No reign was more distinguished than that of Hatasu for art and architecture. She completed the magnificent temple begun during her joint reign with her brother. An avenue of sphinxes led up to the gate towers and the obelisks, which were 97 feet in height, and made of red granite capped with gold. The temple itself stood upon four broad and stately terraces, which rose one above another until they touched the dazzling marble-like limestone cliff against which they rested; the terraces were covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and carvings in bas-relief. In the limestone rock above were excavated vast funeral chambers, and here were buried the queen’s father and mother, a sister who died young, and Thothmes ii. Here also Hatasu herself and Thothmes iii. were laid in due time, but none of these royal mummies have been suffered to remain in peace. To avoid violation and plunder, it became customary some centuries later to examine and to report upon the state of royal tombs and coffins from time to time, and to remove them occasionally to securer resting-places. Thus it came to pass in the great discovery of 1881, the empty coffin of Thothmes i. was found, together with the coffin and mummy of his son and successor, Thothmes ii.
To the architect Semnut, who so successfully carried out the grand conception of the terraced temple, his royal mistress raised a memorial—a statue in black granite in a sitting attitude of calm repose; on his shoulder is the inscription—‘His ancestors were not found in writing,’ i.e. they were unknown men, a not unfrequent phrase in Egyptian inscriptions. Semnut is represented as saying, ‘I loved him, and gained the admiration of the lord of the country. He made me great, and I have become first of the first, clerk of the works above all clerks. I lived during the reign of King Ma-Ka-Ra;[34] may he live for ever!’ No doubt it was the general custom thus to flatter the foible of their sovereign, who was, in fact, designated by a name signifying ‘Lady-King.’
Under the queen’s rule, however, there was an entire cessation of military enterprises, for Hatasu did not so far assume the character of a Pharaoh as to put on armour and lead her troops to the battle-field. Egypt therefore enjoyed unbroken tranquillity during her peaceful and brilliant reign—a reign not only distinguished for the splendour of its architecture, but memorable also for an expedition to the land of Punt. This expedition is portrayed in curious and interesting detail upon the stages of the terraced temple. Long ago we know that the Egyptian imagination had been stirred by the supposed marvels of that ‘sacred land’ of dream and legend. And in the days of Hatasu the expedition sent thither by King Sankhkara, centuries before, would not have been forgotten. By the queen’s command an embassy was despatched to its shores. Princes and lords were intrusted with rich and royal gifts for the purpose of conciliating the people of that land over which the Lady-King desired to establish a supremacy, although not at the sword’s point.
The expedition arrived in safety, and found the people inhabiting little dome-shaped dwellings, supported on piles and approached by ladders, under the shade of their cocoa-nut and incense-trees. The Egyptians, with their strong turn for natural history, were much interested by the novelties they beheld around them, the unfamiliar plants and trees, the strange birds and animals not known in Egypt. All went well. Gifts were exchanged, and the natives promised to acknowledge the supremacy of Egypt, and to send an annual tribute thither. The king of the country appeared on the scene accompanied, say the hieroglyphs, ‘by his enormously fat wife ... an ass serves the fat wife to ride on.’ This lady, the queen of the fairyland of Egyptian fancy, is in truth a painful object to behold; not merely fat but bloated, and swollen in such an extraordinary manner as to render it probable that, although the ‘Queen of Punt,’ she ‘was a leper.’
Soon began the work of packing and of lading the transport vessels with the rare and beautiful products of the land. The busy scene is delineated upon the walls of the temple, and the inscriptions relate how the ‘ships were laden to the uttermost with all the wonderful products of the land of Punt, with the precious woods of the divine land, with heaps of the resin of incense and fresh incense-trees; with ebony and objects carved in ivory and inlaid with gold, with sweet woods and paint for the eyes, with dog-headed apes and long-tailed monkeys, with greyhounds and with leopards, besides some of the natives and their children.’ The Egyptians, on the voyage home, were evidently much taken by the antics of the monkeys, as they sprang about amongst the sails, up and down the rigging. The fresh incense-trees, thirty-one in number, were carefully planted in tubs, and six men were assigned for the transport of each of them to the vessel which was to carry it north for transplantation into another soil.
Several of the princes and chief men of Punt accompanied the expedition on its return, and were received in state by the queen in her male attire. It is a pity we have no records that might convey the impression made by the wonders of Egypt upon the visitors in their turn. The rich treasures they had brought were offered by Hatasu to the god Amen-Ra with gladness and national rejoicings. The queen appeared in royal pomp; the priests carried in solemn procession ‘the sacred bark’ of the deity, before which the youthful Thothmes offered incense; the warriors of Hatasu’s guard followed, bearing branches in their hands as signs of peace, and tumultuous cries of joy rent the air on all sides.
The appearance of Thothmes on the scene proves that the time had come when his claims could no longer be ignored nor he himself be detained amid the distant and dreary marshes of the Delta by the jealous fears of the queen. The sight of the brave and handsome youth who had been King of Egypt by right for fifteen years could hardly fail to win the people’s hearts, and his imperious sister found herself at last compelled to let him take his place at her side, with what long suppressed feelings of rancour and ill-will may be readily imagined.
The coronation of Thothmes iii. was celebrated with all fitting splendour and state, and, for a short time at any rate, the brother and sister ruled jointly. But Hatasu must have felt that her day was over, and after a little while her name silently disappears from the historic records. Of the close of her life we know nothing, but we know that Thothmes, with vindictive satisfaction, chiselled out her name wherever he could find it, and that he always dated the years of his own reign from the time of his brother’s death, ignoring Hatasu’s sovereignty as a usurpation.
The reign of Thothmes, thus reckoned, was a very long one, close upon 54 years, and much of it was passed by the warlike sovereign in other lands and upon distant battle-fields.
Nubia was by this time really an Egyptian province, and was governed by a viceroy, who was often one of the king’s sons. In the gold-yielding districts a miserable population—prisoners, slaves, and criminals, were toiling beneath the scorching sun, extracting the gold from the stubborn stone; which had first to be hewn out, then crushed, and finally the grains of the precious metals to be washed out. Elsewhere the province was peopled by an active race, grouped around the temples, fortresses, and garrison towns, where they found employment, and received abundant supplies of food for their sustenance from Egypt; others were engaged in the navigation of the dangerous cataracts. The natives had grown accustomed to Egyptian rule, and were rapidly adopting Egyptian religion and civilisation. Their chief city Napata was indeed destined to become one day the seat of a strong Egyptian dynasty, and a stronghold of the worship of Amen-Ra.