Biographies Online

Flourished 2nd millennium BC

18th-dynasty king of Egypt (reigned 1400–1390 BC), who secured an alliance with the Indo-European-led Mitanni Empire of northern Syria and ushered in a period of peace at the peak of Egypt's prosperity.

Thutmose IV was the son of his predecessor's chief queen. As prince, he was assigned to the military operational base at Memphis, near modern Cairo, where he spent his leisure time in hunting and sports near the pyramids on the western desert. During a rest near the great Sphinx, he dreamed that the god Horus, whom the sphinx was believed to represent, asked him to free it of sand which had drifted around it, in return for which he would become pharaoh. Based upon this dream, it has been suggested that Thutmose was not the heir apparent and that he succeeded after an elder brother's death, using the dream as divine sanction of his rule.

As king, Thutmose made an armed tour of Syria-Palestine, during which he quelled some minor uprisings. Sensing the growing menace of the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor, he initiated lengthy negotiations with the Mitanni Empire, Egypt's former foe in Syria, which culminated in a peace treaty between the two powers, cemented by a royal marriage between a Mitanni princess and the king. Gifts also were exchanged and the city of Alalakh (modern Açana in southern Turkey), was ceded to Mitanni. A long peace marked by friendly relations ensued between the two states.

In the eighth year of his reign, Thutmose learned of a revolt by a desert chieftain in Lower Nubia (in the modern Sudan). He swiftly gathered and led his army with a riverborne force and defeated the rebels, who probably had endangered the rich gold country of eastern Nubia.

A surviving scarab delimits Thutmose's empire from Karoy, deep in Nubia, to Naharin, the border with Mitanni. During the remainder of his peaceful reign, Thutmose erected at Thebes the large obelisk that now stands before the church of St. John Lateran in Rome. In western Thebes, he built a small but fine mortuary temple, and he also left memorials at Memphis, the residence of his youth.

During his reign Thutmose showed some personal devotion to the Aten, which featured in his grandson's religious revolution, but there is no evidence of any hostility between the king and the priesthood of Amon. The art of his reign likewise reveals the start of tendencies which later led to the Amarna style of his grandson.

Thutmose died after a reign of about nine years and was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep III. His tomb was found in 1903, with some of its furniture in place.