Says Lady Duff Gordon, in her charming “Letters:” “There is such a curious sight of a crowd of men carrying huge blocks of stone up out of a boat. One sees exactly how the stones were carried in ancient times; they sway their bodies all together like one great lithe animal, with many legs, and hum a low chant to keep time. It is quite unlike carrying heavy weights in Europe.”
Later kings spent their energies differently. They built palaces and temples and chose to be buried in caverns in the natural rocks through which they honeycombed innumerable passages, hewed out great halls, or constructed pits in which their mortal remains could be hidden from the light of day.
Rameses II lived to a ripe old age, his wives perhaps dying before him, as many of his children certainly did. Of their lives we know little, of their death nothing. The sacred books say of one Pharaoh, perhaps of Rameses II, that in heaven he will, at his pleasure, take wives from their husbands, so idolatrous was the worship accorded to these haughty, and often tyrannical kings. Seti I had, as we have seen, in early years united his son, Rameses, with himself in the government of his kingdom, and Rameses II adopted the same plan, making his thirteenth son, Meremptah, co-ruler, with himself. In the government of the kingdom. The elder sons, of whom Khamus is known to have been an especial favorite of his father (as was Bint-Antha among the daughters), died before him, or there was some other reason which prevented their following in natural succession. The consensus of opinion seems to be that Rameses II was the oppressor of the Hebrews, and Meneptah the monarch from whom they escaped.
The Israelites are believed to have toiled on the temples, palaces and other architectural works at Tanis, and on the treasure city of Paten or Pithom. They are mentioned in a triumphal inscription, found by Petrie, near the temple of Medinet Aboo, opposite Thebes. It was engraved on an old slab, originally polished, inscribed and put in place in a temple, by Amen-hotep III, which Meremptah, with the ruthlessness of many of the kings, took and also inscribed on the back, or rougher side, to glorify himself. Part of it reads, “The Hittites are quieted. Taken is Askelon. The Israelites are
(Transcriber’s Note: A line (or more) seems to be missing here from the original.)
tions, who had invaded Egypt. Petrie also found, among the ruins of a funeral temple at Thebes, a bust of this king, in grey granite, which has “a firm and rather dogged expression, not untinged with melancholy.” The wife of Meremptah is given as Ast-Nefert or Isis Nefert, but of her personal history we know nothing. The mummy of a certain Queen Anhipu, said to belong to the Nineteenth Dynasty, was found, but no details of her life.
Amenmesses “Mighty Bull, beloved of Maat,” is, by some authorities, said to have usurped the throne after Meremptah; his mother is given as Taak Taakhat, “divine mother, royal mother, great Lady,” and his wife as “royal spouse, the great one, lady of the two lands.” He built a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and he, with his mother and wife, are buried there. It has three corridors and two chambers, and in one his mother and in another his wife are making offerings to the gods.
Another list commonly given is as follows, Rameses II, then Meremptah, Seti II, his grandson, and Siptah, his great-grandson, perhaps by marriage. Reproductions of the pictures of Seti II and Siptah are given in Petrie’s articles, in Miss Edward’s “Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers,” as well doubtless as in other places, and she claims for each of them the distinctive features of the Rammeside family, long heads, long noses, long bodies and long legs. Photographs have been taken of Siptah and others from the bas-reliefs in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, at Thebes. Ebers, in his romance of “Joshua,” mentions Siptah as the nephew of Meremptah and as intriguing to supplant him.
Queen Tausert’s husband is elsewhere spoken of as Meremptah Siptah, the son of an usurper, giving color to the idea that it was she and not he who was the descendant of Rameses II. Among ordinary people the tomb was often prepared for husband and wife together, and occasionally the mummy of the first who died was kept in the house till the death of the second, a constant suggestion that they might soon be reunited, and in pictures they are often betrayed with the arm of one around the neck or waist of the other, showing that affectionate relations were usual. Death and the future life appear to have occupied so large a share in the thoughts of the ancients that their daily life was a sort of Appian Way, lined with tombs, and we know much more of their funerals than of their marriages and other festivities.
The Egyptians were among the earliest, if not the earliest nation to regard literature, to write books (the inscribed papyrus roll being their printed page, to be handed down to posterity) and to preserve and value them.