GIRLS OF THE HAREM

 

I come home in the morning light,
My mother says "When you gonna live your life right?"
Oh ,mother, dear, We're not the fortunate ones,
And girls, They wanna have fun.

I could call the Pharaoh's women a harem, but that conjures up  images of sex starved coquettes -  a male Egyptologist's fantasy if ever there was one. It also seems an inefficient use of resources, feeding and clothing so many sperm receptacles. In truth these women were multi-taskers. For example, we know the Pharaoh's "harem" had a very nice choir.

But besides harmonizing, the ladies of the harem must have earned their keep between reproductive sessions by cutting ribbons at temple openings, encouraging teenagers to just say no to drugs and reminding stone masons of their vital role in the Pharaohonic economy. Proof of the importance of women in Ancient Egypt can be found in events which occurred some 4,200 years ago, at the end of what is called "The New Kingdom" - which gives you some idea of how old Ancient Egypt really is..er, was.  In the spring of 1167 B.C.E. Ramses III sat down to talk with his wives, and he almost did not get up again

Usimare (Ramses III's real name) was a good example of the vagaries of picking a Pharaoh. He was tall for the age - about 5.8", smart, competent and dedicated. His reign should have been as successful as his idol's, Ramses II, who during his 67 years of rule (according to tradition) threw those freeloading Israelites out Egypt. But Usimare was also a really unlucky guy.  

Just before Usimare became Pharaoh a large volcano in Iceland blew its top, and the shadow of its ash cloud badly damaged Egyptian harvest. The price of wheat skyrocketed, and entire classes of farmers and fishermen became hobos, stealing that they could not buy, be it food or a new place to live.

In the Middle East they were called Philistines, and they spent a couple of hundred years bringing "tsuris" to the upstart Israelites. In Tunisia they established Carthage, and a thousand years later became the Roman Republic's worst enemy. In Egypt they were called the Sea Peoples, and fighting them off left the treasury flat broke. That distant volcanic eruption wasn't Ramses III's fault, but he got the bill. He just wasn't lucky. He wasn't even lucky in his death, in that he did not die fast enough.

The phone rings in the middle of the night,
My father yells "What you gonna do with your life?"
Oh, daddy, dear,
You know you're still number one,
But girls, They wanna have fun

By the spring of 1167 B.C.E., poor, unlucky and broke Ramses III was about 65 years old and had been Pharaoh for thirty-two years. He had dragged his entire court to Thebes for the five day celebration of his Heb-Sed, or Feast of the Tail of the Jackal. There were parades, dinners, banquets and lots of drinking, and on the fourth day the Pharaoh had to "run" a course and shoot arrows to prove he was still physically fit enough to rule. What the New Kingdom would have done if the old boy had not been up to it, I don't know. But in the Old Kingdom they used to kill him if he was too feeble.

His harem had of course come with him, headed by his new Great Wife Isis and her boy,  22 year old newly crowned Prince Heqamatre, and also Prince Pentaweret, who was  Queen Tey aka Tiy's son.  Now  Penatweret was just a few months younger than Heqamatre. But that slight seniority had moved Heqamatre next in line to be Pharaoh over Pentaweret, and replaced Tey with Isis as the Great Wife..  

Ramses III could have overridden these automatic adjustments in his royal household if he had felt one heir more suited than the other, but for whatever reason he did nothing. And that would prove to be a fatal choice because Tey was the kind of a girl who took her place in the harem hierarchy very seriously.

Well, she wasn't a girl, she was a grown woman who had given birth to three sons, and she was at least forty years old by now. Listen,  Tey must have been an impressive broad, because six of the other wives sided with her in this matter. And they were all the daughters of rich and powerful families.  Money always matters.

In addition, Tey had considerable support from the bureaucracy which maintained the harem. Chief of the Chamber, Pebekkamen, and his assistant were down with her plan, as well as Peynok, Overseeer Of The Harem,  and his scribe and seven royal butlers, who were all titled members of the bureaucracy. 

Tey also managed to draw the army into her conspiracy. The sister of an officer in the Nubian Archers, who was one of the "harem six", urged her brother to "Incite the people to hostility! And come thou to begin hostility against thy lord." Well, I suppose, she could have been more circumspect. 

In any case, Tey even had conspirators working inside the Thebian police force. She was also attempting to seduce the head of the Egyptian Treasury, which was called The White House. And Tey even managed to enlist Iroi, Ramses III's personal priest-physician. But it appears he was the only priest who joined the conspiracy.

Some boys take a beautiful girl,
And hide her away from the rest of the world.
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun.
Oh, girls, They wanna have fun.

See, ancient Egypt was peppered with temples, large and small, and each had their priests and their grain fields to support them, and slaves to work those fields. By the best estimates, 14 % of the irrigated land and 2% of the population were owned by the temple priests. The temples also owned 500,000 head of cattle, 88 large ships and some 53 workshops and shipyards. And in 1167 B.C. all of this was tax exempt, which shifted more of the tax burden onto the lesser nobles and the peasants. Does any of this sound familiar?

Ramses III tried to reduce his expenses by replacing his bureaucrats and parts of the army with slaves, supplied by royal families acting as independent contractors.  But Ramses III also contributed to this power shift to the priesthood by continuing to donate large sums to the temples. Gold and silver went straight out of the government coffers and into the collection plates. Ramses III boasted on a temple wall, "I did mighty deeds and benefactions...for the gods and goddesses of South and North." Those benefactions hastened the bankruptcy of the national treasury. Familiar again, right?

Just three years before this original "Year of the Woman" the artisans working in the royal tombs had stopped work because their pay had stopped. Ramses crushed this first worker's revolt in history as if he were the Governor of Florida   But that wildcat strike indicated that Tey was not just trying to make her son Pharaoh, she was trying to reverse the decline of the power of The Pharaohs.  The whole thing came to a head, say the ancient accounts, when Ramses III  decided to spend a night with the girls.

Since Ramses III's mummy was discovered in 1886 we know that the Pharaoh received no knife or spear wounds. And his skeleton reveals no broken bones. I'll bet that Usimare was poisoned, not killed but weakened enough that within a few days after setting down to break bread,  he died, perhaps of heart failure or dehydration or diarrhea.  A hint is that in later centuries, Egyptians invoked Ramses III's name when seeking divine assistance in the case of snake bite. And like a snake, Ramses III lashed out from his death bed against those who had stepped upon him.

In three scandalized trials conducted after Ramses III's death, twenty-seven men and six women were convicted of treason, including her boy, Pentaweret.  Pentaweret was forced to drink poison. Every one else, including Tey herself  was slowly simmered to death on a barbecue, cooked until the flesh was just falling off their bones. And then their bones were ground up and their ashes were scattered to the four winds, condemning the immortal souls of these original resurectionists to wander the after-life without a body.  Tough, I know. But if you are going to shoot at the Pharaoh, you had better not miss.

And it is a shame Tey did miss. In his will, Ramses III donated 86,400 slaves to the estates of the god Amon's temples. His son and heir, Heqamatre, became Ramses IV, but he ruled for just six years. Ramses now followed Ramses with such rapidity that the High Priest of el-Kab who had helped Ramses III celebrate his Heb Sed, was still in office when Ramses IX died in 1111 B.C.E. By then the priest were  the power in Egypt, and the country was run for their benefit, sort of like the bankers run America today, and Egypt slipped into a centuries long dark age.  

When the working day is done,
Oh, girls, They wanna have fun.

Ah, if only the poison Tey aka Tiy used had been quicker, then the New Kingdom might have lasted a few hundred years longer, and women might have played a bigger part in history. After all, the girl just wanted to have fun.

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