The monarchs and nobility were at the top of the social structure in ancient Egypt and were supposed to serve as role models for the rest of the people concerning the will of the gods and one’s proper response to their many blessings. The king (or queen) set the standard which others were to emulate.
Not all the members of the upper-class lived up to this responsibility but were idealized as doing so in the artwork they commissioned and so were depicted as paragons of virtue, no matter how they had actually conducted themselves. This paradigm held, not only for the nobility, but for the lower classes in that statuary of servants and peasant farmers present the same ideal vision: how one was supposed to be, not necessarily how they were, although aspects of the physical depictions – such as facial features – are understood as accurate representations.
The social hierarchy in ancient Egypt descended from top to bottom:
- Monarch (king or queen, only known as pharaoh beginning with the New Kingdom, c. 1570 - c. 1069 BCE)
- Vizier
- Members of the Court
- Priests and Scribes
- Regional Governors
- Military Officers (generals, especially, after the New Kingdom)
- Artists and Artisans
- Merchants
- Government Overseers and Supervisors
- Peasant Farmers and Servants
- Slaves
Although some social positions, like that of merchants, went up or down during different periods, the social structure remained more or less rigidly along these lines from the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 -c. 2613 BCE) through the Ptolemaic Period (323-30 BCE). The following gallery presents a sampling of the images of many of the best-known and some lesser-known members of the Egyptian upper-class.
