en hastily
inscribed in ink on the front of the winding-sheet, and when the lid was
removed, garlands of faded pink flowers were still found about the neck,
laid there as a last offering by the priests who placed the Pharaoh and
his compeers in their secret burying-place.

* The precise site is at present unknown: we see, however,
that it was in this place, when wo observe that Ahmosis was
worshipped by the Servants of the Necropolis, amongst the
kings and princes of his family who were buried at Drah-
abu'l-Neggah.

** His priests and the minor _employes_ of his cult are
mentioned on a stele in the museum at Turin, and on a brick
in the Berlin Museum. He is worshipped as a god, along with
Osiris, Horus, and Isis, on a stele in the Lyons Museum,
brought from Abydos: he had, probably, during one of his
journeys across Egypt, made a donation to the temple of that
city, on condition that he should be worshipped there for
ever; for a stele at Marseilles shows him offering homage to
Osiris in the bark of the god itself, and another stele in
the Louvre informs us that Pharaoh Thutmosis IV. several
times sent one of his messengers to Abydos for the purpose
of presenting land to Osiris and to his own ancestor
Ahmosis.

[Illustration: 135.jpg COFFIN OF AHMOSIS IN THE GIZEH MUSEUM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

Amenothes I. had not attained his majority when his father "thus winged
his way to heaven," leaving him as heir to the throne.* Nofritari
assumed the authority; after having shared the royal honours for nearly
twenty-five years with her husband, she resolutely refused to resign
them.** She was thus the first of those queens by divine right who,
scorning the inaction of the harem, took on themselves the right to
fulfil the active duties of a sovereign, and claimed the recognition of
the equality or superiority of their titles to those of their husbands
or sons.

* The last date known is that of the year XXII. at Turah;
Manetho's lists give, in one place, twenty-five years and
four months after the expulsion; in another, twenty-six
years in round numbers, as the total duration of his reign,
which has every appearance of probability.

** There is no direct evidence to prove that Amenothes I.
was a minor when he came to the throne; still the
presump