rlier edifices,
and dedicated to Amon.

[Illustration: 079.jpg MARRIAGE SCARABAEUS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph of the scarabaeus
preserved at Gizeh.

He had several sons;* but the one who succeeded him, and who, like
him, was named Amenothes, was the most paradoxical of all the Egyptian
sovereigns of ancient times.**

* One of them, Thutmosis, was high priest of Phtah, and we
possess several monuments erected by him in the temple of
Memphis; another, Tutonkhamon, subsequently became king. He
also had several daughters by Tii--Sitamon.

** The absence of any cartouches of Amenothes IV. or his
successors in the table of Abydos prevented Champollion and
Rosellini from classifying these sovereigns with any
precision. Nestor L'hote tried to recognise in the first of
them, whom he called _Bakhen-Balchnan_, a king belonging to
the very ancient dynasties, perhaps the Hyksos Apakhnan, but
Lepsius and Hincks showed that he must be placed between
Amenothes III. and Harmhabi, that he was first called
Amenothes like his father, but that he afterwards took the
name of Baknaten, which is now read Khunaten or Khuniaton.
His singular aspect made it difficult to decide at first
whether a man or a woman was represented. Mariette, while
pronouncing him to be a man, thought that he had perhaps
been taken prisoner in the Sudan and mutilated, which would
have explained his effeminate appearance, almost like that
of an eunuch. Recent attempts have been made to prove that
Amenothes IV. and Khuniaton were two distinct persons, or
that Khuniaton was a queen; but they have hitherto been
rejected by Egyptologists.

He made up for the inferiority of his birth on account of the plebeian
origin of his mother Tii,* by his marriage with Nofrititi, a princess
of the pure solar race.** Tii, long accustomed to the management of
affairs, exerted her influence over him even more than she had done over
her husband. Without officially assuming the rank, she certainly for
several years possessed the power, of regent, and gave a definite
Oriental impress to her son's religious policy. No outward changes were
made at first; Amenothes, although showing his preference for Heliopolis
by inscribing in his protocol the title of prophet of Harmakhis,
which he may, however, have borne before his accession, maintained