Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh by Joyce Tyldesley Read Free Book Online

in maintaining the success of the reign.
    The larger-scale stone buildings possessed one very useful feature which was quickly recognized and exploited. Their walls provided the new monarch with an enormous, obvious and permanent billboard upon which to speak directly to both her present and future subjects. Indeed, there was no other effective means of conveying general propaganda to the people. Word of mouth was doubtless used on a daily basis to communicate more specific and ephemeral matters, but spoken messages would surely perish with time, while the writings preserved on fragile papyri and ostraca would never reach a wide audience. Hatchepsut, never one to miss an opportunity, soon became adept at using the walls of her own buildings to proclaim her own glories and justify her own reign.
    In the deserts of Middle Egypt, approximately one mile to the south-east of Beni Hassan, Hatchepsut endowed two temples dedicated to the obscure deity Pakhet, ‘She who Scratches’, a fierce lion-headed goddess of the desert, worshipped locally. Much later the Greeks equated Pakhet with their own goddess Artemis, and her larger temple, cut into a small, steep-sided valley, is now widely known by its classical name of Speos Artemidos, or the ‘Grotto of Artemis’. Its local name is the Istabl Antar (the stable of Antar; Antar was a pre-Islamic warrior poet), while the neighbouring smaller temple of Pakhet is known as the Speos Batn el-Bakarah. The Speos Artemidos survived the reigns of both Tuthmosis III and Akhenaten virtually intact, but was unfortunately ‘restored’ by Seti I who added his own texts to the previously unadorned sanctuary. The Speos Batn el-Bakarah was badly defaced during the reign of Tuthmosis III.
    The Speos Artemidos consisted of two chambers: an outer pillared vestibule or hall which led via a short passage to an inner sanctuary cut into the living rock. A niche set into the back wall of the sanctuary, intended to house the cult statue of Pakhet, formed the religious focus of the shrine. The internal walls bore few decorations, although a series of texts and scenes carved on the south wall of the vestibule, around the

Fig. 6.1 Plan of the Speos Artemidos
    doorway to the sanctuary, were intended to re-emphasize Hatchepsut's filial bond with Amen, the father who had chosen her as ruler of Egypt. Here we can read Amen's words as he proclaims Hatchepsut's kingship:
    Utterance by Amen-Re, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands…, ‘O my beloved daughter Maatkare, I am thy beloved father. I establish for thee thy rank in the kingship of the Two Lands. I have fixed thy titulary.’ 3
    The accompanying scene shows Hatchepsut kneeling before the seated Amen, while the fierce Pakhet extends her left arm and pledges her support for the new king: ‘my fiery breath being as a fire against thine enemies…’ Thoth then announces the accession of Hatchepsut before the assembly of gods. Finally we see Hatchepsut offering incenseand libations to Pakhet who again extends her rather bloodthirsty blessing: ‘I give thee all strength, all might, all lands and every hill country crushed beneath thy sandals like Re.’
    However, it is the lengthy text carved high above the pillars across the front of the temple which is of great interest to students of Egyptian history. Here Hatchepsut makes a bold pronouncement of the policy of her reign; a policy of renewal and restoration. She wishes her readers to understand that, from the very moment of her creation she, Hatchepsut, was destined to restore the purity of the Egyptian temples to their former glories:
    I have done these things by the device of my heart. I have never slumbered as one forgetful, but have made strong what was decayed. I have raised up what was dismembered, even from the first time when the Asiatics were in Avaris of the North Land, with roving hordes in the midst of them overthrowing what had been made; they ruled without Re… I have banished the abominations