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Once only, upon the body of one of the Deir el Baharî princesses, did I find a royal cartouche embroidered in pale rose-colour. The Egyptians of the best periods seem to have attached special value to plain stuffs, and especially to white ones. These they wove with marvellous skill, and upon looms in every respect identical with those used in tapestry work.
If we take the illustration of this expedition given in the temple of Deir al Bahari, we have, to begin with, the frankincense trees, the long straight line of water running inland, the cattle and the birds; then the huts which the Bedouin build on tall poles, approached by ladders, from which they can inspect the produce of their land and drive off marauders, look exactly like those thereon depicted.
"Hatshepsût," more commonly known as "Hatasû;" the new reading is, however, more correct. Professor Maspero thinks that it was pronounced "Hatshopsitû." For full illustrated account of the complete excavation of this temple, see the Deir el Baharî publications of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Temenos, i.e., the enclosure wall of the Temple, within which all was holy ground.
Princess Nesikhonsû had beside her, in the vault at Deir el Baharî, some glass goblets of similar work. The national glass works were therefore in full operation during the time of the great Theban dynasties. Huge piles of scoriae mixed with slag yet mark the spot where their furnaces were stationed at Tell el Amarna, the Ramesseum, at El Kab, and at the Tell of Eshmûneyn.
Among the sarcophagi belonging to kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty which I recovered from Deir el Baharî, the most highly finished belonged to this type, and were only remarkable for the really extraordinary skill with which the craftsman had reproduced the features of the deceased sovereigns. The mask of Ahmes I., that of Amenhotep I., and that of Thothmes II., are masterpieces in their way.
The blue is splendid, and we must overleap twenty centuries before we again find so pure a colour among the funerary statuettes of Deir el Baharî. Green reappears under the Saïte dynasties, but paler than that of more ancient times, and it prevailed in the north of Egypt, at Memphis, Bubastis, and Sais, without entirely banishing the blue.
Down by the coast at Al Hafa there is a square enclosure or bazaar where piles of frankincense may still be seen ready for exportation, miniature successors of those piles of the tears of gum from the tree-trunks which are depicted on the old Egyptian temple at Deir al Bahari as one of the proceeds of Queen Hatasou's expeditions to the land of Punt.
That is the temple of Der El Bahari and was built by Hatshepset, the greatest of Egyptian queens. Hatshepset was the daughter of one king and the wife of another, and after her husband's death she ruled for about sixteen years. She made expeditions to the Red Sea and acted in every way like a man.
The grounds on which Government announced the release of these deportees last winter were even more unhappily chosen than the moment for the announcement, but the event seems so far to have justified Lord Minto's confidence, though one of the deported agitators, Pulin Bahari Das, of Dacca, has had to be rearrested and is now under trial at Dacca for conspiracy of a most serious character.
III. Columns with Hathor-head Capitals. We find examples of the Hathor- headed column dating from ancient times, as at Deir el Baharî; but this order is best known in buildings of the Ptolemaic period, as at Contra Latopolis, Philae, and Denderah. The shaft and the base present no special characteristics. They resemble those of the campaniform columns. The capital is in two divisions.
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