Transcriber’s Note: The original copy of this book wasn’t very well proofread, if at all. A large number of printing errors have been corrected, including transposed full lines of text. In one place (noted below) at least one line was omitted completely: it wasn’t possible to source another edition to check what the missing words might have been. The spelling and hyphenation of Egyptian names are often inconsistent.

Cleopatra.

PREDECESSORS
OF CLEOPATRA

BY
LEIGH NORTH

5 Drawings by G. A. Davis

BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO.
AT
835 BROADWAY, N. Y.
1906

Copyrighted, 1906.
by
Broadway Publishing Co.,

All Rights Reserved.

TO
MY HUSBAND

INTRODUCTION.

In attempting even a brief and imperfect outline of the history of Egyptian queens the author has undertaken no easy task and craves indulgence for its modest fulfillment. The aim has been merely to put the little that is known in a readable and popular form, to gather from many sources the fragments that remain, partly historic, partly legendary, of a dead past. To present—however imperfectly—sketches of the women who once lived and breathed as Queens of Egypt, which has been more ably and completely done—as the period was less remote and the sources of information fuller, for their royal sisters of other lands.

A short article published some years ago in Lippincott’s Magazine may be said to be the nucleus of the present volume, the writer’s interest in the subject having been awakened by the study necessary to its preparation.

We enter a house through the portico or vestibule. We form acquaintances on somewhat the same principle. We begin perhaps with the weather, we exchange comments on trifles, we pass through an introductory stage of intercourse before we reach the real heart of the man or woman who, in time, becomes our dearest friend. Skip the introduction if you will, busy reader, but metaphorically it forms the portico or vestibule of the Egyptian House.

From the darkness which envelopes the centuries modern research has brought to light much that was unknown or forgotten. With almost the creative touch it has made the dry bones to live again and link by link drawn out the long chain of the years. What was once a mere roll of names with a wide hiatus here and there has grown to be a record of the words and deeds of men of like passions with ourselves. We feel once more in touch with the past, as it is the aim of the highest altruism to beat responsive to the heart of the present and the by-gone faces look forth by the side of modern man and claim the universal brotherhood.

Well may we marvel at the faith, the patience, the ingenuity which has unraveled so much of the tangled skein in “The Story of the Nations.” Like Cuvier, from a single bone elaborating a whole animal, the Egyptologist has patiently evolved from shreds of parchment, from fragments of pottery, from broken plinth and capital a more or less complete whole. He has woven a tapestry from which some of the figures start forth with a lifelike vigor.

Few countries claim such antiquity as Egypt and of none were the estimated dates more widely apart. Sometimes involving periods of hundreds and thousands of years. An accumulation of difficulties meets the student as it does the explorer. A cycle of time, beside which modern life seems like a single breath. A language, at first indecipherable, and even now imperfectly read. The hasty guesses of scholars anxious to prove some point or be in the vanguard of discovery; broken monuments, rifled tombs, and inscriptions, mutilated, erased and altered by the monarchs of succeeding generations. Among all these difficulties lies the way. But with patience and care we are rewarded and with “imagination for a servant,” not a master, one “arrives,” as the French say (at least in a measure), at last.

The list of authorities consulted by the author would be too long to enumerate, but among them may be mentioned Rawlinson, Wilkinson, Maspero, Erman, Ebers and later Edwards, Sayce, Petrie and Mahaffy, whose interest is so absorbing and the researches of some of whom are of such recent date. To these may be added the study of all available pictures and photographs, and the experiences of late travel and travellers.

CONTENTS.

Predecessors of Cleopatra.

CHAPTER FIRST.
THE BLACK LAND.

Kem, “the Black Land,” in hieroglyphic, or Kemi, in the later and more familiar demotic, was so called from its dark and fruitful soil, a loam, which turned up freshly, after a recent inundation of the Nile, has, as one traveller describes it, “a brown and velvety lustre.”

Through it winds and flows the great river of which Homer speaks as “Egypt’s Heaven descended stream” and that more than any other has set its stamp upon the country and its inhabitants. So potent for weal or woe is it that one scarce wonders it was worshipped as a deity, and the Arabs call it “El Bahari,” the sea. It is difficult to find the word travel in their language, with the Egyptian it is always up and down stream. From the river he drew the fish which formed part of his daily food, its fructifying waters, spreading over the land, called forth abundant harvests, and from the mud on its banks he built the hut in which he lived, or manufactured the bricks for the construction of his tomb or other more ambitious edifice. The rushes that grew beside it furnished his writing material, and its muddy or turbid water, as a beverage, had for him the charm of a crystal rill.

Leigh Hunt says of the Nile:

“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;

And times and things as in that vision seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands.”

The Nile has been said to be less like a river than a sinuous lake with islands and sand-bars interspersed.

The sacred name of the Nile was “Hapi, the Concealed.” The early Egyptians believed that its source was in fountains, bottomless and far away, and the tears of the goddess Isis caused its ebb and flow. The explorations of comparatively modern travellers have solved the mystery of its being, and to-day we know that it springs from great lakes which their discoverers named respectively, Victoria and Albert Nyanza.

Of the three great rivers, the Nile, the Mississippi, and the Amazon, the first is the longest, the second has the largest number of ramifications, and the third the greatest volume of water.

A Nilometer, a pillar standing in a pit, chronicles the rise of the tide, and great festivities attended the opening of the canals which were dug in all directions to carry its beneficent stream. A human victim was sacrificed to appease the river god. A young girl was each year dedicated to this purpose. Bound to a stake, adorned with flowers, and hailed as “Aruseh, the bride of the Nile,” she stood and watched the on-coming flood which was to shut out for her the light of day. Perhaps it was in the terror with which the bounding pulses of youth must ever regard the great Destroyer. Perhaps with the heroic spirit of a martyr she awaited her fate, glorying in it and giving herself up a willing sacrifice, as the Hindoo woman is said occasionally to have done in the Suttee, when she cast herself on the funeral pile of her husband.

It was a Mohammedan general who put an end to this annual tragedy and refused to permit the usual offering. The river delayed its rising, and the murmurs of the people waxed loud against him. In this dilemma he appealed to the Kadlif Omar, he who destroyed the Alexandria library, saying that if it agreed with the Koran it was useless to preserve it, and if it differed it was pernicious. But in this matter he showed himself larger-minded. He obligingly wrote a letter which was cast into the water and ran thus: A. D. 640, “From Abd Allah Omar, Prince of the Faithful, to the Nile of Egypt. If thou flow of thine own accord, flow not, but if it be Allah, the One, the Mighty, who causeth thee to flow, then we implore Him to make thee flow.”

The prayer was successful and the inundation began. Henceforth a mud pillar, originally no doubt in human form, and still called “the Bride of the Nile,” was substituted for a trembling maiden, and melted away before the encroaching stream. At the inundation the land looks like a marsh, the towns, etc., being just above the level of the water, and even now the crier announces the rise of the current.

The juncture of the White and Blue Nile shows the difference in the tint of the water for some time after. The Nile has no tides. The dews are heavy in Lower Egypt and the nights cool and refreshing, while the temperature is, as a rule, most agreeable. From the low, long, level shore and with a coast line much the same as three thousand years ago, we follow the river through a fertile valley, which in time narrows between mountains and table-lands of sand. At the cataracts the stream surges and swells round little rocky islands and the rapids cause navigation to be difficult if not dangerous.

The Delta, so called from its resemblance to the Greek letter, is a level plain, highly cultivated, varied by lofty dark brown, ancient mounds, on which villages are often built, surrounded by palm trees. The Greeks and Romans divided Egypt into the Delta, or Lower Egypt, and the Thebaid or Upper. The rocks are generally of limestone, till one reaches Thebes, and then they are of sandstone, while at the first Cataract red granite bursts through the sandstone. The granite is yellowish or reddish, with no vegetation on the rocks. The drifts of yellow sand are everywhere. In some parts the mountains are three hundred feet high, and at Thebes they rise to four times that height. On the eastern side they are close to the water, while on the western they are further from the edge. What is called the Fayum is a fertile tract in the hollow of the desert, while at the furthest extremity is a lake of brackish water.

Upper Egypt is bounded by mountains, through which the river has cut its way, their height overshadowing it, but not rising into sharp peaks. It is narrow and cultivated. From the mouth of the Nile to the first cataract is six hundred miles of fertile valley, and it is said that the scenery of the first cataract resembles nothing but that of the second.

The beauty of Egypt is in its coloring. The small proportion of green is compensated for by its intensity. Over the velvet soil hangs a sky of turquoise blue, the sand sparkles like precious stones and the clear air is luminous. “The land where it is always afternoon” might almost be named the golden land. The traveller with the poetic or enthusiastic temperament revels in the delicate variety of its hues. He sees the sun turning the sands to gold, the river reflecting the sky, the blue lotus blossoms and the reeds, the picturesque buffaloes standing in the water with sleepy blue eyes and the vivid green of wheat fields. Another describes the rusty gold of the Libyan rocks, the paler hue of the driven sand slopes, the warm mauve of the nearer Pyramid, which from a distance is a tender rose, like the bloom of an apricot, in delicate tone against the sky. Low on the horizon, soft and pearly tints, blue and luminous at the zenith, while opalescent shadows, pale blue and violet and greenish grey, nestle in the hollows of the rocks and curves of the sand drifts. Lakelike plains, with palm groves and corn flats, relieve the glowing distance. Even in the moonlight one seems to see the color.

From the top of the Pyramids the valley of the Nile looks like a carpet of rich green, the groves of palm trees like figures woven in deeper tints. Another speaks of the palms as sculptured in jasper and malachite against the rosy evening sky.

A sense of rest and tranquillity pervades the mind.

“Straight in his ears the gushing of the wave

Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave.”

Even the conscience slumbers. But the prosaic traveller hurries through all with unseeing eyes. Like the tourist who visited Cologne and was too sleepy to get up and look at the Cathedral, he gapes at the Pyramids, viewing them perhaps as “warts on the face of creation,” and sees no glory in the heavens, no beauty in the earth, the story of the ages has no charm for him.

Long before “Once upon a time,” if such a period can be conceived of, the great monuments were raised, the colossal temples were built, which have been the wonder of all succeeding centuries, and yet still back of and beyond that, stretching away to the confines of Eternity, we picture to ourselves the land as it then was, without these marvels of Art, when Nature ruled supreme. Then as now the plains stretched out, the yellow cliffs rose against the azure sky, the desert spread afar, the purple cloud of the simoom hovered over it. The sun sank in splendor of violet, rose and gold, the torn and ragged sides of the mountains poured down their torrents of shining sand, the fissures burning with a crimson lustre. The splendor passed and ashy paleness followed; then a second paler but intense yellow hue, ere the stars shone out. And ever the Nile calm and unruffled swept on with its eternal flow, while the air breathed balm. Sometimes the waters gained, sometimes the sand. The byblos or papyrus, now almost extinct, abounded; along the waters edge forests and reeds, later destroyed, were plentiful, and wild bear, hippopotami and crocodiles whose ancient haunts know them no more, roved freely. The lakes abounded with fish, pelicans and ducks lived on the shores, and turtle doves brooded on the palm trees. The language of Egypt has been changed once, the religion twice, but the natural conditions remain steadfast.

Before Menes, the first king of whom any distinct record has yet been recovered, man, civilized man, possessed the earth. In tracing the course of Egyptian history we never, as with many other nations, seem to reach primeval humanity. Like Minerva, springing ready armed from the brain of Jupiter, the earliest Egyptian known is in a measure civilized. The wild savage, who develops into the more perfect man, exists in theory, but we cannot lay our hand upon him. Some authorities, as Professor Petrie, attribute the beginning of Egyptian civilization, as the Greeks found it, to Mesopotamian influences, and think the conquering race came over the Red Sea and the conquered were of the same general type as the Libyans of North Africa. But none of these stories have yet been proved beyond the possibility of differing opinion by other students. Strabo said “The Egyptians lived from the first under a regular form of government, they were a people of civilized manners and settled a well-known country.”

Claiming to be the most ancient of peoples the old story tells how the Egyptians yet yielded their pretensions to the Phrygians. The king caused a shepherd to bring up two children, nursed by a goat, and to observe what word they first spoke. Running towards him they cried “Beccos,” the Phrygian for bread, which decided the question, but the wise mother goat perhaps considered they were but imitating her “ba-a!”

The early Egyptian believed that Osiris and Isis, brother and sister, as also husband and wife, were the children of Seb (Saturn), and Nepthys was the sister of Isis. The two were called “the incubators,” who spread their wings over the mummy to impart new life, Isis, represented as a female figure, wearing on her head the pshent or crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, was the earth, the receptive one, was regarded as the mother of all and held somewhat the position to the Egyptians that Juno did to the Greeks. The Egyptians also believed that the heavens were upheld by four pillars and that the stars were lamps lighted therein at night. Osiris and Isis stood for the Nile and Egypt, and Osiris was the sun’s power, the winter solstice, the birth of Horus the summer solstice, the inundations of the Nile the autumnal Equinox. His gods and goddesses were innumerable, their images existing for him in the shape of various animals and birds, and, among royalties, the ancestors were deified.

We of to-day thrust from us the thought of death, and live as much as may be in the present. Not so the Egyptian, it pervaded his daily life and it shared in his feasts and festivals. It rang in his laughter, “Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die!” and his favorite occupation was the building of his tomb.

No other nation possesses such a variety of monuments, says one writer. Their stone quarries were inexhaustible, their facilities for transportation on the great river unlimited, and the sand and the climate combined to preserve what the hand of man erected. Kings pressed their signets on the mountains that the generations to come might know of them and their power.

The sun and soil of Egypt, we are told, demands one breed of men and will no other. The children of aliens die, and the special race characteristics remain to the present day. The Fellah woman, in the picture often seen, crouching beside the statue of an ancient king, has the same contour of face, the same high cheek bones and nose, and the same immutable expression. As the life rule of Egypt’s great river changes not, year after year repeating the same history, so the race shows the same characteristics, century after century. She shares with China her changelessness. Like Japan, she has her types of face, long, oval, slender, with heavy lidded eyes, and nose characteristically depressed at the tip, with sensitive open nostrils, the under lip slightly projecting, the chin short and square, with a slim square shouldered figure. Or a lower, squatter type, belonging to the plebeian, forehead low, nose depressed and short, face prognathous and sensual-looking, the chin heavy, the jaw large, the lips thick and projecting. Both exist on the earliest monuments and to our own time. One writer thinks that the mummies differ from the Arabs of the present day in having a better balance of the intellectual and moral faculties. It is also said that in men the countenance is narrower than in women. The forehead small and retreating, with a long large black and well-shaped eye, a long nose, with a slight bridge, cheek bones a little prominent, an expressive mouth, with full lips, and white regular teeth, and a small round chin. The complexion of men a dark brown, that of women olive to a pink flesh color. The women and girls are slender, with small straight brows and close lashes on each lid, which gives an animated expression to their almond-shaped eyes, the use of kohl (sometimes said to be sanitary in its effects) enhancing this. The forehead is receding, cheekbones high, the bridge of the nose low, the mouth wide and thick-lipped. The peasantry are darker than the townspeople and the color deepens from pale brown to bronze as you go south.

Co-existent with, prior even, perhaps, to the pyramids is the great Sphinx. Maspero believed that it dated before the time of Menes. Battered, mutilated, time worn, yet rearing itself nobly still with its majestic face in its tranquil grandeur, turned towards the East. Towering sixty feet above one of the sand dunes, with a background of yellow sand or sapphire sky, or whitening in the moonlight against the starlit indigo heavens rises this colossal head and shoulders. “Mutilated though it is,” says one traveller, “the changeless serenity, the eternal repose of the noble countenance impresses and awes all beholders.” The typical sphinx, a male or female head, with an animal’s body, in the Greek “the strangler,” signifies intelligence or force. It was a favorite form in architecture and sometimes the face was a portrait of an existing king or queen. The great Sphinx is said, from an inscription at Edfu, to represent one of the personifications of the god Horus. It was designated as Horem Khou, “Horus on the Horizon,” and bore the shape of a human-headed lion to vanquish Typhon (Set) principle of evil, and turning East awaited the resurrection of his father Osiris. As Horus was supposed to have reigned over Egypt, kings took the name Horus, or “Golden Hawk.”

A picture of the Sphinx, by Elihu Vedder, is very impressive. The great head looms skyward, the desert spreads around, the silence of Eternity broods over all. A crouching figure, old and tattered, kneels before it and lays his ear to the silent lips, as if to learn their hidden secrets.

The land is rich in fruits and vegetables, but it has comparatively few trees, and no great variety of flowers. Palms, sycamores, figs, and accasias are among the most frequent of the former. Vegetables are peas, lentils, leeks, onions, garlic, celery, cucumbers, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, egg-fruit, peppers, etc. Fruits are melons, of which the flesh is often a rich golden color, grapes, dates, almonds, figs, pomegranates, apricots, peaches, etc. The lotus, now comparatively rare, might once have been called the national, as it certainly was the favorite flower. It was used at feasts and for decorations, and its buds, blossoms and leaves were continually reproduced in architectural designs. It was chiefly because the water lily bud opened its petals at sunrise and closed them at sunset that the ancients held it sacred to the sun. Pliny says: “It is reported that in the Euphrates the flower of the lotus plunges into the water at night, remaining there until midnight, and to such a depth that it cannot be reached with the hand. After midnight it begins gradually to rise, and as the sun rises above the horizon the flower also rises above the water, expands and raises itself some distance above the element in which it grows.” “And it was also through this peculiarity,” says another writer, “that Hankerville proved that the Egyptians considered the lily an emblem of the world as it rose from the waters of the deep.”

Other flowers include the rose, jassamine, narcissus, lily, convolvulus, violet, chrysanthemum, geranium, dahlia, basil, etc.

The horse was not an early inhabitant—there were camels, elephants, and cattle of special breeds, doves and other birds and many varieties of fish. A number of animals were tamed in Egypt and some of them would seem to us a singular collection of pets, lions, leopards, monkeys, gazelles and even crocodiles, and, above all, cats were household pets, as were the last two among the sacred animals.

Everywhere possible at the present day excavation is going on. Seventy-five centimes a day was at one time the rate for the diggers and fifty for the children who carried away the baskets of rubbish, the food consisting of bread, water, a few dates, cucumbers or onions, and, rarely if ever, any meat.

“The Nile shore,” says Bayard Taylor, “shows either palm groves, fields of cane or doura, young wheat, or patches of bare sand blown from the desert. The villages have mud walls and the tombs of Moslem saints looking like white ovens. The Arabian and Libyan mountains sweep into the foreground, the yellow cliffs overhang and recede into a violet haze at the horizon, while the blue evening shadows lie on rose-hued mountain walls.”

Life in the East moves more slowly, even in modern times, than in the strenuous West. One traveller playfully remarks that one can perceive in the face after a Nile voyage something of the patience and resignation of the Sphinx, and another says that Egypt is the best place in the world to rest, and recommends that one “go 600 or 700 miles up the Nile before the season opens and occupy a hotel alone. You will find each day at least forty-eight hours long, and you will think of nothing but Egyptian antiquities and Arabs, both of which are wonderfully soothing to the tired mind.”

Egypt may be likened to a woman with coloring and charm, who surpasses sometimes in attraction another of more beautiful and regular form. In this land of golden light, of perpetual sunshine, lived and moved the Egyptian queen. Different and yet the same as her sisters of to-day, now she seemed a goddess in might and beauty, and again as the meanest of her slaves, swayed by ambitions, torn by passions, swept by waves of love and hate—a woman still. Each in turn played her little part on the stage of life and passed beyond the curtain, leaving a few, and but few, traces of her existence. Passed into “the land which loveth silence,” the dim Amenti of the gods.

CHAPTER SECOND.
THE QUEEN.

Egyptian Queens! What a picture their name seems to call up of old time splendors—of the light of Eastern skies, the soft breath of eternal summer—of the great river Nile as a beneficent deity, of monuments and palaces, gardens and waving palm trees—houses with gorgeous coloring, of princes and slaves—all mingled on the tapestry of time!

In an age sometimes called “the Woman’s Era,” when woman has become a subject of analytical study to herself and to man, it may be interesting to turn from the varieties of the “New Woman” to the very old. Even on the borderland of mythology she asserts a strange individuality and is vitalized for us in the pages of history and legend.

The Western woman on the stage of life is ever a prominent figure. The Eastern has held a place in the background, giving glimpses only of her real self, always a veiled form, with dark, shining eyes, merely suggestive of beauty and charm. It may be matter of surprise, therefore, to some, that in the most ancient of lands—or among the most ancient of peoples, Eastern beyond dispute, woman held an almost modern place. In this, in some respects, advanced civilization, religiously, politically and socially she took her share in the world’s work and pleasure, and was deemed, not the ignorant child or inferior of Semitic lands, but the friend, the associate, the equal of man.

The Queen was the companion of her royal spouse, not his mere slave and toy. From the time of the Second Dynasty she frequently ruled, as the king’s guardian in youth, as regent in his absence, or as independent sovereign after his decease, or in right of heredity. The succession was continued on the maternal equally with the paternal side, and it was at times through the female, and not through the male parent, that the king traced his right to the throne.

Among the nobility also the same custom, to a degree, obtained. The son of the eldest daughter was sometimes the heir. Thus we read in the time of Sneferu of his “great legitimate daughter, Nefret-Kari,” and her son was “High Treasurer.” In the hieroglyphic system after female appellations, such as queen, wife, mother, daughter, and the like, the figure of a seated woman appears usually on a modest stool.

On the monuments the queen is always treated as an official personage, she shares the king’s honors and her name, like her husband’s, is enclosed in a cartouch. We know more of her public than of her private life.

As a rule, to which there were exceptions, the king had but one legal wife, of high or royal birth, the daughter of “the god,” as the late king was called, and hence she was in many instances, in the strange Egyptian fashion, her husband’s sister. One needs surely a different standard from the Christian to judge of the morals of Egypt. The marriage of a brother and sister, so abhorrent to our ideas, was frequent in the Royal Family, nor does nature herself, at that period, seem to have set upon it the same mark of disapprobation that one might expect. It began in the heavens with the gods, who, according to Egyptian mythology, did not dwell on earth, and why should not humanity follow their example. Osiris and Isis were both brother and sister, husband and wife. Nor could the gods any more than men get on without magic. Even the statues of the former wore amulets as a protection against evil and death, and used mystic formulae to constrain each other. Isis was above all the mistress of magic and famous in incantations.

To her royal spouse the queen is spoken of as “thy beloved sister who fills the palace with light,” or “thy sister who is in thine heart, who sits near thee at the feast,” or “thy beloved sister with whom thou dost love to speak.” A love song in which the woman seems the wooer is preserved and we give one stanza.

“Thou beloved one my wish is to be with thee as thy wife;

That thy arm may lie upon my arm.

Will not my elder brother come to-night?

Otherwise I am as one who lies in the grave.

For art thou not health and light?”

The other ladies of the harem are also occasionally called sisters. “Sutem Mut” was the Royal Mother, “Sutem Hempt,” the Royal Wife. Under the old empire the queen was spoken of as “she who sees the gods, Horus and Set (that is possessor of both halves of the kingdom), the most pleasant, the highly praised, the friend of Horus, the beloved of Ra, who wears the two diadems.” In the New Empire she was designated as “the consort of the god, the mother of the god, the great consort of the king.” She was eligible to all but the highest offices of the priesthood and held forth or played the sacred sistrum to the gods, sometimes dedicating herself to one deity, while her husband served another, and she deemed it the greatest honor to be called “the concubine of the god.”

All women desired the name of Hathor, Isis, the goddess of Love and Fecundity, as in the Middle Ages the name of Mary, the mother of Christ, was specially cherished. Other popular names under the Old Empire signified “Beautiful,” “Strong,” etc. Under the new we also find “Beautiful,” and in addition the names of trees, somewhat in Japanese fashion, with their “Cherry Blossom” and “Plum Blossom,” as “Beautiful Sycamore,” or, hardly admirable in the eyes of the Greeks or ourselves, “Large Headed,” which some of their coiffures and head ornamentations seemed to suggest.

The sons and daughters of the late king were always called the children of the god. The education of both was conducted by the most learned men of the kingdom, frequently priests, and this tutor was spoken of as the “nurse.” The custom of entrusting the royal ladies to such severe training reminds us of the preceptors and studies of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. The queen held property in her own right. At one time the revenues from the fisheries of Lake Moeris were appropriated to her. A talent a day, or upwards of 700 pounds a year. Also the returns from certain cities; as, for example, the taxes on wines of the city of Anthylla, were a queen’s dowry for her dress, and this privilege was continued to the queens of Persia after Cambyses conquered Egypt.

After death, at least from the Eighteenth Dynasty, divine honors were frequently paid to the queen, and especially was this the case of Queens Aah-hotep and Nefertari, the ancestresses of the race of kings who drove out and succeeded the Hyksos, the usurping rulers, and restored Egypt to its native sovereigns.

The palaces were usually of brick, as the temples were of stone adorned with gorgeously painted walls and furnished with carpets, rugs of skin and ebony and ivory chairs and couches. The queen was attended by slaves, and some favored maid or official bore beside her a fan of ostrich plumes. She wore in later periods the double crown of Egypt and presided beside the king at feasts, where men and women, with unveiled faces (veiling being an introduction of the Persians), enjoyed themselves together. They decorated each other with flowers, which already in profusion adorned the drinking vessels, listened to music and watched the dancing of female slaves, the feats of jugglers, etc. Monkeys were sometimes trained to act as torchbearers, and we can imagine the confusion occasionally engendered when one or another of them, bursting, so to speak, the bands of conventionality, reverted to his naturally mischievous impulses and cast his flaming torch into the midst of the festivities. Lions, leopards, dogs, and the specially sacred cats were all numbered among the pets.

The cat, it is said, was created in the ark, hence the Garden of Eden, “where the comforts of home were incompletely organized,” lacked that ornament of the domestic hearth. But by the Egyptians she was, above all, valued and adored. They mourned for her as for a dear and familiar friend, and woe to the man who, even by accident, compassed her destruction. She is most pleasingly set forth by one who evidently admired and appreciated her:

“A little lion, small and dainty sweet

(For such there be),

With sea-grey eyes and softly stepping feet,

She prayed of me.

For this, through lands Egyptian far away,

She bade me pass;

But in an evil hour I said her nay;

And now, alas!

Far-travelled Nicias hath wooed and won

Arsinoe,

With gifts of furry creatures white and dun

From over sea.”

Till the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty there was little change in female attire. A fine linen garment, through which the limbs could be plainly seen, extended from below the breast to the ankle, sometimes supported by straps over the shoulders, and sometimes so narrow as to require not even these. Colored robes were used less frequently. To the man was left in those days, as to the male bird, the gayer plumage. The woman contented herself with the use of oils and cosmetics, blackening her brows and eyes, leaving her hair flowing, bound by a fillet, or with braided locks, or a wig, and encircling arms and limbs with innumerable chains and bracelets. The queen wore a royal head-dress, with the asp, emblem of the sun-god Ra, over her forehead, and the vulture, dedicated to Maut, mother of Isis, above. The golden disk is said to be an emblem of the eternal sunshine, the entwining asp of the winding Nile, and the outspread wings of Upper and Lower Egypt, extending along the river.

Mrs. Stevenson mentions innumerable texts which refer to the god as hidden in the disk, whilst a winged goddess makes light with her feathers, with which light and heat are always associated. The mother goddess of Thebes, Mut, in the shape of a vulture, spreads her wings and says, “I cover thy couch and give life to die back of thy neck.” And the mother of the sun-god at the moment of birth brings her own life “to the back of his neck in flame.” The disk amulet was put under a mummy to preserve the vital heat The winged disk, emblem of heaven, was, in primeval times, conceived as a bird, which, under its embodiment as the hawk, had come to dwell in the sun. “In the Eighteenth Dynasty this symbol over monuments was supposed to guard and protect, and played in Egypt the role that the winged bull of the Assyrians played on the banks of the Euphrates.”

A poetic fancy has thus painted the queen:

“Her form I know; in airless chambers

Of vast old tombs it lives to-day;

The quaint, stiff lines, the rigid posing,

The vivid colors, fresh and gay,

Of raiment striped and barred and fluted,

And tasseled waist and sandaled feet,

That lightly trod, in air and sunshine,

The dust of some Egyptian street.

Her face, I guess at line and color,

Slow almond eyes, with sidelong glance,

And full, calm lips, with curving corners,

Just touched with sleepy scorn perchance,

And straight, low brows, close bound for beauty,

With beaten gold and burning gem,

And the small asp, upreared for striking,

Afront the quaint old diadem.

So richly worn, so darkly splendid,

Looks out her face from shadowland,

Some night methinks I scarce should wonder

To see a living presence stand

Just in the shaft of light thrown dimly

From this old swinging lamp—to hear

A voice that speaks the tongue of Rameses

Fall sweet and strange upon my ear.”

Pen, pencil, brush, and I may add imagination, have depicted for us the royal surroundings. The reigning queen had, like all sovereigns, her tasks to perform. Reports from all parts of the kingdom to receive, the regulation of laws, the commerce and the domestic affairs of her dominions. Luxury surrounded her, attendants and slaves waited upon her bidding. Gold, silver, precious stones and valuable stuffs composed her furniture, her table-service and her attire. Scribes indited at her dictation and royal papyrus bore the impress of her signet, upon which vermilion was rubbed from a small cushion, while blue and a somewhat different stamp was used in religious matters. She dwelt among columns, statues and sphinxes, and, always adorned with flowers and jewels, wore over her shoulders, when in the character of a priestess, the leopard skin of the sacrificer. As special honor to any subject she would bestow upon him a chain of gold and put a ring on his finger. Her throne of ivory was sometimes said to have been so finely carved that a breath would move the foliage represented upon it.

Such in general outline was the position of the Egyptian Queen. But when we approach the individual the difficulties in the study of personality are manifold. Frequently hundreds of years pass and no queen’s name appears—the roll of dynasty after dynasty is searched in vain. In most cases this is enhanced by many names being applied to the same individual, as they are derived from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, or other sources. To this one adds what is called the “Ka” name, a sort of religious addition to the original cognomen.

A parallel to all this might be found in the case of the Duke of Argyle, date 1734, who was also known as John Campbell, MacCallum More, and Ian Roy Cean. The titular, family, and by, or nick-name, signifying “red-headed.” A person searching the archives of Scotland a thousand years hence might be as bewildered in such a case as the Egyptian student is now.

Different authorities give dates hundreds of years apart, different names to the same person, and different spelling to the same name. Some of the queens were taken for men, and only in later and more exhaustive researches was their sex and position ascertained. Nor is this to be wondered at, when the various parts of speech applied to them are of the male gender. Yet here and there a fragment is discovered and we learn something, at least, of many of them.

The partial list extends from the earliest times to the Roman period. Late discoveries give us fragmentary remains from the First Dynasty, but Mertytefs of the Fourth seems the first distinct personality, and the roll, virtually beginning with her, ends with the last and most celebrated Cleopatra. Two of these figures at least stand out with wonderful clearness, the great Hatasu, of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and this same Cleopatra, and while of many others we know much less, we in some cases possess their veritable jewels and ornaments, and in others their actual mummies.

We are working, as it were, to restore a mutilated mosaic. Some of the pieces are altogether gone, many others broken and discolored. From here and there we gather a fragment for our task of restoration. They may vary in shape, they may vary in tint, the recompleted whole is diverse from the original, but it approximates—it gives us an idea of what the perfect design has been, and with that, for the present, we must rest content.

CHAPTER THIRD.
MERTYTEFS.

Year by year the patient research of the archeologist unearths new discoveries, confirming or contradicting those already made, and translating, as it were, into actual fact much that had previously been considered legendary. And still, year by year, till the whole history is laid bare, the process is likely to continue. Comparatively late discoveries at Abydos have converted the mythical kings of the First Dynasty into real human beings, living and dying thousands of years ago. Their burial places have been found, and Menes, Aha-Mena, is no longer a suppositious, but a real character. Weapons, furniture, vases, drinking vessels, jewelry, etc., with the names of various kings upon them, have been dug up and may now be seen at Abydos, in the University Museum in London, in that of the University of Pennsylvania, and in other places.

Among these we come upon the first memorial of a queen. From out of the darkness of the centuries stretches forth a woman’s arm laden with bracelets, and tells of the common humanity which unites us. It is thus described: “The most important piece of gold work discovered consists of the bracelets of the Queen of Zer. The queen’s arm had been broken off long ago, when the tomb was originally plundered, and hidden in a hole in the wall. There it had been overlooked alike by the builders of the Osiris shrine, by the Coptic destroyers, and by the Arabs employed by the French mission, until it was discovered by Professor Petrie’s workmen, with the four bracelets in their original order. Each is made in a different and somewhat elaborate design, partly in gold and partly in beads of amethyst, turquoise or lazuli.” These “finds” also include the tomb of a young girl, “Bener-Ab” (Sweet of Heart), whom some fancied to be the daughter of Ment, which contained an ivory figure dressed in flowing robes. And still another “find” includes some plaited locks and a fringe of curly false hair.

The early Egyptian comes upon the historic stage very much decorated as to head, very decollete as to garments. No Indian with war paint and feathers was more elaborately gotten up. So that his peruke hung in curled or braided locks about him, or, if of royal blood, he wore his crown or double crown, all else seemed of minor importance. We can imagine him lightly attired, treading the streets of modern London and straying into the law courts, where he would encounter judges and barristers in their wigs of office. Doubtless he would bow and touch his head significantly, intimating that a common bond of taste united them.

So important were these coiffures that one of the earliest offices of which we find record is that of “Superintendent of Wigs and Head-dresses,” and among the treasures of various museums are specimens of these belongings of royalty.

Reproduced in almost every book on Egypt are those most ancient portrait statues of General Ra-hotep and his wife, the Princess Nefert. One authority assigns them to the Third Dynasty, and already the wig was in full flow. The gentleman wears a comparatively modest head covering, but the lady’s was of portentous size and thickness, falling in curls on either side of her face, with its artless, unaffected expression. Doubtless the fashionable world of that day thought the wig gave “a presence”—as an English dame said of caps—to the wearer. General Ra-hotep had married a lady of rank, of royal blood, his superior in that respect, but both were deemed important enough to have their massive statues cut, sitting in the usual ceremonial attitude, bolt upright, the knees and feet closely pressed together. “A statue of dignity culminating in a bust of beneficence.”

The Egyptian ideal was a studied dignity of posture. The Greeks, aiming at the grace and beauty of nature, sculptured their figures in the various attitudes of the human form, as also, in a degree, did the Romans. While we see on coins and in old manuscripts the Saxon and early Norman kings with knees and feet wide apart, and this also is the ceremonial Chinese attitude.

But even with a formal prescribed position of the figure the early Egyptian faces were evidently true to nature to an extent not the case in later times. There is an individuality about them which makes us feel that we see a truthful personification. In the Old Empire the realistic school is found side by side with conventional art. In the Fourth Dynasty especially we see conventional figures and portrait heads, while in the Fifth all is more natural. To this last belongs the fine limestone statue of a scribe now in the Louvre. A slender but powerful figure, square in the shoulders, with slight legs and long, flat feet, seated in an Oriental manner and writing on a parchment unrolled on his knee. The flesh tints a pale red, a false beard, bronze for the brows, eyes enamelled alabaster and crystal, and a nail for the pupil.

Another portrait statue of great celebrity is that of the “wooden man” reproduced in a plaster cast in almost every museum. It is half life-size, probably the foreman of a gang of laborers, is called “Ra Emka,” and was found at the Sakkarah pyramid. Its age has been said to be six thousand years. It had originally eyes of opaque white quartz, pupils of rock crystal, bronze eyelids, and arms made separately, with a staff of office in one hand, and was once covered with linen, plastered and painted. The Arabs called it “Sheikel Belel, or Belud,” “Village Chief.” A mutilated statue of his wife was found beside him, only the head and trunk being entire. The face was of the common Egyptian type, with rather a peevish expression, in contrast to the husband’s more urbane and amiable look. Statues of a certain Sepi and his wife, attributed to the Third Dynasty, are also in the Louvre.

The outline of the physiognomy of General Ra-hotep and Ra-Emka are not unlike in type. The Princess Nefert has buff flesh tints, her husband’s are somewhat darker, and both have the crystal eyes which impart such a lifelike appearance. A dignified and portly pair, who gaze steadily out above the head of the sight-seer in the Gizeh museum. This collection, first gathered at Boulak and later removed to Gizeh, is the youngest but the richest in portrait statues of private individuals. Most are in what is called the hieratic attitude, with the left arm close to the body, the left hand holding a roll of papyrus, the right leg advanced, the right hand raised, as if grasping a staff, or perhaps, as at the Resurrection, holding the Book of the Dead. With Menes the first distinct record of dynasties begins, so far as yet discovered, and mooted points remain for the student as to which reigned simultaneously and which in succession. The first two dynasties were Thinites, from Tini, Greek This, near Abydos, in Upper Egypt, seat of the worship of Osiris, where their tombs and various remains, as above referred to, have been found. One of the most ancient is a fragment of jewelry bearing the name of Mena, who is said to have founded Memphis, to have turned aside the course of the river to build his city, to have reigned sixty-two years, and, finally, to have been killed by a hippopotamus or crocodile. Zer, or Teta, understood medicine and wrote astronomical books; of others it is said that one wrote the sacred books, another introduced animal worship, and another was a giant. Of this first dynasty there seem to have been some seven or eight kings.

As early as the Second Dynasty, under Binothris, a law was passed admitting women to sovereignty, and thereafter, from time to time, as guardian, regent, or independent ruler, a woman held sway. As goddesses above, so the woman below had her share of authority. The queen by incantations protected the king when in his priestly robe he offered sacrifices, played the sistrum (a sort of religious instrument) to drive away evil spirits, offered libations, poured perfumes and cast flowers. She walked behind the king in processions, gave audiences with him and governed for him, as the goddess Isis for Osiris, in his absence. The worship of the bull Apis, destined to so wide a popularity, was also introduced in this dynasty.

No extended or separate account of the queens, with one or two exceptions, can be found in the writers on Egypt, but here and there we come across the mention of certain names and brief stories or conflicting statements in regard to them. Several are spoken of by Maspero in his account of these earliest times. But to Mertytefs or Mertitifsi chiefly clings any sort of history which can vitalize her for us. We read of Mirisonku, daughter of Kheops and sister and wife of Khephren, of Mirtitifsi, of Khuit, of Miriri-ankh-nas, and of Meri-s-ankh, of the Sixth Dynasty, worshipper of the gods. Another writer gives Meri-s-ankh as the queen of Sneferu or Khafra, and Hentsen as Kufu’s daughter, says that Hatshepset made scarabs of Menkaura, and mentions a statue of Ra-en-usa, of the Fifth Dynasty. A stele in Gizeh, found at Abydos and of the Fifth Dynasty, represents the royal spouse Pepi-ankhnes and the “chef” Aou seated on each side of a table of offerings. The city of This gave its name to the yet earliest known kings, but Memphis, “The Haven of the Good,” was the great metropolis in the time of Mertitefs.

Queen Mertitefs is said to have been first the wife of King Seneferu, “the Betterer,” whose mother is given by one authority as Queen Hapunimait. Mertytefs was, some say, of the Third, some of the Fourth Dynasty. In a limestone group in the Leyden Museum (among the oldest portrait statues in the world) sit the queen, the mysterious Ka, which may be briefly described as the embodied spirit, and her secretary, a priest named Kenun. Without a secretary or scribe no royal personage’s list of attendants was complete. It was hardly the private correspondence which occupied their time, as in later days, though the habit of letter writing then existed, but so many items had to be noted down. The queen and her Ka sit side by side, with black hair and buff flesh tints just alike.

Seneferu, founder of the Fourth Dynasty, is the first king of whom we have contemporary monuments, and the Fourth is sometimes called the “pyramid dynasty.” During this reign the kingdom was prosperous, the arts flourished, and foreign conquests were made. The king left a good name, and was worshipped till the Ptolemaic period.

Diodorus stated that in the marriage contracts the wife was to control her husband. Be that as it may, she was doubtless, as in modern times, the ruler of the household. Mertytefs was young, some say fourteen, and probably beautiful, when she married Seneferu, whom she survived, and, possessing the usual charm of widows, she again married the Cheops of Herodotus, the Khufu of Manetho, of whom a small ivory has been recently found by Professor Petrie at Abydos, the builder of the Great Pyramid. Marriette assigns the date 4234 B. C., and Brugsch 3733 B. C. to this period, while Petrie gives from the time of the First Dynasty to the Sixth 4777 B. C. to 3503 B. C. Some writers interpolate a certain Ratatef, sometimes said to be the son, sometimes the brother of Khufu.

The building of a pyramid as his sepulchre was one of the chief occupations, might almost say the amusements or pleasures, of a king, as the building of a house in modern times affords constant study and entertainment to the constructor, and day after day he goes to watch its progress. The thought of death had no terror for the Egyptians—to the king it was simply a new world, peopled with gods and goddesses, among whom he would take an honored place. His pyramid was the book, the autobiography, often an illustrated one, that he published, filled with accounts of his deeds and prowess and certain to give him name and fame with posterity. The word pyramid is said to mean “king’s grave,” and thus reveals its purpose.

So, slowly, under the eyes of Queen Mertytefs rose these gigantic and marvellous structures. What matter, if the object were accomplished, that hundreds of lives were sacrificed in the ceaseless and laborious toil under a tropic sun. Herodotus says it took one hundred thousand, Pliny three hundred thousand, men twenty years in the building. We can imagine the queen from time to time going in state to view the progress of the work and helping it on with her suggestions. Some traditions tell that Khufu was specially tyrannical and cruel, and even stopped praying to the gods to press on his great enterprise. The rock testimony styles him brave and a conqueror.

“Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monumental people,” says Bunsen. The history of Egypt goes, as it were, against the stream; the earliest monuments are between Cairo and Siout, in Lower Egypt, the latest temples in Nubia, Upper Egypt.

The pyramids, whose entrances pointed to the North star, and which were perhaps two thousand years old when Abraham was born, looked from a distance like isolated mountain peaks or faint blue triangles outlined against the sky, and the clear air made them seem nearer than they were. They occupied the whole horizon as one advanced beyond the plain of tombs. “Anear,” says Miss Edwards, “a mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, divided the sunlight where it fell, as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air and darkened the space it covered like an eclipse—registering sixty centuries of history.” In the early times the three large pyramids were probably almost central in the embrace of the city, which stretched away westward from the Nile in “a succession of gardens, squares, palaces and monuments, girdling the lake with beautiful villages and climbing, with its terraces, grottoes, shrines and marble pavilions, the very sides of the cliffs two leagues from the Nile. From the top of the great pyramid of Cheops to-day one views the broad domes and the minarets of Cairo, the hills beyond and a palm grove on the site of ancient Memphis,” says Bayard Taylor. “Over the rich palm trees the blue streak of the river and the plain beyond you see the phantoms of two pyramids in the haze which still curtains the Libyan desert. Northward, beyond the parks and palaces of Shoba, the Nile stretches his two great arms towards the sea, dotted far into the distance with sails that flash in the sun.” Many other pyramids are in sight, while higher than St. Peter’s, Rome, St. Paul’s, London, or the Capitol at Washington, the greatest of them, this enormous structure of past ages still dominates the plain. A modern poet has said of them:

“Amid the deserts of a mystic land,

Like Sibyls waiting for a doom far-seen,

Apart in awful solitude they stand,

With thoughts unending caravan between.”

Even then it was probably a magnificent city in which Queen Mertytefs dwelt. Colossal gateways, with the disk and extended wings above, pillars on which lights burned at night, avenues of sphinxes, palaces along the river bank, columns with carved capitals, with the lotus in bud and bloom, as well as other plants, and gorgeously painted shafts, temples of red sandstone, with forests of pillars, lakes surrounded with trees and flowering shrubs, oranges, scarlet pomegranates, olives, figs, vines, and everywhere crowds of freemen and troops of slaves.

The Sphinx, previously sculptured, doubtless underwent some work of restoration at this time, and is said by certain authorities to bear the features of Chephren aggrandized, by others that it was in the image of the god Harmachis. The Arabs named it “Abuthol, Father of Terrors.” Its present state called forth from an illiterate voyager of modern times the caustic remark, “They keep it in shocking repair!” Maspero believed the Sphinx belonged to the period of the Horshesu, “Followers of Horus,” chiefs of the clans gathered into one kingdom under Menes.

The Book of the Dead, which laid down rules, as we may say, both for the dead and the living, belonged to the Fourth Dynasty, and the fragments of it which have descended to us are the source of much of our information about this ancient land and people.

Besides the serious business of pyramid building, the kings and queens had their amusements of other sorts. The harp and flute were known in the Fourth Dynasty, and music, singing and dancing no doubt date from the Garden of Eden. Dwarfs were favorite pets, and a story is told of a frolic of King Seneferu’s, who, for diversion, kept a boat manned with girls whose airy costumes consisted of network. Perchance he may not have been so sober-minded a person as his successor in the queen’s affections. Khufu built the Great Pyramid, and perhaps rebuilt the temple of Isis near the Sphinx, also a temple at Denderah, added to or restored later, first by Thothmes IV and afterwards by some of the Ptolemies.

Mertytefs or Khufu’s sons and daughters are spoken of by Rawlinson, and a daughter, Hents or Hentsen, was buried under a small pyramid near her father. There is a tradition that he sold his daughter for money to carry on the building of his pyramid, while she, sharing in the profits, built one for herself. The king consecrated gold and copper statues to Isis in honor of his daughter. Other stories tell of treasures buried in the pyramids which were appropriated by the sovereigns of other centuries.

Tutors, or “nurses,” as they were called, were appointed for the royal children, and possibly the queen’s secretary, Kenun, may have held this position. Record is made of a certain Shap-siska-fankhu, who was governor of the “House of the Royal Children,” in the Fifth Dynasty. Shafra or Khafra was thought to be son-in-law to Khufu and his wife; Meri-ankh-s, or Meri-s-ankh, whose tomb is at Sakkarah, was a priestess of the god Thoth. She was high in confidence and favor, and bore at least two sons. Her husband, or another son of Khufu, was high priest at Heliopolis.

Mertytefs was evidently a lady of great vigor, capacity and attraction, for two reigns did not exhaust her powers, and under the succeeding king, Kafra or Chafra, probably son-in-law or nephew, and builder of the second pyramid of Gizeh, she still in a measure held sway. The name signified “beloved of her father,” but she was evidently beloved of fortune also, for her sun sinks in splendor as the “Administrator of the Great Hall of the Palace,” where she had probably innumerable slaves to oversee and do her bidding, “Mistress of the Royal Wardrobe” and “Superintendent of the Chamber of Wigs and Head-dresses”—three important offices. Yet are women of forty on the Nile said to be as old as those of sixty in Europe. Not this lady surely, else were her brilliant career briefly run. To account for this singular history one commentator allows her a hundred and six years, another a hundred and thirty. A lady’s age is always a mystery. Perhaps she never told it, but “let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek,” and after these lapses of centuries it may be we shall never be set right on this point.

The statue of King Chefren, with his novel head-dress, serene expression, and paucity of underwear, is familiar, but the upper class figures were always more conventional, the lower more realistic. A new king meant usually a new city, a new palace, and a new tomb, and architecture flourished in these distant periods.

The duties of the Queen Dowager were doubtless arduous. “Administrator of the Great Hall” probably included the direction and control of a large retinue of servants and the preparations for feast and audiences. “Mistress of the Royal Wardrobe” was perhaps a less onerous position, owing to the brevity of the then fashionable costume. At some periods men wore but two garments, women but one—a sort of narrow chemise of fine linen, through which the limbs could be plainly seen, with or without a strap over the shoulders. Another costume was a light skirt with long shoulder straps and bound by a girdle, the ends falling in front. Over this usually a full skirt of fine linen, with sleeves below the elbows and broad skirt falling to the ground.

Both men and women adorned themselves with necklaces and bracelets, and used stibium to darken under the eyelids—while the nails, hands and feet were stained with henna, which gave them an orange tint. Occasionally, also, an added decoration was a line drawn from the corner of the eye to the temple. In the earliest times foot covering was seldom worn indoors.

But to be “Superintendent of the Chamber of Wigs and Head-dresses” could have been no sinecure. Wigs! Wigs! Wigs! We can imagine them in the room devoted to them, on shelves, in boxes, and on stands. Upon this department of his wardrobe the Egyptian spent much time and care. With head closely shaven, and frequently the chin also divested of all natural endowment, he had unlimited opportunity to add what he considered improvement of an artificial character. He wore a manufactured beard, caps of a striped material, and wigs made both of human hair and sheep’s wool. The wigs consisted of rows of little curls beginning at different points and cut round and square. The shorter covered the head or neck, and the longer lay on the shoulders; a wig in the Berlin museum shows both short curls and long. In other instances braids and plaits were preferred to curls. The peculiarity of the Egyptian head was a prominent back, and this doubtless had to be considered in the shape of the wig selected. The pages who served the king and queen in their private apartments often wore a crown of natural flowers.

The women appear usually to have worn the wigs over their own hair, which sometimes escaped below. It also hung down in two tresses on the breast, and the young princes wore a side lock before the ear, as did the youthful god Horus. So much pride did females take in their hair that an especially fine lock was sometimes cut off and buried with them.

It was all deemed an important subject. A certain Shapsesre of later time, superintendent at court, a wig-maker by profession, had four statues of himself made for his tomb, each with a different style of wig!

The king wore a sort of handkerchief, a cap, or a helmet. The white crown of Upper Egypt was a curious, high, white, conical cap; that of Lower Egypt was red, had a high, narrow back and a metal ornament bent obliquely forward. They were, after a time, worn together. The upreared uraeus or asp was the sign of royalty. The goddess Ra-nu was represented with the asp which was worn by the queen, with the addition of the vulture with drooping or outspread wings, the winged sum disk and other costly head-dresses.

A great stele found at the pyramid of Gizeh is dedicated to the memory of a princess who, after being a great favorite in the court of Seneferu and Khufu, was subsequently attached to the private house of Kafra, and her history seems to run strangely parallel with that of the queen—if she herself be not intended.

Four or five thousand years before Christ are the dates assigned to this period. We must grope and work somewhat at random in the reconstruction of our mosaic. Yet does Queen Mertytefs stand out with a certain lifelikeness. Imagination plays around her active figure, and she looks out at us from the shadows, not with languorous, soft glances and gentle movements, but with vivacity and power in her black eyes and an attractive and capable face. None but a woman of power and capacity, we may be sure, could have been “Administrator of the Great Hall.”

CHAPTER FOURTH.
NITOCRIS.

The Sixth Dynasty is illustrated by the name of Queen Nitocris. Famed, and it may be fabled, the obliterating touch of the centuries has yet spared something of her personality. The “most beautiful and spirited woman of her time” is the record that comes down to us from very ancient sources, and “rosy-cheeked” the epithet applied to her. She was the last sovereign of her dynasty, but first we must glance at a few, less noted, that preceded her.

Dynasty after dynasty was named according to the great cities of the provinces, and to the Fifth by some, or by others to the Sixth, was applied the term Elephantines, from the city of Elephantine, in Syene. According to certain authorities, the First, Second and Third Dynasties of Manetho were ruling at This, while his Fourth and Sixth held sway at Memphis, and during a portion of the time his Fifth at Elephantine, Ninth at Heliopolis and Eleventh at Thebes or Diospolis. It is almost impossible to tell which of the families or monarchs were contemporary, or which ruled in succession. To unravel this tangled skein of history is beyond the sphere of the present work.

With Manetho’s Second and Fourth Dynasty we reach the testimony of the monuments, which is perhaps the chief source of information. The Egyptians painted everything but the hardest and most valuable stone, and both brush and chisel have furnished something of our partial and fragmentary story. Our princesses lived in a blaze of color, in radiant sunshine, and amid rainbow tints, sheltered by walls “lined throughout with Oriental alabaster and stained with the orange flush of Egyptian sunsets.”

The winged sun disk, as a symbol, makes its appearance for the first time on monuments of the Fifth Dynasty, a simple disk between two wings inclining downward. Under the Sixth it was more conventionalized, the wings were straightened out and the asp added. At one place Pepi I appears protected on one side by a flying hawk and on the other by a disk, evidently regarded as equivalent. To the Fifth Dynasty also belong the precepts of Patah-hotep, which were found in what is called the “Prisse” papyrus in Paris. “This,” says the script, “is the teaching of the governor Patah-hotep, under his Majesty, King Assa—long may he live.” This monarch appears to have been the first Pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty and the first who had the two names, the throne and the ordinary name. The last, Unas, constructed a great truncated pyramid, now called Mastaba, or “Pharaoh’s seat,” north of the pyramids of Dahshour.

King Shepseskaf, near or at the close of the Fifth Dynasty, who had been adopted by King Mencheres, gave to a highly favored page in his household the hand of his eldest daughter, the Princess Maat-kha. Less frequently than in modern times were foreign alliances sought, and thus the husband often mounted to a higher rung on the social ladder, or even to the throne itself, assisted by the hand of his wife.

The first female name that attracts attention in the Sixth Dynasty is that of Queen Shesh, mother of the king Tete or Pepe. This name occurs in the Hindoo mythology as that of the king of serpents. Whether she showed the wisdom attributed to the serpent or not may be questioned. At any rate we do not find her occupied with matters of state; essentially her interest lay in domestic affairs, but, even so, her name has come down to posterity. She invented a world-famed pomade, since, after the lapse of centuries, we can still read of it. The usual ingredients were the tooth of a donkey boiled with dog’s foot and dates; but the royal lady struck out boldly and substituted the hoof for the tooth of the former beast. And who knows the saving virtues or beautifying qualities of this compound, which perhaps entitled her majesty to the honors of a Lydia Pinkham, a blessing to all her sex.

In the Sixth Dynasty were several kings of the name of Pepi or Pepy, and the long reign of one of them, Pepi-Merira, is much celebrated. According to the Greeks, it lasted a hundred years. Of his first wife, Antes, we know nothing but her name; perchance she died early, and probably bore no sons. His second wife and queen, Merera-Ankes, is more noted; even the names of her parents have been preserved. Her father Khua, her mother Neke-bit, and her two sons, Merenra and Nofer-ka-ra, while among the more extensive ruins is a tomb at Abydos, the last resting place of this queen.

To “go to Abydos” was the equivalent of speaking of a death. It was the sacred place of the Egyptians, the tomb of Osiris, around which the Isis and Osiris legends gathered; where Mena of This, the founder of Memphis, and all the succeeding monarchs of his dynasty were buried. The Step pyramid at Sakkarah, said to be the oldest, is thought to belong to the First Dynasty, Medoom to the Third, and Gizeh to the Fourth. The Fifth Dynasty seems to have been priestly. The oldest dated papyrus of this period was, in 1893, found at Sakkarah, while the figure of Menkahor was found at the Serapeum. The Sixth Dynasty was said to be more limited in power, and some of the minor principalities to have recovered their independence, while in the latter part of the time civil strife broke out, and it was followed by a new race till the Eleventh, though some of the native princes are believed to have still ruled at Memphis.

But to return to the queens. One authority speaks of Queen Amitsi, “great spouse of the king,” and her mother, the Princess Nibit, who, of royal blood, transmitted rights to her daughter, which would have made her heir to the throne in the early part of the Sixth Dynasty. The brief mention of this queen and of Queen Merera-anknes are not altogether reconcilable, but may perhaps apply to the same person. Queen Merera-anknes is said not to have been of royal blood, or if it be the same lady her claim to high lineage probably came from the mother’s side. Whatever her origin, she was evidently well appreciated, since even the names of her relatives were preserved. She at first bore some other cognomen, but after coronation adopted that by which she is known in history, and which couples, in a measure, her own and her husband’s. The inscription on her tomb—on the tablet on which is a figure of Pepi—reads “royal wife of Merira, great in all things, companion of Horus, mother of Meren-ra.” There can be little doubt that she was specially devoted to the service of the gods, and the priests were glad to hand down in laudatory inscriptions her name and fame to later generations.

There is a mention of Pepi-Merira who “executed works to Hathor” at Denderah, a temple which shows traces of the hand of various kings from the earliest to the latest period. The end of this reign was also distinguished by a festival inaugurating a new period of years, called “Hib-set, the Festival of the Tail,” on the principle, perhaps, on which the close of college exercises is called “Commencement,” in which we may be sure Queen Merari-Anknes bore a distinguished part.

The eldest son, Meren-ra, succeeded his father, but him also his mother survived, for in the reign of the second son, Nofer-ka-ra, she takes a prominent position, if not a distinct share in the government, and her name on the monuments seems to occupy as important a place as does that of the king.

A sort of Nestor among these royal personages was a certain Una, or U’ne, a favorite minister of more than one of the sovereigns. He was highly trusted and employed on various important embassies. His records, saved from destruction, form a valuable link in the historic chain. He speaks of Pepi in terms now used by the faithful of the Pope, as “his Holiness.” He chronicles foreign wars for the extension of territory, expeditions in search of stone and other materials for the usual duty and pleasure, the building of the king’s tomb; and last, perhaps most interesting of all in connection with the queens, the private trial of one of these rulers. Entese, queen of one of the Pepys, was the person in question. The king evidently wished not to spread the scandal, whatever it might be, and Una and one other official were alone present. It is the autobiography of this somewhat voluble minister which gives us the fragment of the story, that, like many others, lacks its termination. Perhaps he did not dare to write the conclusion; perhaps that part of the work has disappeared, or perhaps when the matter ceased to include himself he lost interest. We wish, if our final supposition is correct, that this had not been the case, and we wish also that, knowing so much, we knew a little more; whether the lady was found innocent or guilty, and whether she was forgiven or met with a tragic fate.

Says Una: “When the lawsuit was conducted secretly in the royal household against the great consort, Entese, his Majesty ordered me to appear to conduct the proceedings—I alone, no chief judge, nor governor, nor prince was present—I alone, because I was agreeable and pleasant to the heart of his Majesty, and because his Majesty loved me. I myself, I compiled the written report—I alone and one single judge belonging to the town Nechent. Yet formerly my office was only that of a superintendent of the royal anterior country, and no one in my position had ever in earlier times heard the secret of the royal household. I alone was excepted; his Majesty allowed me to hear them, because I was more agreeable to the heart of his Majesty than all his princes, than all his nobles, and than all his servants.” The sentences are fairly spangled with “I’s,” all other capitals being in abeyance. He quite hugs himself, does the good Una, over his virtues and his honors. He has caught something of the self-glorifying spirit which distinguished so many of the sovereigns. The other judge does not seem to count for much; the queen herself is rather in the background. Yet the naivete of this old world reporter—like that quality in all ages—is not without its charm.

We are reminded of Pepys in the seventeenth century and of Boswell in the eighteenth. “Boswell,” said Dr. Johnson, meeting the biographer on the street, “I have been reading some of your manuscripts. There is a good deal about yourself in them. They seem to me Youmoirs rather than Memoirs.” We laugh a little in our sleeves perhaps at this early Jack Horner, “who put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said what a good boy am I.” But we are grateful for the realistic pictures he gives us, and feel the touch of a common humanity which, the world over, from the beginning to the end of time, shows the same virtues and foibles, whatever its racial characteristics or its national individualities.

So the royal Vashti disappears into the shades and some happier Esther takes her place. Evidently Entese did not win the favor that did Queen Merari-anknes; no laudatory inscription on monument or tomb bears her name as companion of the gods.

The ambition for larger territory and foreign wars seemed to stifle, as it usually does, the artistic spirit, and few such marvels of sculpture and portrait statues are attributed to the Sixth Dynasty as have made the preceding the wonder of all following ages.

A woman’s name illumines this period, and with the beautiful Queen Nitocris the dynasty comes to an end. Nitocris is not a usual name in Egyptian history, but we find it occasionally mentioned there and elsewhere. In later times it was borne by a daughter of Psammetic I, whose sarcophagus is preserved. Some of the early writers on Egypt, coming to conclusions hastily from insufficient data and previous to the more modern discoveries, made a sort of composite photograph of a queen by combining the brief history of several with some of the more individual characteristics of the great Hatasu, and called it Nitocris, but time has shown them to have been mistaken. Two traditions exist—those derived from Manetho and those of the compilers from the remains at Abydoh and Sakkarah and the author of the Turin papyrus.

Another celebrated queen of ancient history was called Nitocris, and about her, too, the clouds of mist and fable enwreathe themselves. This was Queen Nitocris of Babylon, who lived five hundred generations after the warlike Semiramis. She turned the course of the Euphrates to make navigation winding and difficult, that thus the city might be preserved from the attacks of enemies. She ordered that she should be buried in a chamber above one of the gates, through which for a long time after none were willing to pass. She also promised treasure to the king who, in great necessity and in straits only, should open her sepulchre, but when at last Darius sought to avail himself of this he merely found an abusive sentence for disturbing her.

The Egyptian Nitocris, according to Herodotus, who derived his tradition from Manetho, lived 3066 years B. C., while to her dynasty he assigned 206 years, but the Turin papyrus and other records disprove this last. These dates, if bearing any relation to fact (for upon this point authorities differ so widely), seem almost like the astonishing figures with which the astronomer leads us from world to world in his celestial researches, and our imagination finds difficulty in grasping such periods, nor is it strange that they are so seriously questioned by many students.

Queen Nitocris’ name appears among a list of three hundred and thirty monarchs, and the duration of her reign is said to have been twelve years. A sort of Cinderella legend attaches to her. An eagle carried off the sandal of the beautiful maiden and dropped it before the prince, who was sitting in an open air court in his office as judge. At once he was fired with a desire to find the owner of that bewitching slipper, who when found became the royal consort.

In the earliest times, as before mentioned, even the noblest in the land wore no foot-covering within doors, and though sandals were more common later, under the New Empire they were frequently carried by an attendant slave and always put off in the presence of superiors. They were made of leather or papyrus, with straps passing over the instep, and between the toes, and occasionally a third strap to support the heel. Sometimes, especially for solemn occasions, they were made with a peak turning up in front, like Italian shoes of the fourteenth century, and as time went on were turned up at the side (having at first only consisted of a flat sole) and assumed more the shape of moccasins or regular slippers and shoes.

With her extensive wig, skimp linen robe, and bare feet or turned up sandals, the lady of long ago seems to us a curious figure. The Egyptians, to use modern slang, were extremely fond of “sitting upon people,” tables and chairs were upheld by the forms of carven captives and even the royal lady’s dainty foot sometimes pressed the painted image of a slave, as the soles were occasionally lined with cloth and so decorated. Specimen of the papyrus sandals may be seen in many museums, among them Berlin, the Salt collection at Alnwick Castle, the New York Historical Society and other places.

With Cleopatra, Mary Stuart and such world-wide charmers ranks perhaps this celebrated beauty of the earliest times. Of her ancestry we know nothing. Fair hair, rosy cheeks and light complexion seem scarcely to suggest the Egyptian type; yet there is mention made of an occasional instance of fair hair, and the complexions were often a clear, light yellow, growing darker as one went southward. So as a blonde, high-spirited, bewitching, beautiful and vengeful, Nitocris stands before us. Nit-a-ker, “the perfect Nit,” as she is styled in the much injured “Book of the Kings” in the Turin papyrus, where some say two of this name are mentioned. A great contrast we feel her to be, in appearance at least, to Queen Mertytefs; yet both were able women who left their mark on their generation. Like others her name is variously rendered as Nitocris—the best known appellation—Nitokris, the former from the Greek Nitaquert, (Egyptian) Neit-go-ri, or Neit-a-cri.

Her chief claim to remembrance lies in the building of a third pyramid, or more accurately the re-building of one, that of Mankaura or Mencheres. Says Rawlinson, “If Nitocris is really to be regarded as the finisher of the edifice, she must be considered a great queen, one of the few who have left their mark upon the world by the construction of a really great monument.”

She placed a most beautiful casement, or revetement, of Syenitic granite upon the unfinished pyramid of Men-kau-ra, begun a thousand years before, and so important was her part that the whole erection has been sometimes credited to her. She perhaps left the body of Men-kau-ra in a lower chamber, and ordered her own, in a blue basalt sarcophagus, to be placed above. The fine basalt sarcophagus found in this pyramid is said to be hers.

Part of that of Men-kau-ra which was being carried off to England, was lost in a vessel wrecked near Gibraltar. The cover of the sarcophagus, with a prayer to Osiris upon it, is in the British Museum. It reads “O Osiris who has become king of Egypt. Majesty living eternally, child of Olympus, son of Urania. Heir of Kronos, over thee may she stretch herself, and cover thee, thy divine mother, Urania, in her name as Mistress of heaven. May she grant that thou should’st be like God, free from all evils. King Majesty, living eternally.” The attenuated remains of Men-kau-ra have been placed in one of the museums and the picture taken of them is in all the collections of Egyptian kings, seeming to verify the truth that “man is but a shadow.” There is a story that the mummy or a wood-gilt image of the daughter of Men-ka-ra was placed in the figure of a cow in a funeral chamber in Sais.

The cartouche of Queen Nitocris, with its encircling arabesque, stands beside that of her husband, in the long list of Manetho. His name is given as Nefer-ka-ra, and as Me-tes-ou-phis II, the question whether he was her brother or not remains unsettled. On the king’s death the queen succeeded as a matter of course, but either her husband or another brother was murdered, probably by political adversaries, and her death followed as a result of his. If it was her husband that she avenged the desire for the destruction of his enemies long smouldered in her breast. She built a hall of great dimensions and doubtless beauty, below the level of the Nile and invited the murderers to a feast within its walls. To disguise her purpose and lull suspicions must have taxed all her powers and fascinations. Fish, beef, kids, gazelles, geese, pasties, condiments and sweets of all sorts loaded the table. The guests sat, rather than reclined, as in many Eastern countries, at the board. Beer is said to be as old as the Fourth Dynasty and that and palm wine probably flowed freely. As at the present day paste of almonds may have been mixed with the Nile water to purify it, and wine and water stood in porous jars, cooling by the process of evaporation, an attendant slave fanning the vessels to hasten the effect. Flowers decorated everything, hung in garlands and wreathed about the table, the water jars, and the persons of the guests.

Darkness quickly follows daylight in Egypt, but it was probably at night that the feast occurred. Music accompanied the festival, harps, flutes and other instruments and dancing girls and jugglers added entertainment and zest to the passing hour. Then, with a warning which was little suspected, a small painted and gilded image of a mummy was carried round among the mirthful crowd. Says Plutarch, “The skeleton which the Egyptians appropriately introduce at their banquets, exhorting the guests to remember that they shall soon be like him, though he comes as an unwelcome and unseasonable boon-companion, is nevertheless, in a certain sense, seasonable, if he exhorts them not to drink and indulge in pleasure, but to cultivate mutual friendship and affection, and not to render life, which is short in duration, long, by evil deeds.”

Possibly Nitocris shared the feast, beautiful and gracious, resplendent in jewels and glowing with the fire of an intense internal and suppressed excitement, such as a man may feel when he goes into battle. Not one moment did she repent of her fearful scheme though she may well have foreseen that she herself would probably fall a victim. Possibly she shared the feast and left them to their revels, or her position as queen may have made it derogatory to her dignity to be present, but by her orders the waters of the great river were let in upon them and they were drowned. Many lives perhaps for one.

But they were probably powerful nobles, with families and numerous adherents and the queen feared the consequences of her act and preferred to take her own life than trust to the mercy of their avengers. She is said to have smothered herself with the fumes of ashes, a noble form of self-destruction or so considered, like the Japanese hari-kari, but as this was a Persian custom the story may belong to that period.

So ended the career of this beautiful and celebrated queen, called “the Minerva Vietrix” of her time, “Neith the victorious,” and it is to be inferred that the Sixth Dynasty closed with a period of convulsions. The Arabs believe that the queen still haunts (a sort of Lorelei) the vicinity of her pyramid, in the form of a naked woman, of such beauty that all men who see her must needs fall in love with her and lose their wits. Avenger, murderer, suicide, syren—all these characters are attributed to her, but it is the image rather of the fair, innocent, rosy-cheeked, beautiful young queen that the centuries have crystallized and preserved for us.

Memphis had in previous reigns been the greatest city in Egypt, but now others contested its claim, nevertheless it seems likely that it was the scene of Queen Nitocris’ tragic fate. Some one has described Egypt as a green belt, four miles wide, the Nile like a silver band, and the cities on its borders like precious stones, and the river swept on, as Leigh Hunt expressed it, “like a great purpose threading a dream,” swept silently by, the giver of life and of death, the god beloved, worshipped and adored, while the beautiful queen died and was buried, and the city waned in prominence and power, and a new metropolis grew in strength and magnificence and new dynasties lorded it over the land.

CHAPTER FIFTH.
SEBEK-NEFRU-RA.

Spirit seems to have especially distinguished those queens who have made their way up through the mists of oblivion which lie so heavily and darkly over many centuries of the Egyptian chronology. No vast library remains for us to turn to and in direct sequence acquaint ourselves with the early history of this land and people. Broken monuments and tombs and half obliterated fragments of papyrus alone tell the story.

Hence from the Sixth to the Twelfth Dynasty, during which period these sources of information are notably lacking, no queen’s name appears. One authority says that the register of the queen’s expenses for servants, etc., in the Eleventh Dynasty, has been found, but no special name seems to be connected with the list; and our knowledge of this time is very meagre. An embalmed figure of the Lady Ament, priestess of Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, has been credited to the Eleventh Dynasty. She is robed in tissues as fine as lawn, with sandals in wood and leather fastened on by worked bands. She wears a woven collar of pearls, in glass, gold and silver, and has silver rings on her hands. Silver being then scarcer than gold was esteemed even more highly. This Eleventh Dynasty was of the Entef line, and, says Miss Edwards: “A mummy case of the Eleventh Dynasty differs as much from the mummy case of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty as the recumbent effigy of a crusader in chain-mail differs from the periwigged memorial statue of the Queen Anne period.”

Interesting “finds” of this same dynasty are well preserved wooden boats which had been used for the transportation of the dead and were exhumed from the sand. Some are in the Museum of Cairo, some have been bought for the collection in our own Chicago, and more from this region are doubtless to be seen in various museums, gathered from the Dahshour pyramids and other places.

With the Twelfth Dynasty Egypt seemed to wake to a new life in many respects and the arts, which had deteriorated and languished, again flourished. Says one traveller, surveying the remains of this and other famous epochs, “Egypt has given me a new insight into that vital beauty which is the soul of true art.” Another, speaking of the special sculpture of this time, writes “This school represents the heroic age of Egyptian sculpture. It lacks the startling naturalism of the school of the Pyramid period, it never aspired to the great scale of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, but it excels all in monumental majesty, and not only the artist’s work, but the craftsman’s skill is seen at its best during this age. No details are so finely cut, no surfaces glow with so lustrous and indescribable a polish as those wrought by the lapidaries of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties. They finished their colossi as fastidiously as a gem engraver finished a cameo. They even polished the sunk surfaces of their hieroglyphics in incuse inscriptions.” In short, “they worked like Titans and polished like jewellers.”

The monarchs of this generation, a noted race, gained new territory, and in various ways sought to improve the internal condition of their kingdom as well, while life, to the favored, became more luxurious.

There are those who hold the opinion that the divisions of the dynasties are in some way connected with the reigns of the queens. Had that of Nitocris immediately preceded that of Sebek-nefru-Ra, the fact that both the Sixth and Twelfth ended with a queen might have given some color to the idea, but there do not seem sufficient data to warrant any such conclusion.

Ancient Egyptian history has been divided by some into three periods, the Old, the Middle, and the New Empire, while others merely divide into the Old and the New, including the Middle with the first. By the former classification the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties are included under the Old Empire, the Twelfth and Thirteenth under the Middle and the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth under the New. So that our course of investigation has now reached the Middle period. Of the previous and subsequent dynasties, those for some time before and after the Twelfth the absence of monumental and other relics leave the history almost a blank. The Twelfth is said to have lasted over two hundred years and later Egyptians looked back to it as a period of National glory when they were governed by wise rulers, literature and art flourished and the language of the time was regarded as a standard of good writing.

Says a writer in “Monumental Records”: “Thanks to the effects of M. de Morgan and his co-workers in the Nile valley we know much more about Egypt and that wonderful Twelfth Dynasty, which flourished so many centuries before Christ, than we do of the history of England’s kings up to the time of Alfred the Great. The Egyptian Empire through all its dynasties, certainly up to the Twelfth, on which the labors of M. de Morgan at Dahshour throw so much light, consisted of three estates, the Monarch, the Army and the Church. As the king’s authority came through the gods his will was, in theory, absolute and his spoken or written desires became laws; but in fact his education from the cradle was directed and his whole reign dominated by the power of a well-organized, patriotic priesthood. The army was made up of the farmers and workers, every soldier being granted about eight acres of land for his family which he could commute at his wish, the physical training of the individual was scientific and the tactics suited to the warlike weapons of the age arouse the admiration and amazement of the foremost soldiers of our own time. But the priests were the power behind the throne, and before the people, and, as a rule, this power was wisely used. The priests established schools near the temples, they founded and fostered engineering and the mechanical arts; they wrote books; they encouraged the fine arts; and with the growth of wealth they sought to restrain the corrupting influences of luxury.”

The same writer also draws attention to the fact that in the mural paintings which tell us so much of the daily lives of the people the high esteem in which women were held is to be everywhere noted.

Dynasty Twelfth began with Amenemhat I of the Theban line which now ruled all Egypt and of which the red granite temple, whose remains have been found at Tanis, has been called a family portrait gallery. The type shown in a fine, though of course mutilated statue of this king, to this day characterizes Upper Egypt. He wears the tall head-dress of Osiris and is described as having “a large smiling face, thick lips, short nose and big staring eyes,” with a benevolent, gentle expression. Miss Edwards gives further particulars, “The cheek bones are high, the eyes prominent and heavy lidded, the nostril open; the lips full, smiling and defined by a slight ridge at the edges; the frontal bone is wide and the chin small and shapely.” The statue was found in the ruins of Tanis and many relics from there are in the museum at Turin. There is also a head of Usertesen bearing resemblance to the former, but less attractive, though equally smiling and amiable in expression. In later times Rameses, the Great, but also the Despoiler, cut his own inscriptions on these and other statues and ruthlessly appropriated the material of older temples to carry out his own architectural plans.

The museum of the London Universary possesses the blue lettered portal of the tomb of Amenemhat, son of Hor-ho-tep and his mother Erdus. Near Silsileh is a tablet on which we see a queen behind Neb-kher-ra and we read of “The royal mother his beloved Aah,” of the Eleventh or Twelfth Dynasty. A certain queen, Mentu-hotep, is known by her coffin and toilette box and there is a copy of an inscription, now destroyed, which reads “Great royal wife Mentu-hotep, begotten of the vizier the keeper of the palace, Semb-hena-f, born of the heiress Sebek-hotep.” So that this royal lady was not of foreign lineage, but probably of princely blood by the mother’s side. A certain Prince Heru-nefer is mentioned as the son of King Menhotep and the “great royal wife,” Shertsat; while at Kha-taneh we find record of Queen Sent, heiress, royal wife and royal mother. Almost empty names which give to their bearers but little individuality.

Amenemhat I associated with him as co-regent his son Ousertesen, or Usertesen I, as in after years his descendant Thothmes I did his daughter Hatasu, and Usestesen succeeded his father. For this son, apparently much beloved, Amenemhat wrote a series of “Instructions” which have been preserved and form an interesting page in the history of the time. We are reminded of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his son, though the former deal with different subjects than manners and deportment, and Usertesen was an abler man and better repaid his father’s interest than did the youthful Chesterfield. This treatise contained the usual self-glorifying records. “I conquered the Ethiopians. I led the Lybians. I made the Asiatics run before me like greyhounds.”

From the pictures in the grottoes of Benee or Beni Hasan, by the Arabs called “Stahl Haman, Pigion Stable,” which are sixty feet square and forty high, impressive ruins, we view the plain of Siout and gain much of our knowledge of these times. They were rock tombs in the face of the mountain above the level of the Nile, containing memorials of a series of ministers of State to the early monarchs of this race, perhaps favored and appreciated as U’na of the Sixth Dynasty. The power of the nobles seems to have been greater, the kings less autocratic than at an earlier period.

Palms, sycamores, fragrant acasias, mimosas and acanthus grow around Siout and the air is fragrant with the rich odor of flowers. Bayard Taylor thus describes the view of the plain of Siout viewed from these grotto tombs. “Seen through the entrance it has a magical effect. From the grey twilight of the hall in which you stand, the green of the fields, the purple of the distant mountains and the blue of the sky dazzle your eyes as if tinged with the broken rays of a prism.”

Of Amenemhat’s wife and Usertesen’s mother there seems no trace. Usertisen I had a brilliant reign, to which the obelisk remaining at Heliopolis, the fragments of statues at Tanis and the inscriptions in the Sienaitic peninsula bear witness—some of these last are in the Naples museum. It is a curious detail that at the obelisk of Heliopolis it is said that the inscriptions on three sides, deeply cut, are almost obliterated by the cells of bees, which have made nests in the hieroglyphics.

A great father was succeeded by a lesser son in Amenemhat II, of whose wife there is little or no record. His son, Usertesen II, was the builder of the pyramid of Illahun, where comparatively recent discoveries, those of M. de Morgan in 1892-3-4 have brought to light various remains of this period and the belongings of the sisters, wives and daughters of the Amenemhats and Usertesens. Tombs, robbed and despoiled in the time of the Hyksos and the Eighteenth Dynasty, yet yielded to the more careful research of later explorations hidden treasures, workmen’s tools of various sorts, and the ornaments, etc., of these long ago queens and princesses. This is often of the finest quality and equals if not excels, in the skill of the craftsman, that earlier discovered elsewhere, belonging to the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Usertesen II had a wife named Nofrit or Nefert. The Gizeh museum has a statue of her, in granite, in the general character of the sculpture of the Tanite school. It goes almost without saying that it is mutilated, the eyes formerly inlaid, have fallen out, the bronze eyelids are lost, the arms have disappeared, but enough remains to show a young and beautiful woman, the fine outlines of whose youthful form are seen through the usual narrow linen robe. The head is adorned, or disfigured, with the heavy wig worn by the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, of which two enormous tresses surround the cheeks and curl outward on the breasts. The queen also wears on her bosom a pectoral or ornament bearing the name of her husband. Her titles are “Hereditary princess,” perhaps the daughter of the former king, “the great favorite, the highly praised, the beloved consort of the king, the ruler of all women, the king’s daughter of his body, Nefert.” The title ruler or princess is peculiar and suggests some prerogative of the government of the female half of the population. Maspero believes that a statue of this same queen may be found in the collection now in Marseilles.

Usertesen II and Queen Nefert seem to have been blessed with a number of children and various daughters’ names are given, Atmu-neferu, Sat-hathor and Sent-s-senb. In the subterranean chamber at Dashur or Dahshour, in the pyramid of Illahur, the tomb of Usertesen II, before referred to, was found a chest for Canopic jars and vases for perfumes, dishes of fowl, wheat grains, a table for writing, a white swan carved in wood, canes and jewelry, crowns, diadems and a gold vulture. The aperture in the ceiling above beings closed by a stone had escaped the notice of the earlier depredators whose purpose was in no way the cause of science. Contrary to the usage of the Old Empire, but in conformity with that of the Twelfth Dynasty, these sepulchral chambers do not contain the carved names of the sovereign proprietors, but these are learned from texts on the wooden coffins and on vases. We have the tombs of the Princess Iza and Knumit, the tomb of Prince Khuma-Nub and the tombs of the Princess Sit-hat and Ita-Qurt, “issues of royal blood” of the family of Amenhotep II. Of the Amenemhats we have a list of the sisters, wives and daughters, Queen Sonit, of whom there is a statuette in black granite, Nofirhonit, Soubit, Sithathor and Monit, names only of whose private history nothing remains to us.

The Princesses Knumit and Iza left much jewelry; the former, probably the daughter of Amenemhat II, was evidently the more important person, with the richer treasures. Among the rest a large necklace with beads of silver, gold, carnelian, emerald, lapis-lazuli and hieroglyphic signs in gold, crusted with precious stones. These were in sheathing of painted and gilded paste, through which some of the network and jewels had escaped. There was also a crown of lotus flowers, of jewelry, which was so arranged that the wearer could place in it various plumes or feathers, to be changed at pleasure.

Henut-tani was the queen of Usertesen III, the conqueror of Nubia, and she was called queen consort, but not royal mother. Queen Merseker and Queen Haankn’s are also mentioned as queens of the Usertesens. And the queens and princesses were frequently priestesses to Nit or Hathor.

The temple of Kounah built by Amenhotep III is said to have contained 700 statues of the lion-headed goddess Seckmet, but they were rather the work of the artisan than the artist and far below the level of the sculpture of this period. There is a bust of Amenemhat III at St. Petersburgh. His reign was distinguished by the construction of Lake Moeris, an artificial reservoir of which traces yet remain, and of the great Labyrinth whose purpose has not been made clear, but the ruins of which were discovered by Dr. Lepsius, in the Prussian Expedition to Egypt. Lake Moeris, with its network of canals, made all the land of the flat basin of the Fayum a fertile garden and the fisheries of the lake were of great value and formed part of the revenues of the queen.

It was a period of wealth and luxury. All the furniture, rosewood from India, ebony from the far south, cedar from the slopes of Lebanon, and pine from Syria was exquisitely carved. The walls were frescoed and painted, decorated with vases for flowers and perfumes and with an altar for unburnt offerings, and the rooms were in suites of chambers, sitting rooms, and bath. The roof was flat, generally shaded with awning, and hosts and guests could sit or lie upon it and enjoy the air and the view.

“The opulent Egyptian,” says Monumental Records, “of the time of Amenemhat II had his country seat, like our modern prince. Its high-walled garden was watered by a canal leading from the Nile. Along the sides of this canal were walks shaded by the yellow blossomed acacia, the sycamore and the Theban palm. In the centre of the garden was a vineyard, the branches trained over trellis work and so forming a rustic boudoir, with broad green leaves and clusters of red grapes on the walls. At one end of the garden stood a summer house or kiosk; in front of this was a pond covered with broad leaves and blue flowers of the lotus, through which water fowl sported. This pond was stocked with fish and the host invited his guest to join him in spearing or angling. Adjoining this were the stables and coach houses, with a park near by, in which gazelles were bred for coursing—for the gentry of old Egypt were lovers of the chase. In hunting wild ducks they made use of decoys and trained cats to retrieve. They speared hippopotami in the Nile and hunted lions in the desert with dogs. They were pigeon-fanciers and were proud of rare varieties.” In short one is “amazed to see in studying their social enjoyments their resemblance to our own.”

The goddess Bast in the time of the ancient Empire was represented with the head of a lioness and only in the Twelfth with that of a cat. The cat and Dongalese dog were first represented on the walls of Beni-Hasan in the time of the raids of the kings into Kush or Ethiopia, the Usertesens and Amenemhats. There are cat cemeteries belonging to this time where the skulls are larger than those of our common cats and also where the animals had been cremated, while in Upper Egypt, in the Fayum, they were found mummified and bandaged.

This dynasty closes, as did the Sixth, with a queen. Little as we know of her she was a ruling monarch and gives her name to this chapter, as she appears to have been the only one of this race who actually swayed the sceptre in her own right. She was the daughter of Amenemhat III and probably sister and wife of Amenemhat IV, whom she succeeded. As her name takes precedence of his on the monuments they probably did not have the same mother and hers may have been of higher lineage than his. Queen Sebek-nefru-ra, or Sorknofrituri, is known chiefly from the traces of her short reign found near Illahun, fragments of pillars bearing her name beside the pre-nomen of her father. These or some portion of them are to be seen in the British Museum. According to the Turin papyrus she reigned three years, eight months and eighteen days, but no tradition has come down to us of her appearance or personality and no romance or tragic story of her life or fate.

Amenemhat III had also another daughter, Phat-neferu, who probably died before her sister and was buried beside her father. Memorials of her are an alabaster altar, a block of black granite, with names and titles and a broken dish, inscribed “King’s daughter, Ptah-neferu.” A sphinx of grey granite is thought to be Queen Sebek-nefrura, because different from the others, which is of course not very conclusive proof and at Hawara her name occurs as often as that of her father on columns and blocks, and there is a cylinder of white schist, glazed blue, of unusual size and bearing all her titles, also a scarab. But it is but little after all that we know of her.

A romance has been discovered of this dynasty in the earlier period, in a story of which a beginning is found on a piece of broken limestone, the end of the tale having been for some time previously preserved on a papyrus in the Berlin Museum. Probably it was a favorite piece of literature, like the adventures of Robinson Crusoe to the English speaking world, and might have been found in various forms. A certain Senebat, an Egyptian, having overheard a state secret and fearing that if this were discovered his life might pay the forfeit, fled to Syria. Wandering in the desert and almost dying of thirst he was found by some of the wild tribes, saved and adopted by them and in time rose to the rank of chief. But homesickness at last overtook him and he sent an appeal to the Egyptian king for permission to return. He was then invited to court, where he wrote a curious account of his adventures and the manners and customs of the Bedouins. He was much honored, being received by the queen and family while the royal daughters performed a dance and sang a chorus of praise to the king. The monarch even distinguished him by taking an interest in the tomb which he prepared and at the end of a sort of triumphal song, Senebat, says, “I was in favor with the king to the day of his death.”

The Twelfth Dynasty is also interesting to us as being contemporaneous with the birth of the Jewish nation, the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

A stele bears the names of the daughters or aunts of the deceased king Sebek-hotep II adoring Min, and their names are Anhetabu and Anget-dudu, born of Queen Nen-na. The parents of Sebek-hotep II are spoken of as “the divine father Men-tuhotep III” and royal mother, Anhet-abu, after whom evidently one of the daughters or grand-daughters was called. The name Sebek-hotep was a favorite. The father of Nefer-hotep and Sebek-hotep III was Ha’ankh’s, his mother Kema, his wife Sebsen and he had four royal children. A statement of facts probably, but with little accompanying detail. Sebek-hotep IV had for his queen Nub-em-hat and his daughter was Sebek-emhat, and there is a certain Pernub, probably of this family, descended from Queen Ha’ankh’s.

Queen Nub’kha’s was the wife of Sebek-em-saf, whose tomb was among those discovered in 1881. It was first rifled in the Twentieth Dynasty and is referred to in papyrus of the time of Rameses IX, of which the Amherst and Abbott papyrus give accounts. Like so many of the queens our only knowledge of her is from her tomb and that from the deposition of the robber who violated it, which is thus given. “It (the tomb) was surrounded by masonry and covered with roofing stone. We demolished it and found them (the king and queen) reposing therein. We found the august king with his divine axe beside him and his amulets and ornaments of gold about his neck. His head was covered with gold and his august person was entirely adorned with gold. His coffins were overlaid with gold and silver within and without and incrusted with all kinds of precious stones. We took the gold which we found upon the sacred person of this god, as also his amulets and the ornaments which were about his neck and the coffins in which he reposed. And having found the royal wife we took all that we found upon her, in the same manner and we set fire to their mummy cases and we seized upon the furniture, their vases of gold and silver and bronze, and we divided them among ourselves.” Death was deservedly the penalty for such offences, but probably the sinner felt a certain relief in making a “clean breast” of it, or perhaps fancied in some strange way that his wicked exploit conferred a sort of distinction upon him.

A stele gives the genealogy of this queen as daughter of the chief of the judges Sebek-dudu, who, rich or poor man, had four wives. The queen is called on a stele in the Louvre “great heiress the greatly favored, the ruler of all women, united to the crown,” thus showing that the kings did not always marry princesses. In the Fourteenth Dynasty, up to this writing, no queen’s name has been discovered. Weaker rulers followed, and thus Asiatic invaders, the Hyksos, an alien race, mistakenly supposed by Josephus to be Hebrews, were able to overpower and usurp the government, ruling in some places simultaneously with, and in others expelling the native sovereigns. They were called shepherd kings or princes. Some of their statues remain, but as they were frequently re-inscribed by later kings, there is doubt about some of them. All traces of the queens are, so far, lost during this period. Whether these strange invaders kept their women in the seclusion usual in the East or whether once existing relics have been destroyed, we know not. Beside the few portrait statues of the kings no royal consort appears, and they are of a different style of art. Joseph is thought to have been the prime minister of one of the Hyksos rulers and an inscription found which reads: “A famine having broken out during many years I gave corn to the towns during each famine,” is believed by some to relate to him. But it was not the wont of the Egyptian monarchs to celebrate the achievements of their slaves and such early memorials, if existing, would probably have been destroyed when the Hebrew race was enslaved by their oppressors.

Petrie gives the approximate dates of 2821 B. C. to 1928 B. C. for these various reigns.

CHAPTER SIXTH.
AAH-HOTEP.

Between the Fourteenth Dynasty, of which we last spoke, and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties, to which this chapter brings us, occurs the third chasm in the monuments, and as they are the chief dependence in learning the history of Egypt, the information in regard to this intervening period is very meagre. Egypt was ruled with special favor shown to the central portion, and weaker monarchs had succeeded the great Amenemhats and Usertesens. Foreigners, the so-called Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, overran and took possession of the country and conquered it, almost without battles, proceeding later to destroy the temples and kill the inhabitants.

Among these kings’ names are that of Salatis, or Shaloti, and a certain Apepi, of the Turanian type, a bust of whom is in the British Museum, and another at Gizeh, while it is to one of these rulers that Joseph is by some believed to have been the favored minister, but, as has been said before, no queen appears amongst them.

After the lapse of five hundred years Egypt awoke from its partial lethargy and, throwing off the yoke of these invaders, asserted its independence under a line of native rulers. Battles were fought and won, and the Theban princes again held sway. King Ta’a ruled, perhaps tributary to the Hyksos, revolted and partially liberated himself from thral, but it remained to his descendant Aahmes to completely accomplish this object. It seemed somewhat characteristic of the Egyptian monarchs that they did not know how to hold their conquered territory. Again and again they won battles and subjected foreign peoples only to lose what they had gained, to be once more fought for by their warlike successors.

The divisions into dynasties is said not to have been made by the Egyptians themselves, but to have been used by historians for the greater convenience of indicating the families who, together or in succession, held the sceptre.

No woman’s strength had been able to struggle up through the previous oblivion, but she now once more takes her place beside the king and shares with him honors, both divine and human. “Divine spouse,” a term not used before, is applied to the queens of this era, who were regarded as the mothers of the race and worshipped for generations after.

It was sometimes inscribed on the monuments in Egypt that “the sons of Misr” were all born equal, but this had about the same relation to facts that the vaunted “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” sometimes bore. In the Twelfth Dynasty, below the crown and royal family came, first, the class of priests; second, the soldiers; third, the husbandmen, gardeners, huntsmen and boatmen; fourth, tradesmen, shopkeepers, artificers in stone and metal, boat builders, stone masons and public weighers; fifth, shepherds, poulterers, fishermen, fowlers, laborers and the people at large—distinctly a succession of classes. Laborers wore only an apron and short trousers of coarse woven grass cloth.

The times were changing; this we learn from the numerous remains of this period, on the sculptured and painted monuments and the papyri, of which many have been discovered. The temples were growing in importance and the kings were buried more in grottoes than, as formerly, in monuments. The military man succeeded the farmer, and the priests gained in power. The wall paintings give pictures of festivals, with music and dancing, and less of the agricultural life previously so much dwelt upon.

It is interesting to know that the horse, in so many countries the useful and often beloved companion of man, seems to have been first introduced into Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty. After that he often figures in battles, and draws the state chariot in which both kings and queens take their pleasure. On the wall of a tomb at Thebes, that of a certain Hui of the Eighteenth Dynasty, is the picture of a queen drawn by two piebald bulls, like the modern Abyssinian breed. This, presumably, is just before the period when horses were in general use. To this time is also attributed the introduction of the pomegranate, the beautiful Eastern fruit of which poets have often sung; and earrings were then said to be added to the previous list of adornments, as the result of foreign example—they first took the shape of broad disks, and later, under the Twentieth Dynasty, became large rings.

In the Seventeenth Dynasty we have mention of a Queen Ansera. Of her private history we know nothing, but after her death she extended her hospitality to a number of her royal connections, for the great discovery in the summer of 1881 brought to light the mummies of many kings and queens gathered together in her tomb. Among these were the celebrated King Rameses II, by some thought to be the oppressor of the Israelites; Queen Aahmes-Nefertari, first of the Eighteenth Dynasty; Queen Merit-Amen, Queen Hout-timoo-hoo and Queen Sitka, also belonging to this dynasty, besides others of later date.

A certain confusion for a long time existed between the two queens, Aah-hotep and Aahmes-Nefertari, but the late history of Professors Petrie and Mahaffy has rendered the details of this period somewhat clearer. Different authorities have varied the name and spelling of Queen Aah-hotep. Thus we have in addition to the spelling above given, Aahotep, Aah-hetep or Ahhot-pou. It has the pretty meaning, “gift of the moon,” and she seems to have been a Theban princess, and first to have married an Egyptian, perhaps not of royal rank, and then Seqenenra, whose mummy has been found, showing that he had been wounded in battle. He was of the Berber type—tall, slender and vigorous, with small, long head and fine black hair. The reasons for this chronology are said not to be very strong. Aahmes was perhaps son of the first, Nefertari, daughter of the second, so the lawful heir, and Aahmes thus married his half-sister. If Kames, at first thought to be the husband and later the son of Queen Aah-hotep, was the elder brother, he had a short reign, followed by Aahmes and Nefertari.

Queen Aah-hotep had several children and was a wonderful woman, according to some accounts, with the longevity of a Mertytefs. A Theban stele of Kames shows that in the tenth year of Amen-hotep I, that Aah-hotep, the royal mother, was still active, revered and honored, taking a share in the government and perhaps regent in the absence of the king, at eighty-eight years of age, and she seems still to have been alive during the reign of Tahutmes or Thothmes I. Hence she had seen the whole of the revolution which again set the native princes upon the throne, during the reigns of son, grandson and great grandson. Petrie says of her, she was “one of the great queens of Egyptian history, important as the historic link of the dynasties and revered along with her still more celebrated and honored daughter, Nefertari.” Peculiarly close, and perhaps personally tender, relations seem to have existed between these two, who were both mother and daughter and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. And children and grandchildren appear to have paid highest respect to Queen Aah-hotep.

The esteem of the son for his mother in the time of the Old Empire seems to have been great, as the Frenchman of to-day is said to be especially devoted to his. The family groups representing the living or dead, and sometimes both, frequently give the king, his wife and his mother, while the father rarely appears; though this is probably more apt to be the case when the royal dignity has descended on the maternal rather than the paternal side.

Queen Aah-hotep was evidently much beloved by her martial son and grandsons, for the latter lavished upon her dead body all sorts of jewelry and ornaments to be buried with her. This large collection has been found and preserved, and, until the discovery of the parure of some of the princesses of the Twelfth Dynasty, was the finest specimen of the skill of the Egyptian craftsman that had come down to modern times. The body was found in the ancient necropolis of No, buried only a few feet below the surface. This, of course, was not the original place of sepulture, where the latest authorities believe it was placed, not by the Arab plunderers of the other royal tombs, but by pious hands, to preserve it from destruction, in the unsettled state of the country. Brugsch thus describes it: “The cover of the coffin had the shape of a mummy and was gilt above and below. The royal asp decked the brow. The white of the eye is represented by quartz and the pupils by black glass. A rich imitation necklace covers the breast and shoulders; the uræus serpent and the vulture—the holy symbols of the Upper and Lower land of Kemi—lie below the necklace. A closed pair of wings seem to protect the rest of the body. At the soles of the feet stand the statues of the mourning goddesses, Isis and Nepththys. The inscription in the middle row gives us the queen Aah-hotep, as servant of the moon.”

The mummy of Queen Aah-hotep was discovered by rummaging Arabs in 1860, but was captured and confiscated by the authorities, who opened the coffin and took away what it contained. The rumor of this theft had spread, and Mariette, the great Egyptologist, who was in charge of the museum at Boulak, put his hand on the coffin and the jewels, but was not able to save them all. He believed that the queen was not originally buried where the Arabs discovered her, but thinks that towards the close of the Twentieth Dynasty she had been carried off by bands of robbers, spoken of in the Abbott papyrus, and hidden by them to despoil at leisure. Their design, however, was frustrated, as they were probably caught and executed, and their secret perished with them, until rediscovered hundreds of years later. As may be seen, the theories of the authorities on these subjects differ somewhat, as is so frequently the case. But to the latest researches and opinions perhaps should be attached the greatest weight, since they have the advantage of their predecessors’ views and the benefit of the most modern discoveries.

A fine illustration of female clothing and adornment is given in the standing statue of the Dame or Lady “Takarshit.” She wears a short wig, in rows of curls, and an embroidered band across her head, a very scant, narrow, and short robe, which almost makes us wonder how she had free play for her limbs (this, too, is embroidered in rows with religious subjects), and she has bracelets and chains on her wrists and arms. The face is older than the figure, as the Egyptians in sculpture would occasionally unite the beauty of youthful form with that of the more mature head and countenance.

The list of Queen Aah-hotep’s treasures, habited, as we can picture her to be, in the garb just described, is a long one. On the gilded coffin lid she is represented with face uncovered and body enveloped in wings of Isis. This goddess was a special object of worship at this time, as later in the Ptolemaic period also. Among the most interesting of the trinkets is a little golden boat set on a wheeled wooden carriage and manned with small figures, the central one of which is her son, King Kames, or, as it was originally thought, her husband. He is going to Abydos, and holds in his hand an axe and a sceptre. There is also another little silver boat with its crew of rowers. A diadem as small as a bracelet for the wrist was found attached to the head of the queen, and terminated in tiny sphinxes, with the name of Aahmes engraved in letters of gold upon a groundwork of lapis-lazuli. A funeral collar, prescribed by the ritual, has designs of animals in chased gold, the figures outlined by fine gold wires, like Chinese cloissonne, between paste and colored stones. The coloring of all this enamel is particularly rich. There are three massive gold bees, possibly intended as the decoration for some order; also silver bees. A necklace with hanging ornaments in the shape of red and blue almonds. A box in the form of a royal cartouch as a large seal guarded by two sphinxes. A magnificent chain with the head of a goose at either end, the name of King Aahmes on the neck and the scarabeus or sacred beetle hanging from it.

Necklaces of gold and silver, rings and bracelets, the former with little figures of the gods, or amulets of various sorts hanging from them, were much worn; and it is said that after the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, owing to Phoenician influences, the bracelets usually terminated in lions’ heads. These amulets were supposed to preserve the wearer from harm, both in a present and a future world, and the gods themselves, strange to say, sought such protection. The “evil eye,” still thought to exist in our comparatively modern life, as witness the Salem witchcraft craze, was especially dreaded, and there were various designs to ward off its ill effects. Among these were outstretched fingers; “Ut-a’” eyes, sometimes with wings and hands, holding a disk, in different substances; the right symbolized the king, as the sun, the left, the queen, as the moon, and, either sculptured or worn, guarded the owner from this particular form of harm.

The heart amulet and the scarab or scarabeus was very common. Many curious notions prevailed about this insect. It was believed to be of only one sex, and women ate it to induce fecundity. The fact that the male and female closely resemble each other and share in the care of their offspring probably was the foundation of this idea. A remarkable example of a scarab was taken from the mummy of Tahut’mes III. It was of steatite, glazed, of a greenish purple hue, in a hold frame bound across. There was a figure of Tahut’mes kneeling, with crown on head, and the whip, signifying authority, in his hand, while with the other he made an offering to the god. A dog was represented in front and a hawk behind him, and a gold loop was attached to hang the scarab to the chain on the neck. All Egyptians loved jewelry, the men as well as the women wearing necklaces, collars, etc., of gold, silver, beads and precious stones. Great use was made of carnelian, lapis lazuli, jasper, etc., and ladies would occupy themselves, as do the blind of our own time, in stringing glass beads and bugles into network, which in these latter days is used to trim the clothing of the living, while with the Egyptian it was chiefly for the adornment of the dead.

A chapter from the Book of the Dead was found on a scarab of the time of Mycerinas. These scarabs seem to have been of three classes; the first merely for ornament, the second for historic record, and the third for funeral purposes. They sometimes bore the names of kings earlier than those with whose mummies they have been found. A signet ring was of special importance and a necessary article among the belongings of either king or queen, as also of many others of less elevated rank. It was the same thing as the signing of a personal name at the present time—they sealed instead of signing, and when an Eastern monarch wished to send special orders he would sometimes intrust his signet ring to the bearer in token of authority. This ring was of gold or less valuable material, according to the rank of the owner. Many examples of a pretty class of ring made of faience, in blue, green, purple, etc., and manufactured at Tel-el-Amarna, the city built by Amen-hotep IV, formerly called Khu-n-aten, in the latter part of the Eighteenth Dynasty have been found, and are among the collections in various museums.

Some of these collections have sets of ornaments belonging to ancient kings and queens. Berlin has that of an Ethiopean Candace. The Louvre that of a Prince Pzar, with griffins and lotus. Also a ring of Rameses II, with little horses standing on the bezel. At Gizeh are heavy earrings of Rameses IX, with filagree chains and uræus, and bracelets of Pinotem in gold encrusted with stones, like those made to-day in the Soudan. The later discoveries of this sort, belonging to the latter period of the Egyptian Empire, show Greek influences. But the most extensive, tasteful and finely wrought of these objects was the parure of Queen Aah-hotep. Chains to the women were as essential as rings to the men; a woman was indeed poor if her jewel box held only one.

As the North American Indian slays the favorite horse and lays beside his dead chief bows and arrows for use in the “happy hunting grounds,” so the Egyptian placed in the tomb of his revered and beloved things that he used in daily life. At one time it was even the custom in the case of a king to kill some of his slaves, whose souls might accompany and attend upon him, but this cruel practice was not kept up. For service in another existence, food, furniture and personal belongings surrounded the dead in his grave, as they had done the living in his household; and, in the case of a woman especially, all her feminine appliances for the toilette and many of her ornaments and jewels were included. Some were what had belonged to her in the past, some were newly prepared for the future state. Even faded flowers hundreds of years old have been discovered, and fruit has been found with mummies of the Eleventh Dynasty.

One museum possesses a sarcophagus of a priest of Maut and a prophet of Queen Aah-hotep. To her the priests of Amen rendered divine honors. On the inside of the coffin are invocations to the divine Amenophis II (a descendant of the queen’s), and also to both Queens Aah-hotep and Nefertari Ahmes. The coffin of the former was not so gigantic as that of the latter, and somehow one pictures her as rather smaller and more feminine looking than the daughter who succeeded her in the royal honors, with the thick eyelashes blackened with kohl, the straight brows, the almond-shaped eyes and the other features characteristic of the Egyptian face. Into the future life in which the Egyptian believed so ardently she stepped, after a long pilgrimage in this world, accompanied by all the little devices which had made her comfort and pleasure here, to be honored and revered as she had been accustomed to be in the lower world.

Among the valued amulets was the buckle, or “Tie,” made of jasper, carnelian, porphery, red glass, faience and sycamore wood, more rarely of gold. The red material stood for the blood of Isis, and this amulet was put on the neck of a mummy for its protection. Such were usually without inscription, but two found together would occasionally be inscribed with a chapter from the Book of the Dead. The “Tet,” made of gold, sometimes had plumes, when it signified Osiris and meant firmness. This also was for protection. Serpents’ heads guarded from their bites in another world. The vulture amulet was of gold, but was not common. It referred to “Mother Isis,” and bore such inscriptions from the Book of the Dead as “His Mother, the mighty lady, makes his protection and brings him to Horus.” This was sometimes suspended from the usual gold collar worn by the dead. The “anck,” or life sign, was something like a small cross with an oval ring on top instead of the upper arm, and was very frequent. The amulet “Nefer” was for good luck. “Maut,” always worn by the god Ptah, was a frequent emblem of Hathor. Frogs, disks, plumes, etc., were of this list. Some of these, and more, probably surrounded Queen Aah-hotep.

In a pectoral on her breast King Ahmes was represented, while the two divinities Amen and Ra poured the water of purification on his head; they stand in a little green temple. Bracelets for the ankle or upper arm were simple rings of gold, massive, solid or hollow, edged with threads of gold to represent filagree. Others worn at the wrist, like ours, were formed of beads of gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian and green feldspar, mounted on threads of gold and disposed in squares in which half was a different color. The fastenings were two gold plates united by an aiglet of gold, the cartouch of Ahmes engraved lightly at the point. Some of the bracelets were more complicated but not so fine in workmanship—three parallel bands garnished with turquoise. There was also a vulture, the queen’s special ornament, with outstretched wings; also the heads of sparrow-hawks. Some of the ornaments were attached to the cloth in which the mummy was wrapped by rings. But for what we may call the trousseau of a bride of the tomb, jewelry was not sufficient. Arms, with which she was to protect herself, or be protected, from the evil spirits of another world, were also provided and placed with her. There was a unique specimen of a baton, bent at the extremity and adorned with a spiral of gold. Such forms as this are found to-day among the inhabitants of Nubia and the Soudan, but probably have not the same meaning. An axe was ornamented with gold and precious stones, inlaid, and with a picture of the warlike Aahmes slaying an enemy. Handles of knives in ebony were carved with the lotus. There were poinards with female heads, and sheaths with raised ornaments of damascened gold and inscriptions. On the blade on one side was “The beneficent god Ra-neb-pebti, life giver, as the sun, ever.” On the other, “The son of the sun and of his side Aahmes-nakht—life giver and always.” One hatchet had a handle of horn and a silver blade. A poinard had a yellow bronze blade and silvered handle, and there was also a clasp of bronze with holes left for ostrich feathers.

To these were added a large variety of toilette articles, vases and jars of various sorts for spices, unguents, etc. Alabaster jars in tombs are as ancient as the Fourth Dynasty, and examples are also known inscribed with the name of Unas, Pepi I, Men-tu-em-saf, Amasis I, Tahutimes II, Amenophis II, Rameses II, and Queen Amen-eritis.

The god Bes, said to be introduced from Punt, presided over the toilette. He had a squat, hideous figure, and a face which was doubtless chiefly appreciated from its contrast to that of his fair votaries. He bore a double character, one side being military or martial in aspect, the other a sort of Bacchus or god of Pleasure, and it was in this last, probably, that he was regarded as a suitable guardian for the preparations for feasts and revels. Toilette articles, of which a number were found with the body of the queen, were mirrors, tweezers, hairpins of wood, bone, ivory and metal, and occasionally combs of wood and ivory, though these last are believed by some authorities not to have been introduced till later. There were also kohl pots and little tubes and jars of various forms. Tiny hands of ivory on a stick for scratching the back were sometimes found.

The mirrors, from three to twelve inches in diameter, had handles ornamented with flowers, particularly the well-beloved lotus, and heads of the goddess Hathor and the god Bes. Vases and jars found in the tombs were of various shapes, for wine, oils, spices, unguents, scents, etc., but transparent glass ones are not found earlier than the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. The kohl pots were to hold stibium and antimony of copper to stain the eyelids and eyebrows and give the eyes a wide-open appearance; also for such purposes were little hollow tubes of wood, glass, ivory and alabaster, a column with a palm leaf and figures of Bes. Sometimes the tubes were double, with movable covers on a pivot and accompanied by a stick of bronze wood to apply the unguent. The wicked Jezabel in the Bible is said to have “set her eyes in stibium,” which was, however, a common Eastern practice.

Fine examples of such articles, with the pre-nomen of Amenophis III and his wife Tyi, and of Tut-arch-Amen and his wife Anknes-Amen, have been found. Hematite pillows or head rests, generally uninscribed, and papyrus sceptres mounted in mother-of-emerald and faience, may perhaps be added to this list and not exhaust it. Thus was the queen, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of life, laid in her last resting place. The Egyptian, as has been before said, spent much of his time in preparing and providing for a future existence, and it is through his death, as it were, and on tombs and monuments that we attain to any realistic knowledge of his living days.

The queen is believed to have had a number of children besides Aahmes and Nefertari, whose personality stands out pre-eminent among them. Of these are Birpu, who appears on a statuette, Amenmes and Uazrmes. Of Nebt’ta, one of the daughters, a scarab is known. And Mut’nefert, subsequently queen, may also have been of this family.

Queen Mertytefs’ name calls up this active, capable ruling spirit of the household and the court. Queen Nitocris comes before us as the beauty of her time—the Mary Stuart of an early age, lovely, captivating and admired, but not blameless in her life story. Queen Sebek-nefru-ra is associated with father and husband in works of public usefulness and benefit. But Queen Aah-hotep seems to bear with her an atmosphere of femininity and tenderness. A devout worshipper of the gods, we can picture her as a frequent attendant upon the services and offerings in the temples. At home, a woman perchance with some foibles and weaknesses and a truly feminine love for ornamentation, and yet a mother who won an undying affection. Lamentations and mourning doubtless followed her to the tomb, and upon her inanimate form was lavished a wealth of adornment which bespoke the clinging tenderness of the royal son whose name is found so often inscribed upon her ornaments.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.
AAHMES-NEFERTARI.

Aahmes, also called Amosis, son of Queen Aah-hotep and an Egyptian father (whose history is as yet unknown), was one of the greatest warriors and most noted kings of Egypt, and regarded as the savior of his country, since he freed it from the long thrall of an alien race. Ambition was evidently a ruling passion with him, but he appears to have been devoted and even tender to those he loved. His wife, the Princess Nefertari-Aahmes, or Aahmes-Nefertari, was long supposed to be the daughter of an Ethiopian king, and therefore not of kin to him, since her pictures on the monuments show a black skin, though Caucasian features.

Nefertari Aahmes.

Later researches have proved her to be his half-sister, the daughter of his mother, but not of his father. She was evidently the first daughter of Queen Aah-hotep’s marriage with Sequenenra, and with a more direct title to the succession than her husband, so that there were state reasons as well as private ones for the marriage. From Sequenenra, therefore, he being of the Berber type, she took her coloring and the right of succession, and she may perhaps be said to have been three-quarters black. The name signifies “good or beautiful companion,” and she was regarded with great veneration on earth and shared with her mother, and mother-in-law, divine honors after death.

Thebes, which had risen to political consequence in the time of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, was now the royal city, the safest home of the royal family, and was said to have stood to Ethiopia, as well as to Egypt, as Rome did to mediaeval Christendom. It was in Upper Egypt, the sacred city, and devoted to the worship of the god Amen, or Amon, whom the Greeks regarded as their Jove. From here went out the great war chariots and the bands of soldiers to battle, and often, especially at this period, to conquest.

“The chief peculiarity of the Egyptians,” says a writer who is an authority, “is the remarkable closeness of their eyelashes on both lids, forming a dense double fringe, which gives so animated an expression to their almond-shaped eyes.” The very ancient and still existing custom of blackening the edges of the eyelids with antimony (kohl), which is said to serve a sanitary purpose, contributes to enhance this natural expression. The eyebrows are straight and smooth, never bushy. The mouth is wide and thick-lipped, and very different from that of the Beduin or inhabitant of the oases. The high cheek bones, the receding forehead, the lowness of the bridge of the nose (this last in some pictures of the statues of Queen Nefertari-Aahmes being noticeable), which is always distinctly separated from the forehead, and the flatness of the nose itself are the chief characteristics of the Egyptian skull; but as the jaw projects less than those of most of the other African colored races, it has been assumed that the skull is Asiatic and not African in shape. A headless statue at Karnak and statuettes at various places exist. They suggest a queenly bearing, and from these and the general description we must form our mental picture of this dark-skinned lady. A light complexion was much admired, but Queen Nefertari-Aahmes was of different type, and perhaps set the fashion of her own style of beauty; at one place she was painted yellow, and one authority claimed that she was only black in a mythological sense, but it now seems to be agreed that to a Berber father she owed her tint.

The two names, Nefruari and Nefertari, appear to be interchangeable, and probably bear the same relation to each other as Mary and Maria. We can see plainly the difference ’twixt our Jacks and Johns, our Marys and Marias, but the alteration of a single letter in a foreign tongue leaves us somewhat bewildered, and the Nofruaris and the Nefertaris, the Nefrits and the Nofrits, etc., are often very puzzling, and, unless great care is taken, may lead to serious complications and mistakes.

Our knowledge of this period comes largely from two sources, the tomb of a naval officer in the service of Aahmes and the discoveries of comparatively late years, which have brought to light many of the very bodies of the kings, queens and princesses of this and subsequent lines. Even in death the truth of the proverb seems to hold, that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” and not in what was intended to be their last resting places, but in collections and museums, are gathered many royalties whose eyes looked out on the light of an ancient world.

Aahmes, son of Abuna, directly or indirectly the king’s namesake, was an officer of the ship called “The Calf,” and later served on one named “Ruling in Memphis,” which perhaps celebrated the reconquering of the ancient capital. Of his early life there are some amusing records: “I was too young to have a wife, and slept in the semt cloth and shennu garment.” This was about 1586 B. C., and his age perhaps twenty. Nor, following the example of his sovereigns, does he hesitate to blow his own trumpet “As soon as I had a house,” says the martial hero, “I was taken to a ship called the ‘North’ on account of my valor.” Apparently, he could face the enemy early in life, but not a fair lady. Diospolis, or Thebes, “hundred-gated Thebes,” was now the chief city, and Officer Aahmes saw active service, but survived and was rewarded by his monarch. The chronicle reads: “I brought very many prisoners. I do not reckon them,” and, further, that he was “presented with gold seven times in the face of the whole land.” The story of his exploits on his tomb throws much light upon the history of the time.

In the summer of 1881, in a pit, near Thebes, was found a concourse of mummies, the bodies of many kings and queens, among them Queen Nefertari-Aahmes. The existence of royal tombs had long been suspected from the various articles which had found their way into the market, and the authorities were at length able to secure the Arab who was the chief purloiner. He and his accomplices long obstinately resisted all inducements, even that of imprisonment, to reveal their secret, but finally yielded, and the bodies of various sovereigns of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (the Twentieth was missing) were found.

The experienced archeologist can tell from the appearance of a mummy case to what period it belongs. The oldest mummy in the world, until recently, about which there was no doubt, is that of Saken-em-saf, son of Pepi I, of the Sixth Dynasty. The mummies of the Eleventh Dynasty are poorly made, brittle and yellowish; those of the Twelfth Dynasty are black, and from these to the Seventeenth are also inferior. But those of the Eighteenth are so finely embalmed that the limbs are pliable and bend without breaking. At Thebes they were generally painted yellow. Alexander the Great is said to have been buried in honey, as was the case with others. Bitumen was used towards the time of the Ptolemies, and grew hard with age. Later still, pieces of wood were inserted, with the face painted upon them.