History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 04 - Vol. 02, Ch. 01: The Political Constitution of Egypt, pt. 4

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Lepsius.

The king is Amenôthes III.

(XVIIIth.

dynasty).

She had her own house, and a train of servants and followers as large as those of the king; while the women of inferior rank were more or less shut up in the parts of the palace assigned to them, she came and went at pleasure, and appeared in public with or without her husband.

The preamble of official documents in which she is mentioned, solemnly recognizes her as the living follower of Horus, the associate of the Lord of the Vulture and the Uraeus, the very gentle, the very praiseworthy, she who sees her Horus, or Horus and Sit, face to face.

Her union with the god-king rendered her a goddess, and entailed upon her the fulfilment of all the duties which a goddess owed to a god.

They were varied and important.

The woman, indeed, was supposed to combine in herself more completely than a man the qualities necessary for the exercise of magic, whether legitimate or otherwise: she saw and heard that which the eyes and ears of man could not perceive; her voice, being more flexible and piercing, was heard at greater distances; she was by nature mistress of the art of summoning or banishing invisible beings.

While Pharaoh was engaged in sacrificing, the queen, by her incantations, protected him from malignant deities, whose interest it was to divert the attention of the celebrant from holy things: she put them to flight by the sound of prayer and sistrum, she poured libations and offered perfumes and flowers.

In processions she walked behind her husband, gave audience with him, governed for him while he was engaged in foreign wars, or during his progresses through his kingdom: such was the work of Isis while her brother Osiris was conquering the world.

Widowhood did not always entirely disqualify her.

If she belonged to the solar race, and the new sovereign was a minor, she acted as regent by hereditary right, and retained the authority for some years longer.

* * The best-known of these queen regencies is that which occurred during the minority of Thûtmosis III.

, about the middle of the XVIIIth dynasty.

Queen Tûaû also appears to have acted as regent for her son Ramses II.

during his first Syrian campaigns.

It occasionally happened that she had no posterity, or that the child of another woman inherited the crown.

In that case there was no law or custom to prevent a young and beautiful widow from wedding the son, and thus regaining her rank as Queen by a marriage with the successor of her deceased husband.

It was in this manner that, during the earlier part of the IVth dynasty, the Princess Mirtîttefsi ingratiated herself successively in the favour of Snofrûi and Kheops.

* Such a case did not often arise, and a queen who had once quitted the throne had but little chance of again ascending it.

Her titles, her duties, her supremacy over the rest of the family, passed to a younger rival: formerly she had been the active companion of the king, she now became only the nominal spouse of the god,** and her office came to an end when the god, of whom she had been the goddess, quitting his body, departed heavenward to rejoin his father the Sun on the far-distant horizon.

Children swarmed in the palace, as in the houses of private individuals: in spite of the number who died in infancy, they were reckoned by tens, sometimes by the hundred, and more than one Pharaoh must have been puzzled to remember exactly the number and names of his offspring.

*** * M.

de Rougé was the first to bring this fact to light in his _Becherches sur les monuments qu’on peut attribuer aux six premières dynasties de Manéthon,_ pp. 36-38. Mirtîttefsi also lived in the harem of Khephren, but the title which connects her with this king--_Amahhit_, the vassal--proves that she was then merely a nominal wife; she was probably by that time, as M. de Rougé says, of too advanced an age to remain the favourite of a third Pharaoh.

** The title of “divine spouse” is not, so far as we know at present, met with prior to the XVIIIth dynasty.

It was given to the wife of a living monarch, and was retained by her after his death; the divinity to whom it referred was no other than the king himself.

*** This was probably so in the case of the Pharaoh Ramses II.

, more than one hundred and fifty of whose children, boys and girls, are known to us, and who certainly had others besides of whom we know nothing.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN SHAKES THE SISTKUJU WHILE THE KING OFFERS THE SACRIFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the temple of Ibsambûl: Nofrîtari shakes behind Ramses II.

two sistra, on which are representations of the head of Hâthor.

The origin and rank of their mothers greatly influenced the condition of the children.

No doubt the divine blood which they took from a common father raised them all above the vulgar herd but those connected with the solar line on the maternal side occupied a decidedly much higher position than the rest: as long as one of these was living, none of his less nobly-born brothers might aspire to the crown.

* * Proof of this fact is furnished us, in so far as the XVIIIth dynasty is concerned, by the history of the immediate successors of Thûtmosis I. , the Pharaohs Thûtmosis IL, Thûtmosis III.

, Queen Hâtshopsîtû, Queen Mûtnofrît, and Isis, concubine of Thûtmosis IL and mother of Thûtmosis III.

Those princesses who did not attain to the rank of queen by marriage, were given in early youth to some well-to-do relative, or to some courtier of high descent whom Pharaoh wished to honour; they filled the office of priestesses to the goddesses Nît or Hâthor, and bore in their households titles which they transmitted to their children, with such rights to the crown as belonged to them.

The most favoured of the princes married an heiress rich in fiefs, settled on her domain, and founded a race of feudal lords.

Most of the royal sons remained at court, at first in their father’s service and subsequently in that of their brothers’ or nephews’: the most difficult and best remunerated functions of the administration were assigned to them, the superintendence of public works, the important offices of the priesthood, the command of the army.

It could have been no easy matter to manage without friction this multitude of relations and connections, past and present queens, sisters, concubines, uncles, brothers, cousins, nephews, sons and grandsons of kings who crowded the harem and the palace.

The women contended among themselves for the affection of the master, on behalf of themselves or their children.

The children were jealous of one another, and had often no bond of union except a common hatred for the son whom the chances of birth had destined to be their ruler.

As long as he was full of vigour and energy, Pharaoh maintained order in his family; but when his advancing years and failing strength betokened an approaching change in the succession, competition showed itself more openly, and intrigue thickened around him or around his nearest heirs.

Sometimes, indeed, he took precautions to prevent an outbreak and its disastrous consequences, by solemnly associating with himself in the royal power the son he had chosen to succeed him: Egypt in this case had to obey two masters, the younger of whom attended to the more active duties of royalty, such as progresses through the country, the conducting of military expeditions, the hunting of wild beasts, and the administration of justice; while the other preferred to confine himself to the _rôle_ of adviser or benevolent counsellor.

Even this precaution, however, was insufficient to prevent disasters.

The women of the seraglio, encouraged from without by their relations or friends, plotted secretly for the removal of the irksome sovereign.

* Those princes who had been deprived by their father’s decision of any legitimate hope of reigning, concealed their discontent to no purpose;

they were arrested on the first suspicion of disloyalty, and were massacred wholesale; their only chance of escaping summary execution was either by rebellion** or by taking refuge with some independent tribe of Libya or of the desert of Sinai.

* The passage of the Uni inscription, in which mention is made of a lawsuit carried on against Queen Amîtsi, probably refers to some harem conspiracy.

The celebrated lawsuit, some details of which are preserved for us in a papyrus of Turin, gives us some information in regard to a conspiracy which was hatched in the harem against Ramses II.

** A passage in the “Instructions of Amenemhâît” describes in somewhat obscure terms an attack on the palace by conspirators, and the wars which followed their undertaking.

[Illustration: 044. jpg The Island and Temple of Philæ] Did we but know the details of the internal history of Egypt, it would appear to us as stormy and as bloody as that of other Oriental empires: intrigues of the harem, conspiracies in the palace, murders of heirs-apparent, divisions and rebellions in the royal family, were the almost inevitable accompaniment of every accession to the Egyptian throne.

The earliest dynasties had their origin in the “White Wall,” but the Pharaohs hardly ever made this town their residence, and it would be incorrect to say that they considered it as their capital; each king chose for himself in the Memphite or Letopolite nome, between the entrance to the Fayûni and the apex of the Delta, a special residence, where he dwelt with his court, and from whence he governed Egypt.

Such a multitude as formed his court needed not an ordinary palace, but an entire city.

A brick wall, surmounted by battlements, formed a square or rectangular enclosure around it, and was of sufficient thickness and height not only to defy a popular insurrection or the surprises of marauding Bedouin, but to resist for a long time a regular siege.

At the extreme end of one of its façades, was a single tall and narrow opening, closed by a wooden door supported on bronze hinges, and surmounted with a row of pointed metal ornaments; this opened into a long narrow passage between the external wall and a partition wall of equal strength; at the end of the passage in the angle was a second door, sometimes leading into a second passage, but more often opening into a large courtyard, where the dwelling-houses were somewhat crowded together: assailants ran the risk of being annihilated in the passage before reaching the centre of the place.

* The royal residence could be immediately distinguished by the projecting balconies on its façade, from which, as from a tribune, Pharaoh could watch the evolutions of his guard, the stately approach of foreign envoys, Egyptian nobles seeking audience, or such officials as he desired to reward for their services.

They advanced from the far end of the court, stopped before the balcony, and after prostrating themselves stood up, bowed their heads, wrung and twisted their hands, now quickly, now slowly, in a rhythmical manner, and rendered worship to their master, chanting his praises, before receiving the necklaces and jewels of gold which he presented to them by his chamberlains, or which he himself deigned to fling to them.

** * No plan or exact drawing of any of the palaces of the Ancient Empire has come down to us, but, as Erman has very justly pointed out, the signs found in contemporary inscriptions give us a good general idea of them.

The doors which lead from one of the hours of the night to another, in the “Book of the Other World,” show us the double passage leading to the courtyard.

The hieroglyph [--] gives us the name Ûôskhît (literally, _the broad_ [place]) of the courtyard on to which the passage opened, at the end of which the palace and royal judgment-seat (or, in the other world, the tribunal of Osiris, the court of the double truth) were situated.

** The ceremonial of these receptions is not represented on any monuments with which we are at present acquainted, prior to the XVIIIth dynasty.

It is difficult for us to catch a glimpse of the detail of the internal arrangements: we find, however, mention made of large halls “resembling the hall of Atûmû in the heavens,” whither the king repaired to deal with state affairs in council, to dispense justice and sometimes also to preside at state banquets.

Long rows of tall columns, carved out of rare woods and painted with bright colours, supported the roofs of these chambers, which were entered by doors inlaid with gold and silver, and incrusted with malachite or lapis-lazuli.

* * This is the description of the palace of Amon built by Ramses III.

Ramses II.

was seated in one of these halls, on a throne of gold, when he deliberated with his councillors in regard to the construction of a cistern in the desert for the miners who were going to the gold-mines of Akiti.

The room in which the king stopped, after leaving his apartments, for the purpose of putting on his ceremonial dress and receiving the homage of his ministers, appears to me to have been called during the Ancient Empire “Pi-dait” --“The House of Adoration,” the house in which the king was worshipped, as in temples of the Ptolemaic epoch, was that in which the statue of the god, on leaving the sanctuary, was dressed and worshipped by the faithful.

Sinûhît, under the XIIth dynasty, was granted an audience in the “Hall of Electrum.

” The private apartments, the “âkhonûiti,” were entirely separate, but they communicated with the queen’s dwelling and with the harem of the wives of inferior rank.

The “royal children” occupied a quarter to themselves, under the care of their tutors; they had their own houses and a train of servants proportionate to their rank, age, and the fortune of their mother’s family.

The nobles who had appointments at court and the royal domestics lived in the palace itself, but the offices of the different functionaries, the storehouses for their provisions, the dwellings of their _employés_, formed distinct quarters outside the palace, grouped around narrow courts, and communicating with each other by a labyrinth of lanes or covered passages.

The entire building was constructed of wood or bricks, less frequently of roughly dressed stone, badly built, and wanting in solidity.

The ancient Pharaohs were no more inclined than the Sultans of later days to occupy palaces in which their predecessors had lived and died.

Each king desired to possess a habitation after his own heart, one which would not be haunted by the memory, or perchance the double, of another sovereign.

These royal mansions, hastily erected, hastily filled with occupants, were vacated and fell into ruin with no less rapidity: they grew old with their master, or even more rapidly than he, and his disappearance almost always entailed their ruin.

In the neighbourhood of Memphis many of these palaces might be seen, which their short-lived masters had built for eternity, an eternity which did not last longer than the lives of their builders.

* Nothing could present a greater variety than the population of these ephemeral cities in the climax of their splendour.

We have first the people who immediately surrounded the Pharaoh,** the retainers of the palace and of the harem, whose highly complex degrees of rank are revealed to us on the monuments.

*** His person was, as it were, minutely subdivided into departments, each requiring its attendants and their appointed chiefs.

* The song of the harp-player on the tomb of King Antûf contains an allusion to these ruined palaces: “The gods [kings] who were of yore, and who repose in their tombs, mummies and manes, all buried alike in their pyramids, when castles are built they no longer have a place in them; see, thus it is done with them!

I have heard the poems in praise of Imhotpû and of Hardidif which are sung in the songs, and yet, see, where are their places to-day?

their walls are destroyed, their places no more, as though they have never existed!

” ** They are designated by the general terms of Shonîtiû, the “people of the circle,” and Qonbîtiû, the “people of the corner.

” These words are found in religious inscriptions referring to the staff of the temples, and denote the attendants or court of each god; they are used to distinguish the notables of a town or borough, the sheikhs, who enjoyed the right to superintend local administration and dispense justice.

*** The Egyptian scribes had endeavoured to draw up an hierarchical list of these offices.

At present we possess the remains of two lists of this description.

One of these, preserved in the “Hood Papyrus” in the British Museum, has been published and translated by Maspero, in _Études Égyptiennes,_ vol. ii.

pp. 1-66; another and more complete copy, discovered in 1890, is in the possession of M. Golénischeff.

The other list, also in the British Museum, was published by Prof. Petrie in a memoir of _The Egypt Exploration Fund _; in this latter the names and titles are intermingled with various other matter.

To these two works may be added the lists of professions and trades to be found _passim_ on the monuments, and which have been commented on by Brugsch.

His toilet alone gave employment to a score of different trades.

There were royal barbers, who had the privilege of shaving his head and chin;

hairdressers who made, curled, and put on his black or blue wigs and adjusted the diadems to them; there were manicurists who pared and polished his nails, perfumers who prepared the scented oils and pomades for the anointing of his body, the kohl for blackening his eyelids, the _rouge_ for spreading on his lips and cheeks.

His wardrobe required a whole troop of shoemakers, belt-makers, and tailors, some of whom had the care of stuffs in the piece, others presided over the body-linen, while others took charge of his garments, comprising long or short, transparent or thick petticoats, fitting tightly to the hips or cut with ample fulness, draped mantles and flowing pelisses.

Side by side with these officials, the laundresses plied their trade, which was an important one among a people devoted to white, and in whose estimation want of cleanliness in dress entailed religious impurity.

Like the fellahîn of the present time, they took their linen daily to wash in the river; they rinsed, starched, smoothed, and pleated it without intermission to supply the incessant demands of Pharaoh and his family.

* * The “royal laundrymen” and their chiefs are mentioned in the Conte des deux frères under the XIXth dynasty, as well as their laundries on the banks of the Nile.

[Illustration: 051. jpg MEN AND WOMEN SINGERS, FLUTE-PLAYERS, HARPISTS, AND DANCERS, FROM THE TOMB OF TI]