Page 234 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[jtjgo-igio b.c.] The Resistance Movement 195

ment and acumen of Hatshepsut, whom, after the death of his
sons, he had brought up almost as a boy. She was self-willed
and temperamental, and had inherited the beauty of her mother
and of her great-grandmother Nefertari. In 1518 b.c. Thothmes
appointed her officially as his co-regent, and at the same time
married her to her half-brother Thothmes. She was at the time

twenty-four years old, and her husband was seven years her
junior.
From that date Thothmes effectively retired from the throne,
and Hatshepsut took over all the official duties of the pharaoh.

The proprieties were still, of course, observed, for no woman
could rule Egypt in her own name, and the name of Thothmes
appeared together with that of his daughter on all decrees. But
the invalid king never left his palace. The young Thothmes, too,
was of weak health and seldom accompanied his self-willed wife
when she drove out in her chariot on inspection tours of her

realm.
Three years passed, and in 1515 b.c. Thothmes I died, and
was succeeded by Thothmes II. But everyone knew that in ef­
fect the succession had devolved upon Hatshepsut.

On hearing that the pharaoh who had conquered them had
died, the natives of the province of Kush made a bid for inde­
pendence, and revolted.
The people of Egypt shared the outraged indignation of
the new pharaoh and his consort at the ingratitude and temerity
of the Sudanese. And most vociferous were the old people of the

towns and villages of upper Egypt. They remembered—intermi­
nably—the victory parades when King Amose’s troops returned
from the war which had liberated Egypt from the foreign yoke,
and the proud bearing of the Sudanese troops who then had

fought side by side with the Egyptians for freedom. That, less
than a lifetime later, the grandsons of these faithful allies should
rise in rebellion against the Egyptian authorities showed the dis­
ruptive effect of modem education and contact with a higher
civilization on the simple morals of a primitive people. Such a

revolt would never have happened in their day, they said.
With the good wishes of the entire Egyptian people, the
expeditionary force set out to relieve the besieged garrisons. With