I have given the Ancient Egyptian dolls anatomy because I am bringing to life the little people in the wall paintings, who are often shown in the nude, with anatomy.
There have been debates in the doll world for some time about dolls with anatomy. Sometimes anatomy is one of the things doll people are trying to get away from, we like the dolls to be small and pretty and as unlike people as possible, while looking like people but not too much.
Years ago I did an article on how to make dolls for DHW magazine. If you use polymer clay it is possible to get very wrinkly realistic looking dolls. After Miniatura I’ll show you some of the ways here. If, additionally, you make clothes of very thin material, such as tissue paper, glued on, you can get thinness in scale. You cannot play with such dolls, they are effectively sculpture, but if realism is your goal and you want to glue them into a scene and then distress them, they are a good choice and even a beginner can have success.
I like miniature dolls that are like real dolls. I like them to move and be played with and have clothes that can be renewed by successive owners, over time. They don’t look like people, they look like dolls.
For these reasons I do not usually give my dolls anatomy, but this time I did. Along with the anatomy I appear to have given them hormones. I was getting on well with giving the men their Ancient Egyptian kilts. The real ones were made of linen and were almost the same for everyone except that the Pharoah had the ties of his kilt and the bit at the front, which I am now convinced is a loin cloth under the kilt, draped over the front and tied in place, bigger than anyone else. In fact the dangling bit at the front of the Pharaoh’s kilt is enormous, triangular, permanently sticking out and stiff. He is the head of the nation, beloved of the gods, best endowed etc. A variety of ways of tying the kilt and dealing with the dangling loin cloth bit are visible in the picture of craftsmen working at various occupations.
It took me a while to work out how to do this in miniature. As I was dressing men, the ones waiting in the box for their turn, seem to have been affected by hormones. A fight broke out.
Who are you calling puny?
I’m just saying you look more modest to me.
Modest! You git!
You are, look at the bloke whose arm I’m trampling beneath my knee as the Pharoah smote the Hittite!
I’m going to swipe you one in less than a water clock hour. I’ve got articulated wrists!
Me too, and I’ve got your leg trapped and I’m sitting on your hand.
I will smite you good and proper and it will all go black for you as if Nut has spread her wings across your sky.
See? Hormones.
Our hang-ups with nudity can be traced back most recently to the Victorians. Queen Victoria liked to have her table legs covered up because they were legs. In previous centuries lack of clothing is strongly associated with poverty. In Tudor times a shiftless woman is so useless she is unable to make a shift, her undergarment. By the time we get back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries actually having clothing is a mark of status, the more elaborate the garment, the swankier the wearer.
Back with the Anglo Saxons, we find the ubiquitous garment is the cloak. Throughout history the cloak has been the easiest item to produce, whether an animal skin or woven cloth, a rectangular covering that can be draped round the wearer is easy to put on and off, becomes bed coverings at night, warmth in the cold and shade in the sun.
The Ancient Egyptians had cloaks, for all the same reasons they were popular in the rest of history, because they’re just very handy, but for most other occasions clothing is optional. The climate and proximity to the river and all the waterborne woes are the most likely reason for some of the preference. The difficulty of producing the linen must also be accounted for. The vertical loom was unknown until late in the history. Flat floor looms require large flat, clean surfaces to produce a reasonable size of cloth.
This may be why children, who cheerfully gather dirt all day, go mostly without clothing until they are old enough to look after it. Certain low status jobs do not offer clothing as part of the package. These include dancing girls and some farmers and fishermen.
Clothing of the best kind, embroidered in metal thread, woven with patterns and beaded, belongs to the Pharoah and the Gods. The Gods lived in the temples. The priests, who shaved every body hair every day and swam in pools to get squeaky clean, had the job of dressing the God, embodied in his statue, every day. They also gave the God offerings of food. If the God wasn’t very peckish, the priests helped out by polishing off the grub. I have looked at an awful lot of Ancient pictures and have yet to find a depiction of a thin priest. They always look extremely substantial. If they are relaying the thoughts and orders of the God, well, you wouldn’t argue.
Tomorrow, if Bastet smiles upon me, I will get started on dressing Lady Two Heads. The women’s dresses were tight tubes, which may very well be one loom full of cloth, sewn into a tube. There are shoulder straps, which sometimes cover the nipples, and sometimes, in a carefree sort of way, miss completely. Most ladies had moved to the Elysian Fields by the time they were forty. They never got the chance to experience the effects of gravity as we, who frequently live two Egyptian Lifetimes do.
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Walk like an Egyptian to the Min
or walk like a miniaturist, shuffling sideways, occasionally straightening up to see if you can see the friend you came with.
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