Probably years after Queen Tyi, or Tuaa, wife of Amenophis III and mother of the heretic King Khu-n-aten, was laid in her grave, her grand-daughter and namesake became the consort of the reigning monarch. The Eighteenth Dynasty had passed away and a new race held sway. They seem to have had no hereditary title to the crown, but may have claimed Hyksos ancestry. Might, however, often makes right, and they were a noted and powerful succession of monarchs. After King Horem-hib and Queen Notem-Mut came in Rameses I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, of whose wife we at present know nothing, though future discoveries may reveal her identity. After a short reign the king was succeeded by his son Seti, or Sety I, called Merenptah or Mereptah, “Son of Ptah,” who strengthened his position by marrying a descendant of the preceding royal line. She brought him as her dower, in addition to whatever else she might have been mistress of, the valuable possession of the true “blue blood,” which she conferred upon her son, Rameses II, “born of Ra,” and thus made his claim to the crown indisputable.
Queen Ti, Thy, Tyi, Tui, or Tuaa, as her name is variously spelled, did not have so romantic a love story as did her great ancestress, but neither would it be quite fair to set down her marriage with Set I as purely one of convenience, no matter how much each might have gained by the union. Their opportunities of meeting, since Egyptian women are not so cloistered as other Eastern nations, may have been frequent, and it is possible the connection may have been one of feeling, as well as of state policy. Of her early life, however, we know nothing, nor are we assured of the name of her parents. In marrying her Seti I conformed to the usual but not invariable custom of these monarchs, in uniting themselves with a princess of Egyptian lineage.
The priests acknowledged the new queen as of the blood royal, the true Theban line, hence there could be no dispute as to the rights of her children. Her experiences were different from those of her great predecessor of the name; she did not journey from a far country to meet her husband, in all probability, as did her great-grandmother, nor did she share with him as did her grandmother, in the effort to promulgate a new religion, constantly pictured beside him in all his occupations. She was both the wife and mother of a warrior, and life must of necessity have passed much a part from them.
To us Queen Tuaa is but a shadowy form, chiefly known as the mother of perhaps the greatest king in the long Egyptian line. Some of her traits of character, some of her features, may[207] have descended to this haughty scion of the race, but they are now beyond our power of specification. He did not show her, apparently, the devotion the first Tyi received from her son, and in his attention to his father’s tomb there is no record of any special care of his mother’s, though doubtless it was not neglected. “On the walls of one of the temples,” says one traveler, “the youthful Rameses is being suckled by the goddesses; on the one side by Anek (or Anouka) ‘his divine mother, Lady of Elephantine’; on the other by Hathor, with a similar inscription, the features are so much alike that they probably represent those of his own mother.” As a child even Rameses must have been freed, in great measure, from his mother’s guidance, since, to establish himself more firmly on the throne, Seti made his son co-ruler with himself, and, to some extent, a sharer in the cares of state and knowledge of warfare.
It is said that Queen Tuaa acted as regent for husband or son during a Syrian campaign. She must have been proud of her talented and precious child, but state etiquette doubtless separated her much from him, and there may have been more outlet for motherly care and tenderness among her other children; of these we do not find much record, save one brother, to whom Rameses was greatly attached. This brother was called Khamus. Tuaa is not recorded as having shared her queenly honors or her husband’s affection with other wives, at any rate, she was the legal consort.
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Lady Duff Gordon speaks of Egypt as “the palimpsest in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that.” At this period it was in the middle stage of this classification. The modern Copt most resembles the ancient Egyptian; the nose and eyes are the same as in the profiles in the tombs and temples. The fellah woman of the present, it is said, walks around the ancient statues in order to have children, and the customs at birth and burial are the same as in ancient times. Of marriage customs of the past less is known, as we have to bear in mind, than of their funeral ceremonies. The genuine Egyptian had a bronze colored skin, recognizing a brother countryman at a glance and despising black, yellow and even white skins; the queen herself, being of ancient race, may have indulged this feeling; certainly it was most apparent in her haughty son.
Was Queen Tuaa beautiful, good looks being usually thought an important part of the claims of a royal bride to her position, a picture, often flattered, being the only means a royal suitor had to judge of his future wife? Curtis thus describes a beautiful Egyptian: “The Greek Venus was sea born, but our Egyptian is sun born. The brown blood of the sun burns along her veins—the[209] soul of the sun streams shaded from her eyes.” Fascinating are the almond-eyes of Egyptian women, bordered black with the kohl, whose intensity accords with the sumptuous passion that mingles moist and languid with their light; Eastern eyes are full of moonlight. Eastern beauty is a dream of passionate possibility. Was the queen perchance of this temperament: “I am of a silent disposition. I never tell what I see. I spoil not the sweetness of my fruits by vain tattling.” For posterity, at least, she has proved so, for we know little of her.
The chief, if not the only picture of Queen Tuaa, is in the temple of Goornah or El Kurn-neh, which is described as a memorial edifice, like the Medici Chapel in Florence. Begun by Seti I, as a memorial to Rameses I, it was completed by Rameses II. They were handsome men of a Dantesque type, and their mothers and wives probably fair women, the men, especially, different in appearance from the preceding race. Rameses I was the tutelary deity of the shrine. He stands swathed and crowned like Osiris, with the pointed and upturned beard peculiar to the gods, worshipped, in one picture, by his own son, Seti I, and in another by his grandson, Rameses II.
“In Egypt every man,” especially if he were of royal birth, “received, after death, by courtesy, the title of Osiris, because it was hoped he had attained blessedness in the bosom of the god.”
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.”
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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[211] 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 throu............