[Illustration: 040.jpg THE MUMMY OF THUTMOSIS III.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Emil
Brugsch-Bey.

She already occupied an important position among them, when Thûtmosis
III. died, on the last day of Phamenoth, in the IVth year of his reign.*
He was buried, probably, at Deîr el-Baharî, in the family tomb wherein
the most illustrious members of his house had been laid to rest since
the time of Thûtmosis I. His mummy was not securely hidden away, for
towards the close of the XXth dynasty it was torn out of the coffin by
robbers, who stripped it and rifled it of the jewels with which it was
covered, injuring it in their haste to carry away the spoil. It was
subsequently re-interred, and has remained undisturbed until the
present day; but before re-burial some renovation of the wrappings was
necessary, and as portions of the body had become loose, the restorers,
in order to give the mummy the necessary firmness, compressed it between
four oar-shaped slips of wood, painted white, and placed, three inside
the wrappings and one outside, under the bands which confined the
winding-sheet.

* Dr. Mahler has, with great precision, fixed the date of
the accession of Thûtmosis III, as the 20th of March, 1503,
and that of his death as the 14th of February, 1449 b.c. I
do not think that the data furnished to Dr. Mahler by
Brugsch will admit of such exact conclusions being drawn
from them, and I should fix the fifty-four years of the
reign of Thûtmosis III. in a less decided manner, between
1550 and 1490 b.c., allowing, as I have said before, for an
error of half a century more or less in the dates which go