THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



1011 



have plentiful stores of harps, lutes, mir- 

 rors, and wardrobes. 



THE SIZE OF PHARAOH'S HAREM 



Pharaoh himself appears in all ages to 

 have been the possessor of a large ha- 

 rem. In tie wonder tale of the wizard 

 Zazamankh, King Seneferu is recom- 

 mended by the magician to select tvv^enty 

 of the fairest girls of his harem to row 

 him in his boat on the lake ; and no doubt 

 succeeding monarchs were not behind- 

 hand in the number of female depend- 

 ents who were attached to the royal 

 household. 



Under the empire the harem was su- 

 pervised by an elderly matron, and was 

 administered by high officials — ''the gov- 

 ernor of the royal harem," "the scribe 

 of the royal harem," "the delegate for 

 the harem" — while a number of slaves 

 watched over the ladies and guarded 

 them from undue intercourse with the 

 outside world. 



The inmates of the harem were drawn 

 from many lands ; and while some of 

 them were Egyptian girls of noble rank, 

 many were foreign slaves. The scale to 

 which such an establishment could attain 

 is illustrated by the case of Amenhotep 

 III. When the King of JMitanni sent 

 him his daughter Gilukhipa in marriage, 

 the young lady was accompanied by a 

 train of 317 maidens, who were no doubt 

 added to the royal harem. This little 

 army of attendants attached to a single 

 queen out of several shows what a crowd 

 of women must have been lodged be- 

 neath the palace roof. 



The case of Amenhotep is not excep- 

 tional, though he was a monarch of very 

 magnificent tastes. The fact that Ram- 

 eses II has left lists of more than 100 

 sons and 50 daughters proves that, as 

 Petrie remarks, "his concubines were 

 probably as readily accumulated as those 

 of an Arabian khalifa." 



AN EAREY SUFFRAGETTE PEOT 



In these enormous assemblages of idle 

 women there lay a great source of dan- 

 ger to the state. The harem has always 

 been a fertile ground for intrigues and 

 plots. Favor shown to one wife or to 

 her children unites the others in a com- 



mon grievance, and the result is gener- 

 ally some plot against the reigning king 

 or an attempt to secure the succession 

 for some one who is held to have been 

 overlooked. Such plots were not want- 

 ing in ancient Egypt. 



We have a very full record of the 

 process against certain ladies and nrinces 

 of the harem of King Rameses III of 

 the twentieth dynasty, which exhibits the 

 harem intrigue in all its familiar fea- 

 tures. Officials of the harem are bribed, 

 messages are sent out to officers of the 

 troops from the secluded ladies, inviting 

 the help of the army to overthrow the 

 king and set up a pretender, and the re- 

 sources of witchcraft are called in to in- 

 sure the success of the scheme. In this 

 case even the discovery of the plot did 

 not put an end to the machinations of 

 those concerned. The judges in the trial 

 were tampered with, and the result was 

 a highly discreditable exposure of the 

 corruption of the Egyptian bench ai well 

 as that of the harem. 



Of course, the great majority of these 

 ladies were never regarded as the legiti- 

 mate wives of the king. The title of 

 "great royal wife" was reserved for the 

 chief among them. Even though the king 

 might, for reasons of state, contract an 

 alliance on equal terms with the daugh- 

 ter of a foreign sovereign, his chief wife 

 was still a native Egyptian — in most 

 cases, though not invariably, of royal 

 descent. 



Gilukhipa, for example, Amenhotep's 

 Mitannian queen, though doubtless a 

 personage of great importance in the 

 state, occupied an inferior position to the 

 favorite wife, Tyi — a native Egyptian, 

 not even of royal birth, whose influence 

 over her husband and her son we have 

 already seen to be supreme. Rameses II 

 was married to a Hittite princess, "Maat- 

 neferu-ra," or "Dawn ;" but his chief 

 wife was the princess Nefertari, of the 

 royal Egyptian line, while in addition he 

 was married to several of his own nu- 

 merous daughters. 



INTERMARRIAGE WITH SISTERS 



Such alliances, which seem utterly ab- 

 horrent to our minds, were by the Egyp- 

 tian looked upon as both natural and de- 



