Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [96]
Toward the end of his life, the aging king seems to have placed his son beside him on the throne. About a year later King Menkheperre Thutmose III “mounted to heaven; he joined the sun, the divine limbs mingling with him who begat him.”
The epithet “the Great” surely belongs to Thutmose III, if to any king of Egypt, even if we judge him only by the material results of his campaigns. In an age which saw brutality—though not on so grand a scale as Christian Europe was able to work up—he showed clemency; at a time when death was the proper portion of the defeated, he spared the fallen. At the very least he deserves to regain the prestige he has lost to bombastic old Ramses II.
And do not forget to add Thutmose’s tomb to your repertory while in Luxor. The central attraction of the Valley of the Kings, on the West Bank, is the tomb of Tutankhamon. During the “season” this part of the Valley is almost too populous, for in the same immediate area are other tombs that are popular with visitors. But if you are wearing sensible shoes you may take a short hike, only a few hundred yards, to a small canyon in the cliffs, apart from the swarming center of things; and here you will have a genuine feeling for the secrecy and loneliness that these Houses of Eternity once conveyed. Today you climb steep wooden stairs to the hole in the cliff where once the swaying funeral cortege carried the embalmed body of Thutmose the Great. In location and in atmosphere it is one of the most impressive tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The paintings are unusual; at first sight they seem sketchier than the conventional Egyptian technique, to such an extent that the human and divine depictions might be called stick figures. Yet they have a sophistication and elegance that some observers, including myself, find highly attractive.
Thutmose’s mummy was not found in his tomb. The members of the second oldest profession had gotten to it long before any of our immediate ancestors were born. But his body survived, thanks to the efforts of a group of devoted priests in the last dying days of Egypt’s greatness. Today Thutmose’s mummy lies in the Cairo Museum with those of his peers. There is nothing particularly majestic about the withered face. Battered by impious tomb robbers, even the once imposing Thutmosid nose has lost its panache. You may draw your own moral.
Seven
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Cartouche of Amenhotep II
AMENHOTEP II
We have exhausted our superlatives on Thutmose III, but that is all right; we won’t be needing them for a while. Not that the Conqueror’s son was not a fair enough fighter himself. If we can believe the stories that have come down to us—which we probably should not—he surpassed even his renowned father in feats of arms. Thutmose III had driven an arrow nine inches out of the back of a copper target two inches thick; Amenhotep II drove his arrow clean through a target three inches thick. He trained his horses so ably that they did not sweat, even when galloping. He rowed a boat (with a thirty-four-foot oar) four miles without stopping, and then landed it alone; his two-hundred-man crew had collapsed long before. He could outrun anyone in Egypt, and no man could draw his bow.
All this braggadocio is harmless, though a psychologist might wonder whether Amenhotep II was trying to surpass an impressive father. But Amenhotep II was not a Nice King. Soon after his father died, he had to lead a campaign into Syria to suppress a “rebellion” of the local princes there; these worthies soon acquired the habit of trying out a new king to see whether he would be as competent or as interested as his ancestors had been. The account of Amenhotep’s first Syrian