DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0259
RAMESES THE GREAT. 241
official name of Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ea, or "Contemplating
the beauties of Ra." The names of two other queens—
Nefer-t-ari and Ast-nefert—are also found upon the monu-
ments.
These three were probably the only legitimate Avives of
Rameses II, though he must also have been the lord of an
extensive hareern. His family, at all events, as recorded
upon the walls of the Temple at Wady Sabooah, amounted
to no less than one hundred and seventy children, of
whom one hundred and eleven were princes. This may
have been a small family for a great king three thousand
years ago. It was but the other day, comparatively speak-
ing, that Lepsius saw and talked with old Hasan, Kashef
of Dorr—the same petty ruler who gave so much trouble to
Belzoni, Burckhardt, and other early travelers—and he,
like a patriarch of old, had in his day been the husband of
sixty-four wives and the father of something like two
hundred children.
For forty-six years after the making of the Khetan
treaty, Rameses the Great lived at j>eace witli his neigh-
bors and tributaries. The evening of his life was long and
splendid. It became his passion and his pride to found
new cities, to raise dikes, to dig canals, to build fortresses,
to multiply statues, obelisks, and inscriptions, and to
erect the most gorgeous and costly temples in which man
ever worshiped. To the monuments founded by his pre-
decessors he made additions so magnificent that they
dwarfed the designs they were intended to complete, lie
caused artesian wells to be pierced in the stony bed of the
desert. He carried on the canal begun by his father and
opened a water-way between the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea.* No enterprise was too difficult, no project too
* Since this book was written, a further study of the subject has
l'''l tue to conjecture that not Seti I, but Queen Hatehepsu (Ilatasu)
°f the eighteenth dynasty, was the actual originator of the canal
which connected the Nile with the Ked Sea. The inscriptions
engraved upon the walls of her great temple at Dayr-el-Bahari
expressly state that her squadron sailed from Thebes to the land of
1 unt and returned from Punt to Thebes, laden with the products of
that mysterious country which Mariette and Maspero have con-
clusively shown to have been situated on the Somali coast-line
between Bab-el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. Unless, therefore,
some water-way existed at that time between the Nile and the Red
Sea, it follows that Queen Hatshepsu's squadron of discovery must
iiftve sailed northward from Thebes, descended the Nile to one of its
official name of Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ea, or "Contemplating
the beauties of Ra." The names of two other queens—
Nefer-t-ari and Ast-nefert—are also found upon the monu-
ments.
These three were probably the only legitimate Avives of
Rameses II, though he must also have been the lord of an
extensive hareern. His family, at all events, as recorded
upon the walls of the Temple at Wady Sabooah, amounted
to no less than one hundred and seventy children, of
whom one hundred and eleven were princes. This may
have been a small family for a great king three thousand
years ago. It was but the other day, comparatively speak-
ing, that Lepsius saw and talked with old Hasan, Kashef
of Dorr—the same petty ruler who gave so much trouble to
Belzoni, Burckhardt, and other early travelers—and he,
like a patriarch of old, had in his day been the husband of
sixty-four wives and the father of something like two
hundred children.
For forty-six years after the making of the Khetan
treaty, Rameses the Great lived at j>eace witli his neigh-
bors and tributaries. The evening of his life was long and
splendid. It became his passion and his pride to found
new cities, to raise dikes, to dig canals, to build fortresses,
to multiply statues, obelisks, and inscriptions, and to
erect the most gorgeous and costly temples in which man
ever worshiped. To the monuments founded by his pre-
decessors he made additions so magnificent that they
dwarfed the designs they were intended to complete, lie
caused artesian wells to be pierced in the stony bed of the
desert. He carried on the canal begun by his father and
opened a water-way between the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea.* No enterprise was too difficult, no project too
* Since this book was written, a further study of the subject has
l'''l tue to conjecture that not Seti I, but Queen Hatehepsu (Ilatasu)
°f the eighteenth dynasty, was the actual originator of the canal
which connected the Nile with the Ked Sea. The inscriptions
engraved upon the walls of her great temple at Dayr-el-Bahari
expressly state that her squadron sailed from Thebes to the land of
1 unt and returned from Punt to Thebes, laden with the products of
that mysterious country which Mariette and Maspero have con-
clusively shown to have been situated on the Somali coast-line
between Bab-el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. Unless, therefore,
some water-way existed at that time between the Nile and the Red
Sea, it follows that Queen Hatshepsu's squadron of discovery must
iiftve sailed northward from Thebes, descended the Nile to one of its