Vinson They Must Be Obeyed

They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed: Arsake, Rhadopis, and Tabubue; Ihweret and Charikleia
Steve Vinson
Comparative Literature Studies, Volume 45, Number 3, 2008, pp. 289-315 (Article)
Published by Penn State University Press DOI: 10.1353/cls.0.0041
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they-who-must-be-obeyed: arsake, rhadopis, and tabubue; ihweret and charikleia
Steve Vinson
The genesis of H. Rider Haggards Ayesha, the She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed of his 1887 She: A History of Adventure, has been a mystery for over a century.1 The problem has provoked almost endless speculation among Haggard scholars and devotees, and has often appeared insoluble in terms of the history of English literature generally or of Victorian ction specically.2 As one of Haggards biographers, Norman Etherington, puts it: Ayeshas longevity amounting to immortality, her towering intellect, and her ability to reveal genuine tenderness as well as implacable passion have no close equivalents either in African legends or English literature.3 In his autobiography, Haggard wrote that he had begun with one simple idea: an immortal woman inspired by an immortal love.4 But Haggard also acknowledged writing She in a white heat and in less than six weeks, which has suggested to many a sudden irruption of ideas and images, whose actual sources Haggard may not have been completely aware of as he composed the novel.5 I suggest here thatalthough Haggard surely drew inspiration from many quartersAyesha owes major aspects of her layered personality to ve female characters from two ancient compositions: a Greek-language novel from the Roman period, Heliodoruss Aithiopika, or Ethiopian Story, and an Egyptian-language ghost story from the Ptolemaic period, conventionally called The First Tale of Setne Khaemwas or First Setne. Apart from the parallels between the tales discussed below, the conclusion that Haggard adapted First Setne in She gains plausibility from the fact that Haggard transparently borrowed elements of First Setne for two of his later works. The case for Haggards knowledge of the Aithiopika is circumstantial, but the novel was far from unknown in the nineteenth century, and the parallels
comparative literature studies, vol. 45, no. 3, 2008. Copyright 2008. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
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between She and the Aithiopika are in fact closer than those between She and First Setne. Of the characters discussed here, threeRhadopis and Arsake from the Aithiopika and Tabubue from First Setneare femmes fatales who doom the men who come into their power. The others, Charikleia from the Aithiopika and Ihweret from First Setne, are virtuous women who represent loyalty, constancy, and the triumph of love. Although the Aithiopika contributes more than First Setne to the structure of She, the nal meaning of She is more tightly bound up with the themes that it shares with First Setne, and Tabubue appears to be the most fundamental of these characters to Ayeshas personality. Tabubues sexual power may have moved Haggard to identify her with the femmes fatales of the Aithiopika, but her special allure, her connection to magic and her moral ambiguity set her apart from the highly sexual but absolutely evil Rhadopis and Arsake. My core claim is that the most important aspect that the characters of First Setne and the Aithiopika all share, which fundamentally informs the ways in which they combine to generate the character of Ayesha, is the relationship that each has to Graeco-Roman Egypts most revered goddess, Isis. Topoi linked to Isis in antiquitymagic, power, immortality, love, sex, loyalty, knowledge, truth, and the claim of the past upon the presentare central to She. Moreover, especially in the Graeco-Roman period, Isis presented a double aspect: simultaneously benign and attractive, as well as threatening and vengeful. This duality strongly informs the relationship between Ihweret and Tabubue in First Setne, and I suggest that Ayeshas dramatic power and her lasting interest owe not a little to her real roots in this tradition.6 Others have touched upon Ayeshas Isis-ness in a very general way, and as we shall see, Haggard himself explicitly directed attention to these aspects of his character in his sequels to She. However, attention is seldom paid in contemporary literary scholarship to the questions of what Haggard may have known about the realities of Egyptian culture and religion, what ancient sources he may have known, and how that knowledge may have affected the structure and meaning of his work.7 Because Ayesha is typically treated as an emblem of Victorian attitudes toward gender and power and as a vehicle for examination of the continuing effects those attitudes may have, antiquity enters modern discussions of She primarily in the context of Victorian Egyptomania, responding to contemporary needs and events.8 These aspects cannot, of course, be ignored. First Setne and the Aithiopika appear to have resonated with Haggard largely because of his particular historical situation. In part, this will have been because the
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talesFirst Setne especially, with its foregrounding of magic, immortality and femininityappealed to Haggards Egyptological and theosophical interests.9 And in part, it will have been because both tales could easily be read in the context of larger late-Victorian discourses on the feminine. But despite its unquestionably Victorian character, She appears unique in important respects when compared to contemporaneous thematizations of gender, mysticism and exotic worlds, even those written by Haggard himself.10 One possible way towards an understanding of why this is so is to consider how, in adapting the Aithiopika and (especially) First Setne, Haggard went beyond the casual appropriation of a few Egyptian motifs or images to infuse Sheeven if unintentionallywith identiably Egyptian notions about divinity and the feminine.
First Setne and Demotic Egyptian First Setne is a product of the Ptolemaic period (32330 BCE), when Egypt had come to be ruled by Alexander the Greats general Ptolemy son of Lagus and by Ptolemys descendants down to Cleopatra VII.11 It is the best-preserved of a number of Graeco-Roman Egyptian tales whose central character is a magician named Setne Khaemwas.12 Like most surviving ancient Egyptian ction, First Setne is no longer than a modern short storyaround 12 pages long in a typical printed translation. The known Setne stories are all written in Demotic, a term that refers to both the vernacular Egyptian in use after c. 650 BCE and a highly cursive script that evolved at that time to write this form of Egyptian.13 However, the Setne Khaemwas of these tales is the ctional alter-ego of a much earlier, and very real, personality: a prince named Khaemwas, a son of Ramses II, the nineteenth-dynasty pharaoh who ruled Egypt from c. 12791213 BCE (himself, perhaps, best known outside Egyptology through Yul Brynners portrayal in Cecil B. DeMilles 1956 The Ten Commandments).14 The name Setne, by which our character is most often known, is a late form of the religious title sm (conventionally pronounced sem).15 The title was used byamong other religious notablesthe high priest of the god Ptah in Memphis. The historic Khaemwas in fact served as high priest of Ptah, and did carry the title of sm. But by the time Khaemwass legendary persona had crystalized, the element Setne had come to be regarded as a component of Khaemwass personal name, and the full form Setne Khaemwas appears only sporadically in the tales.
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I cannot document Haggards knowledge of First Setne before the composition of She, but he had certainly read it by 1909, and he would have had ample opportunity to become familiar with the story well before 1886. In the introduction to his Egypt-themed novel Morning Star (published in book form in 1910, but serialized the previous year), Haggard refers to the translation of First Setne in a popular anthology of Egyptian tales by French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, the rst edition of which appeared in 1882.16 By this time, First Setne was well known to Egyptology; it was initially presented in a French translation by Heinrich Brugsch in 1867, and rst rendered into English in 1875.17 Haggard was a well informed and enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist and could easily have known any of these early publications.18 More importantly, one character in Morning Star is named Ahura, which is a typical nineteenth-/early-twentieth-century spelling of the name I render here as Ihweret. This personal name is unattested in any other known Egyptian literary text, so Haggard must have derived it from First Setne.19 Further, Haggard uses the name Khaemuas (an alternative modern spelling of our Khaemwas) in his 1920 novella Smith and the Pharaohs. Although Haggard may well have known of the historic Khaemwas from his general Egyptological reading, Haggards specication that his Khaemuas had been the mightiest magician that ever was in Egypt unquestionably connects him to the Setne Khaemwas of the Demotic tales. First Setne has actually been adapted more than once since its initial decipherment, notably as a principal source of John Balderstons screenplay for Karl Freunds 1932 The Mummy (which also incorporates signicant aspects taken directly from She).20 It is not, however, well known by name outside Egyptology, so a summary may be helpful. The story concerns a magic book written by Egypts god of magic and writing, Thoth. The tale is presented in two parallel subplots, structured as a third-person framing narrative and a rst-person embedded story, linked by a unifying ending. The rst two pages (or rather, columns) of the story are missing from the single known manuscript.21 However, the primary narrative undoubtedly begins when Setne Khaemwas learns that the book is to be found in the tomb of Naneferkaptah, a long-dead magician and prince who lies buried in the royal necropolis of Memphis (near modern Cairo). Setne breaks in, and confronts the living mummy of Naneferkaptah, along with the ghosts of Naneferkaptahs wife and sister Ihweret, and of the couples child Merib. Ihweret and Merib are themselves buried in the distant town of Coptos, near ancient Thebes/modern Luxor; their ghosts are in the tomb through the craft of a good scribemagicperformed by Naneferkaptah.
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The preserved text begins with Setne in the tomb and the embedded story underway, narrated by Ihweret. Ihweret describes how she had persuaded her father the pharaoh to allow Naneferkaptah to marry her, then recounts how Naneferkaptah had learned of the existence of the book, said to be hidden near Coptos. In Ihwerets narration, Naneferkaptah becomes obsessed with the book; over Ihwerets objections, he obtains a boat and crew from their father, and takes Ihweret and Merib on an expedition to recover it. Three days upriver from Coptos, Naneferkaptah (minus Merib and Ihweret, who remain behind near the town) locates the spot in the river where the book is hidden. Using his power to part the waters, Naneferkaptah discovers a large iron casket, which encloses a series of ve more: a casket of copper, which encloses one of juniper wood, which encloses one of ebony and ivory, which encloses one of silver, which encloses one of gold, which contains the book itself. The book recovered, the expedition embarks for home. But Thoth demands justice from the supreme god Pre, and Pre decrees death for the family.22 Merib and Ihweret successively fall overboard and drown; after each drowning, Naneferkaptah returns to Coptos to conduct the necessary burial. Then, in despair, he ties the book to his waist and drowns himself. The crew is unable to locate the body, but on arrival in Memphis it is discovered that, through his residual magical power, Naneferkaptah has been holding on to the boats steering oar all along. He is buried along with the book in Memphis, and so the family nds itself separated in eternityable to interact spiritually, but deprived of one anothers all-important physical presence. Ihweret now expresses the hope that this tragic tale will convince Setne to leave the book and the tomb in peace. But Setne will have none of it, and using his own magic power, seizes the book. Back in Memphis, Setne is warned by his father Ramses II to return the book to Naneferkaptah with a brazier on your head and a forked stick in your hand.23 This image, unparalleled in any other known Egyptian tale, is certainly not a real gesture of contrition: it appears to be connected to images in magical/religious texts of defeated enemies bound to forked stakes, suffering from axe-blows to the head, which spurt blood that resembles re.24 Predictably, Setne does not heed his fathers advice. Setne now encounters a beautiful woman named Tabubue, and becomes obsessed with her sexually. Setne convinces her to agree to a rendezvous, and Tabubue invites Setne to her home. But before Tabubue will sleep with Setne, she has conditions. First, Setne must sign over to her all of his possessions, which he willingly does. Oddly enough, Setnes children turn up outside of Tabubues house at just this moment. While Setne invites his children in, Tabubue slips on a dress of sheer linen, through which Setne can see every
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part of her body.25 Perhaps the author has in mind the sheath-dress worn in Egyptian art by gures of goddesses or deceased women, which leaves little to the imagination. If so, the garments purpose would not be to simply heighten Tabubues sensuality; it would probably also tip us off that she is not of this world.26 But Setne, oblivious to any such nuances, is now set up for further conditions. First, Tabubue wants Setne to have his children counter-sign the deed of transfer, so that they do not later sue her children to recover their lost inheritance.27 Next, Tabubue wants Setne to permit the murder of his children, so they cannot renege on their agreement. Setne agrees even to this and nally takes Tabubue to bed. But as he reaches out to touch her, she vanishes; Setne nds himself out of doors, feverishly hot, naked, and visibly frustrated.28 But it gets worse. Setne must now hide from the approaching procession of a dignitary who appears to be the pharaoh. Setne is humiliated even more, unable to rise in the presence of the king, and he admits that he has been completely defeated by Naneferkaptah. But Pharaoh gently informs Setne that his children are actually alive and are at that moment standing in Pharaohs presence. From this, we might infer that the Pharaoh in this scene is Naneferkaptah himself.29 Setne now returns the book to the tomb of Naneferkaptah with a brazier on his head and a forked stick in his hand. He asks Naneferkaptah what he can do to make amends; Naneferkaptah asks that Setne travel to Coptos to fetch the mummies of Ihweret and Merib for reburial in Naneferkaptahs tomb. This he does, locating Ihwerets tomb with the help of Naneferkaptah himself, who appears in the guise of an aged priest to guide him to the exact spot. All, including the dead, live happily ever after.
She and First Setne The most obvious debt owed by She to First Setne is Amenartass rstperson narration. As in First Setne, a long-dead Egyptian woman tells the tale of her problematic marriage, followed by a voyage to the distant south with her husband. In each embedded tale, the husband dies following a confrontation with supernatural powers, and each tale explains the deep historical background of a supernatural conict in the storys present. The names of the narrators are assonant; as noted above, Haggard knew the name of the female narrator in First Setne as Ahura, which shares an initial A and an internal vowel-plus-r syllable with his Amenartas.30 The
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names of the destinations of the voyages are both geographically parallel and phonetically alliterative and assonant: Coptos (in southern Egypt) in First Setne, Kr (to the south of Egypt) in She.31 The tales do differ in not-insubstantial ways: Ihwerets tale is oral, Amenartass written. Ihweret dies along with her husband and child; Amenartas survives to write her story and gives birth to Kallikrates son. But otherwise, the stories are quite similar, especially functionally. Each is intended to have a persuasive effect on the hearer/reader: Ihweret hopes to persuade Setne to abandon the magic book, while Amenartas hopes to incite her descendants to revenge themselves upon Ayesha. And the ending of each embedded tale foreshadows the outcome of the conict in the principal story.32 In First Setne, Setne will be unsuccessful in claiming the book of Thoth; in She, Ayesha will be unsuccessful in claiming Kallikrates. Other similarities include: 1. In She as published, the sherd of Amenartas is found in a series of caskets: an iron strongbox, enclosing an ebony chest, enclosing a silver casket of Egyptian workmanship; in Haggards still-existing original manuscript, the innermost casket is said to be of gold, not silver.33 This appears to be an adaptation of the nested caskets that enclose the magic book in First Setne: iron, enclosing copper, enclosing juniper, enclosing ebony and ivory, enclosing silver, enclosing gold. Secondarilyas Haggard likely knewEgyptological tradition holds that First Setne was found in a chest in a tomb in Thebes with a collection of other manuscripts.34 2. The scene of Hollys initial encounter with Ayesha, followed by her unveiling, bears comparison with Setnes encounter with Tabubue. First, Holly describes Ayeshas apartment: Within the curtains was a recess, about twelve feet by ten, and in the recess was a couch and a table whereupon stood fruit and sparkling water. By it, at its end, was a vessel like a font cut in carved stone, also full of pure water. The place was softly lit with lamps formed out of the beautiful vessels of which I have spoken, and the air and curtains were laden with subtle perfume (149150). Many of the same elementscouches, tables, food, beverages, vases, perfumeappear in the description of Tabubues living quarters in First Setne. I translate here Masperos 1882 rendering, which has been improved signicantly over the last century but presents the text as Haggard likely knew it: Setne climbed up the stairs of the house with Tabubue, until he reached the upper oor of the house, which was plastered and colored with a plastering and a variegated coloring of true lapis-lazuli and true mafek.35 There were many couches there, covered with fabric of royal
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linen, and numerous cups of gold on the table. A cup of wine was lled and placed in Setnes hand, and Tabubue said to him: Please take your meal. He said to her: There is not what I know well.36 A vase was placed on the re, and perfume was brought as is done for a royal festival.37 Up until this point, Ayesha had been covered in a loose garment that prevented Holly from seeing her ravishing form. But at Hollys request, Ayesha unveils herself and appears in a diaphanous garment that reveals far more than it conceals: She lifted her white and rounded armsnever had I seen such arms beforeand slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath her hair. Then all of a sudden the long, corpselike wrappings fell from her to the ground, and my eyes traveled up her form, now robed only in a garb of clinging white that did but serve to show its perfect and imperial shape, instinct with a life that was more than life, and with a certain serpentlike grace that was more than human. (158159) First Setne includes an analogous description of the temptress presenting herself in a revealing, white garment and inviting the gaze of her male admirer. The analogy is especially close when we observe an interesting misunderstanding that appears in Masperos translation and other early renderings of the tale. As Setne moves beyond introductory pleasantries to begin his attempt to bed Tabubue, the story observes that Setne had never, ever seen anyone like her. But early translations typically understand the Egyptian idiom, which literally says that Setne had never yet seen Tabubues likeness, to imply that, until this point, Tabubue had been covered and therefore hidden from view. Again, my English rendering of Masperos 1882 translation: Setne enjoyed himself with Tabubue, not yet having seen her body. . . . Tabubue arose; she put on a veil of ne linen, through which Setne saw all of her members, and his desire increased even beyond what it had been at the beginning. Setne said to Tabubue: Let me accomplish what I have come here for! 38 In each sequence, the now-unveiled temptress refuses herself to her visitor, and in each case the reality of the entire experience is questioned. Setne awakes to nd that the encounter appears to have been a dream, and his condition in the immediate aftermath prompts his father, the Pharaoh, to ask: Was it a state of drunkenness that you were in before?39 Holly, too, comes close to losing consciousness: As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember how I reached my own cave. And upon
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reaching home, he asks himself: Was I mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic and most elaborate hoax? (161162) 3. And then there is what may be the most peculiar borrowing of all: the use of red-hot pots placed upon the head to torture and execute condemned persons in the land of Kr.40 In a letter to Haggard while the book was still in proofs, Andrew Lang, a critic, a scholar of Classics and folklore and a friend of Haggards, wrote: Ive never heard of it, historically, and even now Im not sure whether it is one of the cannibal myths.41 Almost a century later, Sandra Gilbert called this an astonishing mode of execution, a cross between cooking and decapitation which seems to have had no real anthropological precedent . . . .42 But in light of the parallels with First Setne already discussed, it seems more than possible that the image was taken from the gesture of humility Setne makes when he returns the magic book of Thoth: he approaches Naneferkaptah with a brazierwhich appears in Masperos 1882 translation as un brasier allum [a lighted brazier]on his head and a forked stick in his hand. Other elements of First Setne appear to have been inverted in Sheprimarily elements of characterizations, or elements of dramatic situations that are closely linked to the characters identities and goals. In the seduction episode in the tale of Amenartas, Ayesha actually plays the part of Setne: Ayesha is here the sexually obsessed magician, willing to commit murder to possess her beloved, but nevertheless fated to experience frustration. Ayesha also appears as an inversion of Naneferkaptah. Each is a (more-or-less) immortal magician, an adept at esoteric knowledge, including the reading of ancient hieroglyphic inscriptions.43 Centuries ago, each had caused the death of her/his beloved; each now uses her/his power in a bid to make amends and overcome the separation. But the characters genders are reversed, as are their specic goals. Ayesha has possession of Kallikrates corpse; she has been waiting through the centuries for his reincarnated soul to return to her so that she can convince him to love her. Naneferkaptah, on the other hand, is fully able to commune spiritually with Ihweret, but feels bereft of her physical presence.
The Aithiopika and the Greek Novel Heliodoruss Aithiopika is the latest and most complex of a small corpus of extended Greek-language prose tales conventionally referred to as the Greek novel or Greek romance.44 Heliodoruss date is uncertain; educated guesses
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place him in the third or fourth centuries CE.45 Like most other novels in the corpus, the Aithiopika has in some respects a standard plot: two lovers (Theagenes and Charikleia), each innocent and remarkably beautiful, fall in love at rst sight. Each ghts against all odds to remain chaste until fate allows them to consummate their love. However, the Aithiopika is unusually complicated, with numerous ashbacks, shifts in point of view, and embedded stories within embedded stories. In contrast to First Setne, a presumption of Haggards knowledge of the Aithiopika needs no lengthy defense. Heliodorus had become familiar to the West in the Renaissance, and the Greek novels were often translated and adapted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.46 Though the novels lost popularity as a taste for more realistic ction took hold in the later eighteenth century, new or reprinted translations, as well as new adaptations, continued to appear in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.47 And in fact Haggard saw himself as a champion of precisely the kind of fantastic, romantic ction epitomized by the Aithiopika, ghting against the realist tide.48 The novels action begins when Charikleia [grace and honor], daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia, is born with unusually fair skin. The queen realizes that this condition is due to the magical effect of a painting of Andromeda that had been in the royal bedroom at the moment of Charikleias conception. Nevertheless, fearing a charge of adultery, she abandons the infant, along with a written narrative of her origins and certain tokens of recognition, including a royal ring. The girl is rst found by an Ethiopian aristocrat, and later adopted by a Greek named Charikles, who takes her to his home in Delphi and names her for himself. Charikles possesses, but cannot read, the Ethiopian queens narrative, and does not know the details of Charikleias origin. As Charikleia reaches marriageable age, she falls in love with Theagenes [goddess-born], who is not Charikles favored candidate. Hoping to change Charikleias mind, Charikles enlists the help of Kalasiris, a magician and former priest of Isis. However, Kalasiris suspects Charikleias true identity. Sworn to celibacy as a priest of Isis, he had own from Egypt to escape the seductress Rhadopis, and had heard part of the story from Charikleias mother during early wanderings in Ethiopia. Kalasiris now convinces Charikles to show him the narrative of Charikleias birth, which he is able to read. His suspicions conrmed, Kalasiris helps the lovers ee to Egypt, whence they hope to reach Ethiopia and Charikleias parents. After a series of perilous adventuresincluding an episode in which Arsake, the wife of the Persian satrap [military governor] of Egypt, attempts to seduce Theagenes and
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murder Charikleiathe reunion is effected. The Ethiopian royal couple blesses Charikleias union with Theagenes.
She and the Aithiopika She and the Aithiopika each relate an adventurous journey to sub-Saharan East Africa, in which a young, beautiful protagonist learns the truth of her/his identity. Both novels are, in part, set in the same general historical era: the Aithiopika is set at an unspecied time within the period of Persian rule over Egypt, or sometime in the years of 525332 BCE.49 Haggard set Amenartass tale in the reign of Egypts last native pharaoh, Nektanebo II, who ruled during a brief interlude of Egyptian independence and was overthrown by the re-invading Persians in 343 BCE, eleven years before Egypts conquest by Alexander the Great.50 Although She implies that Ayesha held sway somewhere in what is now Mozambique, a loose connection to Heliodoruss geography is suggested by the Head of the Ethiopian, a landmark that signals the approach to Kr.51 More striking is the parallelism in the topographic and dramatic circumstances that begin both the Aithiopika and Amenartass journey into Africa. In She, once Amenartas and Kallikrates reach the vicinity of Kr, the couple are left alone four days from the mouth of a mighty river after their party was cast away, some having drowned and others having died of unspecied illness. Amenartas and Kallikrates are then conducted through wastes and marshes to inhabited territory by wild men (40). The mise en scne here echoes the opening of the Aithiopika, in which Theagenes and Charikleia are left alone near one of the mouths of the Nile, sole survivors of a pitched battle among the passengers and crew of the ship bringing them to Egypt from Greece. Facing attack by bandits, the pair is rescued by long-haired, erce-looking men of the Nilotic marshes called boukoloi [herdsmen; in fact these are also thieves, if more of the Robin-Hood variety], who eventually put them on their way.52 But the clearest evidence of Shes dependence on the Aithiopika is Haggards Kallikrates, whose name and backstory inevitably recall Heliodoruss Kalasiris.53 Each is a former priest of Isis who ees Egypt for sub-Saharan Africa. Kallikrates reason for ight is an almost exact inversion of Kalasiriss: Kalasiris ees Egypt to avoid violating his vow of celibacy through an affair with Rhadopis; Kallikrates ees precisely because he has violated his oath by marrying Amenartas, and he faces the seductress
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Ayesha only in Kr. It is also noteworthy that celibacy (whether voluntary or mandatory) among Isis-priests cannot be documented in Egyptian sources or in ancient historiography, but gures occasionally in late-Classical ction like the Aithiopika and Apuleiuss Latin novel The Golden Ass.54 In light of the parallel between Heliodoruss Kalasiris and Haggards Kallikrates, it becomes attractive to consider whether Heliodoruss Arsake lay behind Haggards choice of the name Ayesha for his central character. Certainly Ayesha closely resembles Arsake in multiple respects: each is a beautiful, powerful seductress born in the East (Ayesha in Arabia, Arsake in Persia) with a strong connection to Egypt. Each conceives an overwhelming but futile infatuation for a young, virtuous male character. In each case, rejection leads to cruelty and violence. Arsakes rage over Theagenes faithfulness to Charikleia leads her to imprison and torture Theagenes, and to attempt to poison Charikleia.55 In Amenartass narration in She, Ayesha murders Kallikrates when he rebuffs her; in Hollys narration, she murders the Amhaggar (an inhabitant of Kr) woman Ustane when she realizes that Ustane is a rival for Vinceys affection.56 Finally, Vincey closely resembles Heliodoruss Theagenes, rst as a paragon of male beauty and athleticism whose pre-Ayesha sexuality is, if not non-existent, at least conspicuously muted, and second in his essential vapidity.57 The name Ayesha is in the rst place an evocation of the youngest and most beloved wife of the Prophet Muhammad, and became especially popular among the Ottoman Turks.58 Consequently, the name appears to have become emblematic of the Orient to nineteenth-century Europeans, and heroines named Ayesha appear more than once in Victorian Orientalist ction, e.g., in James Moriers 1834 Ayesha, The Maid of Kars, and in Edward Bulwer-Lyttons 1862 A Strange Story.59 These precedents, along with the assonance and alliteration of the two names, may have prompted Haggard to hit upon Ayesha as an obvious alternative to Arsake. And the geographic parallelism between Arsakes Persian origin and the historical Ayeshas Arabian origin may have suggested to Haggard important elements of his femme fatales back-story and dramatic arc. Other parallels between She and the Aithiopika include: 1. Both Haggards Amhaggar and Heliodoruss Ethiopians practice human sacrice of foreign captives.60 2. In each novel, a wise older man acts as father gure and mystagogue to the young protagonist, and assists her/him on the journey of discovery. Each is the interpreter of a mysterious written communication from a female progenitor, which provides the key to the young seekers true identity. She even hints that Holly may be a reincarnated Egyptian priest himself, when
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Holly discovers a tooth that is the last vestige of Noot, an Egyptian sage from whom Ayesha had learned the secret of the Pillar of Life. The image of a living person confronted with the mortal remains of a previous incarnation had already been introduced in She, when Vincey had been shown the body of Kallikrates.61 3. Each novel includes a royal ring as a crucial token of recognition.62 4. Charikleia, the white heroine of the Aithiopika, is eventually revealed as a princess of Ethiopia, and the story implies that she will one day become ruler there.63 Ayesha is likewise a white woman who becomes a ruler over black East Africans. 5. Kalasiris, like Ayesha, eats no meat and drinks only water.64 6. Ayesha and Charikleia each have a belt with a clasp in the form of interlocking snakes heads.65 7. Ayesha insists on remaining chaste until she is able to possess Kallikrates/Vincey. As in the other Greek novels, chastity is crucial to all of Heliodoruss positive characters, especially Charikleia.66
The Women of First Setne and the Aithiopika In trying to understand Ayesha in relationship to the women of First Setne and the Aithiopika, the essential question is: how did Haggard understand the characters on which he drew? Did Haggardas some modern scholars haveconate Tabubue with Rhadopis and Arsake, and see in these three mainly power, allure, and danger?67 Or did the complexity and irony of Ayeshas character stem in any measure from Haggards understanding of the complementarity of Ihweret and Tabubue? Without an explicit statement by Haggard, all that one can do is explore the complexity of Haggards ancient sources, the ways in which they came to be part of Haggards intellectual world, and the ways in which this material and the traditions of which it was a part interacted with Haggards own age. Shes foregrounding of Ayeshas femininity and her undying love for Kallikrates/Vincey strongly recalls the centrality of the female characters in First Setne and that tales thematization of immortal love. These emphases in First Setne, and Ihwerets specic role as a narrator, are highly unusual in the context of Egyptian literary history. They resonate with the marked ascendance in Graeco-Roman Egypts religious life of Isis, whose most important mythological role is as lover and defender of her brother/spouse Osiris and of their son Horus.68
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Female characters and love are also conspicuously thematized in the Aithiopika and the other Greek novels. As with First Setne in its historical context, these emphases constitute a break with the Classical literary tradition.69 This fact may reect the Greek novels own (at least partial) roots in Graeco-Roman Egyptian tales of Isis and Osiris or in tales like First Setne whose narratology was inuenced by this myth complex.70 This is especially clear in the Aithiopika, in which Charikleia is quickly identied with Isis. The opening scene of the novel presents Charikleia in a quintessentially Isis-linked tableau, mourning over the (apparently) dead body of Theagenes, while onlookers speculate that she might in fact be Isis.71 The novel ends with Theagenes and Chariklea consecrated as priest and priestess of the Sun and Moon, which were specically associated with Sarapis (a Graeco-Roman form of Osiris syncretized with a sacred bull called the Apis) and Isis.72 Throughout, Charikleias loyalty and constancy strongly resonate with Isis. And although it would have been unacceptable to Heliodoruss Greek audience for Theagenes and Charikleia to be revealed as brother and sister, they do occasionally present themselves as such for various tactical reasons.73 But in contrast to the heroines, the femmes fatales of First Setne and the Aithiopika do not function in the same way or bring the same meanings to their respective stories. The Aithiopika strongly contrasts Charikleia with the novels villainesses, who each function to denenegatively, to be surethe heroines perfection. In First Setne, on the other hand, Ihweret and Tabubue are only supercially dissimilar. While Ihweret evokes Isiss motherly and sisterly aspects, Tabubue may be best interpreted as a reection of a more menacing side of Isisa side that is closely tied to notions of justice and vengeance against the enemies of Osiris and of Horus, and that does not negate, but rather complements, the benign face of Isis reected in Ihweret.74 But Setnes encounter with Tabubue is not only conictualit is also comic, and the irony of the Setne-Tabubue episode stands in sharp contrast to Heliodoruss moralizing and melodrama in the confrontations between his femmes fatales and their male prey. The identication of comedy and humor in Egyptian literature is admittedly problematic, but the problem can be approached in a number of ways.75 In the rst place, the SetneTabubue encounter includes a number of motifs with parallels in Classical and post-Classical comic literature. These parallels need not imply direct dependence, but they do conrm that these motifs could be experienced as comic in antiquity. For example: the motif of a temptress making repeated, escalating demands on her suitor, only to leave him frustrated, bears comparison with
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the scene between Myrrine and Kineseas in Aristophanes Lysistrata, ls. 837ff. This scene, like the aftermath of the Tabubue encounter in First Setne, ends with pronounced emphasis on the frustrated lovers penis. The image of Setne outdoors and naked invites comparison with the conclusion of pseudo-Lucians Lucius, or the Ass. As also in Apuleiuss The Golden Ass, the hero Lucius had been bewitched (transformed into an ass) in the course of an abortive effort to obtain forbidden magical knowledge. In pseudo-Lucian, Luciusthe enchantment worn offcalls on a woman with whom he had had sex while in donkey form. The woman at rst welcomes the opportunity, but throws the naked Lucius out of her house when she observes that he has completely reverted to human proportions in all anatomical details.76 The use of servants as intermediaries in the initial contacts between Setne and Tabubue is typical of Hellenistic New Comedy plots.77 And other aspects of Setnes encounter with Tabubue, including its overall irony and misdirection, its wordplay, the presentation of the death of Setnes children (both the offstage presentation of its most gruesome details, and the fact that it is surreal and illusory), are equally well paralleled in many comic literatures.78 The denouements slapstick lampooning of sexuality is especially signicant: not only are sexual escapades characteristic of comedy in all cultures, but the lustful magician specically is also an attested motif in Egyptian folklore.79 Secondly, the purpose of the Tabubue-Setne encounter, and the Setne subplot generally, is consonant with a common intention in early comedy: to ridicule the foibles of a central character and the social/moral type that he represents, but in a way that promotes harmony and reintegration, rather than the destruction or banishment of evil.80 To reframe this in Egyptian terms, Egyptian comic literature would humorously narrativize the triumph of mAa.t (maat) in its social or this-worldly aspect. Maat, conventionally translated as truth, was a polyvalent concept fundamental to Egyptian notions of justice and morality at every level. Not surprisingly, maat was personied and worshiped as a goddess, who could be identied with Isis.81 At the cosmic level, maat demanded the destruction of the enemies of the gods and of order. The Nenferkaptah subplot, in which Naneferkaptah dees the gods and is driven to suicide after the gods destroy his family, plays out this aspect of the maat topos. But in this world, maat entailed reconciliation and the social interconnectedness that, for the Egyptians, was the essence of civilized lifeand the primary narrative of First Setne emphasizes precisely this. The Tabubue incident ultimately constitutes a comic reduction of the role played by Isis in destroying evil. Tabubues role is not to obliterate Setne, but to persuade him to abandon his selshness. Therefore, the punishment she
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administers is relatively benign, and the nal outcome of the encounter is an afrmation of Egypts most positive values.
Isis, Tabubue, and Ayesha This interpretation of First Setne and of the complementarity of Ihweret and Tabubue and their relationship to Isis is, however, rooted in contemporary Egyptological reections on the nature of maat and on the role of feminine divinities like Isis. It is therefore not possible that Haggard and his contemporaries will have read First Setne in precisely this way. Nevertheless, even if Haggard did not fully appreciate all of the cultural resonances of Tabubues character, nor precisely how she is related to Ihweret, it appears that he understood completely the way in which First Setne, taken as a whole, explores the multiple aspects of the divine feminine. And he saw clearly how he could convey his insights in a compelling way to a contemporary audience. I would suggest that two related cultural discourses in Victorian Britain will have more directly informed Haggards reading of First Setne and Tabubues reception in the late nineteenth century. The rst of these was a discourse on femininity and divinity that had its roots in Graeco-Roman antiquity and its own reception of Near Eastern, especially Egyptian, religion. This discourse had in Haggards day developed into two sub-discourses, to both of which Isis was central: one rooted in the new paradigms of scientic modernity, the other in mysticism and the occult.82 The second of these discourses centered on the meaning of the feminine and the place of women in the modern world; the reception of She since at least the 1980s has strongly stressed the novels place in this discourse.83 From the Renaissance forward, when Classical and post-Classical interpretationes graecae of Egyptian religion began to reenter European intellectual life, the person of Isis and her attendant mystery was a common topos, often signaled with the specic image of Isis veiled. This image originates in a description found in Plutarchs On Isis and Osiris of an inscribed statue of Athenathe Greek name for the Egyptians Neith, whom both Egyptians and Greeks assimilated to Isisin the Delta city of Sais. According to Plutarch, the goddess presents herself as all that was, is and shall be, and adds that no mortal has raised my veil.84 The text was famously adapted by Schiller, and Isis veiled or unveiling became a popular motif in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works on natural science. In this context,
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Isis was an essentially positive symbol of the femininity of nature, her veil the mystery that was to be gradually removed through science.85 But the image was also central to Helena Petrovna Blavatskys theosophical treatise Isis Unveiled (1877), and it became common in the works of Victor Hugo and other Romantic-era continental authors.86 Moreover, the development of these discourses on Isis was complicated by a number of factors. In the rst place, Egyptianizing material reached the Victorian world in two separate (albeit ultimately related) streams. Before the decipherment of Egypts hieroglyphs by Jean Franois Champollion in 1824, discussions of Egyptian religion could proceed only from interpretationes graecae, ranging from, for example, the discussions of individual topics in the familiar History of Herodotus, to Plutarchs On Isis and Osiris, to the more esoteric Corpus Hermeticum.87 But from the mid-nineteenth century forward, those with an interest in Egypt also had access to a large and growing corpus of original source material, through which they couldin theorylisten to the Egyptians own voices. Furthermore, Victorian Europe was developing new tools and methods archaeological, philological and anthropologicalwith which to process and understand this material. The latter of these is most signicant here. Borrowing the metaphors of Darwinian evolution and Linnaean biological taxonomy, the new disciplines of folklore studies and of comparative religion both suggested that the myths of world literature and their respective characters often had genetic relationships, and could represent culturally specic manifestations of universal ideas.88 In this context, it was only natural to identify and conate like-seeming heroes and divinitiesa process that Isis had undergone once before, when she became a universal deity in Graeco-Roman antiquity. This could have positive consequences for Isis: for the mythographer Frazer, Isis was one manifestation of a universal nature goddess; in Blavatskys theosophy, Isis was identied with the Divine Mother.89 But in the same era, Victor Hugo could as easily conate Isis with the far-less-positive Lilith of Jewish folklore, and even directly associate her with Satan.90 As did other females of ancient myth and legend, Isis also interacted closely with a larger discourse on the nature and status of woman in the Victorian period, an era in which the traditional male-dominated hierarchy of Western Europe was felt to be in danger of subversion or even outright overthrow by the contemporary new woman. These two discourses coalesced in Victorian fantastic and Gothic ction, which often forefronted powerful or even demonic women whose sexual power, as alluring and fascinating as it might be, was also felt to be inherently dangerous and in need of close control, if not obliteration.91
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First Setne was rst deciphered in precisely this period, and the early reception of Tabubue suggests how newly recovered Egyptological material might be interpreted in light of both received ideas about Isis and Egypt, and of contemporary discourse on the feminine. One of the earliest non-Egyptological discussions of Tabubue as a character appears in the introduction to Tabubu, an adaptation of First Setne intended for a popular audience that appeared in 1893.92 Here, Tabubue, not Setne, is presented as the central (or at least, the most marketable) character in the tale; and the introduction notes that the incomparable and perilous Tabubue reveals Egypts profound knowledge of the science of seduction and its consciousness of the power of woman.93 In fact, whenever Tabubue found her way into late-nineteenth or twentieth-century ction, she was interpreted more or less as Tabubu portrays her. The example most familiar to modern readers may be Mika Waltaris character Nefer, the hyper-sexual femme fatale from Waltaris Sinuhe The Egyptian. But an earlierand perhaps unexpectedly nuancedcase appears to be that of Ziska Charmazel, the Egyptian femme fatale of Marie Corellis 1897 novel Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul, who Gaston Maspero thought was modeled on Tabubue.94 The suggestion is attractive. Ziska, like She and First Setne, deals with a pair of ancient lovers separated in eternity after one has caused the death of the other. Like Tabubue, Ziska is an Egyptian woman of supernatural origin and irresistible beauty, whose dramatic function is to wreak revenge on a male character (who, like Setne, is the initial moral transgressor). Much of Ziska takes place in Cairowhich is not far from ancient Memphis, where First Setne is largely set. The novel also includes repeating scenes reminiscent of the scenes described above in both She and in First Setne, in which the femme fatale toys with a male admirer in a richly decorated, secluded space. The rst encounteras in She and in First Setnetakes place in Ziskas private apartment, the second in an ancient tomb. Like Ayesha and Tabubue, Ziska during these encounters wears a white garment that reveals and emphasizes her form. Finally, what may be an interesting reverse current in all of this appears in a verse adaptation of First Setne produced in 1911 by Oxford Classicist Gilbert Murray.95 Murrays still-Victorian consciousness is evident in the bowdlerization of his source andmost signicant herehis Gothic reinterpretation of the encounter between Setne and Tabubue. In Murrays climax to this scene, Setneas in the Egyptian storytakes Tabubue to bed. But then, he extends his arms To clasp her; and within his arms outspread / Behold, she withered, withered, and her head / It had no eyes, and downward all her jaw / Dropped, like the jaws of the uncared-for
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dead.96 Murrays image of Tabubues jaw dropping is based on a stock Egyptian expression describing someone one who shouts or cries out: in the Egyptian tale, Tabubue open(s) her mouth to the ground [widely] with a loud cry just before she vanishes. Otherwise, Murrays ghastly image is a substantial departure from the Egyptian story. It could have found its proximate inspiration in almost any number of Victorian tales of demonic women, but the parallel with the sudden devolution of Ayeshawho does indeed wither and go blind as the effects of the Pillar of Life take holdis certainly suggestive.
Conclusion We conclude with the scene in She that immediately precedes the death of Ayesha: her exploration with Holly, Vincey, and Job of the ancient Temple of Truth in the ruined city of Kr.97 In describing the statue of the goddess of Truth in this temple as beautiful beyond compare, virginal and veiled, Haggard transparently links her to Ayesha. But we also have here another allusion to Isis, via Plutarchs veiled Athena/Neith/Isis (above, p. 304). The goddesss self-presentation as reported by Plutarch inevitably invites comparison to the inscription that Ayesha reads on the statue of Truth in Kr: Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto him who draws my veil shall I be, and peace will I give him, and sweet children of knowledge and good works. And a voice cried, Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done. No man is there born of woman who may draw they veil and live, nor shall be. By death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth! And Truth stretched out her arms and wept, because those who sought her might not nd her, nor look upon her face to face. (265) I cannot demonstrate that Haggard knew in 1886 that the goddess Maat could be assimilated to Isis, though this seems likely.98 Certainly, however, Haggard will have known that for the Egyptians, Truth was indeed a goddess, and he certainly creates here a positiveindeed poignantthree-fold resonance between Isis, Ayesha, and Truth, reinforced with the image of the veil.
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But because veiling/unveiling is used to communicate substantially different ideas in Haggards sources, Haggard has and exploits the opportunity to synthesize and encode these meanings in She with a single, polysemous image. Tabubues presentation of herself to Setne is clearly erotic in intent, and in its own context resonates not only with images of Isis/Hathor/Aphrodite that place the goddess in extremely revealing clothing, but also with images in which the goddess lifts her dress to expose herself or appears completely nude.99 Images of this latter type ultimately lie behind Plutarchs report that Isiss veil has never been lifted, even though for Plutarch this has become a metaphor for the goddesss unknowability.100 Haggard, for his part, identies his Truthand by implication also Ayeshawith Plutarchs desexualized, intellectualized goddess. But Haggard nevertheless re-sexualizes the image considerably: Haggards veiled Truth is in fact all but completely naked, with her veil covering only her face and left breast (264). Haggard was far from being the rst writer to see the erotic potential still latent in Plutarchs image.101 And Haggard may also manifest here a Victorian Orientalism that reveled in the sexualization of non-Europeans.102 But Orientalist Zeitgeist or not, failure to appreciate Tabubues sexuality would have been difcult in any time or place. With both Tabubue and Plutarchs Athena/Neith/Isis to draw on for the central motif of Ayesha/ Truths (un)veiling, Haggard was able to (re-)combine the topoi of sex, knowledge and truth in a character who was at once readily comprehensible and compelling to Victorian readers, and whounlike Hugos cartoonishly evil Lilith-Isis, or the passive Isis-Nature of Enlightenment/Romantic natural scientists and philosophersdrew dramatic power from the combination of allure, mystery, and threat inherent in the Egyptians own conceptualization of female divinity. In light of our discussion to this point, it might come as a surprise to realize that Isis herself barely gures in She. She appears primarily in reference to Kallikrates status as a priest of Isis, and once in a list of Egyptian gods invoked in a curse (281). On the other hand, in his sequels to She, Haggard made Ayeshas connections to Isis and related goddesses like Hathor and the Greeks Aphrodite completely (and for that very reason, rather tediously) explicit. It is therefore difcult to know precisely how far these many connections were consciously present in Haggards mind when he conceived his greatest character. But at least it is clear that, at some point, Haggard had come to think of his Ayesha in this way. Like Isis, Ayesha is anything but one-dimensional, and it is highly interesting to contemplate the ways in which Ayeshas multiple inections and the complexity of her character may be owed, not only to Haggards imagination, but to the complexity of
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ancient Egypts conception of the intersection of sexuality, magic, justice, and divinity, and to the equally complex intersections of Greek and Egyptian culture, and of antiquity and modernity. Indiana UniversityBloomington
Notes
1. The novel is narrated by Cambridge scholar Ludwig Horace Holly, the erstwhile guardian of 25-year-old Leo Vincey. Via a narration written on an ancient potsherd by an Egyptian woman named Amenartas, Holly and Vincey learn that Vincey is the descendant of Amenartas and Kallikrates, a Greek priest of Isis. The couple was forced to ee Egypt after Kallikrates violated his priestly oaths in marrying Amernartas; Kallikrates had been murdered in the African land of Kr by a near-immortal Arabian sorceress named Ayesha, who had unsuccessfully tried to seduce him. Though skeptical, Holly, Vincey and Hollys manservant Job travel to Africa, and discover that the tale is true. Ayesha recognizes Vincey as Kallikrates reincarnated and hopes to win his love. She offers him the chance to gain immortality by stepping into the ery Pillar of Life, which had millennia ago halted the effects of time against her. Stepping into the re to demonstrate its harmlessness, she is destroyed by the pillars unanticipated reverse effect. Holly and Vincey encounter the reincarnated Ayesha in Tibet in Ayesha: The Return of She (1905), and Ayesha reappears in Haggards She and Allan (1921) and Wisdoms Daughter (1923). There is no standard edition of the works of Haggard; I cite She here according to the pagination of the Penguin Classics edition, She: A History of Adventure (London and New York: Penguin Classics, 2001), which reproduces the text of the 1887 rst edition, (London: Longmans, Green & Co.). 2. See D. S. Higgins, Rider Haggard: A Biography (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 99ff.; Morton Cohen, Rider Haggard: His Life and Works, 2nd ed. (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 102ff; Norman Etherington, Rider Haggard (Boston: Twayne, 1984), 86ff; Peter Ellis, H. Rider Haggard: A Voice from the Innite (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1978), 117118. 3. Etherington, Rider Haggard, 87. 4. Rider Haggard, The Days of My Life, (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926), 1:246. 5. See Haggard, Days, 1:245; Cohen, Rider Haggard, 103; Higgins, Rider Haggard, 99; Patrick Brantlinger, introduction to Rider Haggard, She, xxvxxvi. Compare also a letter written by Haggard, Mr. Rider Haggard and His Critics, Times of London, April 27, 1887, p. 6, in which Haggard bristles at charges of plagiarism in She and traces the basic outline of the tale to an African legend involving mysterious caves in the Cape Colony, and a supernatural woman who had murdered her rst husband and now wandered the underground regions with her bewitched second husband. 6. On Ihweret, Tabubue, and Isis, see Steve Vinson, Through a Womans Eyes and in a Womans Voice: Ihweret as Focalizor in the First Tale of Setne Khaemwas, in Ptolemy II Philadelphus and His World, ed. Paul McKechnie and Philippe Guillaume (London and Leiden: Brill, 2008), 303351; also Steve Vinson, The Names Naneferkaptah, Ihweret and Tabubue in The First Tale of Setne Khaemwas, forthcoming in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. On Isis in the Graeco-Roman period, see Regina Schultz, Warum Isis? Gedanken zum universellen Charakter einer gyptischen Gttin im Rmischen Reich, in gypten und der stliche Mittelmeerraum im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr.: Akten des interdisziplinren Symposions am Institut fr gyptologie der Universitt Mnchen 2527.10.1996, ed. Manfred Grg and Gnther Hlbl (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2000), 251280. 7. On Ayesha as an avatar of Isis, see Evelyn Hinz, She: An Archetypal History of Adventure, Studies in the Novel 4 (1972): 421, 431 n. 10. Cf. Shannon Young, Rider Haggards
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Queer Adventures, Nineteenth Century Literature in English 10 (2006): 252; Patricia Murphy, The Gendering of History in She, Studies in English Literature, 15001900 39 (1999): 748. On Haggards fascination with Egypt, see Shirley Addy, Rider Haggard and Egypt (Huncoat, UK: AL Publications, 1998). On the Egyptian roots of the woman-as-demon theme, see Edmond Meltzer, The Supernatural Lady from Egypt to Walt Whitman and beyond, Seshat 7 (2005): 314, especially 79 on Haggard. 8. See Tim Murray, Archaeology and the Threat of the Past: Sir Henry Rider Haggard and the Acquisition of Time, World Archaeology 25.2 (Oct. 1993): 175186; Nicholas Daily, That Obscure Object of Desire: Victorian Commodity Culture and Fictions of the Mummy, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 28.1 (1994): 2451; Bruce Mazlish, A Triptych: Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams, Rider Haggards She, and Bulwer-Lyttons The Coming Race, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35.4 (Oct. 1993): 726745. 9. See Robert Fraser, Victorian Quest Romance: Stevenson, Haggard, Kipling and Conan Doyle (Plymouth, UK: Northcote, 1998), 4344; Richard Pearson, Archaeology and Gothic Desire: Vitality Beyond the Grave in H. Rider Haggards Ancient Egypt, in Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, (Houndmills, UK and New York: Palgrave, 2000), 218244. On Haggards religious views, see Haggard, Days, 2:234ff.; and 1:254255 for Haggards interest in Egyptian religion and the possibility of reincarnation. On Haggard and theosophy, see John D. Coates, The Spiritual Quest in Rider Haggards She and Ayesha, Cahiers victoriens et douardiens 57 (2003): 3354. 10. Cf. Gail Cunningham, Masculinities in the Age of the New Woman: From She to Vee, in The Crossroads of Gender and Century Endings, ed. Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa, et al. (Lisbon: Edies Colibri, 2000), 111124. 11. Accessible modern translations include R. Ritner, trans., The Romance of Setna Khaemuas and the Mummies (Setna I), in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies and Poetry, ed. W. K. Simpson, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003), 453469; and Miriam Lichtheim, ed. and trans., Ancient Egyptian Literature, A Book of Readings, vol. 3, The Late Period (Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1980). The manuscripts colophon dates it to the fteenth year of an unnamed king. The handwriting is probably early Ptolemaic. Likely dates are 268 or 232 BCE (fteenth years of Ptolemies II and III, respectively). 12. For discussion of other Setne tales, see my Through a Womans Eyes, 307308, n. 16. 13. For a general introduction to Demotic, see Mark Depauw, A Companion to Demotic Studies (Brussels: Fondation gyptologique Reine lisabeth, 1997). 14. Egyptian historical dates here generally follow Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 479483 (chronological overview). On the historic Khaemwas, see Farouk Goma, Chaemwese: Sohn Ramses II. und Hoherpriester von Memphis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973); Marjorie Fisher, The Sons of Rameses II (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), 1:89105; 2:89143. 15. Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphic, its cursive variant hieratic, and the even-more-cursive Demotic) render primarily the consonantal structure of Egyptian words; thus, scholarly transcriptions indicate only the words consonants. When needed, pronounceable, vocalized spellings of Egyptian words are often taken over or adapted from spellings attested in Greek or in Coptic, the medieval form of the Egyptian language written in a modied Greek alphabet. Otherwise, conventional spellings of Egyptian words are generated by inserting an between consonants, or by treating certain consonants (e.g., y, w, or A, the glottal stop) as vowels. 16. Morning Star was serialized in The Christian World News of the Week, Vols. 53 and 54, nos. 27422762 (October 1909 through March 1910); cf. also Denys Whatmore, H. Rider Haggard: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing Corporation, 1987), 5051; Gaston Maspero, Les contes populaires de lgypte ancienne: traduits et comments par G. Maspero, 1st ed. (Paris: J. Maisonneuve, 1882). On Haggards knowledge of French, see Higgins, Rider Haggard, 9ff.; note that even though Haggard was familiar with Masperos anthology by at least 1909, the rst English translation of Contes populaires did not appear until 1915 (New York: G. P. Putnams sons; London: H. Grevel, 1915).
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17. See Heinrich Brugsch, Le Roman de Setnau contenu dans un papyrus dmotique du Muse gyptien Boulaq, Revue archologique, 3rd series 16 (1867): 161179. The rst English rendering: Peter L. Renouf, The Tale of Setnau (from the version of Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey), Records of the Past, 1st series 4 (1875): 129148. 18. See Addy, Haggard and Egypt. A partial list of books from Haggards personal library, compiled for an auction 21 years after his death, includes dozens of scholarly and popular Egyptological publications: Association Books: Part 1: Books from the Libraries of Sir H. Rider Haggard & Harry & Maurice Buxton Forman (Elkin Mathews Ltd., Catalogue 102, May 1946). See also Haggard, Days, 1:254255, 2:158; Higgins, Rider Haggard, 78. 19. Ihweret is an orthographic variant of the divine name Ihet-weret, Great Ihet (more often simply Ihet), a cow goddess who represents the sky and can be identied with Isis and Hathor: See Christian Leitz, Lexikon der gyptischen Gtter und Gtterbezeichnungen (Leuven and Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), 1:537539. The spelling Ahura was used by Heinrich Brugsch in his initial publication of the text (see n. 17 above). Brugsch and his contemporaries considered a number of hieroglyphic signs (and their Demotic counterparts) to represent vowels, and took the initial sign in the name Ihweret to represent a (it is actually a weak consonant similar to j ). The use of an initial I in my spelling is conventional, based on the standard, modern popularizing rendering of the transliteration character i typically used for the Egyptian sign. There is only one other published attestation of Ihweret as a personal name, in a non-literary context: Erich Lddeckens, Demotisches Namenbuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 19802000), 74. 20. First pointed out by Ritner, Setna I, 454; Ritner notes other popularizations of First Setne, including Finnish novelist Mika Waltaris adaptation of the Tabubue sequence for his 1945 Sinuhe egyptilinen (appearing in English in 1949 as Sinuhe the Egyptian). Also discussed in Carter Lupton,Mummymania for the Masses, in Consuming Ancient Egypt, ed. Sally MacDonald and Michael Rice (London: UCL Press, 2003), 3134. 21. The scrolls columns are numbered, which is unusual in Egyptian scribal praxis. 22. Pre: a late form of the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra (or Re): literally The Sun. 23. Ritner, Setna I, 467; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:136. 24. Ritner, Setna I, 463 n. 25, quoting Edmund Meltzer, With a Forked Stick in His Hand . . . , Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Newsletter 7.1 (1976): 1011; cf. Alejandro Botta, Sin and Forgiveness in the Demotic Story of Setne I, Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology, ed. Irene Shirun-Grumach (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 239240; Richard Jasnow, And Pharaoh Laughed . . . Reections on Humor in Setne 1 and Late Period Egyptian Literature, Enchoria 27 (2001): 78 n. 104. 25. Ritner, Setna I, 465; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:135. 26. Gay Robins, The Art of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 76. For a contemporaneous image of what the author may have in mind, see the image of statue 3936 at the Hermitage Museum, discussed in Susan Walker and Peter Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of Egypt from History to Myth (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 160. Here, the dress is indicated only by a hemline, a neckline, and lines at the wrists; breasts, belly, and pubic area are strongly emphasized. 27. An attested procedure in Ptolemaic-era legal praxis: Harry Smith, Another WitnessCopy Document from the Fayym, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 44 (1958): 89 n. 2. 28. The text is obscure here and says that Setnes penis is in a SHyA (shehiya). It is unclear what this word means, but the image would appear to stress sexual frustration and humiliation. For discussion, see Ritner, Setna I, 466 n. 38; Jasnow, Pharaoh Laughed, 7980, n. 115 and 116; David Lorton, The Expression Iri Hrw Nfr, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 12 (1975): 25 n. 19. 29. Cf. Ritner, Setna I, 466 n. 39. 30. The name (possible for both males and females) means (the god) Amun has given her/him (to her/his parents). The female Amenartas best known to modern scholarship was a Nubian princess of the eighth century BCE: cf. John Taylor, The Third Intermediate Period, in History, 353354.
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31. The assonance would be especially marked with a typical British pronunciation of Kr, in which the nal r would be pronounced far more weakly than in most North American accents; for Haggard and his British readers, the quality of the o in Kr would be quite close to that of the initial o in Coptos. Haggard presumably chose a spelling ending in r to avoid creating a name that would appear to rhyme with go or no. 32. Cf. Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: Toronto UP, 1985), 143ff. 33. Norman Etherington, ed., The Annotated She: A Critical Edition of H. Rider Haggards Victorian Romance with Introduction and Notes (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991), 213 n. 5. This reference discusses chapter 3 of She. Haggard returns repeatedly to the metaphor of interlocking boxes (Etherington, Annotated She, xviixviii), a metaphor also central to First Setne; cf. Ritner, Setna I, 454, 460 n. 20. 34. Maspero, Contes populaires, iii. However, the manuscript was acquired from an antiquities dealer, not found in an archaeological excavation, so the actual circumstances of its discovery are in fact unknown. 35. Cf. Masperos rendering: (E)nduit et bariol dun enduit et dun bariolage de lapis-lazuli vrai et de mfek vrai (Contes populaires, 74). Maspero leaves the Egyptian word mfke untranslated; Ritner (Setna I, 465) and Miriam Lichtheim render it turquoise (Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3: 134). 36. Literally: There does not exist that which I know (how) to do, rendered by Maspero as Ce nest pas l ce que je sais bien (Contes populaires, 75). Modern translations typically render it something like there is nothing that I could do: Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:134; Ritner, Setna I, 465 and 465 n. 34. As Ritner points out, inability to eat or drink is a symptom of love enchantment in Egyptian magical literature. 37. The Egyptian word that Maspero translates vase actually means incense: Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:135; Ritner, Setna I, 465. 38. Maspero, Contes populaires, 7576. 39. Ritner, Setna I, 467; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:136. 40. Although the practice is referred to throughout the novel, only one (attempted) execution is actually described: She, 104. 41. Ellis, Rider Haggard, 109. 42. Sandra Gilbert, Rider Haggards Heart of Darkness, in Coordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. George Slusser, et al. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1983), 126. 43. Compare She, 181, 264; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:128; Ritner, Setna I, 455456. 44. See John Morgan and Richard Stoneman, eds., introduction to Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London and New York: Routledge, 1994); and Gareth Schmeling, ed., Novel in the Ancient World, (Kinderhook, NY: E. J. Brill, 1996). 45. Massimo Fusillo, Naissance du roman, trans. Marielle Abrioux (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1991), 13; J. R. Morgan, trans., HeliodorusAn Ethiopian Story, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B. P. Reardon (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989), 417476. 46. See J. R. Morgan, Heliodoros, in Novel in the Ancient World, 422ff.; Gerald Sandy, The Heritage of the Ancient Greek Novel in France and Britain in Novel in the Ancient World, 735773; Marlia Pinheiro, The Nachleben of the Ancient Novel in Iberian Literature in the Sixteenth Century, in Novel in the Ancient World, 775799; J. Maillon, Prface du traducteur, in Hliodore: Les thiopiques (Thagne et Charicle), ed. R. M. Rattenbury and T. W. Lumb, trans. J. Maillon (Paris: Socit ddition Les Belles Lettres, 1935), l: xxxiiici. 47. Fusillo, Naissance du roman, 1011. For a nineteenth-century translation of Heliodorus that Haggard might easily have known, see The Greek Romances of Heliodorus, Longus, and Achilles Tatius: Comprising the Ethiopics, or, Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea; The Pastoral Amours of Daphnis and Chloe; and The Loves of Clitopho and Leucippe, trans. Rowland Smith (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855; republished London: G. Bell and Sons, 1882). On the
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inuence of the Aithiopika in late-eighteenth, early nineteenth-century English ction, see Margaret Doody, Heliodorus Rewritten: Samuel Richardsons Clarissa and Frances Burneys Wanderer, in The Search for the Ancient Novel, ed. James Tatum (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994), 117131. 48. Rider Haggard, About Fiction, Contemporary Review 51 (1887): 172180. 49. Shaw, History of Ancient Egypt, 482. The Aithiopika is not situated more precisely in history; no king is named and the Persian satrap of Egypt in the tale, Oroondates, is otherwise unattested. The name, however, may have a Persian origin: see Ferdinand Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1895), 234. 50. Shaw, History of Ancient Egypt, 482. An editors note supplied by Haggard places Nektanebo IIs overthrow in 339 BCE (She, 40). 51. On the location of Kr, see She, 313; cf. Etherington, Annotated She, 238 n. 5. On the Head of the Ethiopian, see She, 40, 66ff. 52. Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 353ff. On the appearance and demeanor of the boukoloi, see Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 393. On the boukoloi in the Aithiopika and elsewhere, see Ian Rutherford, Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas: A Greek Novel and Some Egyptian Models, Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 117 (1997): 207208; Ian Rutherford, The Genealogy of the Boukoloi: How Greek Literature Appropriated an Egyptian Narrative-Motif, Journal of Hellenic Studies 120 (2000): 106121. 53. Both are genuine names. Haggard correctly glosses the Greek Kallikrates as The Beautiful in strength (She, 20, editors footnote). Kalasiris is the Greek spelling of the Egyptian gl-Sr (gel-sher), which refers to a young warrior. The Egyptian form was current as a personal name in Graeco-Roman Egypt; see Lddeckens, Namenbuch, 1033. 54. Susan Stephens and John Winkler, eds., Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995), 406, note to Papyrus Turner 8, lines 67 (though contrary to the implication of the note, Diodorus Siculus does not claim here that Egyptian priests are ever celibate). 55. For Arsakes treatment of Kalasiris, see Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 521522; Ayesha kills Kallikrates on her own volition, while Arsake has to be persuaded to inict her cruel punishments on Theagenes. Arsakes treatment of Charikleia: Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 523524. 56. On Ayeshas murder of Kallikrates: She, 40 (Amenartass version of the events) and 280 (Ayeshas version). Ayeshas murder of Ustane: She, 227. On the name Ustane, see Etherington, Annotated She, 219 n. 23. Is it overreaching to point out that Ustane is an anagram of Setnau, the spelling used for our Setne in Brugschs rst edition of the tale and in its initial English rendering by Renouf? 57. Compare She, 11, where Vincey is described physically as a statue of Apollo come to life, to 15, where he is further said to be, as a person, not particularly interesting; also see Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 411ff. On Vincey as a dumb blond, see Coates, Spiritual Quest, 42. On the heroes of the Greek novels, whom critics have typically characterized as puppet-like, feeble, and colorless, see Katherine Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 81ff. 58. Prof. Asma Afsaruddin, University of Notre Dame, personal communication, April 7, 2008. On the historical Ayesha, see Nabia Abbott, Aishah: the Beloved of Mohammed (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1942). 59. This novel has often been seen as inspirational to at least some elements of She: See Higgins, Rider Haggard, 100; Brantlinger, introduction to She, xxvi; Herman S. Ficke, The Source of Rider Haggards She, Studies in English 6 (1926): 178180. 60. Compare She, 102, with Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 562. 61. See She, 236ff. for Leos confrontation with the body of Kallikrates; 279280 for Hollys discovery of the tooth of Noot. Haggard makes Hollys identication with Noot explicit in ch. 1 of the She sequel, Wisdoms Daughter. 62. Compare She, 36, 142, and 160 (on a scarab, later set into a ring, once owned by Kallikrates and found by Holly and Vincey with the sherd of Amenartas), with Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 433. 63. See Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 433; 568569.
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64. Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 418. Compare She, 149150 and 157. 65. Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 412. Compare She, 150, 158. 66. She, 159; cf. Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine, 15, 7072, 9091. 67. See Dominique Montserrat, Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 110 and 114115 on Tabubue, Rhadopis, and GraecoRoman ideas about prostitution; cf. Jasnow, Pharaoh Laughed, 76 n. 92; Rutherford, Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas, 205. 68. See Schultz, Warum Isis? 69. On romantic love in the Greek novel, see David Konstan, Xenophon of Ephesus, in Greek Fiction, 62. On the prominence of female characters in the Greek novel, see Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine; Brigitte Egger, Looking at Charitons Callirhoe, in Greek Fiction, 31ff.; Renate Johne, Women in the Ancient Novel, in Novel in the Ancient World, 151207. 70. On the argument that the standard plot used in the extant Greek novels is based on the myths of the mystery religions of late antiquity, especially the myth of Isis and Osiris, and that the Greek novels were intended for the use of initiates into mystery cults, see Reinhold Merkelbach, Isis ReginaZeus Sarapis: Die griechisch-gyptische Religion nach den Quellen dargestellt (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1995); and Reinhold Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich and Berlin: Beck, 1962). Discussion also can be found in Roger Beck, Mystery Religions, Aretalogy, and the Ancient Novel, in Novel in the Ancient World, 131150, where a cultural relationship between the novels and the mysteries is accepted, but a cultic function of the texts is denied. For discussion of Demotic Egyptian ction and the Greek novel, see John Tait, Egyptian Fiction in Demotic and Greek, in Greek Fiction, 203222; Rutherford, Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas, 203209. 71. Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 355 n. 3. 72. Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 587588. On the sun and moon as Sarapis and Isis, see Louis abkar, Hymns to Isis in Her Temple at Philae (Hanover and London: Brandeis UP, 1988), 142, 185 n. 60; Yves Grandjean, Une nouvelle artologie dIsis Marone (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 5760; compare also the strong Isismoon associations in Book 11 of Apuleiuss Golden Ass. This equation is left out of account in Beck, Mystery Religions, 145 n. 57. 73. See, for example, Morgan, Ethiopian Story, 371. On Greek distaste for brother-sister marriage, see Ludwig Koenen, The Ptolemaic King as Religious Figure, in Images and Ideologies: Self-denition in the Hellenistic World, ed. Anthony Bulloch, et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1993), 62. 74. For further discussion and references, see Vinson, Through a Womans Eyes and Names. 75. See Jasnow, Pharaoh Laughed. 76. This episode is absent from Apuleiuss version of the story. On the possible Egyptian origin of the Lucius-as-ass tale, see John Grifths, Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis-Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 22ff. 77. Jasnow, Pharaoh Laughed, 76. 78. For punning in First Setne, see Ritner, Setna I, 460 n. 20, 464 n. 31, 465 n. 33. On the non-reality of death in comedy: Mark Roche, Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel (Albany: SUNY UP, 1997), 212214. 79. Discussion in Vinson, Through a Womans Eyes, 341342 80. See Roche, Tragedy and Comedy. 81. See Jan Assmann, Maat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten gypten (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1990); J. G. Grifths, Isis as Maat, Dikaiosun, and Iustitia, in Hommages Jean Leclant, ed. Catherine Berger, et al., vol. 3 (Cairo: Institut Franais dArchologie Orientale, 1994), 255264. 82. This is similar to the reception of religious/philosophical traditions not typically practiced in Victorian Europe, like Buddhism. See Jeffrey Franklin, The Counter-Invasion of Britain by Buddhism in Marie Corellis A Romance of Two Worlds and H. Rider Haggards Ayesha: the Return of She, Victorian Literature and Culture 31 (2003): 1942. However, the Victorians themselves did not always distinguish between these sub-discourses, and many rst-rank
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Victorian and post-Victorian intellectuals were highly interested in mysticism and the occult. One example: Gilbert Murray, Presidential Address for 1952 to the British Society of Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 49 (1952): 155169. 83. Coates, Spiritual Quest, 3334. 84. See On Isis and Osiris, ch. 9 in John G. Grifths, Plutarchs De Iside et Osiride (Cardiff: Wales UP, 1970), 130131, 283284. 85. Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, trans. Andrew Jenkins (New York: Holt, 2002), 430431; Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 134ff. See also Carolyn Merchant, Isis Consciousness Raised, Isis 73.3 (1982): 398409; and Lisbet Koerner, Goethes Botany: Lessons of a Feminine Science, Isis 84.3 (1993): 470495, especially 478. 86. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical UP, 1877). On the image of Isis in Hugo and his contemporaries, see Agnes Spiquel, La desse cache: Isis dans louvre de Victor Hugo (Paris: Editions Champion, 1997); Camille Aubaude, Isis romantique. La grandeur du mystre, in De Memphis Rome, Actes du Ier Colloque international sur les tudes isiaques, PoitiersFuturoscope, 810 avril 1999, ed. Laurent Bricault (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2000), 147162. 87. James Curl, Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival: A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1994), 68ff.; Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 18ff. 88. These ideas were central to the study of comparative mythology as it was created by James Frazer in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, rst published in 1890; and to comparative religion as formulated in the work of Max Mller (18231900). 89. On Isis as the Divine Mother, see Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:16. The lasting appeal of this sort of pantheaism remains evident in, e.g., Robert Gravess 1948 The White Goddess and Merlin Stones 1976 When God was Woman. 90. See Spiquel, La desse cache, especially ch. 2, Lilithisis. Lilith-Isis gures in Victor Hugos posthumously published, unnished epic Le Fin de Satan (in Victor Hugo, Oeuvres Compltes: Posie IV, ed. Bernard Leuilliot [Paris: Robert Laffont, 1986]). See especially p. 142, where Lilith-Isis is described as the lme noire du monde [dark soul of the world]. See also Murphy, Gendering of History, 748. 91. See Murphy, Gendering of History; Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982); Meltzer, The Supernatural Lady; and Ann Heilman, The New Woman in the New Millennium: Recent Trends in Criticism of New Woman Fiction, Literature Compass 3.1 (2006): 3242. 92. See J.-H. Rosny, Conte gyptien: Tabubu, Petite Collection Guillaume (Paris: E. Guillaume, 1894). J.-H. Rosny was a pseudonym used jointly by Belgian science-ction/ fantasy writers Joseph Henri Honor Boex (18561940) and Sraphin Justin Franois Boex (18591948). 93. Ibid., 45. 94. See the introduction to First Setne in the fourth edition of Contes populaires (Paris: J. Maisonneuve, 1911), 124. Marie Corelli was the penname of Mary Mackay (18551924). 95. The Story of Nefrekepta from a Demotic Papyrus Put Into Verse By Gilbert Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). 96. Ibid., 40. 97. She, 257ff.; cf. Etherington, Annotated She, 235 n. 13. 98. Haggard makes this equation in ch. 2 of Wisdoms Daughter. 99. See Franoise Dunand, Catalogue des terres cuites grco-romaines dEgypte (Paris: Runion des Muses Nationaux, 1990), 136138, catalog nos. 358363. Further discussion in Vinson, Through a Womans Eyes, 337, with ns. 135 137 100. Cf. Assmann, Moses and the Egyptian, 118119; Grifths, De Iside et Osiride, 284285. 101. See Merchant, Isis Consciousness Raised. 102. Murphy, Gendering of History, 759, and 771 n. 40.

Vinson They Must Be Obeyed

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They-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed: Arsake, Rhadopis, and Tabubue; Ihweret and Charikleia

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they-who-must-be-obeyed: arsake, rhadopis, and tabubue; ihweret and charikleia

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