The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson
the marshiness of the ground, and which had to be entered by means of ladders. Cocoa-nut palms overshadowed the huts, interspersed with incense trees, while near them flowed a copious stream, in which were a great variety of fishes. The principal chief of the country was a certain Parihu, who was married to a wife of an extraordinary appearance. A dwarf, hunchbacked, with a drawn face and short, deformed legs, she can scarcely, one would think, have been a countrywoman of the Queen of Sheba. She belonged, more probably, to one of the dwarfish tribes of which Africa has so many, as Dokos, Bosjesmen, and others. The royal couple were delighted with their visitors, and with the presents which they received from them; they made a sort of acknowledgment of the suzerainty of the Pharaohs, but at the same time stipulated that the peace and liberty of the land of Punt should be respected by the Egyptians. Perfect freedom of trade was established. The Egyptians had permission to enter the incense forests, and either to cut down the trees for the sake of the resin which they exuded, or to dig them up and convey them to the ships. We see the trees, or rather bushes, dug up with as much earth as possible about their roots, then slung on poles and carried to the sea-shore, and finally placed upright upon the ships' decks, and screened from the heat of the sun's rays by an awning. Thirty-one trees were thus embarked, with the object of transplanting them to Egypt, where it was hoped that they might grow and flourish. A large quantity of the resin was also collected and packed in sacks, which were tied at the mouth and piled up upon the decks. Various other products and commodities were likewise brought to the beach by the natives, and exchanged for those which the Egyptians had taken care to bring with them in their ships' holds. The most prized were gold, silver, ivory, ebony and other woods, cassia, kohl or stibium, apes, baboons, dogs, slaves, and leopard skins. The utmost friendliness prevailed during the whole period of the Egyptians' stay in the country; and at their departure, a number of the natives, of their own free-will, accompanied them to Egypt. Among these would seem to have been the deformed queen and several chiefs.
The return journey to Thebes was effected partly by way of the Nile. No doubt the sea-going ships sailed back to the harbour from which they had started; while the incense trees and other commodities were disembarked, and conveyed across the desert tract which borders the Nile valley towards the east; but instead of being brought to Thebes by land they were re-shipped on board a number of large Nile boats, and conveyed down the river to the capital. The day of their arrival was made a grand gala-day. All the city went out to meet the returning travellers. There was a grand parade of the household troops, and also of those which had accompanied the expedition; the incense trees, the strange animals, the many products of the distant country, were exhibited; a tame leopard, with his negro keeper, followed the soldiers; a band of natives, called Tamahu, engaged in a sort of sham-fight or war-dance. The misshapen queen and the chiefs of the land of Punt, together with a number of Nubian hunters from the region of Chent-hen-nefer, which lay far up the course of the Nile, were conducted to the presence of Hatasu, offered their homage to her as she sat upon her throne, and presented her with valuable gifts. "Homage to thy countenance," they said, "O Queen of Egypt, Sun beaming like the sun-disk, Aten, Arabia's mistress." An offering was then made by Hatasu to the god Ammon; a bull was sacrificed, and two vases of the precious frankincense presented to him by the queen herself. Sacrifice was likewise made and prayers offered to Athor, "Queen of Punt" and "Mistress of Heaven." The incense trees were finally planted in ground prepared for them, and the day concluded with general festivity and rejoicing.
The complete success of so important and difficult an enterprize might well please even a great queen. Hatasu, delighted with the result, did her best to prevent it fading away from human remembrance by building a new temple to Ammon, and representing the entire expedition upon its walls. At Tel-el-Bahiri, in the valley of El-Assasif, near Thebes, she found a convenient site for her new structure, which she imposed upon four steps, and covered internally with a series of bas-reliefs, highly coloured, depicting the chief scenes of the expedition. Here are to be seen, even at the present day, the ships—the most ancient representations of sea-going ships that the world contains—the crews, the incense-trees, the chiefs and queen of Punt, the native dwellings, the trees and fish of the land, the arrival of the expedition at Thebes in twelve large boats, the prostration of the native chiefs before Hatasu, the festival held on the occasion, and the offerings made to the gods. It is seldom that any single event of ancient history is so profusely illustrated as this expedition of Queen Hatasu, which is placed before our eyes in all its various phases from the gathering of the fleet on the Red Sea coast to the return of those engaged in it, in gladness and triumph, to Thebes.
After exercising all the functions of sovereignty for fifteen years, during which she kept her royal brother in a subjection that probably became very galling to him, Hatasu found herself under the necessity of admitting him to a share in the royal authority, and allowed his name to appear on her monuments in a secondary and subordinate position. About this time she was especially engaged in the ornamentation of the old temple of Ammon at Thebes, begun by Usurtasen I., and much augmented by her father, Thothmes I. The chief of all her works in this quarter were two obelisks of red granite, or syenite, drawn from the quarries of Elephantine, and set up before the entrance, which her father had made in front of Usurtasen's construction. These great works are unexcelled, in form, colour, and beauty of engraving, by any similar productions of Egyptian art, either earlier or later. They measure nearly a hundred feet in height, and are covered with the most delicately finished hieroglyphics. On them Hatasu declares that she "has made two great obelisks for her father, Ammon, from a heart that is full of love for him." They are "of hard granite of the South, each of a single stone, without any joining or division." The summit of each, or cap of the pyramidion, is "of pure gold, taken from the chiefs of nations," so that they "are seen from a distance of many leagues—Upper and Lower Egypt are bathed in their splendour"(!).
Hatasu reigned conjointly with Thothmes III. for the space of seven years. Their common monuments have been found at Thebes, in the Wady Magharah, and elsewhere. It is not probable that the relations of the brother and sister during this period were very cordial. Hatasu still claimed the chief authority, and placed her name before that of her brother on all public documents. She was, as she has been called, "a bold, ambitious woman," and evidently admitted with reluctance any partner of her greatness. Thothmes III., a man of great ambition and no less ability, is not likely to have acquiesced very willingly in the secondary position assigned to him. Whether he openly rebelled against it, broke with Hatasu, and deprived her of the throne, or even put her to death, is wholly uncertain. The monuments hitherto discovered are absolutely silent as to what became of this great queen. She may have died a natural death, opportunely for her brother, who must have wished to find himself unshackled; or she may have been the victim of a conspiracy within the palace walls. All that we know is that she disappears from history in about her fortieth year, and that her brother and successor, the third Thothmes, actuated by a strong and settled animosity, caused her name to be erased, as far as possible, from all her monuments. There is scarcely one on which it remains intact. The greatest of Egyptian queens—one of the greatest of Egyptian sovereigns—is indebted for the continuance of her memory among mankind to the accident that the stonemasons employed by Thothmes to carry out his plan of vengeance were too careless or too idle to effect the actual obliteration of the name, which they everywhere marred with their chisels. Hatred, for once, though united with absolute power, missed its aim; and Hatasu's great constructions, together with her "Merchant Fleet," are among the indisputable facts of history which can never be forgotten.
XII.
Thothmes the Third and Amenhotep the Second.
No sooner had Thothmes III. burst the leading-strings in which his sister had held him for above twenty years, then he showed the metal of which he