She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her authority.  One raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a rising of the Shausu in Central Syria, while the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia, and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt.  When in the second year of his reign the news was brought to Thutmosis II. that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon them, he “became furious as a panther,” and assembling his troops set out for war without further delay.  The presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at rebelling.

The earlier kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had chosen for their last resting-place a spot on the left bank of the Nile at Thebes, where the cultivated land joined the desert, close to the pyramids built by their predecessors.  Probably, after the burial of Amenothes, the space was fully occupied, for Thutmosis I. had to seek his burying-ground some way up the ravine, the mouth of which was blocked by their monuments.  The Libyan chain here forms a kind of amphitheatre of vertical cliffs, which descend to within some ninety feet of the valley, where a sloping mass of detritus connects them by a gentle declivity with the plain.

[Illustration:  350.jpg THE AMPHITHEATRE AT DEIR EL-BAHARI, AS IT APPEARED BEPOEE NAVILLe’s EXCAVATIONS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The great lords and the queens in the times of the Antufs and the Usirtasens had taken possession of this spot, but their chapels were by this period in ruins, and their tombs almost all lay buried under the waves of sand which the wind from the desert drives perpetually over the summit of the cliffs.  This site was seized on by the architects of Thutmosis, who laid there the foundations of a building which was destined to be unique in the world.  Its ground plan consisted of an avenue of sphinxes, starting from the plain and running between the tombs till it reached a large courtyard, terminated on the west by a colonnade, which was supported by a double row of pillars.

[Illustration:  351.jpg THE NORTHERN COLLONADE]

     Drawn by Bouclier, from a photograph supplied by Naville.

Above and beyond this was the vast middle platform,* connected with the upper court by the central causeway which ran through it from end to end; this middle platform, like that below it, was terminated on the west by a double colonnade, through which access was gained to two chapels hollowed out of the mountain-side, while on the north it was bordered with excellent effect by a line of proto-Dorio columns ranged against the face of the cliff.

     * The English nomenclature employed in describing this
     temple is that used in the Guide to Deir el-Bahari,
     published by the Egypt Exploration Fund.—­Tr.