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

certain only in the case of the conjugal family unit of the man heading the list. I would rather assume that these registers were concerned about personnel attached to title-holders rather than households. Other Middle Kingdom documents bear witness that work obligation was imposed on a family head and his /z/'.

61 In addition to this immediate family, a man could also dispose of manpower due to him by reason of his office. This labor force, however, was not for his personal use but to perform state labor. Consequently they are not to be seen as living in one household with him. If so, the function of the Kahun vvpwf-lists could fairly be to control manpower. Among the papyri of the temple archive two letters attest the word wpwt, both of them are concerned with management of manpower.

62 This interpretation would explain why the dependents of Khakaura-sneferu were recorded without husbands. It is agreed that the important fact in Egyptian marriage is the cohabitation of the couples.

63 Thus, if these women had had husbands we would expect them to have been registered in their lists. If they had been widows they could have been placed under the authority of a male family member, as were the mother and sisters of Hori. It seems as if these women had not lived in marriages. Both the evidence of the instructions, linking marriage with the 'establishment of a house' (grg pr), and the title 'lady of the house' (nbt pr), referring to a married woman, suggest that living in marriage and having a household were closely associated notions in the Egyptian mind. Assmann has pointed out the connection between marriage and wealth.

64 Household and services were also inseparable.

65 This recalls the case of early modem Europe,

66 where marriage was seen as a privilege of the office-holding upper and middle strata. In fact, the method of the registration of the population of Kahun attests that the administration acknowledged marriage, and consequently family, only if these were con61 W.C Hayes, A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom in the Brooklyn Museum (Papyrus Brooklyn 35 A 446), The Brooklyn Museum 1955, pl. VI, 54 d, 55-56 d, 57 d, p. 44-45; Pap. Cairo JdE 71.582 (former Pap. Berlin 10020), rt 2-2a: Kaplony-Heckel, op. cit. (note 16), pis. 1V,V. 62 Pap. Berlin 10037, x+19: Scharff, op. cit. (note 16), pp. 33-35; Kaplony-Heckel, op. cit. (note 16), no. 27. Pap. Berlin 10067, 3: SharfT, op. cit. p. 44. 65 P.W. Pestman, Marriage and Matrimonial Property in Ancient Egypt. A Contribution to Establishing the Legal Position of the Woman (Papyrologica Lugduno - Batava 9), Leiden 1961, pp. 50-51 ; S. Allam, Quelques aspects du marriage dans l'Egypte ancienne, Jf/I 67 (1981) p. 116, Id., Ehe, in LA I, col. 1165. " See Assman, op. cit. (note 7), p. 16; and note 23 above. ,,s Kemp, op. cit. (note 14), p. 155. 66 R. van Dülmen, Fest der Liebe. Heirat und Ehe in der frühen Neuzeit, in: Id. (ed.), Armut, Liebe, Ehre. Studien zu historischen Kulturforschung, Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 69.