The Tattooed Lady of Ancient Egypt
Deir el Medina site in Egypt. An ancient village known for their artisans and workers who cut and decorated the tombs of the The Valley of the Kings.
In the last two posts, we talked about the oldest tattoos ever recorded on tattoo collectors Otzi and the Gebelein Mummies. The Gebelein Man allowed researchers to see that both men and women of ancient Egypt could have been tattoo collectors. The Gebelein Woman was a truly groundbreaking addition to the archaeological record. She enlightened researchers to the fact tattoos were for women regardless of their cultural position, from sex-worker to priestess. While we are in the area, let’s talk about another ancient Egyptian tattoo collector, the Tattooed Lady of the dynastic era at Deir el Medina, Egypt, who had over 30 tattoos.
Unlike the last 3 collectors we talked about, The Tattooed Lady was deliberately mummified and not fully intact. In order to preserve her remains, her embalmers covered her in various resins. The resin covered her so much that her sex and other important information could not be determined until careful excavation was completed. This resin darkened the skin to the point that her tattoos were only visible through infrared lighting. This groundbreaking research was spearheaded by Anne Austin at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Austin pushes against leading ideas of tattooing in Egypt from Louis Keimer, who wrote that all tattooed women in Egypt were “prostitutes of dubious morality.” This is why it is so important to identify the lens through which we understand the past. Sex-work is not innately dubious, perhaps in Keimer’s mind it is, but it is not a fair assumption to put onto either current sex-workers, or ancient sex-workers.
Anne Austin using infrared imaging to capture the tattoos camouflaged by resin
The Tattooed lady was adorned in designs that Austin recorded being painted on pottery, on goddess Hathor temple floors, and as graffiti on the stones of the Ramesside temple to Hathor at Deir el Medina. Her tattoos stretched from her shoulder down her arm, across her hip, and on her throat and back. The publicness of her tattoo locations and design choice lead Austin to understand them as a way to mark the Tattooed Lady as a woman of religious worship. Looking at this woman from any angle, you will see The Eye of Horus with the hieroglyph “nefer”. This significant design was placed between her shoulders and on her throat. Austin translates this image combination as “to do good”, and writes, “The placement of divine formulas ‘to do good’ on her throat and shoulders may have magically imbued her song, speech and every arm movement with this ability.”
Throat tattoo of the Tattooed Lady of Ancient Egypt
The analysis of the Tattooed Lady’s tattoos not only includes higher status and religious women as tattoo collectors of the time, but also include women as religious practitioners, a roll they are often excluded from in modern-day understandings of religious work in dynastic Egypt. The images and locations of her tattoos may further suggest the Tattooed Lady embodied the goddess of Hathor herself.
Up Close images of the Tattooed Lady
Something that I see a lot while researching Ancient Egyptian tattoos is giving finite rolls to the women of Ancient Egypt. They were either sex-workers or priestesses, but when we look at prominent figures like Cleopatra, we can discern that sex was often a part of business. Attaching morality to cultural practices of the past is unethical, especially when they have been dead for 5000+ years and cannot defend their honor or cultural practices. Sex and tattoos are taboo topics only if you put those limitations on them, which will only hinder archaeologist analysis.
Tattooing is a taboo topic across cultures, but the finding of the Tattooed Lady and her tattooed contemporaries provide further insight to the cultural significance and normalization of tattoos in ancient Egypt. Tattooing has been recorded as significant cultural markers of protection, status, societal rolls, and religious beliefs. Pushing them aside for being taboo only limits our understandings of humans.
Anne Austin’s work is significant and her critical thinking sets her apart from others in the field. Having an open mind and working towards stripping down our understandings of the taboo have created a promising new fields of study in archaeology.
Sources:
Tattooing in Ancient Egypt by Anne Austin
Nubians at Hierakonpolis: Week 5, Part 2
Tattooed Mummy
Tattoos in Ancient Egypt
3,000-year-old female mummy was covered in hidden tattoos
Ancient Egyptian female sported fascinatingly ornate tattoos, as discovered from her 3,000-year old mummy
Researchers identify Ancient Egyptian ‘emoticons’ made by workers of royal tombs |
Sacred tattoos found on Egyptian Mummy, by Traci Watson
