But the grave afforded no permanent resting-place for the great monarch, warrior and builder. His mummy, his veritable self, with that of his son and many other kings and queens, is in the museum at Gizeh. Even from these withered remains we can judge that Seti was an unusually handsome man. The Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out bodily from the walls of the sepulchre in the Tombs of the Kings. Placed in a tomb, from which he was removed to that of Queen Ansera, for fear of robbers, it was eventually broken into, and after other like journeys and removals he is now the object of the curious or interested gaze of the passing traveler. The mummy is said to be one of the finest ever found, and clearly shows his claim to beauty, even preserving to a certain degree the expression of his face.
There is a figure of Seti I in the British Museum, and smaller memorials of him in other collections, among them the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Of one of the paintings in his tomb, Lady Duff Gordon says: “The face of the goddess of the Western shore Amenti. Athar or Hecate is ravishing, and she welcomes the king to her regions; death was never painted so lovely.” Was it possible that with the artist’s conception of the goddess might mingle a memory of the dead Queen Tuaa, with whom her royal spouse had now joined company; we can but surmise.
Turn we next to the consideration of the wives of that much married man, Rameses II.
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.
NOFRITARI-MINIMUT.
With the exception of Cleopatra, one or two Ptolemy queens, Hatasu, and possibly Nitocris, the history of Egypt which has come down to us deals principally with the kings, and not with the queens. The latter are mentioned incidentally, or not at all, though holding a very different place from the female sovereigns of other Eastern nations, and the student explorer who endeavors to vitalize these fragmentary and scattered outlines has not an easy task.
In no case is the above more true than in that of the wife or wives of Rameses II, the Sesostris of the Greeks who waged tedious wars against the Hittites, with whom he made peace in the twenty-first year of his reign, and of whom Herodotus speaks. It is the king whose striking and heroic figure in childhood, youth and manhood, occupies the foreground of the canvas, dwarfing into comparative insignificance all who stand near him, and leaving the details as regards female relationships but as accessories and background.
Nofritari Minimut.