His position was, indeed, a curious one; although _de facto_ absolute in power, his children by Queen Ahmasi took precedence of him, for by her mother's descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband, and legally the king should have retired in favour of hie sons as soon as they were old enough to reign. The eldest of them, Uazmosu, died early.* The second, Amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latter's reign, and he also held a military command in the Delta,** but before long he also died, and Thutmosis I. was left with only one son--a Thutmosis like himself--to succeed him. The mother of this prince was a certain Mutnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his father's side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother's side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the "seat of Horus" reverted once more to a woman, Hatshopsitu, the eldest daughter of Ahmasi. * Uazmosu is represented on the tomb of Pahiri at El-Kab, where Mr. Griffith imagines he can trace two distinct Uazmosu; for the present, I am of opinion that there was but one, the son of Thutmosis I. His funerary chapel was discovered at Thebes; it is in a very bad state of preservation. ** Amenmosu is represented at El-Kab, by the side of his brother Uazmosu. Also on a fragment where we find him, in the fourth year of his father's reign, honoured with a cartouche at Memphis, and consequently associated with his father in the royal power. *** Mutnofrit was supposed by Mariette to have been a daughter of Thutmosis IL; the statue reproduced on p. 345 has shown us that she was wife of Thutmosis I. and mother of Thutmosis II. Hatshopsitu herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Her maternal ancestor, Sonisonbu, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception, had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner. * A similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the case of two other sovereigns, viz. Amenothes III., whose father, Titmosis IV., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of Thutmosis I.; and Ptolemy Caesarion, whose father, Julius Caesar, was not of Egyptian blood. [Illustration: 344.jpg PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN AHMASI] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Naville.