30 days crooning for King of Gods – then 90 days off
WEARING a long wig and flowing diaphanous robes, glamorous Tamut had an important job in Luxor 3,000 years ago.
The bustling city, 300 miles south of Cairo, was the religious capital of ancient Egypt and as a singer in its Temple of Amun-Ra, the King of the Gods, it was her job to help keep him happy. The Egyptians believed their gods were entertained by music and one ancient text says the temple singer was one ‘who pacifies the god with a sweet voice’.
The temple singers were an elite group of women with high status in society. Ancient sources suggest they were probably trained by their mothers, with several generations of women in a single family often holding the position in the temple, which is part of the temple complex of Karnak. There were several hundred temple singers, and they worked in rotations of 30 days on, then 90 days off, with, it is believed, around 50 of them on duty in the temple at any one time.
Every day they would accompany a male priest in a series of rituals.
The temple contained a small statue of Amun-Ra, probably only about 1ft tall but made of gold and silver. Each day the priest would purify the statue by bathing it, dress it in fresh clothes and food would be laid at its feet.
Yesterday Dr John Taylor, curator of the British Museum’s department of Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, said:
‘They believed that the god’s spirit dwelled in the statue and needed to be nourished in this way.
‘While the priest was doing this, incense would be burning and the temple singers would be chanting, clapping and shaking a rattle-like instrument called a sistrum that made a clanging metallic sound.’ Amun-Ra was an amalgamation of a very early Egyptian god called Amun, who was concerned with creation, and Ra the sun god.
Inscriptions on the brightly decorated cartonnage, or casing, around Tamut’s remains, show that her father Khonsumose was a priest in the same temple where she sang. Dr Taylor said Tamut’s mother Mehenmu that was very likely to have been a temple singer too. Tamut is depicted on the cartonnage wearing barely-there linen robes and a long black wig as she makes her journey to the underworld. Dr Taylor said her clothes are those of a high status woman
‘Slightly provocative’
and she would have worn similar attire in the temple.
He said: ‘It was expected that a young woman dressed in a slightly provocative way. Basically, the temple singers were trying to assure the approval of the god and that included his sexual appetite so it was thought acceptable to dress in partly see-through clothes.’
Wigs made of human hair were a status symbol and also worn as a way of staying free of head lice, which were often a problem in ancient Egypt. It is known from her remains that Tamut had shortcropped hair beneath the dark wig she is depicted wearing.
It i s thought temple singers received a portion of the food which was laid before the god’s statue. This could, sources suggest, be up to 20 sacks of grain a day – meaning the annual total would have been enough to support 110 families. In addition, the god would be given luxury foods such as beef and duck (meat did not form a large part of the ancient Egyptians’ diet, which mainly consisted of flat breads, vegetables, dates, figs and fish) and it is possible Tamut’s death could have been linked to her access to the fatty foods.
She is thought to have been at least 35 when she died around 900BC – around the average life expectancy at the time. Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt as a boy more than 400 years earlier, died at just 17.
Tamut had furred arteries and may well have died from a heart attack or stroke ‘The state of her arteries could have been a genetic thing, or it could be down to a fatrich diet. Was she eating a lot of roast duck from the god’s altar?’ said Dr Taylor. It is not known if Tamut was married, but it is extremely l i kely as women in ancient Egypt were expected to marry when they reached puberty. Nor is it known if she had children, but the chances are she did – and probably several as women having up to 12 pregnancies was common.
Away from the temple, Tamut would have supervised her family home and probably had a few servants. Dr Taylor said: ‘I would imagine she had a reasonably easy life style. She probably didn’t do much in the way of manual work, but would have run the home and probably spent quite a lot of her t i me pregnant and l ooking after the children.’