66 Rev. Edward Hincks on the Egyptian Stele, or Tablet. 



to 550 years, is reduced by others to less than the half of that period ;* and 

 thus an uncertainty to the extent of about 300 years exists as to the reign 

 of each monarch of the so called eighteenth dynasty, when the date of its com- 

 mencement is compared with any given era ; although the order of most of the 

 reigns is perfectly well ascertained, and the length of many of them is known 

 also. 



, I have spoken of kings and queens belonging to this dynasty, whose names 

 are omitted in the tablet of Abydos. That this should be the case should excite 

 no surprise, because that tablet was only intended to include the royal ancestors 

 of Rameses II. The non-appearance of a king's name in it is no evidence that 

 he did not live during the interval of time which it comprehends. In point 

 of fact, the monuments in existence exhibit to us no less than four royal per- 

 sonages, who lived between Thothmos IV. and Rameses I., the twelfth and 

 fifteenth kings on the tablet, in addition to the two who appear as the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth, viz., Amenothph III., and Horus (Har-em-hebee). The names 

 of three of these kings are Amuntuonkh, Amunmes, and Amenothph IV. ; that 

 of the fourth, whose tomb is in the western valley at Thebes, is yet undetermined. 

 There can be little doubt that Amuntuonkh was the brother of Amenothph III., 

 who shared the sovereignty with him for a time. This was pointed out by Sir 

 J. G. Wilkinson, who has, however, confounded this king, who probably died 

 in his childhood, with Amenothph IV. This last king has deservedly excited 

 much interest ; and strange mistakes have been made respecting the age when 

 he lived. M. Letronne, and other French writers, have supposed him to belong 

 to a dynasty anterior to the shepherds, the immediate successors of the gods ! 

 Colonel Vyse, on the other hand, imagines him to be one of the Persian kings 

 of the twenty-seventh or thirty-first dynasty ! The monumental evidence is, 

 however, conclusive as to his belonging to the Thothmos family. It appears, 

 that having become a proselyte to sun worship, he changed his original name of 

 Amenothph, which implies devotion to Amoun, for Vach-en-aten (jn{^3n3)» 



• The most probable supposition appears to me to be that, which makes the date of the ceiling 

 of the Memnonium about 1322 years B. C. ; and which, to accord with this, assumes that the twen- 

 tieth and twenty-first of Manetho's dynasties reigned contemporaneously after the nineteenth. If 

 this be so, according to the principles laid down in a former note, Rameses the Great must have 

 ascended the throne in 1347 B. C, about 400 years before Sheshonk. 



