Nefer leaned close and read the next inscription. “She smiled at his majesty. He went to her immediately, his penis erect before her. He gave his heart to her. She was filled with joy at the sight of his beauty. His love passed into her limbs. The per’aa was flooded with the god’s fragrance, and all his perfumes were from Punt.” Nefer straightened. “Where’s Punt?”
“Somewhere across the eastern desert, then well south along the Red Sea,” Vizier Aametshu replied. “Its a fabled land containing fabulous treasures, particularly the main components of incense – frankincense and myrrh. Once Kemet traded there regularly, but no king has sent an expedition for years beyond memory.”
Senenmut continued. “Next, the royal baby is seen in heaven, with ram–headed Khnum fashioning her identical soul, or ka, on his potter’s wheel.” He addressed Hatshepsut again. “Since the royal ka is the personification of the office of kingship, its presence is incontrovertible proof of Your Majesty’s predestined right to rule.”
“That’s why, at the climax of Mother’s coronation ceremony, she became united with the ka that had been shared by all the kings of Kemet, and lost her human identity to become one of a long line of office holders,” Nefer interjected. “And why Mother has emphasized the existence of her royal ka by including it in her throne name – Maatkare.”
Senenmut smiled proudly. “You’ve learned your lessons well.” He bent back to the papyrus. “Here, in this scene, as Amun watches, Khnum speaks.”
“I will shape for you your daughter. I will endow her with life, health, strength and all gifts. I will make her appearance above the gods, because of her dignity as King of Upper and Lower Kemet,” Nefer read.
Senenmut pointed once more. “Then the frog–headed midwife Heket offers life to the two inert forms. Returning to Kemet, Thoth tells Ahmes of the glories that await her unborn child. Nine months later Ahmes, wearing the vulture headdress of a king’s wife, is led to the birth bower by Thoth and Heket. Next we see Ahmes sitting on a throne and holding the newborn Hatshepsut. Gods surround them, while the goddess of childbirth Meskhenet sits in front of the throne. She is to be the royal nurse and reassures the royal infant ‘I am protecting you like Re.’ Finally Hathor, the royal wet–nurse, presents Your Majesty to Amun. He is overjoyed, kisses you, and says ‘Come to me in peace, daughter of my loins, beloved Maatkare, you are the king who takes possession of the diadem on the Throne of Horus of the Living, eternally.’ He then presents Your Majesty to the assembled gods. Then the story moves from heaven to earth. Your Majesty travels north to visit the ancient shrines of the principal gods of Kemet, accompanied by your father, Thutmose, who presents you to the court and formally nominates you as co–regent and intended successor.”
“Come, blessed one,” Nefer read. “I will take you in my arms that you may see your directions carried out in the per’aa; your precious images were made, you have received the investiture of the double crown, you are blessed. When you rise in the per’aa your brow is adorned with the double crown united on your head, for you are my heir, to whom I have given birth. This is my daughter Khnemet–Amun Hatshepsut, living, I put her in my place.”
“And what is this at the north end of the middle terrace?” Hatshepsut asked.
“The Shrine of Anubis, with a small hypostyle hall before two vaulted chambers. Its walls will contain scenes of Your Majesty making offerings to Anubis and other gods.”
“And on the walls of the south colonnade?”
“Blank for now, Majesty, saved for scenes of military campaigns or expeditions or whatever else of great importance happens during your reign.” Senenmut pointed to the model again. “At the southernmost end of the middle terrace will be a chapel dedicated to Hathor. It will be situated as close to the Hathor chapel in the temple of Mentuhotep as possible. It will be fronted by a court with decorated walls, and filled with columns topped with large faces of Hathor. Inside the chapel Your Majesty will be shown with Hathor’s offspring Ihy, suckling from her. On the west wall, and on either side of the door, will be reliefs of Hathor in the guise of a cow being hand–fed by your stepson.”
So Thut was to be represented in Hatshepsut’s temple, though in a minor way. I was glad of it. I wondered if he would build a temple as fine as this for himself some day. Or, rather, when. I recalled his plans to build extensively throughout the Two Lands. Though Hatshepsut’s kingship was certainly going to delay those plans, if not prevent them, from coming to fruition.
Senenmut’s finger rested on the model. “The second ramp leads to the upper and most important terrace. When Amun is carried here on festival days, he will pass from bright sunlight into cool shade between imposing pairs of kneeling colossal statues that will line the path to the sanctuary. On this uppermost level there will be a hypostyle hall fronted by a portico. Each of the portico’s twenty–four square pillars will be faced with a twice life–sized painted limestone statue of Your Majesty in the guise of Osiris, staring over the river directly east to Ipet–Isut. A central granite doorway will lead through the portico into a pillared court with decorated walls illustrating the Opet festival and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley.”
“And to the north of the terrace?”
“An open–air altar to the sun god Re–Harakhty, and smaller chapels to Amun and Anubis. There will be a raised altar of fine white limestone. There will be a small chapel for your family, with your father Thutmose and mother Ahmes and your grandmother Seniseneb on the walls.”
“And my mortuary chapel?” Hatshepsut asked.
“On the south side of the upper terrace. It will be a rectangular vaulted chamber with an enormous false door stela of red granite. The walls will be etched with images; Your Majesty will ride in the boat of the sun god, and the inscribed hymns of the hours of the day and night will guarantee a cycle of eternity for you. Your statue will stand before the chapel. Next door will be a much smaller cult chapel for your husband.”
“I suppose this is the sanctuary,” I said, pointing.
“Two dark interconnected rooms, designed to hold the barque of Amun and the statue of the god himself. Its walls will be carved with images of Amun’s barque arriving at the temple to celebrate the Beautiful Feast. Your Majesty, Neferure, the first Thutmose, Ahmes, and Neferubity – Your Majesty’s dead sister – will all appear on the walls making offerings before the barque. The sanctuary will effect a union between your family and Amun–Re. Elsewhere, in niches, Your Majesty, Ahmes, and the second Thutmose will receive offerings from priests.”
Hatshepsut placed her hand atop Senenmut’s. “It is a remarkable plan. My faith in you has been well placed.”
Senenmut smiled and bowed his head.
I noted that Hatshepsut continued to let her hand rest on his.
By now a multitude of priests and officials had arrived from the east bank for the foundation ceremony and were gathered in the vicinity of the pavilion. I saw a few craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of the model. I continued to study it as we waited for the ceremony to start. Not until Re fully set and stars began winking into the sky did Hatshepsut and the rest of us emerge from the pavilion. Everyone fell to their knees. She told them to rise, then all formed a procession behind her, some priests bearing torches to light the way, others burning incense, chantresses shaking sistrums and beating drums. Hatshepsut and Senenmut led us on a long walk to the southeastern corner of what would someday be the bottommost terrace. A pole lay flat on the ground there. In the first of the ten foundation rituals, Hori made a sighting of the stars, assisted by Nefer – she was by now quite practiced in the task – then indicated the exact spot on the ground for that corner of the temple. A priest stepped forward and began to dig a large round hole. A priestess dressed as the goddess Seshat recited spells, while Hapuseneb and Puyemre and Mahu passed censors of incense back and forth.
Once the hole was fully excavated, Puyemre embedded the long pole in its center. Workmen rushed to line its sides with mud bricks that Hatshepsut he
rself had made some days earlier in a separate ritual. Then priests carried forward the foundation deposits – amulets, food, perfume, miniature models of tools, pottery vessels, baskets, scarabs engraved with all five of Hatshepsut’s names. The deposits were intended to preserve her name for eternity and bring good luck. In turn, the priests handed the items to Hatshepsut, who dropped them into the hole. Then dirt was shoveled in until the ground was level once more, the erect pole marking the first corner. Senenmut then led us directly west to the base of the cliff, where the southwest corner of the temple would be. Again the ceremony was repeated, as it was at the remaining two corners.
Then came the pedj shes ceremony, the stretching of the cord, to delineate the outline of the temple. Hatshepsut tied the end of a long coiled rope around the nearest pole, then walked directly to the pole opposite, a priest steadily uncoiling the rope behind her as she proceeded, more lighting her way with torches. Once there, after her long walk, she looped the rope around the second pole, then headed to the next, and the next, then back to the first. When she finished, the large rectangular footprint of Djeser Djeseru was clearly delineated. The night’s ceremonies had taken many hours and the moon, low in the east when we started, was now low in the west. I was exhausted by the time I recrossed the river and fell into my bed a little before dawn.
We returned to the site early in the morning two days later. In the interim, hundreds of workers had dug four foundation trenches directly below the cords that Hatshepsut had stretched earlier, each deep enough to reach groundwater. Once again we walked in procession alongside the trenches, accompanied by priests and chantresses and officials. Hatshepsut shoveled ritually pure sand into the trenches to establish their purity and form a boundary between the water and the mud bricks that masons laid atop the sand as they followed behind her. At certain spots Hatshepsut placed miniature tools, offerings, even heads of geese and bulls, in the trenches. A servant shaded her from the sun throughout the process; the rest of us were not so lucky.
The day’s ceremony complete, the site was ready for construction. Senenmut told us work would begin without delay. There were already, in fact, small mountains of limestone blocks piled on the bank of the river near the quay that had been built specifically for the temple construction, and a line of boats was waiting to be unloaded, either tied to the quay or anchored in the river. Gangs of men were preparing to level the rectangle of ground within the cord, and others were attaching ropes to blocks of stone to drag them from the shore to a staging area closer to the work site. “There will be more ceremonies years from now when the temple is completed,” Senenmut said. “The temple will be purified with natron and whitewashed. Priests will perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony in each room. Statues of the temple’s gods will be placed in their sanctuaries. Finally, there will be a banquet for the priests and craftsmen who erected the temple.”
1470 BC
Regnal Year 10 – Thutmose III; Regnal Year 3 – Hatshepsut
“Now truly begins our expedition to the Land of Punt,” Chancellor Neshi informed Nefer and Aachel and me.
I was extraordinarily excited, about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. A little over a month ago the three of us had sailed north on the river from Waset to Koptos, accompanied by a host of soldiers and porters and sailors who were apportioned among five specially–designed sea–going boats. There we’d disembarked and disassembled the boats – sailors had broken each into hundreds of components, each marked with a symbol that indicated the quadrant it belonged to, to aid in the boats’ reassembly. We’d loaded the components and our trade goods and supplies and ourselves onto donkeys, then traveled overland on the ancient caravan route through Wadi Hammamat to the Red Sea port of Quseir. The journey across the desert had been tedious and hot and dusty and uncomfortable, the trail passing through sand and rock and scant vegetation, our progress measured against low hills in the far distance. We were always thirsty, stinking, baked by blisteringly–hot sun.
It had taken our sailors several weeks after our arrival at Quseir to reassemble the boats. The five crews had raced against each other, each trying to finish first, working from first light until late at night, the construction area lit by torchlight, the men chanting and singing as they went about a carefully orchestrated dance. The process had been complex and fascinating and we women had watched with interest.
The sailors first laid every piece of wood the donkeys had carried across the desert on a flat plain near the seashore, arranging each boat’s components by quadrant, then got to work, directed by five master builders. These boats were larger and more ponderous than those that plied the river, to make them more stable. Because there were no large trees in Kemet, each hull was made up of hundreds of three–foot lengths of acacia wood that had to be carefully joined together in a precise order. First, a long plank to serve as the hull’s axis was created by fastening several small planks together end to end. Then more were joined to each of the central plank’s sides to form a gradually upward–curving hull. Ropes were laced through seam holes that had been drilled part–way through each plank to secure them in place. The sailors assured me the ropes would expand when wet and pull the planks together and form as watertight a seal in the ocean as they had in the river. I hoped they were right. A few crossbeams were inserted inside the curve of the hull for support, all pegged in place with wooden dowels. A single large beam, as long as the boat, imported from Retenu, was placed down its middle, supported from below by a series of stanchions that rested on the hull; the deck, consisting of a number of removable hatches, rested atop the beam. Prows in the shape of lotus blossoms were slipped over each end of the boat, and a mast of acacia wood installed, its bottom braced on four sides, with long yardarms top and bottom, the entire structure supported by complex rigging. Finally, hogging trusses were put in place to ensure stability in heavy seas. Each truss consisted of a double rope running from bow to stern and looped over each; once we got underway a stick would be inserted between the ropes and twisted to tighten the truss as needed. Long steering rudders, and benches for oarsmen to sit on, were among the last items added, along with a few wooden frames topped and sided with reed mats to provide some shade for us as we traveled.
Nefer and Aachel and I spent the weeks watching the sailors work on the boats from the shade of open–sided pavilions, or laying on the beach and talking, or frolicking in the warm clear salty water. It had been good to get away from our daily routine, with no responsibilities or demands on our time. We slept well and deeply each night, cooled by gentle breezes, lulled to sleep by the music of waves breaking rhythmically on the shore.
Last night our boats had been loaded with our supplies and the beads and weapons we expected to exchange for the exotic goods of Punt – apes, ivory, gold, ebony, skins of panther and giraffe and cheetah, ostrich feathers, dwarves, and above all the two precious resins – myrrh and frankincense – needed to manufacture incense for use in temple rituals, perfumes, fumigating houses, mummifying the dead, and medicines. In fact, Amun’s oracle had supposedly called upon Hatshepsut to launch the expedition specifically to seek the perfume the god loved. It had been hundreds of years since anyone from Kemet had journeyed to the mysterious and distant land of Punt. Nefer had begged Hatshepsut for weeks for permission to go along on what promised to be a more interesting journey than the one we’d made to Buhen, finally wearing her down. Where Nefer went, I went also, and Aachel. Now that we were about to depart, none of us could contain our excitement. Aachel in particular was looking forward to the sea voyage; the last time she’d been on one we’d rescued her from her merchant. The only person in the expedition who wasn’t excited was Senimen, Nefer’s tutor, forced to go along because of her. He missed the luxuries of Waset; he’d grumbled the entire way so far.
Our soldiers had filed onto our vessels hours ago and the sailors had finally concluded their preparations for departure. Now a dozen began climbing up the rigging on each boat to release sails from yarda
rms. Nefer and Aachel and I ascended the gangplank, following Chancellor Neshi onto the lead boat. We were trailed by Senimen. Sailors pulled the gangplank on board and stowed it. A priest standing at the bow censed the boat as Chancellor Neshi unrolled a sheet of papyrus and read before the crew in stentorian voice the Oracle’s proclamation: “Said by Amun, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands: ‘Come, come in peace, my daughter, the graceful, who is in my heart, King Maatkare. I will give you Punt, the whole of it. I will lead your soldiers by land and by water, on mysterious shores which join the harbors of incense, the sacred territory of the divine land, my abode of pleasure. They will take incense as much as they like. They will load their ships to the satisfaction of their hearts with trees of green incense, and all good things of the land.’”
Neshi rolled up the papyrus and gave the signal. The captain barked an order. One after another, our five ships raised their sails and moved out into the sea, not so close to shore that we would run aground on hidden rocks, not so far that we would lose sight of land.
I’d never imagined such a voyage. When I turned my back to the land there were only sea and sky before me, blending together at the far horizon, a limitless vista, so unlike the narrow ribbon of Kemet with the emerald strip on each side of the river closely hemmed by brown desert plateaus. When I faced the land it was an indistinct blur, dark in places with trees, gray with hills, but mostly dull green. I rode all day long every day at the front of my boat, breathed deeply of the salt air, tasted the spray when the bow plunged into the troughs of waves, watched the graceful billows of our painted sails. We sped south before the wind, the men rowing only during the rare times it failed. We landed each night and set up camp on shore, our appetites whetted by sun and sea.
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