Predecessors of Cleopatra

by Leigh North

Spirit seems to have especially distinguished those queens who have made their way up through the mists of oblivion which lie so heavily and darkly over many centuries of the Egyptian chronology. No vast library remains for us to turn to and in direct sequence acquaint ourselves with the early history of this land and people. Broken monuments and tombs and half obliterated fragments of papyrus alone tell the story.

Hence from the Sixth to the Twelfth Dynasty, during which period these sources of information are notably lacking, no queen’s name appears. One authority says that the register of the queen’s expenses for servants, etc., in the Eleventh Dynasty, has been found, but no special name seems to be connected with the list; and our knowledge of this time is very meagre. An embalmed figure of the Lady Ament, priestess of Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, has been credited to the Eleventh Dynasty. She is robed in tissues as fine as lawn, with sandals in wood and leather fastened on by worked bands. She wears a woven collar of pearls, in glass, gold and silver, and has silver rings on her hands. Silver being then scarcer than gold was esteemed even more highly. This Eleventh Dynasty was of the Entef line, and, says Miss Edwards: “A mummy case of the Eleventh Dynasty differs as much from the mummy case of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty as the recumbent effigy of a crusader in chain-mail differs from the periwigged memorial statue of the Queen Anne period.”

Interesting “finds” of this same dynasty are well preserved wooden boats which had been used for the transportation of the dead and were exhumed from the sand. Some are in the Museum of Cairo, some have been bought for the collection in our own Chicago, and more from this region are doubtless to be seen in various museums, gathered from the Dahshour pyramids and other places.

With the Twelfth Dynasty Egypt seemed to wake to a new life in many respects and the arts, which had deteriorated and languished, again flourished. Says one traveller, surveying the remains of this and other famous epochs, “Egypt has given me a new insight into that vital beauty which is the soul of true art.” Another, speaking of the special sculpture of this time, writes “This school represents the heroic age of Egyptian sculpture. It lacks the startling naturalism of the school of the Pyramid period, it never aspired to the great scale of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, but it excels all in monumental majesty, and not only the artist’s work, but the craftsman’s skill is seen at its best during this age. No details are so finely cut, no surfaces glow with so lustrous and indescribable a polish as those wrought by the lapidaries of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties. They finished their colossi as fastidiously as a gem engraver finished a cameo. They even polished the sunk surfaces of their hieroglyphics in incuse inscriptions.” In short, “they worked like Titans and polished like jewellers.”

The monarchs of this generation, a noted race, gained new territory, and in various ways sought to improve the internal condition of their kingdom as well, while life, to the favored, became more luxurious.

There are those who hold the opinion that the divisions of the dynasties are in some way connected with the reigns of the queens. Had that of Nitocris immediately preceded that of Sebek-nefru-Ra, the fact that both the Sixth and Twelfth ended with a queen might have given some color to the idea, but there do not seem sufficient data to warrant any such conclusion.

Ancient Egyptian history has been divided by some into three periods, the Old, the Middle, and the New Empire, while others merely divide into the Old and the New, including the Middle with the first. By the former classification the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties are included under the Old Empire, the Twelfth and Thirteenth under the Middle and the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth under the New. So that our course of investigation has now reached the Middle period. Of the previous and subsequent dynasties, those for some time before and after the Twelfth the absence of monumental and other relics leave the history almost a blank. The Twelfth is said to have lasted over two hundred years and later Egyptians looked back to it as a period of National glory when they were governed by wise rulers, literature and art flourished and the language of the time was regarded as a standard of good writing.

Says a writer in “Monumental Records”: “Thanks to the effects of M. de Morgan and his co-workers in the Nile valley we know much more about Egypt and that wonderful Twelfth Dynasty, which flourished so many centuries before Christ, than we do of the history of England’s kings up to the time of Alfred the Great. The Egyptian Empire through all its dynasties, certainly up to the Twelfth, on which the labors of M. de Morgan at Dahshour throw so much light, consisted of three estates, the Monarch, the Army and the Church. As the king’s authority came through the gods his will was, in theory, absolute and his spoken or written desires became laws; but in fact his education from the cradle was directed and his whole reign dominated by the power of a well-organized, patriotic priesthood. The army was made up of the farmers and workers, every soldier being granted about eight acres of land for his family which he could commute at his wish, the physical training of the individual was scientific and the tactics suited to the warlike weapons of the age arouse the admiration and amazement of the foremost soldiers of our own time. But the priests were the power behind the throne, and before the people, and, as a rule, this power was wisely used. The priests established schools near the temples, they founded and fostered engineering and the mechanical arts; they wrote books; they encouraged the fine arts; and with the growth of wealth they sought to restrain the corrupting influences of luxury.”

The same writer also draws attention to the fact that in the mural paintings which tell us so much of the daily lives of the people the high esteem in which women were held is to be everywhere noted.

Dynasty Twelfth began with Amenemhat I of the Theban line which now ruled all Egypt and of which the red granite temple, whose remains have been found at Tanis, has been called a family portrait gallery. The type shown in a fine, though of course mutilated statue of this king, to this day characterizes Upper Egypt. He wears the tall head-dress of Osiris and is described as having “a large smiling face, thick lips, short nose and big staring eyes,” with a benevolent, gentle expression. Miss Edwards gives further particulars, “The cheek bones are high, the eyes prominent and heavy lidded, the nostril open; the lips full, smiling and defined by a slight ridge at the edges; the frontal bone is wide and the chin small and shapely.” The statue was found in the ruins of Tanis and many relics from there are in the museum at Turin. There is also a head of Usertesen bearing resemblance to the former, but less attractive, though equally smiling and amiable in expression. In later times Rameses, the Great, but also the Despoiler, cut his own inscriptions on these and other statues and ruthlessly appropriated the material of older temples to carry out his own architectural plans.