Maat-kha

“ Then the happy union can be consummated, and thou, Neit-akrit, the defrauded Princess of Kamt, canst in thy unselfish joy watch the happiness of Maat-kha, the murderess, in the arms of her beloved, the son of Ra, loved of all the gods: and I can swear to thee that he shall not know that the wife of his bosom is the murderess of her first-born until she hath borne him a son, the heir to all her vices. ”

“ In the centre of each boat a pavilion was erected, with turquoise blue and green awnings, the gigantic double crown of Kamt glittering aloft at prow and poop. Queen Maat-kha, swathed in the clinging folds of her black kalasiris, wore the royal uræus round her dark hair, which was thickly plaited with strings of emeralds and half hidden beneath a veil of dull blue and purple stripes. She looked very beautiful, though strangely excited and pale. ”

“ Beyond them I could see nothing but gloom; the dim shadow, which I had fancied to be Princess Neit-akrit, had apparently disappeared, if indeed it had ever been there, and the high priest and the Queen evidently thought themselves alone.
"He often used to evade his attendants at night-time," Maat-kha was saying, apparently in answer to a query from the priest, "and wander about aimlessly in the gardens or the palace. I had come into the temple to pray, bidding my women go and leave me in peace for an hour, when suddenly I saw the Pharaoh before me." ”

“ Queen Maat-kha shrugged her shoulders and laughed a low, derisive laugh.
“ ’Twere better thou didst go back to thy sick-bed, oh, mighty Pharaoh! and didst take some of the soothing potions thy medicine men do order thee. Thy mind doth indeed begin to wander. Love! and Neit-akrit!... was there ever a more impossible union? Why, ’twere easier to credit the jackals of the wilderness with pity for the corpses they devour than Neit-akrit with human love!” ”

“ The priests of Ra will guard the body of the Pharaoh until such time as the soulless corpse will have helped to fulfil the deed of vengeance which the gods of Kamt have decreed."
"I do not understand."
"Listen, Maat-kha," said Ur-tasen, more eagerly, as he bent his shaven crown close to her ear; "at the midnight hour, when Isis is high in the heavens, the stranger, who with sacrilegious arrogance doth style himself beloved of the gods, will plight his troth to thee. ”

“ The sanctuary was at the farther end of the building. Already the high priest, followed by Maat-kha, was rapidly disappearing in the vastness of the temple. Helpless, I looked round me. The conviction had gradually forced itself upon my mind that Ur-tasen
I will cause all my wealth, . ”

“ I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the names of the two and forty gods who live with thee in this Hall of Maāti, who live as watchers of sinners and who feed upon their blood on that day when the characters (or lives) of men are reckoned up (or taken into account) in the presence of the god Un-nefer. Verily, God of the Rekhti-Merti (i.e., the twin sisters of the two eyes) , the Lord of the city of Maāti is thy name. Verily I have come to thee, and I have brought Maāt unto thee, and I have destroyed wickedness. ”

“ The goddess Maāt is carried by the arm at the shining of the goddess Neith in the city of Mentchat, and at the shining of the Eye when it is weighed. I am carried over by it and I know what it bringeth from the city of Kesi, [1] and I will neither declare it unto men nor tell it unto the gods. I have come, being the envoy of Rā, to stablish Maāt upon the arm at the shining of Neith in the city of Mentchat and to adjudge the eye to him that shall scrutinize it. I have come as a power through the knowledge of the Souls of Khemennu (Hermopolis) who love to know what ye love. ”

“ They are by [27] nature peaceful and mild, a race with strong pastoral habits, who have lived for years in dread of Matabele raids; consequently their respect for a chief like Khama—who has actually on one occasion repulsed the foe, and who has established peace, prosperity, and justice in all his borders—is unbounded, and his word is law.
Khama pervades everything in his town. He is always on horseback, visiting the fields, the stores, and the outlying kraals. He has a word for every one; he calls every woman ‘my daughter,’ and every man ‘my son;’ he pats the little children on the head. ”

“ Matsheng, however, did not long retain the position to which he had been raised. He had been brought up as a Matabele soldier, and his spirit of despotism was far too strong for the conservative instincts of the Bamangwatos; his arrogance and cruelty soon cost him his throne, Churuku being the very first to revolt against him and to restore Sekhomo to his former power. Again Matsheng returned to Sechele, who received him with unvarying courtesy and kindness. All this happened in 1859, consequently before the attack of the Matabele that I have described. ”

“ Himself, meanwhile, paced in front, bareheaded and barefoot, a staff in his hand, in the customary chief’s dress of white kilt, shirt, and jacket, and with a conspicuous rosary about his neck. Tall but not heavy, with eager eyes and a marked appearance of courage and capacity, Mataafa makes an admirable figure in the eyes of Europeans; to those of his countrymen, he may seem not always to preserve that quiescence of manner which is thought becoming in the great. ”

“ In the early part of the century Umselikatzi, the late chief of the Matabeli—himself a Zulu, in fact a cousin of Chaka—was sent out of Zululand by Chaka, Cetywayo’s uncle, when he swept through Swaziland, and depopulated this valley, and, as one writer says, “they slew and slew until their arms were tired of killing,” then establishing himself in Matabele Land, beyond the Limpopo, set himself up as an independent monarch. ”

“ An encounter took place in the Francis Joseph valley, at the mouth of the Shoshon pass, in which Matsheng was worsted, the engagement being remarkable for the circumstance that Matsheng’s allies, the Matabele, under the command of Kuruman, the son of Moselikatze, fought on horseback. Prepared for this, Khame posted his best marksmen as advanced skirmishers behind the bushes so effectually, that the mounted Matabele, once dispersed, were exposed to a concealed fire, and unable to recover themselves. ”

“ MATABELE (“vanishing” or “hidden” people, so called from their appearance in battle, hidden behind enormous oxhide shields) , a people of Zulu origin who began national life under the chief Mosilikatze. Driven out of the Transvaal by the Boers in 1837, Mosilikatze crossed the Limpopo with a military host which had been recruited from every tribe conquered by him during his ten years’ predominance in the Transvaal. In their new territories the Matabele absorbed into their ranks many members of the conquered Mashona tribes and established a military despotism. ”

“ The Mashonas are a separate race from the Matabele, who originally were pure Zulus when they came into this country with their chief Umselekatze, or as he was better known under the name of Moselikatze. Since then many of them have taken to wife the young girls of the Mashona tribe. The great men and high-caste Zulus take pride in keeping themselves pure from any mixture with other races, and in walking amongst them in their kraals a marked difference is seen. The pure Matabele is a fine specimen of the human race; tall, well-made, with regular features and an upright bearing. ”

“ Presently the watchers heard Te Karearea's voice raised in a shout of savage triumph. 'Mataika! Mataika!' he yelled, and, grasping a young Arawa chief by the hair with his left hand, dashed out the man's brains with a single blow of the heavy club in his right. 'Mataika!' he yelled again. 'Ki au te Mataika!' and, brandishing the blood-stained mere, dashed into the midst of the foe.
'Is that his battle-cry?' called Terence from behind his tree.
'No. The first to be killed in a fight is called the Mataika,' explained George. ”

“ It is unadvisable to be over-liberal, and each tribe should be treated as its character demands. From what I have already said it may be inferred that a little kindness prevails much with the Mamboë and Manansas; but more reserve must be used with the Marutse and Mankoë. The Matabele require a serious if not a stern demeanour; and it is necessary to recollect that with the Makalakas everything must be kept under lock and key. Whoever the ruler is, he should be treated with marked civility ”

“ His successors at different times followed his example; part they settled in Maitsha, and part along the banks of the Nile in Damot and Gojam, where being converted to Christianity, at least to such Christianity as is professed in Abyssinia, they have increased exceedingly, and amounted, at least before the war in 1768, to 15,000 men, of whom about 4000 are horsemen.
The capital of Maitsha is Ibaba. There is here a house or small castle belonging to the king. The town is one of the largest in Abyssinia, little inferior to Gondar in size or riches, and has a market every day ”

“ To kill the mataika. To kill the mataika, or first man, was counted a very high honour, and the most extraordinary exertions were made to obtain it. The writer once saw a young warrior, when rushing with his tribe against the enemy, rendered almost frantic by perceiving that another section of the tribe would, in spite of all his efforts, be engaged first, and gain the honour of killing the mataika. In this emergency he, as he rushed on, cut down with a furious blow of his tomahawk, a sapling which stood in his way, and gave the cry which claims the mataika. ”

“ Oh! say but once again and to-night I shall meet death with happiness."
"Listen to me, Matangini," replied Madhav, scarcely cool himself, "listen and spare both of us this sore affliction. At your father's house the flame was kindled which seems fated to consume us both and which then we were too young to quench by desperate efforts, but if even then we never flinched from the path of duty, shall we not, now that years of affliction have schooled our hearts, eradicate from them the evil which corrodes and blisters them? Oh! Matangini, let us forget each other. Let us separate." ”

“ The moon had already set and Madhav began half to doubt the truth of Matangini's suspicions. Just as his thoughts were taking that direction a darwan came up to him and informed him in Hindi that one of the men appointed to keep a look out, had seen a light in the direction of the "old garden" (as the mango-grove where Matangini had nearly encountered the robbers was called) and that venturing in that direction very close to the grove he had observed [several] armed men assembled in that place. "What is [your command,] " asked the man, "shall we go and attack [them] ?" ”

“ During the time when Moshesh was the Bamangwato king, they could generally manage to appease him and stay his acts of oppression by gifts of ivory; but Moselikatze carried off their boys and a great number of their women, while the present Matabele despot commissioned his hordes to plunder everything upon which they could lay their hands. It is only when they have been put in charge of some white man whom the missionaries have introduced as a person of importance to be protected as far as the falls, that orders are given to refrain from robbery or violence. ”

“ Matangini was perplexed, she saw that her sister was lost in fear and time could not be spared. The loquacious zeal of Karuna, who could not for the world forego this opportunity of being the first to carry such dreadful tidings, as well as the salutary effect that had been produced upon her fears by the unexpected intelligence, relieved Matangini of her anxiety, and the mortal enemy of the finny tribe, big with the importance of being the messenger of evil, flew to Madhav's chamber to discharge the mission which legitimately belonged to Hemangini. ”

“ At Masasi the epidemic conviviality of the whole male population was a totally unforeseen impediment to this object, and here at Chingulungulu it seems either that Matola has not sufficient influence to obtain wise men for me to question, or that he does not care to reveal the wisdom of his people to a stranger. It is true that he possesses a good deal of information himself, and has already on more than one occasion sat with us and talked about the history of his tribe, but whenever I particularly want him, he is not to be found, and we are told that he is hunting on the Rovuma. ”

“ Until the year 1838 they had their own independent kingdom that extended as far south as the western Makalakas, and a long way up the Uguay and Kwebu rivers. The kingdom was governed by “a great chief,” who made every sacrifice he could to come to reasonable terms with the encroaching Matabele. But the time came when the bloodthirsty Moselikatze, a very tiger amongst men, having ruined the Makalaka empire and half devoured the Mashonas, proceeded to annihilate the Manansas also. ”

“ This mode of vicariously atoning for deliberate sin has passed into a facetious proverb, 'So and so has killed the cow in order to make shoes from the skin,' indicating the utter worthlessness and insufficiency of the reparation.
The Mādigas claim to be the children of Mātangi. "There was," Mr. H. A. Stuart writes, * [12] "formerly a Mātanga dynasty in the Canarese country, and the Mādigas are believed by some to be descendants of people who were once a ruling race. ”

“ Sekhomo fled from quarter to quarter. He first betook himself to the Manupi in the country of the Banguaketse; then to the Makhosi, whence he was expelled by Sechele’s order, and finally he took refuge with Khatsisive at Kanye.
[386]
Matsheng had no sooner again felt his feet as sole governor, than he fell into his old ways, and showed himself a thorough autocrat. He set to work to undermine the influence of Khame and Khamane, declared that Christianity was hostile to the welfare of the tribe, and persevered in every possible way in doing violence to the religious sentiments of his people. ”