CHAPTER XVIII
THE ORDINARY HUMAN FAILINGS OF THE ANCIENT MOGULS
Taken by themselves, as mere mouldering chunks of antiquity that havebeen preserved to us because they happened to be dropped down in a dryclimate, the fragmentary remains of old Egypt are not very inspiring.They were big, but seldom beautiful. As records proving thathumanity--old-fashioned, unreliable humanity, with its fears,jealousies, hatreds, and aching ambitions--is just about the same as itwas five thousand years ago, the temples and the decorated tombs seemto bring us direct and heartfelt messages from our brethren of the longago.
For instance, from the beginning of time probably the most maddeningand unbearable persecution that can be visited upon a sensitive humanbeing is to have some other human being always held up before him as ashining moral example.
Do you recall, O male reader, how you writhed in humiliation and laidplans for assault and battery when the good little Rollo of your nativetown was constantly dangled before your depraved soul as the paragon ofjuvenile virtues? "Rollo never smokes corn silk." "Rollo never putstick-tacks on teacher's bedroom window." "Rollo never carries crawdabbers in his Sunday clothes." "Rollo never runs away to go swimmingand then comes back with his ears full of gravel."
_The paragon of juvenile virtues_]
No, indeed, Rollo never showed any of the traits that have been theessence of boyhood since Adam and Eve started the original brood. Anddo you remember how bright and sunshiny that day seemed when Rollo,having grown to pale and sidewhiskered manhood, was arrested forstealing money from the Building and Loan Association?
Take the story of Queen Hatasoo. She was the Victoria of theeighteenth dynasty, and was on the throne just about 1500 B.C. Thelineal male descendant of that period had a blot on the 'scutcheon or abar sinister across his pedigree or something wrong with his registrycertificate--anyway, he could not qualify as king, and so his sisterHatasoo was made ruler and he was permitted to hang around the palaceas a kind of shawl holder and cab opener. He led the cotillons andattended public dinners and wore decorations, but Hatasoo ran Egypt andThutmes Second was merely a trailer. When he dropped off there did notseem to be any considerable vacancy in court circles. Queen Hatasoocontinued as chief monarch, although her step-nephew, Thutmes Third,carried the honourary title of co-regent. Hatasoo was energetic andambitious. She put nephew into a remote back seat and ran things tosuit herself, waging wars, building temples, and organising expeditionsto far distant lands. Also, according to ancient custom, she had herportrait and the record of her accomplishments carved on the obelisksand painted all over the walls of her private temple, which is stillstanding, about three miles west of the present city of Luxor.
She reigned for thirty-five years, and then Thutmes Third, gray beardedand worn with much waiting, emerged from the nursery and took up thereins of government. According to the judgment of later historians,his reign was about the most glorious in the whole history of Egypt.He was possessed of military genius, and under his direction Syria wasrecaptured, and the influence of Egypt was firmly established inWestern Asia. But no matter how many battles he won or how manycaptives he brought back to Thebes to exhibit in the courthouse square,the old-timers around the court wagged their heads and said, "Yes, he'sdoing fairly well for a beginner, but he'll never come up to the markset by his Aunt Hattie." Hatasoo was her full name, but those who hadknown her for a long time called her "Hattie," and to a few of herintimates she was known as "Hat."
"_He'll never come up to the mark set by his auntHattie._"]
Thutmes was merely human. For years his domineering aunt had kept himout of the running, and now that he was on the throne the glory of herachievements was constantly being dinged into him. Every time he rodeout in his chariot, standing up and sawing away at four horses, just asthey do in Ringling's circus at the present time, he saw her name andpicture on all the public buildings, and, of course, two or three yearsafter her departure, everybody bragged about her a good deal harderthan they had while she was alive. Even the English newspapers speakin kindly terms of an American statesman who is safely deceased.
Thutmes stood it as long as he could, and then he broke over. Heordered the stonecutters to go forth and gouge out all the inscriptionsrelating to his superior aunt. The temple which she had built as aspecial memorial he appropriated to himself, and put his name over themain entrance. It may have been pretty spiteful, but the wholeproceeding somehow seems to establish a sympathetic link between thoseremote heathen days and the unselfish Utopian civilisation that we nowenjoy in Chicago, Omaha, West Superior, and other centres of brotherlylove.
After Thutmes had put in years erasing and chiselling out allcomplimentary references to Hatasoo, he passed away and was carried toa winding subterranean tomb in the valley to the west. For two hundredyears the great monuments which he had erected in his own honour, orquietly borrowed from his aunt, remained intact. Then along cameRameses Second, to whom we have already referred as the best littleadvertiser of ancient times. He had the name of Thutmes removed fromall the temples, obelisks, and public buildings, and put his ownglaring label on everything in sight. In the language of Mr. Peasley,the Kings seemed to spend most of their time in "knocking theirpredecessors" and "boosting" themselves.
Nearly every ancient structure has been defaced or altered to gratify aprivate jealousy or some prejudice founded on religious belief. TheRomans tried to obliterate the old Egyptian deities. The earlyChristians hacked away at anything that failed to strike them as beingorthodox. Then the Turks capped the climax by coming in and burningeverything non-Mohammedan that was at all combustible. A few ancientrecords remain because they are carved in huge characters on very hardstone. The theologians wanted to batter them down, but it would havemeant a lot of hard work and they had been leading sedentary lives. Sothey merely criss-crossed them and wrote the equivalent for "Rats"underneath, and let it go at that.
Egyptian temple paintings]
Even the modern circus bill is not more exuberant and given to joyfulhyperbole than the inscriptions and paintings of the Egyptian temples.A few of them are reproduced herewith. Take No. 1, for example. Thisrepresents our old friend Rameses the Great in the act of overcominghis enemies. It was designed by Rameses himself. Now we know whereKaiser Wilhelm got all of his tips.
_Where Kaiser Wilhelm got all his tips_]
Some warriors are content with overcoming one man at a time, butRameses is seen holding ten of them by the hair, getting ready to cloutthem into insensibility. The picture is an artistic success, but issomewhat shy anatomically. The ten enemies have a total of only threelegs for the whole crowd. They are better supplied with arms, thetotal being thirteen, or about one and one-third to the man. Noticealso the relative size of Rameses and his foes. There we have thereal, unchanging spirit of autobiography--the great I triumphant andthe petty antagonists all coming about knee high to him.
No. 2 is also very characteristic. One of the kings is represented asdefeating two burly warriors. He is walking on one and pushing hisspear through the other. Undoubtedly a glorious achievement. It wouldbe still more glorious if the two gentlemen putting up the fightagainst the King had carried weapons of some sort. The one on theground, who is lifting his hands in mild protest against being used asa rug, has nothing on his person to indicate that he is a soldier. Theone who is being harpooned carries in his left hand what appears to bea box of handkerchiefs. The raised right arm would suggest that heattempted to slap the King, who caught him by the arm and held himuntil he could select a good vital spot in which to prong him.Attention is called to the fact that both of the victims wear the longand protuberant chin whisker, which would indicate that the honestfarmer was getting the worst of it even four thousand years ago.
The carvings and paintings which do not depict warlike scenes usuallyshow the monarchs receiving homage from terrified subjects or elsemingling on terms of equality with the principal deities of the period.Illustra
tion No. 3 is a very good specimen. King Amenophis and hiswife are seen seated on their square-built Roycroft thrones, while twohead priests of Ammon burn incense before them and sing their praisesand tell them that the people are with the administration, no matterhow the Senate may carry on. There was no race prejudice in thosedays. The Queen is shown to be a coal-black Nubian. In one hand shecarries what seems to be a fly brush of the very kind that we used allthe time we were up the Nile, and if the article in her other hand isnot a cocktail glass then the artist has wilfully libelled her.
No. 4 is interesting as a fashion plate. Ptolemeus and Cleopatra aremaking offers to the hawk-headed god and the goddess Hathor. Thispicture will appeal to women inasmuch as it gives us a correct likenessof Cleopatra, the man trapper. No one can dispute the fact that she isbeautiful, but how about the combination of an Empress gown with ahabit back? Is it not a trifle daring? And the hat. Would you callit altogether subdued?
Another well-preserved painting to be found in the temple at Edfoureveals the innate modesty of the Ptolemies. The King (No. 5) isrepresented as being crowned by the goddesses of the south and thenorth--that is, of Upper and Lower Egypt. These divinities seem to beovercome with admiration of the athletic monarch. One has her handresting on his shoulder, as if she hated to see him go. The other,having just fitted him with his new gourd-shaped hat, has both hands inthe air, and you can almost hear her say, "Oh, my! It looks just fine!"
Seti I. was another shrinking violet. In one of his privatethree-sheet advertisements (No. 6) he has the sublime effrontery torepresent the great goddess Hathor as holding his hand tenderly andoffering him the jewelled collar which she is wearing. Notice theuplifted hand. He is supposed to be saying, "This is all very sudden,and besides, would it be proper for me to accept jewelry from one ofyour sex?" Of course, there never was any Hathor, and if there hadbeen she wouldn't have hob-nobbed with a man who had his privateinterviews done into oil paintings. But this painting and one thousandothers that we have seen in Egypt help to give us a line on the ancientKings. If there was any one of them that failed to get the swelledhead soon after mounting the throne, the hieroglyphs are strangelysilent regarding his case. They were a vain, self-laudatory lot, andall of them had that craving for the centre of the stage and the hotglare of the spot-light which is still to be found in isolated cases.
After all is said and done can we blame them? Rameses wanted to beremembered and talked about and he laid his plans accordingly. Hecarved the record of his long and successful reign on the unyieldinggranite and distributed his pictures with the careful prodigality of afootlight favourite. What has been the result? His name is ahousehold joke all over the world. People who never heard of ProfessorHarry Thurston Peck or Marie Corelli or the present Khedive of Egyptknow all about Rameses the Great, although no two of them pronounce itthe same.