reigns of Amenmesse and Seti II were parallel to one another; Seti II must have initially controlled Thebes in his first and second years during which time his tomb was excavated and partly decorated. Then Seti was ousted from power in Upper Egypt by Amenmesse whose agents desecrated Seti II's tomb. Seti would finally defeat his rival Amenmesse and return to Thebes in triumph whereupon he ordered the restoration of his damaged tomb. Rolf Krauss, followed by Aidan Dodson, suggests that Amenmesse was once a Kushite Viceroy called Messuy. In particular, two representations of Messuy on the temple of Amida allegedly show that a royal uraeus had been added to his brows in a way consistent with other pharaohs such as Horemheb, Merneptah and some of the sons of Rameses III. An inscription at the temple of Amada also calls him "the king's son himself" but this may be merely a figure of speech to emphasize Messuy's high stature as Viceroy under Merneptah. However, Frank Yurco notes that various depictions of Messuy in several Nubian temples were never deliberately defaced by Seti II's agents compared to the damnatio memoriae meted out to all depictions of another Viceroy of Kush, Khaemtir, who had served as Amenmesse's Vizier. This strongly implies that Seti II held no grudge against Messuy, which would be improbable if Messuy was indeed Amenmesse. Yurco also observes that the only objects from Messuy's tomb which identified a Pharaoh all named only Merneptah, Seti II's father, which leads to the conclusion that Messuy died and was buried in his tomb at Aniba, Nubia, during Merneptah's reign, and could not be Amenmesse. There has also been a suggestion that the narrative of the "Tale of Two Brothers", first attested during the reign of Seti II, may contain a veiled reference to the struggle between Amenmesse and Seti II. The records of a court case early in the reign of Seti II also throw some light on the matter. Papyrus Salt 124 records that Neferhotep, one of the two chief workmen of the Deir el-Medina necropolis, had been killed during the reign of Amenmesse (the king's name is written as Msy in the document). Neferhotep was replaced by Paneb his adopted son, against whom many crimes were alleged by Neferhotep's brother Amennakhte in a strongly-worded indictment preserved on a papyrus in the British Museum. If Amennakhte's allegations can be trusted, Paneb