royal family that her husband
allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother's
side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from
being recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the "seat of
Horus" reverted once more to a woman, Hatshopsitu, the eldest daughter
of Ahmasi.

* Uazmosu is represented on the tomb of Pahiri at El-Kab,
where Mr. Griffith imagines he can trace two distinct
Uazmosu; for the present, I am of opinion that there was but
one, the son of Thutmosis I. His funerary chapel was
discovered at Thebes; it is in a very bad state of
preservation.

** Amenmosu is represented at El-Kab, by the side of his
brother Uazmosu. Also on a fragment where we find him, in
the fourth year of his father's reign, honoured with a
cartouche at Memphis, and consequently associated with his
father in the royal power.

*** Mutnofrit was supposed by Mariette to have been a
daughter of Thutmosis IL; the statue reproduced on p. 345
has shown us that she was wife of Thutmosis I. and mother of
Thutmosis II.

Hatshopsitu herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Her
maternal ancestor, Sonisonbu, had not been a scion of the royal house,
and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the
sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect
of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god,
becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception,
had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner.

* A similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the case
of two other sovereigns, viz. Amenothes III., whose father, Titmosis
IV., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of
Thutmosis I.; and Ptolemy Caesarion, whose father, Julius Caesar, was not
of Egyptian blood.

[Illustration: 344.jpg PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN AHMASI]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Naville.

The inscriptions with which Hatshopsitu decorated her chapel relate how,
on that fateful night, Amon descended upon Ahmasi in a flood of perfume
and light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on
leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in
whom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below.
The sequel of the story is displayed in a series o