Queen Nub’kha’s was the wife of Sebek-em-saf, whose tomb was among those discovered in 1881. It was first rifled in the Twentieth Dynasty and is referred to in papyrus of the time of Rameses IX, of which the Amherst and Abbott papyrus give accounts. Like so many of the queens our only knowledge of her is from her tomb and that from the deposition of the robber who violated it, which is thus given. “It (the tomb) was surrounded by masonry and covered with roofing stone. We demolished it and found them (the king and queen) reposing therein. We found the august king with his divine axe beside him and his amulets and ornaments of gold about his neck. His head was covered with gold and his august person was entirely adorned with gold. His coffins were overlaid with gold and silver within and without and incrusted with all kinds of precious stones. We took the gold which we found upon the sacred person of this god, as also his amulets and the ornaments which were about his neck and the coffins in which he reposed. And having found the royal wife we took all that we found upon her, in the same manner and we set fire to their mummy cases and we seized upon the furniture, their vases of gold and silver and bronze, and we divided them among ourselves.” Death was deservedly the penalty for such offences, but probably the sinner felt a certain relief in making a “clean breast” of it, or perhaps fancied in some strange way that his wicked exploit conferred a sort of distinction upon him.
A stele gives the genealogy of this queen as daughter of the chief of the judges Sebek-dudu, who, rich or poor man, had four wives. The queen is called on a stele in the Louvre “great heiress the greatly favored, the ruler of all women, united to the crown,” thus showing that the kings did not always marry princesses. In the Fourteenth Dynasty, up to this writing, no queen’s name has been discovered. Weaker rulers followed, and thus Asiatic invaders, the Hyksos, an alien race, mistakenly supposed by Josephus to be Hebrews, were able to overpower and usurp the government, ruling in some places simultaneously with, and in others expelling the native sovereigns. They were called shepherd kings or princes. Some of their statues remain, but as they were frequently re-inscribed by later kings, there is doubt about some of them. All traces of the queens are, so far, lost during this period. Whether these strange invaders kept their women in the seclusion usual in the East or whether once existing relics have been destroyed, we know not. Beside the few portrait statues of the kings no royal consort appears, and they are of a different style of art. Joseph is thought to have been the prime minister of one of the Hyksos rulers and an inscription found which reads: “A famine having broken out during many years I gave corn to the towns during each famine,” is believed by some to relate to him. But it was not the wont of the Egyptian monarchs to celebrate the achievements of their slaves and such early memorials, if existing, would probably have been destroyed when the Hebrew race was enslaved by their oppressors.
Petrie gives the approximate dates of 2821 B. C. to 1928 B. C. for these various reigns.
CHAPTER SIXTH.
AAH-HOTEP.
Between the Fourteenth Dynasty, of which we last spoke, and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties, to which this chapter brings us, occurs the third chasm in the monuments, and as they are the chief dependence in learning the history of Egypt, the information in regard to this intervening period is very meagre. Egypt was ruled with special favor shown to the central portion, and weaker monarchs had succeeded the great Amenemhats and Usertesens. Foreigners, the so-called Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, overran and took possession of the country and conquered it, almost without battles, proceeding later to destroy the temples and kill the inhabitants.
Among these kings’ names are that of Salatis, or Shaloti, and a certain Apepi, of the Turanian type, a bust of whom is in the British Museum, and another at Gizeh, while it is to one of these rulers that Joseph is by some believed to have been the favored minister, but, as has been said before, no queen appears amongst them.
After the lapse of five hundred years Egypt awoke from its partial lethargy and, throwing off the yoke of these invaders, asserted its independence under a line of native rulers. Battles were fought and won, and the Theban princes again held sway. King Ta’a ruled, perhaps tributary to the Hyksos, revolted and partially liberated himself from thral, but it remained to his descendant Aahmes to completely accomplish this object. It seemed somewhat characteristic of the Egyptian monarchs that they did not know how to hold their conquered territory. Again and again they won battles and subjected foreign peoples only to lose what they had gained, to be once more fought for by their warlike successors.
The divisions into dynasties is said not to have been made by the Egyptians themselves, but to have been used by historians for the greater convenience of indicating the families who, together or in succession, held the sceptre.