DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0164
SEASON OF I926-I927
151
months of some year of the reign, to list items against “the Pharaoh”
totaling 14; “the Estate of the Queen,” 15; “the Treasurer,” 19, and
“Sen-Mut,” 19. Here are the four great powers of the land, and of
them Sen-Mut alone goes by his own name. To this scribe, Thut-
mose, Hat-shepsut, and the Treasurer were merely institutions, but
Sen-Mut needed no titles to explain who he might be.
To what extent Sen-Mut’s boldness had grown we had a hint in
1926 when we noticed how he had ordered his portrait introduced
behind every door in the temple of Deir el Bahri,16 and now this past
season we find him tunneling right under the temple enclosure to
make a new tomb for himself, suggestively like Hat-shepsut’s own.
And he had gone even further. Down the middle of the ceiling of the
decorated chamber in this new tomb he had caused to be written in
fine bold hieroglyphics: “Long live the Horus, ‘Mighty of Souls’; the
Favorite of the Two Goddesses, ‘Fresh in Years’; the Golden Horus,
‘Divine of Diadems’; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, ‘Mafet-
ka-Re <’, beloved of Amun, who lives, and the Chancellor, the Steward
of Amun, Sen-Mut, begotten by Ret-mose and born of Hat-nufer.”
So written, without either break or qualifying phrases, this linking
together of Sen-Mut’s name with Hat-shepsut’s would surely have
made interesting reading to any partisan of Thut-mose who might
have seen it.
At this point in the story we sadly lack the diary of some Eighteenth
Dynasty Pepys or Creevey, for surely in the court gossip of the day
we should hear some rumor of all not going quite so well with the
High Steward of Amun as he might pretend. His ward, the Divine
Consort Neferu-Ref had died and with her he had lost his earliest
and, perhaps still, one of his strongest holds on fortune. She had been
alive, of course, at the laying of the foundations of Deir el Bahri in
the 7th Year, and still living in the 1 ith Year, as we know from an
inscription at the mines in Sinai. She was alive at the time when Sen-
Mut built his first tomb and set up the statues now in Berlin, London,
and Chicago. She had even survived until the sanctuary at Deir el
Bahri was sculptured, but she never appears in the decorations of the
rest of the temple, begun about the 16th Year, nor does Sen-Mut any
longer claim to be her guardian in his new tomb of about the same
date, or on his statue in Cairo. In fact, when next we hear of a consort
of Thut-mose HI, it is the younger sister, Meryet-Ref Hat-shepsut,
who is the Great Royal Wife and the mother to the heir of the throne.
16 See above, page 105.
151
months of some year of the reign, to list items against “the Pharaoh”
totaling 14; “the Estate of the Queen,” 15; “the Treasurer,” 19, and
“Sen-Mut,” 19. Here are the four great powers of the land, and of
them Sen-Mut alone goes by his own name. To this scribe, Thut-
mose, Hat-shepsut, and the Treasurer were merely institutions, but
Sen-Mut needed no titles to explain who he might be.
To what extent Sen-Mut’s boldness had grown we had a hint in
1926 when we noticed how he had ordered his portrait introduced
behind every door in the temple of Deir el Bahri,16 and now this past
season we find him tunneling right under the temple enclosure to
make a new tomb for himself, suggestively like Hat-shepsut’s own.
And he had gone even further. Down the middle of the ceiling of the
decorated chamber in this new tomb he had caused to be written in
fine bold hieroglyphics: “Long live the Horus, ‘Mighty of Souls’; the
Favorite of the Two Goddesses, ‘Fresh in Years’; the Golden Horus,
‘Divine of Diadems’; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, ‘Mafet-
ka-Re <’, beloved of Amun, who lives, and the Chancellor, the Steward
of Amun, Sen-Mut, begotten by Ret-mose and born of Hat-nufer.”
So written, without either break or qualifying phrases, this linking
together of Sen-Mut’s name with Hat-shepsut’s would surely have
made interesting reading to any partisan of Thut-mose who might
have seen it.
At this point in the story we sadly lack the diary of some Eighteenth
Dynasty Pepys or Creevey, for surely in the court gossip of the day
we should hear some rumor of all not going quite so well with the
High Steward of Amun as he might pretend. His ward, the Divine
Consort Neferu-Ref had died and with her he had lost his earliest
and, perhaps still, one of his strongest holds on fortune. She had been
alive, of course, at the laying of the foundations of Deir el Bahri in
the 7th Year, and still living in the 1 ith Year, as we know from an
inscription at the mines in Sinai. She was alive at the time when Sen-
Mut built his first tomb and set up the statues now in Berlin, London,
and Chicago. She had even survived until the sanctuary at Deir el
Bahri was sculptured, but she never appears in the decorations of the
rest of the temple, begun about the 16th Year, nor does Sen-Mut any
longer claim to be her guardian in his new tomb of about the same
date, or on his statue in Cairo. In fact, when next we hear of a consort
of Thut-mose HI, it is the younger sister, Meryet-Ref Hat-shepsut,
who is the Great Royal Wife and the mother to the heir of the throne.
16 See above, page 105.