If the Western woman comes to the Oriental bringing in her hands the fair gifts of intellectual advancement and broadened life, her Eastern sister will not be her debtor if she, by example, presents in return the even more precious charms of obedience, modesty, and loyalty which fundamentally are the priceless jewels in the crown of the world’s womanhood.
EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS.
To face p. [19].
The Harim and the Purdah
CHAPTER I
EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST
The word Egypt opens the Book of Romance to the traveller in the East, and he longs to come under the spell of its mysterious grandeur, and gaze upon the monuments which will speak to him of the power and splendour of a people long since gathered to their gods. It is a land in which to dream dreams and see visions. The temples, broken columns, and great pylons call with a voice that must be heard even by the prosaic tourist, and the hands he sees painted upon the walls of Denderah or Deirel Bahari will beckon him when sitting in office, club, or home, far from the dazzling sands or burning sun of Africa.
The charm of the land of the Pharaohs is very real, and it is hard to speak of Egyptian life in a calm and lucid style, or free oneself from extravagant descriptions.
Egypt and its fascination are favourite themes for novelists and writers of travel, and yet in spite of a good deal of general knowledge we remain curiously ignorant of the Egyptian woman, from the point of view of her moral and mental development. In common with women of other Oriental lands, she has been an object of mystery to the Western world. We know that in the olden time, in the days of the Pharaohs, she held an important place in the life of her world. We see her pictures on the tombs, temples were erected in her honour, and we know that there were queens who in their day governed their country with dignity and rare ability.
In former days the purity of the blood of the royal line was assured by the marriage of a brother and sister, the queen reigning equally with the king. If a queen of royal birth took as her consort a male not descended directly from a royal mother, even though his father might have been a Pharaoh, at the death of his wife he was compelled to abdicate in favour of the son or daughter who could call the queen “mother.” This was shown when Thotmes I was compelled to resign his crown in favour of that great Queen Hatshepsu, his daughter, who for twenty years governed Egypt. Although her reign was a stormy one because of her half-brothers who claimed the throne, her name and features erased from all the monuments, and omitted from the official tablets and chronological records, yet enough was left to show that her power had been great and that she commanded the attention of the world. It is said that Hatshepsu had herself everywhere depicted as a man, wearing the dress and even the beard of the stronger sex, perhaps hoping in this way to gain a greater allegiance of her people.
