DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0090
SEASON OF I922-I923
77
hieroglyphics down the front. At first glance it was the leg of a stool of
a common enough kind, and it went among the odd bits of broken
furniture in our storeroom. But on further consideration it evidently
was not a stool leg. When one held it by the lower end—where the
wood was dark and shiny from much handling—there could be seen
the traces of two straps coming out of the hole above, and it became
perfectly clear that this was the heavy, club-like handle of a whip (pl.
44). The hieroglyphics read “The Sailor of Sen-Mut, Neb-iry.” Now
Sen-Mut was Hat-shepsut’s architect, and immediately there arose the
picture of his sailors toiling up the long straight road from the river to
the temple, dragging the ponderous blocks of granite they had brought
down from Aswan by boat, with Neb-Iri, the boatswain, walking along
beside, cracking the broad, heavy, leather lashes across their sweating
backs. The driving whip of the charioteer which we found a couple of
years before had little narrow thongs no wider than a pencil, but these
lashes had been as wide as a man’s leather belt. However, a maddened
horse could kick a flimsy Egyptian chariot to pieces, while the patient
fellah learned to take his blows in silence.
Every day we found scraps of magnificent limestone statues. Some
were fragments of colossal Osiride figures of the Queen, and others
were from a set of her statues about twice life-size, of delightful work-
manship and brilliant coloring. To-day they are only maddening relics
of the spite of her stepson, Thut-mose 111, for limestone had been easi-
ly smashed into little bits. With hard stone it was somewhat more
difficult for the iconoclasts. There had been a row of red granite figures
of the Queen probably between the columns of one of the colonnades,
for there were certainly at least ten of them. All were alike, showing
Hat-shepsut kneeling and offering to the god Amun, probably, a large,
globular vase with a spout shaped like an aw#i-amulet (pl. 53). Each
had been carved with an oblong base. The destruction gang first threw
them all on their sides and then hammered them on their hips with a
big maul until they snapped asunder at their weakest points, usually
the waist and neck, and always along the top of their bases. We never
discovered what became of the latter. Probably, being fairly regularly
shaped oblong blocks, they made excellent corn grinders and were
taken off to the city. The other bits were just a convenient size for one
man to lift and were carried off to the nearest hole and dumped into it.
Five of these little statues were recovered practically entire. We can
not claim that they are masterpieces, for they were intended more as
architectural decoration than as pure sculpture. They have, however,
the breadth and dignity that Egyptian sculpture almost invariably
77
hieroglyphics down the front. At first glance it was the leg of a stool of
a common enough kind, and it went among the odd bits of broken
furniture in our storeroom. But on further consideration it evidently
was not a stool leg. When one held it by the lower end—where the
wood was dark and shiny from much handling—there could be seen
the traces of two straps coming out of the hole above, and it became
perfectly clear that this was the heavy, club-like handle of a whip (pl.
44). The hieroglyphics read “The Sailor of Sen-Mut, Neb-iry.” Now
Sen-Mut was Hat-shepsut’s architect, and immediately there arose the
picture of his sailors toiling up the long straight road from the river to
the temple, dragging the ponderous blocks of granite they had brought
down from Aswan by boat, with Neb-Iri, the boatswain, walking along
beside, cracking the broad, heavy, leather lashes across their sweating
backs. The driving whip of the charioteer which we found a couple of
years before had little narrow thongs no wider than a pencil, but these
lashes had been as wide as a man’s leather belt. However, a maddened
horse could kick a flimsy Egyptian chariot to pieces, while the patient
fellah learned to take his blows in silence.
Every day we found scraps of magnificent limestone statues. Some
were fragments of colossal Osiride figures of the Queen, and others
were from a set of her statues about twice life-size, of delightful work-
manship and brilliant coloring. To-day they are only maddening relics
of the spite of her stepson, Thut-mose 111, for limestone had been easi-
ly smashed into little bits. With hard stone it was somewhat more
difficult for the iconoclasts. There had been a row of red granite figures
of the Queen probably between the columns of one of the colonnades,
for there were certainly at least ten of them. All were alike, showing
Hat-shepsut kneeling and offering to the god Amun, probably, a large,
globular vase with a spout shaped like an aw#i-amulet (pl. 53). Each
had been carved with an oblong base. The destruction gang first threw
them all on their sides and then hammered them on their hips with a
big maul until they snapped asunder at their weakest points, usually
the waist and neck, and always along the top of their bases. We never
discovered what became of the latter. Probably, being fairly regularly
shaped oblong blocks, they made excellent corn grinders and were
taken off to the city. The other bits were just a convenient size for one
man to lift and were carried off to the nearest hole and dumped into it.
Five of these little statues were recovered practically entire. We can
not claim that they are masterpieces, for they were intended more as
architectural decoration than as pure sculpture. They have, however,
the breadth and dignity that Egyptian sculpture almost invariably