(1) See Naville, Deir el-Bahari, Pt.  II, pp. 12 ff.,
     plates xlvi ff.

     (2) See Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol.  II, pp. 23 ff. 
     His chief cult-centre was Hermonthis, but here as elsewhere
     he is given his usual title “Lord of Thebes”.

     (3) Pl. xlvii.  Similar scenes are presented in the “birth-
     temples” at Denderah, Edfu, Philae, Esneh, and Luxor; see
     Naville, op. cit., p. 14.

     (4) Cf.  Budge, op. cit., Vol.  II, p. 50.

The scene in the series, which is of greatest interest in the present connexion, is that representing Khnum at his work of creation.  He is seated before a potter’s wheel which he works with his foot,(1) and on the revolving table he is fashioning two children with his hands, the baby princess and her “double”.  It was always Hatshepsut’s desire to be represented as a man, and so both the children are boys.(2) As yet they are lifeless, but the symbol of Life will be held to their nostrils by Heqet, the divine Potter’s wife, whose frog-head typifies birth and fertility.  When Amenophis III copied Hatshepsut’s sculptures for his own series at Luxor, he assigned this duty to the greater goddess Hathor, perhaps the most powerful of the cosmic goddesses and the mother of the world.  The subsequent scenes at Deir el-Bahari include the leading of queen Aahmes by Khnum and Heqet to the birth-chamber; the great birth scene where the queen is attended by the goddesses Nephthys and Isis, a number of divine nurses and midwives holding several of the “doubles” of the baby, and favourable genii, in human form or with the heads of crocodiles, jackals, and hawks, representing the four cardinal points and all bearing the gift of life; the presentation of the young child by the goddess Hathor to Amen, who is well pleased at the sight of his daughter; and the divine suckling of Hatshepsut and her “doubles”.  But these episodes do not concern us, as of course they merely reflect the procedure following a royal birth.  But Khnum’s part in the princess’s origin stands on a different plane, for it illustrates the Egyptian myth of Creation by the divine Potter, who may take the form of either Khnum or Ptah.  Monsieur Naville points out the extraordinary resemblance in detail which Hatshepsut’s myth of divine paternity bears to the Greek legend of Zeus and Alkmene, where the god takes the form of Amphitryon, Alkmene’s husband, exactly as Amen appears to the queen;(3) and it may be added that the Egyptian origin of the Greek story was traditionally recognized in the ancestry ascribed to the human couple.(4)

(1) This detail is not clearly preserved at Deir el-Bahari; but it is quite clear in the scene on the west wall of the “Birth-room” in the Temple at Luxor, which Amenophis III evidently copied from that of Hatshepsut.

(2) In the similar scene at Luxor, where the future Amenophis III is represented on the Creator’s wheel, the sculptor has distinguished the human child from its spiritual “double” by the quaint device of putting its finger in its mouth.

     (3) See Naville, op. cit., p. 12.