22 Facts About Thutmose II

Thutmose II was the fourth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, and his reign is thought to have lasted for 13 years, from 1493 to 1479 BC, or just 3 years from around 1482 to 1479 BC.

Thutmose II died before the age of 30 and a body claimed to be his was found in the Deir el-Bahari Cache above the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.

Thutmose II was the son of Thutmose I and his minor wife, Mutnofret, who was probably a daughter of Ahmose I He was, therefore, a lesser son of Thutmose I and chose to marry his fully royal half-sister, Hatshepsut, in order to secure his kingship.

That would mean Thutmose II was in his early teens when he became pharaoh himself.

Thutmose II is depicted in several raised relief scenes from a Karnak gateway dating to Thutmose II's reign both together with her husband and alone.

Egyptologists debate whether Thutmose II had a short or long reign.

Ineni, who was already aged by the start of Thutmose II's reign, lived through this ruler's entire reign into that of Hatshepsut.

Kara Cooney argues for short reign, no longer than 3 years, by judging that there were "hardly any temples with his name on them, no campaigns, no mortuary complex of any worth", and points that all known children of Thutmose II were toddlers at the time of his death, which suggests his untimely death before they could grow up.

Consequently, the reign length of Thutmose II has been a much debated subject among Egyptologists with little consensus given the small number of surviving documents for his reign.

Thutmose II's reign is still traditionally given as 13 or 14 years.

Von Beckerath additionally stresses that Egyptologists have no conclusive criteria to statistically evaluate the reign length of Thutmose II based on the number of preserved objects from his reign.

Thutmose II contributed to the decoration of the temple of Khnum at Semna.

Thutmose II's Karnak building projects would imply that his reign was closer to 13 years rather than just three years.

In Year 1, the Coronation of Thutmose II triggered Kush to rebel, as it had the habit of doing upon the transition of Egyptian kingship.

The Nubian state had been completely subjugated by Thutmose I Rebels from Khenthennofer rose up, and the Egyptian forces retreated into a fortress built by Thutmose I On account of his relative youth at the time, Thutmose II dispatched an army into Nubia rather than leading it himself.

Thutmose II seems to have easily crushed this revolt with the aid of his father's military generals.

At Karnak, Thutmose II started the construction of a limestone gateway in the forecourt in front of the Fourth Pylon at the Temple.

Thutmose II's mummy was discovered in the Deir el-Bahari cache, revealed in 1881.

The body of Thutmose II suffered greatly at the hands of ancient tomb robbers, with his left arm broken off at the shoulder-joint, the forearm separated at the elbow joint, and his right arm chopped off below the elbow.

All of these injuries were sustained post-mortem, though the body showed signs that Thutmose II did not have an easy life, as the following quote by Gaston Maspero attests:.

Thutmose II had scarcely reached the age of thirty when he fell a victim to a disease of which the process of embalming could not remove the traces.

The results of the study determined that the mummy of Thutmose II had a craniofacial trait measurement that was common among Nubian populations.