Myths & Legends of Childbirth in Ancient Egypt

I know Mother’s Day was yesterday but hey, Moms are moms 365 days of the year, right? So I’m doing my post today on a subject relating to motherhood - magic and childbirth in Ancient Egypt.

"Repay your mother for all her care. Give her as much bread as she needs, and carry her as she carried you, for you were a heavy burden to her. “ So says the Papyrus of a scribe named Ani, from 1250 BCE.

I’m actually in the middle of writing a new  paranormal romance set in Ancient Egypt in 1535 BCE and there’s a childbirth scene (can’t say who is the mother without giving spoilers LOL). Children were very important to the Egyptians and of course there were many beliefs and legends surrounding the act of giving birth.  Fragmented, surviving papyri give remedies for pregnancy tests, infertility cures, contraception and obtaining answers to the always popular question “how do I know the sex of my unborn child?” Physicians of the day were almost never involved in labor and delivery – it was all left to the women of the household or the village, and the ever present gods and goddesses.

Egyptian myths have a great many variations, which works well for me as a novelist, because I can pick and choose to fit my story. I have the goddesses Hathor and Tawaret attending the birth of the baby in my Work In Progress, but there is historical support for my selection, including a famous carving at the Temple of Hathor in Dendera which shows these two goddesses assisting a woman as she gives birth. Hathor was the beautiful Great One often shown with the head of a cow, or as a woman with cow’s horns, and she was regarded as the goddess of domestic bliss. Tawaret was the Hippo Goddess, although she had the feet of a lioness and the back of a crocodile. She was also regarded as a goddess of fertility and childbirth in part because female hippos were so protective of their young.

A woman often gave birth in a specially constructed pavilion or bower, or even on the roof of her home, shaded to be cooler. Many of the depictions of birth show the use of “birthing bricks”, which were specially made for the pregnant woman to squat or stand on while pushing during delivery. The women assisting her (or the goddesses if she was very lucky) stood on either side, providing support and something to push against. The birth bricks were considered so important they even had their own goddess, Meskhenet.  This important figure was sometimes depicted as a woman and at other times as a brick with a woman's head, adorned with a cow's uterus. She also breathed the child’s ka (one part of the individual’s soul) into them at birth.

One popular folk tale from thousands of years ago had the poor mother deliver triplets and after each son was born, Meskhenet appeared to say hewould become king of Egypt! Which in fact, each of these boys did achieve, succeeding each other as Pharoah, according to the legends. Rather an amusing mental picture – sort of like some modern TV commercials where the nurses keep bringing the poor Dad another baby…

Childbirth could go wrong in so many ways in that era, and newborn babies were regarded as being fragile as the young sun (which was reborn every day). It’s no wonder that a rich tradition of special prayers, remedies and attentive goddesses developed to comfort the mothers in labor.