Nitetis sighed, and the queen Ladice exclaimed, "On the contrary, that very fact proves that you understand but poorly how to appreciate woman's nature! You can have no idea, Bartja, what a woman feels on finding that her husband--the man who to her is more than life itself, and to whom she would gladly and without reserve give up all that she treasures as most sacred--looks down on her with the same kind of admiration that he bestows on a pretty toy, a noble steed, or a well-wrought wine-bowl. But it is yet a thousand-fold more painful to feel that the love which every woman has a right to possess for herself alone, must be shared with a hundred others!" "There speaks the jealous wife!" exclaimed Amasis. "Would you not fancy that I had often given her occasion to doubt my faithfulness?" "No, no, my husband," answered Ladice, "in this point the Egyptian men surpass other nations, that they remain content with that which they have once loved; indeed I venture to assert that an Egyptian wife is the happiest of women. [According to Diodorus (I. 27) the queen of Egypt held a higher position than the king himself. The monuments and lists of names certainly prove that women could rule with sovereign power. The husband of the heiress to the throne became king. They had their own revenues (Diodorus I. 52) and when a princess, after death, was admitted among the goddesses, she received her own priestesses. (Edict of Canopus.) During the reigns of the Ptolemies many coins were stamped with the queen's image and cities were named for them. We notice also that sons, in speaking of their descent, more frequently reckon it from the mother's than the father's side, that a married woman is constantly alluded to as the "mistress" or "lady" of the house, that according to many a Greek Papyrus they had entire disposal of all their property, no matter in what it consisted, in short that the weaker sex seems to have enjoyed equal influence with the stronger.]