Dance in ancient Egypt

The oldest known depictions of dance in this region are found in Predynastic era rock carvings, a linen shroud, a wall painting, a clay model, and pottery in Upper Egypt.[7] The earliest examples of Predynastic dancers come from pottery of the Badarian culture from the 5th millennium B.C. and Naqada I and Naqada II cultures from the 4th millennium B.C.[7] The importance of dance appeared to lessen over time as dancing scenes became rare in the late Naqada period.[7]

The first illustrations of dance in ancient Egypt come from scenes in Old Kingdom tombs of performers associated with funerals.[2]

Researcher Irena Lexová authored the first monograph entirely on ancient Egyptian dance.[8][9]

Professional groups of singers (ḥsı͗t), musicians (ḥnı͗t or ḥnwt), and dancers (ḥbw) often performed at important festivals and funerary services.[10] These groups were referred to in the Old and Middle Kingdoms as the ḫnr or khener,[2][11] which in context translates to "musical performers."[12][13] Khener can also be used to describe a troupe of singers and dancers arranged through a bureau.[14] Victorian scholars often confused the term khener with a harem due to poor understanding of the depictions and cultural differences.[14] The khener are depicted as entertainers for religious ceremonies, entertaining the deceased kings, but the khener may not be solely religious.[14] Khener were used at the Temples of Hathor, Bat, Wepwawet, and Horus Iunmutef.[14] Some kheners were itinerant, traveling from their permanent seat to offer their services as indicated in the story of Ruddedet.[15][11][13] Dancers also took on work outside performances in order to support themselves.[15]

The main types of ḫnr thought to have existed are those associated with cults and temples, the king and funerary estates.[2][16] The ḫnr appear to have been dominated and headed by females until the latter days of the Old Kingdom.[2]

Foreign dancers and musicians became more represented in the New Kingdom.[13] Scholars recognize these dancers' origins by costume, hairstyle, and names in texts among other attributes.[13] They apparently could join an ḫnr, but their participation may have been limited.[13] Scenes in temple reliefs indicate that some cult performances were only reserved for elite Egyptian women.[13]

Topless dancer in a back bend, ostrakon, 13th Century B.C., New Kingdom

Female dancers rarely wore the restrictive ordinary dress – a strapped white sheath starting at the bust and running down to the ankles.[17][18] An exception in the Old Kingdom was for funeral dances.[18] Old Kingdom dancers are not only depicted in dresses but in men's aprons with a scarf or men's skirts.[19][17][2]

Middle and New Kingdom dancers never wore men's skirts, but did wear men's aprons without the scarf.[20] By the New Kingdom, adult dancers appear more scantily clad, often wearing only a belt or scarf about their hips, sometimes with a transparent robe to allow observation of their bodies.[20][2] New Kingdom dancers also wore variations of ordinary dress in their transparent broad long cloaks. Dresses often left the right breast exposed.[20][21]

Dancers adorned themselves with bracelets and ribbons or garlands on their heads.[22][23] Old Kingdom dancers would wear ribbons around their chests.[23] New Kingdom dancers would wear floral collars, earrings and cones made of fragranced semi-solid fat or beeswax, used to give out a pleasant perfume as the dancers performed.[23][2] Dancers' eyes were thickly outlined with kohl.[2]

In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, women's hair dress was characteristically “evenly cut and smoothly combed down, divided into two thinner plaits hanging from the shoulders down to the chest and one broad plait covering the upper part of the back.”[21] Female dancers who did not have long hair resorted to wearing wigs styled in the same fashion.

Female dancers are also depicted with a tattooed or painted symbol on their thigh of Bes, a god of fertility and childbirth affiliated with music and dance.[24][25] It is unclear whether this decoration was unique to dancers or if women commonly had it applied.[24]

Male dancers had short hair[26] and typically wore the standard men's dress viz. skirt; in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, they would also wear an apron with round edges in the front.[23]

Among the ornaments male dancers would wear were collars[23] or chains around their necks, whereas the younger boys wore bracelets on their feet.[23]

Lexova also added that dancers of that era used a short curved stick or cane while dancing, which is a prop still used by modern Egyptian dancers.[27]

Before the New Kingdom, dancers were mostly accompanied by clapping or percussion instruments.[2] Afterward, performers could dance to a greater range of music with the introduction of stringed instruments like the lute and the lyre.[2]

The ancient Egyptians used a vast array of musical instruments such as sistrums, harps, drums, flutes, cymbals, clappers, and tambourines that played a prominent role in melodic compositions of ancient Egyptians composers and musicians. It was rare to find wind or stringed instrument players close to dancers in the same scene. However, it was noted that whenever musicians are depicted, dancers were not generally far away.

Lexová set out classifications for the various dances of the period: the purely movemental dance, the gymnastic dance, the imitative dance, the pair dance, the group dance, the war dance, the dramatic dance, the lyrical dance, the grotesque dance, the funeral dance and the religious dance.[8]

Dance scholar and performer Elizabeth "Artemis" Mourat also categorized dances into six types: religious dances, non-religious dances, banquet dances, harem dances, combat dances and street dances.[1]

Solo, pair and group dances

Tomb of the Dancers, wall painting, 17th Dynasty, Thebes, Second Intermediate Period

Ancient Egyptian dancers danced either as soloists, in pairs or in groups, depending on the occasion and type of the dance performed. Individual or solo dances included performances by the king or priests designated as his representatives. The king would perform the sun dance and he or his deputy danced at the harvest festival honoring Min of Koptos, a fertility god.[28][29][30]

Funeral dances

Further information: Ancient Egyptian funerary practices § Funerary rituals

A fragment of the frescoes on the wall of the tomb chapel of Nebamun, depicting guests, servants, musicians, and dancers at a funerary banquet

Dances associated with funerals included ritual, postures and gestures and secular dances.[32]

Old Kingdom performers included a specialized group of female dancers called “the acacia house.”[33] Dances by the acacia house followed mummification and were aimed at appeasing the goddess Sekhmet and rejuvenating and mourning the dead. Khener dancers are often portrayed entertaining the rejuvenated deceased while he eats from the offering table.[13][33]

The women in banquet scenes playing music and dancing for the deceased and his family, especially in New Kingdom tombs, were not all professional and sometimes included close family relations.[11] The scenes reflected what was hoped to be replayed in the afterlife.[11]

During the Middle and New Kingdom periods, a separate funeral dance was practiced dedicated to Hathor in the goddess's role as guide for the dead into the afterlife. It involved leaping or skipping and was accompanied by a sung or spoken prayer to the sounds of percussion, including the clapping of hands and sticks.[33]

Another specialized troupe of sacred dancers, mww or muu dancers, existed across the Kingdoms. They performed at various points in the funeral, wearing kilts and crowns of woven reed or palm fiber that signified their role as ferrymen.[2][1][13] The crowns themselves were cone-shaped and resembled the king's White Crown of Upper Egypt.[13][26] Through their dance, they symbolically delivered the deceased to the netherworld.[13][33] One researcher finds that the "dances... made by the sacred dancers at the door of... [the] tomb" in the Story of Sinuhe[34] is named the "Dance of the Weary-ones."[13] The title referred to the deceased's ancestors.

• Kinney, Troy; Kinney, Margaret West (1914). The Dancing Of Ancient Egypt And Greece Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1–8.
• Kassing, Gayle (2007). History of Dance." Human Kinetics. 45-48.
• Lexová, Irena, Milada Lexová, Diane Bergman, and K. Haltmar (2000). Ancient Egyptian Dancers. Dover Publications. 57-66.
• "Music & Dance" (2009). The Music & Dance of Ancient Egypt 1-4.
• Reeder, Greg (1995). "The Mysterious Muu and the Dance they do." KMT Communications. 1-13.
• Strouhal, Eugen, Evžen Strouhal, and Werner Forman (1992). Life of the Ancient Egyptians. 41–48.