A Tawaret talisman for perilous pregnancy

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 141

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Taweret is the goddess who protected pregnant women in ancient Egypt. There were no priests, temples or shrines dedicated to her; nevertheless, throughout the pharaonic period she was more popular than any other god. Her only rival in popularity was Bes, the god who protected babies through childhood. In the later centuries of pharaonic Egypt, Bes was increasingly invoked to act beyond his role as protector of children, assisting mature men who were experiencing sexual dysfunction. In contrast, Taweret never deviated from her exclusive role as protector of pregnant women.

Taweret means ‘the Great One’. She was a composite creature: a pregnant hippopotamus with pendant human breasts, lion’s claws, and a crocodile’s tail.  She certainly presented an awesome image, befitting her name. She was typically displayed with her lion-claw hands holding the sa, the ancient Egyptian version of a lifebelt, which was also the hieroglyph for protection. A tripartite wig further defined her as a divinity. In some instances, she was embellished with a sun disc and cow-horn crown, too, which affirmed her affiliation with Hathor, the goddess of love and sexuality. This further suggested her power was cosmic, and not simply limited to the household.

A magical vessel

This article features a rare, perhaps unique, magical vessel that was used to assist pregnant women. The statuette is made of a faience-like unglazed material and is 20 cm tall. The top has a fairly wide opening and is drilled down the centre to connect to a channel leading to Taweret’s right breast. When fluid was poured in the top, it would emerge through the statuette’s breast. The fluid would bring with it the magical power of the goddess.

The roughly hexagonal shape of the breast opening suggests that the vessel may have contained a stopper, or held a shallow ‘pill box’ crown, since the goddess is sometimes portrayed wearing that or the more elaborate crown evocative of Hathor. Unfortunately, we know nothing of its ancient history; where it was found, and when it was used, are unknown. It probably dates to the Ramesside Period or possibly later in the Third Intermediate Period. It was donated to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1947 by Dikran Kelekian, a well-known antiquities dealer. The museum deaccessioned it, and I was able to buy it in a sale at Sotheby’s in New York on 14 December 1994.

Pregnancy

Menstruation usually started at about age 14. Girls became women overnight; they connected with males and pregnancies quickly followed. There was no effective contraception; pregnancies were spaced out by the need for lactation. When possible, the mother would breastfeed her baby for three years. Due to the high mortality rate from all causes, only a few women, favoured by the gods, would live to menopause, around age 50.

Today, in most developed countries, we need only 2.1 pregnancies per woman to maintain a stable population. Because of the high infant and child mortality rate in ancient Egypt, it was necessary to have six to seven pregnancies per woman. The first pregnancy was the most dangerous. After that, the risk decreased until the fifth. Each pregnancy thereafter carried a steadily increasing risk of death. So pregnancy was a genuine hazard and a major cause of death for women during pharaonic times. It is reliably estimated that 1 out of every 60 pregnant women would die. This is shocking to us today, because only 1 in 10,000 women will die in pregnancy in countries with modern healthcare. Sadly, in some sub-Saharan African countries, the death toll is still as high today as it was in ancient times.

Medicine, magic, and belief

It is important to understand the power and effectiveness of magic in ancient Egyptian medicine. To begin, the ancient Egyptians were very pragmatic and clear in dealing with trauma. In such cases, the cause of injury, and path to correct it, were practical and straightforward. If someone fell and broke their arm, the cause was obvious, as was the treatment: immobilise the arm in the proper position for both comfort and good healing. No magic was required. For other conditions, including pregnancy, when there were problems and the cause was not obvious, it was believed to be magical in nature. Perhaps the patient had somehow offended the gods, and was being punished with the affliction. An alternate explanation could be they had been cursed by an enemy. Either way, a magical solution was required to cure the patient.

Taweret was the saviour of pregnant women, who relied on her from the Old Kingdom through to the Ptolemaic era. Her amulets are ubiquitous. Even during the Amarna Period, when Akhenaten closed all temples and demanded worship exclusively for Aten, the gods who protected pregnant women and their babies retained their power and popularity. We know this because factories in the royal city of Amarna produced amulets of Taweret and Bes for the local population. Women wore these around their necks.

However, amulets are of protective or preventive value only. The vessel discussed here is a talisman. It is an object with magical power to treat a problem. A spell probably accompanied its use. The power of magic in ancient Egyptian society is easily underestimated. People truly believed in their religion, and devoted their lives to it. Belief is what controls human behaviour and eclipsed fact then as it does today. To dismiss taking fluid from the goddess’s breast as a worthless placebo is a serious mistake. Placebos had – and still have – great power for believers.

The placebo effect

Some years ago, I was part of a committee reassessing drugs newly approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. I remember well a French study of a new drug to treat kidney cancer. The effectiveness of the drug was tested in 900 terminal cancer patients for whom all previous treatment had failed. It was a double-blind study: neither the doctor dispensing the pill, nor the recipient patient, knew if it was the real drug or the placebo. Half the group received the drug and half got a placebo. After three months, X-rays showed that 400 of the people in the study had a measurable reduction in their tumours. The doctors were thrilled, believing they had found a major breakthrough in treatment. However, when they broke the code to see how many of those who improved had actually received the drug, they found that 250 had, but 150 had experienced a measurable improvement just from taking the placebo. It seems that their belief that they were taking a life-saving drug influenced their immune systems enough to generate the beneficial effect. (Sadly, the drug was proved beneficial, but not to the degree the researchers had hoped.) This placebo effect shows us we should not be too smug about our ‘superior knowledge and intelligence’. We may have more knowledge, but surely cannot claim to be any smarter than the ancient Egyptians. We typically try self-care for our problems, and so did they.

Giving birth

From depictions of men assisting in births of cattle, dating back to the Old Kingdom, it is clear that the ancient Egyptians understood the mechanics of the delivery of cattle. The calf might present head first, or with the head and a foreleg simultaneously, or with rear legs coming out first. The cattlemen could contend with whatever was presented to achieve a successful birth. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that anyone had any understanding of the complex process by which a human head passes through the birth canal to achieve a successful birth. Pregnancy was strictly in the domain of the gods and magic.

To garner the magic of the gods, women gave birth in a specially decorated room in the house, or in a similarly decorated bower outside it. The depiction of Bes was standard. When labour was prolonged and self-care ineffective, it was time to call in a professional. But that was a serious problem for ancient Egyptian women. There is no ancient Egyptian word for obstetrician, midwife or birth attendant of any sort. Women in labour were accompanied by family members or close friends. Perhaps in a difficult delivery, a woman from the village who had borne multiple babies might be consulted.

The only professional who might be called was a heka or magician. We have excellent data showing at least some hekas specialised in helping pregnant women. Flinders Petrie excavated the house of a ‘magician’ at Kahun during his 1888-1889 season. He found several items relating to birthing, the most important of which was a mask of the god Bes. It was made of cartonnage and had obviously been used multiple times. The right eye aperture had been enlarged to help the magician to see more clearly, and the mask had been repainted, indicating repeated use. It is now in the Manchester Museum. In addition, he found a statuette of a naked woman with pendulous breasts wearing a Bes mask. Petrie and James Quibell also found a similar statuette in the ‘Tomb of the Magician’ beneath the Ramesseum during their excavations in 1885-1886. That, too, was a mature naked woman with pendulous breasts, suggestive of having borne children. She holds snakes in her hands showing that she had power over evil intruders. That statuette is also on display in the Manchester Museum. No Taweret mask has been found, but we do have several similar statuettes depicting naked women wearing Taweret masks. Their pendulous breasts suggest they too had borne babies.

It was necessary that a spell or special prayer be said to activate any medical prescription or magic. Anyone could try, but many spells required a skilled practitioner. A heka was necessary to activate such a talisman as this. They believed that a medical prescription was only effective if it came from a swnu (physician) and certain magical spells could be activated only by a heka.

Taweret talisman

Returning to the object of this article, the talisman is obviously an elegant and expensive product. While it could have been commissioned for a wealthy family, I think it most likely to have belonged to a ‘master magician’, someone with the knowledge and power to manipulate or trick the gods into doing their will, or to be able to expunge a curse that had been laid on their client. A magician could have used this magical talisman to assist multiple pregnant women.

We have no clue how the fluid from Taweret’s breast was used. In my years practising obstetrics, I found that women uniformly dislike the development of stretch marks. It is possible the fluid was rubbed on the abdomen in the hope of preventing them. There are special unguent vessels known by their German name Gravidenflaschen (‘pregnancy jars’), which are believed to have held a balm for that purpose. Those vessels may also have had magical properties.

I am inclined to believe this magical Taweret vessel was reserved for more significant problems. Its fluid could have been ingested or rubbed over the abdomen in hope of enhancing contractions in labour, or in hope of making the head come down. It could have been applied to the mother’s breasts to promote lactation, which was essential for the newborn to survive, as there was no substitute for human breast milk in pharaonic times.

Regardless of the nature of the problem or how it was used, we can conclude that this magical vessel was an important talisman to treat problems in pregnancy by drawing the power of ‘the Great One’, Taweret, to aid women in peril during pregnancy.

W Benson Harer Jr is a retired obstetrician/gynaecologist, past President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and former Adjunct Professor of Egyptian Art at California State University San Bernardino. He has published and lectured extensively about ancient Egyptian medicine, and you can read his article on truncated figurines in AE 139.

Further reading:
C A R Andrews (1994) Amulets of Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press). 
R S Bagnall and B W Frier (1994) The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press).
R H Wilkinson (2003) The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson).