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[58] 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[59] 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[60] 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[61] 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.
[62]
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[63] 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[64] 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.
a great father was succeeded by a lesser son in amenemhat ii, of 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[65] 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[66] 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[67] 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[68] 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[69] 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[70] 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,[71] 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.”[72] 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[73] 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.
