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
iw-ms wnw h.3 Sdw wpwt.sn hprw rmt dt m nb dt The offices are open, their wpwt-lists being removed: people, who were dt themselves, have become masters of dt. Contrary to Berlev's consideration that t/r-people were permanent members of Middle Kingdom households, 57 it seem more plausible to me that they were attached to services, and their task was to carry out compulsory work on behalf of their masters, who were title-holders. The system of registering unpeople could follow specific needs of labor obligations: part of them required female, part of them male participation. This points toward the characteristic division of labor by sex in agricultural societies: 5 " women partook in indoor activities (spinning and weaving), while men were engaged in agricultural work, building activities, etc. The filiation system attested in the administrative lists reflects similar sexual division for the lower classes. It is generally agreed that during the Middle Kingdom filiation is most often to the mother. This assertion considers the evidence of the funerary stelae. Nevertheless, for the registration of manpower a different rule seems to have been followed: women were identified by their mother's name, men by that of their father. 59 This practice might be related to the principles of compulsory state work. When performing labor obligations, children could be substituted by parents, but then they had to be of the same sex. 60 Since, by the administration, people of the lower classes were first and foremost seen as manpower, they were categorized according to the nature of the work they were required to perform. It is clear that each wpwt was headed by a man, who was a title-holder and a family head. If we consider their families as households, the general observation on the importance of the nuclear family seems verified. Yet we cannot assert that individuals collected in the same list always represent a single residential unit. It is not improbable that two separate records were kept from one multiple family household, perhaps in the case of Hori and his father, as suggested above. In Pap. Kahun IV. 1 co-residency seems 5: " Berlcv, op. cit. (note 37), pp. 50-51. 58 M.L. Burton, Division of labour by sex, in: A. Kuper-J. Kuper, The Social Science Encyclopedia, London-New York 1996, p. 192. " This is particularly manifest in the Reisner Papyri: W. K. Simpson, Papyrus Reisner l-lV, Boston 1963-1986, especially I, p. 88. M See also Quirke, op. cit. (note 52), p. 89.
