INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 258, 12 August 1938, Page 7

INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

(Copyright), :: |

1 :: ByH. V. MORTON :: 2 Author of “In the Steps of The Master,” and In the Steps of St. Paul. i YGri i :Sl»

NO. 21

she ever did was to lling him into obscurity. This powerful man, who later reorganised a flabby army and led it through Syria and Palestine, conquering wherever he went, was cast completely in the shade while Hatshepsut lived. He detested her so much that aft oilier death he tried to wipe her memory from history. He cut her name from the inscriptions on her temple walls. He even bricked up an immense obelisk which she bad erected at Kavnak so that no one should gaze upon her name. Curiously enough, she had the better of him even there, for his bricks have fallen down and her name now shines - in the sun. I walked round the. lovely temple —the world’s earliest example of a woman’s good taste—and I looked with pleasure at the curious still' figure of Hatshepsut dressed as a man. I. wonder if she really appeared at state functions like that, or is tins portrait merely a. piece of temple-wail propaganda ? The great event of her reign was her expedition to Punt, a savage region that may have been Abyssinia. The walls of the temple give a complete “lilm” of this expedition made by artists specially sent for the purpose. They show five ships manned by soldiers and sailors, and accompanied by artists, scribes and men of learning. They arrive in a savage country. The people say, “How did you reach this unknown place? Did you descend by the paths of the sky?” The chief, a man called Parihou, has a colossally fat wife, named Atoui The artist was determined that not one fold of flesh should he left out. Often it has been suggested that she suffered from elephantiasis, but I think she is just one of those mountainous females whom Eastern people have always admired. In a series of spirited pictures we see how tho Egyptians, in true commercial style, gave the poor savages all kinds 1 of worthless objects in return for masses of solid gold* incense trees, silver, ivory, apes, hunting panthers and all manner of curious things. Tho arrival of the treasure ships at Thebes was an occasion of tremendous rejoicing. The Queen had the incense trees planted round; her temple, and the receptacles for them, pierced with holes for water to run through, are still to bo seen. But tho figure of the great queen, seated under a canopy with her guardian spirit behind her, sculptured in the act of making a speech of welcome, has been chiselled out by the man who hated her. This remarkable woman wrote her epitaph in tho great temple of Karnak: “I have given thee all lands and! all countries,” she said to tho god. “1 conciliated them by love.” Those are the last words of the first queen. In tho hotel that night I met a young American newspaper man who was visiting Egypt for tho first time. It was his first journey outside the States. When I asked him what had interested him most, he made this classic reply: “Queen Hat-and-all’s temple. That’s a real feminine racket; and I’ll tell you why. When a guy wants to put up a big show, what does lie do? He swells out and becomes a stuffed shirt. Ho begins to boast and throw his weight about, and behave generally like a great big ham. “You see, he’s got to heat tho last feller —got to put it over big—and in the darned old traditional wpy. Get me ? “But this woman now, this Queen Hat-and-all, what does she do? She calls the chief priest and she says to him: ‘See here, you big prune, I’m going to build a temple and I want none of your boloney. You forget all the other temples in Egypt, and do something different. “You tell the story of my life—and mind you get the news in the first paragraph! Tell tho story of Bunt .and all that junk they brought back. Put in tlie fat woman, and make her just as ugly asi she was, for she was the ugliest dame I’ve ever Refen, and I’ve noticed a. few around here.. “Now go to it, priest, and if you don’t fix me a temple that’s different —you’re fired . . .” (To be continued.)

GOOD QUEEN HAT.

I came down from the Valley of the Kings ill the heat of the day, with my coat over my afhi and my thoughts dwelling with affection on the sound of ice tapping against a glass. But there was no ice and no glass, only the heat quivering over I>eir cl Bahari in long white bands ’ the same movement that trembles in the air above a furnace door. The mountains lie back from the plain, towering into the sky, a sheer tawny yellow wall striped with blue shadows.

Cut into the base of tlse tallest mountain is the strangest temple in EgyptIt is the only temple that does not rely for effect on sheer brutal strength, weight and repetition. It is a thing of balance and beauty, of lightness and joyousness. The pillars which uphold its colonnades arc more Greek than Egyptian. It is almost as if this building, which, was erected 1500 years before Christ, holdsa promise of the Parthenon. People who see the Temple of Deir fel Bahari for the first time, even though they may not know its strange history, often give a gasp of delight and say something like this: “How different it is, how charming, how, in some way difficult to describe —happy!” The explanation is a curious one. This temple is - the only feminine temple in Egypt. All the others are ponderous and masculine, impressive, but never charming, never amusing, never audaciously provoking. And Deir el Bahari is all these things because it is the temple of the first great 4 woman in history, the Queen Elizabeth of ancient Egypt—a puzzling, clever, and domineeiing woman called Queen Hatshepsut. As I walked up the incline to the terraces • oh which the temple is constructed, a party of English tourists was caning down. I heard a woman say: “Well, Queen Hat’s temple is certanly the most curious place we’ve seen so far. It looks just like one of those fashionable bathing places in the south of France. .. • Sitting in a patch of shade, I tried tb remember the details of Queen Hatsh'epsut’s life before I looked at the sculptured walls which are in a sense, a family quarrel in stone. But what a confusion the story is, how many gaps there are to fill in, and what a pity it.is that we should never know the real truth about her. When she was born Egypt had never been ruled by a queen. The thought of a female Pharaoh was incredible. Nevertheless, Hatshepsut had a stronger claim to the throne tiiVin hei half-brother, Thothmes 11, whose mother was not of royal blood. When the great Thothmes I. grew old there must have been much talk about the succession, and; perhaps Thebes was split into two parties. an anti-feminist party, that wanted the half-brother on the throne, and a legitimist party, that wanted Hatshepsut, in spite of the -fact that she was a woman. .. ... , ... The old king favoured the legitimists, for when Hatshepsut was about 24 he summoned the Court and the great men of the land to witness a peculiar scene. He sat. on his throne with his daughter, in front of him. After embracing her, he made over her the magic passes of the setep sa, which means to “send forth the fluid of lire. These hypnotic passes, or whatever they were —for we know nothing about them—were believed to impart magic protection to the person who received them. i * * * *

Prostrate on the ground, the assembly was ijhen comniantled. by the Pharaoh to recognise in the girl the new ruler of Egypt. It is not known whether he abdicated m lier favour, or whether he associated her with him in the government of the country. „ But from that moment the unfortunate woman became the centre of plot and counter-plot. She must have been a won#an oi an extraordinary forceful character, for after her father’s death she was deposed, or sent into exile, only to ieturn and grasp a sceptre again. During a rein of' over twenty years she declined to make war. The history of her reign is the story of friendly visits to foreign countries, of the first known scientific expedition in the annals of mankind, and in the spreading of all the arts of peace. Feminine she may have been in lier private life, but in public she dressed like a man. Her beautiful face is l to boon seen on the temple walls with the ceremonial heard! strapped to the chin. She walks forward dressed as a Pharaoh, her chest bare, her bosom flat, ifer hips slender, wearing only the’ short kilt of. an Egyptian king; and the only feminine touch she permitted herself was tbo use of tho feminine gender in hei-name. But for tins one might imagine that she was a man. Like"all great queens in history, she surrounds herself with able men, and. tine most accomplished was a. man called Senmut, about whom, I imagine, there might he a lot to know. He was tho leader of the legitimist party, the architect of her temple and her devoted adviser in all affairs oi state; ho was the man behind the throne. The most dangerous person in her life was her nephew, a man who after her death becomes Thothmes HI, and developed into the Napoleon of ancient Egypt. His mummy is in the vaults of the Museum at Cairo. Ho hated her peaceful attitude to life and writhed with fury to think that while she planted incense trees and built her pretty temple, the tribes were ready to revolt on the frontiers; as they eventually did. Thothmes 111 was the obvious candidate of the military party, hut for some reason —perhaps the Queen Was responsible he was a priest of Amen at Karnak. Ho must have been a very had one. He was, however, an admirable politician, lor, enlisting the god on his side, ho contrived to get himself nominated over her head during a State festival in the temple! Tho image of the god Amen actually stopped in front oi him and elected him king! He was obviously a dangerous nephew, so Hatshepsut married lii.m ! Perhaps the most extraordinary thing