"How many are the things which thou hast made? "Thou createst the land by thy will, thou alone,

"With peoples, herds and flocks,

"Everything on the face of the earth that walketh on its feet,
"Everything in the air that flieth with its wings.

"In the hills from Syria to Kush, and the plains of Egypt,
"Thou givest to every one his place, thou framest their lives,
"To every one his belongings, reckoning his length of days;
"Their tongues are diverse in their speech,
"Their natures in the colour of their skin.

"As a divider thou dividest the strange peoples.

"Thou makest the seasons of the year to create all thy works : "The winter making them cool, the summer giving warmth. "Thou makest the far-off heaven, that thou mayest rise in it, "That thou mayest see all that thou madest when thou wast alone.”

Upon one occasion the Queen-mother gave a feast, probably at her own palace in the new city, and entertained her son and his queen, accompanied by three of his daughters. The relief which records this festivity is found in the Tel el-Amarna tomb of Huy, who was overseer of the house and steward for Queen Thry.

The last contemporary memorial of the queen appears to be the mention of her name in a letter to Khuenaten from Dushratta, who sends gifts and salutations to the Queen-mother Thry. On this letter a note in hieratic dates its receipt early in the twelfth year of Khuenaten's reign as six years of this time included a co-regency with his father, the date of the letter was in the sixth independent year of Khuenaten. Amen-hetep III. was about sixteen1 when he first recorded the " Royal Wife Thry," who could scarcely have been younger than fourteen. If this is added to the thirty-six years of her husband's reign, and the six years of her son's during which she is known to have been alive, it appears that Thry was at least fifty-six years of age at the time of her death.

1 P., H.E., vol. II, 56, 177.

Mr. Petrie has recently found a small portrait head of the queen, which bears her cartouche on the crown ;1 it is a marvellous bit of realistic sculpture, and certainly represents a woman of nearly sixty. (See Plate No. X.)

At an unrecorded date, some time during the reign of her son, the queen died. Her body was wrapped in sheets of pure gold, laid in a magnificent gold coffin, and enclosed in a great shrine of gilded wood.

During the season of 1906-7, Mr. Davis, who was excavating in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, discovered the rough unfinished tomb which held much of the burial outfit of the queen, including the shrine, and a coffin enclosing a mummy. The shrine had been broken up, the cartouches of Khuenaten, who had buried his mother, were defaced; but the body which was supposed to be that of the queen remained untouched; and when the excavators entered the tomb, the mummy lay in the midst of its golden wrappings.

The coffin lid was practically intact, and proved to be one of the finest ever found; the ground was a net-work of solid gold, elaborately inlaid with a scale-like design in lapislazuli, turquoise, and red and white carnelian. The hands. of gold were crossed on the breast, and a broad gold band with inlaid hieroglyphs stretched to the feet. The head had been covered with a golden mask, which had fallen off. The mummy was still adorned with a beautiful gold and enamelled necklace, and wore the golden vulture-crown of Egyptian queens. The wings, delicately engraved and shimmering with iridescent colour, were folded about the head and fastened at the back.

The tomb had, unfortunately, a great crack across the ceiling, from which the plaster had dropped away, allowing water to pour into the sepulchre and greatly damaging the contents; the wood had rotted, and the mummy-a long slender blackened form-crumbled like ashes to the touch.

From Sinai. Cairo M., Room T. Arch. Report, 1904–5.

The inscriptions were in the name of Khuenaten, who had made the great shrine for his mother Thïy. Many articles were found which had formed part of the tombfurnishing; they included vases, pots, figures and models, of a light green glaze; and four alabaster canopic jars. The lids of these vases are in the form of human heads, which are presumably portraits of the queen; they are works of the rarest beauty, and are almost unequalled as specimens of an idealized portraiture. The heads are of ivory white alabaster, with enamelled eyes and lapis-lazuli eyebrows; and all but one are in an excellent condition.

The greater part of the contents of the tomb was conveyed in safety to the Museum at Cairo, where it was placed on exhibition in the room which contains the mummies and furniture of the queen's parents.1 The tomb itself was not far from that of Iuaa and Thuaa, and was in the same style, undecorated and with but a single chamber approached by a steep flight of steps cut in the rock.

When the supposed body of Queen Thïy was examined, a surprising discovery was made. The bones, instead of indicating a woman of sixty, are said to be those of a young man under twenty-five years of age. As the inscriptions refer to the queen, the objects found are almost certainly to be regarded as belonging to her burial. How a young man's body, wearing a queen's crown and jewels, came to be substituted for that of Thry, is a mystery for some future discovery to solve.

The contents of the tomb lay in great confusion, and suggested a hasty removal from some former burial place. Perhaps the queen's body had been destroyed, and the priests in charge had hurriedly replaced it by the nearest mummy at hand, a thing which frequently happened when neglect on the part of tomb attendants had resulted in the loss of a royal mummy. Or it is possible that in the

1 Cairo M., Room T.