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.