Prof. Breasted in his history gives a lucid account of the expulsion of the foreigners, basing his statements on the inscriptions preserved on the walls of the tombs at El Kab in Upper Egypt, the home of some of the generals employed by Aahmes in the war. It is to be read there how the city of Avaris was stormed, and how the Asiatics were driven across the desert into Syria. It was now the turn of the Egyptians to invade and capture the land of Syria. King Aahmes pursued the retreating Asiatics to Sharuhen, a town of southern Judah, mentioned in the Bible (Joshua xix, 6), where he besieged them for six years, finally capturing the city. From Judah he drove them into the heart of Syria, and there he seems at last to have crushed them. His successor, Amenhotep I, penetrated as far as the territory between the Orontes and the Euphrates; while Thothmes I, the next king, was able to set his boundary stone at the northern limits of Syria, and thus could call himself the ruler of the entire east end of the Mediterranean.

The Hyksos had created the first known world-empire, and Egypt was now building up the second. The great Pharaoh, Thothmes III, conducted a long series of campaigns in Syria, and so terrorised the inhabitants that he was able to end his years in comparative peace. War was, however, renewed under his successors, Amenhotep II and Thothmes IV, the result of which was that Amenhotep III succeeded to an empire that gave him little trouble. This empire exceeded in extent and power even that of the barbaric Jonias; and so cowed were the peoples of the known world by the continuous activity of the foregoing Pharaohs that, with one accord, they bowed the knee to Amenhotep. Under Akhnaton, who next succeeded to the throne, there was a general revolt in Syria, and the empire was rapidly lost to the Egyptians. It is the culmination, the decline, and the fall of the Egyptian power abroad on which so much light has been thrown by the archæological discoveries of recent years; and first amongst these stands the finding of the tomb of Yuaa and Thuaus, the parents of Queen Thiy, the wife of Amenhotep III.

Somewhere about the year 1470 B.C., while Thothmes III was campaigning in Syria, a child was born who was destined to become the grandfather of the most remarkVol. 210.-No. 418.

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able of all the Pharaohs of Egypt. Neither the names of his parents nor the place of his birth are known; and the reader will presently find that it is not easy to say whether he was an Egyptian or a foreigner. His name is written Aau, Aay, Aai, Ayu, A-aa, Yaa, Yau, and most commonly Yuaa; and this variety of spellings seems rather to indicate that its pronunciation, being foreign, did not permit of a correct rendering in Egyptian letters. He must have been some twenty years of age when Thothmes III died; and thus it is quite possible that he was one of those Syrian hostages whom the Pharaoh brought back to Egypt from the courts of Asia to be educated in the Egyptian manner. When Thothmes III had conquered a kingdom, it seems that he brought home with him to Thebes the heir-apparent, and later set him upon his father's throne as a devoted vassal. Some of the hostages who were not direct heirs may have taken up their permanent residence on the banks of the Nile, where it is certain that a fair number of their countrymen were settled for business and other purposes. During the reign of Amenhotep II, Yuaa must have passed the prime of his life; and at that king's death he had probably reached the forty-fifth year of his age. He had married a woman called by the common Egyptian name of Thuan, regarding whose nationality there is, therefore, not much question. Two children were born of the marriage, the first a boy who was named Aanen, and the second a girl named Thiy, who later became Egypt's greatest queen. Thiy was probably about four years old when Thothmes IV came to the throne; and, as her parents both held appointments at court, she must have now received those first impressions of luxury which influenced her childhood and her whole life.

At this time Yuaa held the sacerdotal office of Priest of Min, one of the most ancient of the Egyptian gods. Min, who had many of the characteristics of, and was later identified with, the Greek Pan, was worshipped at three or four cities of Upper Egypt, and throughout the eastern Desert to the Red Sea coast. He was the god of fecundity, fertility, generation, reproduction, and the like, in the human, animal, and vegetable worlds. The woman who prayed that she might present a son to her husband, the man who asked that his fields might bear a

rich harvest, alike made supplication to the great god Min. In his form of Min-Ra he was a god of the sun, whose fertilising rays made pregnant the whole earth. He was more noble in conception than the Greek Pan, and represented the pristine desires of lawful reproduction in the family rather than the erotic instincts for which the Greek god was famous. Were one to compare him with any of the gods of the countries neighbouring to Egypt, he would be found to have as much likeness to Adonis, the north-Syrian god of vegetation and reproduction, as to any other deity. This fact offers food for some thought, for if Yuaa was a foreigner hailing, as may be supposed, from Syria, there would have been no Egyptian god to whose service he would so readily have attached himself.

Min was no local god, nor was he very essentially the protector and upholder of Egyptian rights and Egyptian prejudices. He was universal, and he appealed to the sense and the senses of Syrian and Egyptian alike. At this time the priests of the great god Amen held the chief religious power in the kingdom; but the wealth of the Amen temples had brought corruption in its train, and the court began to display a desire to rid itself of an influence which was daily becoming less exalted. It may be that Yuaa had some connexion with this movement, for he was now a personage of considerable importance at the palace. He may have already held the title of prince or duke, by which he is called in his funeral inscriptions; and one may suppose that he was a favourite of the young king, and of his wife, Queen Mutemua, who is thought to have been of Syrian extraction. When this Pharaoh died and his son Amenhotep III, a boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, came to the throne, Yuaa was a man of over fifty, and his little daughter Thiy was a girl of marriageable age, being about as old as the king.

The court at the time was more or less under the influence of the Queen-dowager, Mutemua, and her advisers, for Amenhotep was still too young to be allowed to go entirely his own way; and amongst these advisers it seems evident that Yuaa was to be numbered. Now the boy-king had not been on the throne more than a year, if as much, when, with feasting and ceremony, he

was married to Thiy; and Yuaa and Thuau became the proud parents-in-law of the Pharaoh.

It is necessary to consider the significance of this marriage. The royal pair were mere children; and it is impossible to suppose that the marriage was not arranged for them by their guardians. If Amenhotep at this early age had simply fallen in love with this girl, with whom, probably, he had been brought up, he no doubt would have insisted on marrying her, and she would have been placed in his harim. But she became his great queen, was placed on the throne beside him, and received honours which no other queen of the royal blood had ever received before. It is clear that the king's advisers would never have permitted this had Thiy been but the pretty daughter of a noble of the court. There must have been something in her parentage which entitled her to these honours and caused her to be deliberately chosen as queen. There are several possibilities. Thuau may have had royal blood in her veins; she may have been, for instance, the granddaughter of Thothmes III, to whom she bears some likeness in face. Queen Thiy is often called 'royal daughter' as well as 'royal wife'; and it is possible that this is to be taken literally. In a letter sent by Dushratta, King of Mitanni, a country of north Syria, to Akhnaton the queen's son, Thiy is called 'my sister and thy mother'; and, though it is possible that the word 'sister' is here used to indicate the general brotherhood of royalty, it is more probable that some real cousinship is meant, for other relationships, such as 'daughter, 'wife,' and 'father-in-law,' are precisely stated in the letter. Yuaa may have been indirectly of royal Egyptian blood, or he may have been, as we have seen, the off spring of some Syrian royal house, such as that of Mitanni, related by marriage to the Pharaoh; and thus Thiy may have had some distant claim to the throne, and Dushratta would have had reason for calling her his sister. Queen Thiy, however, has so often been called a foreigner, for reasons which have now been shown to be quite erroneous, that we must be cautious in adopting any of these possibilities; and we must be equally prepared to admit, on the discovery of further evidence, that she was a pure Egyptian or that she was Syrian.

Prof. Petrie considers that her face is north-Syrian in type; and, as she derives her main features from her father, this would mean that Yuaa also resembled the people of that country. Prof. Breasted in his history states that Queen Mutemua, then the paramount influence at the palace, by whose wishes the marriage of Amenhotep and Thiy may have taken place, was herself a princess of Mitanni. Be this as it may, Amenhotep and Thiy, a boy and a girl hardly yet in their teens, ruled Egypt together; and Yuaa and Thuau stood behind the throne to advise them.

Thuau now included amongst her titles those of 'royal handmaid,' or lady-in-waiting, 'the favoured one of Hathor,' the goddess of beauty, the favourite of the king,' and 'the royal mother of the great wife of the king,' a title which may indicate that she was of royal blood. Amongst the titles of Yuaa may be mentioned those of master of the horse and chariot-lieutenant of the king,' the favourite excellent above all favourites,' and the mouth and ears of the king,' that is to say, his agent and adviser. He was a personage of commanding presence, whose powerful character showed itself in his face. One must picture him now as a tall man, with a fine shock of white hair, a great hooked nose like that of a Syrian, full, strong lips, and a prominent, determined jaw. He has the face of an ecclesiastic; and there is something about his mouth which reminds one of the late Pope, Leo XIII. One feels, in looking at his wellpreserved features, that here indeed may be found the originator of that great religious revolution which his daughter and grandson carried into execution. There is perhaps more than mere extravagance in the titles, 'he who fills the heart of the king,' and 'the prince who is called at any hour to receive the praises of the Pharaoh,' which one finds in his funeral inscriptions.

During this time the more thoughtful members of the court were quietly attempting to undermine the influence of the priesthood of Amen, and were beginning to carry into execution the schemes of emancipation which, as we have already seen, were entertained in the reign of Thothmes IV. The god Amen was originally the local deity of Thebes; and, when the Theban Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty had elevated him to the position of