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On either side of him run the fan-bearers, who manage, by a miracle of skill and activity, to keep their great gaily-coloured fans of perfumed ostrich feathers waving round the royal head even as they run. Behind the King comes a long train of other chariots, only less splendid than that of Ramses. In the first stands Queen Nefertari, languidly sniffing at a lotus-flower as she passes on.
His queen, Nefertari, "the most venerated figure of Egyptian history," was a Negress of great beauty, strong personality, and of unusual administrative force. She was for many years joint ruler with her son, Amenhotep I, who succeeded his father. The new empire was a period of foreign conquest and internal splendor and finally of religious dispute and overthrow.
Europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ.
We saw two colossal sitting statues of Ramses forty-five feet in height, one of which was completely excavated, the other buried breast high in rubbish, and in a court of the temple were many gigantic standing figures of Ramses placed between the pillars. Beside one of these was a small figure, representing the queen Nefertari, which just reached to the height of the knees of Ramses.
Now, I but let me introduce Nefertiti to your Majesty. I may explain that she was my only wife." "So I have understood. Your Majesty was rather an invalid, were you not? Of course, in those circumstances, one prefers the nurse whom one can trust. Oh, pray, no offence! Nefertari, my love oh, I beg pardon! She is interested in the question of plural marriage. Good-bye!
"The king desired to indicate by the size of the statues that he was a great conqueror," said the dragoman. "His wife was the daughter of Pharoah who, while bathing in the Nile, found the Hebrew babe hidden among the papyri plants." "If Nefertari was the princess who rescued Moses, she deserved a larger statue," responded one of the tourists.
At one end of the reception hall stands a low balcony, supported on gaily-painted wooden pillars which end in capitals of lotus-flowers. The front of this balcony is overlaid with gold, and richly decorated with turquoise and lapis lazuli. Here the King will show himself to his subjects, accompanied by his favourite wife, Queen Nefertari, and some of the young Princes and Princesses.
As rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes as Queen Nefertari and Amenhotep III among many others in Egypt; Candace and Ergamenes in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ali, and Mohammed Askai in the Sudan; Diaz in Brazil, Toussaint L'Ouverture in Hayti, Hannivalov in Russia, Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder Dumas in France, Cazembe and Chaka among the Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the numberless black leaders of India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton.
The miracle is that Moses was not instantly slain for his boldness in proposing it; he was, of course, screened by his relationship to Pharaoh's daughter, but that would have counted little had he not been protected by a power far above that of the king of Egypt. Close down under the knee of the standing Rameses is the figure of a plump woman, his favourite wife, Nefertari.
The small speos of Hathor, about a hundred paces to the northward, is of smaller dimensions. The façade is adorned with six standing colossi, four representing Rameses II., and two his wife, Nefertari. The hypostyle hall, however, is supported by six Hathor-headed pillars.
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