



Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from images made available by the HathiTrust
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Transcriber’s Note: The original copy of this book wasn’t very well
proofread, if at all. A large number of printing errors have been
corrected, including transposed full lines of text. In one place (noted
below) at least one line was omitted completely: it wasn’t possible to
source another edition to check what the missing words might have been.
The spelling and hyphenation of Egyptian names are often inconsistent.




[Illustration: CLEOPATRA.]




                              PREDECESSORS
                              OF CLEOPATRA

                                   BY
                               LEIGH NORTH

                       _5 Drawings by G. A. Davis_

                             [Illustration]

                         BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO.
                                   AT
                           835 BROADWAY, N. Y.
                                  1906

                           Copyrighted, 1906.
                                   BY
                        BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO.,
                         _All Rights Reserved._




TO MY HUSBAND




INTRODUCTION.


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.




CONTENTS.


    INTRODUCTION                            i

                  CHAPTER ONE.

    The Black Hand                          1

                  CHAPTER TWO.

    The Queen                              15

                 CHAPTER THREE.

    Mertytefs                              26

                  CHAPTER FOUR