I hope you enjoy viewing Winifred Brunton's portraits with accompanying descriptions. Please click on the thumbnails to enlarge images !

           The following is an extract from the foreword to the above work, written by Professor J.H. Breasted, Holderness, New Hampshire,Sept.I, 1924 :

        ' The portraiture which we historians attempt in words is achieved here by Mrs. Brunton in form and color. Her effort is to my mind fully legitimate as ours. That such and effort is possible only in Egyptian history distinctly adds to the interest, and I may say also to the fascination. For only in Egypt have the actual flesh and blood faces of those who made her great past survived to us. With what eagerness have we not all awaited a glimpse of the young Tutankhamon ! - if indeed he was young, as the indications lead us to conclude.Except in the degree of its almost unlimited measure of refinement and in its employment of another category of expression, Mrs. Brunton's task so admirably accomplished , does not differ from ours. For she, too, bases her portraiture upon materials and sources, carefully studied. '

                                                                MERIRE PEPY I
                                                              

             The following extract is from the words of Winifred Brunton herself:

          ' Each of the great dynasties of Egypt produced one monarch who was the flower of his time - the embodiment of the spirit of the period. He forms the height of the curve of energy of his line, a height which usually comes early in the curve. In the Sixth Dynasty the third king is the height of the curve. First comes Teta, then Ati-Userkere and then Merire Pepy I. He reigned for at least fifty years. Of this great personality most of our knowledge comes from the tombs of two of his great nobles, Una and Herkhuf. These Princes of the South Country, in their autobiographical inscriptions bear witness to the ability and energy of the king, their master and friend. An idea of the character of Pepy I can only be arrived at by piecing together this information and deducing therefrom.His strength and vigour appear at once. Personal magnetism too, and the power to win love from his subjects. Pepy's personal appearance is known to us from the magnificent life-sized bronze statue discovered by Mr. Quibell at

                                                                 

Hierakonpolis. It represents Pepy as a young man, probably very soon after his succession. When found buried in the temple debris, the figure was in several pieces , the beaten plates composing it lying heaped together, and inside the body-plates was the smaller statue now shown beside it in the Cairo museum. The whole has been skilfully restored , and shows the king, tall and broad shouldered, in the usual formal attitude, erect, left leg well advanced as if striding forward, and the left arm bent to hold a long staff, which, like the crown, kilt and girdle ( all perhaps of precious metal) have disappeared. The eyes are inlaid, of obsidian and white limestone, and have a wonderful effect of intent vision. That Pepy was energetic we know from the evidence of the monuments, but if they gave us no information we should guess it from his face. The set of the eyes, the spring and jut of the big nose, the full yet very firm lips, the carriage of the head with the brow a little forward all these show the man of action, but a man who thinks before he acts,one of decision and tenacity. '

                                                                AMENEMHAT III
                                                                 

            The following extract was written by Guy Brunton :

          ' Amenemhat III is one of the great figures of Egyptian history. Many circumstances combined to render his reign remarkable and the outstanding feature of the XII dynasty. First he had inherited from a line of energetic, forceful, far-seeing monarchs the type of mind and character which could conceive great schemes, organise their development , and carry them to a successful fulfilment. And lastly, there were no wars abroad, nor political troubles at hometo distract him from his work for the good of his country. Egypt has rarely, if ever, been blessed by such an opportunity, so well made use of. We infer that Amenemhat was the son of his predecessor Senusert 111.There is the strong family likeness , and no evidence to the contrary. If, as is possible , the successor of a king was chosen from the sons born during the actual reign , Amenemhat might have been some 30 years of age at his accession.
                The principal statues so far discovered are the young Amenemhat , from Hawara, now at Cairo; three others at Cairo , of which two are from Karnak; the head and the walking statue from Memphis at Berlin; the seated statue at Petrograd; the serpentine head belonging to Mr. Oscar Raphael ; and the magnificent obsidian head now in Australia . As some of these do not actually bear the name of the king, we have only the likeness by which to identify them; and some would prefer to see in them a likeness of Senusert 111. But this is not the opinion of the majority.It must be borne in mind that though certain traits are not pronounced in youth, they may still be very noticeable in old age. Thus the sandstone statue in Cairo from Hawara shows us Amenemhat in the early part of his reign; while the obsidian statue , lately in the MacGregor Collection, represents the king shortly before his death. Allowing for this we can then realise what true portraits these wonderful statues are, and it is from a combination of these that the artist of this miniature has built up her living representation of the king in later years, showing him as a severe, but just, sovereign, one whom affairs of state had rendered thoughtful, even a trifle gloomy : and whose soul was embittered by some disappointment or disillusionment on which it brooded always.What this may have been we can only guess. '

                                                             QUEEN TETISHERI
                                                              
                                                   
             The following extract is from H.E. Winlock :

     ' The position which Tetisheri occupies in Egyptian history is extremely interesting . She was the first of a line of remarkable women who exerted unusual influence in their days. At Tetisheri's death her daughter Ahhotep became regent during the absence of Ahmose, her son, at the Nubian campaigns.At Ahhotep's death, later in the reign of Ahmose, it was Nefretiri who became the great personage, and she survived at least until the coronation of Thotmose 1. Her daughter Ahhotep 11 and her granddaughter Ahmose 11 carried on the tradition, until finally the latter's daughter Hatshepsut became the actual, acknowledged ruler of Egypt.
             Tetisheri rested in her Theban tomb for nearly six centuries, until the brigandage in the Necropolis became so uncontrolled that it was necessary to gather up the royal mummies and move them from place to place out of danger of the thieves. Most of them had been robbed, and Tetisheri's body had been stripped of its grave clothes by the time it was carried to the hiding place at Deir-el-Bahari. Either then, or during the final move to Cairo some forty years ago, the bandages on which her name was written had been separated from her mummy. Recently they have been rediscovered in the Cairo museum and there, doubtless, lies her mummy unknown to the present generation. If one might make a guess, there are many reasons for supposing that Tetisheri is the anonymous mummy 'B' - a lttle, old, white haired , partly bald woman, whose scanty locks were ecked out with false tresses. Her face was roundish ; her small chin pointed, and her upper teeth prominent, like all of the members of the family of Ahmose. When Tetisheri was laid in her tomb in the Theban hills, one of her faithful retainers, the Overseer Senseneb, placed in her chapel a pair of delighful little statues that 'her name might live forever', picturing her as the charming young person she must have been when she married the now forgotten Tao the Elder. One of them, which forms the basis for Mrs. Brunton's portrait, has found its way to the British Museum, and the other, sadly broken , is in the French Institute in Cairo. Ahmose never forgot the memory of the grandmother who had directed the destinies of the Theban family through three generations and into four reigns, and through the final Hyksos war to its place of pre eminence. Even toward the end of his reign he still remembered her as the guiding personality of the family and recorded on a great stela at Abydos his devotion to her.

                                                               QUEEN HATSHEPSUT
                                                                    

              The following extract was written by Professor Margaret Murray :

     ' The XV111 Dynasty is a period of great queens. At the very beginning is Queen Aahmes-Nefertari, revered and worshiped for more than a thousand years ; in the middle of the dynasty is Hatshepsut, the greatest of all Egyptian queens; and at the end comes the beautiful Queen Tyi, whose influence on the history of her period is only now being realised. Hatshepsut's career begins at the very beginning, with her parents. Like all the Pharaohs from the Vth Dynasty onwards she claimed divine descent and she recounted the circumstances of her birth with such dramatic power that her inscription served as a standard text and was copied almost verbatim by Amenhotep 111 who merely altered the names of mother and child.
             Every Pharaoh was, in his own estimation and in that of his people, the offspring of a human mother and a divine father, and it was this belief which Hatshepsut records so vividly on the walls of her temple.Amon, originally the local god of Thebes but regarded at this period as the supreme deity of Egypt, called together all the gods of Egypt to announce his desire of begetting a child to rule over Egypt. Thoth, the god of wisdom, named Aahmes, queen of Thothmes 1, as the appropriate mother, and at once led Amon to the royal palace where they found the queen asleep. ' In majesty and beauty he appeared before her and her heart was filled with joy' ..........The child was then lifted in the arms of the goddess Hathor and carried into the presence of her divine father Amon who received with delight.Hatshepsut was thus launched on her earthly career with the assistance of all the gods and goddesses of Egypt; and as might have been expected with such sponsors, that career was a brilliant one. When she was old enough for the honour, the gods consecrated her for the high position as Pharaoh by a ceremony of purification and she was taken to the ancient shrine of Heliopolis to be crowned by the god Atum. She was then in the bloom of her youth and beauty, and she is enthusiastically described as being like the gods, 'like a god's was her beauty, like a god's was her form, like a god's was her splendour'.
             All the chief deities of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hathor of Thebes, Buto of Dep, Amon of Karnak , Atum of Heliopolis, Mentu of Thebes, Khnum of the Cataract, their images borne on the shoulders of their priests, accompanied her to Heliopolis in a triumphal procession, or came out to meet her as she passed. The chief work of Hatshepsut's reign is the great temple of Zeser zesru, 'Holy of Holies' known in modern times as Deir-el-Bahri. In Egypt the sun was the god of the Pharaohs, and his daily resurrection was to his royal worshippers the promise of their own resurrection; therefore Hatshepsut placed her mortuary temple where the rays of her newly risen lord might shine upon it, while his daily death was hidden from sight. The inscriptions recording Hatshepsut's divine birth and her coronationare sculptured on the north side of the western colonnade of the middle court; on the south side of the same colonnade the other great event of her reign - the trading expedition to the land of Punt - is recorded . Another great work recorded by Hatshepsut is the setting up of obelisks in the temple of Karnak; these were four in all, but the record applies only to the pair which stood before the inner pylon of Thothmes 1, the original entrance to the temple.
                 Hatshepsut stands out as one of the great monarchs of Egypt. Though no wars or conquests are recorded in her reign, her triumphs were as great as those of the warrior-kings of Egypt, but they were the triumphs of peace not of war. Her records, as might be expected from a woman, are more intimate and personal than those of a king. There are no campaigns, no lists of conquered towns and countries, no enumeration of captives and of the slain, no dashing exploits of battle; instead there are detailed accounts of a friendly visit to a foreign land, of the coronation, of the moving and erecting of heavy stones; unexciting items perhaps, but of surpassing interest in the wealth of personal detail and the human element pervading them. This was no conqueror, joying in the lust of battle, but a strong-souled noble-hearted woman, ruling her country wisely and well. '

                                                                THOTHMES 111                 
                                                                 
                              
                The following extract is from Guy Brunton :

       'Thothmes 111 is in many ways the most striking figure in the whole king list of the Pharaohs of Egypt. He is the first and only king who has left many detailed records of his foreign wars; he consolidated the conquests in Asia which his grandfather Thothmes 1 had made; and during his reign Egypt became mistress of an empire, stretching further to the north and south than it had ever done before or was to do again. tribute of all kinds flowed into the country ; temples to the gods were built or enlarged in almost every city of the kingdom, and wealth and prosperity were at their maximum.
               Hatshepsut's pacifist had deprived ardent spirits of an outlet for their energies; and it is easy to imagine how readily they lent their support to the young Thothmes in his struggle for the reins of power.How the end came we do not know - Hatshepsut, now about sixty years of age, may or may not have died a natural death. But it is certain that a mighty vengeance was wreaked on her supporters. They disappear from the page of history; and their names and figures were ruthlessly chiselled from the walls of Hatshepsut's great temple at Deir-el-Bahri. Thothmes was not slow to put his ambitious plans into action.A restive army was only too anxious to follow his leadership and set out on campaigns which would be sure to yield them a handsome booty. In the last 22 years of peace Egypt's resources had been stored up; and a full treasure chest gave the means for equipping the army with all necessities, and, also possibly, for the hiring of mercenaries............. At the end of his wars, the king put up in the temple at Karnak a long list of conquered cities and countries both in the north and the south.A large stela of black granite was also put up in Karnak, inscribed with a long hymn of victory. This consists of 25 lines, and is a fine literary composition.
             Of his statues a great number have survived. The best known is the colossal head of red-granite in the British Museum. This is not remarkable as a portrait; but viewed from below, as it has to be in its present position, it appears more clumsy and grotesque than it really is. The finest portrait of the king is perhaps the famous schist statue in the Cairo Museum. This was found by Legrain at Karnak, with the great mass of statues of all ages, which had been collected from the temple and buried at some later date when the great fane was repaired and generally put in order. The profile and front views of this statue show a remarkable difference of aspect. The profile is that of a refined but most energetic temperament, with the large nose so often associated with military genius. The full face, with its rounded cheeks and somewhat plebean expression is not of a type usually associated with the Egyptian royal family at this time. We see a likeness to his mother Isis. In the British Museum there is a portion of a basaltic statue of a king, uninscribed, attributed to the XXV1 th Dynasty which so closely resembles the Cairo statue that we may almost certainly see in it another portrait of Thothmes. '

                                                                    QUEEN TY             
                                                                

             The following extract is from Professor T.E. Peet :
      
         ' Ty is one of those characters to whom history has probably done more than justice. Woman of mark are so rare in Egypt that the importance of the few who seem to raise their heads above the common level is apt to be exaggerated. In most books which deal with the period of Amenhotep 111 and Akhenaten the impression is given that Ty was a woman of commanding personality, who not only influenced her husband very powerfully but engineered the religious revolution of her son. Yet the evidence on which these statements are based is seen, the moment it is critically examined, to be remarkably flimsy.For the powerful influence which she is said to have exerted over her husband there is no evidence whatsoever save the fact that he inserted her name after his in the royal inscriptions, a practice in which he was followed by his immediate successors.
            It is hardly necessary to point out that this shows nothing more than a desire on the part of the king to associate his wife more closely with himself in the formal aspects of royalty than had previously been customary. Whether this was a personal feeling on the part of Amenophis IV or an indication of a change in the Egyptian attitude towards women in general it is impossible to say. For the belief that Ty was behind the religious revolution of her son there is even less evidence , indeed,indications point precisely in the opposite direction. '

                                                             QUEEN MUTNEZEMT                
                                                                  

              Again by Professor Peet :

             ' In several of the tombs of Akhenaten's courtiers at Tell-el-Amarna Ty is accompanied by a sister whose name has been generally read as Nezemmut. This lady has in her train two dwarfs whose names have survived in the tomb of Ay : they are called with ironical inappropriateness 'The Vizier of the Queen, Eternity' and 'The Vizier of his mother, Pre (the sun god)' Every effort has been made to discover further details of the life of Nezemmut.
              She has by some been identified with a lady of this name who appears with King Horemheb in a colassal syenite statue at Turin and who has by some been regarded as his wife, though the inscription on the pedestal does not specify the relationship. That she was actually the wife of some king is clear from the fact that her name is written in a cartouche. Afrog amulet in green felspar from Abydos and a canopic vase now in the British Museum , both of which bear the name and title Great Royal Wife Nezemmut, perhaps belong to her. But in any case her relationship to Horemheb must remain uncertain : she may have been either his mother or wife or even his daughter. Those who believe that this Nezemmut was the wife of Horemheb and who identify her with Ty's sister may claim that their view presents no chronological difficulty , for Horemheb, who came to the throne perhaps ten years after Akhenaten's death, had previously served him as a general and may therefore have been of suitable age to marry the king's aunt.
                 There is, however, a much more serious objection , and indeed a fatal one, to the identification. It has been pointed out thatin the name of Ty's sister the sign previously read nezem is not the nezem-sign at all but the somewhat similar though quite distinct bener-sign. Her name must therefore be read not Nezemmut but Benertmut, or more accurately, Mutbenert 'the goddess Mut is pleasant'

                                              QUEEN NEFERTETE                     ANKHESENAMEN
                                         

         The following extract again by Professor Peet :

         ' Akhenaten's wife was named Nefertete, 'The Beautiful One has come'. Like her mother-in-law Ty she has been described as a foreigner , and some would even identify her with a certain Tadukhipa of Mitanni.We know from the Tell-el-Amarna letters that Dushratta , King of Mitanni, sent his daughter Tadukhipa to Egypt just as her aunt Kirgipa had been sent before her . Though the terse but bombastic wording of these letters is apt to be obscure it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the king to whom she was sent and to whom she was at least intended to be married was Amenophis 111 . We cannot say for certain that this marriage took place, though if it did not it is hard to see why Dushratta later addresses Amenhotep 111 as his son-in-law. What is, however, quite certain from the letters is that this same Tadukhipa was eventually married to Akhenaten.
                Of the events of Nefertete's life we know very little. The date of her marriage is unknown , but it was doubtless previous to the moment at which the king adopted the new religion in all its fullness . On the earliest monuments on which her name occurs she is called simply Nefertete : later , however, the name Neferneferuaten, 'Beautiful are the beauties of the Disk' is prefixed to this within the cartouche. The change must have taken place between the sixth and eighth years, for on the Boundary Stela K at Tell-el-Amarna, and which is in all probability to be dated to Year 6, she bears only the shorter name , while on the stelae the latest date in which is Year 8 she has the addition. That she embraced in full the religion of the Disk is amply shown by her appearance side by side with the king in all scenes where the worship of the new deity is shown. '

                                                                  AKHENATEN
                                                               

                The following extract again by Professor Peet :  

          'What of Akhenaten's early rule in Thebes? Most historians have pictured him as a minor of fourteen or fifteen, ruled by his mother Ty and gradually forced by her into a break with orthodoxy. We shall not lightly accept this view, for in the first place we have seen that the evidence for Akhenaten's extreme youth at his accession is very flimsy and that there is no reason at all for supposing the revolution to have been engineered by Ty.When we come down to facts the most salient is that during the early years of his reign the king's names were Amenhotep 'Amun is satisfied', Neferkheperure uaenre 'Beautiful is the being of Re, Re is (or has become) one' These names persisted until the fifth year at least, for in that year we have a papyrus document from Kahun which gives the names in this form.
              It was probably at the moment of the revolution and of the move to Tell-el-Amarna in the sixth year that the king changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten, 'It is well with the Disk'. One new fact with regard to the revolution has been brought out during the last few years, namely that the worship of the Aten's or sun's disk was not, as we had become accustomed to think it, a mushroom growth of the heretic's own reign but had its roots further back in Egyptian history. The roots of the Aten heresy go back at least into the preceding reign, and the full name of the new deity ' Re- Horus of the Horizon who rejoices in his name of Shu who is the Disk' is to be ascribed not to Akhenaten but to his father or even some earlier king.                  The temple (built by Amenhotep 111 at Thebes) was taken over by Akhenaten on his father's death and remained the seat of the new cult. There has been much discussion and there will still be more on the question whether he was a true monotheist, that is to say whether he believed in one god to the exclusion of all others. Some authorities vigorously deny it.
             They point out that the expunging of the names of the other gods was in some places directed only against the Theban triad Amun, Mut and Khonsu, while at the Speos Artemidos, for example, only the name of Amun has been erased, the other gods being left untouched. Similarly on a grave stela from Abydos now in the Leyden Museum Amun has been deleted while Osiris and Anubis who accompany him are undamaged.Yet it is not hard to meet this.Akhenaten's immediate concern was with the state-god Amun. Once he could be replaced by the Disk the rest would follow. The change in religion was accompanied by a change in artforms, traceable from the earliest years of the reign.
            The traditions of drawing which had prevailed almost untouched for 2000 years were laid aside and a freer and more naturalistic style prevailed, marked, however, by certain mannerisms which from constant repetition become extremely tedious at Tell-el-Amarna. It is not possible here to describe in full the nature of the changes which took place. Suffice it to say that the most obvious are the use of softer and more rounded contours in the drawing,especially of the human figure, and the application to art of a closer and more accurate study of nature , more particularly animals, birds, insects and plants, together with much greater freedom of treatment. Had we sufficient works of art from the period of Amenhotep 111 we should surely see these tendencies developing.
              No doubt there were at all times artists with new ideas, but it was rarely that any of them succeeded in breaking the fetters laid on art by the highly conservative religion which was its chief employer.At this particular moment, however, tradition had for the moment relaxed. The advanced school saw their chance and took it. The king, himself perhaps not devoid of an artist's eye and soul, and ready to welcome anything which would accentuate the break with the established religion, became their patron, and the decoration of the new town was placed in their hands.
           That this peculiar art was not some sudden development of the local art of the Tell-el-Amarna district now seems clear from the fact that the change can be traced through all its stages in the tombs of Thebes itself. The process was complete at the time of the move, for there is literally nothing in the old style at Akhetaten, and the latest found re-used blocks in the pylon of Horemheb from the Aten temple at Karnak are most unmistakably in the Tell-el-Amarna style. Even as we write, this pylon, built almost entirely of older blocks, is being carefully dissected, and it may prove possible to reconstruct whole scenes from the Theban Temple of the Disk. Thus it may well be that when fresh light is shed on the nature and origin of the Aten-cult it will be not, as might have been expected, from Tell-el-Amarna itself but from Thebes.'

                                                                     SETY 1              
                                                              

              The following extract is from Professor Margaret Murray :

            ' After the chaos of the Tell-el-Amarna period, Horemheb and Rameses 1 brought in the rule of law and order. Egypt revived, and her neighbours on all sides began to cast covetous eyes in her direction. Under the son of Rameses 1 events followed in the regular order of succession, and Sety carried the arms of victorious Egypt northwards into Syria, southwards into Nubia, and westwards into Libya. It was in the first year of his glorious reign that Sety 1 started on that career of conquest which was so necessary to preserve his own country. The first campaign was against Nubia, and was entirely successful as no further trouble ensued in the South during the rest of his reign.
             The next campaign was a purely defensice one to repel an invasion ; this also was completely successful. To prevent another such invasion Sety, with his usual thoroughness, spent two years in preparation for a vigorous onslaught on Southern Syria, a country which was always a menace to the peace of Egypt. Having regained some of the lost provinces and imposed the Pax Aegypytiaca upon their warring kings Sety returned in triumph to Egypt and presented the spoil, both in captives and treasure, to Amon at Thebes. The next campaign was against the Libyans, who invariably pushed into the western Delta at every opportunity, probably because of economic pressure in their own country.
         In spite of his victories in Syria, or perhaps because of them Sety found it necessary to return to that country. Here the Hittites encountered him, and for the first time learned what it was to meet the redoubtable warrior kings of Egypt; for Sety trod the battlefield like Set, the god of war, after whom he was named. Egypt was now launched on another era of prosperitywhich came to an end more than 100 years later with the death of Set's grandson Merenptah. Sety built the well-known remple of Qurneh as a memorial for his father Ramses 1, and he laid the foundations of the Ramesseum which Rameses 11 finished for himself; both on the western side of Thebes; and he also built the beautiful Temple of the Kings at Abydos.
             He restored a great number of ruined shrines and sanctuaries, and obliterated as far as possible all signs of erasures of the name of Amon which Akhenaten had perpetrated. Wherever his restorations occur, he announces the fact by one modest little line of hieroglyphs, 'King Sety 1 restored this monument'. The temple of Amon at Karnak was enriched by the addition of the great hypostyle hall, one of the most dignified and imposing buildings of Egypt.Its long aisles, its vast size, its deep shadows,its darkness even at broad midday, all combine to impress upon the mind a feeling of mystery and awe.
            The temple at Abydos was for the commemoration of the long line of kings from whom Sety was descended. To Osiris, the Occupier of the Throne, the king living and the king dead, the temple was dedicated. Seven chapels stand in a line fronting the pillared halls, six for the worship of the gods, one for the worship of the living king. Of those six the largest is for Osiris. On this temple Sety lavished great riches; for it, all the greatest artists were assembled to cover its walls with delicate sculpture, painted with an interweaving of tints and a wealth of colours which glow in the dim light like a rich mosaic; for it the gold mines of the eastern desert were re-opened; for it the quarries were kept in full work, and for it the endowments of lands, slaves, and herds, were granted by the king.
            Other temples also he built and endowed ( at Wady Halfa, the obelisk of Sety at Heliopolis, in the great temple of Kalabsheh, at Sesebi, of which some columns still stand in silent and melancholy grandeur. The monument by which Sety is best known in modern times is his splendid tomb in the Valley of the Kings.The tomb of Sety was discovered by Belzoni in 1815. The beautifiul sarcophagus of translucent alabaster was still in situ; it had been forcibly opened, by the simple process of smashing the lid to pieces. Sety's sarcophagus is of a soft stone, with a recumbent figure of the king on the top; a goddess spreads her wings round the head of the figure. '

                                                                RAMESES 11
                                                              

              The following extract was written by Professor Margaret Murray :

            ' Ramses 11 succeeded his father Sety 1 who had to a certain extent restored the ancient glory of Egypt. Ramses was about 18 when he came to the throne; and, judging by the portraits which remain, he was extraordinarily handsome. His portrait at this age is on the walls of the Sety Temple at Abydoswhere he offers incense to his father in the scene of the apotheosis of the king. He was tall and slender, with regular features and an aquiline nose. A portait of him at a later age is the basalt statue in the Turin Museum. In later life he 'lost his looks', and in the thin emaciated face of the muumy the aquiline nose stands out prominently, dominating all the features.
             On his accession to the throne, the youthful Rameses at once set to work to finish the buildings which Sety had left incomplete. It is very remarkable that in the great temple of Abydos the basreliefs of the time of Sety indicate a high degree of technical skill in the artists; the delicacy of line and the exquisite modelling are still a joy to all who see them. Yet Ramses, within a year of Sety's death, covered the yet undecorated walls of the temple with sculptures so crude and barbarous that Sety and his artists must have turned in their graves.
             At the same time there is no doubt that Ramses had a keen eye for the beautiful in art; and as the artists of his period, as of all other periods in the worls's history, could not produce masterpieces to order, the king - or perhaps the artists themselves - adopted the easier method of ascribing to Ramses all great works of art of previous periods by the simple method of erasing the earlier king's name and substituting that of Ramses himself.This was always done merely because the artists were inferior; for the intellect which conceived the idea of the great rock-temple of Abu Simbel and the skill which put that idea into execution, were as great as those of any other period; the Ramesseum is as fine and well-proportioned, as noble and dignified, as the temple of his predecessor; and the black basalt statute is, in attitude and expression, the embodiment of royal power; Ramses is represented as 'every inch the king.' One of the first acts of Rameses, when he came to the throne, was to go on tour through his kingdom.
           He went up the river to Abu Simbel, and came down when the inundation was rising, stopping at Thebes for the great summer festival of Amon, and floating down on the swift current to Abydos. Here he raised Nebunnef, the high-priest of denderah, to be high-priest of amon, the highest priestly rank in the kingdom. Nebunnef's inscription gives, naturally enough, an enthusiastic account account of the young king; but throughout his long life, Ramses seems to have had the gift of rousing enthusiasm. This may have been partly due to his personal beauty, 'beautiful was he with the beauty of the gods, in form like Horus, Avenger of his father' He was endowed with a reckless courage which endeared him to his soldiers, and with a certain regal quality which made his every act appear as the condescension of a god to a worshipper.
      The main foreign incidents of his reign were his relations with the Hittites, warlike during his fiery youth and friendly towards the end of his life. Rameses in the fifth year of his reign made his great attack on the most formidable of his enemies.Though the coast towns were apparently held by the Egyptians, Rameses led his army by land through Tharu, northwards along the maritme plain to the Lebanon, which he crossed, then continued his northward course towards his main objective, the great Hittite stronghold of Kadesh. Even in the time of Thothmes 111 Kadesh had been a centre of opposition to Egypt, but now in the reign of Ramses it was the rallying point of a great confederacy of the enemy. Against this formidable alliance Ramses marched his army. As he advanced northwards he passed through a country without any sign of the enemy, for the Hittite king was lying in ambush..... Ramses was completely deceived and went gaily forward to the northwest of kadesh where he camped, the Hittite army moving round the opposite side of the city which completely masked their movements to the Egyptians. The Hittite army had emerged from its ambush and had attacked the division of Ra at a critical moment just at the moment the Egyptians were crossing the ford.
           The Egyptians were quite unprepared for a sudden attack and were completely routed. This disaster, struck panic into the Amon division, who abandoned their king and fled. Ramses was left with only his immediate bodyguard.The Hittite commander executed an enveloping movement and enclosed the Pharaoh and his little body of men in a hollow square of chariots. It was a desperate situation but Ramses rose to the occasion. With the eye of a general he saw that the enemy were least numerous to the east, and in that direction he charged in his chariot, the guards following their royal master. Though in the scenes sculptured on the temple walls he is shown with the reigns tied to his waist in order to leave his hands free to wield his weapons, the authoritative account records that his faithful charioteer Menna was with him.The fiery courage of the Pharaoh in leading this forlorn hope had its effect on his guards, and their fierce onset drove the Hittites into the Orontes which flowed behind them. The divisions of Amon and Ra had by now been rallied by their officers, and realising that the day was not yet lost they returned to the fight.The battle raged for three hours and even at the end the result was still doubtful, but the sudden arrival of the vizier, who had brought up the division of Ptah in hot haste, turned the scale.
           The Ptah divsion took the enemy in the rear with such vigour that they broke the field, and Ramses was left master of the field. Ramses retreated without taking Kadesh, and for years afterwards he continued his campaigns in Syria reaching as far as the country of Naharaina. In the 21st year of his reign, both sides seem to have grown tired of fighting, and the Egyptians made a treaty of peace with their ancient foes, the Hittites.
         Fourteen years later, when he was 53, Ramses married the daughter of the Hittite King. Egypt seems to have enjoyed much prosperity during the greater part of Ramses' reign. It is possible to gauge the prosperity of Egypt at any given period by the number and size of the temples, statues, and other works which remain; for it is obvious that when the struggle for life is hard, there is no time or inclination for Art. But under Ramses the temples which he raised or ornamented are very numerous; statues of him are found in every part of egypt, his inscriptions are sculptured in every temple, and his scarabs are more numerous than those of any other king except those of Thothmes 111.
           It is perhaps because of this material prosperity that traditions of his reign lasted for many centuries. Ramses was apparently a generous patron of the gods. He founded temples on all the principal sacred sites, and many of the inferior ones as well. He restored, added to, or decorated all the temples in existence in his time.At Thebes he not only built the Ramesseum and finished the decoration of Sety's Temple at Qurneh, but his work is found in the temples of Amon at Luxor and Karnak as well.At Abydos he built a temple of his own, decorated the unfinished portions of Sety's Temple, and added to the Temple of Osiris. At Memphis he built or re-built much of the Temple of Ptah, for whom he had a particular affection, for he appears to have thought himself markedly favoured by that god.
            He called the son, who afterwards succeeded him, Mery-en-Ptah, 'Beloved of Ptah'. Ramses reigned 67 years and must therefore have been upwards of 85 years of age when he died. He is known to have had seven queens of whom the best-beloved was Nefertari-mery-Mut, and the names of seventy nine sons and thirty one daughters have been preserved. In spite of the brilliant promise of his youth, his reign was singularly uneventful. As he grew older the egotism, which is visible even in his early records, became more and more pronounced till it reached colossal proportions. his own heroism at Kadesh was marvellous in his eyes, and therefore in the eyes of his courtiers; and he was never tired of reproducing the history and scenes of his one great exploit.
           He was so filled with the sense of his own importance as the pharaoh, the incarnate God , that in the Temple of Abu Simbel he is shown worshipping his own divinity. It was probably this magnificent egotism, this overwhelming self-appreciation, combined with the splendour of his court, which so impressed his personality on his own age and made him remembered for generations when other and far nobler Pharaohs were forgotten. His power and his riches dazzled the eyes of his people, and made the chroniclers forget that there was no event of paramount importance in his reign, no splendid or noble work done for his country. He is, like Solomon, the impersonation of the splendour and glory of regal power. '

                                                                RAMESES 111
                                                                

            The following extract was written by Professor Margaret Murray:

      ' The XIXth Dynasty followed the same course as the XVIII th ; first there came great kings, who raised Egypt to power; then followed a period of internal dissensions with consequent chaos; and lastly, at the end of the dynasty there was the sudden rise of a great organising genius. The strong man who came to the throne at the end of the XIXth Dynasty was Setnekht, the father of Ramses 111. Though he reigned only one year he had, by the time of his death, already done much towards reducing the country to order.          The weakness of Egypt is always an invitation to her enemies to descend upon her, either as raiders or settlers; if there should arise in Egypt a strong ruler, the danger may be averted, but if a weak hand is at the helm, or if the country is torn with internal dissensions, the invaders enter, and seize and hold the land.Though these invasions appear to have been of benefit to Egypt and to have brought her prosperity, the strong Nationalist feeling of the people always resented foreign rule, unless the rulers could prove Egyptian descent, either truly or, as in the case of Alexander the Great, by a fiction. Ramses 111 came to the throne in one of these crises of weakness through which Egypt passes periodically.
           Setnekht's life was too short for more than the beginning of re-organisation, but the foundations of that re- organisation were so well and truly laid that Ramses had merely to continue on the same lines in order to bring his country again into a prosperous condition.In his fifth year Ramses 111 made war on the Libyans and Meshwesh, driving them out of Egypt, which was now free from foreigners within her borders, but the fertile Nile Valley was always a coveted possession in ancient times. A coalition of peoples of The Eastern Mediterranean had been formed,which threatened every country in that region.
           The temptation of so rich a country as Egypt was too great for the confederates to resist, and once again the allies made a determined attempt at invasion. They had waited three years to recruit their shattered forces, and in the hope that the Egyptians might relax their vigilance and be caught unawares. The invaders actually entered Egypt, coming in from the west, crossed the delta and reached nearly to Heliopolis. Ramses had chosen his position for the decisive battle deliberately and well, and led his army to victory. The rout of the invaders was complete, and Ramses continued the pursuit across the border into the enemy's country.
           Having brought this campaign to a satisfactory end, Ramses pursued the usual policy of his predecessors by raiding Syria, thereby breaking the power of its kings.He followed up this by waging war against Nubia which he conquered. Thus Egypt had nothing more to fear for at least a generation from either the north or the south; and as the Libyan power was already crushed she was secure from all invasion and had time to develop her own resources in peace.
         The great monument which Ramses 111 raised, and on the walls of which he recorded all the historical events of his reign, was the temple now known as the temple of Medinet Habu.The building, which was probably begun on his accession, was finished in twelve years; it was dedicated to the chief god of Thebes, Amon, and was richly endowed by the king. The description of the temple in the Great Harris Papyrus, gives a vivid idea of the wealth lavished on both the building and the endowment. When Ramses 111 died, there was written for him a full account of all that he done on earth for his country and his gods. this extraordinary document was probably intended to be shown to God on the Judgment Day in order to ensure its owner's entry to the realms of bliss. It was evidently made immediately after the king's death, to be buried with him.
        The 72 days which elapsed between the death of Ramses 111 and the coronation of Ramses IV afforded sufficient time for the manuscript to be written. These 72 days are the time required for the embalming and wrapping, during which time the family and the hired mourners performed their lamentations.70days then were spent in preparing the corpse of Ramses 111 for burial, and 2 days were allotted to the funeral ceremonies; when the door of the tomb was finally closed and sealed, the thoughts of the nation in general and of the court in particular turned with relief to the joyous ceremonies of his successor's coronation.
            Here then we leave the last of the great Pharaohs of Egypt. To him it had been given to experience all that the world had to offer of good and evil, of pleasure and pain; he had weighed them in the balance, and found them wanting. He had tasted the joy of battle and the lust of slaughter; he had conquered his enemies and saved his country; he had gained great wealth and had given to the gods all that their grasping priesthoods had demanded; he had enjoyed all the pleasures of the flesh, and had been betrayed by those he held most dear. Success, wealth, love, pleasure, all were as Dead Sea apples in his mouth; yet even to the end he kept a greatness of mind, a nobleness of outlook, which compelled him to demand that justice and not vengeance should be bestowed on his betrayers and murderers. Ruthless and sincere, cynical and just, resolute for good and evil, Ramses 111 towers above his contemporaries and successors as the Colossi of Thebes tower above the plain. With him vanished the glory of Egypt. Under weak kings and a greedy priesthood Egypt sank to the lowest depths of barbarism, superstition and poverty, and became the prey in turn of Ethiopians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, and Macedonians, until finally she was seized by the mighty hand of all-conquering Rome. When Ramses 111 was laid in his tomb the splendour of Egypt had passed away. '

PHYSIOGNOMY AS HISTORICAL MATERIAL by Winifred Brunton.

        A portrait -painter falls naturally into the habit of searching the faces of his sitters for indications of character. The painting of a portrait is in fact a hunt for the personality hidden or expressed by the features. The artist ponders on the faces of those best known to him, comparing them with those of mere acquaintancies , and trying to account for likenesses of form by similarities in character.
        No one can fail to conclude that, broadly speaking, there is something in the outward aspect which reflects the inward personality - that the face, the whole figure, balance and movement of a human being, are a true indication of the soul and mind - if we could read the signs well enough. But it is a big if. Can we ever learn enough of the signs to read them certainly? There are so many factors to take into consideration. It is not enough to say 'He has a broad brow and shrewd eyes - he must be intelligent' or 'he has a square jaw and a firm mouth - he must have a strong will' This is the merest alphabet - the letters, which properly put together, should make words, even sentences. It is not a question of one or two features only, but of the proportions and balance of a face, to say nothing of the hands ( often more expressive than the face ) , the voice, the hair, the bearing, the feet, and so on. And in considering these, one must be careful not to lay undue stress on mere 'family' features, but to take into consideration accidental effects on the carriage, hair and feet particularly.
        The alphabet, then, seems endless, the factors infinite in number, and the attempt vain for one student in one lifetime to grasp sufficient to form reliable conclusions. Hopeless perhaps, but how interesting to go on trying! And so I did. And presntly it did really seem as if I could depend upon a particular set of combination of features to mean a certain streak of character - even more, upon a certain smile meaning a special generosity - a particular nose invariably implying a greedy nature, a special kind of eyelid indicating caution or nervousness - always provided no other feature or features definitely gave contrary evidence.
      And then I went to Egypt, and my study was led into a path which seems hitherto unexplored.In 1911, on visiting the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, I had my first sight of the royal mummies. all who have seen them know how especially striking are the two kings sety 1 and Ramses 11. As I hung over the cases enclosing them, the thought crossed my mind, 'How delightful it would be to make these stately ancients sit, in their actual flesh, for their modern portraits!' Though at first a casual impulse, the idea stayed and grew. I began to form mental pictures of ancient royalty in its brilliant regalia and robes of white linen - to study the methods of mummification so as to understand the changes it involves in the outward aspect of the body.
          If one could realise the behaviour of the features under the operation, would it not be possible to reverse the process in imagination, and reconstruct the living subject? Then how enthralling to indicate on the restored features, the character and temperament of the man, so far as known to us through history! How did these quiet dead faces bear out what we know? And in what did they amplify or contradict tradition? To make a serious study of these royal dead, I must be guided by the mummies principally but not exclusively.
          I turned to the statutes and reliefs. These would show me how the sitters impressed the artists of those days, and the work of an artist's chisel or brush is at least as good evidence as the sworn word of a witness in a court of law, at any rate when the artist is as literal-minded as were the Egyptians. Do we not know the honest mistakes a man in the witness-box can make? And shall we not concede the difference between a trained and an untrained observer?
           The ancient artist was a trained observer; I would examine his trained evidence on what he saw, and compare it with what I could see today of the Pharaohs. This done, discrepancies appeared which could not be disregarded. And besides, the various artists who portrayed a Pharaoh did not all agree in detail among themselves. This added to the difficulty! It was evident that some detailed and perhaps laborious comparing would have to be done. I had recourse again to the mummy, and took the face carefully back through the process of mummification.
          Certain confirmations appeared of the artists' evidence; these I accepted and retained, especially as they seemed to me to agree with the king's known character. Discrepancies on the other hand could be partly accounted for by the changes in the subject between youth and old age, and partly by the deference due to kings. Finally I did construct a firm scaffolding on which to build my portrait, and so the picture of Sety 1 was begun.
          The costume was a simpler problem. One had only to consult the monuments and the jewel-room of the Museum, and to be careful to avoid howlers such as a dinner party parure with a field-service helmet, and so on. Ramses 11 was next attempted, and I was greatly cheered by the recognition of my resussitated kings by several eminent archaeologists. Not all the Egyptologists who recognised my portraits realised the method in my madness, the slow sifting of evidence and the laborious brick-making. To many they seemed flights of a fancy only slightly, if at all, controlled by research.
          But one of the most famous of them all, namely Professor Breasted, gave me enormous encouragement. Whatever was to be thought of these particular portraits, he admitted that this was a line of research not hitherto tried, but perfectly legitimate and which might conceivably yield valuable results. His kind words so stimulated me that I made similar attempts with other defunct royalties, and gradually completed the series of kings and queens which appear in these pages.
       The portrait of Ramses 11 followed that of Sety 1. It was an earlier task, as there were so many statues of the later king to consult. The only surprise, as I worked on it, was the unexpected look of humour that developed; a quality one would have hardly have suspected of Ramses 11. The mummies of comparatively few of the kings are well enough preserved to afford clear information. Among them however is that of Ramses 111, whose dead face is a curious and interesting, though rather a repulsive study. There is a look of hate, rage and disappointment. Can it be that the events of the close of his life so stamped their traces upon his features as to obscure the look of sagacity that so able a ruler must surely have possessed? He certainly lacks the air of nobility noticeable in many of the great rulers of Egypt. Not all the portraits in this book are of equal historical value.
           In the case of Khafra I had only the famous diorite statue in Cairo and the exquisite fragment now in Copenhagen, as reliable guides. For this reason I did not feel justified in giving this king my usual realistic treatment. He is such a vague personage that all I could indicate was a vision , man or statue, one hardly knows which, looming out of the distant past. Amenemhat 111's portrait was a fairly straightforward piece of work. It was only necessary to take all the authentic statutes of this king, and by eliminating the differences and retaining the similarities, it was possible to get a fairly definite result.
             But the expression remains a puzzling one. Why that tragic look? It was surely due to more than the ordinary cares of state, heavy though these may have been. here is a face with history written on it, but alas! we cannot read the script other than vaguely. as for his complexion, darker than most of the others, that is more or less surmise. It is considered by some Egyptologists that the very individual family type of the x11th Dynasty was due to southern blood.
           The picture of Queen Tetasheri ('little Teta') was suggested by the delightful statuette in the British Museum. The technique of this shows that the sculptor was hampered by his lack of facility, but in spite of a certain gaucherie he has conveyed such a delicious impression of shy youth, the little queen seeming weighed down by her royal array with its heavy headress ( a very interesting early form of the vulture cap ), that the impulse to translate this effort into modern langauge was irresistable. Hatshepsut was another baffling person. Her portraits have been so heartily obliterated by Thothmes 111 that it is hard to find one intact. But enough material remains to show that she strongly resembled her father, Thothmes 1. Into her portrait as queen there crept, almost without my will, a look of watchfulness, or even suspicion, under its calm. In the somewhat anomalous position she occupied, against precedent in a country where precedent was justification in it itself, and amid so many enemies and spies, she must have felt perpetually insecure, even though her immediate entourage wasardently devoted to her. So I let the watchful look remain - though I have no historical warrant for it.
            The mummy attributed to Thothmes 111 is so badly knocked about and imperfect that it was next to useless as a basis for his portrait. But there is the very fine schist statute in the Cairo Museum, and hosts of others, all agreeing closely. In the schist statute there is in the full face a touch of vulgarity, alomost of pompousness, which vanishes as one passes to his noble profile. His mother was only a lady of Thothmes 11's harim, not a royalty. Who can say whether the mixture of common blood with the 'divine' was not visible on Thothmes 111's face (indeed our sculptor affirms almost in spite of himself, that it was so ) and whether it was not just the cruder vigour of the strain that made him so successful an agressor abroad?
         The sculptor has had a struggle over the lower part of the face, between his love of truth and his reverence for the king. Down to the mouth the face is that of a fattish man - but it would never do for the Lord of the Two Lands to be represented to his adoring subjects with a double chin and thick neck, so the round cheeks fall away suddenly to the slim neck of a boy, quite out of keeping with the rest.
         Of the portrait of Akhenaten I will say little except that it represents the king as he must have been toward the end of his reign. The poetic grace of his youth had gone, and illness and fanaticism had left their mark. He must have realised, if he realised anything, that his beautiful religion was not gaining ground, and that the world remained unregenerate. Ty's whole face shows her to have been a woman of violent emotions, swayed by impulse, subject to moods, and her expressive mouth moreover is that of a jealous imperious individual, lacking self-control.
              What a contrast is the high-bred self-repressed face of Nefertithi, eloquent of intelligence and forbearance. If these two women's faces speak the truth, they hint at family difficulties of which history tells us nothing.At any rate, Nefertithi looks 'more of a lady' than any other queen whose portrait has come down to us.
            Mutnezemt is a quite obscure personage, frankly treated merely as a peg for decoration. The only historical value of the picture is as a representation of the crown, wig and jewellery of the very end of the XV111th Dynasty, when fashions were changing, and the details have been carefully studied and can be depended upon. The face has been taken from a beautiful colossal limestone head, attributed, and I think correctly, to the reign of Horemheb. This head is so obviously a portrait, that it has been thought to represent the Queen of Horemheb or some royal lady of the period , and a clever cruel creature she was, if the sculptor is to be trusted. It is at least likely that the portrait is that of Mutnezemt, as of anyone else. But we know nothing certainly.
            The value of this line of research cannot be known till it has at least been tried. The faces of our long ago predecessors must first be studied in the light of known facts, and then it will be found that more light is revealed by the study.If we had given the countenance of our fellow-man of today closer atttention, we should be able better to interpret the revelation of those faces so wonderfully preserved to us from ancient times. I tender my warm thanks to all those who have helped me with this book - more particularly to those Egyptologists who voluntarily gave me assistance of the greatest value.

           Winifred Brunton.

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