After exercising all the functions of sovereignty for fifteen years, during which she kept her royal brother in a subjection that probably became very galling to him, Hatasu found herself under the necessity of admitting him to a share in the royal authority, and allowed his name to appear on her monuments in a secondary and subordinate position.  About this time she was especially engaged in the ornamentation of the old temple of Ammon at Thebes, begun by Usurtasen I., and much augmented by her father, Thothmes I. The chief of all her works in this quarter were two obelisks of red granite, or syenite, drawn from the quarries of Elephantine, and set up before the entrance, which her father had made in front of Usurtasen’s construction.  These great works are unexcelled, in form, colour, and beauty of engraving, by any similar productions of Egyptian art, either earlier or later.  They measure nearly a hundred feet in height, and are covered with the most delicately finished hieroglyphics.  On them Hatasu declares that she “has made two great obelisks for her father, Ammon, from a heart that is full of love for him.”  They are “of hard granite of the South, each of a single stone, without any joining or division.”  The summit of each, or cap of the pyramidion, is “of pure gold, taken from the chiefs of nations,” so that they “are seen from a distance of many leagues—­Upper and Lower Egypt are bathed in their splendour"(!).

Hatasu reigned conjointly with Thothmes III. for the space of seven years.  Their common monuments have been found at Thebes, in the Wady Magharah, and elsewhere.  It is not probable that the relations of the brother and sister during this period were very cordial.  Hatasu still claimed the chief authority, and placed her name before that of her brother on all public documents.  She was, as she has been called, “a bold, ambitious woman,” and evidently admitted with reluctance any partner of her greatness.  Thothmes III., a man of great ambition and no less ability, is not likely to have acquiesced very willingly in the secondary position assigned to him.  Whether he openly rebelled against it, broke with Hatasu, and deprived her of the throne, or even put her to death, is wholly uncertain.  The monuments hitherto discovered are absolutely silent as to what became of this great queen.  She may have died a natural death, opportunely for her brother, who must have wished to find himself unshackled; or she may have been the victim of a conspiracy within the palace walls.  All that we know is that she disappears from history in about her fortieth year, and that her brother and successor, the third Thothmes, actuated by a strong and settled animosity, caused her name to be erased, as far as possible, from all her monuments.  There is scarcely one on which it remains intact.  The greatest of Egyptian queens—­one of the greatest of Egyptian sovereigns—­is indebted for the continuance of her memory among mankind to the accident that the stonemasons employed by Thothmes to carry out his plan of vengeance were too careless or too idle to effect the actual obliteration of the name, which they everywhere marred with their chisels.  Hatred, for once, though united with absolute power, missed its aim; and Hatasu’s great constructions, together with her “Merchant Fleet,” are among the indisputable facts of history which can never be forgotten.