and earth. And his sister spake, answering him: 'Why hath one
remembered these matters, and wherefore hath this word been said?
Prithee, what hath come into thy heart?' The king spake, saying: 'As for
me, I have remembered the mother of my mother, the mother of my father,
the king's great wife and king's mother Teta-shera, deceased, whose
tomb-chamber and _mer-ahat_ are at this moment upon the soil of Thebes
and Abydos. I have spoken thus unto thee because my Majesty desireth to
cause a pyramid and chapel to be made for her in the Sacred Land, as a
gift of a monument from my Majesty, and that its lake should be dug, its
trees planted, and its offerings prescribed; that it should be provided
with slaves, furnished with lands, and endowed with cattle, with
_hen-ka_ priests and _kher-heb_ priests performing their duties, each
man knowing what he hath to do.' Behold! when his Majesty had thus
spoken, these things were immediately carried out. His Majesty did these
things on account of the greatness of the love which he bore her, which
was greater than anything. Never had ancestral kings done the like for
their mothers. Behold! his Majesty extended his arm and bent his hand,
and made for her the king's offering to Geb, to the Ennead of Gods, to
the lesser Ennead of Gods... [to Anubis] in the God's Shrine, thousands
of offerings of bread, beer, oxen, geese, cattle... to [the Queen
Teta-shera]." This is one of the most interesting inscriptions
discovered in Egypt in recent years, for the picturesqueness of its
diction is unusual.

* A polite periphrasis for the dead.

As has already been said, the king Amenhetep I was also buried in the
Dra' Abu-'l-Negga, but the tomb has not yet been found. Amenhetep I and
his mother, Queen Nefret-ari-Aahmes, who is mentioned in the inscription
translated above, were both venerated as tutelary demons of the Western
Necropolis of Thebes after their deaths, as also was Mentuhetep III. At
Der el-Bahari both kings seem to have been worshipped with Hathor, the
Mistress of the Waste. The worship of Amen-Ra in the XVIIIth Dynasty
temple of Der el-Bahari was a novelty introduced by the priests of Amen
at that time. But the worship of Hathor went on side by side with that
of Amen in a chapel with a rock-cut shrine at the side of the Great
Temple. Very possibly this was the original cave-shrine of Hathor, long
before Mentuhetep's time, and was incorporated with the Great Temple and
beautified wi