Thutmes stood it as long as he could, and then he broke over. He ordered the stonecutters to go forth and gouge out all the inscriptions relating to his superior aunt. The temple which she had built as a special memorial he appropriated to himself, and put his name over the main entrance. It may have been pretty spiteful, but the whole proceeding somehow seems to establish a sympathetic link between those remote heathen days and the unselfish Utopian civilisation that we now enjoy in Chicago, Omaha, West Superior, and other centres of brotherly love.
After Thutmes had put in years erasing and chiselling out all complimentary references to Hatasoo, he passed away and was carried to a winding subterranean tomb in the valley to the west. For two hundred years the great monuments which he had erected in his own honour, or quietly borrowed from his aunt, remained intact. Then along came Rameses Second, to whom we have already referred as the best little advertiser of ancient times. He had the name of Thutmes removed from all the temples, obelisks, and public buildings, and put his own glaring label on everything in sight. In the language of Mr. Peasley, the Kings seemed to spend most of their time in "knocking their predecessors" and "boosting" themselves.
Nearly every ancient structure has been defaced or altered to gratify a private jealousy or some prejudice founded on religious belief. The Romans tried to obliterate the old Egyptian deities. The early Christians hacked away at anything that failed to strike them as being orthodox. Then the Turks capped the climax by coming in and burning everything non-Mohammedan that was at all combustible. A few ancient records remain because they are carved in huge characters on very hard stone. The theologians wanted to batter them down, but it would have meant a lot of hard work and they had been leading sedentary lives. So they merely criss-crossed them and wrote the equivalent for "Rats" underneath, and let it go at that.
Egyptian temple paintings
Even the modern circus bill is not more exuberant and given to joyful hyperbole than the inscriptions and paintings of the Egyptian temples. A few of them are reproduced herewith. Take No. 1, for example. This represents our old friend Rameses the Great in the act of overcoming his enemies. It was designed by Rameses himself. Now we know where Kaiser Wilhelm got all of his tips.
Where Kaiser Wilhelm got all his tips