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A project of the American Research Center in Egypt

Thutmes IV

Ruler/Tomb owner
1419-1386 B.C.
15552.jpg
Thutmes IV receiving life from Hathor (detail).
(#15552)

Son of Amenhetep II and the Royal Wife Tia'a, Thutmes IV claimed in the so-called “Dream Stela” at Giza that he had been made pharaoh because he obeyed the wish of the god Horemakhet by clearing sand away from the body of the Great Sphinx (which represented that god). This is a fiction, of course, probably meant to satisfy religious aspects of New Kingdom kingship.

Thutmes IV was not active militarily and there are fewer military officials during his reign than in his predecessors’. There was, however, a very large civil and religious bureaucracy. His building activities mainly involved adding to existing temples, but he constructed a small mud-brick temple for himself on the West Bank at Thebes immediately south of the Ramesseum, and an Egyptian alabaster shrine at Karnak, now reconstructed in the Karnak Open-Air Museum. His tomb, KV 43, was unfinished at the time of his death.