Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/843

 Minor Notices 833 seems, was reigning only by right of marriage with her mother, the royal princess Ahmose. When the queen died, Thutmose III., at a great feast, by collusion with his former associates the powerful Amonite priests, was publicly proclaimed king by the god, who uttered an oracle and transferred to him the royal duties in connection with the ritual. The suddenness and boldness of the dramatic coup left Thutmose I. without authority and Thutmose III. master of the throne. Only later did his wife Hatshepsut become co-regent with him. The absence of any allu- sion to her in the inscription suggests that it was written after her death in the sixteenth year of his reign. The reference to offerings made in his fifteenth year confirms this conclusion. On the other hand, the absence of any mention of his Asiatic campaigns, which began in his twenty-second year, establishes the date of this important inscription be- tween his sixteenth and twenty-second year. Only on the basis of such scholarly, fundamental work as is found in this monograph, and of which in this especial field there has in the past been a woeful lack, can a re- liable history of ancient Egypt be constructed. Charles F. Kent. The Legal Protection of JVomaii Among the Ancient Germans. [Doc- toral dissertation. University of Chicago.] By William Rullkoetter. (University of Chicago Press, 1901, pp. 96.) This thesis is, aside from certain errors of style, of judgment and of conclusion, a useful summary of available material concerning the legal protection and the status of women among the ancient Germans. As to style, it is thoroughly un- scientific ; the writer is at once a special pleader and a panegyrist. He is the advocate for the superiority of the German people and the exponent of " The eternal womanly." All this would have been fitting in a popular article upon Teutonic women but is out of place in a doctor's dissertation. The author is sometimes carried beyond his depth by his advocacy and accepts too literally and credits too trustingly the statements of his au- thorities, the creditableness of some of which is at least open to question. Errors arise from his indiscriminate use of uncredited excerpts and his utter disregard of the element of time-of-occurrence in its relation to proof. In collecting data, Mr. Rullkoetter has shown great energy and he has accomplished much in gathering from old laws and records valu- able information. He has shown skill in the fitting together of the myriad scraps that make up his mosaic, but he has not been so careful in matching their colors. His work is, therefore, a patchwork, neatly joined it is true, but abounding in discordant facts. Mr. Rullkoetter seems to use as his own work the foot-notes of standard authorities, and though, as far the present reviewer has verified these foot-notes, they are cited correctly, yet we should have preferred that our author's citations might have been wholly the result of his own investigation. In using illustration and fact Mr. Rullkoetter seems to have no appreciation of the effect of time and progress upon evidence. He will bolster up a theory