f pictures before our
eyes.

[Illustration: 345.jpg QUEEN MUTNOFRIT IN THE GIZEH MUSEUM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct
the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her
face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in
this portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world
amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and
her double constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time,
her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and
presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt and
the world.*

* The association of Hatshopsitu with her father on the
throne, has now been placed beyond doubt by the inscriptions
discovered and commented on by Naville in 1895.

[Illustration: 346.jpg QUEEN HATSHOPSITU IN MALE COSTUME]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Naville.

From henceforth Hatshopsitu adopts every possible device to conceal her
real sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herself
Hatshopsiu, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of Hatshopsitu, the chief
of the favourites. She becomes the King Makeri, and on the occasion
of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume. We see her
represented on the Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of
breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem
rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her
chin.

[Illustration: 347.jpg BUST OF QUEEN HATSHOPSITU]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertens.
This was the head of one of the sphinxes which formed an
avenue at Deir el-Bahari; it was brought over by Lepsius and
is now in the Berlin Museum. The fragment has undergone
extensive restoration, but this has been done with the help
of fragments of other statues, in which the details here
lost were in a good state of preservation.

She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and
also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the
betrothed of Amon--khnumit Amaunu.*

* We know how greatly puzzled the early Egyptologists were
by this manner of depicting the queen, and how Champollion,
in striving to explain the monuments of the period,