Page 225 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

JLOU The Argosies [1580-1510 B.C.]
to the resistance veterans in the villages along the Nile that their

great commander was dead. And the heralds who brought the
news announced at the same time the accession of his son
Amenhotep. The news was not unexpected, for Amose was in his
sixties, and had been ailing for some time. Yet it seemed to the
older generation that with his passing Egypt was once more left
defenseless, and they looked anxiously again to the north.

Admittedly Amenhotep’s mother, the divine wife and sister of
Amose, Nefertari, was still alive, and the old queen Ahotep,
the heroine of the liberation, was as active as ever within the
palace, though she was now over eighty. Both the dowager
queens were legendary figures who had ruled the land with firm­

ness and courage while Amose had been away at the front,
and surely they could advise the young Amenhotep, if troubles
should come again.
Whether Amenhotep needed, or heeded, the advice of his
mother and grandmother was never known outside the palace.
But the number of “royal and divine” ladies within it was the

subject of comment, and of daring jokes, along the river. It was
of course right and proper, and enjoined by law and custom, that
Amenhotep should marry his full sister, for it was after all the
daughter even more than the son of the divine rulers who con­

tained within herself the spark of divinity. But Amenhotep car­
ried it rather to extremes. Amose and Nefertari had three daugh­
ters, Ahotep—called after her grandmother—Merit-Amon, and
Sat-Kamose, all full sisters of Amenhotep, and it was undoubt­
edly because he knew that anyone whom one of his sisters mar­

ried would thereby become a not impossible rival to the throne
that he proceeded to marry all three of them himself. As royal
princesses they all three, of course, counted as divine wives and
reigning queens, and the problem of precedence among the five

queens in the palace must, it was agreed, give periodic head­
aches to the master of the household.
Amenhotep reigned for twenty years, and, historically speak­
ing, his reign was uneventful and prosperous. The new system
of delegation of authority instituted by Amose worked well,
taxes came in regularly, and there was little discontent and no

civil disturbance. On and beyond the frontiers there was peace,