Abstract:
The period covered by this study is from the reign of Ahmose to that of Tuthmosis IV, c.1575-1405B.C. Very little textual information is available for this period and the main sources for any investigation of the family are the scenes on the walls of the private tombs of the upper classes, the majority of which were at Thebes.
Although the study relies largely on the pictorial representation of the family in the tombs, I have not adopted an art historical approach, the representations being used not as art forms but for the information that can be obtained from them. Since the tombs belonged exclusively to men, this information is almost totally male oriented, everything in the tomb being related back to the tomb owner.
Ninety-three tombs are examined and the families of the tomb owners analysed. Each member of the family is considered individually and in Part II of the thesis the role of each member of the family is assessed. Such questions as the importance of the mother vis à vis the wife, the existence of a matriarchal tendency, multiple marriages and consanguineous marriage are studied.
Unfortunately many problems that arose were incapable of solution due to damage to the scenes and inscriptions in the tombs and to the simplified kinship terminology used at this time.
The conclusions reached were that there was no matriarchal tendency in the family at this time, the only occasion on which the mother was preeminent in her son's tomb was if he was unmarried or his wife had been excluded from the tomb for some reason. I believe multiple marriages, not necessarily or often polygamous, were probably more common than the surviving evidence suggests. Marriage within the kinship group was probably common, but there is no evidence whatever for brother-sister marriage in the Eighteenth Dynasty.
