Predecessors of Cleopatra

by Leigh North

No woman’s strength had been able to struggle up through the previous oblivion, but she now once more takes her place beside the king and shares with him honors, both divine and human. “Divine spouse,” a term not used before, is applied to the queens of this era, who were regarded as the mothers of the race and worshipped for generations after.

It was sometimes inscribed on the monuments in Egypt that “the sons of Misr” were all born equal, but this had about the same relation to facts that the vaunted “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” sometimes bore. In the Twelfth Dynasty, below the crown and royal family came, first, the class of priests; second, the soldiers; third, the husbandmen, gardeners, huntsmen and boatmen; fourth, tradesmen, shopkeepers, artificers in stone and metal, boat builders, stone masons and public weighers; fifth, shepherds, poulterers, fishermen, fowlers, laborers and the people at large—distinctly a succession of classes. Laborers wore only an apron and short trousers of coarse woven grass cloth.

The times were changing; this we learn from the numerous remains of this period, on the sculptured and painted monuments and the papyri, of which many have been discovered. The temples were growing in importance and the kings were buried more in grottoes than, as formerly, in monuments. The military man succeeded the farmer, and the priests gained in power. The wall paintings give pictures of festivals, with music and dancing, and less of the agricultural life previously so much dwelt upon.

It is interesting to know that the horse, in so many countries the useful and often beloved companion of man, seems to have been first introduced into Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty. After that he often figures in battles, and draws the state chariot in which both kings and queens take their pleasure. On the wall of a tomb at Thebes, that of a certain Hui of the Eighteenth Dynasty, is the picture of a queen drawn by two piebald bulls, like the modern Abyssinian breed. This, presumably, is just before the period when horses were in general use. To this time is also attributed the introduction of the pomegranate, the beautiful Eastern fruit of which poets have often sung; and earrings were then said to be added to the previous list of adornments, as the result of foreign example—they first took the shape of broad disks, and later, under the Twentieth Dynasty, became large rings.

In the Seventeenth Dynasty we have mention of a Queen Ansera. Of her private history we know nothing, but after her death she extended her hospitality to a number of her royal connections, for the great discovery in the summer of 1881 brought to light the mummies of many kings and queens gathered together in her tomb. Among these were the celebrated King Rameses II, by some thought to be the oppressor of the Israelites; Queen Aahmes-Nefertari, first of the Eighteenth Dynasty; Queen Merit-Amen, Queen Hout-timoo-hoo and Queen Sitka, also belonging to this dynasty, besides others of later date.

A certain confusion for a long time existed between the two queens, Aah-hotep and Aahmes-Nefertari, but the late history of Professors Petrie and Mahaffy has rendered the details of this period somewhat clearer. Different authorities have varied the name and spelling of Queen Aah-hotep. Thus we have in addition to the spelling above given, Aahotep, Aah-hetep or Ahhot-pou. It has the pretty meaning, “gift of the moon,” and she seems to have been a Theban princess, and first to have married an Egyptian, perhaps not of royal rank, and then Seqenenra, whose mummy has been found, showing that he had been wounded in battle. He was of the Berber type—tall, slender and vigorous, with small, long head and fine black hair. The reasons for this chronology are said not to be very strong. Aahmes was perhaps son of the first, Nefertari, daughter of the second, so the lawful heir, and Aahmes thus married his half-sister. If Kames, at first thought to be the husband and later the son of Queen Aah-hotep, was the elder brother, he had a short reign, followed by Aahmes and Nefertari.

Queen Aah-hotep had several children and was a wonderful woman, according to some accounts, with the longevity of a Mertytefs. A Theban stele of Kames shows that in the tenth year of Amen-hotep I, that Aah-hotep, the royal mother, was still active, revered and honored, taking a share in the government and perhaps regent in the absence of the king, at eighty-eight years of age, and she seems still to have been alive during the reign of Tahutmes or Thothmes I. Hence she had seen the whole of the revolution which again set the native princes upon the throne, during the reigns of son, grandson and great grandson. Petrie says of her, she was “one of the great queens of Egyptian history, important as the historic link of the dynasties and revered along with her still more celebrated and honored daughter, Nefertari.” Peculiarly close, and perhaps personally tender, relations seem to have existed between these two, who were both mother and daughter and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. And children and grandchildren appear to have paid highest respect to Queen Aah-hotep.

The esteem of the son for his mother in the time of the Old Empire seems to have been great, as the Frenchman of to-day is said to be especially devoted to his. The family groups representing the living or dead, and sometimes both, frequently give the king, his wife and his mother, while the father rarely appears; though this is probably more apt to be the case when the royal dignity has descended on the maternal rather than the paternal side.

Queen Aah-hotep was evidently much beloved by her martial son and grandsons, for the latter lavished upon her dead body all sorts of jewelry and ornaments to be buried with her. This large collection has been found and preserved, and, until the discovery of the parure of some of the princesses of the Twelfth Dynasty, was the finest specimen of the skill of the Egyptian craftsman that had come down to modern times. The body was found in the ancient necropolis of No, buried only a few feet below the surface. This, of course, was not the original place of sepulture, where the latest authorities believe it was placed, not by the Arab plunderers of the other royal tombs, but by pious hands, to preserve it from destruction, in the unsettled state of the country. Brugsch thus describes it: “The cover of the coffin had the shape of a mummy and was gilt above and below. The royal asp decked the brow. The white of the eye is represented by quartz and the pupils by black glass. A rich imitation necklace covers the breast and shoulders; the uræus serpent and the vulture—the holy symbols of the Upper and Lower land of Kemi—lie below the necklace. A closed pair of wings seem to protect the rest of the body. At the soles of the feet stand the statues of the mourning goddesses, Isis and Nepththys. The inscription in the middle row gives us the queen Aah-hotep, as servant of the moon.”

The mummy of Queen Aah-hotep was discovered by rummaging Arabs in 1860, but was captured and confiscated by the authorities, who opened the coffin and took away what it contained. The rumor of this theft had spread, and Mariette, the great Egyptologist, who was in charge of the museum at Boulak, put his hand on the coffin and the jewels, but was not able to save them all. He believed that the queen was not originally buried where the Arabs discovered her, but thinks that towards the close of the Twentieth Dynasty she had been carried off by bands of robbers, spoken of in the Abbott papyrus, and hidden by them to despoil at leisure. Their design, however, was frustrated, as they were probably caught and executed, and their secret perished with them, until rediscovered hundreds of years later. As may be seen, the theories of the authorities on these subjects differ somewhat, as is so frequently the case. But to the latest researches and opinions perhaps should be attached the greatest weight, since they have the advantage of their predecessors’ views and the benefit of the most modern discoveries.