had only fresh flowers, which were never wanting in the garden of her
son-in-law. Only a plain gold diadem, the badge of her royal descent,
always rested, from early morning till late at night, on her high brow--
for a woman too high, though nobly formed--and confined the long blue-
black hair, which fell unbraided down her back, as if its owner contemned
the vain labor of arranging it artistically. But nothing in her exterior
was unpremeditated, and the unbejewelled wearer of the diadem, in her
plain dress, and with her royal figure, was everywhere sure of being
observed, and of finding imitators of her dress, and indeed of her
demeanor.

And yet Katuti had long lived in need; aye at the very hour when we first
make her acquaintance, she had little of her own, but lived on the estate
of her son-in-law as his guest, and as the administrator of his
possessions; and before the marriage of her daughter she had lived with
her children in a house belonging to her sister Setchem.

She had been the wife of her own brother,

[Marriages between brothers and sisters were allowed in ancient
Egypt. The Ptolemaic princes adopted this, which was contrary to
the Macedonian customs. When Ptolemy II. Philadelphus married his
sister Arsinoe, it seems to have been thought necessary to excuse it
by the relative positions of Venus and Saturn at that period, and
the constraining influences of these planets.]

who had died young, and who had squandered the greatest part of the
possessions which had been left to him by the new royal family, in an
extravagant love of display.