NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 4 Fig. 4.33, Daily items used by the Egyptians — THINK ABOUT IT

Book page 88 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

Observe the images given above. What do they tell you about Egyptian fashion?

Answer

First, what Fig. 4.33 actually shows — three objects:

A red pottery jar, round-bodied with a small spout and handles at the top, painted with dark bird figures around its shoulder.
A coiled reed basket with a fitted lid, oval, woven in fine close rows.
A pair of sandals plaited from reed or palm fibre, with a plaited sole, a woven border and a toe-post thong — very like the chappal shape still worn in India.

What they tell you about Egyptian fashion — five things, each tied to something visible:

What you can see	What it tells you
Sandals, not closed shoes	Dress suited a hot, dry climate — open footwear, feet exposed, nothing heavy or insulating
Reed and palm fibre, not leather or metal	Fashion used local plant materials — the same river-valley plants that gave them papyrus for writing. What grew beside the Nile is what they wore
The plaiting is fine, even, and bordered	These are skilled craft products, made by specialists. Everyday things were made carefully and meant to look good, not merely to function
The pot is painted with birds; the basket is patterned in its weave	A taste for decoration on ordinary objects. Egyptians did not keep beauty for temples and tombs; they put it on the pot in the kitchen
The basket has a lid and the jar a narrow mouth	Objects made for storing and keeping things clean — a settled household with possessions worth putting away

Read this against the rest of the chapter. Fig. 4.29 shows Ani and his wife in fine white linen with collars and wigs; Fig. 4.34 shows Cleopatra painted on a temple wall in a patterned gown with a headdress and beaded jewellery. Fig. 4.33 shows the other end of the same wardrobe — the sandals and household goods of ordinary life. Put together, they say that Egyptian dress ran from plain plaited reed to gold and fine linen, and that the difference between the two was rank.

Q2.

Which social classes do you think used these items?

Answer

Most likely the middle and lower tiers of Fig. 4.32 — the free landholders, artisans and merchants, and the serfs and slaves — with the plainer versions of these same objects reaching every household in Egypt.

Item	Most likely users	Reason
Reed sandals	All classes, but as the ordinary footwear of working people	Made of a cheap, locally abundant material. Sandals of gilded leather existed for royalty; plaited reed is the everyday form
Coiled reed basket	Free landholders, artisans, merchants; also servants storing household goods	Baskets carry and store grain, bread, tools and cloth — the objects of daily work
Painted pottery jar	A household that could afford a decorated pot rather than a plain one — an artisan, merchant or landholding family	The painting is extra work, so it costs more than plain ware, but clay is cheap and the vessel is a working container, not a treasure

Who probably did not use them — and this is the sharper half of the answer. The pharaoh and the highest nobles are unlikely to have used these particular objects. Their possessions were of gold, precious stone, fine linen and imported wood, and they were buried with them. A reed sandal and a clay pot belong to a working household. But note the caution: the classes overlap, and a fine painted jar may well have stood in a wealthy house too.

Q3.

What clues in the images help you to make this guess? Try to explain your reasoning based on the materials, designs, or accessories shown in the pictures.

Answer

Three clues, and here is the reasoning that runs from each one to the conclusion:

Clue in the image	The reasoning	Conclusion
Material. Reed, palm fibre and clay — no gold, no silver, no ivory, no fine imported wood	Value in an object comes largely from how scarce and far-travelled its material is. These three materials all grew or were dug within sight of the river	Everyday goods, affordable to ordinary households
Design. Plain shapes doing plain jobs — a lidded box, a jar with a narrow mouth, a flat sole with a toe-post	Nothing here is ceremonial. Every feature serves use: the lid keeps out dust, the narrow mouth slows evaporation, the toe-post keeps the sandal on while walking	Objects made to be used daily, not displayed
Workmanship. Even coiling, a neat woven border, careful painted birds	This is skilled work, so the owner was not destitute — but the skill has been spent on cheap material, which is the signature of a craftsman working for ordinary customers	The middle tier of the pyramid: artisans, merchants and landholding families

The general rule to state. Archaeologists judge status from material first, workmanship second, and rarity third. Gold from far away in a fine setting means high rank; local clay well made means a comfortable working household; local clay crudely made means little means at all. Fig. 4.33 sits squarely in the middle band.

Say where the reasoning could go wrong. Three honest limits. (i) Survival bias — reed and cloth rot; what survives is not a fair sample of what was used. (ii) Findspot unknown — the figure does not say whether these came from a workman's village or a royal tomb, and rich burials often contained ordinary objects for use in the next life. (iii) The same object can cross classes — a wealthy Egyptian also owned baskets. So the right form of the answer is 'these are most likely everyday objects of the middle and lower classes', not 'these prove they were poor'. Marking the limits of an inference is part of making it well.

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