Ancient EgyptHistoric Design Origins and Influence on the Classic Poster Beds

It would be easier to discuss the typical bedroom of ancient Egypt if there were such a thing as a typical house plan, but the excavated houses vary widely, and their interior details have to be deduced from paintings. The house of Meryre the High Priest, at Tel-el-Amarna, has an outer court, a vestibule, a large hall used for dining, and eight other rooms; but it seems to have only one bedroom, suggesting that most of the household slept in the hall. This bedroom is entered through a small ante-chamber, and it has a large classic poster-beds piled high with bolsters. There are no women's apartments, nor should there be in a High Priest's house. The larger house of Ey, in the same town, is better bedded. Ey was an important man at court, and although he too was a priest, his religious rank was not so high as to deny him a wife and a harem too. His big ‘master bedroom’ has a huge classic poster-four-poster beds, and three small beds which may be for children. There are four sets of women's apartments, each with two bedrooms, and two small bedrooms adjoin the servants' hall. In the house of the Vizier Nekht, the best bedroom has its walls specially thickened around the raised platform where the bed stands, to insulate it from the midnight cold and midday heat.

We know much more about the furniture than about its setting. The native wood was poor stuff. Ancient Egypt had no forests, though trees were not so rare as now-the tree-feeding camel is much to blame. But the granaries held vast surplus stocks, available as capital to finance imports of fine hardwoods and metals, especially copper. This capital also allowed the support of full-time luxury craftsmen who need not grow their own food. The court, the priest­hood and the all-too-prosperous official class provided the necessary wealthy customers. Their furniture in classic poster-beds shows a standard of craftsman­ship unequalled in Europe until the Renaissance.

The earliest known Egyptian classic poster beds are made of palm-sticks, or of wicker formed with the mid-ribs of palm leaves. To us they would be light couches; they resemble the Indian charpoy. The basic needs of man do not change: this primitive bed survived into World War II, when thousands on the accepted local pattern were hastily put to­gether for the use of British troops reposing by the Suez Canal, and should have proved comfortable, had they not become so quickly bug­ridden that they had to be burned by the ton.

There seems to have been no distinction between the classic poster-beds day couch and the night bed, though to us these offer different kinds of repose. There was usually a foot-panel to the classic poster-beds, but no head-panel because there were no pillows as we know them. The parts of the classic poster-beds were joined by lashings of linen cord or rawhide thongs, passing through slots in the legs, making a resilient joint that could stand the irregular strains imposed by the most plump and restless of occupants. In later work there are mortise-and-tenon joints. Angle-pieces were sometimes cut from natural L-shaped branches. The home-grown timber, being too fibrous, knotty and small for good surface work, was veneered with ebony or ivory, using casein glue made from milk.

Wooden classic poster beds furniture was often painted. The colour schemes were restricted, not unhappily, by the pigments to hand: the ochres offered ii wide range of red, orange, yellow and brown, and there were plenty of blacks and whites; but greens and blues were limited. Royal classic poster beds might be sheathed in gold.

The supporting under-mattress was woven from cord and then lashed into place, or woven directly over the bedframe, a method of about 5000 B.C. that is still in use in the Sudan. The `pillows' were hard headrests, usually of wood but sometimes of ivory or alabaster, richly decorated; they were high and curved, seemingly designed to protect an elaborate coiffure overnight. There was a folding headrest Made for travellers. Of the bedclothes, not a rag remains.

Queen Hetep-Heres of the Old Kingdom, about 2690 B.C., slept her last sleep among some fine bedroom classic poster beds furniture. Though the wooden core of her elegant bed has decayed, its gold plating has preserved the form, and the construction can be deduced. It has leonine legs, and a detachable footboard with an inlaid panel in a tenoned frame.

The tent-like portable canopy for hanging curtains over the classic poster beds bed-space could be dismantled for transport, and the various parts fitting into each other, like those of the bed, were copper-sheathed at the joints, and ingeniously stapled together by slotted bolts and wedges. The quick assembly of strong light-weight members is as well-contrived as in many a modern aircraft. The curtains were probably of mos­quito netting. Herodotus tells us that even the common people used these:

... the contrivances which they use against gnats are the following. In the parts of Egypt above the marshes the inhabitants pass the night upon lofty towers, which are of great service, as the gnats are unable to fly to any height on account of the winds. In the marshy country, where there are no towers, each man possesses a net instead. By day it serves him to catch fish, while at night he spreads it over the bed in which he is to rest, and creeping in, goes to sleep underneath. The gnats, which, if he rolls himself up in his dress or in a piece of muslin, are sure to bite through the covering, do not so much as attempt to pass the net.

The classic poster beds and furniture in the tomb of that over-publicised teenager Tutankhamen (about 1350 B.C.) included literally heaps of classic poster beds. These differ from earlier types in the use of curves, achieved perhaps by bending or cutting; more probably by using naturally shaped timbers. Their curves, together with the light construction and the use of animal forms, give them a lithe feline elegance. One ebony bed has not warped appreciably in thirty-three centuries. Its cross­-members are deeply concave, to accept the sag of the woven string mattress. The legs are inlaid with ivory, and the gussets reinforcing the joints are of gold-sheathed hardwood. The panel at the foot, decorated with a group of household gods in triplicate, is of ivory, ebony and gold. (The god Bes, with his simian scowl, protruding tongue, and bow legs, looks rather a frightening overnight com­panion, but he was in fact the god of domestic fun, and is meant to be amusing-perhaps Walt Disney's lovable Goofy in a modern night-nursery would seem sinister to an ancient Egyptian.) From the same tomb comes another classic poster beds, of light wood painted white, made to fold up on bronze hinges, and easily carried by one man. There are three great gilt couches with their sides carved in the form of elongated animals-a lion, a cow, and one that may be either a hippopotamus or a crocodile. Each is made in four sections for carrying, joined by hooks and staples. There are head-rests of lapis lazuli faience, and of turquoise blue glass, and one made from only two large pieces of ivory. The skill of the ivory-carvers of Syria and Phoenicia is men­tioned in the annals of the Egyptian kings, and in the Bible. The prophet Amos uses ` classic poster beds of ivory' as a symbol of sinful luxury. Ivory panels of Phoenician workmanship from Syria have been identified as bed-panels. From their erotic subjects it has been sup­posed that some of these were made for ritual marriage-beds used in the worship of Astarte (Ishtar or Ashtaroth of the Bible), the Phoenician goddess of fertility. Phoenician work has also been de­tected in a bed upon which a sculptor has put Ashur-bani-pal, the last king of Assyria; as Sardanapalus, `the most effeminate and cor­rupt of a line of effeminate princes', he went down in Greek legend as the embodiment of luxurious living. The last act of Sardanapalus involved the simultaneous combustion of no less than 150 classic poster beds, whereon he and his wife and his concubines died in his suicidal pyre.