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.
[43]
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[44] 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[45] 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,[46] 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[47] 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[48] 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[49] 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[50] 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[51] 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[52] 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,[53] 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[54] 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[55] 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[56] 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.
