SECTION III.

THE DOWNFALL OF THE HOUSE OF THE TUTHMŌSES IN THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS SCHISMS AND CONFUSION.

THE NINTH (LAST) REIGN OF THE EIGHTEENTH, AND THE FIRṣt of

THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY. —44 YEARS.

INTRODUCTION.

SURVEY OF THE DYNASTIC COMPLICATIONS.

We have explained in the preceding Book, according to Lepsius, the dynastic relations which, after the death of Amenōphis III., led in the reign of Horus to quarrels and divisions. During the life of the latter, a rival sovereign first sprung up in the person of an elder brother, AAKHEN- (formerly read BEKHEN-) ATEN-RA, the KENCHERES of the Lists. His original name was AMEN-HEPT RA-NEFRU-KHEPERU (IV.). He adopted this title after having introduced the worship of the visible disk of the sun into his new capital (El Amarna in Central Egypt). It signifies "a worshipper of the sun's disk." Horus outlived him, as well as a younger brother, who received the royal dignity as Amentuankh RA-NEB-KhePERU. There is palpable proof of this from Horus having erected a palace and temple upon the ruins or materials of the edifices of his rivals. The reign of the former of these antagonists, at all events, must have lasted a considerable time, for there are monuments of it mentioning the sixth year. These are met with only to the southward. Ashmunin, in Central Egypt, is the most northern city where traces are found of the rule of

Amenophis IV. The seat of the second schism was likewise in the south. The monuments of Amentuankh and his son exist only in Ethiopia.

This is an outline, but, though merely an outline, a faithful picture of those divisions which the recent labours of Lepsius have extracted from the monuments. As regards details, in the absence of any muse to unfold to us the history of Egypt, we shall do wisely to wait for further researches in those mute but eloquent contemporary records.

NINTH REIGN: THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY; HORUS (HEREM HеBI MERI-AMEN RA-SER-KHеPERU SETEP EN RA)74, SON OF AMENŌPHIS III., AND HIS WORKS.

(Pl. VII. 43.)

HORUS AND THE COLLATERAL AND RIVAL SOVEREIGNS WITH HIM,

(Lepsius, Hist. Mon. vol. vi. Pl. 91—122.)

I. HORUS AND HIS WORKS.

IN reference to this king, the only one recognised in the contemporary succession of kings as a legitimate Tuthmosis, after the death of Amenōphis III., we have, as it seems to me, a very important though only a casual remark by Manetho. When speaking of Menephthah, the son of the Great Ramesses, he observes that "he desired to behold the Gods as one of his predecessors, Horus, did." Such a remark can only refer in the historical work to this King Horus, who, consequently, according to the testimony of Manetho, the high

74 That is, "Horus in the Panegyries, the Beloved of Ammon." This is an undoubted instance of the whole family scutcheon not being usually inserted with the name. Of all its hieroglyphics one only is pronounced (the sparrowhawk).

priest, was a superstitious sovereign, devoted to the priests, and a contemplative enthusiast. From the extant history of his reign, he would seem to have been the victim of his own superstitious folly.

The monuments of his reign, which bear nevertheless on the face of them evidence of the high perfection of style which characterizes the dynasty, are principally of a religious and mystic tendency. Rosellini mentions the following edifices as erected by him: a richly ornamented temple hewn in the rock (speos) in Nubia, not far from the Second Cataract, near Djebel Addeh, on the east bank. Here and at Silsilis he is represented as the young Horus, suckled by his Goddess mother.75 In the cavern temple of Silsilis, his warlike exploits are also represented, and indeed in Kush (Ethiopia), the seat of the revolt under Amentuankh, as we have seen above.76 His gorgeous works were at Thebes, Luxor, and Karnak. Here he constructed the splendid avenue of colossal ram-headed sphinxes, raised upon pedestals, of most costly workmanship, of which Rosellini counted fifty on each side in a space of fifty paces. On a fragment of a wall the king is represented with his vanquished enemies, among whom the name BERBER is legible, signifying consequently people from Nubia.

II. NO GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT TOOK PLACE IN THE REIGN OF HORUS.

In giving an explanation of the mythological details, we have spoken of Wilkinson's remark, that in this king's time the name of the God Amun-Ra is the original one on the monuments, whereas, in that of Amenōphis III. and several of his predecessors in the 18th Dynasty, it is found substituted for that of some other divinity which has obviously been erased.

75 M. R. Pl. xliv.

76 Idem; comp. M. St. iii. pp. 277-287.

It appears from the careful researches of Lepsius and Abeken in Nubia, that no trace exists in the scutcheons of Amenōphis I. of any such erasure having been made. On them the name AMN was the original one. But under Tuthmosis III., wherever his name and likeness occur, another God had previously been portrayed. For instance, they found on the Nubian monuments, and especially on those at Soleb and Semneh, the AMN (both the name and figure of the God Ammon) on the scutcheons of Amenōphis II., as well as those of Amenophis III., upon a ground which had been chiseled out. But, as a general rule, the throne-names also of those two kings (Ra-aa-kheperu and Ra-neb-ma) were placed upon a scutcheon from which another name had been erased, in which they thought they could identify an Amenhept.

These circumstances induce us to abandon the conjecture advanced in the first part of this work, that in the scutcheons where the erasures exist the name KHEMHEPT had originally stood. Lepsius has further investigated the state of the case in his instructive "Treatise on the first Circle of Gods" (p. 43.). When the fanatical sun-worshipper caused the name and scutcheons of these two kings to be erased, in order to place the throne-name in their stead, it frequently hap pened that two similar throne-name scutcheons stood side by side. Still it is established that under Tuthmōsis III. the name of Amun was substituted for that of another God. It is likewise established that we find afterwards, as well as before, Amun honoured as God, but Khem, the Phallic God of the Egyptians (their Pan), only in exceptional instances. Amun-Ra is represented by the side of the figure of Khem, and that only from the reign of Horus.

The further question arises then, whether the peculiar representation of the sun, as the visible ray-emitting disk, in the monuments of his rival, AAKHENATEN,

has not some connexion with this singular change or occasional deviation, which ceases again on the monuments of Horus? Such a representation, however, which has nothing of the ordinary type about it, never occurs again. We find no trace of any further religious change connected with it. This circumstance, therefore, furnishes no ground for believing that any general religious movement occurred in the reigns of Amenōphis and Horus; and the last shadow of plausibility for the assumption that the Jewish exodus occurred at that time, owing to their taking advantage of a religious crisis in the country to throw off the yoke, necessarily vanishes.

The Egyptian annals, it is true, stated something about King Bokhoris and the Jews, which we can only refer to this King Horus on account of the name. But the fact connected with the name of Bokhoris is not the exodus, but the oppression, of the Jews. And as regards Scripture, we must not forget, that, of all the dates belonging to this portion of history, none appeared to us better authenticated than the one which defines two hundred and fifteen years as the time of the bondage.

III. THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY.

No tombs of the Tuthmoses or any other legitimate kings of the 18th Dynasty have hitherto been discovered. This is the more remarkable, as those of the kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties have almost all been found in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings (Biban el Moluk). Researches on the spot have hitherto been fruitless.

Were they interred in their own "houses," the Tuthmōseum and Amenōpheum? Amenōphis III. had priests in his "house" till a late period. The God of the Dead was the chief divinity there. Was it some