Tea at Trianon: Life in the Royal Ancient Egyptian ‘Harem’

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Life in the Royal Ancient Egyptian ‘Harem’

From Historical Eve:

At the top of that female pyramid of power was the queen herself. She was the chief wife of the pharaoh and the mother of the crown prince, and as a companion to the king, she was considered a goddess. Both, the pharaoh and she, embodied the masculine principle and the feminine principle that guaranteed the existence of order or Maat, an essential concept of the Egyptian worldview that represented harmony, the cosmic balance that prevailed in the world since its origin. And in order to maintain the masculine-feminine duality, the main wife had to accompany the monarch during the ceremonies. Of course, she always occupied a secondary level with respect to him. And sometimes the position of Great Royal Wife was held by more than one woman at the same time.
For Miriam Bueno, art historian and doctoral student in Egyptian art, the term ‘harem’ is not suitable to describe this type of institution in ancient Egypt:

“The oldest term interpreted as “harem” is that of “ipt”, found from the 1st Dynasty, and referring to a group of women and children (who were educated there) who belonged to the court but lived in separate rooms or building. (Read more.)