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"(!).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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