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.