herself all that glory in which he was so well fitted to share; perhaps he saw the dangers which her pacific policy was bringing upon the land; perhaps there was some deeper reason which we do not know. What we do know is that after her death every attempt was made to obliterate her name, and to remove all traces of her greatness from her buildings in Egypt. Her cartouches and her figure were hacked from the walls of her own temple wherever this was possible without sacrilege; around the bases of her obelisks her successor built a sheathing of masonry to hide her inscriptions; the titles and names of her chief servants and favourites were chiselled away from their statues and from their tomb-steles. It seems a petty vengeance for a great man to have taken upon the memory of a great woman; but we do not know enough of the circumstances to pass judgment upon it. Fortunately, as vengeance, it has missed its aim. The greatness of Hatshepsut can still be traced in the scenes from which Tahutmes sought to obliterate her name; and the sheathing with which he cased the lower part of her obelisk may have helped to preserve the very inscription which it was meant to hide for ever.

(Professor Breasted, the author of the latest important History of Egypt, reconstructs what he calls 'The Feud of the Thutmosids' in a somewhat different, somewhat more dramatic, and certainly more complicated fashion. His view as to the relationships of the three Tahutmes and Hatshepsut is in outline as follows. In the uncertainty as to the paternity of Tahutmes III., he reckons him as a son of Tahutmes I., and thus, equally with Tahutmes II., a half-brother, instead of a nephew, of Hatshepsut. The old king, Tahutmes I., is forced by the legitimist party in the State to associate Hatshepsut, who is subsequently married, not to Tahutmes II., but to Tahutmes III. Tahutmes III., having no prospects, is placed as a priest in the temple of Amen at Karnak, but, by means of a coup d'état carried out

with the help of the priesthood, is proclaimed king in place of Tahutmes I., who is retired, but allowed to live. The legitimist party, however, gradually force Tahutmes III. to recognize the rights of his wife Hatshepsut, and to give her a share in the government. This once attained, she eventually thrusts her husband into the background, and assumes supreme authority herself. But at this point the other child of the old king, Tahutmes II., appears upon the scene, allies himself with his dethroned father, Tahutmes I., thrusts aside both his brother and sister, and seizes the crown. Tahutmes II., in concert with his father, then begins the persecution of the name of Hatshepsut. Before long, the death of Tahutmes I. so weakens the position of Tahutmes II. that he makes common cause with Tahutmes III., and the two have a short co-regency, which is closed by the death of Tahutmes II. The throne is thus held again by Tahutmes III.; but once more the legitimist party forces on him the recognition of Hatshepsut as coregent; and, as before, once recognized, she proves strong enough to relegate Tahutmes III. to obscurity, and assumes the leading rôle in the State. Finally, Hatshepsut dies, leaving Tahutmes III., as the sole survivor of this amazing welter, to reign alone.) If this reconstruction, which, as Professor Breasted remarks, 'is not without its difficulties,' be a true representation of the history of the time, the game of politics in the land of Egypt round about 1500 B.C. must have had exciting moments, and statesmen must have been possessed of an agility compared with which the facile evolutions of the Vicar of Bray were sluggish.

It has to be noticed that in the temple at Serabit-elKhadem, where there are inscriptions of Hatshepsut from the fifth to the twenty-second year of her reign, she and Tahutmes III. are always named in unison. In one case one cartouche of Hatshepsut is put together with one of Tahutmes to express their joint rule-'Suten-bat Maat

ka-ra [Hatshepsut], Sa-ra Tahutimes.' 'There is,' says Petrie, 'not a single erasure of the name of either ruler, and no trace of that alternation of power which has been erroneously supposed.' In the absence of conclusive evidence, the simpler arrangement of the history has been followed in the preceding pages, in preference to the ingenious reconstruction of Breasted.

CHAPTER VII

TAHUTMES III. AND THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA

THE pacific policy of Hatshepsut had no doubt been of great value to the land of Egypt itself; but it had not impressed the Syrian principalities which had so lately come under the yoke of the Empire. The fact that Egyptian troops had not been seen in Syria for more than twenty years no doubt encouraged them in hopes of throwing off the suzerainty of the great southern power and reasserting their independence. So long as the great queen remained on the throne, no overt acts of hostility to the sovereign power were committed; the tribute came in uninterruptedly, and the queen was able to describe herself as 'having the Asiatics in her grasp'; but there can be no doubt that the chiefs of the various principalities had been silently maturing their plans, and were only waiting to carry them into execution till the troubled hour when the sceptre of Egypt should be passing from one ruler to another.

The conspiracy against the Egyptian power apparently found its head in the King of Qedesh, on the Orontes, who had succeeded in quietly gathering around him a formidable coalition of States, ready for the moment when the signal of revolt should be given. Accordingly, Queen Hatshepsut can scarcely have been laid in her grave before the whole of Northern Syria went up in a flame of insurrection.

'Beginning from Yeruza, as far as the ends of the country they rebelled against His Majesty.' If the Syrian tribes imagined that they had chosen a favourable moment to strike for freedom, they were destined to be bitterly disappointed. It was Egypt's hour, and the rebellious dynasts had simply delivered themselves into the hands of the one supremely great soldier whom Egypt has ever bred. In campaign after campaign, carried on from the twenty-third to the forty-second year of his reign (reckoning from his association with Hatshepsut), he harried and drove them relentlessly, until at last he had thoroughly beaten the spirit out of them, and the whole land, from the Negeb to the Euphrates, lay submissive and exhausted at his feet.

Peaceful as Hatshepsut's reign had been, it is evident that the army had not been allowed to become inefficient; otherwise Tahutmes could never have accomplished what he did with it within a few months of his accession. Warhardened, of course, it was not; but it must have been well drilled and disciplined, and accustomed to manœuvres and to marching. When the news of the revolt in Syria reached the king's ears, he got his troops on foot at once, and towards the end of the twenty-second year of his reign he marched out from Zaru, the frontier fortress of the land. What force he had with him is not stated, but probably, judging from the size of the armies in the wars of Ramses II., it would be somewhere about 20,000 men. Nine days after leaving Zaru he was at Gaza, a distance of about 160 miles-which gives a rate of marching sufficient in itself to show that the army must have been in good condition. The day he arrived at Gaza was the anniversary of his coronation. The fact is merely mentioned in the Annals; Tahutmes had other things to think of than the celebration of anniversaries.

Resting one day at Gaza, he marched northward again next day. As he drew nearer to the enemy's position, his