Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/356

 2 66 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. Hatasu, the wife and sister of Thothmes II., governed Egypt with skill and energy for seventeen years, in trust for her brother, Thothmes III. Where does her mummy repose ? Is it in that ravine on the south-west of the Bab-el-Molouk which is called the Valley of the Queens, because the tombs of many Theban princesses have been found in it ? Or is it in the slopes of the mountain behind the temple itself? Numerous sepulchral excavations have been found there, and many mummies have been drawn from their recesses. The artists to whom the decoration of the temple was committed, were charged to represent the chief actions of Hatasu as regent, and, although their works do not give us a detailed history of her eminently successful administration, they deal at length with the enterprise of which the regent herself seems to have been most proud, namely, the maritime expedition against Ptint, a distant region which must have been either southern Arabia, the country of the Somalis, or the eastern coast of Africa. Next in point of age to the building of Queen Hatasu is that which is called the Ra7nesse2iin ; this is no other, as the members of the Institut d'Egypte have clearly proved, than the so-called Tomb of Osyinandias which is described at such length by Diodorus.^ Erroneous though it be, this latter designation is by no means without interest, as it proves that, at the time of Diodorus, per- sistent tradition ascribed a funerary origin to the edifice. The whole temple, inside and out, recalled Rameses II. ; the great conqueror seemed to live and breathe on every stone ; here majestic and calm, like force in repose, there menacing and terrible, with his threatening hand raised over the heads of his conquered enemies. His seated statue, fifty-six feet in height, was raised in the courtyard ; to-day it lies broken upon the ground. Battle scenes are to be distinguished upon the remains of the walls. An episode of the war against the Khetas may be recognized, which seems to have made a great impression upon the kinsf and his comrades in arms. It deals with that battle fought upon the bank of the Orontes, in which Rameses, when surrounded by the enemy, won safety for himself by his own personal valour and presence of mind. His prowess was cele- brated by Pentaour, a contemporary poet, in an epic canto which has survived to our day. Rameses is there made to ascribe his Diodorus, i. §§ 47-49.