Page 251 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

jl w sit gu tries
H5IO-I44O B.C.]
by Hatshepsut, and he had married her to his son by a slave-girl,
still another Thothmes. So Thothmes III should have succeeded
his father by reason of his wife’s title. But Hatshepsut wasn’t the

woman to retire in favor of her stepson, who was only seventeen
at that time anyway. She imprisoned the youngster in the palace,
where he presumably still was, and, as cool as you please, pro­
claimed herself, not as queen, but as king! Why, she even wore
a false beard when she appeared officially, and used all the mas­
culine titles. And now she had reigned for fourteen years, and

her renowned beauty was fading; but Egypt had prospered as
never before, and that was the place to take a cargo if you had
a cargo to sell.
The advice was taken. After three weeks in Knossos the ship

sailed, with nearly half its original cargo and with a Cretan pilot,
towards the southeast.
But these three weeks were a period of wonder for the crew.
The stone buildings were no less amazing on closer inspection,
with their frescoes of garden scenes and of fishing and dancing

scenes, of acrobats and the sacred bull-baiting. Donkeys they had
already seen in the Spanish ports, but here they were more nu­
merous and did most of the portering within the city. But par­
ticularly the degree of nakedness practiced by the natives

shocked—and delighted—the crew. That the men only wore a
breechclout was reasonable enough in the warm sunshine that
they scarcely recognized as winter. But the bared breasts of the
women contrasted oddly and excitingly with their long flounced
skirts—a direct reversal of the fashions among their own sisters

back home, who wore decent high-necked blouses, but whose
corded skirts scarcely went halfway to the knee.
They made good trade at Avaris, on the delta of the Nile,
and were almost too sated with new impressions to do more

than note idly the flat-topped houses of mud brick, the palm
trees and papyrus rushes and the endless miles of cultivation.
But the sight of Negroes in the streets aroused their comment.
They had only heard of black people before, and never seen
them. They were for the most part slaves, from the Nubian cam­

paigns, and rarely had the chance to sign onto the crews of the
Mediterranean ships.