of King Men-khepru-Ra, deceased, in the August Habitation in Western Thebes.”  Men-khepru-Ra was the prenomen or throne-name of Thothmes IV.  Tied round a pillar in the tomb is still a length of the actual rope used by the thieves for crossing the chasm, which, as in many of the tombs here, was left open in the gallery to bar the way to plunderers.  The mummy of the king was found in the tomb of Amenhetep II, and is now at Cairo.

The discovery of the tomb of Thothmes I and Hat-shepsu has already been described.  In 1905 Mr. Davis made his latest find, the tomb of Iuaa and Tuaa, the father and mother of Queen Tii, the famous consort of Amenhetep III and mother of Akhunaten the heretic.  Readers of Prof.  Maspero’s history will remember that Iuaa and Tuaa are mentioned on one of the large memorial scarabs of Amenhetep III, which commemorates his marriage.  The tomb has yielded an almost incredible treasure of funerary furniture, besides the actual mummies of Tii’s parents, including a chariot overlaid with gold.  Gold overlay of great thickness is found on everything, boxes, chairs, etc.  It was no wonder that Egypt seemed the land of gold to the Asiatics, and that even the King of Babylon begs this very Pharaoh Amenhetep to send him gold, in one of the letters found at Tell el-Amarna, “for gold is as water in thy land.”  It is probable that Egypt really attained the height of her material wealth and prosperity in the reign of Amenhetep III.  Certainly her dominion reached its farthest limits in his time, and his influence was felt from the Tigris to the Sudan.  He hunted lions for his pleasure in Northern Mesopotamia, and he built temples at Jebel Barkal beyond Dongola.  We see the evidence of lavish wealth in the furniture of the tomb of Iuaa and Tuaa.  Yet, fine as are many of these gold-overlaid and overladen objects of the XVIIIth Dynasty, they have neither the good taste nor the charm of the beautiful jewels from the XIIth Dynasty tombs at Dashur.  It is mere vulgar wealth.  There is too much gold thrown about.  “For gold is as water in thy land.”  In three hundred years’ time Egypt was to know what poverty meant, when the poor priest-kings of the XXIst Dynasty could hardly keep body and soul together and make a comparatively decent show as Pharaohs of Egypt.  Then no doubt the latter-day Thebans sighed for the good old times of the XVIIIth Dynasty, when their city ruled a considerable part of Africa and Western Asia and garnered their riches into her coffers.  But the days of the XIIth Dynasty had really been better still.  Then there was not so much wealth, but what there was (and there was as much gold then, too) was used sparingly, tastefully, and simply.  The XIIth Dynasty, not the XVIIIth, was the real Golden Age of Egypt.