male attire, and in the inscriptions masculine pronouns and verbal forms are used in speaking of her, and masculine attributes, including a beard, are ascribed to her; only when considered as a goddess is she represented in female form. She reigned for about 16 years, and the chief event of her reign, omitting the building of the temple, was the famous expedition to Punt, a general name of the land on both sides of the Red Sea as far south as, and including, Somaliland. The queen sent five ships to the coast of Africa, and M. Maspero believes that they were sailed by their crews up the Elephant River, near Cape Guardafui, and made fast near one of the

Queen Hatshepsut.

native villages inland. Then followed the exchange of objects brought from Egypt for native produce, and the natives appear to have given large quantities of gold in return for almost valueless articles. The bas-reliefs which illustrate these scenes are found on the southern half of the wall which supports the Western Terrace, and it is easy to see that what the natives are giving to the Egyptians is both valuable and bulky. The chief of Punt, called Pa-rehu, with raised hands, wears a dagger in his belt; he is followed by his wife, a lady with a remarkable figure, who wears a single yellow garment and a

necklace, and by his two sons and a daughter. The drawing below illustrates this scene. The native products given by the Prince of Punt to the Egyptians consisted of aromatic woods, spices, incense, anti, rare trees and plants, which were afterwards planted in the gardens of Amen at Thebes, gold, etc.: these things were given to the Egyptians in such large quantities that their boats were filled with them, and they formed a very substantial offering to the god Amen. Among the gifts of the Prince of Punt were leopards, panthers, and other wild animals. Hatshepsut seems to have been a capable ruler and administrator, but the conquests of foreign lands during her reign were few. Her husband, Thothmes II, waged war against the nomad, raiding tribes of the Eastern Desert, and he conducted a campaign of considerable importance in Nubia; he seems to

Pa-rehu, the Prince of Punt, his wife and his two sons, and a daughter. (This portion of the relief was stolen from the temple, and has n not been recovered.)

have died while he was comparatively young. After his death, Hatshepsut associated Thothmes III with her in the rule of the kingdom, but, as after her death he always obliterated her name from her temple, it seems that the relations between the rulers were not always happy. M. Naville thinks that Thothmes III hated Hatshepsut because her husband, Thothmes II, had not raised his (Thothmes III's) mother Aset to royal rank, and that he was jealous of his mother's honour; Hatshepsut had no son, and she seems to have been obliged to associate Åset's son with her in the rule of the kingdom. Thothmes III seems to have married first Neferu-Ra, a daughter of Hatshepsut, and secondly another daughter of the great queen called Hatshepsut-meri-Rā. It would be unjust to the memory of a great man and a loyal servant of Hatshepsut if we omitted to mention the name of Senmut, the architect and overseer of works of Dêr al-Baharî. The tomb of this distinguished man is still to be seen. It is cut in a hill about a mile from the

temple, of which it commands a good view. There is little doubt now that he was influenced in the plan which he made by that of the temple of Menthu-hetep, but it says much for the good sense of the ablest woman who ever sat on the throne of Egypt, that she gave this distinguished architect the opportunity of building the unique and beautiful temple which has shed glory on the name both of the subject and of his great sovereign. The visitor to the temple of Dêr al-Baharî owes the ease with which he is able to visit every part of it to the labours of M. Naville, assisted by Mr. Hogarth, who spent three winters in clearing it at the expense of the Egypt Exploration Fund. An idea of the vastness of the work may be gleaned from the fact that in two winters the enormous amount of 60,000 cubic metres of rubbish and stones was removed from the site and carried away to a distance of 200 yards. This temple now presents a striking appearance, whether seen from the Luxor or Kûrnah side, and every visitor will much appreciate the excellent results which have attended the completion of the undertaking.*

Archeologists will be interested to know that the newly found fragments of the wall upon which the expedition to Punt is depicted all agree in pointing to the eastern side of Africa as the country which the Egyptians called Punt; some of the animals in the reliefs are identical with those found to this day on the Abyssinian coast, and the general products of the two countries are the same. Punt was famous for its ebony, and all tradition agrees in making Abyssinia, and the countries south and east of it, the home of the ebony tree. The tombs at Dêr al-Baharî were opened many, many years ago, and a very large number of the coffins with which Mariette furnished the first Egyptian Museum at Bûlâk came from them; since that time the whole site has been carefully searched by diggers for antiquities, hence comparatively few antiquities have been unearthed by M. Naville. In the course of the work he discovered an interesting mummy pit, and in a small chamber hewn in the solid rock, about 12 feet below the pavement, he found three wooden rectangular coffins (each containing two inner coffins), with arched lids, wooden hawks and jackals, wreaths of flowers, and a box containing a large number of ushabtiu figures. These coffins contained the mummies of a priest called Menthu

*

M. Naville's description of the temple has been published under the title, The Temple of Deir el-Bahari, 5 parts, with a quarto volume, London, 1894-1908.

Teḥuti-auf-ankh, and of his mother, and of his aunt; they belong to the period of the XXVIth dynasty, or perhaps a little earlier. During the last days of the excavations at Dêr al-Baharî M. Naville's workmen came upon a very interesting "foundation deposit," which they discovered in a small rock-hewn pit. It consisted of fifty wooden hoes, four bronze slabs, a hatchet, a knife, eight wooden models of adzes, eight wooden adzes with bronze blades, fifty wooden models of an implement of unknown use, ten pots of alabaster, and ten baskets; above these were a few common earthenware pots, and over all were some mats. All the objects bear the same inscription, i.e., the prenomen and titles of Queen Hatshepsut.

6. The Tomb of Hatshepsut. The great interest which attaches to the name of this queen, and the romantic circum

stances under which she lived and reigned, have induced many to endeavour to discover her mummy and her tomb, and during his excavations M. Naville kept this object steadily before him. Good fortune, tenacity of purpose, and a lavish but enlightened expenditure of money, gave the clue to the well-known American archæologist, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, and this gentleman, having overcome difficulties of a more than ordinary character, early in 1904 declared that he had found the tomb of the Great Queen. He was assisted in his work by Mr. Howard Carter, one of the two English Inspectors of Egyptian Antiquities, who superintended the excavation operations. account of the works and the discovery of the tomb appeared

An

in The Times of March 14th, 1904. The account of the excavation and clearing of the tomb is best given from Mr. Davis's Introduction to his publication on the tomb. The tomb was probably opened by the priests about 900 B.C., and the contents taken out and concealed in the tomb generally known as the "cachette " near Hatshepsut's temple at Dêr al-Baharî. The entrance door of the tomb was open in the time of Strabo, and Napoleon's Expedition cleared out about 80 feet of the corridor in 1799. In 1844 Lepsius cleared the corridor for about 140 feet, and then abandoned it. In March, 1903, Mr. Davis caused all the ground near the tomb to be

cleared, and shortly after this work was started his men came upon a spot directly before the door of the tomb which yielded a hollow sound, and which, upon excavation, proved to be a small pit cut in the solid rock, which contained models of objects used in making the tomb, such as bronze tools, alabaster vases, reed mats, magic symbols, bread, fringed mummy cloth, napkins, etc., many of them bearing the cartouche of Hatshepsut. Shortly afterwards he undertook the exploration of this corridor for the benefit of the Cairo Museum, under the direction of Mr. Howard Carter. The corridor proved to be 692 feet long, and 320 feet vertically deep, and the entire length was filled to the roof with small