2150 b.c.e) tomb of Ankhmahor at Sakkara, the necropolis at
Memphis, may show a priest circumcising a boy with a curved
fl int knife, though this scene may instead depict a ritual shav-
ing. Egyptian mummies show evidence of circumcision. Th e
Greek historian Strabo (ca. 63 b.c.e.–21 c.e), who wrote in Ro-
man times, claims that the Egyptians also practiced female
circumcision, but this has not yet been confi rmed through ex-
amination of surviving female mummies.
Th e main education of Egyptian boys came in the form
of an apprenticeship under their fathers. Boys belonging to
the elite class were sent to scribal school. Scribal students of-
ten copied literary works, which has led to the preservation
of numerous documents of “wisdom literature,” or texts of
an instructional or philosophical nature. Because wisdom lit-
erature was set up as guidance from father to son on how to
behave and how to live one’s life, it has been assumed that the
majority, if not all, offi cial scribal students were boys. Boys
belonging to the upper echelons of society received a broader
training, oft en involving the study of mathematics. It is not
known whether girls received any sort of formal education.
Letters dating to the New Kingdom are considered by some
scholars to be evidence that at least some women were liter-
ate. Not surprisingly, young girls learned from their mothers
how to take care of household duties. Th eban tomb scenes
also show girls serving food and drink at banquets.
Children of the poorer classes had to work from an early
age. Around the mortuary complex and tomb of Khasekhem-
wy, the last king of the Second Dynasty (2770–2649 b.c.e.),
children’s footprints were found in the mud plaster, indicat-
ing that they, too, worked on its construction. Fathers were
anxious for their sons to take over their jobs, and the boys
learned their father’s trade as apprentices. Likewise boys and
girls would have worked alongside their parents in the fi elds.
For the children of the poorest class, a childhood as we know
it did not exist.
Children looked aft er their parents later in life. Evidence
from Deir el-Medina, a village near Th ebes that was home
to craft smen who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the
Kings and the Valley of the Queens, indicates that an aging
father would give his post to his son and, in turn, the son
would provide for his father. Children were not forced to look
aft er their aging parents, but if they did not, they could be
prevented from receiving their inheritance.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY KAREN RADNER
Th e purpose of a marriage in the ancient Near East, including
Mesopotamia and Persia, was to produce children. For Meso-
potamia specifi cally, children were a necessity for any family,
as the continuation of the bloodline guaranteed survival for
all ancestors. Children were expected not only to provide for
their parents in old age but also to perform memorial service
to commemorate the dead of the family, thereby keeping their
essence alive. Not to have children was therefore extremely
awkward, and if the situation could not be helped with the as-
sistance of prayer, magic, and medicine, a couple had the op-
tion to adopt a child or to use a surrogate mother to produce
an heir. With high mortality rates among pregnant women
and babies, the birth and the survival of a child were always
considered a divine blessing; many people bore names that
refl ected their parents’ joy in having had them, oft en refer-Game of Senet from New Kingdom (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)
190 children: The Middle East