Standing by the Nile, two women in local dress display their water jars. Of the women of rural Egypt, Edward W. Lane, in his Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) wrote: "The women of the lower orders seldom pass a life of inactivity. Some of them are even condemned to greater drudgery than the men. Their chief occupations are the preparing of the husband's food, fetching water (which they carry in a large vessel on the head), spinning cotton, linen, or woollen yarn, and making the fuel called "gelleh," which is composed of the dung of cattle, kneaded with chopped straw, and formed into round flat cakes . . . . They are in a state of much greater subjection to their husbands than is the case among the superior classes."

• Silver gelatin on glass
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