From “Concubines of the Dead” to Embodied Regeneration: Reinterpreting Middle Kingdom Fertility Figurines

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This Middle Kingdom female figurine (late 12th–13th Dynasty, ca. 1900–1700 BCE) that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago exemplifies a funerary strategy in which regeneration was embodied directly in the human form. Its green surface, invoking Osirian rebirth, and its tattooed dancer iconography, associated with ritual performance and Hathoric vitality, mark the figure as a magically operative body, not a representation of a household woman.

Middle Kingdom female figurine (late 12th–13th Dynasty, ca. 1900–1700 BCE) photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch

Early Egyptological scholarship—shaped by late 19th- and early 20th-century assumptions about sexuality and the afterlife—interpreted such figures as literal sexual companions for the deceased, giving rise to the term “concubines of the dead.” This label reflected a tendency to read Egyptian funerary belief through a modern, literalizing lens, conflating erotic symbolism with sexual service and overlooking the ritual and cosmological dimensions of the imagery.

Over the past several decades, this interpretation has been largely abandoned. Comparative analysis of tomb contexts, iconography, and Middle Kingdom religious developments now situates these figures within a broader system of apotropaic and regenerative objects. The tattooing—closely paralleling that worn by female dancers and musicians in ritual scenes—signals mythic and liminal status, not social identity. Sexuality here is not biographical or relational, but cosmic and functional, operating as a force of renewal essential to rebirth in the Osirian afterlife.

The contrast with the New Kingdom is instructive. New Kingdom female figures—human and divine—are typically rendered in naturalistic yellow or light ochre skin tones, emphasizing social identity, lineage, and narrative presence. Regenerative power does not vanish; instead, it is re-encoded materially and textually. Osirian rebirth is made explicit through funerary texts identifying the deceased by name as Osiris, while regeneration is distributed across faience amulets, scarabs, shabtis, resin-treated mummies, ritual substances colored green, blue, or black, and vegetal "corn mummies.”

“Corn mummies” were small, mummiform figures made of soil mixed with grain (usually barley or emmer) and wrapped like a corpse. As the grain germinated, the figure enacted the Osirian cycle of death and rebirth, transforming decay into new life. These objects made regeneration materially visible and biologically active, reinforcing the identification of the deceased with Osiris as a being who dies, germinates, and is reborn eternally.

Seen in this light, the Middle Kingdom figurines once called “concubines of the dead” represent a fundamentally different metaphysical solution to the same problem later addressed through texts and materials. They are embodied regeneration, not erotic accessories—mythic instruments designed to guarantee renewal in perpetuity.

I was curious, though, if the emphasis on potency, was legislated by the pharaoh as it later was codified legally in Augustan Rome. But my research revealed during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055–1650 BCE) there were no decrees, edicts, or legal texts mandating marriage, childbirth, or minimum family size, no tax incentives, land grants, or exemptions explicitly tied to reproduction, and no surviving administrative records framing population growth as a state policy goal. However, fertility was strongly promoted through religious, social, and economic norms, especially after the instability of the First Intermediate Period.

Texts such as royal inscriptions and wisdom literature, such as "The Instruction of Ptahhotep" and "The Instruction for Merikare" frame prosperity and order as dependent on stable families, legitimate heirs and proper transmission of property and cult obligations. Funerary cults required descendants to maintain offerings and the cults of Hathor, Taweret, Bes, and Min placed ritual emphasis on rebirth, regeneration, and sexual potency.

The New Kingdom, however, reorganized the infrastructure of regeneration. Pharaonic divine kingship became ideologically absolute—particularly after Ahmose's expulsion of the Hyksos established the 18th Dynasty pharaoh as cosmic restorer. Imperial administration expanded dramatically, incorporating tribute from Nubia and the Levant, massive temple economies, and professionalized priesthoods. Within this transformed landscape, regenerative power became institutionally mediated: funerary texts required scribal production, proper materials needed temple workshops, correct rituals needed trained priests.

The Middle Kingdom figurines had operated as autonomous magical technologies, concentrating regenerative power in portable, ritually activated objects. The New Kingdom system distributed that same power across standardized mechanisms embedded within state cult infrastructure. Rebirth remained central, but its material expression shifted from concentrated embodiment to coordinated assemblages of texts, amulets, ritual substances, and temple performance.

The decline of tattooed female figurines was not abandonment of their function but displacement of their method—decentralized, symbolically dense objects gave way to centrally produced, textually coordinated systems. This shift aligned with broader New Kingdom patterns of theological standardization and administrative consolidation, making regeneration legible and controllable within imperial frameworks.

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Selective Naturalism in Neo-Assyrian Relief Sculpture: Familiarity, Function, and Power

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This detail from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (ca. 825 BCE) that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago depicts exotic animals—most plausibly monkeys—presented as tribute to the Assyrian king. Their anthropomorphic facial treatment contrasts sharply with the striking anatomical accuracy seen in Neo-Assyrian representations of horses.

Relief said to depict monkeys or baboons sent to Assyrian King Shalmaneser III (ca. 825 BCE) as tribute portrayed on his Black Obelisk that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago. The imperial artists were apparently unfamiliar with the anatomy of these exotic creatures so resorted to depicting them with human-like faces.

Natural depiction of a horse and lancer from a wall of the palace of Assyrian King Sargon II that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago. Horses, a crucial element of Assyrian military power, were depicted as accurately as possibly by court artists.

This contrast is instructive. Assyrian sculptors demonstrated sustained empirical observation when depicting animals central to imperial life. Horses, essential to chariotry, cavalry, and royal display, are rendered with careful attention to musculature, proportion, gait, and behavioral nuance across relief programs at Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Nineveh.

Exotic animals, by contrast, occupied a different epistemological category. Monkeys were rare prestige objects acquired through long-distance exchange and likely encountered only briefly at court. In such cases, artists appear to have relied on conventionalized visual schemas—particularly standardized human facial types—applied to unfamiliar bodies. The goal was not zoological accuracy but legibility within an imperial narrative of reach and domination.

The resulting figures are neither mythological hybrids nor cultic symbols. Rather, they exemplify selective naturalism, in which representational fidelity correlates with cultural familiarity and ideological importance. Chains, posture, and scale communicate submission more effectively than anatomical precision.

Seen in this light, the “human” faces of these animals do not encode symbolism so much as they expose the boundaries of observation within Neo-Assyrian visual culture—revealing how knowledge, power, and artistic convention intersect on the surface of empire.

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Childhood and Sacred Space: A Stark Contrast Between Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This terracotta wheeled animal, likely representing a ram, which I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago, was found at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna), House XXXI, Room 14, and dates to the Akkadian period (ca. 2330–2150 BCE). Objects like this blur modern distinctions between toy, amulet, and ritual object.

Tell Asmar (House XXXI), Akkadian period: Wheeled ram with differentiated head and facial features, reflecting its role as a domestic toy-amulet used in everyday household religion. Photographed at the Institute of the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch.

Unlike similar wheeled animals recovered from Early Dynastic temple contexts—such as those from Khafajah’s Temple Oval II, where they functioned as votive offerings dedicated to a deity—this example comes from a domestic setting. Its findspot within a private house suggests it belonged to the sphere of household religion, where families actively sought divine protection for their children within the home.

Khafajah (Temple Oval II), Early Dynastic period: Wheeled animal votive with barrel-shaped body and minimally defined head, emphasizing symbolic presence within a formal temple precinct. Photographed at the Institute of the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch.

The choice of a ram is significant. In Mesopotamian symbolism, the ram conveyed strength, vitality, leadership, and divine protection, and was associated with major protective deities such as Enki/Ea and Shamash. As a wheeled object, it was meant to be pulled along the floor—likely by a child—making protection dynamic and continuous, embedded in daily life rather than confined to formal ritual moments.

This object illustrates a broader Mesopotamian pattern: concern for children’s survival and future was addressed both publicly in temples and privately in the home. The same symbolic language—animals, motion, and clay—was adapted to different ritual settings.

By contrast, ancient Egypt followed a different path. Wheeled pull-toys are extremely rare there before the Middle Kingdom and are almost never associated with temples. Egyptian parents instead relied on amulets, figurines (such as Bes or Taweret), and magical texts to protect children.

For the Predynastic period, we have no texts, no depictions, and no securely identified ritual objects that can be tied specifically to children acting as ritual participants. There are no scenes of children in cultic processions, no identifiable “novice” priest figures, no votive objects clearly framed as children’s offerings within cult spaces, and no architecture indicating spaces for child instruction or residence within ritual precincts.

Representations of children in ritual settings do not appear in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom, and more clearly in the New Kingdom. At that point, young musicians and singers appear in temple processions, trainees are attached to priestly households, and child figures associated with gods such as Harpocrates (Horus the Child) enter formal divine iconography.

Crucially, these developments postdate the Predynastic period by over a millennium and coincide with fully institutionalized temples, formal priesthoods, and state-sponsored ritual economies.

This contrasts sharply with Mesopotamia, where children’s objects appear in both temple and domestic religious contexts by the Early Dynastic period.

This modest clay ram also reflects a technological difference: Mesopotamia’s early adoption of the wheel, and its integration into both ritual and play, produced a distinctly different material expression of childhood and belief. It is therefore more than a toy. It is a material expression of parental hope—shaped by hand, rolled across a household floor, and entrusted, day after day, with the protection of a child in an uncertain world.

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