Says an ardent Egyptologist, “One of the handsomest of men, we come in time to recognize his face, with its haughty beauty, just as we do that of Henry VIII or Louis XIV.” Curtis speaks thus on the general subject: “Oriental masculine beauty is so mild and feminine that the men are like statues of men seen in the most mellowing and azure atmosphere. The forms of the face have a surprising grace and perfection. They are not statues and gods so seen, but the budding beauty of the Antinous when he, too, had been in the soft climate, the ripening rounding lip, the arched brow, the heavy, drooping lid, the crushed, closed eye, like a bud bursting with voluptuous beauty, the low broad brow; these I remember at Asyoot and remember forever.”
Much of this, perhaps, constituted the charm of the youthful Rameses face, but to it must be added something of the strength and intellect which were often lacking.
From his mother, Queen Tuaa, Rameses II, of the nineteenth dynasty, received the heritage of royal ancestry; his father, Seti I, belonged to a new family, who, in view of descent, had no claim to the throne. So say most authorities, though some dispute it. As a child, his father made him co-ruler with himself. An inscription of Rameses II reads, “I was a boy in his lap,” referring to his father, “and he spoke thus, ‘I will have him crowned as king, for I desire to behold his grandeur while I am still alive.’” Officers then came forward to place the crown on his head, and Seti said: “Place the royal circlet on his brow.” After this ceremony, however, he was still left in the house of the women and royal concubines, but was put in command of a band of Amazons, “maidens who wore a harness of leather.” So that soldier and conqueror though he so early became, his associations from childhood up were constantly with women, and for the sex in general his subsequent conduct may lead us to infer he had a special weakness.
Another inscription reads, “when thou wast a boy with the youth locks of hair, no monument saw the light without thy command, no business was conducted without thy knowledge.” He laid foundation stones even in childhood. Little wonder that no prouder monarch ever held sway and that we associate the idea of unwonted magnificence with him and his queens.
“Rameses the Great, if he was as much like his portraits as they are like each other, must have been one of the handsomest men, not only of his own day, but of all history,” says the enthusiastic Miss Edwards. There is a bas-relief of him during his first campaign as a beautiful youth with “a delicate, Dantesque face.” Some years later we see him at Abydos in the temple of Seti I with a boyish beard. The likeness with which we become most familiar, in the prime of life, is thus described: “The face is oval, the eyes are long, prominent and heavy-lidded, the nose slightly aquiline and characteristically depressed at the tip. The nostrils are open and sensitive, the under lip projects, the chin is short and square.”
It seems likely that it was true of Rameses II as is said of the sailor, that he had a “sweetheart in every port.” No woman could boast that she alone reigned in his heart. Two, if not three, wives were made his legal consorts, and he had numerous concubines. The king’s name was branded on female slaves that they could not escape undiscovered.
Little or nothing is known of the queen’s previous history; she may be said to have had no childhood or youth as regards our story. As the wife of Rameses II and the mother of his children she first becomes known to us. Queen Nofritari seems to have been his earliest consort, probably his sister or the daughter of some Egyptian noble. One writer, Pollard, gives authority for considering her the princess who rescued Moses, the daughter of the king, whom he subsequently married; but as the king doubtless married in his youth, and she is the first queen of whom we find record, this seems unlikely. Says the same writer, speaking of the temple of Luxor, “Rameses the Great, some two hundred and thirty years afterwards, added another large court, which was surrounded by a double row of columns; between these are gigantic statues of this monarch, more or less perfect. One on the left of the court is very beautiful, in most perfect condition, and represents him as a young man. The expression of the countenance is very pleasing. By his side, her head reaching to his knee, stands the diminutive but beautiful form of his beloved Nefert-ari.”
The queen’s name, as usual, is variously spelled
Nofritari-Minimut, Nefertari, Nofertuit-Meri-en Mut, and Nofruari, and means, as did that of Queen Nefertari-Aahmes, “good or beautiful companion.” She shared her honors with a Khi-tan princess, whose brief story is told in a later chapter, and with another lady, Isis-Nefer.