truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the
south and north, Sozir Khopiruri chosen of Ea, the offspring of the Sun,
Harmhabi Miamun, giver of life. The _cortege_ came afterwards to the
palace, the king walking before Amon: there the god embraced his son,
placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole
world, over foreign populations as well as those of Egypt, inasmuch as
he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe.

This is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. Pharaoh is
the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might
have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of Horus; and as he
became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the
moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless
respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. In this case,
however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional
formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the
circumstances of the moment. Amon, who had been insulted and proscribed
by Khuniatonu, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of
the immediate successors of his enemy.

[Illustration: 123.jpg THE FIRST PYLON OF HARMHABI AT KARNAK]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Beato.

They had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become
reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this
was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion:
they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal
system, and the temple of the hateful Disk still dishonoured by its
vicinity the sanctuary of Karnak. Harmhabi, on the other hand, was
devoted to Amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from
his birth to worship none but him. Harmhabi's triumph marked the end
of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which Amon saw
himself again master of Thebes and of the world. Immediately after his
enthronement Harmhabi rivalled the first Amen-othes in his zeal for the
interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonu and
the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might
remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he
set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of Thutmosis III. They
remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in t