Predecessors of Cleopatra

by Leigh North

Another description speaks of war ships having the poop twisted, with armed mariners in helmets of brass, with four short masts and on each a large castle containing bowmen with steel-headed arrows. Upon the prow a sort of fortress, the soldiers carrying long spears and oval shields decorated with hieroglyphics in brilliant colors. Above the rowers large black Ethiopians in steel cuirasses and long swords. The captains in variegated armor and accompanied by a thousand soldiers and three hundred rowers. The prow ornamented with a lion’s head and colossal shoulders across a broad gilded image of the feathered globe of the sun, the emblem of Egypt and the inscription, “Mistress of the World.” But Hatasu’s fleet was going on a peaceful errand and required no such panoply of war. Experienced seamen managed it, while soldiers, ambassadors and, some say, even ladies, accompanied it and bore with them a variety of presents to win the friendship and favor of the inhabitants of this strange land. The envoys had a small guard of soldiers, but all included did not number more than two hundred and ten men.

The voyagers were met with a friendly welcome and returned with stores of treasures. The inhabitants of Punt lived in little round shaped huts, built on stages and reached by ladders, all under the shade of spreading palms. A picture on the wall of the temple shows the prince of the land Parihu by name, with his wife, Ati or Aty, the latter fat and ungainly (though probably considered a specimen of great beauty by her countrymen), with a donkey to ride upon, followed by two sons and a young daughter, the last giving promise of rivaling her mother in rotundity of outline. Gold, spices, ivory, incense bearing trees, to the number of thirty-one, precious gums, used in the service of the temple, and various animals were brought back to Egypt as a result of this most successful journey. The return was celebrated by a high festival in the temple. Hatshepsut or Hatasu appeared in fullest royal attire, adorned in the richest manner, a helmet on her head, a spotted leopard skin covering her shoulders and her limbs “perfumed like fresh dew.” She offered incense to the god Amen, as his priestess, bearing two bowls full and weighing out gold with her own hand. This was before the sacred boat of Amen Ra, with a ram’s head at each end, and carried by high priests, also in leopard skins. The Naka, or incense bearing trees, were borne in tubs, and the weights for weighing the precious metals were gold rings in the shape of recumbent oxen.

Later, as was his iconoclastic wont, Rameses II destroyed some of these pictures and inscriptions and inserted his own name.

Although the name of Tahutmes II, husband and co-ruler with the queen, is not specially mentioned in connection with this great expedition, he shared in the after festival. He, too, designated by his court name of King Menkhefer-ka-ra, offered incense in the boat of Amen, carried on the shoulders of men. “Thus,” says Miss Edwards, “to the sound of trumpets and drums, with waving of green boughs and shouts of triumph, and followed by an ever gathering crowd, the great procession takes its way between avenues of sphinxes, past obelisks and pylons, and up one magnificent flight of steps after another till the topmost terrace of the Great Temple is reached, where the Queen herself welcomed them to the presence of Hathor, the Beautiful, the Lady of the Western Mountain, the Goddess Regent of the Land of Punt.”

At what period is not exactly known, but of course earlier than this, since he is believed to have designed the beautiful temple of Deir el Bahri, the queen called to her assistance the services of the architect Senmut, whose statue is in the Berlin Museum. He, it is implied, usurped the place in Hatasu’s affection which rightfully belonged to her husband, but of this it is not possible to speak with any degree of certainty or authority. We only know that he was a man of great ability in his own line, of intelligent mind and skillful hand, and was highly appreciated by her majesty. In an inscription in the Berlin Museum he says his lady ruler made him “great in both countries” and “chief of the chiefs” in the whole of Egypt. The buildings which the queen and he erected are said to be among the most tasteful, complete and brilliant in the land. He was of lowly birth, and therefore his position was the more surprising. He appears to have occupied in the queen’s counsels something of the place of Disraeli to Queen Victoria, whose Jewish origin made his occupancy of the position he gained remarkable. After Senmut’s death Hatasu raised to him a stone memorial as a token of gratitude, with his portrait in black granite and in an attitude of repose. On his shoulder were the short but significant words, “there was not found in writing his ancestors.” He is also introduced in an inscription, as himself speaking, where he used the male pronoun “he” in mentioning the queen refers to his own services and ends with styling her “the lord of the country, the King of Makara.”

Senmut was evidently the chief counsellor and favorite of Hatshepsut, but there was also another highly regarded officer who shared with or succeeded him in the queen’s favor and good graces. This was a certain Aahmes, who had also served her father, Thothmes, or Tahutmes I, and whose tomb was discovered by Brugsch, and bears this inscription, “I was during my existence in the favor of the king, and was rewarded by His Holiness, and a divine woman gave me further reward, the defunct great queen Makara (Hashop), because I brought up her daughter, the great queen’s daughter, the defunct Nofrerura.” It is of course plain that he survived the queen, but we do not know whether he met with equal favor at the hand of her successor. Possibly the mother’s heart, little given to tenderness, may have had an especial softness towards this “nurse” or tutor of her dead child, her father’s trusted servant and perhaps, on that very account, hers also.

Two children were born to the queen, both daughters, Neferura, the heiress, who is spoken of as “the mistress of both lands,” who died in the beginning of the reign of Tahutmes III, and Hatasu Meri or Merytra, who it is estimated was born about 1512 B. C. and became heiress Princess, inheriting all her mother’s rights. To establish the throne more firmly therefore, she was married to Tahutmes III. This king was long supposed to be the youngest son of Tahutmes I, but the latest authorities, although they do not speak with absolute assurance, incline to believe he was the son of Tahutmes II, by a concubine, hence he was in one case the uncle, and in the other the half or step-brother of the young princess, but with a less direct title to the throne than she. A certain Renekheb is also spoken of as a tutor of the young queen. This marriage appears to have taken place when they were both children and before the death of Tahutmes II, which is proved by the cartouches of Tahutmes II and Tahutmes III being found together upon some of the monuments, and at the same time suggests that the juvenile pair, nominally at least, shared in the government.

Tahutmes II, born about 1533 B. C., appears to have died at about thirty, in 1503, and some writers maintain that Hatshepsut usurped the power which rightfully belonged to Tahutmes III, but Miss Edwards (ever ready to champion her heroine) finds in the above fact strong proof that the queen really protected the interests of her young half-brother or nephew. While Petrie admits that it would be unlikely and perhaps even unnatural that a capable and ambitious woman, still in the prime of life, should immediately hand over the reins of government, placed in her hands by her father, to a young and inexperienced boy and justifies her retention of them, the more that it was she and not he who had the stronger legal claim. Be this as it may, if Tahutmes III owed gratitude to Hatshepsut for care or protection he showed her little return. Whether from the general unpopularity of mothers-in-law, from her treatment of his brother or uncle, from the feeling that he was suppressed and kept in the background, or from some unknown cause, he evidently hated her. When he came into power he endeavored to destroy the memorials of her from off the earth and cause her memory even to be forgotten. He injured or erased her name constantly and whenever possible and substituted that of his brother or himself.

Tahutmes I had continued the building of Thebes and set up his two granite obelisks. Tahutmes II and Hatshepsut continued building at Karnak, the temple having been in existence, it is said, as far back as the Eleventh Dynasty. So gigantic was the scale on which these architectural works were undertaken that one life seldom saw their completion. Like the coral reef the temples grew and were added to, monarch after monarch of succeeding generations taking a share in the general design.

Tahutmes I had raised at Karnak two obelisks seventy feet in height, his daughter’s far outdid them, for hers were the loftiest then known in Egypt, a flawless block of red granite or rose quartz, rising 108 or 109 feet into the air. This was erected in the sixteenth year of her reign and after the death of her husband, which took place some dozen or more years after that of his father. Probably the ceremonial mourning was observed for him, but the heart of Hatshepsut was hard and cold and even if we exonerate her from the implication of being directly concerned in his decease, which stands “not proven,” there seems little doubt that she rejoiced to be comparatively free and hold the reins of power exclusively in her own hands. Nothing seemed missing from her life or her pursuits, which she followed with renewed energy and appeared more constantly than ever in male attire, the short kilt and sandals, the war helmet and even perhaps, as in her reproduction, a beard. Architecture was evidently of great interest to her as to many of her predecessors and obelisks and temples still, after the lapse of centuries, bear witness to her power and skill.