* We know how greatly puzzled the early Egyptologists were by this manner of depicting the queen, and how Champollion, in striving to explain the monuments of the period, was driven to suggest the existence of a regent, Amenenthes, the male counterpart and husband of Hatshopsitu, whose name he read Amense.  This hypothesis, adopted by Rosellini, with some slight modifications, was rejected by Birch.  This latter writer pointed out the identity of the two personages separated by Champollion, and proved them to be one and the same queen, the Amenses of Manetho; he called her Amun-num- hc, but he made her out to be a sister of Amenothes I., associated on the throne with her brothers Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis IL, and regent at the beginning of the reign of Thutmosis III.  Hineks tried to show that she was the daughter of Thutmosis I., the wife of Thutmosis II. and the sister of Thutmosis III.; it is only quite recently that her true descent and place in the family tree has been recognised.  She was, not the sister, but the aunt of Thutmosis III.  The queen, called by Birch Amun-num-het, the latter part of her name being dropped and the royal prenomen being joined to her own name, was subsequently styled Ha-asu or Hatasu, and this form is still adopted by some writers; the true reading is Hatshopsitu or Hatshopsitu, then Hatshopsiu, or Hatshepsiu, as Naville has pointed out.

Her father united her while still young to her brother Thutmosis, who appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very subordinate part which he plays beside the queen.  When Thutmosis I. died, Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office:  but Hatshopsitu, while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her husband,* kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands.  The portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression.  The oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed.

* It is evident, from the expressions employed by Thutmosis I. in associating his daughter with himself on the throne, that she was unmarried at the time, and Naville thinks that she married her brother Thutmosis II. after the death of her father.  It appears to me more probable that Thutmosis I. married her to her brother after she had been raised to the throne, with a view to avoiding complications which might have arisen in the royal family after his own death.  The inscription at Shutt-er-Ragel, which has furnished Mariette with the hypothesis that Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis IL reigned simultaneously, proves that the person mentioned in it, a certain Penaiti, flourished under both these Pharaohs, but by no means shows that these two reigned together; he exercised the functions which he held by their authority during their successive reigns.

[Illustration:  348.jpg PAINTING ON THE TOMB OF THE KINGS]