The Girls' Book of Famous Queens. Lydia Hoyt Farmer
Egypt was her birthplace, Grecian blood flows through her veins, and whitens her skin, and lightens the dusky shadows in her hair, and gives the brown shadings to her lustrous eyes; and Grecian culture gives her voice its oft-narrated magic charm of melting sweetness; and a spark of Grecian genius quickens her powers of mind, and gives her the enchanting fascination of brilliant wit, and a native aptitude of acquiring knowledge, and all the polite arts and sciences; and her Grecian free-born grace lends to her form its perfect pose of queenly stateliness, together with an irresistible charm in every easy motion of rounded limb, and unstudied naturalness of action. The agile litheness of the Greek is combined with the oriental voluptuous indolence of the Egyptian; which combination explains the otherwise unaccountable, weird, and subtle allurements of face and form which history, romance, and poetry have acceded to her. Shakespeare calls her “the serpent of old Nile,” “this great fairy,” “great Egypt”; and Horace gives to her the name of “fatal prodigy.” Leigh Hunt describes her as
“. . . That southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands.”
Another writer says of her: “She was born a princess, reigned a queen, won an emperor, swayed a hero, and defeated a conqueror. We think of her as the queen of enslavers more than as queen of Egypt. Cleopatra is enthroned enchantress of the world. She, of all her sex, in her person, gave to the unworthy art of coquetry a something magnificent and lustrous in its so potent exercise. Hers was the poetry of coquetry.”
Even the scene of Cleopatra in her gorgeous barge upon the river Cydnus does not give a complete picture of this wonderful story. In the background we must paint the Mediterranean Sea, which she has crossed in her journey thither; and then beyond looms up the city of Alexandria, on the further side; and by it flows the marvellous river Nile, through the fertile valley irrigated yearly by its overflowing waters; and high in the background, towering over all else in the picture, stand the majestic pyramids, like huge sentinels, guarding the unknown secrets of Egypt’s wondrous history.
Yes, to rightly comprehend the significance of the life of the famous Cleopatra, a panorama of changing scenes, covering centuries of time, would be needed. But we can only take a bird’s-eye view of those old lands of weird and endless enchantment.
“Cleopatra was by birth an Egyptian; by ancestry and descent she was a Greek. Thus, while Alexandria and the delta of the Nile formed the scene of the most important events and incidents of her history, it was the blood of Macedon which flowed in her veins. Her character and action are marked by the genius, the courage, the originality, and the impulsiveness pertaining to the stock from which she sprang. The events of her history, on the other hand, and the peculiar character of her adventures, her sufferings, and her sins, were determined by the circumstances by which she was surrounded, and the influences which were brought to bear upon her, in the soft and voluptuous clime where the scenes of her early life were laid.”
Let us look for one moment at Egypt as a country, and then take a passing glance at the peculiar characteristics and customs of that ancient people.
Egypt is situated in the midst of the most extensive and remarkable rainless district in the world. The Red Sea divides this tract, and the eastern portion forms the Arabian desert, while the western African tract has received the name of Sahara. Through the African desert flows the Nile; rising in the region of the Mountains of the Moon, and flowing northward, it empties into the Mediterranean Sea. These mountains, being near the equator, are subject to vast and continued torrents of rain in certain seasons of the year. The river created by these streams is the Nile, which at times expands over the entire valley, forming an immense lake, five to ten miles wide and a thousand miles long. The rains in the mountains gradually cease, but it requires months for the water to subside and leave the valley dry. As soon as the water disappears, a rank and luxurious vegetation springs up from the entire surface of the earth which has been submerged. This most extraordinary valley seems specially preserved by nature for man. The yearly inundation prevents impassable forests, and also the presence of wild beasts. Egypt being thus wholly shut in by deserts on every side, by land, and shoals, and sandbars, making the approach difficult by sea, remained for many ages under the rule of its ancient kings. The people were peaceful and industrious, and its scholars were famed throughout the world for their learning, science, and philosophy.
It was during this period of isolation that the famous pyramids were built, and the huge monoliths were carved, and the silent Sphinx was reared, and those vast temples constructed whose ruined columns are now the wonder of mankind.
As Egypt was always fertile, when famine existed elsewhere, corn would be plentiful there. Thus neighboring tribes from Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, when driven by want and starvation, crossed the barren deserts on the eastern side, and found this fertile and marvellous country, already old in learning and the arts, and a certain kind of civilization far superior to their neighbors.
At length the Persian monarchs conquered the country. About two hundred and seventy years before the time of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, in his wars with Darius, had taken possession of Egypt; and at his death, in the division of his empire amongst his generals, Egypt fell to the share of one of them named Ptolemy. This was the commencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who were Greek princes, reigning over this Egyptian empire, formerly governed by a long line of native kings, reaching back in history to the year 3000 B.C., and including the famous lines of Cheops, Thotmosis, Rameses, and others, known under the general name of the Pharaohs.
We cannot give any particulars of these reigns in this sketch, and will only mention some of the customs of the ancient Egyptians previous to the time of Cleopatra.
Egypt contained about five millions of people, who were divided into various castes. Plato tells us that in Egypt not only were the priests, the soldiers, and artisans habitually separated, but that every particular trade and manufacture was carried on by its own craftsmen, who handed down the trade from father to son.
The entire cultivated land of Egypt was about twelve millions of acres. The clothing of the Egyptians consisted mostly of linen, made from the flax which grew abundantly in the delta of the Nile. Wool was but little employed, as the soil was not fitted for grazing sheep. Cotton was first mentioned in the reign of Amasis, about 566 B.C. It was also this Amasis who allowed his wife, the Egyptian queen, to receive the large income from the royal fishery at the flood-gates to the lake of Moeris, to meet the expenses of her toilet; and a century later the reigning monarch added the taxes of the city of Anthylla to the former income to keep his queen in sandal-strings; the sum obtained from the fisheries being a talent a day, or upwards of 70,700 pounds a year: and when this formed only a portion of the pin-money of the Egyptian queens, to whom the revenues of the city of Anthylla, famous for its wines, were also given, it will be seen that the Egyptian kings were at least very generous to their wives in this respect, even though they were not very particular about cutting off their heads or giving them a cup of poison if they failed to please their royal lords.
Although wool and cotton were sometimes employed as articles of clothing, the preference was given to linen. Herodotus mentions some Egyptian dresses of linen, bordered with a fringe, over which was worn a cloak of white wool, similar to the bornouse worn at the present day in Egypt and Barbary.
The dresses of the priests and persons of rank consisted of an under-garment in the form of an apron, and a loose upper-robe with full sleeves, secured by a girdle around the waist; or of an apron, and a shirt with short, tight sleeves, over which was thrown a loose robe, leaving the right arm exposed. Princes wore a dress very like that of the priests; but their distinguishing mark was a peculiar badge, at the side of the head, descending to the shoulder, and frequently adorned with golden fringe.
This ornament contained the lock of hair indicative of youth; for though the Egyptians shaved their heads and wore wigs, certain locks of hair were left upon the heads of children.
Therefore this badge was always attached to the head-dress worn by princes as an emblem of their rank, as they were not supposed to have arrived at kinghood during the life of their father, on the same principle that a Spanish prince is styled an infant.
The robes of a sovereign varied according