The Egyptian woman, of the lower or middle classes at least, suffered no enforced seclusion. She came and went as her will led her, appearing in public without covered face, and chatting with acquaintances whom she met without having her conduct questioned or her modesty placed under suspicion. She might enjoy a banquet with the opposite sex, and at its close look upon the weird figure of a corpse carved in wood, placed in a coffin, which Herodotus says was carried around by a servant. As he shows the image to each guest in turn the servant says: "Gaze here and drink and be merry; for when you die such you will be." Thus was Epicurus anticipated in ancient Egypt. _Dum vivimus, vivamus._ The Egyptians generally, however, kept the next world always in view, and immortality played no small part in shaping the Egyptian life, both as to its men and its women. The Greek influence, which, after the days of Alexander, was destined to revolutionize Egyptian thought and custom, notwithstanding the efforts of the Ptolemies to win favor of the populace by revolutionizing the waning worship of Osiris, is illustrated in a poem written about one hundred years before Christ, a _Lament for the Dead Wife of Pasherenptah._ In this poem, the ancient hope of immortality is overcast, and the weeping spouse is enjoined: "Love woman while you may Make life a holiday, Drive every care away And earthly sadness." The first lady of the land was of course a queen. The queens of Egypt not unfrequently had a wide outlook upon the material progress of the people. This is well exemplified in the expedition of Queen Chuenemtamun of which we know from discovered monuments, which represent the ship being ladened with large and costly stores under her direction. Queen Hatshepsu fitted out a fleet of five ships and sent them to the land of Punt,--the southern coast of Arabia, or, as some suppose, the African coast south of Abyssinia,--that they might bring back scented fig trees which she would transplant in her gigantic orchard at Thebes. The tallest monolith in the world, of reddish granite and one hundred and eight feet high, said once to have been covered with a coating of gold, was the work of this famous queen. In a few cases queens ruled in Egypt, wives of kings governed jointly with their husbands, and there are instances in which pretenders to the throne married women of royal lineage that their claims might have at least the show of being legitimate. This was the case with Piankhi, one of the Ethiopian dynasty of kings, whose wife Ameniritis is described as a woman of rare intelligence and of superior merit; one who, because of her rare strength of character and wisdom, exerted a powerful influence in the government and won for herself great popularity in Thebes and the entire region around.