** The king is not named in the inscription. It cannot have been Amenôthes IV., for an individual of the importance of Harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have had a tomb begun for him at. Tel el-Amarna. We may hesitate between Aï and Tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say definitely that Harmhabî succeeded directly to the king under whom he had held important offices for many years, and this compels us to fix upon Aï, who, as we have said at p. 108, et seq., of the present volume, was, to all appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns.
He never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by Thot the Ibis himself. For many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. The nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. His favourite residence was Memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. Here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.
* This part of the account is based upon, a study of a certain number of texts and representations all coming from Harmhabîs tomb at Saqqârah, and now scattered among the various museums--at Gîzeh, Leyden, London, and Alexandria. Birch was the first to assign those monuments to the Pharaoh Harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been dethroned by Ramses I., and had lived at Memphis in an intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a private individual; this opinion was adopted by Ed. Meyer, rejected by Wiedemann and by myself. After full examination, I think the Harmhabî of the tomb at Saqqârah and the Pharaoh Harmhabî are one and the same person; Harmhabî, sufficiently high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have had his tomb constructed at Saqqârah, as Aï and possibly Ramses I. had theirs built for them at Tel el-Amarna.