The Dream Stele

        According to the traditional history Amenhotep II was succeeded by a son Menkheperure Thutmose whose reign lasted either an abbreviated 8 years or an extended 32 plus years.   The longer reign length is supported by such notable scholars as Wente and Van Siclen,  based primarily, though not exclusively, on monuments which suggest that the king celebrated at least one heb seb (30 year) festival. (15)   In our opinion there is no getting around the evidence supporting the longer reign length.    Menkheperre ruled at least 30 years, probably much longer.   Those who argue for the minimum figure are clearly influenced by the anatomical reports related to the mummy of Menkheperure.   We will examine those reports shortly.

        It is assumed that this pharaoh began his kingship at the death of his father, though in fact there is no evidence that this is so.  The possibility remains that he ruled for a time as coregent with Amenhotep, more so if we accept the longer figure for his reign length.

        One of the more prominent inscriptions attributed to this king is that contained on a stele found near the great Sphinx in 1818 by Caviglia, translated by Salt several years later and by others multiple times since.   It's central theme is well known to those with even the most casual acquaintance with things Egyptian, due largely to well intentioned but mistaken attempts to relate this king to the time of Moses and the plague-ridden exodus of Israel from Egypt.   On this so-called "Dream Stele" Thutmose IV credits the god Harmakhis, the god of the sphinx, for elevating him to office, this in gratitude for Thutmose having cleared away the sand which buried his image.  Portions of the inscription are worth noting.   It is dated in "Year 1, third month of the first season, day 19, under the majesty of Horus ....King of Upper and Lower Egypt Menkheprure", i.e. in the first year of the king.   This must be the date when the inscription was made.  In the narrative which follows the newly crowned king celebrates his belated good fortune.   From the language of the inscription there appears to have existed a lengthy period of time between the god's promise to the prince and its eventual fulfillment.  It might be as long as twenty or thirty years.   Thutmose may be middle aged.   He is certainly not the young man he was when the incident took place.
Thutmose begins his narrative with an extensive list of epithets, and continues by documenting his carefree days as a youth, then probably in his mid to late teens judging from the events he describes.

When his majesty was a stripling like Horus, the youth in Khemmis, his beauty was like the protector of his father, he seemed like the god himself.  The army rejoiced because of love for him, the king's-children and all the nobles. Then his strength overflowed him, and he repeated the circuit of his might like the son of Nut.  Behold, he did a thing that gave him pleasure upon the highlands of the Memphite nome, upon its southern and northern road, shooting at a target with copper bolts, hunting lions and wild goats, coursing in his chariot, his horses being swifter thant he wind; together with two of his followers, while not a soul knew it. Now, when his hour came on for giving rest to his followers, (it was always) at the [shoulder] of Harmakhis, beside Sokar in Rosta ... over aginst the lords of Khereha, the sacred road of the gods to the necropolis west of On (Heliopolis).  Now,. The very great statue of Khepri, rests in this place, the great in prowess, the splendid in strength; upon which the shadow of Re tarries.  The quarters of Memphis and all the citiies which are by him come to him, (raising) their hands for him in praise to his face, bearing great oblations for his ka..

One of those days it came to pass that the king's son, Thutmose, came, coursing at the time of midday, and he rested in the shadow of this great god.  A vision of sleep seized him at the hour (when) the sun was in the zenith, and he found the majesty of this revered god speaking with his own mouth, as a father speaks with his son, saying: "Behold thou me! See thou me! My son Thutmose.  I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khepri-Re-Atum, who will give to thee my kingdom on earth at the head of the living.  Thou shalt wear the white crown and the red crown upon the throne of Keb, the hereditary prince.  The land shall be thine in its length and breadth, that which the eye of the All-Lord shines upon.  The food of the Two Lands shall be thine, the great tribute of all countries, the duration of a long period of years.   My face is thine, my desire is toward thee.  Thou shalt be to me a protector (for) my manner is as if  I were ailing in all my limbs {--}.  The sand of this desert upon which I am, has reached me; turn to me, to have that done which I have desired, knowing that thou art my son, my protector; come hither, behold I am with thee, I am thy leader."   When he had finished this speech, this king's-son [awoke] hearing this ---- --; he understood the words of this god, and he kept silent in his heart.  He said: "Come, let us hasten to our house in the city; they shall protect the oblations for this god ...   BAR II 815

the Year 1 date is very likely fictitious with respect to the stela's erection.  It might refer to the king's first clearance efforts in the vicinity.  It would be difficult to believe that the excavation at Giza had been completed, as well as the royal constructions at Heliopolis and Memphis referred to in lines 1-3, in the first regnal year.  The abbreviated form of the introduction suggests that a summary of activities in the north has been provided because of the overall theme of the inscription - the royal attachement to the sun god at Giza. (16)

        A two fold conclusion follows from our brief examination of this stele.  In the first place Thutmose, at the moment when he first conversed with Harmakhis, was probably not in line for the kingship, else we wonder why this story would ever have been told.   And secondly, his kingship began a significant number of years after his dream experience as a youth.  We should be careful not to read any more into his remarks than that.

        But if Thutmose was an adult, possibly middle aged,  when he became king, and if he ruled 32 years in Egypt, then he must have been between 60-70 years old when he died.   And this is a minimal figure.  The physical remains of this king should confirm his lengthy life.  But by now we have learned to anticipate otherwise.
 

Mummy of Thutmose IV

        We have previously mentioned the fact that the lower estimates of the reign length of Thutmose IV have been unduly influenced by the anatomical examinations of the mummy of this king, found by Loret in 1898 in KV35.    Bryan has summarized the earliest findings, resulting from Elliot Smiths investigation at the turn of the 20th century:

Anatomical studies of Thutmose IV's mummy have been available since the early years of this century.  G. Elliot Smith, who studied the royal mummies for the Cairo Museum, published two different estimates of the king's age at death.  In 1903 and 1904 Smith suggested 25 as the most probable age.  He described the king as "a young clean-shaved effeminate, and extremely emaciated man, 5 feet 6 inches in height".  Through x-ray examination Smith learned that the epiphyses of the tibia were fully joined, indicating to him an age of at least 20 and probably more than 24.  Becuase the epiphyses of the crest of the ilium were not joined, however, he felt the king could not have been m more than 25 years.   In 1912 Smith published the royal mummies for the Cairo Museum and had by then revised his conclusions.  Since he had observed other examples of incompletely joined epiphyses of ilia, he believed it was not uncommon for Egyptians to exhibit a delayed union of epiphysis cristae.  The results of a skiagram of the epiphyses of the vertebral border of the scapula showed an apparent separation.  This led Smith still to support a low age estimate, though perhaps as high as 28.  He concluded that the texture of bones should admit that Thutmose IV might possibly have been even older than this."  It should be added, however, that Smith's assessment of delayed union has not impressed all modern radiologists, however, whose work on providing age at death has been built up from increasingly larger numbers of radiological projects.  The comparative "bone-age" material continues to be however, the modern population. (17)

        The 1972 re-examination of the royal mummies by James Harris and Kent Weeks has resulted in a slight increase in Thutmose's estimated "age at death".  In the years following the 1972 study, two anatomists, Krogman and Baer, examined the x-rays, working independently, and their opinions were published by Harris and the Egyptologist Edward Wente in An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (1980).  These two medical specialists concluded that Thutmose died slightly later than the figures suggested by Elliot Smith.  In their estimation his death took place between his 30th and 40th years, though they preferred the median age 35.    This left scholars such as Wente and Van Siclen sufficient wiggle room to let the monuments speak for themselves.  These two highly respected Egyptologists have recently argued that Menkheperure ruled at least 30 years, that he acceded to the throne while still an inpw (i.e. "youth") not yet having reached puberty (p. 230), and that in consequence his maximum age at accession was only slightly over 13 years (13 + x years), making his age at death a maximum of slightly over 46 years (46 + x years).   It was felt that this maximum age accorded reasonably well with the anatomical evidence.    But the manner in which they presented their argument disguised the inherent problem.  The dateline of the "dream stele", and the language of that same monument, absolutely demand that the reign of Thutmose began when that king was an adult reasonably advanced in age, i.e., that a significant length of time intruded between Thutmose's dream and his accession to the throne.   The "x" in Wente's argument is therefore a large number.  That conclusion, and the fact that Wente's  "maximum" should rather be construed as a minimum (18), combine to argue much the same result as we outlined earlier.   Thutmose began his kingship between 30 and 40 years of age and died at minimum 30 years later, between sixty and seventy years of age.  Under no circumstances can the mummy from KV35 be the author of the monuments which speak of a heb seb festival.  Only one reasonable conclusion follows naturally - there were two kings who bore this same name.   The mummy belongs to the 18thdynasty; the inscriptions belong to a namesake king.  There remains for us to locate the second king historically.
 

Erman's Analysis

      The conclusion that there were two kings who bore the name Menkheperure Thutmose is not entirely dependent on the results of x-ray analysis.  The same conclusion, with the added information that the namesake king was a contemporary of Piankhi and Aakheperure Amenhotep, follows naturally from the analysis of the "dream stele" provided by the eminent German Egyptologist A. Erman at the beginning of the 20th century.  In 1904 Erman determined that the sphinx stele of Menkheperure was inscribed sometime between the end of the 22nd/23rd dynasty and the beginning of the 26th Saite dynasty, precisely where we have dated the king by this name. (19)    The argument by the German scholar was thorough and irrefutable.   It should have resulted in a reexamination of this king's place in history.   Instead many Egyptologists, including Erman himself, reasoned that a 15th century stele of Thutmose was recopied by priests about 800 years later, and the copy was substituted for the original at the site of the sphinx.   Breasted came to an identical conclusion about the same time.  In the prelude to his translation of the inscription he remarks on how:

The form and content of the document are strikingly unlike the official or royal records of the Pharaohs.  It is besides filled with errors and striking irregularities in orthography, and exhibits a number of suspicious peculiarities not to be expected in a monument of this class.  It is therefore to be regarded as a late restoration.  BAR II 810

        Other explanations for the apparently late orthography on Thutmose's stele were immediately forthcoming, (20) but the explanation of Breasted and Erman soon won the day.  That situation changed abruptly by the middle of the 20th century, when in 1937 a possible escape from the conundrum was afforded to scholars by the excavation, also from the immediate vicinity of the Sphinx, of the stele of Amenhotep II from which we quoted earlier. (21)    In her recent analysis of Thutmose's stele Betsy Bryan describes the opinion that resulted from that discovery, one which prevails today:

There are few scholars remaining who accept Erman's proposal, but that is largely due to the discoveries made by Hassan at Giza (especially the 'Sphinx Stele' of Amenhotep II"   Many of the unusual writing and unattested words appeared on the great Stela of the earlier king, thus removing the major objections raised by Erman." (22)

        Almost every explanation conceivable has been given to the results of Erman's analyses except that which is most reasonable.  Menkheperure's dream stele shows signs of being created during the 25th dynasty because it was the creation of a 25th dynasty king. The same can be said for the sphinx stele of Amenhotep.  We can only regret that Egyptologists are so deeply rooted in an errant chronology, and so convinced of the fact of the uniqueness of 18th dynasty names (an unwarranted economy of exegesis),  that they fail to recognize where the evidence is leading.

        We have already tentatively identified Amenhotep as the son of Osorkon IV and thus a terminal king of either the 22nd or 23rd dynasty.   But who is the 7th century Menkheperure?    At the conclusion of our last section we hinted at the answer.
 

Menkheperure = Shabaka

        There is but one king unaccounted for in the late 7th century - Shabaka.   According to our analyses in Nebuchadnezzar this king was ruling within Egypt in 612 B.C. around the time of the fall of Nineveh.   According to Josephus he was responsible for the death of Bocchoris, the son of Tefnakht, which would also date his reign to the late 7th century.   On several monuments Shabaka used as a prenomen the name of Neferkare, well known as the prenomen of Osorkon IV.  It should be of no surprise to anyone that Shabaka would use that name since the two kings ruled in close proximity to one another.  Osorkon IV ruled over the district of Bubastis/Busiris at the time of Piankhi's invasion in 616 B.C..   Shabaka/Menkheperure ruled over the neighboring region of Memphis/Heliopolis, a district under the control of Tefnakht during the rebellion and left vacant following his defeat.  The fact that Memphis and Heliopolis  figure prominently on Menkheperure's Dream Stele attest the fact that he resided (and therefore ruled) in this region of the country.  We assume that Shabaka was elevated to kingship in 615 B.C., or soon thereafter, in order to safeguard Piankhi's interests in the region.  In that capacity he apparently encounted and brutally murdered Bocchoris, the son of Tefnakht..

        According to Herodotus this 25th dynasty patriarch ruled Egypt for 50 years, yet his inscriptions are few and far between.   The traditional history credits him with only 15 years,  based on a single inscription which bears that date.   But Shabaka is a Nubian name.  If Shabaka assumed an Egyptian name when he became pharaoh within Egypt, a likely event, and if that name was Menkheperure as we suggest, then his reign may well have lasted the 33 years argued by Wente and Van Sicilen, perhaps longer.  If his kingship began in 615 B.C., shortly after the conclusion of the Tefnakht rebellion, then it would have ended around 582 B.C., shortly after the death of Piankhi.

        If no other evidence were available to substantiate this identification we should have chosen it nevertheless.   Menkheperure's "Dream Stele" was composed in the 7th century.  A king by this name must have ruled during that century, and he must have authored the inscriptions that speak of an heb seb festival, since those cannot belong to the mummy found in KV35.   It is the reign of the second Menkheperure which entended into his 33rd year.  In our revised history this reign must be placed in the latter half of that century, overlapping the reigns of Menkheperre Piankhi and Aakheperure Amenhotep, son of Osorkon IV.  There is no other place for him in the revised chronology.  Even if we lacked the tradition which claims that he lived into the reign of Bocchoris and was responsible for the death of that 24th dynasty pharaoh, we would have argued that his kingship began around 615 B.C. and extended through the balance of the reign of Menkheperre Piankhi, whose name surely influenced his own selection.   But fortunately we do not have to speculate.  There exist few inscriptions of any significant length which bear the name of Shabaka.  It is therefore all the more significant that one of these clearly informs us that Shabaka adopted the names of the earlier  Menkheperure Thutmose.

The Fourth Pylon Inscription

        According to Egyptologists the doorway through the fourth pylon in the Karnak temple of Amun was subject to many repairs and alterations over the centuries of its existence.  It was presumably constructed by Thutmose I,  reconstructed during the reign of Thutmose IV, renovated and improved again during the reign of the 25th dynasty king Shabaka, and repaired for the last time by Alexander late in the 4th century B.C..   Evidence that it was constructed by Thutmose I is circumstantial, based entirely on the fact that the balance of the pylon is attributed to this king.    No inscription of his is present on the doorway itself, which contains only inscriptions of Thutmose and Shabaka.   Thutmose decorated the northern wing of the Pylon at the entranceway with a dedicatory inscription accompanied by scenes of the king in audience before Amun.   On the uprights of the door there is another inscription of Shabaka absent any representation.   The entire entranceway gives the impression of having been constructed at one time.   It must be the case, therefore, that the inscription by Shabaka was added to the work of the earlier king at a later date.

        A closer examination of the inscriptions suggests otherwise.   According to the inscription of Thutmose IV, the entranceway and the porch which fronts the entrance were entierely his creation.

Then his majesty acted, making a great doorway as his monument], extending and magnifying greatly, more than that which his ancestors had done. Its height was great, it reaching the sky.  Its rays inundated the Two lands making festive the lord of the gods, Amun-Re.(23)

        When we turn our attention to the inscription of Shabaka we are surprised to see the 25th dynasty pharaoh taking credit for the identical construction.   According to his inscription it was he who built the large revetement wall and “the large porch finished with fine gold, the two columns being worked with electrum (and) the two bases supporting the latter with pure silver.”(25)

        Who are we to believe?   The solution for Egyptologists was patent.   Only one possibility was chronologically possible.  Thutmose IV in the late 15th century refurbished a crude entranceway in the pylon built by Thutmose I, and 700 years later Shabaka repaired the work of Thutmose IV using identical materials.    But there are strong objections to this interpretation.  In the first place the two inscriptions appear to complement one another.  Thutmose gives credit to his ancestors who built and repaired the doorway originally, then provides no specifics about what he has done.  Shabaka on the other hand gives prior credit to no-one, but goes into great detail about his construction, as if the entire work is his creation.  There is absolutely no hint in Shabaka’s inscription that he has merely repaired an earlier work by Thutmose.   And who are these unnamed ancestors (plural) who preceded Thutmose in re-constructions of the doorway.   If he is an 18th dynasty king, less than a century removed from Thutmose I, we would have expected him to have acknowledged the work of his close ancestor (singular), and not several nameless predecessors.

        To be fair,  Egyptologists have sensed the problem and have provided the ad hoc explanation noted above.   But questions abound.   Why did Thutmose place his only inscription at this site in such an obscure location, leaving the uprights of the entranceway uninscribed and available for Shabaka to insert his inscription seven centuries later (eight centuries in the revised history)?   The uprights (montants) were favored locations for builders in antiquity to publicize their efforts, easily seen and read by passers by.  And why did the kings in the intervening dynasties fail to avail themselves of the opportunity provided by the uninscribed and inviting surfaces.  It is said of Ramses II of the 19th dynasty that he filled every available piece of masonry with his name.   Why did Ramses ignore this prominent and available surface.?   And how is it that Shabaka claims to have entirely remade the entranceway (he actually says he made it, not that he re-made it) yet left intact the inscription of Thutmose which claims that Thutmose remade it.

        There is only one explanation that makes sense of the 4th pylon doorway.    Shabaka is entirely  responsible for this major reconstruction of an entranceway built hundreds of years earlier and repaired many times in the interim by nameless and perhaps unknown pharaohs.  He alone is responsible for the porch which fronts the entranceway.  Both inscriptions belong to him.   Using his adopted name Menkheperure Thutmose he began his inscription, acknowledging the work of his predecessors.  Using his Nubian name Neferkare Shabaka.he completed his inscription, describing in great detail the nature of his work.  Both inscriptions were made at the identical time, near the end of the 7th century.(26)

        We have achieved our objective.   We have demonstrated the possibility, if not the probability,  that kings by the name Menkheperure Thutmose and Aakheperure Amenhotep lived and ruled over districts of Egypt in the days of Menkheperre Piankhi at the close of the 7th century.   If the reader is uncomfortable about the thesis of duplicate names we can only hope that doubts will be dispelled by the revelations to be set forth in the following chapter, where for the first time we attempt to trace the origins of the 25th dynasty patriarch Piankhi.