representations of the potter's wheel employed in the process of man's
creation. When the famous Hatshepsut, after the return of her expedition
to Punt in the ninth year of her young consort Thothmes III, decided to
build her temple at Deir el-Bahari in the necropolis of Western Thebes,
she sought to emphasize her claim to the throne of Egypt by recording
her own divine origin upon its walls. We have already noted the
Egyptians' belief in the solar parentage of their legitimate rulers,
a myth that goes back at least to the Old Kingdom and may have had its
origin in prehistoric times. With the rise of Thebes, Amen inherited the
prerogatives of Ra; and so Hatshepsut seeks to show, on the north side
of the retaining wall of her temple's Upper Platform, that she was the
daughter of Amen himself, "the great God, Lord of the sky, Lord of
the Thrones of the Two Lands, who resides at Thebes". The myth was no
invention of her own, for obviously it must have followed traditional
lines, and though it is only employed to exhibit the divine creation of
a single personage, it as obviously reflects the procedure and methods
of a general Creation myth.

(1) See Breasted, _Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache_,
XXXIX, pp. 39 ff., and _History of Egypt_, pp. 356 ff.

This series of sculptures shared the deliberate mutilation that all
her records suffered at the hands of Thothmes III after her death, but
enough of the scenes and their accompanying text has survived to render
the detailed interpretation of the myth quite certain.(1) Here, as in a
general Creation myth, Amen's first act is to summon the great gods
in council, in order to announce to them the future birth of the great
princess. Of the twelve gods who attend, the first is Menthu, a form of
the Sun-god and closely associated with Amen.(2) But the second deity
is Atum, the great god of Heliopolis, and he is followed by his cycle of
deities--Shu, "the son of Ra"; Tefnut, "the Lady of the sky"; Keb,
"the Father of the Gods"; Nut, "the Mother of the Gods"; Osiris, Isis,
Nephthys, Set, Horus, and Hathor. We are here in the presence of cosmic
deities, as befits a projected act of creation. The subsequent scenes
exhibit the Egyptian's literal interpretation of the myth, which
necessitates the god's bodily presence and personal participation.
Thoth mentions to Amen the name of queen Aahmes as the future mother of
Hatshepsut, and we later see Amen himself, in the form of her