Why Did Ancient Egyptians Have Kids at 12?
Ancient Life
260,594 views
Why Did Ancient Egyptians Have Kids at 12?
---
📖 NEW EBOOK: Life in Ancient Egypt — our illustrated ebook. 121 pages, an original hand-drawn illustration on every page, one life from birth to burial.
🎬 First 100 people get their name in the next video.
👉 https://ancientegyptian.gumroad.com/l...
---
In this video we go looking for the real number, and find it in some unexpected places: a 3,500-year-old birth brick dug up at South Abydos, a Roman-era census of nearly 300 Egyptian households, a father's wisdom text nagging his son about what his mother sacrificed for him, wet nurse contracts, and a body of law that let Egyptian women own property, initiate divorce, and take people to court.
What we find is that the "twelve" comes almost entirely from royal marriages — political alliances mistaken for population data — and that ordinary Egyptian women were most likely marrying and starting families in their mid-to-late teens, with husbands often a decade older. We also find something stranger: the age of physical maturity has actually moved earlier since ancient times, not later — which flips the whole assumption behind the question.
🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into what daily life was actually like for ordinary ancient Egyptians — not just the pharaohs.
#AncientEgypt #Egyptology #History
20 Comments
If out of 8 children birthed by a woman, 3 of them survived childbirth + childhood diseases and made it into adulthood, they had a good chance to make it into their 50s or 60s at least.
As recently as 30, 40 years ago, many countries around the world still had life expectancy of ~30 years or so. And them too didn't magically drop dead at that age. It was the poor birth control, lack of maternal care absurdly high number of infant and children deaths that was driving the mortality statistics.
Why Did Ancient Egyptians Have Kids at 12?
Ancient Life
260,594 views
Why Did Ancient Egyptians Have Kids at 12?
---
📖 NEW EBOOK: Life in Ancient Egypt — our illustrated ebook. 121 pages, an original hand-drawn illustration on every page, one life from birth to burial.
🎬 First 100 people get their name in the next video.
👉 https://ancientegyptian.gumroad.com/l...
---
In this video we go looking for the real number, and find it in some unexpected places: a 3,500-year-old birth brick dug up at South Abydos, a Roman-era census of nearly 300 Egyptian households, a father's wisdom text nagging his son about what his mother sacrificed for him, wet nurse contracts, and a body of law that let Egyptian women own property, initiate divorce, and take people to court.
What we find is that the "twelve" comes almost entirely from royal marriages — political alliances mistaken for population data — and that ordinary Egyptian women were most likely marrying and starting families in their mid-to-late teens, with husbands often a decade older. We also find something stranger: the age of physical maturity has actually moved earlier since ancient times, not later — which flips the whole assumption behind the question.
🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into what daily life was actually like for ordinary ancient Egyptians — not just the pharaohs.
#AncientEgypt #Egyptology #History