[2] 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.

While he successfully put down rebellions in Nubia and the Levant and defeated a group of nomadic Bedouins, these campaigns were specifically carried out by the king's Generals, and not by Thutmose II himself.

[6] Some archaeologists believe that Hatshepsut was the real power behind the throne during Thutmose II's rule because of the similar domestic and foreign policies that were later pursued under her reign and because of her claim that she was her father's intended heir.

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

[7] She later had herself crowned Pharaoh several years into the rule of her husband's young successor Thutmose III; this is confirmed by the fact that "the queen's agents actually replaced the king's name in a few places with her own cartouches" on the gateway.

[15] In addition, Thutmose II is poorly attested in the monumental record and in the contemporary tomb autobiographies of New Kingdom officials.

[16] However, apart from several surviving blocks of buildings erected by the king at Semna, Kumma, and Elephantine, Thutmose II's only major monument consists of a limestone gateway at Karnak that once lay at the front of the Fourth Pylon's forecourt.

[18] While monuments can be usurped, scarabs are so small and comparatively insignificant that altering their names would be impractical and without profit; hence, they provide a far better insight into this period.

[19] Hence, unless there was an abnormally low number of scarabs produced under Thutmose II, this would indicate that the king's reign was rather short-lived.

[15] Since he lived long enough to father two children—Neferure and Thutmose III—this suggests that he may have had a longer reign of 13 years in order to reach adulthood and start a family.

[25] If correct, this would be a major project on the part of Thutmose II, which required a construction period of several years and implies a long reign for this king.

[26] Meanwhile, French Egyptologists at Karnak have also uncovered blocks from a chapel and a barque sanctuary constructed by Thutmose II there.

Aswan Stela of Thutmose II summary: Kush started to conspire, making subjects of the Lord of the Two Lands (nb-tawy) to contemplate a revolt.

Plundering took place behind the fortification lines built by Thutmose I to hold back revolts from the foreign lands of the tribesmen of Ta-Seti of Khent-hen-nefer.

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

[8] Archaeologists from Warsaw University's Institute of Archaeology led by Andrzej Niwiński have discovered a treasure chest and a wooden box dated 3,500 years back in the Egyptian site of Deir el-Bahari in March 2020.

In addition, a little wooden trinket box was discovered inside the bundle, believed to contain the name Pharaoh Thutmose II.

The much destroyed tomb dates to the early 18th Dynasty and shows many features typical for a king's burial, such as a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars, the remains of an Amduat depicted on the walls and inscribed vessels bearing the king's name and Hatshesput's name as his great wife.

[40] All of these injuries were sustained post-mortem, though the body also showed signs that Thutmose II did not have an easy life, as the following quote by Gaston Maspero attests: He 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 skin is scabrous in patches, and covered with scars, while the upper part of the skull is bald; the body is thin and somewhat shrunken, and appears to have lacked vigour and muscular power.

[41]James Harris and Fawzia Hussien (1991) conducted an X-ray survey on New Kingdom royal mummies and examined the mummified remains of Thutmose II.

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