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Besides the jewels found upon the mummy of Queen Aahhotep, a number of arms and amulets were heaped inside her coffin; namely, three massive gold flies hanging from a slender chain; nine small hatchets, three of gold and six of silver; a golden lion's head of very minute workmanship; a wooden sceptre set in gold spirals; two anklets; and two poignards.
Aahhotep was the wife of Kames, a king of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and she was probably the mother of Ahmes I., first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her mummy had been stolen by one of the robber bands which infested the Theban necropolis towards the close of the Twentieth Dynasty.
The chased lion's head found with the jewels of Queen Aahhotep, the Harpocrates of Gizeh inscribed with the names of Kames and Ahmes I., and several statuettes of Amen, said to have been discovered at Medinet Habû and Sheikh Abd el Gûrneh, are of that period. Our most important bronzes belong, however, to the Twenty-second Dynasty, or, later still, to the time of the Saïte Pharaohs.
The technical processes throughout are irreproachable, and the correct taste of the craftsman is in no wise inferior to his dexterity of hand. Having arrived at the perfection displayed in the parure of Aahhotep, the goldsmith's art did not long maintain so high a level. The fashions changed, and jewellery became heavier in design.
The Ptah and Amen of Queen Aahhotep, another golden Amen also at Gizeh, and the silver vulture found in 1885 at Medinet Habû, are the only pieces of this kind which can be attributed with certainty to the great period of Egyptian art. The remainder are of Saïte or Ptolemaic work, and are remarkable only for the perfection with which they are wrought.
The mummies of Amenhotep I., and Thothmes III., of Sekenenra, and Aahhotep have survived the dwellings of solid stone designed for their protection. Towards the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, however, all the best places were taken up, and some unoccupied site in which to establish a new royal cemetery had to be sought. Amenhotep III., Aï, and perhaps others, were there buried.
So fresh and delicate are they we forget that the royal ladies to whom they belonged have been dead, and their bodies stiffened and disfigured into mummies, for nearly five thousand years. At Berlin may be seen the parure of an Ethiopian Candace; at the Louvre we have the jewels of Prince Psar; at Gizeh are preserved the ornaments of Queen Aahhotep.
The craftsmen who made these ornaments were doubtless as skilful as the craftsmen of the time of Queen Aahhotep, but they had less taste and less invention. Rameses II. was condemned either to forego the pleasure of wearing his ring, or to see his little horses damaged and broken off by the least accident.
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