Amenophis II. was succeeded by Thothmes IV., who was called upon to face a new enemy, the Hittites.  It was at the commencement of his reign that they first began to descend from their mountain homes, and the frontier city of Tunip had to bear the brunt of the attack.  It was probably in order to strengthen himself against these formidable foes that the Pharaoh married the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who changed her name to Mut-em-ua.  It was the beginning of those inter-marriages with the princes of Asia which led to the Asiatized court and religion of Amenophis IV., and finally to the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty.

The son of Mut-em-ua was Amenophis III., whose long reign of thirty-seven years was as brilliant and successful as that of Thothmes III.  At Soleb between the second and third cataracts he built a temple to his own deified self, and engraved upon its columns the names of his vassal states.  Among them are Tunip and Kadesh, Carchemish and Apphadana on the Khabur.  Sangar, Assyria, Naharaim, and the Hittites also appear among them, but this must be on the strength of the tribute or presents which had been received from them.  The Pharaoh filled his harim with Asiatic princesses.  His queen Teie, who exercised an important influence upon both religion and politics, came from Asia, and among his wives were the sisters and daughters of the kings of Babylonia and Mitanni, while one of his own daughters was married to Burna-buryas the Babylonian sovereign.  His marriage with Gilu-khipa, the daughter of Sutarna, king of Aram-Naharaim, was celebrated on a scarab, where it is further related that she was accompanied to Egypt by three hundred and seventeen “maids of honour.”  Besides allying himself in marriage to the royal houses of Asia, Amenophis III. passed a good deal of his time in Syria and Mesopotamia, amusing himself with hunting lions.  During the first ten years of his reign he boasts of having killed no less than one hundred and two of them.  It was in the last of these years that he married queen Teie, who is said on scarabs to have been the daughter of “Yua and Tua.”  Possibly these are contracted forms of Tusratta and Yuni, who were at the time king and queen of Mitanni.  But if so, it is curious that no royal titles are given to her parents; moreover, the author of the scarabs has made Yua the father of the queen and Tua her mother.  Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, while from another of them it would seem as if Teie had been the daughter of the Babylonian king.  One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank as chief queen.  In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty the vizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father was called Yu the elder.  Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; and a connection has been suggested between it and the Hebrew Yahveh.  This, however, though possible, cannot be proved.