reat additions to the
temple of the Theban Ammon at Karnak by which the Pharaohs of the Empire
rendered it by far the greatest of the existing temples in the world.
The temple of Deir el Bahri also was designed by him. Towards the end of
his reign, his elder sons being dead, Tethmosis associated Hatshepsut,
his daughter by Ahmosi, with himself upon the throne. Tethmosis I. was
the first of the long line of kings to be buried in the Valley of the
Tombs of the Kings of Thebes. At his death another son Tethmosis II.
succeeded as the husband of his half-sister, but reigned only two or
three years, during which he warred in Nubia and placed Tethmosis III.,
his son by a concubine Esi, upon the throne beside him (c. 1500 B.C.).
After her husband's death the ambitious Hatshepsut assumed the full
regal power; upon her monuments she wears the masculine garb and aspect
of a king though the feminine gender is retained for her in the
inscriptions. On some monuments of this period her name appears alone,
on others in conjunction with that of Tethmosis III., while the latter
again may appear without the queen's; but this extraordinary woman must
have had a great influence over her stepson and was the acknowledged
ruler of Egypt. Tethmosis, to judge by the evidence of his mummy and the
chronology of his reign, was already a grown man, yet no sign of the
immense powers which he displayed later has come down to us from the
joint reign. Hatshepsut cultivated the arts of peace. She restored the
worship in those temples of Upper and Lower Egypt which had not yet
recovered from the religious oppression and neglect of the Hyksos. She
completed and decorated the temple of Deir el Bahri, embellishing its
walls with scenes calculated to establish her claims, representing her
divine origin and upbringing under the protection of Ammon, and her
association on the throne by her human father. The famous sculptures of
the great expedition by water to Puoni, the land of incense on the
Somali coast, are also here, with many others. At Karnak Hatshepsut
laboured chiefly to complete the works projected in the reigns of
Tethmosis I. and II., and set up two obelisks in front of the entrance
as it then was. One of these, still standing, is the most brilliant
ornament of that wonderful temple. A date of the twenty-second year of
her reign has been found at Sinai, no doubt counted from the beginning
of the co-regency with Tethmosis I. Not much later, in his twen