Figure 1.--This cosmetic container in the form of a carved boxwood statuette provides some hints as to girls' clothing in ancient Egypt. The statuette stands on a rectangular wooden pedestal. Her head is shaved except for one lock of hair painted on the right side. We thought this is how boys had their hair done, but apparently girls as well. The right ear is missing and there is a small circular hole on both sides of the head. There is an ivory mushroom-shaped stud in the left ear lobe. The face is finely carved and painted using black and white paint. There is a necklace, incised and painted, tied at the back of the neck with a pendant in the shape of the god Bes. A girdle is painted in gold around the waist; some of the paint has worn away. The black area in the genital are suggests that she is a teenager, but given her head hair style probably a younger teen. The girl is carrying a large jar with both hands and balanced on her left hip. This suggests that we are seeing the depiction of an ordinary Egyptian girl. The lid of the jar pivots open; it has a small ivory stud on the lid and another on the side of the jar. The jar is where the cosmetics for an elegabt lady would have been stored. It is dated to New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, Amenhotep III/Amenophis III/Nebmaatr (about 1370 BC). The statuette is thought to have come from the tomb of Meryptah, Sheikh `Abd El-Qurna. Meryptah was the chancellor and chief priest of Amun under Amenhotep III. Put your cursor on the image to see another angle. Source: It is now at Oriental Museum, Durham University, UK.

We are not entirely sure about gender differences concerning clothing. Each gender was most likely to wear the same clothing worn by their like-gender parents. we know of no specific child garments for either girls or boys. The basis difference for children is as described above, children often did not wear any clothes. Here we are not sure to what extent this was affected by gender. We suspect that it was more common for girls to wear some minimal clothing, especially older girls. We notice a sculpture which looks to be a teenager wearing no clothing at all (figure 1). She is an ordinary girl. The neclace suggests she is notalave girl. While she has no clothing, she does have a necklace and waist string. We are not sure how common this was, but it may have ben more common for girls thn boys. This may be due to the fact that men often toiled naked in the fields, but women doing their chores in the home were more likely to be clothed. Clothing children may have been largely a matter of temperature and special occassions. Egypt of course has a warm climate, but there are temperture differences and some cool nights. Any there were special days and celebrations in which people may have dressed up, including the children. This would have affected both genders. We suspect that girls may have been more interested in clothing and an earlier age, just because that is true of girls in modern society. Girls seem to mature a little earlier than boys which seems to be a bilogical, not societal function. Social class factors may also have been involved. Despite the Egyptian interest in fashion, they were inevitably plain and simple. This my have been a fashion preference, but because mothers in the home made the clohing,anything beyond basic and simple may have been beyond the means at hand in most households.