An inscription in the temple of Karnak reads thus, it is as it were the deed of gift of the royal father Tahutmes I to his favorite child, and addressed to the god Amen: “I bestow the Black Land and the Red Land upon my daughter, the queen of Lower and Upper Egypt Ma-Ka-ra, living eternally. Thou hast transmitted the world into her power, thou hast chosen her as king.” Hatshepsut claimed divine origin in that the god Amen had taken upon him the person of her father and in an especial manner considered herself the daughter of the god. Hatshepset spelled with the e means “the first among the favorite women,” but the queen changed the e to u and later called herself Hatshepsut, which signifies “the first among the great and honorable nobles of the kingdom,” which she considered more befitting her exalted position.

The Eighteenth Dynasty is included in the Golden Age of Egyptian history, and in no period was its power more widely felt, its individual monarchs more remarkable or its architectural and literary remains grander or more impressive.

Before his death Tahutmes I seems to have had celebrated the marriage of his two children, his daughter of twenty-four and his son of seventeen. All things combined to put Hatshepsut in the first place, her more royal heritage, by the mother’s side, her father’s devotion to her, her superiority in years and her more striking talents, while Tahutmes II was perhaps both physically and mentally her inferior. Death at last had severed the tie which bound father and daughter together, but no such tender feeling seems to have existed between the two now occupying the throne, hers was the dominant will, hers is the prominent figure. After this she frequently wore male attire and the dress and ornaments belonging to a king, and doubtless, had it been a matter of choice, she would have been a man.

She styles herself “King Horus abounding in divine gifts, mistress of diadems, rich in years (not a claim the modern lady is ever anxious to establish) the golden Horus, goddess of diadems, queen of Upper and Lower Egypt, daughter of the sun, consort of Ammon, daughter of Ammon, living forever and dwelling in his breast.” Another inscription reads, speaking of her by her name Cheremtamun, “He has created (her) in order to exalt his splendor. She who creates beings like the god Chefr’a. She whose diadems shine like those of the god of the horizon.”

She used both the male and female sign and the title, “daughter of the sun.” As the sphinx bore sometimes a male, sometimes a female head, so this strange and wonderful woman assumed now the one, now the other character. A curious life this old Egyptian history brings before us, so permeated as it was with the constant thought of death and its belief, real or assumed, in the actual intercourse with a race of superior beings, gods, and yet set forth in the lowest images of the brute creation. To the poor and uneducated doubtless as in all idolatrous countries, the semblance seemed the reality and their thought did not pierce beyond the image before them, but the more intellectual and spiritual minds must have rent the veil of sense and stretched out longingly to the infinite beyond, if peradventure they might “feel after and find” the truly godlike.

Hatshepsut did not at once set to work, like the early kings, to build a pyramid in which she might herself be interred. Mundane subjects at first occupied her, and later she built a memorial to her father in the form of an obelisk which described his powers and virtues, and temples for the worship and to the glory of the gods.

Probably the regulation of the country and the administration of internal affairs occupied the earliest years of Hatshepsut’s rule, after the death of Tahutmes I, but in them she was also preparing for the expedition which was one of the great features of her reign and took place in its ninth year. Punt, a country on the eastern bank of the Red Sea, had been, to some extent, known to the Egyptians in the earliest times, those of Chafre’ of the Fourth Dynasty. “Under the name of Punt,” says one writer, “the old inhabitants of Kemi meant a distant land washed by the great ocean, full of valleys and hills, abounding in ebony and other rich woods, balsams, spices, precious metals and stones and of animals, hunting-leopards, panthers, dog-headed apes, etc.” It was the Ophir of the Egyptians, the present coast of Somali, perhaps the land in sight of Arabia, but separated by the Red Sea.

Old traditions said that it was the original seat of the gods, and from it had travelled the holy ones to the Nile valley, at their head Amen, called Kak, as king of Punt, Horus and Hathor. This last was the queen and ruler of Punt, Hor, the holy morning star, which rose to the west of the land. The god Bes also was peculiarly associated with the country. Under the last king of the Eleventh Dynasty is said to have taken place the first journey to Ophir and Punt, and the envoys sent were attended by three thousand men and brought back spices and precious stones. After that it seemed to relapse in the popular imagination into a sort of fairyland which was inhabited by strange serpents.

Like a new Columbus the great queen decided to attempt the rediscovery and exploration of these distant shores. Amen of Thebes, the lord of gods, it is said, had suggested the thought to her, “because he held this ruler so dear, dearer than any other king who had been in this country.” Pictures and accounts of this expedition were afterwards placed in illustration on the walls of the temple of Deir-el-Bahari, built by the queen, and the inscription concludes with the statement that nothing like it had been done under any king before. “And,” says an authority on these subjects, “it speaks the truth. Hatasu showed her people the way to the land whose products were later to fill the treasuries not only of the Pharaohs, but also of the Phoenicians and the Jews.”

It was a peaceful expedition, perhaps the only one that had ever been sent forth, this voyage of discovery, nearly sixteen hundred years before the Christian Era; but of course great preparations and even some military ones had to be made that in case of unexpected attack they might be prepared. Ships were built for the expedition, and doubtless years passed between the time of the first conception of the enterprise and its execution.

An inscription by the picture of the squadron thus describes it. “Departure of the squadron of the Lord of the two Worlds, traversing the great sea on the Good Way to the Land of the gods, in obedience to the will of the King of the gods, Amen of Thebes. He commanded that there should be brought to him the marvellous products of the Land of Punt, for he loveth the Queen Hatasu above all other kings that have ruled this land.”

A canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea which has been attributed to Seti I Miss Edwards claims as an engineering feat of Hatasu, as it would shorten the length of the voyage rather than to take the almost inconceivably long trip around the west coast of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, the Mosambique Channel and the coast of Zanzibar.

The ships, five in number, were large and stately for the time. They are described as having a narrow keel with stern and prow high above the water, seventy feet in length and with no cabin accommodations. A raised platform at either end, with a balustrade, probably afforded some shelter to the officers. A single mast supported the spreading sail, there were no decks and the hull was fitted with seats for the rowers. After the Old Empire all large boats were adapted for sailing, as well as rowing. Other vessels of this or a little later time were one-decked galleys with thirty oars, with seats and shrines and the stern ornamented with figures of animals. The cabin of those of royal or high rank was a stately house, with roof and pillars, sides brightly colored, in the fore, large paintings and the stern a gigantic lotus. The blade of the oar was like a bouquet of flowers with the head of the king at top, the sails the richest cloth of gay colors. A royal vessel of this description belonged to King Thothmes III, Hatasu’s successor and was called “Star of the two countries.”

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.

It took nineteen months from its first inception to the completion of her great obelisk and even so, when one thinks of its magnificent proportions, the work seems to have proceeded with wonderful celerity. Inscriptions by Senmut record the quarrying. Her brother’s name appears at the side. One face was covered with gold, which the queen is believed to have weighed out with her own hand. The beautifully carved centre was inlaid with electrum or silver gilt and related to herself. “Amen-Khnum Hatasu, the golden Horus, Lord of the two lands hath dedicated to her father, Amen of Thebes, two obelisks of Maket stone (red granite) hewn from the quarries of the South. Their summits were sheathed with pure gold, taken from the chiefs of all nations.” “His Majesty gave these two gilded obelisks to her father, Amen, that her name should live forever in his temple,” and adds towards the conclusion, “when Ra arises betwixt them as he journeys upward from the heavenly horizon they flood the two Egypts with the glory of their brightness.” Rosellini says, speaking of the fineness of the work, “every figure seems rather to have been impressed with a seal than graven with a chisel.” An inscription at the bottom states that it was erected to her father, Tahutmes I. This obelisk, with its mate, was to occupy a place in the centre court of the palace at Karnak. Dr. Naville, the explorer, discovered the burial chamber of Tahutmes in 1893 and a great altar erected by the queen.

In an inscription on part of the rock-cut temple of Speos Artemidos, south Beni-hasan, reciting her re-establishment of Egyptian power and worship after destruction by the Hyksos, Hatshepsut says: “The abode of the mistress of Qes (Kusae on west side) was fallen in ruin, the earth had covered her beautiful sanctuary and children played over her temple—I cleared and rebuilt it anew—I restored that which was in ruins and I completed that which was left unfinished. For there had been Amu in the midst of the Delta and in Hanar and the foreign hoardes of their number had destroyed the ancient works. They reigned ignorant of the god Ra.”

The temple of Deir-el-Bahri or “Dayre-el-Bahari,” its present Arabic name, was perhaps the greatest work of Hatshepsut’s life and enough of the ruins still remained for the clever French architect, M. Brune, to reconstruct its plan for us. The site was one that would have been chosen by the Greeks for a theatre, but the Egyptian dedicated it to what he deemed a higher object, the worship of the gods. Situated on a green plain, near the tombs of the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, it was a magnificent natural amphitheatre on the shore of the river and, terrace by terrace, rose from the edge of the water to its steep background of golden brown rock, in which the inner temple, the “holy of holies,” was excavated. Of its structure Senmut or Sen-Maut was the presiding genius. The name “Dayre-el-Bahari” means North church, or monastery, and was, of course, applied to it in later times from the ruins of an old monastery which was yet young and modern beside the original erection. An avenue of sphinxes connected the landing for boats with the four terraces. These were supported by earth-works and stone and guarded by hawk-headed figures, in marble, bearing the uraeus. Columns also supported it, some of them polygonal in shape, with the head of the goddess Hathor as a capitol, and were later restored and kept in order till the time of the Ptolemies. “This temple,” says one writer, “was a splendid specimen of Egyptian Art history, whether we consider the treatment of the stone or the richness of the colored decorations,” and it was unique in design and differed from all others. In the inner recesses of the rock-cut chambers was a picture of the queen, representing her as sucking the milk of the sacred cow, the incarnation of the goddess Hathor, thereby intimating her divine origin.

Some sixteen or seventeen years after the death of Tahutmes II the cartouch of Tahutmes III becomes associated with that of Hatshepsut and then her brilliant career terminates, but the end is wrapped in mystery. Whether she voluntarily laid aside her royal power, which seems unnatural and unlikely, whether she met with foul play or whether she died a natural death, we know not The remains of many others of her family, more or less illustrious, were found, but hers were not among them. Her place of sepulture was discovered by Mr. Rhind in 1841 in a cliff side near her temple, but, strange to say, was again lost sight of, and her successor, showing plainly his feeling towards her, has constantly chiselled out her name. A party of modern travelers, however, claim to have rediscovered it.

Her cartouch, which may be seen in Baedaker and other works, seems comparatively simple, beside the more elaborate ones of other monarchs. It is a circle with a dot in the centre, a small seated female figure, wearing the plumes of a goddess and below two right angles joined. The three hieroglyphic signs are explained to mean “Ma, the sitting figure of the goddess of Truth, Law and Justice; Ka, represented by the hieroglyphic of the uplifted arms and signifying Life, and the sun’s disk, representing Ra, the supreme solar god of the universe.”

Many memorials of this great queen, spite of the efforts made to destroy them, remain to us. The ruins of the temple, the great obelisks, one of which is still standing, various statues and statuettes, many sun-dried brick with her cartouch and that of her father, some of which can be seen in our own Metropolitan Museum in New York, a cabinet in wood and ivory, her standard, her signet ring in turquoise and gold, in the possession of an English gentleman, and, most interesting of all perhaps, the remains of her throne chair, now in the British Museum. It is made of a dark wood, not natural to Egypt, and probably from the land of Punt. The legs are decorated with ucilisks in gold, and the carven hoof of some animal. The other parts are ornamented with hieroglyphics in gold and silver and one fragmentary royal oval in which the name of Hatasu appears and thereby identifies the owner of the throne.

Thus ends in comparative mystery, darkness and silence this brilliant life, of which we were long in ignorance.

Says Curtis in his charming “Nile Notes”: “The history of Eastern life is embroidered to our youngest eyes in that airy arabesque—an Eastern book cannot be written without a dash of the Arabian Nights—the East throughout hath that fine flavor.”