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.’