Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the coloured plate in Lepsius.
He nevertheless felt obliged to treat it with consideration; he respected the rights of the feudal princes, and behaved himself in every way like a Pharaoh of the old royal line. He summoned his mother from Napatà, where he had left her, and after proclaiming her regent of the South and the North, he associated her with himself in the rejoicings at his coronation. This ceremony, celebrated at Tanis with the usages customary in the Delta, was repeated at Karnak in accordance with the Theban ritual, and a chapel erected shortly afterwards on the northern quay of the great sacred lake has preserved to us the memory of it. Akaluka, installed with the rank and prerogatives of the “Divine Spouse” of Amon, presented her son to the deity, who bestowed upon him through his priests dominion over the whole world. She bent the bow, and let fly the arrows towards the four cardinal points, which she thereby symbolically delivered to him as wounded prisoners; the king, on his part, hurled against them bullets of stone, and by this attack figuratively accomplished their defeat. His wars in Africa were crowned with a certain meed of success,* and his achievements in this quarter won for him in after time so much popularity among the Egyptians, that they extolled him to the Greeks as one of their most illustrious conquering Pharaohs; they related that he had penetrated as far as the Pillars of Hercules in the west, and that he had invaded Europe in imitation of Sesostris.
* The list inscribed on the base of the statue discovered by
Mariette contains a large number of names belonging to
Africa. They are the same as those met with in the time of
the XVIIIth dynasty, and were probably copied from some
monument of Ramses II., who had himself perhaps borrowed
them from a document of the time of Thûtmosis III. A bas-
relief at Medinet-Habu shows him to us in the act of smiting
a group of tribes, among which figure the Tepa, Doshrît, and
“the humbled Kush;” this bas-relief was appropriated later
on by Nectanebo.
What we know to be a fact is, that he secured to the valley of the Nile nearly twenty years of prosperity, and recalled the glories of the great reigns of former days, if not by his victories, at least by the excellence of his administration and his activity. He planned the erection at Karnak of a hypostyle hall in front of the pylons of Ramses II., which should equal, if not surpass, that of Seti I.*
* These columns have been looked upon as triumphal pillars,
designed to support statues or divine emblems. Mariette
thinks that they supported “an edifice in the architectural
style of the kiosk at Philæ and the small hypothral temple
on the roof of Denderah.” I am of opinion that the architect
intended to make a hypostyle hall, but that when the columns
were erected, he perceived that the great width of the aisle
they formed would render the strength of the roof very
doubtful, and so renounced the execution of his first
design.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.