Magical Birth Bricks

Looking into how Ancient Egyptians gave birth, I wasn’t expecting to run into magical birth bricks. But here we are.

The standard practice of childbirth in ancient Egypt has long been known from papyrus texts. A woman would deliver her baby while squatting on two large bricks, each colorfully decorated with scenes to invoke the magic of gods for the health and happiness of mother and child.

But archaeologists had never laid their hands on a single one of these magical ”birth bricks” until last year. In excavations at Abydos, ruins of an ancient city in southern Egypt, archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania have uncovered such a brick, 14 by 7 inches, among artifacts from a 3,700-year-old house.

Ancient ‘Birth Bricks’ Found in Egypt.  John Noble Wilford.  The New York Times.  August 6, 2002, Section F, Page 4.

Alas, I have not found a picture of the magical birthing brick (yes, just one was found) that is under a Creative Commons or similar license, but you can find the images in the articles I link to. The picture above is for regular bricks but gives an idea of the size, shape, and materials.

The idea is that a birthing woman would have two, one under each foot. She’d somehow balance and squat and give birth that way. Ummm, sure. Some other interpretations are that the bricks would be for laying the newborn on in a religious ritual.

Then there is this. A “modern” (1880’s) woman birthing with her hands and knees supported on top of a cloth covering two piles each consisting of three large bricks. Her toes barely touch the ground. I suppose it’s possible that some births are acrobatic feats, but… But. (My concern is not so much the position (which appears to have merits) but the precariousness of the bricks and being on tippy toes.)

Births in all but the last couple of centuries in the West (and more recently around the world) are often done in a squatting position, usually supported. Some are standing. Others are on hands and knees. We also see semi-reclined and side laying. A post with an amazing assortment of pictures and descriptions comes from The Well Rounded Mama.

A birthing stool or chair is a very common tool. Its support is to the butt or upper legs. Additional support (including from the floor/ground) can be to the knees or hands. More importantly, other women were there to help. Often by sitting (or sometimes standing) behind the birthing woman.

The Hebrew term for “birth stool” in Exod 1:16, obnayim, means literally “two stones.” It may refer to the primitive form of the birth stool, which was simply two bricks (or stones) placed under each of the buttocks of the woman in labor. Such birth stools are depicted in the later forms of the hieroglyphic symbol for “birth” and are referred to in ancient Egyptian folk sayings, such as “He left me like a woman on the bricks.” Ancient Egyptian pictorial art shows that the two bricks were replaced by a chair with an opening in the middle (like a toilet seat) through which, with the help of gravity, the mother could push out her baby into the deft hands of the midwives.

Puah: Bible, in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.  Mayer I. Gruber, updated by Tamar Kamionkowski.  Last updated June 23, 2021.  

So here we have birthing bricks (the magic is optional). No balancing acts. Just solid and practical support. In older Egyptian depictions, the birthing woman is kneeling with her arms free. While we don’t see the birth stool, it must be there, because the baby is able to emerge under its mother’s body. This is a more detailed version of the hieroglyph.

We also see more squatting positions.

Birth chairs and backless birthing stools help people feel balanced and supported in an upright position as they give birth. With three or four legs, they usually feature a semicircular cutout on the seat. The position of the body in the birthing chair not only makes use of gravity as the baby drops from the womb and emerges through the vagina, but also maximizes the ability of muscles (abdominal, back, stomach, legs, arms, and vaginal sphincter) to efficiently work in concert. Babylonian birthing chairs date back to 2000 BCE. An Egyptian wall relief dating to 1450 BCE in the birth room of the Luxor temple shows Queen Mutemwia giving birth to her son, Amenhotep III. A birthing chair is also depicted on a Greek votive from 200 BCE. Some millennia-old birthing stools from Britain were designed to be carried while disassembled, suggesting that they belonged to midwives rather than individual households.

Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History. An excerpt from “Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births.” Michelle Millar Fisher & Amber Winick.   September 14, 2021. The MIT Press.

References

• Ancient ‘Birth Bricks’ Found in Egypt.  John Noble Wilford.  The New York Times.  August 6, 2002, Section F, Page 4.
• Childbirth Magic: Deciphering Bed Figurines from Ancient Egypt.  Charlotte Rose.  Penn Museum.  Volume 58, Issue 3.  Originally Published in 2017.
• Bricks of birth: “The names of the three bricks upon which Mary gave birth”. Markéta Preininger. The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Roman and Early Islamic Egypt.  7th January 2020. 
• The Magic of Birth and Bricks.  The Pennsylvania Gazette. 01 Mar 2003.
• A Decorated Birth Brick from South Abydos: New Evidence on Childbirth and Birth Magic in the Middle Kingdom. Josef Wegner, University of Pennsylvania.  In Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt, Yale Egyptological Seminar (June 15, 2009), edited by David P. Silverman, William Kelly Simpson, Josef Wegner.
• The physical activity of parturition in ancient Egypt: textual and epigraphical sources.  Susanne Töpfer, Institute of Egyptology, University of Heidelberg. Dynamis vol.34 no.2 Granada, 2014.
• Puah: Bible, in The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.  Mayer I. Gruber, updated by Tamar Kamionkowski.  Last updated June 23, 2021.  
• Birthing chair. Wikipedia.
• Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History. An excerpt from “Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births.” Michelle Millar Fisher & Amber Winick.   September 14, 2021. The MIT Press.
• Historical and Traditional Birthing Positions.  The Well-Rounded Mama Blog.  Pamela Vireday. March 18, 2015.
• Labor among primitive peoples. Showing the development of the obstetric science of to-day, from the natural and instinctive customs of all races, civilized and savage, past and present (1883). George Julius Engelmann. Second Edition— Revised, Enlarged and Re-Arranged. St. Louis: J. H. Chambers & Co. 1883.