The great Hatasu was no more and after her no woman held such extended and absolute sway. The next queen whose name occurs at all prominently is Maut-a-mua, or Maut-em-va, “Mother of the boat,” wife of Tahutmes IV and mother of Amenophis III. She appears to have held the regency after her husband’s death till her son assumed full power, or if not actually in this official position, to have had great influence with him. The tie between mother and son was a close one and even his marriage did not seem to weaken it.

But before entering upon such fragmentary history of her as remains to us it may be well to enumerate briefly the lists of sovereigns which connects Hatasu or Hatshepsut with her great grandson’s or great nephew’s wife. Her half-brother or step son-in-law, Tahutmes or Thothmes III, sometimes called the Alexander of Egypt, who succeeded or wrested the power from her hands, had a long reign of fifty-three or fifty-four years. Hatshepsut died at fifty-nine, and Tahutmes III ascended the throne at thirty-one years of age. The computation of his reign probably dates from the time he was first associated with his sister or stepmother in the regal power. He was one of the most noted of the Egyptian kings, laid aside the peace policy of his predecessors and entered on a series of wars and conquests, marked with many cruelties. The records of his military expeditions are said to give us great insight into the condition of Syria and Palestine about the fifteenth century B. C. He, like his predecessor, was interested in architecture, builded and added to the temples and showed individual taste in his additions. He has left more monuments behind him than any of the Egyptian kings but Rameses II. He built at Heliopolis, Memphis, Thebes, Elephantine and nearly every town in Nubia. Four of his obelisks have come down to us—one in Rome, one in Constantinople, one in London and one in New York. These last bear the popular title of “Cleopatra’s needle,” though erected in a much earlier time than the era of that renowned queen. The first, “the greatest of all extant monoliths,” is standing before the church of St. John Lateran, at Rome. Many, many years were occupied in its preparation. Obelisks were generally erected in pairs and occasionally several of them in succession formed an avenue. In the temple of Deir el Bahri are pictures of Hatshepset and Tahutmes III making offerings to the gods. Says Baedaker: “On the upper part of the right wall is a noteworthy scene. Makere, Hatshepsut I, Thutmosis III, and the Princess Ranofru sacrificing to the boat of Ammon, behind which stands Thutmosis I with his consort, Aahmes, and their little daughter, Binofru. A similar scene was represented above the recess on the left wall; the kneeling Thutmosis III and the Princess Binofra may still be distinguished.” The statues of Tahutmes III are numerous, but not colossal.

He “took to wife” in the old Eastern phrase, Hatasu-Meri, daughter of the great Hatshepsut and his own near relative, but our knowledge of her is extremely limited. She evidently did not inherit her mother’s characteristics and possibly did not live any great length of time. Or if her husband transferred to her any portion of the dislike which he so evidently bore her mother he may have purposely kept her in the background, but in any case she cannot be looked upon as an assertive character. Her second name is given as Meri or Merira and there is a picture of her on a throne behind, not beside, her husband. She is, however, attired as a goddess, with whip, ankh and tall plumes. This is at Medinet Habu; again she is spoken of as Meryt-ra Hatshepset, mother of Amenophis II, and a scene in a tomb represents her, accompanied by her son. A female sphinx representing her with her husband’s name inscribed was found in the temple of Isis and is now in the Baracco collection at Rome and casts are at Turin and Berlin. One inscription, and possibly more, remain, however, speaking of her as “beloved consort,” or some other form expressing a degree of affection, but at this late period it is impossible to determine whether it was the usual conventional phrase or had some foundation in truth. She lived and died, but whether her life was a long and happy one or short and sorrowful we cannot tell.

The reign of Tahutmes III is among the longest in history. It was, however, exceeded by some monarchs, Louis XIV, seventy-two years. George III and Queen Victoria over sixty, Henry III occupied the throne fifty-six years, Edward III fifty, and there was also one of the Mogul Emperors, as well as others. A glass vase in the British Museum, said to be the oldest in existence, bears the name of Tahutmes III. There are various mementoes or memorials of him in different places, the most personal perhaps, his coffin, much damaged and stripped of its gilding, which may be seen in the Gizeh Museum.

Amenophis or Amenhotep II, son probably of Hatasu-Meri, succeeded his father. Of him also we read as a warrior and a cruel one, bringing back the bodies of several kings whom he had slain with his own hand. The Egyptians were said not to be so cruel in battle as the Assyrians, but there seems little to choose between them. There is a picture of Amenophis II on the wall at Abd-el-Gurneh, as a child on the lap of a nurse, the heads and backs of five Asiatics serving him as a footstool, implying doubtless that he himself would be, or his father before him had been, a warrior and a conqueror. There is also a kneeling statue of him, in later life, holding a globular vase in his hand. He succeeded to the throne when young, perhaps at eighteen, and his reign was comparatively short as was that of his son and successor, Tahutmes IV. His queen was named Ta-aa and is recorded on a double statue of her and her son, Tahutmes IV. She is called “royal mother and wife,” showing her to be his mother. We knew less of her than of almost any of the queens, that she continued the royal line and her name seems but brief record of her.

Of Tahutmes IV it is said that he spent much time in youth in hunting and field sports. He married Mautamua, or Maut-em-va, or as she is again spoken of, Moutetemarait, possibly an Ethiopian princess. Various inter-marriages, as in modern times not unfrequently, making the families in adjacent kingdoms near of kin.

The name of Tahutmes IV is especially associated with the great Sphinx and we cannot doubt the whole matter was of much interest to the queen also. The god Harmaehis appeared to the king in a dream and promised him his special favor if he would dig out the Sphinx which bore his image and lay half buried in the sand. The monarch obeyed, restored and repaired the grand monument and built a temple at its base. This stands between the two extended paws, on one of which the king’s name has been found inscribed. It was an open temple with an altar and on the breast of the colossus was the memorial stone with the king’s name, made of red granite.

Dreams seem to have borne a special art in the family history. The queen also had a noted dream. It was said that she was sleeping in the most beautiful room in the palace and awoke and saw her husband by her side. Then a few moments after the figure of the god Amen appeared and, when she cried out in alarm, he predicted the birth of her son and vanished in clouds of sweet perfume. Hence the young king was considered in a sense the son of the god. Mautamua is elsewhere called a princess of Mitanni and seems to have been won with difficulty by the young Egyptian prince or kin. One of the tablets found says: “When the father of Nimmuriya (Tahutmes IV) sent to Artotama my grandfather and asked for his daughter to wife, my grandfather refused his request, and though he sent the fifth time and the sixth time he would not give her to him. It was only after he had sent the seventh time that he gave her to him, being compelled for many reasons.” This was among the noted collection of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets and is believed by late authorities to refer to Queen Maut-amua, who is also spoken of as the divine wife and mother.

The queen’s home was in Thebes, which had succeeded Memphis as the great city of the Empire, standing, it is said, to Ethiopia and Egypt “in the relation occupied by Rome to MediÆval Christianity, the capital sacerdotal city of all who worshipped the god Amen.” On the wall of what is called the “Birth Room” at the temple of Luxor are various reliefs relating to the birth of Amenophis III, showing Queen Maut-a-mua, the nurses, the goddess Isis and others. In one the Queen, after the birth of her son (Ra-ma-neb), is seen kneeling on a kind of dais. The goddess Hathor kneels facing her with the babe in her arms. The Ka of both are repeated, making double figures, and the sacred cow suckles the child. For some reason, not given, Amenophis III was particularly rich in Ka names, for he had seven. Another relief shows Hathor presenting the child to the goddess Safekh, and to Amen-Ra, the god of Thebes. Behind Amen-Ra stands the god Nilus and behind him another carrying three ankhs or life signs for the family, throne and Ka name. Safekh dips her pen in ink to record his birth; the royal and Ka ovals are inscribed above. Says Miss Edwards: “Each sovereign on succeeding to the throne not only assumed a throne name, but took also a name for his Ka. The throne name was enclosed in a royal oval, or cartouch, like the family name, but the Ka name was represented as if inscribed above the false doorway, just where the name of a deceased person would be inscribed above the actual door of his sepulchre.”

As the goddess Safekh was the patron deity of libraries we may judge that the king had intellectual tastes, though we know him to have been something of an athlete and a great sportsman. Indeed, it was to this last that he owed his wife, for it was on a hunting expedition that he encountered and fell in love with her. Queen Maut-amua and her daughter-in-law, Ti or Thi, were associated much together, as were Queen Aahotep and her daughter-in-law, Nefertari-Aahmes, though not so generally considered divinities as were the founders of the race.

Maut-a-mua must have been a woman of intellect, capacity and attraction since she was her son’s guardian, and probably regent, and his attachment to her seems to have been strong and enduring. She lived many years after her husband, whose reign was brief, lasting not more than eight or nine years.

The likenesses of these various kings and queens are often found among the wall pictures in the tombs and are reproduced in many of the books on Egypt. The bas-reliefs and statues which decorated temples and tombs were mostly painted. Says Maspero: “That the Egyptians studied from Nature is proved by the facility with which they seized likenesses and drew the appropriate movements of animals. These figures are strange, but they live and have a certain charm.” To paint men brown and women yellow was the rule, but to this there were occasional exceptions. At Sackuarah, in the time of the Fifth Dynasty, the flesh tint of the men is yellow, while at Istamboul, or Abu Simbel, it is red, as also in the tombs of the epoch of Thotmosis IV.

The early Egyptian is said to have had a fine forehead, small, aquiline nose and a well-formed chin. The picture preserved of Queen Maut-a-mua, with the royal asp above her forehead, gives a long, slightly aquiline nose and a small, well-shaped chin. It is rather startling, in turning to her daughter-in-law, Ti, to find this face repeated in a sort of caricature, devoid of beauty. As in most cases, doctors differ as to the amount of reliance that can be placed upon the verisimilitude of the portraits and statues of these various kings and queens that have come down to us. Some authorities maintain that there existed an ideal conventional type, to which the actual bore little or no resemblance, and point out how each is but the modification of the other. Some again claim for them considerable authenticity. Perhaps a middle ground may come nearest to the truth. The conventional type no doubt dominated the painter’s or sculptor’s mind. But when the statues are proved to have been executed in the lifetime of the original it seems likely that some resemblance was aimed at, and the differences that exist go to show this. Also in many cases they belonged to the same family, and may well have had features common to all; as in later times the Hapsburgh jaw was handed down from generation to generation. How hard we have found it to reconcile the picture in the various galleries with the reputation of the charming, beautiful and unhappy Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and yet doubtless there was a resemblance. How often, too, the photograph of a near and dear friend has an utterly unfamiliar aspect. So that we may fairly admit that even in these ancient times statues and pictures (at least in some cases) a suggestion of the original may remain to us.

The head of Tahutmes IV, which is preserved in a statue or statuette, gives a pleasing face, with an amiable expression. At Luxor, Queen Maut-a-mua appears without the king, but with her son, whose paternity is ascribed to Amen. There is also a picture of the king, smiting some negroes, and behind is a queen called Ai’at who is spoken of as royal daughter, sister and wife, but it is thought this may be intended for an ideograph of the “goddess queen,” Maut-a-mua, as there is no other trace of her. On one private tomb is a picture of Amenophis III and his mother, and there are also various small remains in the way of scarabs, rings, etc. In one of the reliefs in the “Birth Room,” before referred to, the god Amen and the queen are seated upon the hieroglyphic symbol for heaven and supported by the goddesses Selqet and Neith.

King Amenophis III did not resemble his mother. It is quite a different face, with good features and a resolute, though pensive expression. The forehead is high, the eyes full, the nose long but rounded at the end, the upper lip short, and the chin prognathous. He is described as amiable and generous, and showed deference and strong affection both for mother and wife. He seems among the most pleasing of the Egyptian kings. Engaged in wars, devoted to hunting, especially the chase of the lion, which led him far afield, he was yet, as were many of his predecessors, deeply interested in architectural enterprises and the era is noted for the spirit and beauty of its sculpture. Court and colonnade at Karnak were of his building, and on the walls of various apartments are pictures of the coronation of the king and other details of his life.

He is best known to us, and his fame rests chiefly on the marvellous colossi which he erected, “the grandest the world has ever seen.” They are sixty feet high, and when they wore the crown of an Egyptian king, which has since been destroyed, towered seventy feet into the air, a solid block of sandstone. Miss Martineau, a traveller of comparatively modern times, thus describes the impression they made upon her. “There they sit, together yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Europe. I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this pair has been conceived of by the imagination of Art, nothing certainly, even in Nature, ever affected me so unspeakably. The pair, sitting alone amid the expanse of verdure, with islands of ruins behind them, grow more striking to us every day. The impression of sublime tranquility which they convey, when seen from distant points, is confirmed by a nearer approach. There they sit, keeping watch, hands on knees, gazing straight forward, seeming, though so much of the face is gone, to be looking over to the monumental piles on the other side of the river, which became gorgeous temples after these throne seats were placed here—the most immovable thrones that have ever been established on the earth.”

It is rarely that the name of an Egyptian sculptor is preserved, but this case is an exception. An inscription records his name and his naturally proud and exultant feelings at the completion of his work. He was called Amen-hotep or Amen-hept, and thus speaks: “I immortalized the name of the king and no one has done the like of me in my works. I executed two portrait statues of the king, astonishing for their breadth and height, their completed form dwarfed the temple tower; forty cubits was their measure: they were cut in the splendid sandstone mountain, on either side the eastern and the western, I caused to be built lightships whereon the statues were carried up the river; they were emplaced in their sublime temple; they will last as long as heaven. A joyful event was it when they were landed at Thebes and raised up in their place.”

The stone is of a yellowish brown color and very difficult to work. Both statues represent the king and stood before a temple which he built, but of which the veriest fragments remain. We are reminded somewhat by the sculptor’s triumphant pÆan of the good Un’e, who was minister to Pepi VI and so exulted in his work and position. Fond as Amenophis was of both his mother and his foreign wife, for whose pleasure and diversion he constructed a great lake, neither of them sit beside him or share the honor of so majestic a statue, as we might suppose, especially as regards his wife, would have been the case; he immortalizes himself alone. Two figures of queens, Maut-a-mua and Ti, are, however sculptured at the base of the statues; they measure eighteen feet in height, but appear small beside the colossi. Says one visitor, the surface of the statues was originally beautifully polished. The thrones on which they are seated are covered with sculptures; the god Hapi (the Nile) is weaving together the lotus lily and papyrus plant, implying the rule of the monarch over Upper and Lower Egypt.

Homer calls Amenophis III, the Memnon of the Greeks, “the most stately of living men,” and according to a later legend he was the son of Aurora. It was during the Roman imperial epoch that they were taken for the statues of Memnon, who slew Nestor’s son, Antiochus, in the Trojan war, and was himself slain by Achilles, and to explain the fact that the Trojan hero should thus appear in Egypt a legend was invented. The so-called “vocal Memnon,” the more Eastern of the statues, greeted his mother, Eos, with musical sounds and the morning dews were supposed to be the tears which the goddess shed upon her beloved child. The two statues stood at the end of an avenue of gigantic figures, leading to the temple of Amen, and from the river to the temple, a mile in length, went the Strada Regia, the royal street of Thebes.

Says our own Curtis, who has written so charmingly of his Egyptian experiences: “Yearly comes the Nile humbly to his feet, and leaving them pays homage. Then receding slowly leaves water plants wreathed around the throne, on which he is sculptured as a good genius harvesting the lotus, and brings a hundred travellers to perpetuate the homage. These sublime sketches in stone are an artist’s work. In those earlier days Art was not content with the grace of Nature, but coped with its proportions. Vain attempts, but glorious!” The fact of this musical note being heard from “the darling of the dawn” is recorded on the base of the statue, and is mentioned by Strabo, the elder Pliny and many others. Sandy beaches sometimes emit musical sounds and something in the structure of the rock, warmed by the rays of the rising sun, may have caused the sounds to be heard, or they may have been produced by artificial means, at the instance of the priests, striving to impress the people. The true origin of the mystery was never discovered, though its existence seems well attested, and eventually the sounds ceased, probably as the result of an earthquake or the restoration of the figures which was undertaken by a later king. Another theory lays the injury of the statues at the door of Cambyses, who was credited with all possible crimes, and a sculptured inscription reads: “I wrote after having heard Memnon. Cambyses has wounded me. A stone cut into the image of the sun-king. I had once the sweet voice of Memnon, but Cambyses has deprived me of the accents which express joy and grief.”

The sounds are said by some authorities to have been heard during a period of two hundred and twenty years. Travellers in ancient times (like the modern vandal) were very fond of scribbling their names on monuments, which should be held in more respect, and a number of these, including some of their remarks and silly verses, have been found on the base of the statue and refer to the sounds. At the time of their erection the level of the Nile was evidently different from that of the present day for its waters, as Curtis has said, now occasionally leave the feet of the giant pair.

Amenophis III began quarrying stone for his numerous architectural works in the first and second years of his reign from quarries near Silseleh, and his palace was said to resemble that subsequently built by his son at Tel-el-Amarna in some respects. Scarabs bearing the name of this king are to be seen in our own New York Museum, as also in various other places, but those of Tahutmes III are still more frequent here. The tomb of Amenophis III was found in the west valley of the Tombs of the Kings by a French expedition.

Queen Maut-a-mua had the pleasure, we may believe, of seeing a number of grandchildren, as Amenophis III had four sons and three daughters, if not others unmentioned, and so kindly seem to have been the family relations that we may perhaps picture her with her son’s wife in the midst of the home circle spoiling them quite like a modern grandmother. Up to this period the men of the family appear to have been a stalwart, good-looking race, while the women probably possessed more beauty than their pictures would lead us to infer. Of the general outline of their history we have some knowledge, but seldom or never can we definitely place the day of their birth or that of their death. So at what exact period Queen Maut-a-mua passed away we cannot state, only we may believe she was watched over by filial affection to the last, was buried amid tears and lamentations, and had all due funeral rites observed, even if she was not numbered among those royalties who were specially regarded as divinities, the founders of the race, and to whom divine honors were subsequently paid, yet is she occasionally spoken of as “the goddess queen.”