Wood identifies Ezbet Helmi,

located just over one mile southwest of Pi-Ramesses, as the royal residence of the exodus-pharaoh during the Israelites’ stay in Goshen (Wood, “The Rise and Fall,” 482). Though this site indeed may have possessed two palace structures of the 18th Dynasty (Ibid., 483; Manfred Bietak, Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos [London: British Museum Press, 1996], 68–72), there is no epigraphical evidence confirming that Amenhotep II ever resided there, even periodically. Moreover, the discovery of a scarab there with his royal cartouche no more proves his personal occupation of the city (Wood, “The Rise and Fall,” 484) than the discovery of a scarab with his cartouche at Gibeon proves he resided on the Central Benjamin Plateau (James B. Pritchard, Gibeon: Where the Sun Stood Still [Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1962], 156). Memphis, a known royal residence of Amenhotep II and the headquarters for all of the Asiatic military campaigns of the era, is currently a better candidate for the site where the exodus-pharaoh resided, though Ezbet Helmi does remain a legitimate candidate. 53. Other New-Kingdom princes who were sm-priests also functioned as chief pontiffs at Memphis, such as “the king’s son and sm-priest, Thutmose,” who appears with his father, Amenhotep III, at his burial in the Serapeum. This prince is attested on a canopic box, where he is called “the king’s eldest son, his beloved, high priest of Ptah and sm-priest.” He doubtlessly is to be identified with the king’s son and sm-priest, Thutmose, who appears on a statuette in the Louvre (Redford, “Coregency of Tuthmosis III,” 111). 54. Ibid., 112, 114. 55. Ibid., 114. 56. Ibid., 110, 114. 57. Ibid., 114. 58. In Tomb 64 of the Theban necropolis is an important wall painting that displays two royal tutors: Hekreshu and his son, Hekerneheh, who are in the company of their princely charges: Thutmose and Amenhotep. Hekreshu is seated, facing right, with the young heir apparent, Thutmose, on his lap. Standing before him is Hekerneheh and a small Prince Amenhotep, who is carrying a bouquet. Hekreshu is specifically stated to be a “tutor of the king’s eldest bodily son, Thutmose,” whose nomen is represented in a cartouche. Hekerneheh’s title is “tutor of the king’s son, Amenhotep.” Behind Hekerneheh appear six other princes, originally all named, but the hieroglyphs are now almost completely destroyed. One name alone can be made out, that of a certain Amenemhet. All of the princes, including the seated Thutmose, wear pectorals bearing the nomen and praenomen of Thutmose IV (Ibid., 114, 115). The presence of the birth name and throne-name of Thutmose IV on each of the princes drove Newberry to conclude that the child on Hekreshu’s knee was undoubtedly the later Thutmose IV, and that the other princes, including Amenhotep, were his sons. The prince named Amenhotep, according to Newberry, eventually ruled as Amenhotep III (Percy Edward Newberry, “Akhenaten’s Eldest Son-in-Law ‘Ankhkhe-prure’,” JEA 14 [1928], 83–84). Redford points out that Newberry’s argument is not compelling, as all of the others in the scene could easily be wearing the cartouche of Thutmose IV out of deference to the son who succeeded to the throne. He further suggests that perhaps the six princes in the background are sons of Thutmose IV, while Amenhotep could be a brother, and for that reason was singled out to be depicted in a position of honor (Redford, “Coregency of Tuthmosis III,” 113). The problem, however, with the suggestion that the six princes are the sons of the seated Thutmose is that Thutmose and Amenhotep themselves, whoever they might be in reality, are depicted in the scene as children, and it would be odd to depict in the same scene both a father and his children as children. A possible rebuttal against Redford’s suggestion that Thutmose and Amenhotep are brothers might take the following form: Hekreshu is specifically stated to be the tutor of the king’s eldest son, Thutmose, while Hekerneheh is the tutor of the king’s son, Amenhotep. Since a father-son relationship existed between the tutors, perhaps a father-son relationship existed between their charges. Redford dismisses this idea by offering a parallel depiction found in graffiti from Konosso. A king’s son, Amenhotep, is mentioned twice at Konosso, once with Hekreshu and a second time with Hekerneheh. The presence of the cartouches of Thutmose IV in the immediate vicinity lends support to the dating of the graffiti to his reign. More importantly, Amenhotep’s name is accompanied by that of another prince, Okheprure, and the parallelism in the graffiti between the two names strongly suggests a fraternal relationship. Okheprure again is shown on the knee of an unidentified scribe in Tomb 226 of the Theban necropolis, along with three of his brothers. If, as his name would indicate, he was a son of Amenhotep II, then most likely Prince Amenhotep was also his son. On the wall painting from Tomb 64, therefore, Prince Amenhotep also should be considered a brother to Thutmose IV, and not a son (Ibid.). If Princes Thutmose and Amenhotep from Tomb 64 are indeed brothers, who are the six princes in the background? Certainly the fact that all of the princes, including the seated Thutmose, are wearing pectorals that bear the nomen and praenomen of Thutmose IV seems to indicate that the princes are all on the same level, and therefore brothers, as was the case with the Konosso graffiti and Tomb 226. The problem that remains, then, is that Thutmose IV is universally accepted as not having been the firstborn child, which is both confirmed by Thutmose IV’s own account on the Great/Sphinx Stele and by the fact that Prince Amenhotep was shown to be the rightful heir to the throne of Amenhotep II before Thutmose IV. Thus one of two options must be true: either (1) the Tomb-64 painting is falsifying the truth by assigning Thutmose IV the status of “the king’s eldest son,” or (2) the Thutmose who sits on the lap of Hekreshu is intended to portray a different Thutmose. The former option hardly seems possible, since the tomb-wall painting is located in a deeply secluded place, not at all prominently displayed whereone would expect to see propagandistic depictions of a king’s grandeur. If Redford is correct that Prince Amenhotep, who never is called “the king’s eldest son,” was not the eldest son of Amenhotep II, and that by custom a king named “Amenhotep” would name his first son “Thutmose,” and thus that Amenhotep II did name his first son “Thutmose,” the Thutmose sitting on the lap of the royal tutor indeed may be “the eldest son” of Amenhotep II, who could have died a premature death during the tenth and most gruesome of the plagues on Egypt. The painting may be depicting the entire entourage of Amenhotep II’s sons during the time when his firstborn son was still alive. The presence of Thutmose IV’s praenomen on the pectorals of all of the princes, even on that of the long-deceased plague-son, may indicate that the painting was made during the reign of Thutmose IV. Newberry, for one, was convinced that Tomb 64 was constructed for Hekerneheh during the reign of Thutmose IV (Newberry, “Akhenaten’s Eldest,” 82). The reason for the cartouche of Thutmose IV next to each of the princes, which could be a later addition to the painting if instead it originally was painted during the reign of Amenhotep II, may simply be that the painter wanted to demonstrate the sovereignty of Thutmose IV over all of his brothers, being that he was the only one from among them who rose to the position of pharaoh. Certainly this interpretation would better explain why Amenhotep, who was in line for the throne before his younger brother Thutmose IV, was being depicted as smaller in stature than the Thutmose who sat on his tutor’s lap. This detail is highly problematic for any view that instead purports Thutmose



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