Naville, Edouard: The temple of Deir el Bahari (Band 3): End of northern half and southern half of the middle platform (London, 1898)

THE

TEMPLE OF DEIB EL BAHAEI.

DESCBIPTION OF PLATES.

PLATES LVI.-LXVII.

MIDDLE COLONNADE, NORTHERN WALL (UPPER REGISTER).

Plate LVI.—Sixteenth and Seventeenth Scenes.
We now pass to the upper row of the sculptures.
It begins at the southern corner with two scenes
engraved on the wall of the causeway, exactly above
the long scene of the assembly of the gods (pi. xlvi.).
After having had her years numbered and determined
for the first time by the goddess Safekhabui (pi. lv.),
Hatshepsu is undergoing a regular baptism. Her
figure is so entirely destroyed that we have to
turn to the similar scene in the temple of Luxor,
where the same legend is applied to Amenophis III.,
in order to see what her appearance was like. She
must have been represented as a young man standing
between two divinities ; for though her lea is men-
tioned in the text, it is not probable that it was
engraved. The reason of this is that what we have
before us is not an imaginary performance, supposed
to take place in another world at the hands of
the gods, but a real ceremony preliminary to her
coronation, something similar to what we should call
her coming of age, when she is declared fit to occupy
the royal throne. We have to suppose that for this
ceremony two priests adopted the appearance of the
gods whose office they performed, just as in the
funerary rites a man assumes the figure of Anubis,
who watches over the mummy. The gods here
represented are Amon and Horus, who both pour
water over the head of the queen. At Luxor
Amenophis III. is baptized by Menthu and Turn.

The words pronounced by the gods are the same in
both cases:

fl)



^

vab td hn'a ka-t sah-t ur n

thou art purified with thy lea (for) thy dignity great



suten nt
of King of Upper and Lower Egypt

" Thou art purified with thy lea, to receive thy great
dignity of King of Upper and Lower Egypt." The
gods add the usual promise of a great number of Sed
periods.

Seventeenth Scene. After having been purified,
the queen is shown to the gods of the South and the
North. Amon is seated with the boy standing on his
knees. With his right hand the god draws towards
him the head of the boy, that he may kiss him ; with
his left he holds emblems which are destroyed, but
which wo know from Luxor to have been a sceptre, a
hook, and a flail. The figure of the boy has been
completely restored, that of the god only imperfectly.
The gods of the South and the North are in two rows,
in the semblance of men, each holding a sceptre and
the ■¥•. There are three of them in each row; not
that six was their real number, but because three is
the ideographic representation of the plural.

The text engraved between Amon and the gods is