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 above described activities of the inhabitants of the settlement reflect changes in the residential structure. The original layout reveals bureaucratic conceptions, while later modifications bear witness to self-sufficient achievements of the occupants. The uniformity and the relative small size of the original houses in the western sector coincide with the view of society emerging from the wpvw-lists: both appear to point towards the predominance of the nuclear family. Subsequent transformations bear out larger dwelling places, however, which could entail changes in the complexity of households. Conclusion Administrative documents, didactic literature and basic kinship terms emphasize the prominence of the nuclear family in dynastic times. This conception is also attested at the centrally planned and managed Middle Kingdom settlement site of Kahun, both in the surviving administrative records and the original layout of the settlement. This one-sided bureaucratic construction is weakened by evidence concerning micro-level socio-economic environment of the inhabitants: legal texts and transformations of the original houses imply that households tended toward complex forms of internal organization. This inconsistency of the sources observed at Kahun applies to the entire social sphere of the Middle Kingdom. While bilaterality is observed in property rights (the careful separation of patrimonial and matrimonial properties of a man) as well as in filiation and descent, administrative practices seem to reflect strong patrilineal pattern (the inheritance of office through the single male line, as well as the administrative device which recognizes households only with male head). 95 The apparent contradiction in both material and textual evidence represents different social contexts. Katalin Anna Kóthay University of Miskolc Dept. of Prehistory and Ancient History Franke, op. cit. (note 3), p. 345.
