Dancing in taverns and at private parties was segregated by sex. Unmixed wine was drunk at upper- and middle-class parties, which often lasted all night. Egypt produced great quantities of good wine and imported more from Greece. Without the papyrus scrolls that were traded for Greek wine, we would know little or nothing of Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and scores of other ancient authors. Nor would we have had the first two scrolls written with such desperate clarity by the brain-damaged mercenary who called himself Latro.

Marriage in ancient Egypt was casual in the extreme. Polygamy was common in both the middle and upper classes. A man's chief wife, his hemet, was usually, although not always, his first. A queen of Egypt-Nefertiti is a famous example-was the chief wife of the pharaoh. Our puritanical Egyptologists frequently characterize lesser wives as concubines, but this is incorrect; they too were wives (hebswt). A man of wealth spoke of his wives, not of his wife and his concubines.

No ceremony, religious or civil, was required for marriage. Marriage contracts were negotiated only when property was involved. Marriage normally required the consent of the bride's parents or her guardians, as well as that of the bride herself. Many girls married at twelve.

The "singing girls" who figure so largely in this scroll are ignored or disguised by most of our writers on ancient Egypt. A famous picture found in a Theban tomb shows a half-dozen richly dressed women singing, clapping, and playing musical instruments while two naked girls, smaller in the picture because they were less important, dance. The books that reproduce it, or more often some part of it, rarely explain it. The well-dressed ladies are guests at a party. The naked dancers are singing girls, hired entertainers.