The maids of honor and princesses carried fans, which they held over the queen, and bore the title of “dearest friend.” When the queen and royal ladies drove forth, it was in chariots, sometimes of gold, and drawn by a pair of horses (after the introduction into Egypt of that valuable animal, of which there is no representation on the monuments of the very earliest times), adorned with plumes, while an umbrella was occasionally fixed to the chariot to protect them from the sun.
But the queen’s highest position was as priestess, concubine, daughter, wife, of the god. Egyptian queens or princesses held the service of Amon or Jove and the queen followed in the king playing on the sistrum and making offerings. No queen held the highest priestly office, but they were called “singers of Amon,” and “wives of the god.” Occasionally the mummy of the daughter will be found among the priests, the mother among the royalties.
The queen was “Neter-Hemt, prophetess,” “Neter-hemet, divine wife,” or “Neter-tut, divine handmaid.” The sistrum was from eight to eighteen inches in length, Hathor-headed, cow-eared, and sometimes inlaid with silver or gilt and the noise was supposed to frighten away Typho, the spirit of evil. The action of shaking was called “Art Ses.” A sistrum in either hand standing before the altar of the god, the queen had reached the highest pinnacle of human greatness or human ambition.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.
PERSIAN QUEENS.
With the conquests of Cambyses Egypt became subject to a new set of rulers, by whom its manners and customs were, in a degree, changed or modified. Yet such are its inherent characteristics that it has been often said of Egypt, as of Greece, that she rather impressed herself upon her masters, than was impressed by them. Through the Persian period, to that of the Ptolemies, women retired into the background, and no one name comes into prominence, at least in an official character. It is in connection with Persia rather than with Egypt that we learn of the queens, some, perhaps most of whom, remained in their own land, while their husbands were absent, engaged in wars and conquests. The kings, distracted by wars in all directions, often made hurried visits to their conquered territories, leaving satraps and deputies to rule in their absence. The legal queen, we may believe, tarried at home, while the warriors left their women behind or were accompanied by their concubines, to whom no formal honors were paid.
Hence it is more than possible that although nominally queens of Egypt but few of them ever resided in the country, those of the kings who reigned longest, of course, being most likely to do so. The Persian kings usually chose their wives from among their own nobility, the concubines were of varied nationality.
In thinking of these royal ladies we seem to see a veiled figure, with beautiful shining eyes, wandering among the gardens of the palaces, which gardens were said to be less formally laid out than those of the native Egyptians, but she is silent. Or behind palace walls we hear the echo of distant music, and perchance the sound of soft singing, to the accompaniment of a lute, or some other instrument. If she looked forth from her windows it was from behind curtains and lattice work, and if she appeared in public it was with a veiled countenance, only the eyes showing.
The ruins at Persepolis, Ecbatana, the capital of Media, and Suza acquaint us with the construction of Persian palaces, which differ somewhat from the Egyptian. When in Egypt the Persian kings probably accepted, to a considerable extent, the architecture and general arrangements of that country. Madame Ragozin gives us, from an earlier source, an account of the palace built by Darius, at Persepolis. “A central hall flanked by two sets of apartments, of four rooms each, with a front entrance, composed of a door and four windows, opening on a porch, supported by four columns, and forming at the same time the landing between the two flights of stairs,” such the ruins disclose. “The throne and audience hall, the reception and banqueting hall, was two hundred and twenty-seven feet every way, with cedar and cypress beams upborne by a hundred columns ten rows of ten, tall and slender, they rested lightly on their inverted flower base, carrying the raftered ceilings proudly and with ease on the strong, bent necks of the animals which adorned their capitals, of that peculiarly and matchless fanciful type which is the most distinctive feature of Akhaemenian architecture.”