Queen of Egypt

“ Those who look for beauty will be disappointed, but the history of the Queen of Egypt would lead us rather to suppose that she was a woman of great charm of manner and the most highly educated mind. On the silver coin here given, which bears her head and Mark Antony’s, she has certainly a face more remarkable for intellect and determination than for beauty, and, though she was then in middle-life, her portrait represents her at her best age, as the Greeks never otherwise pourtrayed women on their coins, though they had not the same rule as to men. ”

“ In Egyptian texts she is often mentioned as “the divine consort,” and usually she was no less a personage than the Queen of Egypt herself. For, according to the Egyptians, their monarchs were actually begotten by the god Ammon, who assumed for the time being the form of the reigning king, and in that disguise had intercourse with the queen. The divine procreation is carved and painted in great detail on the walls of two of the oldest temples in Egypt, those of Deir el Bahari and Luxor ”

“ At least, thanking the gods for what they have given us, let us go straight forward in humility, remembering that though we be King and Queen of Egypt, first and foremost we remain Brother and Sister of the Dawn, sworn to its holy faith and to the service of mankind. ”

“ This was the sentiment of the nation, by the lips of Khu-n-Aten, the artist king:
"Sweet love fills my heart for the queen; may she ever keep the hand of the Pharaoh."
Whatever Egypt's mode of worshiping Khem and Isis, nothing could set at naught this clean, impulsive, sincere avowal. ”

“ According to Diodorus (I. 27) the queen of Egypt held a higher position than the king himself. The monuments and lists of names certainly prove that women could rule with sovereign power. The husband of the heiress to the throne became king. They had their own revenues (Diodorus I. 52) and when a princess, after death, was admitted among the goddesses, she received her own priestesses. (Edict of Canopus.) During the reigns of the Ptolemies many coins were stamped with the queen’s image and cities were named for them. ”

“ And Queen Neferu-Ra was with his Majesty, for the Great Royal Wife in Egypt has ever been the worshipper of Amon-Ra, king of the gods.
There came into the temple courtiers of the King to announce the arrival of a messenger from the prince of Bekhten. Loaded was he with gifts for Neferu-Ra, Queen of Egypt, daughter of the prince of Bekhten, and he carried also a message to the King. When he entered the royal presence, he bowed to the earth saying, "Glory to thee, O Sun of the nine Archer-tribes! May we live before thee!" ”

“ The queen’s eyes, which a moment before gleamed with pride, were filled with tears. All at once she bent and kissed her son’s hand, saying with emotion,—
“Thou art, indeed, the son of Isis and Osiris, and I did well when I yielded thee to the goddess. Egypt at last has a ruler.”
From that time the worthy lady never appealed to her son in any question. And when she was asked for protection, she answered,—
“I am the servant of his holiness and I advise you to carry out his commands without resistance. All he does comes from inspiration of the gods. And who can oppose the gods?” ”

“ Of the future we know nothing because it is hid from men, yet we believe that in it much joy awaits you with length of days, and that the crown which now we set upon your head in secret in time to come shall shine openly before the multitudes of earth. In the name of Egypt and of the Order of the Dawn to which you are sworn, O Queen, I, Roy the Prophet, do you homage. ”

“ Know, O Queen, that great troubles await you and bitter loss that shall leave you desolate, nor with all our strength can we save you from these, for they are written in the book of fate and must befall. Nor, for a while that to mortals must seem long, can we free Egypt from the bonds with which the Shepherds have bound her, as they bind the feet of their own sheep for slaughter, though the time shall come when she will shake them loose, like a bull breaking through its net, and grow greater than ever she has been. ”

“ With a warning of instant death to the blacks if they dared to touch the jewel chests, the Princess of Egypt made her way through the piles of riches to the small room where rested the famed Queen of antiquity. ”

“ The queen causes his throat to be cut; two drops of his blood fall in front of the gate of the palace, and produce in the night two splendid “Persea” trees, which renew the accusation in a loud voice. The queen has them cut down, but a chip from one of them flies into her mouth, and ere long she gives birth to a child who is none other than a reincarnation of Bitiû. When the child succeeds to the Pharaoh, he assembles his council, reveals himself to them, and punishes with death her who was first his wife and subsequently his mother. ”

“ One day while she was bathing in the river, an eagle stole one of her gilded sandals, carried it off in the direction of Memphis, and let it drop in the lap of the king, who was administering justice in the open air. The king, astonished at the singular occurrence, and at the beauty of the tiny shoe, caused a search to be made throughout the country for the woman to whom it belonged: Rhodopis thus became Queen of Egypt, and could build herself a pyramid. Even Christianity and the Arab conquest did not entirely efface the remembrance of the courtesan-princess. ”

“ Once she was queen of the world, as after her, Babylon, Thebes, Tyre, and Athens are, or have been queens. From Kôr thousands of years ago in the black, lost ages Egypt was peopled, as were other lands. In those dim days by another title her citizens worshipped Isis, Queen of Heaven, only they named her Truth whom in Egypt you know as Maat. ”

“ Flinders Petrie comments, “like the titles of Tyi, imply a hereditary right to [pg 428] rule Egypt.” They undoubtedly place her on a footing of equality with the king, which is, however, comprehensible when it is explained that she was the ruler of all women, while he was the ruler of all men. The position of the Egyptian queen would thus prove to have been analogous to that of the ancient Mexican Quilaztli (see pp. 61-67) . ”

“ The critical examination of a number of inscriptions, translated by Brugsch, is found to show that the queen was the high priestess and living image of Hathor-Isis and the personification of the female principle of nature, associated in Egypt with the nocturnal Heaven and the Above, and their symbols, the bird or vulture, the cow, the female serpent, the moon, the stars, and in particular Sirius-Sothis. In remotest historical times the goddess-queen seems to have resided in her own capital, a fortress. ”

“ As might be expected in the case of a queen who personified Isis, frequently represented under the form of a “woman-serpent,” the uræus is a favorite motif on other gold ornaments belonging to the Ethiopian queen.
Certain passages in Prof. Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt afford a curious insight into the prerogatives of Egyptian queens as far back as about B.C. 2684. The consort of Usertesen II, the fourth king of the twelfth dynasty was named Nefert,of whom a grey granite statue is preserved at the Ghizeh Museum and represents her as seated on a throne. ”

“ 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, [17] 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. ”

“ Ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her the new name of Ûirimaûnofîrurî—“She who sees the beauties of the Sun.” She figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the place usually occupied by women of Egyptian race only, and these unusual honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years old. ”

“ Now, after these things were done, the Pharaoh and his Queen drove through the hosts of Egypt in their golden chariot, and received the homage of the hosts ere they departed northwards for Thebes. At nightfall they returned again and sat side by side at the marriage feast, and once more Tua swept her harp of ivory and gold, and sang the ancient song of him who dared much for love, and won the prize. ”

“ Then did the gods bring the bodies to the palace of the King of Egypt. Khnum, the creator, and Hekt, the goddess of birth, Isis, the great mother, and her twin sister Nephthys, Bes, the protector of children, and Meskhent and Ta-urt, all were present to hail the birth of Hatshepsut, the great queen, the daughter of Amen-Ra and Queen Aahmes. ”

“ Certain it is that Queen Hatshepsut rallied sufficiently from the shock of his death to reign for many years.
It was very disconcerting to a nation so strongly held by tradition and veneration for established customs as was Egypt, to have a woman on the throne of the Pharaohs. This is amusingly shown in temples where her loyal supporters sought to lessen prejudices felt because she was a woman by portraying pictures designed to show that her birth had been attended by special marks of favor and of prophecy on the part of the gods. In these, however, she is often represented as a boy. ”

“ Political women have played a great rôle in Egypt from Hatshepsut and Cleopatra to the Christian wife of Aziz, the princess royal who engineered the downfall of Hakim, and the black mother who dominated Mustansir; and it was a woman who was the first queen of the Mamluks. Sheger-ed-durr ("Tree of Pearls") , widow of Salih, the last reigning Ayyubid of Egypt, was the brain of the army which broke the chivalry of France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This knowledge also awakens imagination, and we wonder in what other ancient countries there were women artists. We know that in Egypt inheritances descended in the female line, as in the case of the Princess Karamat; and since we know of the great architectural works of Queen Hashop and her journey to the land of Punt, we may reasonably assume that the women of ancient Egypt had their share in all the interests of life. ”

“ So that Queen Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please) , perceiving that we stood as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your unguicules. ”

“ Behold me, gaze on me, O my son Thûtmosis, for I, thy father Harmakhis-Khopri-Tûmû, grant thee sovereignty over the two countries, in both the South and the North, and thou shalt wear both the white and the red crown on the throne of Sibû, the sovereign, possessing the earth in its length and breadth; the flashing eye of the lord of all shall cause to rain on thee the possessions of Egypt, vast tribute from all foreign countries, and a long life for, many years as one chosen by the Sun, for my countenance is thine, my heart is thine, no other than thyself is mine! ”

“ The question presents itself whether, during these centuries of perpetual warfare, there had not been a moment when, all the males of the family having perished, the women alone were left to perpetuate the solar race on the earth and to keep the succession unbroken. As soon as the veil over this period of history begins to be lifted, we distinguish among the personages emerging from the obscurity as many queens as kings presiding over the destinies of Egypt. ”

“ The goddess Nubt giveth life to thy nostrils, and the Lady of the Stars joineth herself to thee, as thou sailest to the South wearing the Crown of the North, and to the North wearing the Crown of the South. Wisdom is stablished in the mouth of Thy Majesty, and health is on thy brow. Thou strikest terror into the miserable wretches who entreat thy mercy. Men propitiate thee, O Lord of Egypt, [as they do] Rā, and thou art acclaimed with cries of joy like Nebertcher. ”

“ Were we not greatest when our gates were closed to the stranger, when we depended on ourselves and our own strength, and lived according to the ancient laws of our ancestors and our gods? Those days beheld the most distant lands subjugated by Rameses, and heard Egypt celebrated in the whole world as its first and greatest nation. What are we now? The king himself calls beggars and foreigners the supporters of his throne, and devises a petty stratagem to secure the friendship of a power over whom we were victorious before the Nile was infested by these strangers. ”