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Passage Illustrated: Ayesha Pronounces the Doom of the Amahagger who attacked the English

On the right and left stood the silent guards, robed in white and armed with great spears and daggers, and men and women mutes watching with hard curious eyes. Then, seated in her barbaric chair above them all, with myself at her feet, was the veiled white woman, whose loveliness and awesome power seemed to visibly shine about her like a halo, or rather like the glow from some unseen light. Never have I seen her veiled shape look more terrible than it did in that space, while she gathered herself up for vengeance.

At last it came.

“Dogs and serpents,” She began in a low voice that gradually gathered power as she went on, till the place rang with it. “Eaters of human flesh, two things have ye done. First, ye have attacked these strangers, being white men, and would have slain their servant, and for that alone death is your reward. But that is not all. Ye have dared to disobey me. Did I not send my word unto you by Billali, my servant, and the father of your household? Did I not bid you to hospitably entertain these strangers, whom now ye have striven to slay, and whom, had not they been brave and strong beyond the strength of men, ye would cruelly have murdered? Hath it not been taught to you from childhood that the law of Hiya is an ever fixed law, and that he who breaketh it by so much as one jot or tittle shall perish? And is not my lightest word a law? Have not your fathers taught you this, I say, whilst as yet ye were but children? Do ye not know that as well might ye bid these great caves to fall upon you, or the sun to cease its journeying, as to hope to turn me from my courses, or make my word light or heavy, according to your minds? Well do ye know it, ye Wicked Ones. But ye are all evil — evil to the core — the wickedness bubbles up in you like a fountain in the spring-time. Were it not for me, generations since had ye ceased to be, for of your own evil way had ye destroyed each other. And now, because ye have done this thing, because ye have striven to put these men, my guests, to death, and yet more because ye have dared to disobey my word, this is the doom that I doom you to. That ye be taken to the cave of torture, and given over to the tormentors, and that on the going down of to-morrow’s sun those of you who yet remain alive be slain, even as ye would have slain the servant of this my guest.” [Chapter XV, “Ayesha Gives Judgment,” pp. 180-181]

Commentary: Judgment Day

Here Haggard and Greiffenhagen realise an important aspect of Ayesha's social function among the Amahagger. We and the English travellers have regarded her as a vain and capricious beauty who delights in exercising her powers to fascinate and emotionally captivate members of the opposite sex. However, in her function of She-who-must-be-obeyed she can be — as here — a stern and unrelenting judge of transgressors, not so much violators of any abstract law, but of wilfully disobeying of her expressed commandments. She had told Billali and his followers that the travellers were to be assisted in approaching her, and were in no way to be exploited or interfered with. When the Ammahagger attacked Leo, Holly, and Job after attempting to kill (and consume) the Arab helmsman, they violated those time-ordained social norms; now She, enwrapped in her mummy shroud and completely inscrutable, exacts vengeance for her subjects' disobedience.

In the picture, Holly occupies a central position on her dias, immediately below her throne, whereas the illustrator omits Job and Leo. The narrator is thus well positioned to observe the reactions of the bound, submissive captives who were, only a short time before, acting like unrestrained, blood-thirsty cannibals. The artist, however, does include nine spears to suggest Ayesha's bodyguards, through whose presence, of course, she enforces her dread pronouncements. Although her throne is hardly "barbaric" in the lithograph, it is certainly massive and spartan, in contrast to the ornate walls with their low-relief sculptures.

Bibliography

Haggard, H. Rider. "SHE:" A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. The Graphic Magazine, Vols. XXXIV and XXXV. 2 October 1886 to 8 January 1887.

Haggard. H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. New York: Harper & Bros., 1887.

Haggard, H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure.  Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888, rpt. 1927.

Haggard, H. Rider. She. Project Gutenberg EBook #3155 produced by John Bickers; Dagny; William Kyngesburye; David Kyngesburye; David Widger. 2016. Web. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Royal Mummies recently Unbandaged at the Boulak Museum, Egypt. The Graphic Magazine, No. 870, Vol. XXXIV. 31 July 1886, p. 102 and 109.

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