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.
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.