THUTMOSE thut mōs’ (Egyp. dḥwty-ms, [the god] Thoth is born). An Egyp. name popular during the New Kingdom and the personal name (nomen) of four kings of the 18th dynasty. Thutmose I, the third king of the dynasty, was the son of Amenhotep I. A vigorous ruler, Thutmose I engaged in military expeditions in Nubia, reaching beyond the Third Cataract, and in Asia, where he crossed the Euphrates and set up a memorial stela. His tomb was the first to be located in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings (Biban el Moluk), W of Thebes. He did some building at Karnak, where one of his obelisks still stands. His son, Thutmose II, had a brief and unimpressive reign. He married his half-sister, Hatshepsut, and their daughter married Thutmose III, who was the son of Thutmose II and a concubine. Upon his death the young Thutmose III was crowned, but Hatshepsut succeeded in becoming regent and “king.” Thutmose III remained in a subordinate and obscure position until her death, serving as a priest in the temple of Amon in Karnak, where an inscr. purports to describe how he was divinely chosen for the kingship. His brilliant victory over an Asiatic coalition at Megiddo marked the first of seventeen campaigns in Palestine-Syria. Like his grandfather (Thutmose I), he crossed the Euphrates and set up a stela. In this area he also engaged in a celebrated elephant hunt. In the S he extended the boundary to Gebel Barkal (Napata), just below the Fourth Cataract. Famous as a military strategist and capable as an administrator, Thutmose III created the Egyp. empire. He built extensively at Karnak: the Hall of the Annals, where the accounts of his expeditions were recorded; the Sixth Pylon; the Seventh Pylon; and the large Festival Hall to the E of the site of the Middle Kingdom structures. His mortuary temple, now largely destroyed, stood at the edge of the western desert. He also built at Medinet Habu and other sites in Egypt and Nubia. Thutmose IV, the son of Amenhotep II, was the last of the Thutmosids. His Dream Stela, located between the forelegs of the Sphinx at Giza, tells how he became king. The name Thutmose does not appear in the Bible, but Thutmose III has sometimes been regarded as the Pharaoh of the Oppression.

Bibliography W. F. Edgerton, The Thutmosid Succession (1933); J. A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt (1951), 166-205; G. Steindorff and K. C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East (2nd ed., 1957), 34-46, 53-72; A. H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (1961), 177-205.