Page 231 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

~ The Argosies [1580-1510 b.c.]
Thothmes, who, though her half-brother, was only the son of

Amenhotep by a slave girl. The divine blood of the royal house
would be only a little diluted, and Thothmes was known to be
an energetic young man with the expansion of the power of
Egypt at heart. It was generally believed that the powerful
clique of queens in the palace at Thebes was equally pleased.
Amenhotep’s mother, the famous beauty Nefertari, was now
dead, but his grandmother Ahotep was still very much alive,

vigorous despite her ninety-five years. And she and the three
reigning queens saw with satisfaction that the feminine influence
which had bulked so large in the present and previous reigns
was likely to continue in the next, with the coming queen in

fact more legitimate than her consort. It seemed even that Amon
himself favored their sex, for the first child of the young couple
was a daughter, the charming and vivacious princess Hat-
shepsut.
Amenhotep died in 1538 b.c., and those who, as month-
old babies, had been carried to see the coronation of the liberator

Amose, now as men and women aged forty-two attended the
proclamation, from the same temple platform, of the succession
of his grandchildren, his namesake Queen Amose and her con­
sort Thothmes.

Thothmes was at this time a young man in his twenties,
untried in war, and the Sudanese kingdom to the south, which
had a defeat at the hands of Amenhotep to avenge, promptly
invaded Egyptian territory. But the young pharaoh was not
caught napping. He had inherited an efficient and well-equipped

army from his father, and he struck back at once. Marching south
from Thebes, he crossed the frontier, penetrated deep into the
Sudan, and captured and sacked Kerma, the capital of Kush, the
Nubian kingdom. From Thebes to Kerma is five hundred miles,
but not content with this, Thothmes pressed on two hundred

miles more, past the point where the Nile bends back upon itself
to the north. He set the boundary stones of his empire there, by
the fourth cataract of the Nile, proud of having, as his scribes un­
doubtedly told him, accomplished a march in hostile territory
no shorter than that by which Mursilis of the Hatti had surprised

and captured Babylon sixty years before. Leaving a garrison at