* The form Amenophis, which is usually employed, is, properly speaking, the equivalent of the name Amenemaupitu, or Amenaupiti, which belongs to a king of the XXIst Tanite dynasty; the true Greek transcription of the Ptolemaic epoch, corresponding to the pronunciation Amehotpe, or Amenhopte, is Amenothes.  Under the XVIIIth dynasty the cuneiform transcription of the tablets of Tel-el Amarna, Amankhatbi, seems to indicate the pronunciation Amanhautpi, Amanhatpi, side by side with the pronunciation Aman-hautpu, Amenhotpu.

Ahmosis was laid to rest in the chapel which he had prepared for himself in the cemetery of Drah-abu’l-Neggah, among the modest pyramids of the XIth, XIIIth, and XVIIth dynasties.* He was venerated as a god, and his cult was continued for six or eight centuries later, until the increasing insecurity of the Theban necropolis at last necessitated the removal of the kings from their funeral chambers.** The coffin of Ahmosis was found to be still intact, though it was a poorly made one, shaped to the contours of the body, and smeared over with yellow; it represents the king with the false beard depending from his chin, and his breast covered with a pectoral ornament, the features, hair, and accessories being picked out in blue.  His name has been 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.