Birth Bricks, Potter’s Wheels, and Exodus 1,16 313 be expected. Egyptian practices, which are more thoroughly attested in a number of different media, provide stronger evidence for explicitly connecting this Hebrew term with a birth brick. 5. Egyptian Birthing Practices Childbirth practices in Egypt are well known and have been the subject of study by Erika Feucht (16). Feucht reconstructs the birthing practices of the Egyptians from a variety of sources. In the practices that can be reconstructed (although practices likely varied somewhat between different classes of women as well as different periods of Egypt’s history), the woman never seems to have given birth in a supine position. Descriptions suggest that she would squat on the floor, squat on two bricks, or sit on a confinement chair. After birth, the child is given a name, the umbilical cord is cut, and the baby is laid upon a cushion on a brick. At this stage, it is important to describe in detail some of the evidence used to reconstruct these birthing practices. Pictorial evidence demonstrates aspects of Egyptian birthing culture. In an ostraca from Deir el-Medina a woman sits in a birthing pavilion, holding up the baby (17). The chair she sits in may be the birthing stool, but this is unclear from the image. However, the similarities in posture with the determinatives for nurse or nursing connects the ostraca strongly with child bearing practices. A similar image is preserved in the royal tomb at Amarna (18). Likewise, a relief from the Temple of Hathor at Dendara depicts the labor process from a squatting position (19). The language used to describe birthing hints at the practices involved. The determinative used with mswt depicts a woman kneeling. The child is depicted being born while the woman is in this position; the head and arms of the child are clearly visible. Feucht suggests that paraphrases for this word were also used by the Egyptians, one of which reads: prj h≥r t3 “come down to the ground”. (16) See E. FEUCHT, Das Kind im Alten Ägypten (New York 1995) and “Birth”, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (ed. D. REDFORD) (Oxford 1999) 192- 193. (17) See R. JANSSEN – J. JANSSEN, Growing Up in Ancient Egypt (London 1990) 5, and G. PINCH, Magic in Ancient Egypt (Austin 1994) 127. (18) JANNSEN – JANSSEN, Growing Up in Ancient Egypt, 4-6. (19) Z. HAWASS, Silent Images (Cairo 1995) 82.