Part of that of Men-kau-ra which was being carried off to England, was lost in a vessel wrecked near Gibraltar. The cover of the sarcophagus, with a prayer to Osiris upon it, is in the British Museum. It reads “O Osiris who has become king of Egypt. Majesty living eternally, child of Olympus, son of Urania. Heir of Kronos, over thee may she stretch herself, and cover thee, thy divine mother, Urania, in her name as Mistress of heaven. May she grant that thou should’st be like God, free from all evils. King Majesty, living eternally.” The attenuated remains of Men-kau-ra have been placed in one of the museums and the picture taken of them is in all the collections of Egyptian kings, seeming to verify the truth that “man is but a shadow.” There is a story that the mummy or a wood-gilt image of the daughter of Men-ka-ra was placed in the figure of a cow in a funeral chamber in Sais.
The cartouche of Queen Nitocris, with its encircling arabesque, stands beside that of her husband, in the long list of Manetho. His name is given as Nefer-ka-ra, and as Me-tes-ou-phis II, the question whether he was her brother or not remains unsettled. On the king’s death the queen succeeded as a matter of course, but either her husband or another brother was murdered, probably by political adversaries, and her death followed as a result of his. If it was her husband that she avenged the desire for the destruction of his enemies long smouldered in her breast. She built a hall of great dimensions and doubtless beauty, below the level of the Nile and invited the murderers to a feast within its walls. To disguise her purpose and lull suspicions must have taxed all her powers and fascinations. Fish, beef, kids, gazelles, geese, pasties, condiments and sweets of all sorts loaded the table. The guests sat, rather than reclined, as in many Eastern countries, at the board. Beer is said to be as old as the Fourth Dynasty and that and palm wine probably flowed freely. As at the present day paste of almonds may have been mixed with the Nile water to purify it, and wine and water stood in porous jars, cooling by the process of evaporation, an attendant slave fanning the vessels to hasten the effect. Flowers decorated everything, hung in garlands and wreathed about the table, the water jars, and the persons of the guests.
Darkness quickly follows daylight in Egypt, but it was probably at night that the feast occurred. Music accompanied the festival, harps, flutes and other instruments and dancing girls and jugglers added entertainment and zest to the passing hour. Then, with a warning which was little suspected, a small painted and gilded image of a mummy was carried round among the mirthful crowd. Says Plutarch, “The skeleton which the Egyptians appropriately introduce at their banquets, exhorting the guests to remember that they shall soon be like him, though he comes as an unwelcome and unseasonable boon-companion, is nevertheless, in a certain sense, seasonable, if he exhorts them not to drink and indulge in pleasure, but to cultivate mutual friendship and affection, and not to render life, which is short in duration, long, by evil deeds.”
Possibly Nitocris shared the feast, beautiful and gracious, resplendent in jewels and glowing with the fire of an intense internal and suppressed excitement, such as a man may feel when he goes into battle. Not one moment did she repent of her fearful scheme though she may well have foreseen that she herself would probably fall a victim. Possibly she shared the feast and left them to their revels, or her position as queen may have made it derogatory to her dignity to be present, but by her orders the waters of the great river were let in upon them and they were drowned. Many lives perhaps for one.
But they were probably powerful nobles, with families and numerous adherents and the queen feared the consequences of her act and preferred to take her own life than trust to the mercy of their avengers. She is said to have smothered herself with the fumes of ashes, a noble form of self-destruction or so considered, like the Japanese hari-kari, but as this was a Persian custom the story may belong to that period.
So ended the career of this beautiful and celebrated queen, called “the Minerva Vietrix” of her time, “Neith the victorious,” and it is to be inferred that the Sixth Dynasty closed with a period of convulsions. The Arabs believe that the queen still haunts (a sort of Lorelei) the vicinity of her pyramid, in the form of a naked woman, of such beauty that all men who see her must needs fall in love with her and lose their wits. Avenger, murderer, suicide, syren—all these characters are attributed to her, but it is the image rather of the fair, innocent, rosy-cheeked, beautiful young queen that the centuries have crystallized and preserved for us.
Memphis had in previous reigns been the greatest city in Egypt, but now others contested its claim, nevertheless it seems likely that it was the scene of Queen Nitocris’ tragic fate. Some one has described Egypt as a green belt, four miles wide, the Nile like a silver band, and the cities on its borders like precious stones, and the river swept on, as Leigh Hunt expressed it, “like a great purpose threading a dream,” swept silently by, the giver of life and of death, the god beloved, worshipped and adored, while the beautiful queen died and was buried, and the city waned in prominence and power, and a new metropolis grew in strength and magnificence and new dynasties lorded it over the land.