And it was thought that “the King’s dance” could only be performed by Nōfert-āri, claimed as daughter by the blind Tutīya, though known to the irreverent youth of Thebes as the child of Hathor, of the Goddess of Beauty, sprung from the head of Ra. At one end of the flowery carpet left by the little children knelt three heavily-cloaked women. Behind them squatted eight shaven-headed harpers, clutching to their naked breasts the gilded frames of their ten-stringed instruments. Back of these again were flute-players, players on the hand drum, players on the ivory castanets, and a group of men and women whose duty it was to mark the syncopated time by clapping their hands, agitating _menats_ of jeweled beads, or shaking sistra of silver or gold. Suddenly, like the blood-curdling cry of a savage desert-dweller, the high-pitched call of Tutīya thrilled the heated frames of the expectant onlookers. Instantly the harpers, in a soft and minor key, commenced an air at once slow in measure, plaintive and sad, an air that sounded distant amid the confused murmur of a thousand voices, the clatter of dishes and the distant tap-tap of the butlers’ hurrying sandals. The shrill cry of Tutīya had brought two of the three women to their feet. Dropping the cloaks that had enveloped them, they took their places at some distance in front of the third figure. Turning toward the royal dais the two dancers sank down in a slowly executed courtesy, until the nodding lotus-flowers that wreathed their curling wigs swept the flower-strewn floor below him. Then, in answer to Pharaoh’s scarcely perceptible acknowledgment, slowly they rose upon their slender feet and, with a “life and health, lords” placed themselves once more beside the still motionless central figure. All eyes were centered upon this well-cloaked figure. It, too, now rose. Was it motionless? It called to mind the birth of some glorious butterfly or moth. The undulating movement that one sees in the soon to be discarded shell best described the bursting of Nōfert-āri upon the delighted vision of her audience as, shivering with the peculiar motion seen but in those creatures of a day, she suddenly dropped the dull-brown cloak that enveloped her, and appeared fresh and smiling to their view. In the dancer Nōfert-āri we see a slim, though willowy form, a form and countenance that represented the very arch-type of all that an Egyptian held beautiful in women. A pair of sparkling eyes, elongated, obliquely set, gleamed in frames of blue-black antimony, which served to accentuate the striking whiteness in which swam their fathomless pupils.