Hen-Pecked Thutmose Iii Of Egypt

Quaint Angle on the Fascinating Theory Which Gives Polynesians' Origin to Egypt

By A. C. Rowland

AMONG the hundred and one theories as to the origin of the Polynesians is that which places the cradle of the race in Egypt. According to this theory, the hegira came about probably as follows.

During 54 years—from 1501 BC to 1447 BC—Thutmose 111 was Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt with his seat of gov ernment at Thebes.

While in the later years of his reign he became the greatest warrior of all the long line of Pharaohs, and extended the boundaries of Egypt to their most distant limits, Thutmose* for two decades was the most hen-pecked man in the ancient world. In the sunny days of his youth he had married a stately damsel descended from the old royal house of the defunct Middle Kingdom, named Hatshepsut.

The period of the Middle Kingdom had been the Feudal Age of Egypt. The heirs of those turbulant nobles, who had torn the country apart until they were brought to heel by the early kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, were restive under their new masters.

They saw their opportunity for regain ing power and influence in the person of Hatshepsut. “As a result of their efforts Thutmose 111 was forced to acknowledge the co-regency of the queen. Finally, he was forced into the background. She was called the ‘Female Homs’ and was the actual sovereign.”

How Thutmose felt about all this is witnessed by the savage fury with which

he chiselled out Hatshepsut’s name from all inscriptions recording the events of her reign when, after 20 years, she was gathered to the bosom of Osiris These inscriptions depict sound, sea worthy ships, which carried expeditions down the east coast of Africa in quest of gold, ebony, frankincense, ivory. That some of these expeditions arrived at and examined Madagascar, there can be little doubt.

Thutmose, as subsequent events proved had many partisans. Perhaps, some of whispered to him that in the vast island to the south he could found a kingdom far from the petticoat rule of Hatshepsut. It is quite in accord with his character—as history reveals it—that Thutmose seized upon the idea, and despatched surreptitious expeditions, under trusted leaders, to establish on Madagascar colonies in preparation for the day when he could elude the watch ful eye of his spouse.

Fate, however, intervened, and Thut mose, alone on the throne of Egypt for got Madagascar in the turmoil and splen dour of his conquests.

Such, perhaps, was the origin of the Hova of Madagascar—said by scientists * blood-kin of the Polynesians of the Pacific.

How or why Hova tribes navigated to Indonesia we do not know; but, if the scientists have been able to transport them from India to Madagascar, our theory can reverse the proceedings. Thus we can land them safely in Java or

thereabout. Their further migration into the Pacific has been traced in a man ner acceptable to all—except stubborn heretics who contend that the cradle of the Polynesian race was in South America.

Evidences of Egyptian origins are to be found in Polynesia—in addition to the celebrated coincidence of the sun-god of Ra of the Nile, and the Polynesian word Ra for the sun itself.

The ancient Egyptian and Polynesian Conceptions of cosmogenesis are so nearly identical that one needs only to substi tute Polynesian for Egyptian names of the divine actors in the drama to co ordinate the two.

The persons and attributes of Polyne sia’s principal deities, and the concep tion of the celestial and infernal spheres of their habitation, are so akin to those of Egypt that they bear the hallmark of a common origin. The cult of birds, cer tain fish and insects, as “shadows” on earth of the greater gods, was common to both Egypt and Polynesia.

The social organisation in both parts of the world —divided, as it was, into rigid strata under an hierarchy of rulers and nobles possessing sacerdotal as well as civil authority bore extraordinary resemblances.

In addition, certain racial characteris tics have come down the ages unim paired. The ladies of Imperial Rome (who. in manners, cosmetics and con versation differ little from women of the twentieth century) made the same caus tic remarks about the damsels of the Nile, as do the ladies of Imperial Holly wood concerning the golden-brown daughters of our Pacific Isles.

Someone has declared that the culture of Polynesia is the debris of some high form of civilisation. If that ancestral civilisation was Egyptian, we have the historic spectacle of one hen-pecked man —gnawing at his chains —responsible for the Polynesian race in the Pacific.

Goree fort. While recovering he manouvred his little fleet in and out of West African ports, winning several French outposts to the cause of Free France.

From West Africa, Rear-Admiral d’Argenlieu went to the Pacific.