How did people live in Bible times? Often this question is asked on reading Bible stories, so in this post I will demystify what daily life in the Ancient Near East was like. For this is foundational to an understanding of the Bible.

Our Bible Quotation of Focus

In this post, our Bible quotation of focus is as follows: “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of [the true] God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Ephesians 4:18.

Now you may be asking, What does “Ephesians 4:18” mean? It is an example of Bible notation, in that, it is a way of referencing the Bible which is a collection of books. As it is, each book in the Bible consists of one or more chapters, and each chapter has numbered sections called verses. For example, the Bible notation “Ephesians 4:18” refers to the book of Ephesians, the 4^th chapter, and the 18^th verse of Chapter 4.

Who or What is the True God?

I have mentioned God, But who or what is the true God? Well, on reading the Bible, you will find that “God” (Genesis 1:1) and “the Godhead” (Acts 17:29) are interchangeable names in the Bible for a divine Family made up of three Persons. So, God is a Person or, rather, Persons, and not a thing or things.

And God describes Himself in the Bible by saying that He is “God, that cannot lie” (Titus 1:2) and “God is love.” 1 John 4:8. That is to say, each of the three members of the Godhead has a character of love that is identical to the character of the others. In fact, this love is the only definition of true love in the universe.

And, No, there are not three Gods! Why? Because the members of the Godhead never contradict each other at any time, that is, we can say that they speak with one voice. For there has never been nor ever will be any disagreement or contention among them. Therefore, we can say, “there is one God.” Mark 12:32.

Furthermore, each Person in the Godhead, the divine Family, is “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” Hebrews 7:3.

And the names of these three Persons in the Godhead are “the Father” (Matthew 11:27), “the Son” (Psalm 2:12) also called Christ (Matthew 1:1), and “the Holy Spirit.” Psalm 51:11. And God says, “My name [is] JEHOVAH.” Exodus 6:3.

OK, with this understanding of who God is, a related question is, Who is Jesus? The name Jesus was given to Christ when He was born as a baby boy on earth over 2,000 years ago.

What is the Ancient Near East?

The Ancient Near East was the home of some of the earliest civilisations on earth. It was a region that roughly spanned what is known as the Middle East today.

Specifically, the Ancient Near East consisted of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and parts of Turkey, Iran, and Syria), ancient Egypt, Elam, Media, Parthia, Persia (parts of modern-day Iran), Asia Minor/Anatolia (the major part of modern-day Turkey), the Armenian highlands (modern-day Armenia, parts of Turkey, Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan), the Levant (modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan), Cyprus, and the Arabian Peninsula.

However, for the purposes of this post, we will discuss three main regions—Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine.

Sources of Information Regarding Daily Life in the Ancient Near East

In order to reconstruct the manner of daily life in the Ancient Near East, it is necessary to piece together evidence from many different sources.

In Egypt, painted tomb pictures or reliefs, which are sculptures consisting of shapes carved on a surface so as to stand out from the surrounding background, are a major source of information about daily life.

These depict the habits of the people from all walks of life, their dresses, tools, furniture, houses, and also the different occupations of life.

In Mesopotamia, the source material is more limited. Pictures on cylinder seals, statues, and reliefs, provide some of the information needed to describe the habits and customs of daily life of that country. Other evidence comes from legal, religious, and business documents.

Palestine and Syria have an almost complete absence of pictorial evidence of daily life. So, the source of information largely depends on archaeological evidence and analogies from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Fortunately, the latter two give information through pictures and descriptions of Palestinians.

Of great value also for understanding daily life are the objects preserved in the ruins of the Ancient Near East such as household vessels, tools, weapons, toilet articles, jewellery, and other objects used in daily life.

In speaking of the Ancient Near East, this post will on the time from about 2000 B.C. to 500 B.C. What is meant by B.C.? I will now explain.

A Brief Word About Chronology

B.C. means Before Christ. That is, the year 2022 is properly known as 2022 A.D., where A.D. is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase Anno Domini which means “in the year of [our] Lord.”

So, 1 A.D. is meant to be the year Christ was born on earth and 50 B.C. means 50 years before Christ was born.

Note that after the year 1 A.D. was established it was later found that Christ was born a few years earlier in 5 B.C.

Daily Life in Egypt

What follows in the description of the daily life of the Egyptian, peasant, craftsman, and nobleman reflects the conditions of the times of Moses, a leader of Ancient Israel. The daily life in Moses’ time was not much different from the conditions, customs, and habits of Abraham in an earlier time.

Who was Abraham? He was a godly man called by the true God, Jehovah, to be the ancestor of Christ and of the nation of Israel, which would consist of the descendants of Abraham.

The Daily Life of the Egyptian Peasant

In the period under discussion in this post, the vast majority of Egyptians were peasants, that is, they belonged to a class of low social status.

Sources of Information About an Egyptian Peasant’s Daily Life

The peasants were a voiceless group of people in that they had no scribes (secretaries) to tell the story of the joy and woes of their daily life to later generations through literary writings. Neither did they have any means to build tombs with wall pictures telling their life story.

Thus, what we today know about the daily life of Egyptian peasants, who were the great majority of Egyptians, comes from the remarks and pictures of higher-class people. And the higher class mentioned their less-privileged fellow citizens and depicted their lives only where it had some relationship to themselves.

An Egyptian Peasant’s Daily Life of Farming

Sometimes these peasants owned a tiny piece of land from whose harvest of crops from a daily life of toil they had to pay high taxes, typically as much as twenty percent.

If they did not own land, the peasants served either a rich landlord, a temple, or the king in their daily life. They made a living by tilling the soil of the one whom they served and, in return, being fed by the one for whom they performed this service.

The Houses of Egyptian Peasants

The daily life of Egyptian peasants, that is, the ordinary man, was very simple. They lived in a small hut made of mud bricks. The roof was flat and consisted of layers, the lowest layer being beams of acacia wood, and above that a layer of matting, which was material woven together to form a mat. Lastly, the uppermost layers consisted of clay.

A single opening in the hut served as a door and smaller openings as windows. Privacy in daily life inside the hut was guaranteed by matting made of reeds, hung vertically, and which could be rolled up.

The Furniture of Egyptian Peasants

All that a daily of toil of most Egyptian peasants could afford was a bed which consisted of a wooden frame on four legs. For a mattress, strips of leather were stretched crosswise the wooden frame. And for a pillow, that is, a headrest, this was made of wood or baked clay as a cushion.

In addition, some peasants’ daily life of toil, afforded them low chairs and small tables, maybe a wooden box to store valuables, and a spare piece of cloth as a garment.

Other Implements of Egyptian Peasants

There were other implements used in the daily life of an ordinary peasant’s home. These were such things as pottery, cooking pots, jars used as containers for water, grain, legumes, or other foodstuff.

Other items useful for daily life were a wooden comb with long teeth, two millstones use for making flour, some simple tools for work in the field such as a wooden plough, a few bronze sickles to harvest the grain they had planted, as well as a bronze knife.

Also, the typical peasant had for use in daily life, nets to catch birds in the marshes and a simple loom on which the women did the weaving.

The Clothing of the Egyptian Peasant

All that the average Egyptian peasant needed for clothing in daily life was a white loincloth for males. This was the standard dress of all Egyptians males from the king down to the peasant. The females, that is, wives and daughters, in their daily life wore long, white dresses.

The Farming Life of the Egyptian Peasant

The peasant’s daily life was a continual struggle to keep alive. Farming life revolved around the annual flooding of the Nile River in late July when the dams which surrounded each field had to be kept in repair.

And there was the necessity of constant vigilance in daily life to ensure that every field got enough of the precious, muddy water that came saturated with fertility laden soil from the Abyssinian highland.

At this time, the fields were sown. When the level of the Nile River fell, the toil of daily life was to pump water to irrigate the fields with the minimum water necessary for successful growth of the crops.

This task of daily life was done by means of a water sweep which was a long pole that pivoted on a high post to lower and raise a bucket that was filled with water from the river or a canal. Such work of daily life had to done until the end of the harvest season in March the following year.

TO BE CONTINUED…