"is the first, and thus far the only scientific study of the problem employing and reckoning with all the materials."1 Sethe's arguments about the mutilation and recutting of Hatshepsut's name on the walls of her temple at Dêr al-Baharî are wholly rejected by Naville, who knows more about that building than any other man. Von Bissing has shown3 that Sethe's principal assumptions are wholly unfounded, and Hall's remarks reveal the unsoundness of the arguments that Sethe and Breasted have adduced in support of their theory.

During the reign of Thothmes II the Nubians again rebelled, and raided the Egyptian caravans and made incursions into Egyptian territory. An Egyptian army marched into Nubia, pillaging, burning and destroying as it went, and an inscription at Aswân says that every male was killed, with the exception of one of the sons of the Prince of Kash, who, with his family, was taken prisoner, bound in fetters, and brought before the king, who set his feet upon his body. The usual loot was brought back to Thebes, and the god Amen received his share. In this reign the Egyptians made a raid into Retenu, or Northern Syria, and captured so many prisoners that their general, Aāḥmes-pen-Nekheb, was unable to count them.

Hatshepsut, who adopted the prenomen of Maātkarā (the Amensis or Amersis of Manetho), married her half-brother, Thothmes II, and, when he died, became Queen of Egypt. She had been associated by her father, Thothmes I, with himself in the rule of the kingdom, and the experience that she had thus gained, coupled with her great natural ability and forceful personality, made her rule effective. Her husband seems to have been a weakling, both mentally and physically, and the government of the country fell somewhat naturally into her capable hands. She seems to have been a prototype in most ways of Ṣâliḥ Ayyûb's slave-woman, the famous Shajar ad-durr, who held courts, presided over councils, and attended to the discipline of the army, until the arrival of her lord's heir, Tûrânshâh.5 Ḥatshepsut sent a fleet of five ships to Punt, and their commander, Neḥsi, brought back large quantities of myrrh, "green gold," spices for incense, ebony, boomerangs, eyepaint, leopard skins, and a number of apes and dog-headed baboons. The reception of the Egyptians by Paruhu,

|, Prince

of Punt, was most friendly. The great architect, Senmut, built for Hatshepsut the famous temple with three terraces, called Tcheser Tcheseru, at Dêr al-Baḥarî, and on its walls she caused to be

1 Ancient Records, Vol. II, p. 53.

2 Aeg. Zeit., Bd. XXXV, p. 30 ff., and Bd. XXXVII, P. 48 ff. Aeg. Zeit., Bd. XLI, p. 126.

• Ancient History, pp. 286, 287.

'Her story is well told by Lane-Poole in his Egypt in the Middle Ages, p. 237 ff.

sculptured a series of reliefs depicting the principal events of this expedition. Another series of reliefs in this temple illustrated the fiction of her being begotten by Amen-Rā, King of the gods, who was held to have consorted with her mother in the form of a man. Hatshepsut caused herself to be represented in male form, with a beard, and in masculine attire, for she believed herself to be a counterpart of the god Amen, and in her inscriptions masculine pronouns and verbal forms are used in speaking of her. She was a loyal servant of Amen, and enriched his temple, and set up there four mighty granite obelisks1 to the glory of her god and the memory of her father, Thothmes I. They were quarried at Aswân by Senmut and brought to Thebes in seven months-a wonderful piece of work. Hatshepsut rebuilt and repaired many of the temples in Egypt, and devoted a large portion of the spoil and tribute that came to her to their endowment. Under her patronage the arts and crafts flourished, and though there is no evidence that she conducted any wars of conquest, none of the frontiers of Egypt was thrust back during her reign.

Thothmes III, the Misaphris or Misphragmuthôsis of Manetho, was the son of Thothmes II and Queen Aset (Isis), and nephew and, perhaps, husband of Queen Ḥatshepsut, with whom he reigned as co-regent for about 21 years. Though as co-regent he had the rank and titles of the King of Egypt, he possessed no real power, for his aunt ruled absolutely, even as she had ruled when she was co-regent with Thothmes II. As soon as Hatshepsut was dead Thothmes determined to make the peoples of Western Asia, who had promptly refused to pay tribute to Egypt and had declared themselves independent, to submit again to Egyptian supremacy. In the 22nd year of his reign (which included the years of his co-regency) he set out on his first expedition to Syria, defeated a confederation of Asiatics, and besieged and captured the town of Megiddo, and returned to Egypt with an enormous amount of spoil. Expeditions followed in the 24th, 25th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 33rd, 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st, and 42nd (?) years of his reign, but it was the earlier expeditions that made him master of all Northern Syria and the country to the east of the Euphrates. In the 30th year of his reign he captured Kadesh, Simyra, and Arvad, and two years later he set up a tablet at Ni, that of Thothmes I, to mark the limit of the Egyptian Empire to the East in Western Asia. Whilst in this country Thothmes III hunted elephants, and his general, Amenemḥeb, says that he helped his master to capture 120 of them, that on one occasion he saved the king's life by cutting off the trunk

11

nn

1 One of these is still standing.

side by side with

, and

of an elephant which was attacking him. The account of these campaigns, which was most carefully written day by day on a leather roll by the scribe Thanni, shows that Thothmes III was a good tactician and military administrator, a bold and fearless general, and the narratives of his acts and deeds recorded on many monuments prove that he was the greatest of all the kings who sat on the throne of Pharaoh. As a conqueror and statesman the only other Egyptian king who can possibly be compared with him is Usertsen (Sen Usrit) III, and this opinion was shared by the Egyptians themselves, for at Jabal Dôshah, in the Sûdân, the two names are cut side by side. Towards the close of his life Thothmes III sent his soldiers into Nubia, where the great tribes had revolted. In the 50th year of his reign he set out for the Sûdân, and in passing through the First Cataract he ordered the old canal, which had been made under the VIth dynasty, to be cleared out. He went on to Buhen (Wâdî Ḥalfah) and, presumably, to Samnah, beyond Sarras, where he ordered a temple to be built in honour of Usertsen III. On his return to Egypt he passed through the canal in the Cataract, and about four years later he died. His expeditions in Western Asia broke the power of the Prince of Kadesh and his powerful allies, and the amount of spoil, gifts and tribute that Thothmes brought back to Egypt as the result of them can hardly be imagined. His tribute from Nubia must have been very great, and the gifts that he received from Cyprus and the neighbouring countries were not inconsiderable. A large proportion of his spoil he devoted to the enlargement of the great temple of Amen and the endowment of the priests, and the great colonnade1 built by him at Karnak proves that he was as great a builder as he was soldier. He rebuilt and repaired all the great temples of Egypt, he built a fort in the Lebanon mountains, and founded the great temple at Sulb on a plain on the left bank of the Nile in the Third Cataract. He set up four great obelisks at Thebes; one is on the hill of the Lateran in Rome, one in New York, one on the Thames Erhbankment, and a part of the fourth is in Constantinople. Thothmes III was buried in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, and his tomb was discovered by Loret in 1898. The best summary of his conquests is found on a large stone stele, which was originally set up in the great temple of Amen at Karnak and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo ; it was discovered by Mariette and published by him in his Album, pl. 32, and in his Karnak, pl. 11. Many translations of it exist.

Amenḥetep II, the Amenôphis of Manetho, was the son of Thothmes III, and for a short time before his father's death he had been his co-regent. When Thothmes III died the peoples of Western Asia revolted, declined to pay their annual tribute to Egypt, and declared themselves independent. Amenḥetep set out at once to

1 It is about 150 feet long, 50 feet wide, and has 50 columns and 32 rectangular pillars.

crush the rebellion, and defeated the enemy at Shemshu-Atum ; he led his troops in person and captured many prisoners and horses with his own hand. He then marched on and crossed the Orontes, and a little later he captured seven rebel chiefs in their country of Takhisa. Continuing his march he came to Ni, where he was warmly welcomed, and soon after, probably at Akathi, the chiefs of Mitanni1 paid tribute and submitted to him. Whether he marched into the country of Mitanni, which lay along the middle Euphrates, is doubtful, but somewhere near the place where he stayed his advance he set up a memorial tablet, as Thothmes III and Thothmes I had done at Ni. His expedition, or rather raid, into Syria procured for him much loot in the shape of 1,650 teben2 of gold, 210 horses, 300 chariots, hundreds of chiefs and 240 of their wives, and a very large amount of copper. With the spoil which the king obtained in Upper Rethenu he brought back the bodies of the seven chiefs whom he had slain in Takhisa, and he sailed up the Nile with them suspended from the bows of his royal barge. Six of the bodies were hung upon a gateway at Thebes, and the seventh he sent up to Napata, to be hung on the city wall, so that all men might know throughout Egypt and Nubia and Kash that he had conquered the rebels in Western Asia. The mention of Napata in his inscriptions shows that he was master of the Sûdân as far as the foot of the Fourth Cataract, but there is reason to believe the influence of Egypt extended nearly as far south as the modern town of Khartûm. He built or rebuilt temples at Amâda and Elephantine and carried out works at Karnak and Memphis and Heliopolis. His mummy was found in his tomb by Loret in 1899.

Amenḥetep II was succeeded by his son, Thothmes IV, the Tuthmosis of Manetho. According to the legend cut on the great granite stele between the paws of the Sphinx he owed his throne to the good offices of Ḥeremȧakhu, the god who is symbolized by the Sphinx at Gîzah, i.e., to the powerful priesthoods of Memphis and Heliopolis. Be this as it may, he made an expedition into Northern Syria early in his reign and returned laden with spoil, and he gratified the priesthood of Amen at Thebes by bringing back great logs of cedar wood from Lebanon to make a new sacred boat for the god. For some reason, which is not quite clear, unless we suppose that he was troubled by the trend of events that he saw taking place in Northern Syria, Thothmes IV sent to Artatama, king of Mitanni and grandfather of Tushratta, and asked for his daughter to wife, and he had to make his request seven times before the

1 The kingdom of Mitanni only lasted 75 years. Seven of its kings are known, viz., Saushshatar, Artatama I, Shutarna I, Tushratta, Artatama II, Shutatarra, and Mattiuaza. The Mitannian language was non-Semitic. 2 The teben between 90 and 91 grammes.

=

represent about £105 of our money.

3 500,000 teben (about 44 tons).

Ten teben of gold would

Mitannian king granted it.1 In due course the Princess of Mitanni came to Egypt, probably with a suitable escort of nobles and ladies, and there seems to be little doubt that she brought with her the religious beliefs that caused so much trouble in Egypt in later days. Her native name is not known, but she seems to have been called

Mutemuȧa, in Egyptian, and she became the mother of the next king, Amenḥetep III. Thothmes IV, encouraged by the counsel of Amen, made an expedition, in the eighth year of his reign, into Nubia, where the tribes had revolted on a large scale. What he did there exactly cannot be stated, for nearly one-half of the inscription on a rock in the First Cataract, which tells the story of it, is destroyed. But we may assume that the rebellion was put down in the usual way, and that when a sufficient number of the natives had been killed the remainder brought as gifts to the king slaves, male and female, gold and other Sûdânî produce, which the king took back to Thebes. His reign was too short (nine years or so) for the completion of any great building work, but he did one remarkable thing at Thebes, for he finished the work on the great granite obelisk, now known as the Lateran Obelisk, which Thothmes III had left incomplete at his death, and set it up. He added columns of text on the sides of the central dedication texts of Thothmes III, and from those on the south side of it we learn that the obelisk lay on its side unfinished for 35 years.

Amenḥetep III, the Hôros of Manetho and the Memnon of Greek writers, was the son of Thothmes IV by the Mitannian princess to whom the Egyptians gave the name of Mutemuȧa. The official fiction, which is illustrated by the bas-reliefs on the walls of the temple of the Southern Apt (i.e., the Temple of Luxor), is that he was begotten by Amen, who took the form of a man and companied with Queen Mutemuàa. In the fifth year of his reign a rebellion broke out in the country south of the Third Cataract (now the Dongola Province) and Amenḥetep, employing the Nubian regiments which his viceroy Merimes had enrolled, marched to the South and defeated the rebels utterly. About 300 of them were killed and their hands cut off, and 750 of them were taken prisoners. Having reduced the natives to subjection he went southwards on what may be regarded as an exploring expedition, but, as the positions of the places which he mentions, Hua, Kheskhet and Unshek, cannot be located, we do not know how far south he went. When in the Dongola Province it would be easy for him to march by the old caravan route to the place called Matammah, nearly opposite Shindî, on the Nile, and the Qebḥu-Her, or Pool of Horus, where he set up his memorial stele, may be the famous Gakdûl Wells. From

1 See the Tall al-'Amârnah tablet, Berlin, No. 24 (ed. Winckler, p. 51).