear it, with a few impressions of the deity occurring quite a bit in the Bayoum town of Lahoon. A number of the lion figurines occurred in Upper Egypt while baboons were more common in the Menphite Bayoum area. And felines seem to have an association with Hathor. So most of them were actually found at the Hathor temple in Sarabah El Khadim in the Sinai. Crocodiles are particularly interesting because they were actually mostly in clay and located especially in Lahoon. It seems to indicate that Sobek during this period had some minor fertility roles as well. And one example that I show here in Egyptian blue was actually found in the same child's burial as the phant's cup I showed above. A number of the Atricopeia head association with the bedroom is an important point for what we see later on in the new kingdom. For the wands, there are two tomb scenes depicting them amongst bedroom objects like beds, head rests, as well as coal jars. In addition, there are a number of other Atricopeia objects that had associations with the bedroom, ranging from cosmetic or three boxes, certain types of early to mid-18th dynasty coal vessels and some head rests. Interestingly, in karma I found in Nubia, there was a Nubian equivalent to this iconography from the second in the period tombs of karma. There were wooden beds with a bed in place with a lot of similar figures, including our Epet Tawara in particular. Another interesting object for our purposes is the 13th dynasty headrest of Neferhotep from his tomb in Thebes, showing our Ahabbes, Epet Tawara standing lion, as well as a bullman. And the inscriptions was particularly interesting because we again see this Saharu Saga reaction of the day, protection of the night that we see with the wands and some medical magical spells. To transition to the Hathorica female imagery, there were three types of nude female figurines during this period. The Hathorica formers, a stylized handmade figurine and plaque figurines. The Hathorica figures range from paddle dolls that date from the late 11th, the early 12th dynasty generally, and the truncated figurines that date from the early 12th dynasty through the second in immediate period. These were generally located in areas of the royal coal and tombs. So for the paddle dolls, it was mainly Daryl Bahri while with the move of the capital in the 12th dynasty to Egypt Tawi in the Paiyum, the truncated figurines were located mainly in Lyst, Assasif, and Lahum. According to Ellen Morris's work, the tattooing, generally geometric, the brightly colored clothing, the general reveal, as well as archeological associations with mirrors and musical instruments indicated that the paddle dolls in particular were associated with the khenar dancers. These are dancers that were associated with royal funerary cults, as well as divine cults, particularly of Hathor. Relatedly, the recent work by Angela Thule on the hairstyles, the truncated figurines found that the braid itself had similarities with representations of female musicians and daughters of the deceased, serving a Hathoric role of reviving the deceased. These Hathoric figures also had roles in childbirth itself. In the sixth dynasty tomb chapel of Wathatt-Pethor, there is a scene of dancers labeled khenaret that explicitly state that they were there to serve childbirth. Likewise, in the middle kingdom birth legend of Papyrus Westcartes, the guys that came to help the birth of three kings came and disguised as dancers with knowledge of childbirth. In addition, some of the paddle dolls have images of our epet to wear at. Another piece of evidence is that some of the truncated figurines are shown holding children. And in two interesting cases shown here, there's even inscriptions to the tombowner from their relatives specifically requesting a successful childbirth. In addition, there are handmade stylized figurines. They generally occurred in tombs in Upper Egypt for both men, women, and children. And as well as a number were actually imported from Upper Egypt to the Hathor temples located at the periphery of Egypt, such as Jebel Zait by the Red Sea. And some of these also hold children. And they generally are subdivided into two types. So you have one that has a pierced holes for the insertion of hair and another with a fillet on top with a number of different plates of hair that has some similarities with some of the truncated figurine hairstyles. Another important type are plaque figurines. These are roughly shaped with more emphasis on certain feminine features such as the both, the pubic triangle and breasts. These are almost always occur in towns. They are highly local in their decoration with certain shapes being typical of certain areas or red paint being common with those from lower Nubia areas in Egyptian control. Interestingly, some even show evidence of pregnancy, such as if I can really do that right now, I'll have to minimize this. There we go, easy here, there. And one really fascinating case that's at the Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh, it's from a bitos dating to the second Indian period. There appears to be a circular protrusion coming out of the vulva area which may be a representation of childbirth, which is extremely rare in ancient Egyptian art. And in addition are figurines of male and female dwarfs. They silencically have some similarities with the new female figurines in terms of having larger bellies and some of the same jewelry and even some of the same braided hairstyles on the female dwarf figures. And the dwarfs appear to have represented the survival of childbirth since it was rare in ancient times for a dwarf to survive to adulthood. And they seem to have some associations with Ahabbas. Interestingly, a number of the female figures have children. And these are generally located in tombs. On the other hand, there's a domestic variant in the lahoon that were in the shape of jar stands. And these indicate that there was some domestic cult at that time. In addition are amulets that are generally associated with the tombs of women. Most important ones are cowries, which were associated with the goddess Hathor in her title, Lady of the Volva, as well as acacia seed beads, which, as we know from medical magical spells, acacia was used to prevent bleeding and the plant head associations with power. What's interesting is that there's some continuity in use over time with the non-elite versions of materials. So, for example, the regular cowries, the cowrie shaped seals called cowboys versus more elite materials such as the cowrie imitations and more precious materials. Aha, this also occurred in figurines and amulets during the middle kingdom. While most had a tomb context, some had a domestic context, such as the mask here from a lahoon, which indicates that the god had both funerary and domestic roles during this time. He generally came in three forms during this period, a male doorfish form, a female form, and in the form of a child. Similarly, Apet Tawaret occurred in both engineering as well as domestic context. And there's an interesting variation of instead of just the crocodile back having a whole crocodile depicted on her back. And a number of seals with this goddess have a domestic context. Hekka during this period occurred in figurines and amuletic seals. While most were from tomb contexts, there's some evidence of repair of some of the amuletic seals indicating they had prior use in daily life before final deposition. Hathor, interestingly enough, there were very few privately owned materials depicting her directly during this period. A less direct way of showing her occurred with the one extant birth brick that we have, which was excavated in South Obitos in the town of La Sute in the so-called Mayor's House. Though we have textual evidence and iconographic evidence of the use of birth bricks from the Sixth Dynasty through the Greco-Roman period, this is the only excavated example they've found so far. A number of the sites have a similar Apetual-Payek figures such as a ha, Apet, a standing lion, and a cobra, sometimes with a human head that may be the goddess from the Newtet. Now the main site, not the most important site, shows a successful childbirth with the mother and child flanked by midwives and then Holstein in turn flanked with tree trunks with the Hathor emblem. Hathor has a title Lady of Sycamore and Sycamore Trees given their locations at the desert margins that had solar symbolism. Interestingly, the hair of Hathor as well as all the women were in this bluish color and one of Hathor's titles is referring to her turquoise colored hair. So this seems to be a way of equating the mother indirectly with the goddess. We know from medical magical spells from the Middle Kingdom through the New Kingdom the mother is often equated with Hathor or Isis to try to ensure successful childbirth like that of the goddesses. There are several pieces of evidence that suggest that four birth bricks were used stacked in twos with the woman either swatting on top of them or kneeling on them. From the Sixth Dynasty two chapels bought that Hathor that I mentioned previously there's a birth song that the dancers sing including the birth bricks E-E-Fed O-4 with the brick determinants. Similarly in Papyrus Westcar the children were delivered on an E-Fed and Jebette to a cushion of bricks at the home. Another piece of iconographic evidence is some late meal kingdom rod segments. They're generally see a type in other materials. They're generally located in tombs as well as the town of Lahoon. They have some of the imagery of the aftercropaea including the little figures on top and the sole complete example that we have from the net shows four such segments. Interestingly later on in the New Kingdom with the Book of the Dead spell 151 they specified that there was supposed to be four funerary bricks located at the carnal points at the tomb but in actual New Kingdom royal tombs these bricks were found as pairs indicating their use in daily life for regular bricks. During the New Kingdom iconography became standardized and focused on the main birth day of these. Imagery of Hathlor in private context became much more prevalent and the cults of Vess and Howaret were particularly prevailing in that domestic context and a lot of material from dioramidina such as there was even a cult who at Howaret Vess during this period became more standardized to a male dwarf figure some of whom are holding instruments with the female form being really rare during this time. Vess had also used in childbirth magic. We have purchased redskins from dioramidina that record a purchase of a birth amulet in three medical magical spells discussed using a dwarf figures or amulet of health. Given the prevalence of Vess and New Kingdom iconography it's likely that the dwarf referred to images of Vess. One interesting spell that I've shown here from Papyrus Leiden I348 it's repeated four times which may be another reference to birth bricks. The New Kingdom birth iconography focused on birthbed. These were typically decorated with images of Howaret and especially Vess. They particularly occurred in domestic contexts like dioramidina as well as some in tombs. They both occur in relief panels as well as bedlegs in the shape of Vess. The iconography is also shown in domestic wall paintings from dioramidina and the Pound of Amarna as well as in tomb scenes and figures under the bed in New Kingdom royal first scenes from mortuary temples of Hatshepsit and Almanhotep III. The main features of this birthbed iconography focused on the women in the toilet the divine beds as well as vegetation. In the domestic paintings and the Pallava Osterka seen as typical is the mother frequently with a child often nursing she is served predominantly by female servant holding objects such as mirrors and cold jars. The cold jars may have had some fertility and bedroom protection given the apropayic jars that I've shown earlier and mirrors we know are associated with Hathor and her priestesses. In the female figurines we also see this type of iconography and actually even in the middle kingdom there were three examples of female figurines found on bed models and there's also such examples from the New Kingdom as some figurines have items such as mirrors as well. One figurine type from the New Kingdom that best matched this iconography are the women on bed figurines either the woman is shown alone or with a child and several of the figurines even have tattoos of bests on the thighs. In parallel to the female attendant seen on the ostraca there's one woman on bed figurine from Garab where there's even a female nurse type figure and interestingly several of the woman on bed figurines particularly from the town of Garab in Middle Egypt had a volvulous vine and some even have depictions of snakes. Besides the woman on bed figurine New Kingdom female figurines during this time predominantly occurred in domestic and upper Egypt particularly the towns of Dyrma Dina and Amarna some like the modious headdress and the perfume home types show children. Plaque figurines during this period continued with some newer shapes such as full general shapes as well as painted potchards from Dyr Al Medina and except into the generally domestic figurines are the unadorned female type and the handmade non-idealized ones have a wide decoration they both come from domestic and temporal contexts. There's also a distinction between the molded female figurines that generally had the slim body type standard in ancient Egyptian art versus a non-standardized appearance of the handmade types based on areas of fertility. Beth is often portrayed in these Vulcan lava scenes as under the bed or as the legs of the bed and interestingly there's also a snake that generally painted red and that may be the goddess in her role as ensuring breast milk and we've actually seen imagery of her back with the apotropaic stuff from the male kingdom. A domestic wall painting from a marnage even has several dancing best figures before Tawaret. Likewise in Dyr Al Medina there were six different wall paintings representing best. Another theme was vegetation particularly decorating the birth harbor with Convola's vine being the most prevalent. This plan is often associated with women such as in 19th to 21st Dianese sarcophagi lids of women, tomb depictions of a chantress of a moon, dancers as well as the kiosk of princess Mechitbaphen in the royal tomb in Amarna and this princess may even died in childbirth. There's also a domestic wall painting from Dyr Al Medina showing a march scene which is parallel to votive fance bowls that were dedicated to Hathor showing a female musician. Another interesting thing to note both in the musician figure here another domestic wall painting is that you have the best tattoos on the sides like we've seen with some of the women on bed figurines. Bed metals on their own had their own meaning there are generally two types one's a simple type and the other is molded. The regular type generally had painted decoration on the top of either a lattice pattern or dots one interesting example from Amarna located in the Petrie Museum had an image of best right next to the which an appeal represents the verb to become and interestingly enough there's some parallels with a woman on bed to green held at the MFA where the headboard shows Talwara and advancing best while the other side shows a woman holding a mirror and what perhaps as always unclear from the image may be a blue lotus flower that has some symbolism. More towards a late new king and through the third immediate period are beds with molded decoration and particularly showing a scene with a best flanking either side and a girl on a papyrus boat holding papyrus. This type of symbolism of the papyrus may have referenced a ritual associated with Hathlor, the shwaj or shaking of the papyrus from the old kingdom as well as in some new kingdom and late period temples and he's tend to have a erotic theme to them. There are several implications with the material in the study. One is the degree of regionalization versus standardization which reflected levels of specialization and local religious practices with the figurines you have and a relatively few but individualized elite performer figurines versus the more widespread and domestic plaques and women on dead figurines that tend to have stylizations that are locally specific. Likewise we have the more standardized and widespread types that tended to be more common in temples and have a more generalized appearance versus having head dresses like the perfume cone and a modious headdress. There's a possible reason for this difference which may be that the more generalized appearance of these figures made them more appropriate for multiple stages in the fertility process. That would mean that a purchaser did not have to purchase so many to donate to the temple and that served two purposes. One it saves the donor money and the other since the priesthood would have to clear out old votive make room for new votives having less objects to deal with would likely be quite helpful. In addition we also see the use of regional religious practices and cults with the distribution of colloids and the actual pay figurines. For example plant decoration was more common in Memphis Bayou while in thieves auspicious hieroglyphs were more common on the colloids. Another interesting thing to note is that there were less changes overall with the textual record versus the material record with the exception of the mentions of best amulets in the new kingdom reflecting the use of best amulets during that time. There's also no reference to apotropaea in the text which is particularly interesting. Some factors involved besides gaps in our textual record may be copying. Indeed the fertility tests and spells from Papyrus Kahun occurred almost verbatim in later new kingdom copies. Another factor may be audience with the medical magical spells to treat a larger population. Indeed with the papyrus west Kahun may have been aimed more for the elite as opposed to the high elite that would have used the ones. In contrast the records from Dio Medina were much more consistent with the material culture from that location indicating they served the same population. Finally the degree of shifts differed by social class with generally more gradual developments with non-elite imagery ultimately developing into a standardized birth iconography that was distinct from solar birth iconography. In contrast with the elite you'll have materials becoming less available over time in the second intermediate period. With that things like the ones iconography not being as really available likely made the idea of using them for daily use to not be as feasible and hence why atrophobic figures became a funerary post the second intermediate period. With the decline of the elite you also have the decline and the enforcement of religious restrictions on the use of privately owned Hathor objects and depictions of non-divine women along birth days. Thank you for listening to this talk and I look forward to your questions. It's always amazing to see a completely different archaeological record of the remains of the Hathor objects. This is the kind of information about a major portion of the population and the continuation of the population. I just wanted to thank you for that and also say if I were giving birth having that little best figure would scare any baby right out of me and having it tapped on your head just like, oh goodness, let's get this over with. Anyway, so it's very interesting the choice of imagery and those different beauties. So thank you again. I don't have any particular questions but thank you. Thanks. What's a birth brick? It's a brick. Generally in the case of the one brick that we have marked as four childbirth because it has an imagery on them and back in the early modern times it was actually more common for women to either be on a squine position with either a foot support by a brick and generally you have one midwife holding them up and one at the bottom waiting to catch the infant. There is basically a way of using gravity to speed things along. Similar to some latrines in Asia. Yeah. It just seems like balancing on the two bricks doesn't make it any easier. It's the point of the bricks to try to elevate them so that they have room to catch a baby. Possibly. There's also some symbolism involved because with the child coming in and to elevate a point shaped like the hieroglyph and that's another way of symbolizing a connection of the newborn with always successfully reborn at sun god. I imagine people had to be holding the birth. Yeah, that's why you generally see two midwives one at the back and one at the front to provide that type of support. Then evolve on to the birthing chair. The more comfortable. Thanks for the talk. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the antiquities trade project you're working on. Well, it was tracking materials that were on antiquities dealer's websites to see if objects were traded around for instance and generally seeing okay, are there perhaps materials that for example may be evidence of money laundering, particularly if they're changing hands every month or so. The person in charge of that project at the time was Dr. Susanna Bay from the University of Edinburgh. I believe that she has published more details about the final findings. So I was just curious to hear a little more about the birth wands. One question is that they look like they're you said they're elite related and they look like they're made of maybe hippo tusks or something. How big are they and are there non-elite or are they made of ivory or a material that would be cheaper to find and also did they have any functional use? It seems like a lot of these things related to the birth practices are pointy things and I hate to say that but sometimes you break the amniotic fluid or is there any evidence that there's some use of them other than magical? There's not really any evidence that they were used to break the amniotic fluid. We have at least one medical magical spell related to trying to get the hasten childbirth and it doesn't really mention that. So part of the issues is that we don't have the textual record to back anything up about that. So it does seem to be more something that's bragged on the ground at least. So we have that evidence. And these ones are generally about hand held size. So you hold the little bit sharper end and while a lot of them are in hippo ivory there's some there in pheons. I think the material was as big of a factor perhaps because there's one I mentioned from a biosday has inscriptions of syn-MK is actually made of clay. So I think it may be based on what materials were available and how often the object would be used or reused because we do have plain evidence of reworking of figures and repairs even. So these were used for multiple verbs and had wear and tear on them. Object nothing about this. But it did remind me of I guess a plow. Practices with a ceremonial platform being dragged across the field with those kinds of objects and to scratch the earth kind of that very shallow plow so creating that furrow. And I can't remember where that reference from. But I'm just wondering if that's that continuity of a form that is used to open up that spring forth life. The agricultural connection. That's interesting. I haven't heard that as a suggestion about these types of ones before but it makes some sense at least in terms of that we know that they were dragged and used.