h year, and that her brother
and successor, the third Thothmes, actuated by a strong and settled
animosity, caused her name to be erased, as far as possible, from all
her monuments. There is scarcely one on which it remains intact. The
greatest of Egyptian queens--one of the greatest of Egyptian
sovereigns--is indebted for the continuance of her memory among mankind
to the accident that the stonemasons employed by Thothmes to carry out
his plan of vengeance were too careless or too idle to effect the
actual obliteration of the name, which they everywhere marred with their
chisels. Hatred, for once, though united with absolute power, missed its
aim; and Hatasu's great constructions, together with her "Merchant
Fleet," are among the indisputable facts of history which can never be
forgotten.

XII.

THOTHMES THE THIRD AND AMENHOTEP THE SECOND.

No sooner had Thothmes III. burst the leading-strings in which his
sister had held him for above twenty years, then he showed the metal of
which he was made by at once placing himself at the head of his troops,
and marching into Asia. Persuaded that the great god, Ammon, had
promised him a long career of victory, he lost no time in setting to
work to accomplish his glorious destiny. Starting from an Egyptian post
on the Eastern frontier, called Garu or Zalu, in the month of February,
he took his march along the ordinary coast route, and in a short time
reached Gaza, the strong Philistine city, which was already a fortress
of repute, and regarded as "the key of Syria." The day of his arrival
was the anniversary of his coronation, and according to his reckoning
the first day of his twenty-third year. Gaza made no resistance: its
chief was friendly to the Egyptians, and gladly opened his gates to the
invading army. Having rested at Gaza no more than a single night,
Thothmes resumed his march, and continuing to skirt the coast, arrived
on the eleventh day at a fortified town called Jaham, probably Jamnia.
Here he was met by his scouts, who brought the intelligence that the
enemy was collected at Megiddo, on the edge of the great plain of
Esdraelon, the ordinary battle-field of the Palestinian nations. They
consisted of "all the people dwelling between the river of Egypt on the
one hand and the land of Naharain (Mesopotamia) on the other." At their
head was the king of Kadesh, a great city on the upper Orontes, which
afterwards became one of the chief seats of the Hitt