 Music was a lucrative career
open to both men and women in ancient Egypt. Musicians and dancers could work
freelance or be permanently attached to an estate or temple. Leisure hours were
filled with singing and dancing, as farmers danced to give thanks for good
harvests, and all-female song and dance troupes were standard entertainment
after dinner.
A suitably gifted woman could choose an honorable career as a dancer. In the
Old Kingdom period the female performing duo of Hekenu and Iti, were
commemorated in the tomb of Nikaure, who was an accountant. Although secular
dancers appear on the walls tombs at this period, and these two dancers may have
delighted Nikaure during his lifetime, this celebration of specific dancers was
unheard of. But it does indicate the popular standing in which dancing was held.
Dancing was an accepted part of life, a part of religious ritual even before
it became secular. The Dancer of the Muu was enacted at funerals by male dancers
wearing tall head-dresses made of reeds. The Sed-festival, the
Opet Festival,
Processions of the Sacred Barques, and other festivals, were all accompanied by
dancers. A chant from the Temple of Hathor at Dendera even goes: "The King
comes to dance, he comes to sing. Sovereign lady, see how he dances, Wife of
Horus, see how he leaps."
Women who danced (and even women who did not) wore diaphanous robes, or
simply belt girdles, often made of beads or cowrie shells, so that their bodies
could move about freely. Though today their appearance may be interpreted as
erotic and even sensual, the ancient Egyptians did not view the naked body or
its parts with the same fascination that we do today, with our sense of possibly
more repressed morality.
The movements of the ancient Egyptian dancers, particularly the women, are
called by scholars such as J. Gardner Wilkinson in his 1837 essay, and by Eugen
Strouhal in his book Life in Ancient Egypt, "elegant, graceful, even
acrobatic." A classic painting shows a lithe female doing a splendid
backbend with apparent ease.
Nothing is known of the kind or extent of the training that professional male
and female dancers received, though training probably began in early childhood.
Reliefs on tombs and temples show dancers running, leaping, pirouetting,
sinuously bending, with weighted hair-plaits swinging side to side, using
tambourines.
One scholar classifies ancient Egyptian dance into several
categories.
1. The purely movemental dance. A dance which was little more than an outburst
of energy, where the dancer and audience alike simply enjoyed the movement and
its rhythm.
2. The gymnastic dance. Some dancers excelled at more strenuous and difficult
movements, which required training and great physical dexterity and flexibility.
These dancers also refined their movements so as to move delicately.
3. The imitative dance. These appeared to be emulative of the movements of
animals, only obliquely referred to in Egyptian texts while not actually being
represented in art.
4. The pair dance. Pairs in ancient Egypt were formed by two men or by two women
dancing together, not by men dancing with women. The movements of these dancers
were executed in perfect symmetry, indicating, at least to the author of this
treatise, that the Egyptians were deeply conscious and serious about this dance
as something more than just movement.
5. The group dance. These fell into two sub-types, one taking place took place
with perhaps at least four, sometimes as many as eight, dancers, each performing
different movements, independent of each other, but in matching rhythms. The
other sub-type was the ritual funeral dance, performed by ranks of dancers
executing identical movements.
6. The war dance. These were apparently recreations for resting mercenary troops
of Libyans, Sherdans, Pedtiu (peoples who formed parts of the so-called Sea
Peoples) and other groups.
7. The dramatic dance. From the examples used herein, the author is considering
a depicted familiar posture of several girls as being performed to commemorate a
historical tableau: a kneeling girl represents a defeated enemy king, a standing
girl the Egyptian king, holding the enemy with one hand by the hair and with the
other a club.
8. The lyrical dance. The description of this dance indicates it told its own
story, much as a ballet we may see today. A man a girl dancer using wooden
clappers which gave their steps rhythm danced in harmonious movement, separately
or together, sometimes pirouetting, parting, and approaching, the girl fleeing
from the man, who tenderly pursued her.
9. The grotesque dance. These were apparently primarily performed by dwarves
such as the one Harkhuf was asked to bring back to dance "the divine
dances".
10. The funeral dance. These formed three sub-types. One was the ritual
dance, forming part of the actual funeral rite. Then there were the expressions
of grief, where the performers placed their hands on their heads or made the ka
gesture, both arms upraised. The third sub-type was a dance to entertain the ka
of the deceased.
11. The religious dance. Temple rituals included
Musicians trained for the
liturgy and singers trained in the hymns and other chants.
No notation has yet been found, if any in fact existed, to provide
information as to how the dances actually were performed. Perhaps as more texts,
reliefs and paintings are uncovered, more information will be found.
See also:
Sources:
- Women in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Watterson
- Daughters of Isis by Joyce Tyldesley
- Ancient Egyptian Dances by Irena Lexova
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