Predecessors of Cleopatra

by Leigh North

Queen Tuaa stands behind her husband, and Miss Edwards finds in her delicate but slightly angular profile a resemblance to some of the portraits of Queen Elizabeth. In Rameses II she says “the beauty of the race culminates. The artists of the Egyptian Renaissance, always great in profile portraits, are nowhere seen to better advantage than in this series.”

A statue of the Lady Nai, in the Louvre, may give some idea of the dress of this period, the nineteenth dynasty. She wears a long wig, with a band round her head, a tight garment of linen, not unlike the modern chemise, only narrower, and a strip of linen hanging down in front.

This temple of El Kurneh is at the entrance of the valley of the Tombs of the Kings, and the cutting is called by the Arabs Bab-el-Molook, “gate of the Sultan.” The road is narrow and stony, its desert sands dazzling in the brilliant sunshine, leading to a lonely and sepulchral glen, honeycombed with the tombs of past dignitaries, nobles, priests and monarchs.

Here and there, as we study the history of Egypt, is a link with the Bible story, though nothing very definite has yet been discovered. It is believed by some writers that Moses and Aaron lived in the age of Seti I, and that Moses was brought up with the youthful Rameses II. Others make the time somewhat later, and think that the princess who rescued the deliverer of the Israelites from the water was one of the many daughters of the great Sesostris.

Thebes was probably Queen Tuaa’s principal residence, and the palace saw many partings, since with warriors for husband, sons and grandsons, if the queen survived so long, they must have been frequently absent, and she must needs have passed some anxious hours. But so essentially was war the trade of the monarchs of ancient times, and in the lives of their female relatives so much a matter of course, that it would seem as if the feminine heart must have become somewhat hardened. Doubtless the royal lady looked forward to receiving a victor laden with spoils. We almost seem to hear the burden of the refrain, “Have they not sped, have they not divided the prey, to every man a damsel or two, to Sisera a prey of diverse colors of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?” What matter to the conqueror, or even to his consort, if thousands of lives paid the price?

Seti I was “a man of blood,” and is spoken of as “a jackal which rushes leaping through the land, a grim lion that frequents the more hidden paths of all regions, a powerful bull with a sharpened pair of horns.” His chariot horses were called “Amon gives him strength.” But if, in Scripture language, he chastised the people “with whips,” Rameses II, his son, “chastised them with scorpions.”

Side by side with his father fought the youthful hero, and we are reminded by them of a similar pair in more modern history, Edward III of England and the Black Prince. Chief among the wars was that against Khita, or Hittites, from which, as Queen Tuaa anticipated, Seti I returned victorious. He came laden with rich booty, silver, gold, blue, green, red and other precious stones. At the frontier the priests, nobles and great men met him with gifts and flowers—conqueror, as he was reported to be, of thirteen peoples and many cities. And we cannot doubt that the palace, too, by Queen Tuaa’s orders, was specially beautified and decorated with plants and flowers in honor of the victor’s return. Booty and prisoners were dedicated to the god Amon, his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu.

Little, perhaps, did Queen Tuaa then imagine that one of her daughters-in-law, a princess of Khita, would be from among the conquered people. But so it proved, when Rameses II formed an alliance with the King of Khita and took his daughter to wife; but Queen Tuaa may not have lived to see the union, since Rameses II in earlier times had probably already provided himself with a wife.

Queen Tuaa must have viewed with interest, as did Queen Mertytefs of the fourth dynasty, the magnificent architectural works of her husband. In one case a temple of the gods, which yet recorded the king’s own power, and in the other the tomb or monument which should keep before the eyes of all future generations the name of its builder. The temple lies largely in ruins, but the older structure has withstood to a much greater degree the ravages of time and the wanton destruction of man.