Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs by Barbara Mertz

Author:Barbara Mertz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780061842368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-01-30T10:00:00+00:00

There was no one to replace her. Her daughter, Nefrure, was her only child. What little we know about this princess provides more questions than answers. One of Senenmut’s titles was that of tutor to the princess, and several statues show them in a close if conventional embrace. Some scholars believe she married young Thutmose III. If so, she did not last long. Did she die a natural death, and if so, when?

It’s no wonder that historical novelists and some historians (including me) have interpreted this morass of nonevidence in dramatic terms. The new king was careful to ensure that Hatshepsut would die the second and final death, by obliterating her name and her carved image from every spot he could get at. One of the places that echoed to the blows of sledgehammers smashing stone was the temple at Deir el Bahri. The Metropolitan Museum Expedition, working at that site, found the pieces of dozens of statues of Hatshepsut dumped into a quarry near the temple, and fragments of others were strewn over a wide area. Hatshepsut’s titles and portraits were erased from the walls of the temple. The great obelisks at Karnak were not overthrown, but Thutmose III ordered them sheathed in masonry, which would cover up the female king’s name and her proud inscriptions.

Hatshepsut’s kingly sarcophagus was left intact, but Senenmut’s, the mate to hers, was literally broken to bits. Over twelve hundred fragments of it were found, scattered broadside over the ground near his tomb, and these pieces represented only about half of the original sarcophagus. Of the mummy that lay within it, there is no trace. Thutmose even sent his agents after the little images behind the doors of Djeser djeseru. Luckily for us, the human tools erred. They had no strong feelings one way or the other about Senenmut, and in the heat of the day it was pleasant to snatch a nap in a secluded spot where the overseer could not see. Many of the hidden figures escaped their notice, and it is these that we would see today if we could venture into the recesses of the great temple.

We have been talking all this time about people, and quite rightly, because Hatshepsut and her successor are figures that cannot be ignored. But there were other elements involved in the struggle for power; they certainly affected Hatshepsut’s seizure of the throne, and they were, perhaps, connected with her downfall. Hatshepsut’s devotion to Amon, and the position of her ally Hapuseneb as high priest of Amon, suggest that this mighty spiritual power supported her. But Thutmose III also honored Amon; and how he honored Amon! After he assumed full power, he caused to be circulated a curious and suggestive story.

As a youth, or “nestling,” he had served in the temple of Amon as a minor priest. One day came the occasion of a great festival of the god, in which the shrine was carried in procession through the north colonnaded hall of the Karnak temple.

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