DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12609#0026
01? THE ROYAL OVALS.
11
husband's name, Being used with the feminine pro-
noun, became in a manner her own.* Some stigma
appears to have attached to his memory, for the
name was erased from inscriptions by his successors.
The similarity of the name Axmux-neitgori, and the
concurring circumstances, favour the conjecture that
this is the famous Mtocris, a sovereign queen, whose
memory tradition kept alive upwards of a thousand
years, and of whom Herodotus heard a story which
he took care to preserve for his auditory at the
Olympic Games. " The name of this queen was
Mtocris. The Egyptians, they say, having slain her
brother, their sovereign, she was appointed his suc-
cessor : afterwards, to avenge his death, she destroyed
a great many Egyptians by the following artifice : —
She gave orders that a large subterraneous apartment
should be prepared, professedly for a festival, but in
reality for a very different purpose. To this place
she invited the conspirators, and then by a private
canal introduced the waters of the river. They
added that, to avoid the indignation of the people,
she suffocated herself in a chamber filled with ashes." f
It is very remarkable that there is but one large
* Sir G. Wilkinson makes Amun-neitgori a queen. Eosellini and
Champollion suppose him to have been regent during the minority
of the third Thothmes (their fourth). The figure accompanying
the name is that of a man, and clearly a portrait. This and the
Ethiopic character of his ovals are enough, I think, to settle the
question, at least of sex.
t Herod, ii. 100.
11
husband's name, Being used with the feminine pro-
noun, became in a manner her own.* Some stigma
appears to have attached to his memory, for the
name was erased from inscriptions by his successors.
The similarity of the name Axmux-neitgori, and the
concurring circumstances, favour the conjecture that
this is the famous Mtocris, a sovereign queen, whose
memory tradition kept alive upwards of a thousand
years, and of whom Herodotus heard a story which
he took care to preserve for his auditory at the
Olympic Games. " The name of this queen was
Mtocris. The Egyptians, they say, having slain her
brother, their sovereign, she was appointed his suc-
cessor : afterwards, to avenge his death, she destroyed
a great many Egyptians by the following artifice : —
She gave orders that a large subterraneous apartment
should be prepared, professedly for a festival, but in
reality for a very different purpose. To this place
she invited the conspirators, and then by a private
canal introduced the waters of the river. They
added that, to avoid the indignation of the people,
she suffocated herself in a chamber filled with ashes." f
It is very remarkable that there is but one large
* Sir G. Wilkinson makes Amun-neitgori a queen. Eosellini and
Champollion suppose him to have been regent during the minority
of the third Thothmes (their fourth). The figure accompanying
the name is that of a man, and clearly a portrait. This and the
Ethiopic character of his ovals are enough, I think, to settle the
question, at least of sex.
t Herod, ii. 100.