Five chapters thus far have been consumed establishing that the Theban Annals of Menkheperre Thutmose are the product of the 25th dynasty king Meryamun Piankhi.   That objective has been achieved.  Throughout our discussion we accepted without question that there were two kings by this name, a pharaoh who ruled over the 18th dynasty Empire, and his 25th dynasty namesake.  Our attention has been focused exclusively on the campaigns of the later.  Momentarily we must turn our attention, albeit briefly,  to the earlier pharaoh.   But before we do that we must expand our current thesis.

        The 18th dynasty king Menkheperre Thutmose is not the only 18th dynasty monarch whose life story is affected by our thesis.   Hundreds of Egyptian monuments are demonstrably contemporary with the Annals, as attested by the fact that their inscriptions allude directly or indirectly to the campaigns described in the Annals.  If the Annals belong in the 7th century then so also do these other monuments.  But these sundry inscriptions have been used by Egyptologists, along with the Annals,  to write much of the history of the 18th dynasty.  If we are correct in our thesis much of this history belongs to the 7th century!

        The historical error extends to the intricate genealogy of the 18th dynasty kings.  It is stated in the textbooks that the 18th dynasty Menkheperre was the grandson of a king named Aakheperkare Thutmose (I) and the son of a king named Aakheperenre Thutmose (II), that he had a step-mother named Maatkare (Hatshepsut), who ruled Egypt during his infancy, a son Aakhperure Amenhotep (II) and a grandson Menkheperure Thutmose (IV), all based on the assumption that the documents which reveal these family connections belong to the 15thcentury.  If in fact they are contemporary with the Annals, as we claim, then it follows necessarily that much, if not all of this genealogy must be transferred to the 25th dynasty patriarch Piankhi.  We recognize the enormity of this claim and the difficulties inherent in proving it.   But we have no alternative than to follow the evidence where it leads.

        It is also clear from multiple inscriptions that many dignitaries served Menkheperre on his campaigns or in the administration of the vast treasure he brought back from those campaigns.  Their tombs have been excavated and details of their lives, recorded in the memoirs inscribed on the tomb walls,  have been woven into the fabric of the political and cultural history of the 18th dynasty.   But all of these notables, including Amenemheb, who alone has appeared thus far in our revision, must belong to the 7th century, not the 15th.   The cultural milieu in which these men lived, revealed in the colorful murals which accompany their memoirs, must be moved forward in time by at least 800 years.   The implications of this claim for such diverse subjects as the history of art, archaeology (including pottery typology), the evolution of hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts, and assorted other cultural developments too numerous to mention, are far ranging.  But by far the most serious ramifications are historical.  And the historical errors have not simply to do with Egypt.

        We have already witnessed the historical confusion at first hand - the erroneous assumption that an Anatolian kingdom of Hittites existed in the 15th century B.C. ; the creation of an entirely fictional Mitannian kingdom based on references to 7th century Medians; the mistaken opinion that Phoenicians inhabited the Mediterranean coastline in the 15th century, and the errant assumption that Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms existed centuries before these nations made their entrance onto  the historical stage.   And these are but precursors of a much broader confusion which remains to be described..

        Where do we start unraveling the error?

        It is apparent at the outset that we must prove, minimally,  that the genealogy typically credited to the 18th dynasty Menkheperre fits perfects in the 7th century, and does in fact belong to Piankhi.  The balance of this book is devoted to that end.   In the following chapters we intend to flesh out the family connections of Piankhi, demonstrating that kings and queens bearing the names Aakheperenre, Maatkare (Hatshetsup),  Aakheperure Amenhotep and Menkheperure Thutmose are all part of his extended family.
 

Duplicate Dynasties

        It is clear from our stated objectives that our thesis has expanded significantly.  No longer do we argue merely that a single 25th dynasty king (Piankhi) adopted the titulary of an illustrious predecessor from the 18th dynasty (Menkheperre).   We are now compelled by the evidence to assume that many of Piankhi's extended family did likewise, creating what amounts to a duplicate dynasty of namesake kings. The truth of this proposition must be established in the chapters which follow.   But lest the reader be unduly skeptical, at the outset we need to clarify several points at issue.

        In the first place we do not argue that the two dynasties are parallel in their extent.  We do not claim that every 18th dynasty king finds his counterpart in the 7th century, nor that every 7thcentury king adopted the names of a member of the 18th dynasty.   On the contrary, we will argue that several of Piankhi's contemporaries favored names of notable kings from other dynasties, contributing to the confusion which we are now attempting to unravel.   Several times already we have remarked on the fact, long recognized by scholars based on extensive excavations in Nubia, that Cushite kings habitually adopted, with little or no modification, the throne names of Egyptian kings long dead.   The fact that the 25th dynasty Menkheperre, and members of his extended family, favored the names of kings of the 18th dynasty, is hardly a matter requiring explanation.  But in fact a compelling explanation is readily at hand, and will be provided in the following chapter.

        It should also be made clear at the outset that the two dynasties are not parallel in their genealogical connections.    The family relationships of the 7th century kings, which we are about to disclose, are not necessarily the same as those attributed to the 18th dynasty kings in the textbooks, even though many of the same names are involved and the respective genealogies are based on many of the same documents.   The reader should not be surprised.   Even Egyptologists are not in agreement concerning the sequence of kings in the 18th dynasty.  For well over a century scholars have been embroiled in a sometimes bitter feud concerning 18thdynasty genealogy, what the textbooks call the Thutmoside  succession.   Not all scholars, for example,  believe that Thutmose II is the father of Thutmose III, and at various times Hatshetsup has been considered to be the sister, the wife, and the step-mother of Thutmose III.  It is our contention that one of the main causes of this disagreement are the source documents used by the contestants, some of which belong to the 18th dynasty, others to the 25th dynasty. Small wonder there is confusion, since the documents are describing different families. Another source of confusion is the ambiguity inherent in the Egyptian terms which describe family connections.  As Alan Gardiner succinctly puts it in his Egypt of the Pharaohs, "the principal difficulty in dealing with Egyptian genealogical problems (is that) one never knows whether terms like 'son', 'daughter', 'brother', 'sister', and so forth are to be understood literally or not." (1)

        It follows from what has been said that just because 18th dynasty history identifies Menkheperre as the father of Aakheperure and grandfather of Menkheperure, this does not mean that the 7thcentury kings who borrowed these three names were also related in like fashion.  A similar ambiguity exists in family connections between earlier kings in the dynasty.   The relationship between the 7th century kings who borrowed 18th dynasty names must be determined on an ad hoc basis.  When we claim, as we did earlier,  that much of 18th dynasty history, including the genealogy of its kings, belongs to the 25th dynasty, we are not implying that we simply have to transpose that history, as presently written in the textbooks, to the 7th century.   We are saying only that much of the information on which that history is based, including the genealogical references, relates to the 7th century - nothing more, nothing less.   In their new 7th century context the inscriptions will take on an entirely new meaning, as we have already seen in our extensive analysis of the Annals of Menkheperre Piankhi.

        As we search for Piankhi's extended family, like himself namesakes of the 18th dynasty kings, we are immediately confronted with a problem.   If indeed two sets of kings bearing identical names ruled Egypt centuries apart, how do we determine which documents belong to which dynasty?   If we are to accurately rewrite 25th dynasty history we must be careful to use only 25thdynasty inscriptions.   Our solution to this problem has already been suggested.   We have demonstrated that the Annals of Menkheperre belong to the late 6th century.   We must be careful to limit our analysis to documents clearly contemporary with the Annals, or unequivocally assigned to the 7th century on other grounds.   Those documents at least must refer to 7th century kings.

        Before we begin we need clear up a question which must have come to the reader's mind in the course of these few remarks.   If most of 18th dynasty history is about to be transferred to the 25th dynasty, what remains to illuminate the activities of the earlier kings.  Indeed, how do we know that there even existed an earlier dynasty?  For the most part we have no intention of addressing this question.  An adequate response would lead us too far astray.   Sufficient to say that there is no doubt of the existence of an 18th dynasty.  Manetho includes a listing of its kings, albeit convoluted.   They are also named in certain king lists.   Additionally, many monuments exist which could, if time allowed, be clearly attributed to them.   But most importantly, their tombs in the King's Valley have been discovered and extensively excavated over the past century.  And their mummified remains now rest in the storage rooms and display rooms of the Cairo museum, where they were deposited immediately after their discovery in the final decades of the 19th century.   It is most important that we examine those bodies before we proceed to examine the documents of their 7th century namesakes, this for two reasons.  In the first place the skeptic must be convinced at the outset that there is reason to continue reading, that our hypothesis of duplicate dynasties is correct.   And secondly, we need to be convinced that the documents we are about to examine, those which are contemporary with the Annals and which formerly furnished much of the history of the 18th dynasty, were not written by the kings now resting in Cairo.
 

The Deir el-Bahari Cache and the Amenhotep Tomb.

         The story of the 1881 discovery of the bodies of the 18th dynasty kings needs to be told, if only to draw to the attention of the reader several important facts related to their provenance.  We listen to the story as told by the renowned Egyptologist Alan Gardiner.

In the last quarter of our nineteenth century objects belonging to Dyn. XXI had long been finding their way into the antiquities' markets, and their abundance and evident importance made it clear that some of the inhabitants of Kurna had lighted upon a tomb or cache of an altogether exceptional kind.  By 1881 official investigation could no longer be delayed, and G. Maspero, then Director of the Antiquities Service, took the matter energetically in hand.  In course of time suspicion narrowed itself down to the 'Abd er-Rasul family.  All attempts to make the finders divulge the secret failed until the eldest of them, realizing that this was about to be betrayed by one or other of his brothers, resolved to steal a march upon them.  Hence the discovery of the wonderful hiding-place of so many of the royal mummies which has been partially described or alluded to in earlier pages of the present work.  A deep shaft to the south of the valley of Der el-Bahri led down into a long passage ending in a burial-chamber which had been originally occupied by a half-forgotten queen Inha'py.  Coffins, mummies, and other funerary furniture were found piled up in this inconspicuous burial-place, having been brought there after considerable peregrinations by successors of HriHor.  Almost since the times of their actual burial the mighty kings of Dyns. XVII to XX had been exposed to violation and theft on the part of the rapacious inhabitants of the Theban necropolis, and it was only as a last frantic effort to put an end to such sacrilege that the high-priests of Dy. XXI intervened.  This they could do with greater confidence since the golden ornaments and other precious possessions had long ago disappeared, so that little more than the coffins and corpses remained to be salvaged.  However, for the modern world thus to recover the remains of many of the greatest Pharaohs was a sensation till then unequaled in the annals of archaeology; to be able to gaze upon the actual features of such famous warriors as Thutmose III and Sethos I was a privilege that could be legitimately allowed to the serious historian, though it was for a time denied to the merely curious.  Besides the nine kings who were found there were a number of their queens, as well as some princes and lesser personages.  Hieratic dockets on certain coffins or mummy wrapping disclosed the dates of the re-burials and the authorities responsible for them.  More important from the purely historical point of view were the intact coffins of high-priests of Dyn. Xxi and their womenfolk, the hieroglyphic inscriptions furnishing no small portion of the material for the discussions contained in Maspero's fundamental monograph on the find.  Among the latest burials were those of Pinudjem II and his already-mentioned spouse Neskhons.  After them the cache was sealed up in the tenth year of the tanite king Siamun, but was reopened once more in the reign of King Shoshenk I in order to inter a priest of Amun named Djedptahef'onkh. EP320-21

        The sensational discovery of the Deir el-Bahari tomb (henceforth referred to as DB320, its official designation) was followed in short order by yet another remarkable archaeological find, important for our ongoing story notwithstanding the fact that the discovery involved only the remains of many 21st dynasty dignitaries.  For reference purposes we reproduce Gardiner's summary of the discovery, which follows on the heels of his discussion of previous find.

In 1891, just ten years after the discovery above described, the same native of Kurna who had divulged the secret of the royal mummies pointed out to E. Grebaut, Maspero's successor as Director of the Service, a spot to the north of the temple of Der el-Habrui where a tomb of altogether exceptional importance could be expected.  A few blows with a pick revealed a shaft leading to a gallery nearly 80 yards long followed by a rather shorter northerly gallery at a somewhat lower level.  Here G. Daressy, placed in charge of the operations, came upon no less than 153 coffins, 101 of them double and 52 single, together with many boxes of ushabti-figures, Osirian statuettes of which some enclosed papyri, as well as other objects of lesser interest.  Near the entrance the coffins were in utter disorder, but farther inwards they were stacked up against the walls in opposite rows leaving a passage-way in the midst.  An innermost chamber had been reserved for the family of the high-priest Menkheperre, but later the galleries were used indiscriminately for members of the priesthood of Amen-Re.  The actual mummy-cases were generally of anthropoid shape covered with polychromatic religious scenes and inscriptions finished off with a yellow varnish; for the historian they had little value except as giving the names and titles of their owners, among whom there were a certain number of women, mainly temple musicians.  Of great importance, on the other hand, are the leather braces and pendants found upon the mummies, for they frequently depict the contemporary or an earlier high-priest standing in front of Amun, or another deity; and of perhaps greater interest are the legends often written upon the mummy-cloth, since these usually state the date at which it was made.  Here, in a word, we have the primary source for the clarification of this complicated dynasty. EP 320-21

        We will return to the Deir el-Bahari (DB320) and Amenhotep (KV35) tombs many times in the course of our discussions during the next several chapters.  Their contents have been misunderstood and in consequence misinterpreted by scholars.   At the moment we are concerned only with the bodies of the 18th dynasty kings recovered at these locations.

        In the years immediately following the discovery of these two caches, the mummies of many of the 18th and 19th dynasty kings, and the artifacts associated with them,  were carefully examined by archaeologists, Egyptologists and medical specialists.  The physical remains were the subject of an intense anatomical investigation conducted in 1912 by G. Elliot Smith (2), and duplicated on an ad hoc basis over the next half-century.   In1972 the bodies were again examined collectively, using advanced x-ray technology, by the Egyptologist Kent R. Weeks and the anatomist James E. Harris. (3)   Several of the results of these investigations have been particularly troublesome for the traditional history, undermining as they do the credibility of the source documents on which 18th dynasty history is based.   Particularly problematic for Egyptologists was the disparity between the physical remains of several of the 18th dynasty kings and the lives of those same kings as portrayed in the inscriptions supposedly authored by them.   The remains of Thutmose I and Thutmose III are especially at odds with their lives as depicted in the textbooks.   A few brief remarks concerning the bodies of these two kings is therefore in order.
 

Thutmose I

        According to Weeks and Harris, in reference to the x-rays of Thutmose I:

Egyptologists who have reconstructed the chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty from textual evidence generally have assigned a reign of ten years to Thutmosis I and have assumed that he died at about the age of fifty.  However, several eminent physical anthropologists who have seen these x-rays have been absolutely convinced that this mummy is that of a young man, perhaps eighteen years of age, certainly not over twenty.  Such an age is simply not compatible with the chronology of this period, and there does not seem to be any convincing explanation.  It is possible that the history of the period is in error, that Thutmosis I was in fact a child-king whose reign was much shorter than is supposed.  But the textual basis of the chronology seems fairly solid and not likely to allow such drastic revision.  It is also possible, as suggested by Smith, that the mummy labeled Thutmosis I is in fact the mummy of someone else, perhaps mistaken for the king by later priests who re-wrapped his body.  Or it may be the mummy of Thutmosis I, and he suffered from some disorder that delayed the normal maturation of the skeleton. Such disorders may have included those of nutritional origin (rickets), endocrinopathis (hypothyroidism), osteoporosis, and so on.  It remains to be seen which of these explanations is correct.   But again, x-rays have cast doubt on the generally accepted reconstruciton of New Kingdom history. pp. 131-132 (emphasis added)

        The only reasonable interpretation of the x-rays of Thutmose's body is that proposed by our revision.  The hieroglyphic inscriptions which refer to a king by the name Aakheperkare Thutmose are describing the actions of a namesake king, distinct from the 18th dynasty occupant of the Deir el-Bahari tomb.   Needless to say, this possibility has never been raised, much less entertained by the community of scholars.  But the 18 year old mummified body of Aakheperkare all but demands that conclusion.  This body, in and of itself, all but confirms our hypothesis of duplicate names.   And the likelihood rises to a virtual certainty as our investigation extends to the bodies of the other kings in the Cairo Museum, whose remains are equally at odds with the historical documents.   We will defer the examination of these kings until the histories of their namesakes are incorporated into our 7th century history in the balance of this book.   But since we have already concluded our treatment of Menkheperre Thutmose we will take time here to examine the body of the 18th dynasty king whose name he borrowed.
 

Thutmose III

        It is most fortunate that the mummy of the 18th dynasty Menkheperre Thutmose was included among the remains preserved by the 21st dynasty priests in the Deir el-Bahari tomb.  If we are correct these remains will bear little resemblance to the 80 year old king who authored the Annals.

        In commenting on the mummy of Thutmose III, Weeks and Harris, in their  1973 publication X-Raying the Pharaohs,  restrict themselves to a single innocuous comment, and let the matter rest.

Thutmose III died after fifty-five years as king, on March 17, 1436 B.C., according to Hayes' calculations, althoughthe x-rays do not support such an advanced age. p. 137-138 (emphasis added)

        Examination of the teeth of  Thutmose III (dentition analysis), whose moderate wear (attrition) closely resembled that of the youthful Thutmose I, revealed that this king was around 35 years old at the time of his death.  Separate analysis of the vertebral column (lipping, intervertebral spacing, epiphyseal union, long bone development), the shoulder girdle, and the pelvis, yielded independent and comparable results, confirming beyond all doubt that the body preserved in the Cairo Museum was that of a man whose death occurred between his 35th  and 40th  years. Under no circumstances can these  mummified remains be assigned to the king who authored the Annals and reigned 54 years over Egypt.

        It goes without saying that Egyptologists have attempted to minimize the age of Thutmose III in hopes of ameliorating the devastating results of the anatomical examinations.  Wente himself is typical of this process, suggesting in the X-Ray Atlas that Thutmose may have become king as an infant only three years old, thus placing his death as early as his 57th year.  This interpretative effort is predicated largely on the use of the Egyptian term inpw in reference to the youthful prince Thutmose in a document yet to be examined, one which describes the circumstances which led to Thutmose's enthronement.   The argument is disingenuous at worst and strained to say the least, as we will soon see when we look to the beginnings of Thutmose's kingship in the next chapter and examine the inscription referred to by Wente.  And even if Thutmose III did begin his reign at the age of 3 and died at the age of 57, there is no possibility that the 35-40 year old mummy in the Cairo Museum belongs to him.

        If Wente will not say it, let us say it for him, paraphrasing Weeks in his description of the  body of Thutmose I (see above).    The anatomically determined age of 35-40 years for Thutmose III is simply not compatible with the chronology of this period established from the monuments, and setting aside the strained exegesis of Egyptologists, there does not seem to be any convincing explanation for the discrepancy of 30 years between the lowest possible date of death of Menkheperre (70 years assuming he began his kingship at the age of 15) based on the monuments and the 35-40 years assigned to his mummified corpse.   With Thutmose III there is no possibility of discounting the textual basis of his lengthy kingship, well established by the Annals and the inscription of Amenemheb, and scholars are loathe to suggest, as they have done with the  mummy labeled Thutmosis I, that the body represents someone else, perhaps mistaken for the king by the 21st dynasty priests who re-wrapped his body (though in all fairness many books place a question mark beside the name of Thutmose III in the list of remains forthcoming from DB320).  There is only one possible explanation of the evidence.   The monuments and the mummified remains belong to two different kings by the name Menkheperre Thutmose!

        Having said that, we proceed with our stated objective, to identify the contemporaries and extended family of Menkheperre Piankhi.