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Sinai, is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign. No period in any history that can be named is better authenticated by contemporary monuments.

The same truth may be asserted of the twelfth dynasty, which in the tablet of Abydos is represented by Nos. 59 to 65. The number of monuments accurately dated belonging to this period is very considerable. They are all perfectly consistent with one another, and leave no doubt as to the length of each reign and of the whole dynasty. It is to this dynasty that the splendid tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at Benihassan belongs. His inscription mentions the first four sovereigns as having honoured three successive generations of his family.

Omissions of this List.

Let me now speak of the omissions of this tablet, which I have selected in preference to others in consequence of its being the longest and the most intelligible as to its arrangement.

The most beautiful monuments of the eighteenth dynasty were raised by the powerful queen Hatshepsu, daughter of Tehutimes I., who associated her with him. She reigned for some years either alone or in conjunction with her brothers Tehutimes II. and Tehutimes III. successively; but her name and memory were persecuted by the latter, who resented her dominion over

him during the years of his minority. Her name does not appear on the tablet of Abydos. There is also an interval between the reigns of Amenhotep III. and Hor-em-heb, which chronologically is filled up by the period of the sun-disk worshippers. Amenhotep III. was followed by a king, the fourth of the same name, who dropped it when he assumed that of Chut-en-Aten, as the founder of a new religion, which had but a very partial and short-lived success. His attempts at reformation led to his exclusion from the lists of the legitimate kings. There is monumental evidence of one or two reigns of short duration before that of Hor-em-heb, who broke up the monuments of Chut-en-Aten, and used them in the construction of his own. It is not out of place to mention the fact that the first information we obtained about this abortive attempt at the transformation of the Egyptian religion, was derived from blocks of one of the propyla of Karnak, which Mohammed Ali had brutally pulled down, that the stones might be broken up and roasted to quick-lime, in order to furnish stucco for his saltpetre works. Mr. Perring, an English architect, who was there, was surprised to find that the faces of the stones, which had been placed inwards and covered with cement, were sculptured with hieroglyphics of the same perfect execution as those which had been engraved on them after their arrangement in the new building. This appropriation, of which there are many instances, by one

sovereign of materials bearing the name and inscriptions of one of his predecessors, is always of value as determining the question of priority in time.

The omission of the heretical sovereigns is easily accounted for, and Seti may have shared the dislike of Tehutimes for queen Hatshepsu. But no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the omission of a large number of names between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. The immediate passage on the tablet from one of these dynasties to the other, cannot mean that the king numbered 65 was followed by the king numbered 66, who is Aahmes I. The important inscription of the naval officer Aahmes, son of Abana, which has already been quoted, mentions king Sekenen-Ra as the predecessor of Aahmes I. Sekenen-Ra is as thoroughly historical a personage as any one of our own sovereigns. There were even three kings of the name, and their tombs have actually been found at Thebes. On the other hand, the tablet of Ameni-senb, now in the Louvre, belongs to the reign of a king anterior to the eighteenth dynasty, but later than the twelfth, as it records the restoration of a temple at Abydos founded by Usertsen I.1 The interval between the twelfth and the eighteenth

1 Commonly called Usertesen, or still more erroneously Usirtasen. Usert is a feminine noun, and sen is a pronominal suffix, in allusion to the child's parents, like ef, es and ári.

dynasty must have been very considerable. The time immediately preceding the eighteenth dynasty was the period of the foreign domination generally known as that of the Hyksos, or the Shepherd kings. So much is certain, but it is absolutely impossible to ascertain from Egyptian records when this period began, and how long it lasted. The 511 years which are ascribed to it by Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, are neither to be simply accepted nor rejected, but must remain subject to future verification. The only evidence from Egyptian sources which bears upon the subject is a monument of Rameses II., dated from the four hundredth year of one of these kings of foreign origin. But a considerable number of native kings must have reigned between the last king of the twelfth dynasty and the beginning of the foreign invasion. There are numerous inscriptions which prove that sovereigns powerful in the north of Egypt had extended their dominion to the very heart of Nubia. The monuments of Thebes, southern Egypt and Nubia, might be consistent with the hypothesis of a Hyksos kingdom in the north, but the presence of equally important monuments of the Sebekhoteps at Bubastis and Tanis, kings whose names occupy an important place in the chamber of Karnak, would alone be sufficient to overthrow this hypothesis. There is in the Louvre a magnificent colossal statue in red granite of Sebekhotep III., with reference to which M. de Rougé

says: "A single statue of this excellence and of such a material shows clearly that the king who had it executed for the decoration of his temples or palaces had not yet suffered from the invasion of the Shepherds. It is evident that under his reign Egypt was still a great power, peacefully cultivating the arts." Perhaps the most interesting monument of this period is the colossal statue of the king Semench-ka-Rā (the eighteenth king of the thirteenth dynasty, according to the royal Turin papyrus), on the right shoulder of which one of the foreign kings has had his name engraved in hieroglyphic characters.

Of

Of the kings of the eleventh dynasty, only two (Nos. 57 and 58) appear on the tablet of Abydos. Very interesting inscriptions belonging to their reigns are still extant; but other kings bearing the name of Antuf and Mentuhotep are known to us, not only by inscriptions, but by their coffins in our museums. Mentuhotep III., dates have been found as high as his forty-third year. And a tablet has been found representing him as being worshipped by his successor, Antuf IV. There is a very interesting fact connected. with one of the monuments of this dynasty. Many years ago,1 Dr. Birch translated a papyrus, now in the

1 In the Revue Archéologique of 1859. See Dr. Birch's paper "On the Tablet of Antefaa," in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. IV. p. 172.

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