Plate XII

With this picture we skip four centuries and embark upon the paintings of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Plates XII and XIII illustrate the best style of painted relief The figure of the king is the only one that has been spared in this small chapel, the hatred of Tuthmosis III having caused the portrait of his predecessor, Queen Hatshepsut, to be expunged everywhere, and the iconoclastic zeal of Akhenaten having removed the figures and names of the gods. Tuthmosis I, the father of Hatshepsut, was here originally seen behind his daughter 'making adoration four times' to the sacred symbol of Anubis in a shrine. Above him are his names and titles:'The good god, master of offerings, rokheperkarer, the son of [Amen-]rer, given life.' He wears the linen head-dress known as nems, in front of which coils the uraeus serpent, and his false heard is of the archaic type. Around his neck is a collar of beads and gold, and bracelets are upon his wrists. The short simple skirt of the period was stiffened so as to have triangular form when seen from the front, as we know from statues. A sporran of gold and inlay hangs down from the belt, which bears the king's name. The bull's tail, part of the insignia of the Pharaoh, is represented in an exceptional manner: it begins with a human finger, continues in the leopard-tail pattern known from the decorative borders of wall-paintings, and at last passes into the bull's tail proper. To the left of the Plate are traces of the erased figure of Hatshepsut, the chisel-marks closely following the lines of her body. This picture of Tuthmosis I contrasts strikingly with that of Ramesses II in Plate C, where magnificence has taken the place of the simplicity here attained