* Here again my description is taken from the present appearance of the mummy, which is now in the Gizeh Museum.  It is evident, from the inspection which I have made, that Ahmosis was about fifty years old at the time of his death, and, allowing him to have reigned twenty-five years, he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six when he came to the throne.

[Illustration:  113.jpg THE SMALL GOLD VOTIVE BARQUE OF PHARAOH KAMOSU, IN THE GIZEH MUSEUM.]

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

The impenetrable marshes of Menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the Red Sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting network of the branches of the Nile, together with the artificial canals, protected them as by a series of moats in front, while Syria in their rear offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their troops, or levying recruits among tribes of kindred race.  As long as they could hold their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible; one victory would bring them to Memphis, and the whole valley would again fall under then-suzerainty.  Ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold, averted this danger.  It is, therefore, not without reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty.

[Illustration:  114.jpg Page Image]

His predecessors had in reality been merely Pharaohs on sufferance, ruling in the south within the confines of their Theban principality, gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the suzerainty of the whole country.  They were reckoned in the XVIIth dynasty together with the Hyksos sovereigns of uncontested legitimacy, while their successors were chosen to constitute the XVIIIth, comprising Pharaohs with full powers, tolerating no competitors, and uniting under their firm rule the two regions of which Egypt was composed—­the possessions of Sit and the possessions of Horus.*

* Manetho, or his abridgers, call the king who drove out the Shepherds Amosis or Tethmosis.  Lepsius thought he saw grounds for preferring the second reading, and identified this Tethmosis with Thutmosi Manakhpirri, the ihutmosis III. of our lists; Ahmosis could only have driven out the greater part of the nation.  This theory, to which Naville still adheres, as also does Stindorff, was disputed nearly fifty years ago by E. de Rouge; nowadays we are obliged to admit that, subsequent to the Vth year of Ahmosis, there were no longer Shepherd-kings in Egypt, even though a part of the conquering race may have remained in the country in a state of slavery, as we shall soon have occasion to observe.

The war of deliverance broke out on the accession of Ahmosis, and continued during the first five years of his reign.* One of his lieutenants, the king’s namesake—­Ahmosi-si-Abina—­who