Some warriors are content with overcoming one man at a time, but Rameses is seen holding ten of them by the hair, getting ready to clout them into insensibility. The picture is an artistic success, but is somewhat shy anatomically. The ten enemies have a total of only three legs for the whole crowd. They are better supplied with arms, the total being thirteen, or about one and one-third to the man. Notice also the relative size of Rameses and his foes. There we have the real, unchanging spirit of autobiography—the great I triumphant and the petty antagonists all coming about knee high to him.
No. 2 is also very characteristic. One of the kings is represented as defeating two burly warriors. He is walking on one and pushing his spear through the other. Undoubtedly a glorious achievement. It would be still more glorious if the two gentlemen putting up the fight against the King had carried weapons of some sort. The one on the ground, who is lifting his hands in mild protest against being used as a rug, has nothing on his person to indicate that he is a soldier. The one who is being harpooned carries in his left hand what appears to be a box of handkerchiefs. The raised right arm would suggest that he attempted to slap the King, who caught him by the arm and held him until he could select a good vital spot in which to prong him. Attention is called to the fact that both of the victims wear the long and protuberant chin whisker, which would indicate that the honest farmer was getting the worst of it even four thousand years ago.
The carvings and paintings which do not depict warlike scenes usually show the monarchs receiving homage from terrified subjects or else mingling on terms of equality with the principal deities of the period. Illustration No. 3 is a very good specimen. King Amenophis and his wife are seen seated on their square-built Roycroft thrones, while two head priests of Ammon burn incense before them and sing their praises and tell them that the people are with the administration, no matter how the Senate may carry on. There was no race prejudice in those days. The Queen is shown to be a coal-black Nubian. In one hand she carries what seems to be a fly brush of the very kind that we used all the time we were up the Nile, and if the article in her other hand is not a cocktail glass then the artist has wilfully libelled her.
No. 4 is interesting as a fashion plate. Ptolemeus and Cleopatra are making offers to the hawk-headed god and the goddess Hathor. This picture will appeal to women inasmuch as it gives us a correct likeness of Cleopatra, the man trapper. No one can dispute the fact that she is beautiful, but how about the combination of an Empress gown with a habit back? Is it not a trifle daring? And the hat. Would you call it altogether subdued?
Another well-preserved painting to be found in the temple at Edfou reveals the innate modesty of the Ptolemies. The King (No. 5) is represented as being crowned by the goddesses of the south and the north—that is, of Upper and Lower Egypt. These divinities seem to be overcome with admiration of the athletic monarch. One has her hand resting on his shoulder, as if she hated to see him go. The other, having just fitted him with his new gourd-shaped hat, has both hands in the air, and you can almost hear her say, "Oh, my! It looks just fine!"
Seti I. was another shrinking violet. In one of his private three-sheet advertisements (No. 6) he has the sublime effrontery to represent the great goddess Hathor as holding his hand tenderly and offering him the jewelled collar which she is wearing. Notice the uplifted hand. He is supposed to be saying, "This is all very sudden, and besides, would it be proper for me to accept jewelry from one of your sex?" Of course, there never was any Hathor, and if there had been she wouldn't have hob-nobbed with a man who had his private interviews done into oil paintings. But this painting and one thousand others that we have seen in Egypt help to give us a line on the ancient Kings. If there was any one of them that failed to get the swelled head soon after mounting the throne, the hieroglyphs are strangely silent regarding his case. They were a vain, self-laudatory lot, and all of them had that craving for the centre of the stage and the hot glare of the spot-light which is still to be found in isolated cases.
After all is said and done can we blame them? Rameses wanted to be remembered and talked about and he laid his plans accordingly. He carved the record of his long and successful reign on the unyielding granite and distributed his pictures with the careful prodigality of a footlight favourite. What has been the result? His name is a household joke all over the world. People who never heard of Professor Harry Thurston Peck or Marie Corelli or the present Khedive of Egypt know all about Rameses the Great, although no two of them pronounce it the same.