quite in accordance with the manners of the time. He had taken prisoner
seven chiefs in the country of Tikhisa, and had brought them, chained,
in triumph to Thebes, on the forecastle of his ship. He sacrificed six
of them himself before Amon, and exposed their heads and hands on the
façade of the temple of Karnak; the seventh was subjected to a similar
fate at Napata at the beginning of his third year, and thenceforth
the sheîkhs of Kush thought twice before defying the authority of the
Pharaoh.*

* In an inscription in the temple of Amada, it is there said
that the king offered this sacrifice on his return from his
first expedition into Asia, and for this reason I have
connected the facts thus related with those known to us
through the stele of Karnak.

Amenôthes'reign was a short one, lasting ten years at most, and the end
of it seems to have been darkened by the open or secret rivalries which
the question of the succession usually stirred up among the kings' sons.
The king had daughters only by his marriage with one of his full
sisters, who like himself possessed all the rights of sovereignty; those
of his sons who did not die young were the children of princesses of
inferior rank or of concubines, and it was a subject of anxiety among
these princes which of them would be chosen to inherit the crown and be
united in marriage with the king's heiresses, Khûît and Mûtemûaû.

[Illustration: 046.jpg THE GREAT SPHINX AND THE CHAPEL OF THUTMOSIS IV.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph taken in 1887 by
Émil Brugsch-Bey