You May See Her, If You Will, A Little Lady On The Wall, With A Face
Decidedly Sensual - A Long, Straight Nose, Thick Lips, An Expression
Rather Determined Than Agreeable.
Her mother looks as Semitic as a Jew
moneylender in Brick Lane, London.
Her husband, Thothmes II., has a
weak and poor-spirited countenance - decidedly an accomplished
performer on the second violin. The mother wears on her head a snake,
no doubt a cobra-di-capello, the symbol of her sovereignty. Thothmes
is clad in a loin-cloth. And a god, with a sleepy expression and a
very fish-like head, appears in this group of personages to offer the
key of life. Another painting of the queen shows her on her knees
drinking milk from the sacred cow, with an intent and greedy figure,
and an extraordinarily sensual and expressive face. That she was well
guarded is surely proved by a brave display of her soldiers - red men
on a white wall. Full of life and gaiety all in a row they come,
holding weapons, and, apparently, branches, and advancing with a gait
of triumph that tells of "spacious days." And at their head is an
officer, who looks back, much like a modern drill sergeant, to see how
his men are marching.
In the southern shrine of the temple, cut in the rock as is the
northern shrine, once more I found traces of the "Lady of the Under-
World." For this shrine was dedicated to Hathor, though the whole
temple was sacred to the Theban god Amun. Upon a column were the
remains of the goddess's face, with a broad brow and long, large eyes.
Some fanatic had hacked away the mouth.
The tomb of Hatshepsu was found by Mr. Theodore M. Davis, and the
famous /Vache/ of Deir-el-Bahari by Monsieur Naville as lately as
1905. It stands in the museum at Cairo, but for ever it will be
connected in the minds of men with the tiger-colored precipices and
the Colonnades of Thebes. Behind the ruins of the temple of Mentu-
Hotep III., in a chapel of painted rock, the Vache-Hathor was found.
It is not easy to convey by any description the impression this
marvellous statue makes. Many of us love our dogs, our horses, some of
us adore our cats; but which of us can think, without a smile, of
worshipping a cow? Yet the cow was the Egyptian Aphrodite's sacred
animal. Under the form of a cow she was often represented. And in the
statue she is presented to us as a limestone cow. And positively this
cow is to be worshipped.
She is shown in the act apparently of stepping gravely forward out of
a small arched shrine, the walls of which are decorated with brilliant
paintings. Her color is red and yellowish red, and is covered with
dark blotches of a very dark green, which look almost black. Only one
or two are of a bluish color.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 39 of 71
Words from 19765 to 20264
of 36756
