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
The three groups of (/^-people are carefully separated from the conjugal family unit of the household head: the first group is assigned to him due to his temple function as ordinary lector priest (14 individuals), the second is transferred to him by an official, the act perhaps involving property transfer (3 individuals), while the third contains dependents presumably inherited from his uncle (5 individuals or more). These people are usually seen as servants, though their exact relationship to Khakaura-sneferu is not specified; they are evidently not relatives of him. From the 22 persons enumerated in the three groups 18 are females and 4 males. Three of the males are undoubtedly minor and sons of females also listed in the document. Individuals in one group are connected with each other by blood, except for one man. 35 The reconstitution of the genealogy of the largest group apparently attests the descendents of three sisters. All of the women were registered together with offspring, but no indications concerning their husbands or the fathers of their children appear in the text, whereas kin relations between them were accurately recorded. In the case of two sisters (17 and 19) the list makes evident that they were descended from the same father but from different mothers. This can be inferred from the way their filiations are given. The text normally does not indicate the mother's name since relationships are given as to referring to the previous individual, i.e. 'her sister' or 'her daughter/son'. However, the names of these two women, though they are stated to be sisters, contain references to two different mothers. The general interpretation of these registers called wpwt considers them census-type documents 36 recording households, 37 while an alternative view emphasizes their role as titles to property, rather than their character of being regular censuses of the population. 38 The high number of women in the Kahun vvpwi-lists could also imply an association with the word ipt 'harem', 39 but recent researches reject the existence of concubines and harems in Egyptian society outside the royal family. 4 " Ji Griffith, op. cit. (note 16), pl. X, 24. "' Wb I, 303,6; B. Kemp, in: Trigger et al, Ancient Egypt. A Social History, Cambridge 1983,p. 83; Id., op. cil. (noie 14), p. 156; Quirke, op. cit. (note 16), p. 169. 17 Griffith, in: W. M. F. Petrie, Illahun, Kahun and Guroh, Warminster and Encino 1974, p. 48; A. H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus from Leiden, Liepzig 1909, p. 48; O. D. Berlev, Obscestvennye otnosenija v Egipte epoxi srednego carstx'a: socialnyi sloj 'carskix hmww', Moscow 1973, p. 50-52; Helck, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 110-111 ; W. A. Ward, Index of Egyptian Administrative and Religious Tides of the Middle Kingdom, Beirut 1982, passim. a Valbelle, op. cit. (note 50), p. 77; Id., op, cit. (note 17). pp. 36, 45. " U. Luft, The ancient town of el-Lâhûn, in: S. Quirke (ed.), Lahun Studies, SI A Publishing 1998, pp. 28-29, n. 199. '" Robins, op. cit. (note 25), p. 62; O'Connor, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 395, note 30.
