places, as a god in the act of receiving homage. A fine picture of him was found at Gournou by the late Prussian expedition; a marble statue of him is in the noble collection at Turin, and a pair of sandals with his name on the strap is in the museum of Berlin. He appears to have been the originator of the great palace-temple of Karnak, and is regarded by some as the second founder of the Egyptian monarchy.—J. E.
AMENOPHIS II., son of Thothmes III., and one of the kings of the 18th dynasty, whose architectural works are found chiefly in Nubia. By some compilers of the royal lists, he was wrongly identified with "Memnon and the speaking statue."—J. E.
AMENOPHIS III. or AMENOPHIS-MEMNON, son of Thothmes IV., and one of the most famous of the kings of the 18th dynasty. The works erected by him in Egypt were numerous and magnificent—such as the great palace of Luxor, in the rooms of which his birth and education are pictured out, and the long avenue of sphinxes which joins it to Karnak. His conquests were extensive, and on a monolith statue in the Louvre is a long and proud record of them. The great fabric of the Amenophium was on the western bank of the Nile. Two colossal statues still stand in solitary grandeur among its extensive ruins, and one of these, known of old as the vocal statue described by Pausanias and Strabo, has connected this sovereign with the Memnon of the Odyssey and of Grecian story. The tomb of Amenophis is one of the most complete that has been found; 352 feet in length, and covered with hieroglyphical characters.—J. E.
AMENOPHTHIS, successor of Ramses, and a king of the nineteenth Egyptian dynasty. His name appears in one of the halls of Luxor. His reign was short, and, according to Egyptian custom, his tomb on that account was left unfinished.
AMENTA, Nicolo, a poet and philologian of Naples, who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
AMENTES, a Greek surgeon of the first century.
AMERAD or AMERLAN, Eloi d', a French writer, born about the close of the fourteenth century, at the town of Bethune, in Artois, where he was master of the choir of singing boys. He was author of a remarkable book on Satanic agency.
AMERBACH, Bonifacius, son of Johann Amerbach, was born at Basle in 1495, became professor of civil law in his native town, and enjoyed the friendship of Erasmus and Fröben, and died in 1562.
AMERBACH, Elias Nicolas, a composer for the organ. He held an appointment as organist in Leipzig in the year 1571, and published several fugues and other pieces for his instrument.
AMERBACH, Johann, a German printer of the fifteenth century, one of the first who introduced the Latin character in place of the Gothic. He was much esteemed by the literary men of that age, and died in 1528.
AMERBACH, Veit, a German writer, professor of philosophy at Ingolstadt, where he died in 1557.
AMER BIAKHAM ALLAH, Abul Mansur Amer Kamilah, a caliph of Egypt, of the Fatimite house, was born in 1095, and assassinated in 1130.
AMERGIN or AMERGHIN (Latin, AMERGINUS), surnamed Glungeal, the "white-kneed," one of the heroes of ancient Irish history, is said to have lived ten or twelve centuries before the Christian era. Tradition represents him to have been the son of Golamh, surnamed Milo or the Milesian, and Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, in which country he was born. Holding afterwards the office of chief priest among the Milesians of Spain, he accompanied them to the conquest of Ireland as one of the leaders of the expedition, which owed much of its success to his ability and courage. Three Danaan (or Damnonian) princes then ruled the island; and on their remonstrating against the sudden and stealthy invasion, Amergin, who had been sent as the envoy to demand their submission, consented to allow them time to assemble their forces, that the matter might be decided by fair fight in the field. In the struggle that followed, the result was for some time doubtful. The invaders suffered severely from storm as well as in battle. Five of Amergin's brothers perished: but at length he and the two surviving sons of Milesius slew the three Danaan princes in the battle of Tailtan, and secured possession of the kingdom. Inbher Sceine, now called Bantry Bay, is said to have derived its name from Sceine or Sgenea, Amergin's wife, who was drowned there; and the name of his mother, Scota, is supposed to be perpetuated in her burying place, Glen Scota, in Tralee. But in the obscurity which rests on the early history of Ireland, it is impossible to say how much of the history of Amergin is fable, and whether he be not altogether a fictitious personage.—W. B.
AMERGIN or AMALGAIDH, an Irish poet, who lived in the middle of the sixth century, and author of the "Dinn Seanchas, or history of noted places in Ireland." This has been from time to time enlarged by additions, some of them so late as the eleventh century.—(Ware, O'Reilly.)—J. F. W.
AMERGIN, Mac Amalgaidh, an Irish writer of the seventh century, who lived in the reign of Finghin, king of Munster. He composed a treatise on the privileges and punishments of the different ranks in society. There is a copy of this tract among the Seabright MSS. in Trinity college, Dublin.—(O'Reilly.)—J. F. W.
AMERIGHI, Michel Angelo da Caravaggio. See Caravaggio.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI or AMERICUS VESPUTIUS (generally so written, though Vespucci was his surname), a navigator eminent for nautical science and enterprise. He was employed at the court; of Ferdinand of Arragon, together with other persons, as Pinzon and Solis, at the head of a sort of board of navigation, constructing charts, and tracing out new routes for projected voyages. He was born at Florence, on the 9th March 1451, of a wealthy family, and educated by his uncle, Giorgio Antonio, a monk of the congregation of St. Mark. He went as a merchant to Seville in connection with the Florentine house of Juanoto Bernardi, and seems to have gone to and fro between Florence and Spain for several years. It is proved by documents that he was in the latter country in 1486, though he lived at Florence in 1489. Humboldt, in his "Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent," has carefully investigated the four voyages said to have been made by Vespucci; two by the command of the king of Castile, and two by that of the reigning monarch of Portugal. His first voyage was in the capacity of pilot in an expedition of Alonzo de Hojeda, on the 20th May, 1499, which sailed from a port of Galicia. In twenty-seven days from the Canaries he reached the coast of South America, which he traced westwards as far as Cape de la Vela. Then turning northwards he touched at Hispaniola, and returned to Spain on 15th October, 1499. By some blunder, which has never been satisfactorily explained, a statement bearing the name of Vespucci was published at St. Dié in Lorraine, in which the year 1497 was substituted for 1499, which made it appear that he reached the mainland of America a year before Christopher Columbus. There is no reason, however, to believe that he ever attempted to defraud Columbus of his rightful claim to this great discovery. The suggestion that the new continent should be named after Amerigo, seems to have originated with the author of an Italian account of his voyages. The astronomical knowledge of Vespucci was considerable. His love for maritime adventure, as he himself informs us, was owing to his mercantile avocations at Seville. While fitting out ships for long voyages, he imbibed the strong desire to accompany them. His earliest expeditions were made in the service of the Spanish sovereign, and at the time of the death of the great admiral, we find him again in Spain soliciting employment. He was appointed the head of the Spanish pilots on the 2nd of March, 1508, and in his commission was ordered to take care that no one should be licensed to so responsible an office, unless he thoroughly knew the theory and practice of the astrolabe and the quadrant. Amerigo died at Seville, February 22, 1512. He had been afflicted in his old age with poverty, and left to his widow the chance of obtaining a small pension of 10,000 maravedis (a maravedi being about the seventh part of a halfpenny), which his succcessor in office, with difficulty, consented to pay. Amerigo was generous and enthusiastic, a good astronomer and constructor of maps, able and conscientious in victualling and furnishing fleets, and, like so many of his contemporaries, never gazing upon the Western ocean without longing to know what lay beyond. It was an age of adventure, and though surpassed by the original genius of Diaz and Gama, the two Cabots of Venice, and Columbus of Genoa, Amerigo Vespucci deserves to be remembered with admiration and respect.—T. J.
AMEROT, Adrien, a French philologist, who died in 1560.
AMERSFOORT, Evert van, a Dutch painter of the seventeenth century.
AMERSFOORT, Jacob, a Dutch philologian, who was born at Amsterdam in 1786, and became eminent for his knowledge of the Oriental tongues. He died in 1824.
