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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



dently that of the great queen. Accord- 

 ingly it was assumed that the coffin which 

 contained a murnmy wrapped in gold foil 

 and crowned vsath a golden vulture of 

 exquisite workmanship was that of one 

 of the two supremely great women of 

 Egyptian history. 



The inscription on the coffin, however, 

 written in rare stones, gave the titles of 

 Akhenaten, "the beautiful Child of the 

 Sun ;" and when the bones were sent for 

 examination b}^ Mr. Weigall to Prof. 

 Elliot Smith as those of Queen Tyi, his 

 answer was, ''Are you sure that the bones 

 you sent me are those which were found 

 in the tomb? Instead of the bones of an 

 old woman, you have sent me those of a 

 young man. Surely there is some mis- 

 take." 



There was no mistake, however, and 

 the bones were not those of Queen Tyi, 

 but of her extraordinary and unfortu- 

 nate son, Akhenaten. 



When the court returned to Thebes, 

 after his death, his body had been 

 brought back and laid with reverence in 

 his mother's tomb ; but when the reac- 

 tion set in, and his memory was exe- 

 crated as that of a heretic, priestly hatred 

 pursued the dead king even to his grave. 

 His body was felt to have polluted the 

 chamber where his mother lay. Accord- 

 ingly the tomb was opened again ; Ak- 

 henaten's name was erased, so far as 

 possible, from the inscriptions ; Tyi's 

 body was removed from the defiling 

 neighborhood of her son's mummy and 

 buried elsewhere — where is as yet un- 

 known. This miserable revenge accom- 

 plished, the body of Egypt's great un- 

 comprehended reformer was left to lone- 

 liness and shame — the usual fate of men 

 who are too great or too far in advance 

 of their time. 



THE POSITION 01^ WOMAN IN ANCi:eNT 

 \ EGYPT 



The frequent mention of the influence 

 -exerted upon the course of Egyptian his- 

 tory by the two great queens, Hatshep- 

 .'sut and Tyi, leads us to consider briefly 

 the subject of the position of women in 

 the kingdom of the Nile Valley during 

 the dynastic period. The habitual view 



of the modern mind with regard to the 

 status of women in the ancient king- 

 doms of the East has been that it was 

 fundamentally contrasted with the posi- 

 tion accorded to them in Western lands. 



''In the West, woman is the compan- 

 ion of man ; in the East, his servant and 

 his toy." Like most epigrammatic state- 

 ments, this statement of the case has 

 more point than fairness. Certainly it is 

 unfair to the chief Eastern nationalities 

 during the period of their greatness, 

 however much it may apply to them in 

 the period of their luxurious decadence. 



As Erman has pointed out, the posi- 

 tion of woman is very much the same in 

 all nations which have reached a certain 

 degree of culture, unless that position is 

 affected by particular religious views 

 such as those of Mohammedanism or 

 Christianity. "As a rule, one woman is 

 the legitimate wife and mistress of the 

 house ; at the same time the man may, if 

 his fortune allow it, keep other women, 

 and it is generally considered that the 

 slaves of the household belong to him. 



"This state of things, which appears to 

 us most immoral, does not seem so in the 

 eyes of a primitive people ; on the con- 

 trary, the slave feels it a disgrace if she 

 does not 'find favor' in the sight of her 

 lord." On the whole, this view, which 

 readers of the Bible will recognize as 

 that of the Hebrew patriarchs, is that 

 which obtained in ancient Egypt during 

 the historic period. 



It coexisted, however, with a much 

 higher sentiment of respect for woman- 

 hood, and with a position of much greater 

 influence for women than one would have 

 imagined possible under such conditions. 



THE REVERENCE EOR MOTHERHOOD 



There existed in the Egyptian mind a 

 sentiment that could almost be called 

 reverence for womanhood, particularly 

 in respect of its great function of moth- 

 erhood — a sentiment which is much more 

 akin to our modern Western view than 

 anything else that we meet with among 

 ancient peoples. 



The mother was respected for her su- 

 preme share in the life and upbringing 

 of her children, and for all the self-sac- 



