The Queen-Mother’s head was small, her low forehead slightly retreated. Her nose was of the delicate Syrian type, the tip somewhat rounded, the nostrils well opened. From beneath artificially prolonged eyebrows, eyebrows shaved close and lightly penciled with black antimony paste, glowed two large and lustrous eyes. Thi’s lips were full, but well-cut. Cruelty showed in the drooping corners. At this moment Thi was clad in one of the richest costumes of the extravagant New Empire, a pale-green robe minutely plaited and studded at intervals with lotus-flowers in beaten gold. Gold plumes, which rose above a gem-encrusted headdress of vulture form, seemed to give height and dignity to one who was in reality a short and slender woman. About the great Queen’s throat, wrist and ankles were broad bands of alternate gold bars and minute cylinders of beryl and amethyst. The names of Aton, the Syrian sun-god, stamped in rich blue fayence, hung from a long chain well down upon her high bosom. Though now no longer in the dazzling beauty of her youth, Thi still possessed many a charm of face and form. Yet, had she been devoid of such, her voice had served to win for her the great and powerful empire that was hers. At the sound of it, one knew at once why in Akhmin, where first her parents had settled, men had called her Nightingale; why, at a later date, poets and singers of the Theban court had vied with one another to do her honor. No mere doll-faced beauty had caused the former monarch to set aside Queen Hanit, an exalted lady of the line of Egypt’s royal house and a lineal descendant of Ra the sun-god, yes, and to cause the death of the unhappy Prince Wazmes whom she had borne him. Thi’s face and form had been enough to set kings and princes warring. Yet, to those prized gifts of Hathor, Beauty’s Goddess, had Ptah of Memphis added the voice of a ten-stringed lute, and Khnum, Fashioner of Mankind, an intellect that had quickly won to her by far the greater number of the nobles of the court. Thus had Thi, a foreigner, a woman sprung, by descent at least, from common Syrian stock, usurped the rightful place of the great Queen Hanit, descendant of kings and a king’s wife. At the foot of a short flight of steps leading to the festival hall, Thi and Menna met. They exchanged the customary string of effusive greetings and honorifics. As the Queen-Mother swept on she found her way blocked by the crooked form of Enana. The wizened old Magician stood leaning upon his jackal-headed staff immediately in the center of the narrow passage. Enana’s sole garment consisted of a long kilt or tunic fastened at the waist by a jeweled belt, and faced in front with squares of fine gold. This was an affectation of a fashion long since forgotten.