Place for Queen Hatshepsu! Surely she comes to a sound of flutes, a
merry noise of thin, bright music, backed by a clashing of barbaric
cymbals, along the corridors of the past; this queen who is shown upon
Egyptian walls dressed as a man, who is said to have worn a beard, and
who sent to the land of Punt the famous expedition which covered her
with glory and brought gold to the god Amun. To me most feminine she
seemed when I saw her temple at Deir-el-Bahari, with its brightness and
its suavity; its pretty shallowness and sunshine; its white, and blue,
and yellow, and red, and green and orange; all very trim and fanciful,
all very smart and delicate; full of finesse and laughter, and breathing
out to me of the twentieth century the coquetry of a woman in 1500 B.C.
After the terrific masculinity of Medinet-Abu, after the great freedom
of the Ramesseum, and the grandeur of its colossus, the manhood of all
the ages concentrated in granite, the temple at Deir-el-Bahari came upon
me like a delicate woman, perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation
of white and blue and orange, standing--ever so knowingly--against
a background of orange and pink, of red and of brown-red, a smiling
coquette of the mountain, a gay and sweet enchantress who knew her
pretty powers and meant to exercise them.
Hatshepsu with a beard! Never will I believe it. Or if she ever seemed
to wear one, I will swear it was only the tattooed ornament with which
all the lovely women of the Fayum decorate their chins to-day, throwing
into relief the smiling, soft lips, the delicate noses, the liquid eyes,
and leading one from it step by step to the beauties it precedes.
Mr. Wallis Budge says in his book on the antiquities of Egypt: “It would
be unjust to the memory of a great man and a loyal servant of Hatshepsu,
if we omitted to mention the name of Senmut, the architect and overseer
of works at Deir-el-Bahari.” By all means let Senmut be mentioned, and
then let him be utterly forgotten. A radiant queen reigns here--a
queen of fantasy and splendor, and of that divine shallowness--refined
frivolity literally cut into the mountain--which is the note of
Deir-el-Bahari. And what a clever background! Oh, Hatshepsu knew what
she was doing when she built her temple here. It was not the solemn
Senmut (he wore a beard, I’m sure) who chose that background, if I know
anything of women.
Long before I visited Deir-el-Bahari I had looked at it from afar. My
eyes had been drawn to it merely from its situation right underneath
the mountains. I had asked: “What do those little pillars mean? And are
those little doors?” I had promised myself to go there, as one promises
oneself a _bonne bouche_ to finish a happy banquet. And I had realized
the subtlety, essentially feminine, that had placed a temple there.
And Menu-Hotep’s temple, perhaps you say, was it not there before the
queen’s? Then he must have possessed a subtlety purely feminine, or have
been advised by one of his wives in his building operations, or by some
favorite female slave. Blundering, unsubtle man would probably think
that the best way to attract and to fix attention on any object was to
make it much bigger than things near and around it, to set up a giant
among dwarfs.
Not so Queen Hatshepsu. More artful in her generation, she set her
long but little temple against the precipices of Libya. And what is the
result? Simply that whenever one looks toward them one says, “What are
those little pillars?” Or if one is more instructed, one thinks about
Queen Hatshepsu. The precipices are as nothing. A woman’s wile has
blotted them out.
And yet how grand they are! I have called them tiger-colored precipices.
And they suggest tawny wild beasts, fierce, bred in a land that is the
prey of the sun. Every shade of orange and yellow glows and grows pale
on their bosses, in their clefts. They shoot out turrets of rock that
blaze like flames in the day. They show great teeth, like the tiger when
any one draws near. And, like the tiger, they seem perpetually informed
by a spirit that is angry. Blake wrote of the tiger:
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night.”
These tiger-precipices of Libya are burning things, avid like beasts of
prey. But the restored apricot-colored pillars are not afraid of their
impending fury--fury of a beast baffled by a tricky little woman, almost
it seems to me; and still less afraid are the white pillars, and the
brilliant paintings that decorate the walls within.
As many people in the sad but lovely islands off the coast of Scotland
believe in “doubles,” as the old classic writers believed in man’s
“genius,” so the ancient Egyptian believed in his “Ka,” or separate
entity, a sort of spiritual other self, to be propitiated and ministered
to, presented with gifts, and served with energy and ardor. On this
temple of Deir-el-Bahari is the scene of the birth of Hatshepsu, and
there are two babies, the princess and her Ka. For this imagined Ka,
when a great queen, long after, she built this temple, or chapel, that
offerings might be made there on certain appointed days. Fortunate Ka
of Hatshepsu to have had so cheerful a dwelling! Liveliness pervades
Deir-el-Bahari. I remember, when I was on my first visit to Egypt,
lunching at Thebes with Monsieur Naville and Mr. Hogarth, and afterward
going with them to watch the digging away of the masses of sand and
rubbish which concealed this gracious building. I remember the songs of
the half-naked workmen toiling and sweating in the sun, and I remember
seeing a white temple wall come up into the light with all the painted
figures surely dancing with joy upon it. And they are surely dancing
still.
Here you may see, brilliant as yesterday’s picture anywhere,
fascinatingly decorative trees growing bravely in little pots, red
people offering incense which is piled up on mounds like mountains,
Ptah-Seket, Osiris receiving a royal gift of wine, the queen in the
company of various divinities, and the terrible ordeal of the cows.
The cows are being weighed in scales. There are three of them. One is
a philosopher, and reposes with an air that says, “Even this last
indignity of being weighed against my will cannot perturb my soaring
spirit.” But the other two sitting up, look as apprehensive as old
ladies in a rocking express, expectant of an accident. The vividness
of the colors in this temple is quite wonderful. And much of its
great attraction comes rather from its position, and from them,
than essentially from itself. At Deir-el-Bahari, what the long shell
contains--its happy murmur of life--is more fascinating than the shell.
There, instead of being uplifted or overawed by form, we are rejoiced
by color, by the high vivacity of arrested movement, by the story that
color and movement tell. And over all there is the bright, blue, painted
sky, studded, almost distractedly studded, with a plethora of the yellow
stars the Egyptians made like starfish.
The restored apricot-colored columns outside look unhappily suburban
when you are near them. The white columns with their architraves are
more pleasant to the eyes. The niches full of bright hues, the arched
chapels, the small white steps leading upward to shallow
sanctuaries, the small black foxes facing each other on little yellow
pedestals--attract one like the details and amusing ornaments of a
clever woman’s boudoir. Through this most characteristic temple one
roves in a gaily attentive mood, feeling all the time Hatshepsu’s
fascination.
You may see her, if you will, a little lady on the wall, with a face
decidedly sensual--a long, straight nose, thick lips, an expression
rather determined than agreeable. Her mother looks as Semitic as a Jew
moneylender in Brick Lane, London. Her husband, Thothmes II., has a weak
and poor-spirited countenance--decidedly an accomplished performer on
the second violin. The mother wears on her head a snake, no doubt a
cobra-di-capello, the symbol of her sovereignty. Thothmes is clad in
a loin-cloth. And a god, with a sleepy expression and a very fish-like
head, appears in this group of personages to offer the key of life.
Another painting of the queen shows her on her knees drinking milk from
the sacred cow, with an intent and greedy figure, and an extraordinarily
sensual and expressive face. That she was well guarded is surely proved
by a brave display of her soldiers--red men on a white wall. Full
of life and gaiety all in a row they come, holding weapons, and,
apparently, branches, and advancing with a gait of triumph that tells of
“spacious days.” And at their head is an officer, who looks back, much
like a modern drill sergeant, to see how his men are marching.
In the southern shrine of the temple, cut in the rock as is the northern
shrine, once more I found traces of the “Lady of the Under-World.” For
this shrine was dedicated to Hathor, though the whole temple was sacred
to the Theban god Amun. Upon a column were the remains of the goddess’s
face, with a broad brow and long, large eyes. Some fanatic had hacked
away the mouth.
The tomb of Hatshepsu was found by Mr. Theodore M. Davis, and the famous
_Vache_ of Deir-el-Bahari by Monsieur Naville as lately as 1905. It
stands in the museum at Cairo, but for ever it will be connected in the
minds of men with the tiger-colored precipices and the Colonnades of
Thebes. Behind the ruins of the temple of Mentu-Hotep III., in a chapel
of painted rock, the Vache-Hathor was found.
It is not easy to convey by any description the impression this
marvellous statue makes. Many of us love our dogs, our horses, some
of us adore our cats; but which of us can think, without a smile, of
worshipping a cow? Yet the cow was the Egyptian Aphrodite’s sacred
animal. Under the form of a cow she was often represented. And in the
statue she is presented to us as a limestone cow. And positively this
cow is to be worshipped.
She is shown in the act apparently of stepping gravely forward out of
a small arched shrine, the walls of which are decorated with brilliant
paintings. Her color is red and yellowish red, and is covered with dark
blotches of a very dark green, which look almost black. Only one or two
are of a bluish color. Her height is moderate. I stand about five foot
nine, and I found that on her pedestal the line of her back was about
level with my chest. The lower part of the body, much of which is
concealed by the under block of limestone, is white, tinged with yellow.
The tail is red. Above the head, open and closed lotus-flowers form
a head-dress, with the lunar disk and two feathers. And the long
lotus-stalks flow down on each side of the neck toward the ground. At
the back of this head-dress are a scarab and a cartouche. The goddess
is advancing solemnly and gently. A wonderful calm, a matchless, serene
dignity, enfold her.
In the body of this cow one is able, indeed one is almost obliged, to
feel the soul of a goddess. The incredible is accomplished. The dead
Egyptian makes the ironic, the skeptical modern world feel deity in a
limestone cow. How is it done? I know not; but it is done. Genius can
do nearly everything, it seems. Under the chin of the cow there is a
standing statue of the King Mentu-Hotep, and beneath her the king kneels
as a boy. Wonderfully expressive and solemnly refined is the cow’s face,
which is of dark color, like the color of almost black earth--earth
fertilized by the Nile. Dignified, dominating, almost but just not
stern, strongly intelligent, and, through its beautiful intelligence,
entirely sympathetic (“to understand all, is to pardon all”), this face,
once thoroughly seen, completely noticed, can never be forgotten. This
is one of the most beautiful statues in the world.
When I was at Deir-el-Bahari I thought of it and wished that it still
stood there near the Colonnades of Thebes under the tiger-colored
precipices. And then I thought of Hatshepsu. Surely she would not brook
a rival to-day near the temple which she made--a rival long lost and
long forgotten. Is not her influence still there upon the terraced
platforms, among the apricot and the white columns, near the paintings
of the land of Punt? Did it not whisper to the antiquaries, even to the
soldiers from Cairo, who guarded the Vache-Hathor in the night, to make
haste to take her away far from the hills of Thebes and from the Nile’s
long southern reaches, that the great queen might once more reign
alone? They obeyed. Hatshepsu was appeased. And, like a delicate woman,
perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation of white and blue and
orange, standing ever so knowingly against a background of orange and
pink, of red and of brown-red, she rules at Deir-el-Bahari.