This series is published with the authorization of Professor Jin Shoufu. This is an AI-assisted contemporary editorial adaptation by Clio Walker based on Jin Shoufu’s Ancient Egyptian Civilization. It is neither a newly written eyewitness travel account by the professor nor a chapter-by-chapter reproduction of his book.

In the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, there is a small limestone seated statue, about thirty centimetres high, inventory number 2973.

The seated figure is a man named Senefer, an official of the late Sixth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom who served as an overseer at the royal court. The seat is made for two. His wife should be sitting beside him.

She is gone. Her body was deliberately chiselled away, and her name was erased. Jin Shoufu writes that only one of her arms is left on her husband’s back, the arm she had once laid there as a sign of affection.

The statue comes from Senefer’s tomb in the Western Cemetery at Giza, where it stood hidden in the sealed statue chamber. The German archaeologist Hermann Junker excavated it.

Who cut her away? Jin’s answer is blunt: it is almost certain that it was the man still sitting on the base. He did not bother to remove the stump of his former wife’s arm. All he wanted was for the woman he had once loved to disappear from view.

This story is about the ancient Egyptian household. It begins with husbands and wives, moves on to children, and ends with houses and gardens. At the end, we will come back to this statue.

I. Keep Quiet at Home

How should a husband and wife live together? Egyptian instruction texts had advice ready.

An instruction was a book of life lessons written by an elder for the young. The Instruction of Any, from the New Kingdom, was written by Any, who called himself a minor official, for his son. On the home, he advised:

“If she keeps things in good order,

do not shout at her, ‘Where is that? Bring it to me!’

Keep quiet at home;

one look is enough to tell you whether she does her work well.

The joy of marriage lies in living in harmony with her,

yet many people do not understand this.”

A man, he goes on, should avoid starting quarrels; a man with a household should know how to control himself. Do not order your wife about, or she will turn the tables on you.

It sounds considerate. But the lines draw clear boundaries: it is the husband who judges whether the wife is competent, and the wife whose job it is to keep the house in order. Jin notes that the difference in status between men and women can be read between these lines.

II. One More Cup

The Egyptians did not keep their eyes only on the afterlife.

The older Instruction of Ptahhotep urged people to enjoy life while they could: as long as you live, follow your heart; do not work more than you must; do not cut short your leisure, for cutting short the time of pleasure angers the god; earning enough to feed your family is enough; if you have wealth, use it, for wealth is worth nothing to a gloomy man.

Herodotus, who visited Egypt, recorded a custom at banquets. After a rich man’s dinner, someone carried around a small coffin holding a carved, painted wooden figure made to look exactly like a corpse, one or two cubits long. He showed it to each guest and said: drink and enjoy yourself, and look at this, for this is what you will be when you die.

There is no way to verify the story. But in a number of Middle and New Kingdom officials’ tombs, archaeologists have found banquet scenes: a blind harpist sings to the guests and urges them to drink one more cup. The tomb owner had loved such scenes in life, and the living hoped he would go on enjoying them in the next. Jin argues that these paintings show, from another angle, how much the Egyptians valued this life.

III. Children Are Like a Crop in the Field

Having children was the first business of an Egyptian marriage. As the previous story explained, an Egyptian who died without heirs was said to have been “pulled up by the roots.”

Yet Ptahhotep wrote a passage that does not lean all one way. He compares having children to farming: if you plough and sow and the crop fills the field, that is because the god chose to give you a harvest, so do not boast to your neighbours. Be careful with those who cannot have children, neither too proud nor too humble. Some men are unhappy after becoming fathers; sometimes a childless woman is more content than a mother; the lonely may receive the god’s support, while a man with a houseful of children may still worry that he has no worthy heir.

Whether there is a harvest depends less on people than on the will of the god, and a large harvest is not always a blessing: an undutiful son is worse than none. Jin observes that such words smack of blind faith, but they also offered real comfort and release.

IV. Three Whole Years

Any’s answer comes from the other side. He tells his son to honour his parents once he is grown, and above all to be good to his mother. More than three thousand years later, the passage still moves readers:

“Repay your mother twice, even many times over, for all she did for you;

support her as she once carried you.

She raised you willingly

and never said, ‘Heavens, when will this ever end!’”

Any then counts it all up, item by item. She carried you for nine months, and her real labour began only after you were born. For three whole years you held her breast in your mouth, and she never complained. Your nappies stank, and she was never disgusted. She sent you to school to learn to read and write. Year after year she raised you, and the house never ran short of bread and water.

Now you are grown, married and with a household of your own. Do not forget, Any says, how you were born, and remember even more how she brought you up. Give her no reason to blame you. Do not drive her to raise her hands to the god in prayer, for the god will surely see that she gets justice.

V. No Boat, No Far Shore

And if the son you raised with such effort turns out badly?

Ptahhotep has an answer for that too. If your son is upright and reliable like you, and manages your property beyond reproach, then do everything for him that you should, for he is the offspring the god has given you. If he goes astray, ignores your advice and talks nonsense, punish him promptly and properly.

Then he hands the account over to the gods. The gods do not love a son who defies his father’s will; such a son was doomed to go wrong while still in his mother’s womb. Those whom the gods guide do not lose their way, and those to whom the gods deny a boat cannot reach the other shore.

In this way, a father’s disappointment found somewhere to go.

VI. The Houses of Amarna

After the people of the household, the house itself.

The British archaeologist Barry Kemp spent decades excavating at Amarna. Amarna was the new capital built after Akhenaten’s religious reform, around 1346 BCE. The city stood on the edge of the desert and was used only briefly, so the foundations of its houses remain where they were, which makes it possible to count how a whole city lived.

Kemp’s figures run like this. About 65 per cent of residents lived in houses of less than 100 square metres; about 21 per cent in houses of 100 to 200 square metres; fewer than 8 per cent in houses over 200 square metres; and fewer than 1.9 per cent in houses over 400 square metres.

Size decided what a house contained. Houses under 100 square metres had no columned hall, no shrine and no chapel. The larger the house, the likelier it was to have a well, a bathroom or a porch; only at around 250 square metres could a house have all of these. No more than 9 per cent of the population lived in houses that large.

That small minority had not only more private space but gardens as well. Every house over 250 square metres had a thick, high enclosure wall; one of them had at least twenty-six courses. Jin suggests that the walls did less to mark the owner’s property than to keep out people of lesser wealth and status.

VII. A Fig Tree in the Garden

What grew in those gardens? Kemp’s excavation reports record that the tree pits, large and small, were filled with soil from the Nile valley. Amarna was built on desert, and to keep their trees alive these wealthy residents had earth carried all the way from the valley.

Kemp’s findings show once again how sharply stratified Egyptian society was. They also show that the Egyptians cared far more about the surroundings of a house than about its furniture and decoration. Tomb paintings and reliefs in which the owner punts through the reeds with his family, hunting birds, depict exactly this ideal.

In the 1950s John Wilson, former director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, made a startling claim: ancient Egypt had no urban civilization at all. Scholars have argued about it ever since; some agree, and more have tried to refute him.

Jin’s view is that prehistoric Egypt did have many towns side by side, but once a unified royal state was born, the capital quickly came to dominate everything, and that pattern hardly changed. If Egyptian cities were less developed than those of other civilizations of the time, there were political reasons, but the Egyptians’ love, even passion, for country scenes should not be underestimated.

Any’s advice to his son includes a checklist for setting up a household:

“If you, as a man, wish to found a household and see it prosper,

then this is what you should do:

build a garden around your house,

and fence off a plot in it for cucumbers;

plant a fig tree in the middle of the garden,

for it is indispensable, as a sight and for shade.”

These, he concludes, are things no life can do without. Prepare them while you are young.

VIII. Back to Hildesheim

Now back to the seat for two with only one person on it.

Jin reads it as the story of a faithless husband. The excavator Junker also considered divorce, but he offered another explanation as well: tomb robbery. One detail at the tomb’s entrance supports it. Senefer’s tomb was poorly built, of crumbly limestone, with rough chapel walls and false doors without inscriptions. The only image in the whole tomb is on the entrance jamb.

In that relief, Senefer stands leaning on his staff, and his wife stands behind him with her right arm on his right shoulder. Her name was Ankh-Hathor, and her title was “king’s granddaughter.” There, her name was not chiselled away.

But if it was robbers, why did they not carry off the whole pair statue, instead of cutting away only the wife? That question still has no answer.

Any told his son to keep quiet at home and not to order his wife about. Ptahhotep told people to follow their hearts. More than three thousand years later, a statue holds only a man, and on the tomb door, a woman’s hand still rests on his shoulder.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Authorized base text: Jin Shoufu, Ancient Egyptian Civilization, authorized electronic manuscript, Lecture 4, section 4.3, “Family Life and Living Environment,” read in full on 26 October 2026. The three passages from the Instruction of Ptahhotep (work and leisure, children likened to a harvest, the good and the bad son); the classical report of a mummy shown around at banquets and the blind-harpist banquet scenes in Middle and New Kingdom officials’ tombs; the three passages from the Instruction of Any (husband and wife, honouring one’s mother, house and garden); the Hildesheim statue of Senefer with only the husband left, the wife’s arm remaining on his back, and the “faithless husband” reading; Kemp’s housing statistics at Amarna (65 per cent, 21 per cent, under 8 per cent, under 1.9 per cent, 250 square metres, no more than 9 per cent, walls of at least twenty-six courses, Nile-valley soil in tree pits) and his two conclusions; John Wilson’s 1950s claim that Egypt had no urban civilization; the dominance of the capital and the Egyptian love of country scenes are all paraphrased from this section. Any’s description of himself as a minor official, the New Kingdom date of his Instruction, and Ptahhotep’s earlier date come from Lectures 3 and 8 of the same book. Quotations from the instructions are translated into English from Jin’s Chinese versions; some passages are paraphrased, and omissions are marked or paraphrased without changing the sense. The base text’s caption for a fragmentary pair statue with clasped hands is omitted because the object could not be identified. 2. Additional sources: (1) Digital Giza (Harvard University), object RPM_2973, “Seated statue of Sinefer and his wife” (https://giza.fas.harvard.edu/objects/54636/full/, read 26 October 2026): limestone, 31.8 × 22 × 15 cm, from Senefer’s serdab, late Sixth Dynasty, excavated by Hermann Junker, now in the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim; figure and name of the wife not preserved. (2) German Wikipedia, “Senefer” (read 26 October 2026), based on Hermann Junker, Giza IX: Das Mittelfeld des Westfriedhofs (Vienna, 1950), pp. 127–134, and Martin von Falck and Bettina Schmitz, Das Alte Reich (Hildesheim, 2009), no. 34: Senefer as overseer at the royal court and “king’s descendant,” his wife Ankh-Hathor as “king’s granddaughter”; the poorly built tomb in the Western Cemetery at Giza, with the entrance-jamb relief as its only image, showing the wife’s right arm on his right shoulder; the wife deliberately chiselled out of the pair statue and her name erased; von Falck’s divorce reading, Junker’s alternative of tomb robbery, the unerased name at the entrance supporting the latter, and the unanswered question of why robbers would not take the whole statue. Junker’s volume itself was not consulted directly; these points are cited at second hand. (3) Herodotus, Histories 2.78, trans. A. D. Godley (Perseus 1999.01.0126, read 26 October 2026). 3. Places and dates: Senefer’s tomb is mapped to the Giza necropolis area (29.9792, 31.1342; area only), dated to the late Sixth Dynasty as an approximate frame, c. 2300–2181 BCE. Amarna is mapped to the site area (27.6450, 30.8956), dated to c. 1346 BCE as given in the base text. Hildesheim is where the statue is now kept, not a place in the story, and is not mapped. 4. Boundaries and tensions: the base text says the object shown at banquets was “a small box containing a mummy”; Herodotus describes a small coffin holding a carved, painted wooden imitation of a corpse, and the text follows Herodotus. The base text says it is “almost certain” the husband cut away his wife and that her arm remains on his back; Digital Giza records only that the wife’s figure and name are not preserved and does not mention the arm, and the literature behind the Wikipedia article gives both divorce and robbery. The text reports Jin’s reading first, then the excavator’s alternative, and draws no conclusion. “Pulled up by the roots” appears in story 12 of this series. No dialogue, thoughts or scene details are invented; Senefer’s dates and whether a divorce took place are unknown, and the text does not state them.