Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/58

 their arrangement in the new building. This appropriation, of which there are many instances, by one sovereign of materials bearing the name and inscriptions of one of his predecessors, is always of value as determining the question of priority in time.

The omission of the heretical sovereigns is easily accounted for, and Seti may have shared the dislike of Tehutimes for queen Hatasu. But no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the omission of a large number of names between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. The immediate passage on the tablet from one of these dynasties to the other, cannot mean that the king numbered 65 was followed by the king numbered 66, who is Aahmes I. The important inscription of the naval officer Aahmes, son of Abana, which has already been quoted, mentions king Sekenen-Rā as the predecessor of Aahmes I. Sekenen-Rā is as thoroughly historical a personage as any one of our own sovereigns. There were even three kings of the name, and their tombs have actually been found at Thebes. On the other hand, the tablet of Ameni-senb, now in the Louvre, belongs to the reign of a king anterior to the eighteenth dynasty, but later than the twelfth, as it records the restoration of a temple at Abydos founded by Usertsen I.