first
Syrian campaigns.

It occasionally happened that she had no posterity, or that the child
of another woman inherited the crown. In that case there was no law or
custom to prevent a young and beautiful widow from wedding the son, and
thus regaining her rank as Queen by a marriage with the successor of her
deceased husband. It was in this manner that, during the earlier part
of the IVth dynasty, the Princess Mirtittefsi ingratiated herself
successively in the favour of Snofrui and Kheops.* Such a case did not
often arise, and a queen who had once quitted the throne had but little
chance of again ascending it. Her titles, her duties, her supremacy over
the rest of the family, passed to a younger rival: formerly she had been
the active companion of the king, she now became only the nominal spouse
of the god,** and her office came to an end when the god, of whom she
had been the goddess, quitting his body, departed heavenward to rejoin
his father the Sun on the far-distant horizon.

Children swarmed in the palace, as in the houses of private individuals:
in spite of the number who died in infancy, they were reckoned by tens,
sometimes by the hundred, and more than one Pharaoh must have been
puzzled to remember exactly the number and names of his offspring.***

* M. de Rouge was the first to bring this fact to light in
his _Becherches sur les monuments qu'on peut attribuer aux
six premieres dynasties de Manethon,_ pp. 36-38. Mirtittefsi
also lived in the harem of Khephren, but the title which
connects her with this king--_Amahhit_, the vassal--proves
that she was then merely a nominal wife; she was probably by
that time, as M. de Rouge says, of too advanced an age to
remain the favourite of a third Pharaoh.

** The title of "divine spouse" is not, so far as we know at
present, met with prior to the XVIIIth dynasty. It was given
to the wife of a living monarch, and was retained by her
after his death; the divinity to whom it referred was no
other than the king himself.

*** This was probably so in the case of the Pharaoh Ramses
II., more than one hundred and fifty of whose children, boys
and girls, are known to us, and who certainly had others
besides of whom we know nothing.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN SHAKES THE SISTKUJU WHILE THE KING OFFERS THE
SACRIFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the temple of