The Stolen Queen

by Fiona Davis

Sometimes, as Charlotte translated the ostraca, she wished she’d been born in ancient Egypt, when women and men had many of the same rights under the law. If a woman divorced or her husband died, she retained a third of the property. Divorce and remarriage weren’t frowned upon, nor were children born out of wedlock, nor sexual relations between unmarried people. In fact, life in old Luxor sounded a lot more fun to Charlotte than life in the modern world, where women had limited rights and the idea of a dalliance was considered shocking and immoral.

Clothes protected; clothes were armor. Clothes were a distraction when things got difficult.

“It’s not about the dress, it’s about the life you’re living in the dress.

“ ‘Antique’ is French for ‘old.’ Anything that’s at least one hundred years old is antique. Antiquities run from 5000 BC to about the fall of Rome, around 500 AD.”

“Within the silent green-cool groves of an inner world where, alone and free, you may dream the possible dream: that the wondrous is real, because that is how you feel it to be, that is how you wish it to be. And how you wish it into being.”

Death, to the ancient Egyptians, was not an end; it was a continuation of the life already lived. In the underworld, the spirit ultimately faced judgment by Osiris, its leader. After offering up a list of denials of wrongdoing, the truth of the matter was tested: The spirit’s heart was placed on one side of a scale, and a feather—the symbol of truth and justice—was placed on the other. If the scales were balanced, the eternal life of the person’s spirit would be much like that of an abundant earthly life, surrounded by riches, servants, and plenty of food and drink. Those who failed the test had their hearts fed to Ammut, “the Devourer”—a beast that was part crocodile, part lion, and part hippo—and their souls cast into darkness.