Predecessors of Cleopatra

In attempting even a brief and imperfect outline of the history of Egyptian queens the author has undertaken no easy task and craves indulgence for its modest fulfillment. The aim has been merely to put the little that is known in a readable and popular form, to gather from many sources the fragments that remain, partly historic, partly legendary, of a dead past. To present—however imperfectly—sketches of the women who once lived and breathed as Queens of Egypt, which has been more ably and completely done—as the period was less remote and the sources of information fuller, for their royal sisters of other lands.

A short article published some years ago in Lippincott’s Magazine may be said to be the nucleus of the present volume, the writer’s interest in the subject having been awakened by the study necessary to its preparation.

We enter a house through the portico or vestibule. We form acquaintances on somewhat the same principle. We begin perhaps with the weather, we exchange comments on trifles, we pass through an introductory stage of intercourse before we reach the real heart of the man or woman who, in time, becomes our dearest friend. Skip the introduction if you will, busy reader, but metaphorically it forms the portico or vestibule of the Egyptian House.

From the darkness which envelopes the centuries modern research has brought to light much that was unknown or forgotten. With almost the creative touch it has made the dry bones to live again and link by link drawn out the long chain of the years. What was once a mere roll of names with a wide hiatus here and there has grown to be a record of the words and deeds of men of like passions with ourselves. We feel once more in touch with the past, as it is the aim of the highest altruism to beat responsive to the heart of the present and the by-gone faces look forth by the side of modern man and claim the universal brotherhood.

Well may we marvel at the faith, the patience, the ingenuity which has unraveled so much of the tangled skein in “The Story of the Nations.” Like Cuvier, from a single bone elaborating a whole animal, the Egyptologist has patiently evolved from shreds of parchment, from fragments of pottery, from broken plinth and capital a more or less complete whole. He has woven a tapestry from which some of the figures start forth with a lifelike vigor.

Few countries claim such antiquity as Egypt and of none were the estimated dates more widely apart. Sometimes involving periods of hundreds and thousands of years. An accumulation of difficulties meets the student as it does the explorer. A cycle of time, beside which modern life seems like a single breath. A language, at first indecipherable, and even now imperfectly read. The hasty guesses of scholars anxious to prove some point or be in the vanguard of discovery; broken monuments, rifled tombs, and inscriptions, mutilated, erased and altered by the monarchs of succeeding generations. Among all these difficulties lies the way. But with patience and care we are rewarded and with “imagination for a servant,” not a master, one “arrives,” as the French say (at least in a measure), at last.

The list of authorities consulted by the author would be too long to enumerate, but among them may be mentioned Rawlinson, Wilkinson, Maspero, Erman, Ebers and later Edwards, Sayce, Petrie and Mahaffy, whose interest is so absorbing and the researches of some of whom are of such recent date. To these may be added the study of all available pictures and photographs, and the experiences of late travel and travellers.