Ahmose, whose name signifies "Child of the Moon," was certainly not of Theban origin. The moon was the heavenly habitation of the Egyptian Hermes, Thut, who upon earth was invoked by his disciples and adorers as "the thought and will" of the sun god Ra, his heavenly father, in his temple, in the midst of the frequently mentioned and much celebrated Ibis-town of Khmun-Hermopolis, on the left hand of the stream in Middle Egypt. According to ancient custom and usage, the name of this god, and that of his shining emblem in heaven, was with design chosen for the baptismal name of King Ahmose and of his mother "Aahhotep", "the moonly", and also of their offspring Thutmes, whose sovereignty ushered in the fortunate times of the eighteenth dynasty.
Ahmose attacked his enemies by land and sea, conquered the chief seat of their strength, the fortress Auaris, so celebrated in history, and pursued the people of the foreigners far beyond the boundary of Egypt as far as the Canaanitish town Sheruhan. This place will be mentioned later, in the accounts of the wars of King
Thutmes III. against Kanaan and Naharain as a resting place on the road from Egypt to the fortress of Gaza.
It is not passed over in silence in Holy Scripture, since Sheruhan is expressly mentioned among the towns which fell to the lot of the inheritance of the tribe of Simeon in the South. In the tomb of the second Ahmose with the surname Pen Nukheb, this country, in which the King fought his Eastern battles, and in which Sheruhan was situated, is designated by its general name. It is the same Zahi, or Zaha, which was before mentioned.
In his tomb Ahmose is made to say, "My early life was passed in the time of the defunct King Ahmose, and of the defimct King Amenhotep I., and the defunct King Thutmes I., and the defunct King Thutmes I, and was finished in the time of Thutmes III. May he live long.' He then continues: I have reached a fortunate old age. I was during my existence in the favor of the king, and was rewarded by his Holiness, and was beloved by the royal court. And a divine woman gave me a further reward, the defunct great queen Makara (Hashop), because I had brought up her daughter, the great queen's daughter, the defunct Noferura."
It was only such a treaty, founded on the concession and recognition of these rights, which enabled the enterprising Ahmose, after the death struggle for the expulsion of the foreigners, to secure himself against insurrection and jealous opposition in the interior of the country, and to lead his veteran warriors from Patoris upon a campaign against the rebellious negroes on the southern frontier of the country.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the empire during the foreign dominion in the north, the widely spread tribes of To Chont on the Nubian districts of the south threw off the ancient yoke of the Pharaohs, and perhaps even set up an independent empire in the hot valleys near the dangerous cataracts of the Nile, which the kings of the twelfth dynasty had step by step wrung from their dusky neighbors. Ahmose, the chief of the sailors, has already related to us how Ahmose the king came out victorious from many struggles, in which a king named Tetan offered an obstinate resistance.
So now not only the two halves of the empire were again reunited under the powerful sceptre of the Pharaoh, but the south was again subjected to Egyptian supremacy. Now at last had the time of leisure arrived, which allowed the king, according to the good old custom, to prove his gratitude, as a beloved son of the Gods, by embellishing and extending their temples.
During the long dominion of the foreigners ' the temples had fallen into decay since the times of our forefathers, and the Pharaoh Ahmose, in the twenty-second year of his reign, gave the command to reopen the deserted quarries in the Arabian chain of mountains, to draw therefrom limestone for the building of the temples in Memphis, Thebes, and the other principal cities of the empire. According to ancient prescribed usage, which had already been practiced by the scribes in the reign of one of the Amenemhats of the twelfth dynasty, the fact was brought to the knowledge of the then existing and future generations by two rock tablets in the quarries of Toora and Maassara, in the neighborhood of the future town of the Khalifs, in the city of Cairo.
The engraved words read thus :
"In the twenty-second year of the reign of King Ahmose, his Holiness gave the order to open anew the rock chambers, and there to cut out the best white stone (limestone) of the hill country (of the name of) An, for the houses of the Gods of endless years' duration, for the home of the divine Ptah in Memphis, for Amon, the gracious god in Thebes..and for all the other monuments, which his Hohness carried out. The stone was drawn by bullocks, which were brought and given over to the foreign people of the Fenekh."
It was only such a treaty, founded on the concession and recognition of these rights, which enabled the enterprising Ahmose, after the death struggle for the expulsion of the foreigners, to secure himself against insurrection and jealous opposition in the interior of the country, and to lead his veteran warriors from Patoris upon a campaign against the rebellious negroes on the southern frontier of the country.
See Ahmose wife:
Queen Nofretari
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