Daniel Kolos 

Assuming that the ancient Egyptians practiced coming-of-age rituals as did all of their neighbours, this paper will look at the specific gender role for boys and girls as they reach their sexual maturation.  Concentrating on the New Kingdom, military training and service provided both the physical development and the facing of life-and death situations: those young men who survived were treated as having made successful passage into adulthood. Itinerant musical troupes provided young girls whose menses had started, with a chance to travel, perform, become pregnant, learn midwifery, and go through their first birthing in an environment most conducive to giving birth.  Because of the high rate of both still births and mothers dying in childbirth, these itinerant entertaining troupes performed the life-and-death rite of passage for girls.  Once having given birth to a healthy child, a young girl could return to her village/household as a valuable, marriageable member of her family.  The system of Egyptian household economy could not accommodate the uncertainty of young men and women starting out within the household and then possibly dying in foreign wars or in childbirth.  As a result, family members left the household upon maturity to fulfill these previously unacknowledged coming-of-age rituals. Variations of this ritual accommodated class structure and even the royal family went trough their own version of this rite of passage.

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