[2] The scene in the lunette shows Thutmose IV on the left and right making offerings and libations to the Sphinx, which sits on a high pedestal with a door at the base.

[4] The preserved text runs as follows: Year I, third month of the first season, day 19, under the Majesty of Horus, the Mighty Bull, begetting radiance, (the Favourite) of the Two Goddesses, enduring in Kingship like Atum, the Golden Horus, Mighty of Sword, repelling the Nine Bows; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Men-kheperu-Ra, the Son of Ra, Thothmes IV, Shining in Diadems; beloved of (Amon), given life, stability and dominion, like Ra, for ever.

Behold, he did a thing which gave him pleasure upon the highlands of the Memphite Nome, upon its southern and northern road shooting at a target with copper bolts, hunting lions and the small game of the desert, coursing in his chariot, his horses being swifter than the wind, together with two of his followers, while not a soul knew it.

Sekhmet, presiding over the Mountain, the Splendid Place of the Beginning of Time, opposite the Lords of Kher-ahah (Babylon), the sacred road of the Gods to the Western Necropolis of Iwn (Heliopolis).

This interpretation is based on the find of three finely carved stele (now lost) which depict other sons of Amenhotep II making offerings to the Sphinx; the names of these princes have been carefully erased.

[6] Selim Hassan's publication of the stelae (partially composed by Dorothy Eady) was the first to propose this interpretation: We may suppose then, that these elder brothers stood in the way of his ambitions, and that Thothmes removed them in some way, either by death or disgrace, and then obliterated their names, in order that their very memories might be forgotten...

I am afraid that this theory does not present Thothmes IV in a very favourable light, and if he was not actually a wholesale murderer (and there seems to be grounds for supposing that he was), at least he was a cold-hearted egoist.

[7] In 2012, Dr Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon at Imperial College London, hypothesized that early deaths of Thutmose IV and other 18th Dynasty pharaohs, including Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, were likely a result of familial temporal epilepsy.