furnishes accounts, deemed fabulous, of powerful gynocracies.
Thus we have heard of the Amazons, the fabulous race of women warriors who
are supposed to have founded a powerful empire on the coast of the Euxine.

A searching analysis of the texts translated by Brugsch, relating to the
ceremonies performed at the New Year and famous Sed festivals, as well as
historical facts gleaned from the works of living authorities, throw a
light upon the position and sacred duties of the Egyptian queens during
many centuries. The critical examination of a number of inscriptions,
translated by Brugsch, is found to show that the queen was the high
priestess and living image of Hathor-Isis and the personification of the
female principle of nature, associated in Egypt with the nocturnal Heaven
and the Above, and their symbols, the bird or vulture, the cow, the female
serpent, the moon, the stars, and in particular Sirius-Sothis. In remotest
historical times the goddess-queen seems to have resided in her own
capital, a fortress. The universal necessity to insure the safety of women
and children in times of warfare may well have originally led to the
assignment of a separate, permanent place of residence, to the female
portion of the population. The New Year festival, which coincided with the
heliacal rising of Sirius (20th July, Jul. Cal.) and the overflow of the
Nile, which suspended outdoor activity, was generally celebrated
throughout the land as the "union of heaven and earth," or the conjunction
of "the sun and the moon, or Sirius."

It was customary that, at this period, the queen, personifying the Sothis
star, should come forth from her retirement and, surrounded by pomp and
majesty, meet the king in solemn state, publicly occupy her place on the
double throne, and share in the performance of sacred religious rites. It
is easy to see that the idea underlying the entire ceremonial was the
harmonizing of the actions of the sacred personifications of the dual
principles of nature with the natural phenomena, from which arose a
strange confusion of ideas concerning the relationship between these
consecrated individuals and the powers of nature, which culminated in the
artificial belief that they were divinely appointed mediators between
humanity and the supreme power.

There are clear indications that the consecrated nuptials of king and
queen marked the Sed festival which was celebrated, at the beginning of
every fourth year, at Dend