Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun

by Moyra Caldecott

  Six days went by and Senmut saw nothing of Hatshepsut but the face she was prepared to show to her friends. She never summoned him alone, but always with someone else from the expedition. She was anxious to hear every detail and questioned them again and again, as the official reports did not satisfy her. Several times a day she was down at the quayside watching the unloading.

  She was particularly excited about the panther they had brought. The colour of midnight, with eyes of cold fire, it prowled its cage restlessly, muscles rippling. Senmut watched her watching it and knew that she was identifying with it. He knew more than anyone that burning ambition had put her on the throne, but another side of her hated the formality and restrictions that came with it, and she longed to run free sometimes and shake off her responsibilities and duties as a dog shakes off water from its coat. Senmut had suffered from that dark and powerful restlessness more than once—that prowling hunger for freedom. He suspected their lovemaking was her way of breaking out of her cage—but even as it ended, she was already accepting, and, indeed, welcoming, the bars again. The panther lay in a patch of striped sunlight, asleep—but even so, wary and alert. Senmut smiled. He had been foolish. Distance had made him sentimentalise his relationship with Hatshepsut. He should never have expected her to fling herself into his arms and say conventional things like “I love you” and “I've missed you". Her passions were taken up entirely at the moment by the excitement of what he had brought her.

  At her feet he had laid fragrant woods, heaps of myrrh resin, fresh and growing myrrh trees, and ebony, out of which she was already planning to commission a magnificent ebony shrine. There were huge cases of pure ivory, of shells, of green gold from Emu, cinnamon wood, khesyt wood for incense, ihmut incense, sonter incense, eye cosmetic ... There were apes, monkeys, dogs and mounds of panther skins.

  When she had wearied of all this, and the pressures and the anxieties started again, she would seek him out. If he expected more, he was deceiving himself. He forced himself to go about his business and forget his dreams, and, instead of rushing to her side the next time she called, he sent a messenger with an excuse and stayed at her temple helping Thutiy arrange with the stone-scribes where the various inscriptions describing the Punt expedition were to go. How different to the rough and exhausting reality among the heat and flies it sounded in that formal jargon written for posterity.

  I have led them on water and on land, to explore the waters of inaccessible places, and I have reached the Myrrh terraces. It is a glorious region of God's-Land: it is indeed my place of delight. I have made it myself, in order to please my heart, together with Mut, Hathor, Wereret, mistress of Punt, the mistress “Great in Sorcery", Isis, mistress of all the gods. They took myrrh as they wished. They loaded the vessels to their hearts’ content, with fresh myrrh trees and every good gift of this country, strangers, southerners of God's-Land. I conciliated them by love that they might give to thee praise, because thou art a god, because of thy fame in all the countries. I know them, I am their wise lord, I am the Begetter, Amun-Ra; my daughter, who binds the Lords, is the King Maat-ka-Ra, Hatshepsut. I have begotten her for myself. I am her father, who set her fear among the Nine Bows, while they came in peace to all gods.

  They have brought all the marvels, every beautiful thing of God's-Land, for which thy majesty sent them: heaps of gum of myrrh, and enduring trees bearing fresh myrrh, united in the festival-hall, to be seen of the lords of the gods. May thy majesty cause them to grow, before my temple, in order to delight my heart.

  My name is before the gods, thy name is before all the living, forever. Heaven and earth are flooded with incense: holy scents are in the Great House. Mayest thou offer them to me, pure and cleansed. May the divine limbs be fragant and my statue be made festive with necklaces. My heart is glad because of thee.[7]

  [7—These quotations are from the Punt reliefs inscribed on the walls of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el Bahri and translated by J. H. Breasted in Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2.]

  She had written these things herself and given them to Thutiy to have inscribed. She told them Amun-Ra had given them to her in a dream. He could believe it. As earthy and devious, ambitious and worldly as she was, she could also reach great heights of mystic ecstasy—and who was to say the god did not speak to her?

  Senmut himself chose the wording of some of the passages. He described her as he had seen her, too eager to wait for the formal count, running her hands through the treasures herself:

  ... the best of myrrh is upon all her limbs, her fragrance is divine dew, her scent is mingled with Punt, her skin is gilded with electrum, shining as do the stars in the midst of the festival-hall, before the whole land. There is rejoicing in all the people; they give praise to the lord of gods, they laud Maat-ka-Ra Hatshepsut in her divine qualities, because of the greatness of the marvels which have happened to her. Never did the like happen under any gods who were before, since the beginning. May she be given life, like Ra forever.

  On the seventh day she sought him out. She came to his chamber in the west wing of the palace as silently as the panther itself would have done, but when the door was shut and she was beside him she stood almost hesitantly, waiting for him to make the first move. It crossed his mind to play the game she had been playing and pretend indifference—but his heart was hammering too loudly and at that moment he cared nothing for pride or hurt or rejection. Silently he pulled back the fine linen quilt and made a space for her beside him, reaching out to take her in his arms as she climbed in. What a creature of contrasts she was, he thought. Fearsome, murdering panther, and gentle, vulnerable kitten. He trembled slightly as her silky skin touched his, though he told himself again and again to be cool, calm, casual. No words were spoken. Silently their limbs flowed over each other, each touch, each movement from merest fingertip contact to deeper penetration sending shudders of delight throughout. Ah, that it would never end! Never ... never ... never...

  But it was already over, already past.

  They lay quietly for a long time enclosed in the afterglow, dreading the return of the ordinary. At last they began to talk, in whispers, though there was no one near enough to overhear them. She did not explain her treatment of him since his return, and he did not ask about it. Instead, they spoke of things that had happened in the time they had been parted. He told her about the experiences he had kept back from the official report, and she, similarly, described her feelings one day when she stood beneath the towering peak of Meretseger, “She Who Loves Silence", in the valley of her father's tomb, watching the men dig her own.

  Her mortuary temple was on the far side of the huge stone ridge she was facing, and she planned to have the passage of her tomb dug directly into the rock of the mountain from this side so that her embalmed body might lie close, but unseen, behind Amun's most sacred sanctuary. The tomb and the sanctuary would be in exact alignment with the axis of her temple, which led through a long straight avenue of myrrh trees and sphinxes to the river bank directly opposite Amun's great temple at Ipet-Esut. There she was intending to erect two obelisks tipped with gold, taller even than the ones already there, which would be visible from the top terrace of her mortuary temple and would be a delight to the part of her soul that would dwell there after her death.

  “But I don't want to die,” she said to Senmut, sitting up suddenly and clasping her knees. “I want to live forever!"

  “You will live forever."

  “I know. I know,” she said impatiently. “But not as Hatshepsut. Not as I am now. I want so much. I want to do so much! I want to feel the evening breeze on my skin. I want to sail the river. I want to make love to you. Nothing will be the same in the Myriad of Years. Nothing will be the same as a bodiless ka no matter how many offerings are put in my tomb."

  “And if you come back, as some believe, to live other lives in other times and places? If you have flesh and blood again? If you feel the dawn breeze? If you sail the river again?"

  “Will you be there? W
ill Thutiy? Nehsi? Hapuseneb? All the rest? Will my panther be there? Will we make love?"

  Senmut laughed. “I'll never leave you."

  Her face suddenly went white and she looked at him as though she had seen a ghost.

  “What is it?” he asked, startled.

  “You will."

  “Will what?"

  “You will leave me. You won't be there when I need you."

  “I vow—"

  “Don't vow, don't—don't..."

  She was shivering, but she would not let him take her in hisarms. She began to weep, and her shoulders were shaking convulsively—but she drew away from him.

  “My love, I swear I'll never leave you. Even if I die I will make sure my ka is with your ka.” It was at this moment that he decided to dig his own secret tomb beneath her mortuary temple, so that in death his ka would be with hers. “If we walk the earth again, in whatever time, in whatever place, I'll be with you. I swear it."

  She looked at him angrily, her face streaked with tears.

  “How can you be so sure?” she snapped. “Nothing is sure. Nothing!"

  “I am sure of our love. It is strong enough to hold us together, no matter what."

  She snorted and jumped out of his bed. She swept her robe up off the floor where she had dropped it and swung it round her shoulders.

  “If I as Pharaoh cannot be sure of my future, how can you...?"

  She used no epithet, but he was suddenly reduced from “Chief Steward, Favourite of the King, Conductor of all his works, Guardian and Mentor of the Princess Neferure, Overseer of the fields of Amun, Overseer of the gardens of Amun, Overseer of the cattle of Amun, Chief Steward of Amun, the Confidant of the King, his Beloved...” to a naked man tangled awkwardly in a crumpled quilt.

  She walked imperiously to the door, but turned just before she left—and he could see that there was fear and despair in her eyes.

  “It's all so short!” she said bitterly. “We've hardly time to find out who we are!” And then she was gone, the wood juddering from the way she slammed the door behind her.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  Hapuseneb strode between the pair of great obelisks that flanked the entrance to the Temple of the Sun at Yunu, north of Men-nefer. Hatshepsut had made a particular point of restoring the temples fallen into disrepair and disuse during the time of the Hyksos “who ruled without Ra and did not act by divine command". The desert-dwellers had had their own gods—but they were primitive and savage compared to the sophisticated hierarchies of Khemet. Hatshepsut believed that a land networked with living temples, each in its special place, was a healthy land, a secure land, a dynamic and powerful land. From the wheat growing out of the grain that was sown, to the preservation of life after death, everything was the gift of the gods—and if the gods were happy everything would be in order, everything would work smoothly.

  Since she was very young she had heard tales of the cruelties of the Hyksos and how not only the temples and the people but the land itself had suffered at their hands. She was immensely proud of her family for driving them away and her father for establishing strong borders to keep them out. She believed her own task was to reassert the rule of the cosmic law within the country and to encourage the flow of benevolent divine influence through her priesthood to her people. She saw Amun-Ra as the great unifying force behind them all.

  Hapuseneb had done his work well as her chosen emissary. Old temples had been restored to the honour of the diverse aspects of the Mystery behind existence. New temples had been built to the one she felt more than any other was vital to the whole.

  Hapuseneb encountered no opposition to his programme of extending the worship of Amun-Ra throughout the Two Lands until at Yunu he tried to make the temple of the combined god Amun-Ra larger and more prestigious than the temple of Ra alone. Yunu had traditionally been the home of the cult of the sun god and had enjoyed long centuries of unrivalled power and privilege. The priests of Ra were not happy to accept any diminishing of this prestige.

  What had once been only a cult local to Waset had gradually become more and more important as the warrior pharaohs, under the banner of Amun, had driven the Hyksos out and extended the borders of their own empire further and further east towards the Euphrates and further and further south into Kush and Nubia. The god was obviously powerful and a force itwould be prudent to have on one's side. In taking the double crown from her stepson-nephew, Men-kheper-Ra, Hatshepsut claimed that her royal mother had been impregnated by Amun, and that she, therefore, was truly the daughter of Amun.

  He made his form in majesty like that of her husband, Aa-kheper-ka-Ra. He found her sleeping in the beauty of her chamber. She wakened at the fragrance of the god and he took her in his arms and had his desire of her. Then he caused her to see him in his form as a god and she rejoiced at the sight of his beauty. His love passed into her limbs and she was flooded with his divine fragrance. All his scents were of frankincense and myrrh. Then did the king's wife and king's mother Aah-mes, speak in the presence of this great god, Amun, Lord of Waset:

  "How great is thy presence, O Lord! Thou hast united me to thee with thy favours—thy dew is in all my limbs.” Then did the majesty of this god do all that he desired of her, and at the end he uttered these words:

  "Khenemet-Amun-Hatshepsut shall be the name of this my daughter, whom I have placed in thy body. She shall exercise excellent kingship in this whole land. My soul is hers, my treasure and my crown, that she may rule the Two Lands, that she may lead all the living to know that I am I.” [8]

  [8—“He made his form in majesty...” from Ancient Records.]

  Even before Hatshepsut had the scene celebrating her divine origins carved on the walls of her temple at Serui, she had heralds proclaiming it throughout the land.

  But Ra-hotep, the High Priest of the Temple of the Sun, “the Greatest of the Seers", protested at sharing his god's glory with that of the upstart Amun. For millennia, apart from the years under the Hyksos’ rule, Yunu had been the supreme religious centre of the Two Lands. Local cults might flourish for the common people, but Yunu was a powerhouse of theological knowledge and training, its great god of light in the three aspects of Kheper at dawn, Ra at noon and Atum in the evening, unchallenged and unchallengeable. Since the earliest days the young heirs to the throne were obliged to serve apprenticeship with the great sun priests and, when they left their fathers donated all kinds of riches to the temple. Hatshepsut herself had studied there, as had Men-kheper-Ra.

  Now Hatshepsut was threatening to lessen Pharaoh's bounty. Her favourite god was to receive many of the vast estates, and much of the gold and silver, that Ra-Hotep felt should be coming his way. And here was the High Priest of Amun declaring that Ra in his aspect of Amun, or Amun in his aspect of Ra, was the only Mighty One, the Ancient of Days, the Lord of Lords.

  Ra-Hotep was a man in his middle years, heavy in build and with eyebrows startlingly thick and black in contrast to his shining shaved skull. He had laboriously worked his way up to the position of First Prophet of the Sun at Yunu, without benefit of royal relations, and was not at all pleased to find that when he at last reached what he thought would be the primary position of power in the land, second only to the Pharaoh, Hapuseneb was there before him.

  Hapuseneb arrived at the Temple of the Sun during the summer solstice, one of the major festivals of the god.

  The city, always busy although it was no longer the capital of the Two Lands, was packed to overflowing with enthusiastic pilgrims. The tent city, pitched outside the crumbling walls that had not been restored since Hyksos’ times, was almost as large as the permanent one. There were pedlars selling amulets of Ra and Kheper and Atum, and effigies by the thousands were set up in little shrines. The din of excited people shouting and the whine and whistle of flutes and pipes was almost deafening.

  Not all would be allowed into the first court of the temple for the ceremony—but a great many would. Ra-hotep and his closest associates tu
rned a blind eye to the bribery that was going on as members of the public tried to persuade the junior priests on guard at the gate to let them in. But Hapuseneb noticed it, and smiled grimly. No doubt it went on everywhere, he thought. Probably even after death people would try it on at the many gates on the Duat—but there it would not benefit them. There the gatekeepers were incorruptible and the only way through was by the honesty and wisdom of the answers they gave to the fearsome questions asked. He must remember to have a word with his own priests. The people must learn that merit, and not bribery, was all that they could safely rely upon.

  After a brief ceremony in the outer court for the benefit of the crowd, Ra-hotep, Hapuseneb and certain other priests left for an inner court where the public were not allowed. There they performed more ceremonies of purification—standing still as stone while sweet oils and pure, cool water were poured over their heads. On the walls around them images of the sacred ablutions were painted.

  On the door that they were to pass through Hapuseneb read these words:

  I am the god who resides in the egg of the first and the last. I am the god who rises from the horizon and swims in the shining sky. Who sends light to illumine all things and whose like is not found among the gods ...[9]

  [9—“I am the god who resides in the egg...” from Georg Steindorff, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Putnam, 1905.]

  Silently Ra-hotep broke the clay seal of the door and stepped through, followed only by Hapuseneb.

  In this chamber prayers were said to prepare mortals for the encounter with the immortal. Each word had been taken from ancient and well-used texts and was engraved on the stone walls.

  To enter the next chamber another seal had to be broken.

  Hapuseneb found himself standing before a column of smooth black diorite. Its top was pyramid-shaped except for the very tip, which was hollowed out so that a huge green crystal egg could rest there. The flames of four low braziers illuminated a room that would otherwise have been pitch-dark, their flickering light reflected in the polished black stone so that it appeared that the crystal egg was rising from the flames.