Slave Girl

April 27, 2025

Stephanie looked at herself in the mirror. “Hail, great Ptamuset.” Or not so great. Apparently, Ptamuset had been governor of a somewhat minor district of Egypt; important enough to have a tomb, lowly enough that his collection was endowed to the university instead of to a museum.

It would all end up in a basement somewhere someday, waiting for someone to learn about it and get permission to study it. It probably would have gone straight to a basement if someone hadn’t suggested that if they put the collection on display they could turn the opening night into a fund raiser. Then somebody suggested that the staff should wear costumes.

The loincloth of her slave girl costume showed a lot of thigh. She turned and looked over her shoulder; a risqué amount of butt cheek showed from either side of the back covering. The sort of thing that may raise some concerns but it was historically accurate – she thought.

She got her phone from her purse and scrolled through the pictures. She stopped at one that had been cataloged as ‘Slaves going to market’. When the idea of costumes had been suggested she took a quick picture of it. A quick and blurry picture. She saw nothing wrong with her costume, but was beginning to wonder if she could use historical accuracy as an excuse.

Her long coat covered most of her outfit. Hopefully nobody would notice the sandals. Her keys were in her purse. Most of the history staff would still be at home getting ready. She hoped none of her friends would see her crossing campus and stop her.

She let herself in Danby Hall and headed for the back foyer where the displays were set up. She had worked on the display to represent Ptamuset’s office. There was a display that was supposed to depict his home and one for more general artifacts. He probably owned slaves but not enough for the picture she sought to be there. She let herself into the rear foyer and turned right towards the general collection.

There was a lot to see here – not well organized – but a picture would most likely be displayed on a wall. She circled the wall and easily found the picture of the slaves. She snickered at the sight of it. A hundred years ago this would have been considered pornographic; today it was questionable but all of the naughty bits were covered. Thousands of years ago it would have been common place. If anything, the costume she had on under her coat was a more modest version of what some of the girls in the picture wore. She had put on eye makeup more in line with pictures of royals that she had seen and could see it was a bit much for her presumed status, but other than that she was fairly authentic.

“Slave Hobbles” a sign on the display case under the picture read. Some ornate bindings were in the case. She looked back at the picture and saw some of the figures wearing bindings on their upper arms and thighs. She had assumed it was rope from the picture she had taken, but that was blurry.

Stephanie fingered through the key ring she still held and got to some of the smaller keys. Would any of them… the second one she tried opened the display case. She had experience handling artifacts, so didn’t feel guilty about picking up a set of thigh cuffs to examine. They were smooth to the touch. There was engraving along the outside – artwork, not hieroglyphs. As she turned it in her hand to study the pictures her finger brushed a catch on the inside and the cuff unexpectedly popped open. She studied the other cuff and found a similar catch.

It had to be done. Her coat was removed and tossed across a nearby display case and she was very shortly binding her legs together. A slave certainly couldn’t run away very fast with these on, she thought as she paced the room.

As expected, the arm restraints opened the same way. She shut one just over her left elbow. The picture showed the chains running behind the bound slaves back. Taking the other cuff in her left hand she could bend her arm behind her and reach her right arm. The chain was about the same length as her forearm, making it just within reach. When secured her elbows were bound close to her hips. She would be able to serve a tray of food or do light housecleaning with little difficulty. She could not easily rebel against her master or run away. She could almost write a research paper on these bindings alone.

“Not all slaves are depicted as wearing hobbles,” she read, “so it is uncertain if all slaves were hobbled. If it was not a standard practice then there has been no indication as to why any particular slave was chosen to wear them.”

Well, duh, to keep them from running away. Something like this was probably commonplace in ancient Egypt so there wouldn’t be any detailed explanation of their use given in old papyri. Looking up more picture of slave markets would probably give her an idea of where she would most likely find more writings on topic. And they may have used terminology that we wouldn’t use today to describe these.

“The release catches being inside the binding, they would be unreachable when locked around the appropriate limb. It has been theorized that the master would have a special key, possibly working by magnetism, to release a slave,” she continued reading. “However, no such device has ever been found. Other scholars have proposed that these bindings were only used when the slave was to be kept permanently hobbled.”

Stephanie read the paragraph a second time.

“Crap!”