Queen Ti, Thy, Tyi, Tui, or Tuaa, as her name is variously spelled, did not have so romantic a love story as did her great ancestress, but neither would it be quite fair to set down her marriage with Set I as purely one of convenience, no matter how much each might have gained by the union. Their opportunities of meeting, since Egyptian women are not so cloistered as other Eastern nations, may have been frequent, and it is possible the connection may have been one of feeling, as well as of state policy. Of her early life, however, we know nothing, nor are we assured of the name of her parents. In marrying her Seti I conformed to the usual but not invariable custom of these monarchs, in uniting themselves with a princess of Egyptian lineage.
The priests acknowledged the new queen as of the blood royal, the true Theban line, hence there could be no dispute as to the rights of her children. Her experiences were different from those of her great predecessor of the name; she did not journey from a far country to meet her husband, in all probability, as did her great-grandmother, nor did she share with him as did her grandmother, in the effort to promulgate a new religion, constantly pictured beside him in all his occupations. She was both the wife and mother of a warrior, and life must of necessity have passed much a part from them.
To us Queen Tuaa is but a shadowy form, chiefly known as the mother of perhaps the greatest king in the long Egyptian line. Some of her traits of character, some of her features, may have descended to this haughty scion of the race, but they are now beyond our power of specification. He did not show her, apparently, the devotion the first Tyi received from her son, and in his attention to his father’s tomb there is no record of any special care of his mother’s, though doubtless it was not neglected. “On the walls of one of the temples,” says one traveler, “the youthful Rameses is being suckled by the goddesses; on the one side by Anek (or Anouka) ‘his divine mother, Lady of Elephantine’; on the other by Hathor, with a similar inscription, the features are so much alike that they probably represent those of his own mother.” As a child even Rameses must have been freed, in great measure, from his mother’s guidance, since, to establish himself more firmly on the throne, Seti made his son co-ruler with himself, and, to some extent, a sharer in the cares of state and knowledge of warfare.
It is said that Queen Tuaa acted as regent for husband or son during a Syrian campaign. She must have been proud of her talented and precious child, but state etiquette doubtless separated her much from him, and there may have been more outlet for motherly care and tenderness among her other children; of these we do not find much record, save one brother, to whom Rameses was greatly attached. This brother was called Khamus. Tuaa is not recorded as having shared her queenly honors or her husband’s affection with other wives, at any rate, she was the legal consort.
Lady Duff Gordon speaks of Egypt as “the palimpsest in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that.” At this period it was in the middle stage of this classification. The modern Copt most resembles the ancient Egyptian; the nose and eyes are the same as in the profiles in the tombs and temples. The fellah woman of the present, it is said, walks around the ancient statues in order to have children, and the customs at birth and burial are the same as in ancient times. Of marriage customs of the past less is known, as we have to bear in mind, than of their funeral ceremonies. The genuine Egyptian had a bronze colored skin, recognizing a brother countryman at a glance and despising black, yellow and even white skins; the queen herself, being of ancient race, may have indulged this feeling; certainly it was most apparent in her haughty son.
Was Queen Tuaa beautiful, good looks being usually thought an important part of the claims of a royal bride to her position, a picture, often flattered, being the only means a royal suitor had to judge of his future wife? Curtis thus describes a beautiful Egyptian: “The Greek Venus was sea born, but our Egyptian is sun born. The brown blood of the sun burns along her veins—the soul of the sun streams shaded from her eyes.” Fascinating are the almond-eyes of Egyptian women, bordered black with the kohl, whose intensity accords with the sumptuous passion that mingles moist and languid with their light; Eastern eyes are full of moonlight. Eastern beauty is a dream of passionate possibility. Was the queen perchance of this temperament: “I am of a silent disposition. I never tell what I see. I spoil not the sweetness of my fruits by vain tattling.” For posterity, at least, she has proved so, for we know little of her.
The chief, if not the only picture of Queen Tuaa, is in the temple of Goornah or El Kurn-neh, which is described as a memorial edifice, like the Medici Chapel in Florence. Begun by Seti I, as a memorial to Rameses I, it was completed by Rameses II. They were handsome men of a Dantesque type, and their mothers and wives probably fair women, the men, especially, different in appearance from the preceding race. Rameses I was the tutelary deity of the shrine. He stands swathed and crowned like Osiris, with the pointed and upturned beard peculiar to the gods, worshipped, in one picture, by his own son, Seti I, and in another by his grandson, Rameses II.
“In Egypt every man,” especially if he were of royal birth, “received, after death, by courtesy, the title of Osiris, because it was hoped he had attained blessedness in the bosom of the god.”