Surely she would not
brook a rival to-day near the temple which she made - a rival long lost
and long forgotten.
Is not her influence still there upon the terraced
platforms, among the apricot and the white columns, near the paintings
of the land of Punt? Did it not whisper to the antiquaries, even to
the soldiers from Cairo, who guarded the Vache-Hathor in the night, to
make haste to take her away far from the hills of Thebes and from the
Nile's long southern reaches, that the great queen might once more
reign alone? They obeyed. Hatshepsu was appeased. And, like a delicate
woman, perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation of white and blue
and orange, standing ever so knowingly against a background of orange
and pink, of red and of brown-red, she rules at Deir-el-Bahari.
XIII
THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS
On the way to the tombs of the kings I went to the temple of Kurna,
that lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored massive façade, its heaps
of fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough,
columns recalling Medinet-Abu. There is not very much to see, but from
there one has a fine view of other temples - of the Ramesseum, looking
superb, like a grand skeleton; of Medinet-Abu, distant, very pale gold
in the morning sunlight; of little Deir-al-Medinet, the pretty child
of the Ptolemies, with the heads of the seven Hathors.
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