Ancient Egyptian literature does not lack its reference to women. One of the most famous of the stories that have been presented to us from Egyptian sources is The Tale of the Two Brothers. This goes back to the day of Moses, and has suggested to many the Hebrew account of Joseph. It reveals the charms of her whose beauty the sea leaped up to embrace, and the acacia flowers envied. This romance, written for the entertainment of Seti II. when he was yet crown prince, and considered, by Mr. Flinders Petrie, to be connected with the ancient Phrygian of Atys, gives us an early illustration of the fact that many ills and many pleasures have been born to the race through love of a woman.
The women of Babylonia and Assyria enjoyed a measure of freedom that was exceptional for the Orient, and yet the Egyptian woman was more independent still. Indeed, the respect that was paid to womankind by the Egyptians is one of the fairest elements in the civilization of the valley of the Nile. Motherhood also was highly respected. But one illustration, referred to by Lenormant, will suffice to prove this statement. A woman while enceinte, condemned to death for murder or any other crime, could not be executed till after the birth of the child; for it was considered the height of injustice to make the innocent participate in the punishment of the guilty, and to visit the crime of one person upon two. And he adds: "The judges who put to death an innocent person were held as guilty as if they had acquitted a murderer."
Before the law woman's rights were respected. In the division of the paternal estate, the daughters shared equally with the sons, and were more responsible than the sons for the care of the parents. In worship, the queen is sometimes depicted as standing near her husband in the temple--behind him, to be sure, as the king was the head of the religion and indeed "son of the Sun," but with him, like Isis behind Osiris, lifting her hand in sympathetic protection and shaking the sistrum, or beating the tambourine to dispel all evil spirits, or holding the libation vase or bouquet.
The Egyptian woman, of the lower or middle classes at least, suffered no enforced seclusion. She came and went as her will led her, appearing in public without covered face, and chatting with acquaintances whom she met without having her conduct questioned or her modesty placed under suspicion. She might enjoy a banquet with the opposite sex, and at its close look upon the weird figure of a corpse carved in wood, placed in a coffin, which Herodotus says was carried around by a servant. As he shows the image to each guest in turn the servant says: "Gaze here and drink and be merry; for when you die such you will be." Thus was Epicurus anticipated in ancient Egypt. Dum vivimus, vivamus. The Egyptians generally, however, kept the next world always in view, and immortality played no small part in shaping the Egyptian life, both as to its men and its women. The Greek influence, which, after the days of Alexander, was destined to revolutionize Egyptian thought and custom, notwithstanding the efforts of the Ptolemies to win favor of the populace by revolutionizing the waning worship of Osiris, is illustrated in a poem written about one hundred years before Christ, a Lament for the Dead Wife of Pasherenptah. In this poem, the ancient hope of immortality is overcast, and the weeping spouse is enjoined:
"Love woman while you may
Make life a holiday,
Drive every care away
And earthly sadness."
The first lady of the land was of course a queen. The queens of Egypt not unfrequently had a wide outlook upon the material progress of the people. This is well exemplified in the expedition of Queen Chuenemtamun of which we know from discovered monuments, which represent the ship being ladened with large and costly stores under her direction. Queen Hatshepsu fitted out a fleet of five ships and sent them to the land of Punt,--the southern coast of Arabia, or, as some suppose, the African coast south of Abyssinia,--that they might bring back scented fig trees which she would transplant in her gigantic orchard at Thebes. The tallest monolith in the world, of reddish granite and one hundred and eight feet high, said once to have been covered with a coating of gold, was the work of this famous queen.
In a few cases queens ruled in Egypt, wives of kings governed jointly with their husbands, and there are instances in which pretenders to the throne married women of royal lineage that their claims might have at least the show of being legitimate. This was the case with Piankhi, one of the Ethiopian dynasty of kings, whose wife Ameniritis is described as a woman of rare intelligence and of superior merit; one who, because of her rare strength of character and wisdom, exerted a powerful influence in the government and won for herself great popularity in Thebes and the entire region around.