An Egyptian Princess. Georg Ebers
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than you fancy with us. We Asiatics know how to honor beauty; and prove it by taking many wives.”
Nitetis sighed, and the queen Ladice exclaimed, “On the contrary, that very fact proves that you understand but poorly how to appreciate woman’s nature! You can have no idea, Bartja, what a woman feels on finding that her husband—the man who to her is more than life itself, and to whom she would gladly and without reserve give up all that she treasures as most sacred—looks down on her with the same kind of admiration that he bestows on a pretty toy, a noble steed, or a well-wrought wine-bowl. But it is yet a thousand-fold more painful to feel that the love which every woman has a right to possess for herself alone, must be shared with a hundred others!”
“There speaks the jealous wife!” exclaimed Amasis. “Would you not fancy that I had often given her occasion to doubt my faithfulness?”
“No, no, my husband,” answered Ladice, “in this point the Egyptian men surpass other nations, that they remain content with that which they have once loved; indeed I venture to assert that an Egyptian wife is the happiest of women.
[According to Diodorus (I. 27) the queen of Egypt held a higher
position than the king himself. The monuments and lists of names
certainly prove that women could rule with sovereign power. The
husband of the heiress to the throne became king. They had their
own revenues (Diodorus I. 52) and when a princess, after death, was
admitted among the goddesses, she received her own priestesses.
(Edict of Canopus.) During the reigns of the Ptolemies many coins
were stamped with the queen’s image and cities were named for them.
We notice also that sons, in speaking of their descent, more
frequently reckon it from the mother’s than the father’s side, that
a married woman is constantly alluded to as the “mistress” or “lady”
of the house, that according to many a Greek Papyrus they had entire
disposal of all their property, no matter in what it consisted, in
short that the weaker sex seems to have enjoyed equal influence with
the stronger.]
Even the Greeks, who in so many things may serve as patterns to us, do not know how to appreciate woman rightly. Most of the young Greek girls pass their sad childhood in close rooms, kept to the wheel and the loom by their mothers and those who have charge of them, and when marriageable, are transferred to the quiet house of a husband they do not know, and whose work in life and in the state allows him but seldom to visit his wife’s apartments. Only when the most intimate friends and nearest relations are with her husband, does she venture to appear in their midst, and then shyly and timidly, hoping to hear a little of what is going on in the great world outside. Ah, indeed! we women thirst for knowledge too, and there are certain branches of learning at least, which it cannot be right to withhold from those who are to be the mothers and educators of the next generation. What can an Attic mother, without knowledge, without experience, give to her daughters? Naught but her own ignorance. And so it is, that a Hellene, seldom satisfied with the society of his lawful, but, mentally, inferior wife, turns for satisfaction to those courtesans, who, from their constant intercourse with men, have acquired knowledge, and well understand how to adorn it with the flowers of feminine grace, and to season it with the salt of a woman’s more refined and delicate wit. In Egypt it is different. A young girl is allowed to associate freely with the most enlightened men. Youths and maidens meet constantly on festive occasions, learn to know and love one another. The wife is not the slave, but the friend of her husband; the one supplies the deficiencies of the other. In weighty questions the stronger decides, but the lesser cares of life are left to her who is the greater in small things. The daughters grow up under careful guidance, for the mother is neither ignorant nor inexperienced. To be virtuous and diligent in her affairs becomes easy to a woman, for she sees that it increases his happiness whose dearest possession she boasts of being, and who belongs to her alone. The women only do that which pleases us! but the Egyptian men understand the art of making us pleased with that which is really good, and with that alone. On the shores of the Nile, Phocylides of Miletus and Hipponax of Ephesus would never have dared to sing their libels on women, nor could the fable of Pandora have been possibly invented here!”
[Simonides of Amorgos, an Iambic poet, who delighted in writing
satirical verses on women. He divides them into different classes,
which he compares to unclean animals, and considers that the only
woman worthy of a husband and able to make him happy must be like
the bee. The well-known fable of Pandora owes its origin to
Simonides. He lived about 650 B. C. The Egyptians too, speak very
severely of bad women, comparing them quite in the Simonides style
to beasts of prey (hyenas, lions and panthers). We find this
sentence on a vicious woman: She is a collection of every kind of
meanness, and a bag full of wiles. Chabas, Papyr. magrque Harris.
p. 135. Phocylides of Miletus, a rough and sarcastic, but
observant man, imitated Simonides in his style of writing. But the
deformed Hipponax of Ephesus, a poet crushed down by poverty, wrote
far bitterer verses than Phocylides. He lived about 550 B. C. “His
own ugliness (according to Bernhardy) is reflected in every one of
his Choliambics.” ]
“How beautifully you speak!” exclaimed Bartja. “Greek was not easy to learn, but I am very glad now that I did not give it up in despair, and really paid attention to Croesus’ lessons.”
“Who could those men have been,” asked Darius, “who dared to speak evil of women?”
“A couple of Greek poets,” answered Amasis, “the boldest of men, for I confess I would rather provoke a lioness than a woman. But these Greeks do not know what fear is. I will give you a specimen of Hipponax’s Poetry:
“There are but two days when a wife,
Brings pleasure to her husband’s life,
The wedding-day, when hopes are bright,
And the day he buries her out of his sight.”
“Cease, cease,” cried Ladice stopping her ears, that is too had. Now, Persians, you can see what manner of man Amasis is. For the sake of a joke, he will laugh at those who hold precisely the same opinion as himself. There could not be a better husband.
“Nor a worse wife,” laughed Amasis. “Thou wilt make men think that I am a too obedient husband. But now farewell, my children; our young heroes must look at this our city of Sais; before parting, however, I will repeat to them what the malicious Siuionides has sung of a good wife:
“Dear to her spouse from youth to age she grows;
Fills with fair girls and sturdy boys his house;
Among all women womanliest seems,
And heavenly grace about her mild brow gleams.
A gentle wife, a noble spouse she walks,
Nor ever with the gossip mongers talks.
Such women sometimes Zeus to mortals gives,
The glory and the solace of their lives.”
“Such is my Ladice! now farewell!”
“Not yet!” cried Bartja. “Let me first speak in defence of our poor Persia and instil fresh courage into my future sister-in-law; but no! Darius, thou must speak, thine eloquence is as great as thy skill in figures and swordsmanship!”
“Thou speakst of me as if I were a gossip or