Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

KATALIN ANNA KÓTHAY: Houses and households at Kahun: Bureaucratic and Domestic Aspects of Social Organization During the Middle Kingdom

1) A set of six documents (Pap. Kahun I.3-6)

18 concerns the family of a soldier called Hori. The chronological sequence of these wpwt-Usts can be set up after Griffith:

19 • 1.4 recto: registration of the family of Hori's father Djehuti at his death • 1.4 verso: registration of Hori's family at the death of his father = same year than previous • 1.5: registration of Hori's family a year after the death of his father • 1.6 recto: registration of the family at the death of Hori = 2nd year of Sekhemkare (second ruler of Dynasty 13) • 1.6 [verso]: [assumed registration of the family of Hori's son Sneferu at his father's death = same year than previous] • 1.3: registration of the family of Sneferu a year after his father's death = 3rd year of Sekhemkare The documents record subsequent phases in the family course: following the death of his father, Hori, who previously had been head to a conjugal family unit comprising himself, his wife and their son (1.4 verso), became head of a multiple family household, in which to his conjugal family unit a secondary unit composed of his widowed mother and five of his sisters was added (1.5). After Hori's death we see his son Sneferu cropping up at the head of a newly compiled list (1.3), being composed of his mother, paternal grandmother and three paternal aunts. Unfortunately the lists do not reveal whether in the first phase the young couple with their child remained in the house of the husband's father or lived in a separate home. The same question arises as to the mother and sisters of Hori: did the two conjugal family units, following the death of Hori's father, live under the same roof? In the last recorded phase the members of this family were referred to as hr.

20 To belong to a hr meant to belong to a political, administrative or social unit well-defined in space (foreign country, nome, or household). Accordingly, when the word refers to a family it must be seen as describing a co-resident domestic group. Since designated by this word, it seems sure that after the death of Hori's father the family shared residence. If we surmise that, before setting up house together, i.e. while Hori's father was still alive, the two conjugal family units lived separately, it should be asked what happened to the 18 Griffith, op. cit. (note 16), pl. IX. " Griffith, op. cit. I, p. 24. 20 Middle Kingdom attestations of the word are discussed by Franke, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 231-244.