more completely than a man the qualities necessary for the exercise of magic, whether legitimate or otherwise:  she saw and heard that which the eyes and ears of man could not perceive; her voice, being more flexible and piercing, was heard at greater distances; she was by nature mistress of the art of summoning or banishing invisible beings.  While Pharaoh was engaged in sacrificing, the queen, by her incantations, protected him from malignant deities, whose interest it was to divert the attention of the celebrant from holy things:  she put them to flight by the sound of prayer and sistrum, she poured libations and offered perfumes and flowers.  In processions she walked behind her husband, gave audience with him, governed for him while he was engaged in foreign wars, or during his progresses through his kingdom:  such was the work of Isis while her brother Osiris was conquering the world.  Widowhood did not always entirely disqualify her.  If she belonged to the solar race, and the new sovereign was a minor, she acted as regent by hereditary right, and retained the authority for some years longer.*

* The best-known of these queen regencies is that which occurred during the minority of Thutmosis III., about the middle of the XVIIIth dynasty.  Queen Tuau also appears to have acted as regent for her son Ramses II. during his first Syrian campaigns.

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

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