Egyptian house

Housing and furniture

Describe the typical Egyptian house

• box like structures - plain and functional. They were one or two storeys,
• built of sun dried mud bricks, covered with a mud plaster
Strips of linen were mixed into reinforce the longer blocks needed for lintels (horizontal beam used as a finishing piece over a door or window). As Egypt was short of good timber, some palm stems were used for roofing beams.
• flooring: a layer of brick tiles, or just used stamped earth.
• roof was a usable space: families spent much time up on the roof especially during summer and while they were cooking.

• The flood of the Nile meant that the walls had to be given a footing of quarried stone, or erect the building on the heaped up debris from the earlier mud brick home.
• The brickwork would be

Inside the house

The homes of the rich & poor had a basic structure: An entrance area, a central living space, a kitchen or storerooms leading off. Somewhere in between were the houses of the workers of Deir el- Medina, which are dated to the Ramesside period.
• A whitewashed entrance hall contained a cupboard bed of the god Bes (use is uncertain)
• CENTRAL LIVING: was the heart of house, with a high ceiling supported by pillars. Windows were small and set high in the walls so the harsh desert does not enter. They did not have glass panes; they used pieces of linen cloth. The main activities took place here. The room would be furnished with busts of ancestors and painting on the walls, and at least a chair for the master of the house and a number of stools for guests or family members, one or more tables and perhaps a chest.
• Lifting a trapdoor a stair would lead into a cellar, the safest place in the house where valuables could be kept.
Niches in the walls held religious objects. The roof served as an additional living space and for storage

Nobles Ordinary people
The upper classes lived in spacious affairs which stood in leafy walled gardens. The interior walls were often colour washed or painted with lively scenes that were pretty.
They also enjoyed the comfort of bathroom, and lavatories (discussed in part 2). The rich often had villas that were nearly 3 storeys high. The entrance would be shared with a donkey or goat and lead through to chamber that were crowded with children and aged relatives. In some workmen’s cottages over two dozen people were packed together.

What did the Egyptians do for cooking, eating, sleeping and toilet?

Cooking
 Much cooking was done on small braziers which could easily be set up in kitchen or courtyard or even on the roof
 Bread was often baked in a domed oven made out of moulded clay
 Baskets were used to store dry foods
 Mud pots held water, wine, oil, milk and salted foods.

Eating
 At dinner, families squatted together around low wooden tables or built-in earthenware platforms
 At Deir el Medina, people ate around a raised platform by day and at night it was used as a bed for the man and wife of the house
 At banquets of the rich, the guests sat around in little groups and were served from small tables loaded with food and wine
 There was no cutlery; both the rich and poor ate with their fingers, scooping up food from a shared bowl. They would poor water on their hands before and after eating.
 Peasants sat on the floor to eat while nobility and wealthy families had a food stand set before each member.

Sleeping
 The bed was considered a status symbol, distinguishing the sophisticated from the peasants.
 The legs of the bed were often carved into animal hooves or paws
 Beds sloped towards the foot and often came equipped with a foot board, presumably to prevent the sleeper from slipping
 Instead of a pillow, people laid their heads on a head rest carved to support the head. This was made out of stone or wood and wrapped in cloth for added comfort and support.
 A magic hippopotamus wand was a bedroom accessory designed to ward off any scorpions or snakes that might approach during the night.
 The wand was carved with images of protective deities from ivory of the hippopotamus.
Toilet
 The rich had lavatories that consisted of a wooden seat on brick supports with a pan half filled with sand underneath
 In the poorer homes there is likely to have been some sort of sanitary arrangement, even if it comprised of no more than a sand filled pot in a corner of the room
 Dung was not wasted. One of the jobs of women and children was to gather up and stray human and animal droppings, mix them with straw and pat them into cakes which were then dried out on the roof of their houses. This was later used for fuel.

http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/timelines/topics/housing.htm is good.
Note: material is drawn from across Egyptian history - at bottom is link to Deir el-Medina housing