1
I have raised up what was dismembered, even from the first time when the Asiatics were in Avaris of the North Land, with roving hordes in the midst of them overthrowing what had been made; they ruled without Re…1
Princess Hatchepsut was born into the early 18th Dynasty, at a time when the newly united Egypt was still reeling from the ignominy of seeing foreign kings seated on the divine throne of the pharaohs. Although the 18th Dynasty was to develop into a period of unprecedented Egyptian prosperity, the deep humiliation of a hundred years of Hyksos rule and the widespread civil unrest of the Second Intermediate Period were never fully forgotten, and a concern with replicating the halcyon days of the Old and Middle Kingdoms – and in particular the glorious 12th Dynasty – became a constant underlying theme of early 18th Dynasty political life.
The 12th Dynasty had represented a truly golden age. Recovering from a somewhat shaky start which included the assassination of its founder, Amenemhat I, there had followed almost two hundred years of internal peace and stability which are now widely regarded as forming one of the classical periods of Egyptian civilization. Throughout the dynasty a succession of strong pharaohs ruled over a united land from the new capital of Itj-Tawy (a northern city lying somewhere between the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis and the mouth of the Faiyum), their position as absolute rulers greatly strengthened by a well-planned series of civil service reforms aimed at restricting the power of the wealthy nobles who, after the local autonomy of the First Intermediate Period, might otherwise have been tempted to establish their own independent local dynasties. Twelfth Dynasty foreign policy was as successful as it was adventurous, and trade and diplomatic links were established with both the Aegean and the Near East as Egypt abandoned her traditional insularity and started to play a more prominent role in the Mediterranean world. There were intrepid expeditions, including a mission to the fabulous land of Punt, and significant military conquests as a new aggressive attitude towards the south pushed Egypt's boundary further into Nubia. Within Egypt's newly strengthened borders the eastern desert was exploited for its natural resources which included gold, the Sinai was mined for turquoise and copper and the Faiyum was developed for agriculture through a series of innovative irrigation techniques.
A combination of increasing Egyptian wealth, foreign stimulation and political stability throughout the Middle Kingdom allowed the arts to flourish. This was to become the period of classical Egyptian language and literature when many of the best-known texts, inscriptions and narrative stories were composed. The writings of the Old Kingdom had been brief, formal and very self-conscious in style. Middle Kingdom compositions are both longer and far more fluent; the autobiographies2 recorded on the walls of the private tombs are simultaneously more informative and more imaginative than their Old Kingdom counterparts while the instructive texts, or Instructions in Wisdom, show a new realism in their desire to stress the chaos poised to overwhelm Egypt in the absence of a strong king. However, it is for the development of narrative fiction that the Middle Kingdom literature is most justly celebrated. The Satire of the Trades, The Story of the Eloquent Peasant, The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and The Story of Sinuhe all date to this period, allowing us to trace the evolution of the genre from simple action-packed adventures taken straight from the oral tradition (for example, The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor – a Boys' Own-style tale of shipwreck and adventure including a fabulous snake-like creature) to more thought-provoking tales told in an increasingly more sophisticated blend of styles (for example, The Story of Sinuhe – the fictional autobiography of a nobleman exiled from Egypt and longing for home).3
Artists and sculptors were quick to reflect the new mood of combined nostalgia and realism and their work, while still based on the traditional and highly formalized style of the Old Kingdom, demonstrates a willingness to portray subjects as individuals rather than stereotypes. The royal sculptors now felt themselves free to depict a more human pharaoh; when we look at the portrait heads of the 12th Dynasty kings Senwosret III and Amenemhat III we see strong, serious and somewhat weary men striving to conduct their divine role with regal severity, a marked contrast to the more serene and remote all-powerful god-kings of the Old Kingdom. At the same time the range of private sculpture expanded as ordinary individuals started to be represented in a variety of innovative forms rather than the limited range of statues found in Old Kingdom tombs. Few royal paintings have survived from the Middle Kingdom but the private tombs of Beni Hassan vibrate with colourful life as representations of wrestling, warfare and dancing now join the more restrained scenes found in Old Kingdom tombs.
Large-scale building projects recommenced during the 12th Dynasty, with the form of the pyramid being re-adopted as a means of emulating the Old Kingdom precedent and emphasizing the status of the king and his connection with the sun god, Re. However, there was now to be no single public building on the grand scale of the Giza pyramids. Instead of following their royal predecessors and concentrating their efforts on one solitary mortuary monument, the monarchs of the Middle Kingdom decided to spread their resources rather more widely. The extent to which these kings were willing to construct stone additions to existing mud-brick temples in the provinces is unclear because of the extensive re-modelling which occurred during the 18th Dynasty, but the evidence, where it survives, suggests a construction programme which extended the royal monopoly of stone buildings to the furthest corners of the most distant Egyptian provinces. Unfortunately, many important temples from this period were deliberately destroyed so that their precious stone blocks could be re-used in later buildings, and our knowledge of 12th Dynasty architecture is consequently sadly restricted. Our best-known example is the White Chapel of Senwosret I. This beautiful building, which demonstrates a thorough mastery of stone-working techniques including some impressive relief carving, had been dismantled and used as part of the filling of a pylon built by the New Kingdom Pharaoh Amenhotep III at Karnak. After painstaking reconstruction it is now restored to its former glories and is on permanent display in the Open-Air Museum at Karnak.
All good things must come to an end. Eventually the royal family, which had until now provided one of the longest continuous lines ever to rule Egypt, found itself without a male heir to the throne. Amenemhat IV, the final king of the 12th Dynasty, was therefore of necessity succeeded by his sister or half-sister Sobeknofru, who ruled as Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt for three years, ten months and twenty-four days before dying a natural death in office. With her death came the end of her dynasty. Although there was, in theory, nothing to prevent a woman from becoming pharaoh and, indeed, there appears to have been no opposition to Sobeknofru assuming this role – although any unsuccessful opposition would, of course, be difficult for us to detect – such an obvious departure from royal tradition was a sure sign that something was very wrong within the royal family, and Sobeknofru's reign is now generally interpreted as a brave but doomed attempt to prolong a dying royal line. An alternative view, that she must have seized the crown as the result of a vicious family quarrel, is now largely discredited on the grounds of lack of evidence. The fact that Sobeknofru's name was included on the Sakkara king list may be taken as a good indication that her reign was acceptable both to her people and to the historians who preserved her memory.
Sobeknofru was succeeded by an unrelated king, and the 13th Dynasty started to follow very much in the tradition of the 12th. However, no strong royal family was established and there was little apparent continuity between the monarchs traditionally assigned to this period. Instead, a succession of short-lived kings and their increasingly powerful viziers reigned over a slowly fragmenting Egypt, and the country gradually disintegrated into a loose association of semi-independent city states. A series of freak Nile floods at this time, and the resulting strain on the Egyptian economy, must have seemed a very bad omen; the regular rise and fall of the Nile was taken as a general sign that all was well within Egypt and the 13th Dynasty rulers must have been unpleasantly reminded of the very low floods which had heralded the collapse of the Old Kingdom. They would have done well to heed the omen. The end of the 13th Dynasty saw the ‘official’ end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 14 to 17), a badly recorded phase of national disunity and foreign rule sandwiched between the well-documented stability of the Middle and New Kingdoms.
Tutimaios. In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of god smote us; and unexpectedly from the regions of the east invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our land… Their race as a whole was called Hyksos, that is ‘king-shepherds’, for Hyk in the sacred language means ‘king’ and sos in common speech is ‘shepherd’.4
Throughout the Middle Kingdom there had been a persistent influx of ‘Asiatic’ migrants from the east, Semitic peoples who were attracted by Egypt's growing prosperity and who were themselves being pressured westwards by immigrants from further east; this was a time of population shifts throughout the entire Eastern Mediterranean region. The new arrivals were accepted by the locals and merged peacefully into the existing towns and villages of northern Egypt.5 During the 13th Dynasty, however, these groups started to form significant and partially independent communities in the Nile Delta. At the same time the previously emasculated local rulers were gradually gaining in power as national unity began to crumble. Slowly the country resolved itself into three mutually distrustful regions, each ruled concurrently by different dynasties. The Nubian kingdom of Kerma developed in the extreme south, a small group of independent Egyptians controlled southern Egypt from Thebes (17th Dynasty), and the north was ruled by a group of Palestinian invaders known as the Hyksos (15th Dynasty) and their Palestinian vassals (16th Dynasty).6
It was the Hyksos invaders who made the deepest impression on the historical record, ruling over northern Egypt for over a hundred years and taking the eastern Delta town of Avaris (a corruption of the Egyptian name Hwt W'rt, literally ‘The Great Mansion’ or ‘Mansion of the Administration’, modern Tell ed-Daba) as their capital. To the south the native-born Theban rulers remained independent and relationships between north and south were initially peaceful, if distrustful; the southern kings were able to lease grazing land from their Hyksos neighbours and there is even some evidence to suggest that Herit, a daughter of the final Hyksos king, Apophis, may have married into the Theban royal family. The Hyksos were certainly on good terms with the Nubian rulers of Kerma, to the extent that the same Apophis, towards the end of his 33-year reign and no longer on such friendly terms with his immediate neighbours, felt free to urge the Nubians to invade the Theban kingdom in order to distract the Theban army and so protect his own position in the north. A letter written by Apophis to the King of Kush and fortuitously intercepted by troops loyal to the Theban King Kamose, details his plotting:
… Have you [not] beheld what Egypt has done against me… He [Kamose] choosing the two lands to devastate them, my land and yours, and he has destroyed them. Come, fare north at once, do not be timid. See, he is here with me… I will not let him go until you have arrived.7
Egyptian legend as typified by Manetho regards the Hyksos as an uncivilized, brutal band of invaders and their reign as a dark, never-to-be-repeated period of chaos and mayhem:
… By main force they [the Hyksos] easily seized [Egypt] without striking a blow, and having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the gods, and treated all the natives with a cruel hostility, massacring some and leading into slavery the wives and children of others…8
This lament is, to a large extent, merely the conventional expression of horror at the realization that despised and culturally inferior foreigners could actually conquer the mighty Egypt. Exaggeration was an accepted and even expected component of historical narrative and the Egyptians saw no harm in re-interpreting their own past as and when necessary. The deeply held belief that their land could only flourish under a divinely appointed Egyptian pharaoh was certainly strong enough to distort the historical record in this instance. Archaeological evidence, less obviously biased, makes it clear that the hated Hyksos, far from inflicting barbaric foreign practices on their new subjects, made a determined effort to adapt themselves to the customs of their adopted country. The new rulers retained a few of their own traditions: architectural styles and pottery forms now show a distinct Near Eastern influence, the war goddess Anath or Astarte was quickly absorbed into the Egyptian pantheon as ‘Lady of Heaven’ and her consort, the Egyptian god Seth, became the chief deity. However, in most other respects the Hyksos surrendered their own identity as, with the zeal of new converts, they immersed themselves in Egyptian culture, adopting hieroglyphic writing, embellishing local temples, copying Middle Kingdomart-forms, manufacturing scarabs and even transforming themselves into Egyptian-style pharaohs by taking names compounded with ‘Re’, the name of the Egyptian sun god. Far from bringing economic disaster to Egypt, their lands were governed efficiently, making good use of the Middle Kingdom administrative framework which was already in place, and native-born Egyptian bureaucrats worked willingly alongside their new masters to ensure that the Delta region prospered under their rule. The long-term material advantages of the brief interlude of foreign rule now seem very obvious. Under Hyksos rule, Egypt rapidly lost much of her traditional isolation as trading and diplomatic links were established with a wide range of Near Eastern kingdoms, and the resulting flood of exotic and practical imports both stimulated the economy and inspired the Egyptian artists and artisans. Egypt benefited from the introduction of new bronze working and pottery and weaving techniques; there were exciting new food crops to be tested, and even a previously unknown breed of humped-back cattle. Most important of all was the Hyksos contribution to Egypt's traditional military equipment; it was their improvements, combined with the early 18th Dynasty reorganization of the army structure, which led directly to the evolution of the efficient and almost invincible fighting troops of the 18th and 19th Dynasty Empire. The Hyksos introduced new forms of defensive forts, new weapon-types (more efficient dagger and sword forms and the strong compound bow which had a far greater range than the old-fashioned simple bow) and the concept of body armour to protect the troops. The soldiers – who during the Old and Middle Kingdoms had marched into battle dressed only in the briefest of kilts or loincloths and protected by a long and cumbersome cow-hide shield – were now issued with protective jackets and a lighter, easier-to-handle tapered shield. Their most important introduction was, however, the harnessed horse and the two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot, a light and highly mobile vehicle which, manned by a driver and a soldier equipped with spear, shield and bow, quickly became one of the most valuable assets of the Egyptian army.
In the south the Theban 17th Dynasty ruled over Egypt from Elephantine to Cusae (el-Qusiya, Middle Egypt), successfully continuing many of the Middle Kingdom royal traditions but on a reduced scale and adapted to fit local conditions; the 17th Dynasty royal pyramids were
Fig. 1.1 The cartouche of King Sekenenre Tao II
relatively tiny mud-brick structures perched on top of rock-cut tombs. As the southern dynasty slowly established itself relationships between south and north gradually deteriorated, and open warfare erupted when King Sekenenre Tao II, ‘The Brave’, came to the Theban throne. A fantastic New Kingdom story which purports to explain the outbreak of hostilities starts by setting the scene:
It once happened that the land of Egypt was in misery, for there was no lord as [sole] king. A day came to pass when King Sekenenre was [still only] ruler of the Southern City. Misery was in the town of the Asiatics, for Prince Apophis was in Avaris, and the entire land paid tribute to him, delivering their taxes [and] even the north bringing every [sort of] good produce of the Delta.9
We are told how the Hyksos King Apophis, now a fervent worshipper of the peculiar and so far unidentified animal-headed god Seth, decides to provoke a quarrel by making an intentionally ridiculous demand. A messenger is sent southwards, and he delivers the complaint to the bemused Sekenenre Tao:
Let there be a withdrawal from the canal of hippopotami which lie at the east of the City, because they don't let sleep come to me either in the daytime or at night.
Sekenenre is understandably rendered speechless by this unreasonable request: it is inconceivable that the Theban hippopotami could have been making so much noise that they were preventing Apophis from sleeping in Avaris, some 500 miles downstream. Unfortunately, the end of the story is lost, and we do not know how the king eventually replied, or indeed whether Apophis went on to make even more outrageous demands.
The more down-to-earth archaeological evidence confirms that Sekenenre Tao II fought against the Hyksos in Middle Egypt before dying of wounds sustained in battle: his mummified body was unwrapped by the French egyptologist Gaston Maspero in 1886, and examined by the distinguished anatomist G. Elliot Smith in 1906. The mummy was clearly a disturbing sight, with horrific head and neck injuries caused by repeated blows from a bronze Hyksos battle-axe:
All that now remains of Saqnounri Tiouaqen [Sekenenre Tao II] is a badly damaged, disarticulated skeleton enclosed in an imperfect sheet of soft, moist, flexible dark brown skin, which has a strongly aromatic, spicy odour… No attempt was made to put the body into the customary mummy-position; the head had not been straightened on the trunk, the legs were not fully extended, and the arms and hands were left in the agonized attitude into which they had been thrown in the death spasms following the murderous attack, the evidence of which is so clearly impressed on the battered face and skull.10
The badly preserved body suggests that the king had been hastily mummified, not necessarily by the official royal undertakers. Sekenenre Tao II was succeeded by his son, Kamose, who ruled for little more than three years yet managed to strengthen the Theban hold on Middle Egypt. After brooding aloud on the unfortunate situation which had divided his land – ‘I should like to know what serves this strength of mine when a chieftain is in Avaris and another in Kush, and I sit united with an Asiatic and a Nubian’11 – Kamose took decisive action. He advanced northwards towards Avaris and southwards as far as Buhen, obtaining control of the vital river trade routes and exacting vengeance on those believed to have collaborated with the enemy, before returning to Thebes where he recorded his daring deeds on a limestone stela at the Karnak temple:
Fig 1.2 The cartouche of King Kamose
O wicked of heart, vile Asiatic, I shall drink the wine of your vineyard which the Asiatic whom I captured press for me. I lay waste your dwelling place and cut down your trees… I did not leave a scrap of Avaris without being empty… I laid waste their towns and burned their places, they being made into red ruins for eternity on account of the damage which they did within this Egypt, for they had made themselves serve the Asiatic and had forsaken Egypt their mistress.12
Kamose died young, possibly killed in action like his father, and was in turn succeeded on the Theban throne by his younger brother Ahmose. Ahmose, initially too young to fight, waited for over ten years before resuming the struggle to unite his country. His victorious campaign against the Hyksos has been recorded in full and somewhat bloodthirsty detail by a soldier also named Ahmose, the son of a woman named Ibana and a soldier named Baba, who hailed from the southern Egyptian town of el-Kab. In his autobiography, Ahmose the soldier aims to impress us with his lengthy military record and his extreme personal bravery, quoting directly from a New Kingdom proverb: ‘The name of the brave man is in that which he has done; it will not perish in the land forever.’ We learn how, when he had ‘founded a household’ (that is, married and perhaps fathered a child), he started his military service on a ship called The Northern. Ahmose sailed north to fight alongside his pharaoh in the Delta, taking part in several bloody battles and playing an active part in the sacking of Avaris. The Hyksos and their kinsmen had been active throughout northern Sinai and in the Levantine area and, as they retreated from Egypt, King Ahmose followed them eastwards into south-west Palestine, eventually laying siege to the fortified town of Sharuhen, the last outpost of the Hyksos kingdom. After each successful battle Ahmose, son of Ibana, was rewarded
Fig. 1.3 The cartouche of King Ahmose
with booty, including the prisoners he had captured, and he proudly informs us that he was eventually awarded the ‘Gold of Valour’, one of the highest military honours, for his bravery in battle. His words allow us a rare insight into the turbulent life of an early 18th Dynasty professional soldier:
… I was taken to the boat ‘The Northern’ because of my bravery. I accompanied the Sovereign, life, prosperity and health be upon him, on my feet when he travelled around in his chariot. The town of Avaris was besieged. I was brave in the presence of his Majesty. Then I was promoted to [the boat] ‘Rising in Memphis’. There was fighting on the water of Padjedku of Avaris and I made a seizure and brought away a hand. This was reported to the Royal Herald, thereupon I was given the gold of valour… Then there was fighting in Southern Egypt, south of this town. I brought away one man as a living captive… When it was reported to the Royal Herald I was rewarded with gold a second time.
Then Avaris was sacked. I brought away from there as plunder one man and three women, a total of four people. His Majesty gave them to me as slaves. Then Sharuhen was besieged for three years. His Majesty plundered it. I brought away from there as plunder two women and a hand. The gold of valour was presented to me and, lo, I was given slaves as plunder.13
Following the successful expulsion of the Hyksos, Ahmose turned his attention southwards to Nubia, where once again he was followed by his loyal soldier:
[His Majesty] sailed south to Khenthennefer to destroy the Bowmen of Nubia. His majesty made a great heap of corpses among them. I brought away plunder from there, two living men and three hands. I was rewarded with gold again and I was given two female slaves. His majesty travelled north, his heart swelling with bravery and victory. He had conquered southerners and northerners.
When Ahmose writes of capturing a hand he is referring to the practice of amputating the hand, or on some occasions the penis, of a dead enemy so that the true scale of the victory could be assessed. This effective, but to modern eyes rather gruesome, means of counting is attested by several large-scale scenes of victorious New Kingdom pharaohs standing by piles of discarded human body parts.
Following the death of Ahmose the king, Ahmose the soldier continued his military career serving in Nubia under both Amenhotep I and Tuthmosis I, and receiving both promotion and gifts of land as a reward for his loyalty. In his final campaign he accompanied Tuthmosis I to Syria before returning to enjoy a well-earned retirement and a natural death at el-Kab where he was eventually interred ‘in the tomb that I myself made’.
A second soldier, also a native of el-Kab and possibly a young relation of Ahmose, son of Ibana, somewhat confusingly named Ahmose-Pennekheb, tells us that King Ahmose undertook a second Asian campaign in his regnal Year 22, fighting in ‘Djahy’, the general name used for Syria and Palestine, and perhaps reaching as far east as the River Euphrates. Presumably this second campaign was intended to provide conclusive proof that Egypt was once again united under a strong king and well able to participate in international affairs. This region, now under the influence, if not the direct control of Egypt, formed the basis of the Egyptian Empire which was later to be developed by the Tuthmoside kings. By the end of his regnal Year 16 Egypt was the chief power in the Near East and Ahmose was free to consolidate his southern border. Here, as Ahmose son of Ibana has already related, a series of efficient campaigns ensured that control was re-imposed on Nubia and Egypt's boundary was re-established below the Second Cataract.
King Ahmose died after a 25-year rule leaving his son, Amenhotep I, to inherit a country united and secure within her boundaries for the first time in over two hundred years. The Hyksos had been expelled from the north, the Nubians had been crushed to the south and Egypt had expanded into the Levant in order to protect herself from further attack. Although Ahmose was clearly continuing the foreign policies started by his immediate predecessors, to him has gone the credit of militarizing the country and ridding Egypt of the hated foreigners. In honour of this magnificent achievement, history traditionally places Ahmose at the head of the 18th Dynasty, even though his grandfather, father and brother are still regarded as 17th Dynasty kings. Ahmose later became the object of a funerary cult based around his cenotaph at Abydos.
Ahmose had been revered throughout the land for his prowess as a mighty warrior-king. Personal bravery and a good military record now became desirable attributes indicative of a successful monarch, and succeeding 18th Dynasty rulers found it prudent to place great emphasis on their military strength and personal bravery. It was now almost expected that a new king would mark his accession by leading his troops to crush the traditional enemies to the south (Nubians) and to the north (Asiatics). This had not always been the case, although the first king of Egypt, Narmer, is best known in his role of a military leader. Generally, as the Old and Middle Kingdoms progressed and as Egypt continued her policy of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the Mediterranean world, the armed forces had become more and more insignificant, although a royal bodyguard was always maintained. Fighting was not viewed as a particularly noble occupation, being generally associated with periods of civil war when Egyptian fought against Egyptian, and most kings did not choose to exploit the military aspect of their rule. There was no Old or Middle Kingdom standing army; the king relied on an informal militia-type arrangement to gather groups of fighting men together whenever needed, and the small group of professional soldiers who administered these irregular troops were not significant members of the ruling élite.
However, the time of the Hyksos expulsion from Egypt was a time of increasing military activity throughout the entire Near East. Egypt now understood only too well that she was vulnerable to attack and that, with her lucrative interests in Nubia and Palestine, she could no longer afford to remain aloof from world affairs. By maintaining an efficient fighting force, Egypt could remain allies with powerful and well-armed near-neighbours such as the Hittites, who might otherwise be tempted to invade a temptingly wealthy and weak country. The fact that the
Fig. 1.4 Old and New Kingdom soldiers
army could also become a focus for national pride and unity was an additional and quickly exploited bonus. It was now perceived as excellent propaganda for the king to be seen defending his territory, subduing foreigners and, by implication, maintaining his control over the population within Egypt, and large-scale scenes of the king, riding in his chariot, meeting foes in battle or even grasping a handful of enemies by the hair, became a standard decoration for monumental gateways and exterior temple walls. This change in attitude may perhaps be understood by considering the approach of present-day monarchies to the armed services. In early eighteenth-century England, following the civil wars of the late seventeenth century, the army was deeply distrusted by the population at large, who saw it as a means of suppressing the rights of free-born Englishmen. It was therefore rare for a member of the royal family to be seen wearing a military uniform away from the battlefield. Today, however, following victory in the two World Wars and the first-hand experience of those required to do National Service, the army is viewed as an obvious and acceptable leadership role for young male members of the royal family and military uniforms are considered appropriate wear for public occasions such as royal weddings.
The New Kingdom army was suddenly both popular and socially acceptable, rapidly joining the priesthood and the civil service as one of the acceptable professions for the educated and literate classes. Recruitment soared, and there was a constant demand for able quartermasters and administrators who could ensure the smooth running of a large and complex organization. Alongside the hard-bitten old campaigners who had fought their way up through the ranks there could now be found the ancient equivalent of ‘graduate entry’ officers: professionals valued more for their administrative skills than their combative abilities. The army was an attractive career option for those who, ambitious but illiterate, were denied entry into the bureaucracy and priesthood, and soon there were whole families who undertook to serve in the army for several generations in return for the right to tenant their own farms. The revitalized and greatly expanded army was organized into highly trained units of infantry, chariotry and more specialized troops: three or four divisions of up to 5,000 men were progressively subdivided into hosts (500 men), companies (250 men), platoons (50 men) and squads (10 men) and a ‘Great Army General’, often the crown prince, was appointed to take overall command.14The pharaoh, of course, remained absolute head of the armed forces.
The monarchs of the 18th Dynasty openly acknowledged that their military successes were entirely due to the superiority of the Egyptian deities and, in particular, to the patronage of their local god, Amen of Thebes. It was no coincidence that the great scenes of the pharaoh as warrior triumphant were carved on temple walls, emphasizing the link between devotion and victory; as Hatchepsut herself was to affirm: ‘I have done this with a loving heart for my father Amen… My majesty knows his divinity. I acted under his command. It was he who led me, and I did not plan a single work without his doing.’15
Throughout the Old Kingdom the most important state god had been Re, the sun god whose cult centre of Heliopolis lay close to the capital city of Memphis, and whose most striking monuments were the pyramids in the Memphite royal cemeteries. The form of the pyramid was designed to associate the dead king with the living god, allowing him to ascend the stairway to heaven so that he might sail across the sky with Re every day. The rise of the Middle Kingdom at Thebes did little directly to reduce the power of Re, although his association with kingship now became far less obvious than it had been during the Old Kingdom. The kings of the 12th Dynasty moved their capital north and recommenced the building of Re-related pyramids, presumably as a means of stressing their newly acquired royal status. However, they still retained a loyalty to their local Theban gods and, as their choice of names – Amenemhat, ‘Amen to the Fore’; Senwosret, ‘The Man of Wosret’16 – suggests, the provincial southern deities were starting to gain in national importance. This period saw the beginning of large-scale development at the Temple of Amen at Karnak. The Karnak temple complex, set in a northern suburb of Thebes, became, during the New Kingdom, the largest collection of related religious buildings in the world.
Fig. 1.5 The god Amen
Amen had started life as an insignificant and rather colourless local deity worshipped in the immediate area around Thebes. However, he was quickly to become the most powerful god in the Egyptian Empire, associated with the most important Old Kingdom deity in the compound god Amen-Re, linked with the fertility god Min of Coptos in his ithyphallic form and accorded the magnificent title ‘King of the Gods and Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands’. Iconographically, Amen most commonly appears as a man dressed in a short kilt and sporting a distinctive feathered headdress of two tall plumes. His sacred animals are the goose and, far more importantly, the ram, and his main cult centre is the Karnak temple at Thebes. Egyptian gods do not usually come singly but as members of divine families of three; Amen's consort is the anthropoid goddess Mut (‘Mother’), a lady who has links with both the mother-goddesses Hathor and Bast and with the fierce lion-headed goddess of war and sickness, Sekhmet, and their son is the local moon-god, Khonsu. Mut's cult centre is an impressive temple enclosure directly to the south of Amen's at Karnak, while Khonsu was worshipped in a temple im-mediately to the north.
Fig. 1.6 The goddess Mut
Egypt's new prosperity allowed the 18th Dynasty pharaohs to endow shrines and temples to various gods throughout the land. These new buildings were now built of stone rather than mud-brick and were literally designed to last for all eternity. Major cities such as Thebes and Memphis, previously home to relatively modest mud-brick chapels, now found themselves dominated by massive, painted stone temples. These were typically surrounded by clusters of relatively unimpressive mud-brick buildings housing lesser shrines and administrative offices, the whole temple complex being enclosed by a high, thick mud-brick wall of military appearance, designed to keep the common people out. The Egyptian temple was not the equivalent of a medieval cathedral; it was the private home of the god who, in the form of a statue, dwelt within. The temple gates were rarely thrown open to the general public and, while many townsmen must have worked on the temple buildings, few would have been aware of the mysteries surrounding the daily practice of their state religion. Indeed, although the ordinary people owed an official allegiance to the state gods, they were far more likely to worship their less exalted and more familiar local gods, while folk-religion, including magic, superstition and witchcraft, played an important role in the life of the peasant communities.
By the middle of the 18th Dynasty, Thebes had become a major religious centre with a full range of temples and shrines dedicated not only to Amen and his family but to a whole host of lesser deities. On the western bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes, were the mortuary temples of the kings, the tombs of the élite citizens and, hidden away in the Valley of the Kings, the tombs of the pharaohs themselves. All New Kingdom monarchs showed their extreme devotion to Amen by trying to outdo their predecessors in embellishing the Karnak complex itself, and a considerable amount of Egypt's new-found foreign wealth was diverted towards the Great Temple of Amen so that it grew physically, becoming an economic force in its own right and employing an increasingly large staff to carry out the cult ceremonies and administer the god's extensive portfolio. Theban state religion was now organized on a far more professional basis and the hitherto private deity started to make a series of well-organized public parades through the streets, a tradition which allowed the people to enjoy a day's holiday while subtly underlining the magnificence and omnipresence of the god and his priesthood.
By the middle of the New Kingdom, the religious foundations controlled an estimated one-third of the cultivated land and employed approximately twenty per cent of the population. Amen himself owned not only temples but major secular investments such as fields, ships, mines, quarries, villages and even prisoners of war who had been donated by the grateful monarchy. The income from these assets, together with the routine daily offerings of thousands of loaves of bread and hundreds of jugs of beer plus costlier foodstuffs including wine and meat, was collected by Amen's earthly representatives and was used to pay the temple employees. Surpluses were stored in vast mud-brick warehouses kept safe within the temple walls. Within a very short time the Amen temple at Karnak was second only to the throne itself as a centre of economic and political influence in Egypt.
Perhaps it is modern cynicism which prompts present-day historians to question why the 18th Dynasty monarchs should have deliberately chosen to raise the cult of Amen to state god status, thereby creating an immensely wealthy and semi-independent priesthood capable of posing a threat to the throne. The simple answer, that the kings felt a strong devotion to their patron deity, may well be the true one. However, it is tempting to see the rise of Amen as a more calculated gesture, perhaps aimed at reducing the influence of the northern-based cult of Re. Promoting a new Egyptian state god, one who had demonstrated his powers by granting victory in battle, may have been a shrewd move aimed at unifying a demoralized country recovering from the ignominy of foreign rule. It would certainly have helped the position of the new pharaoh who, as chief priest of all the gods, and indeed as the very son of Amen, had the power to interpret the god's wishes as he saw fit. Hatchepsut herself was to make great use of her filial relationship with Amen, continually stressing the doctrine of the divine birth of kings to support her claim to the throne. However, this mutual dependency could prove to be a two-edged sword. Any public failure by the new god, such as a refusal to grant further victories to the Egyptian army, could be taken as a direct sign that the king himself was failing to perform his duties correctly, and a powerful and wealthy priesthood could ultimately bring about the fall of a weak or inefficient king.
By the late 18th Dynasty, the monarchy was starting to feel itself challenged by the power and ever-increasing wealth of the cult of Amen. Amenhotep II, Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III all appointed their own loyal followers to the position of High Priest in an attempt to maintain a degree of royal control over the priesthood, while Amenhotep III also started to pay more attention to the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon, partially reverting back to Old Kingdom theology by re-allying the monarchy with the sun god, Re of Heliopolis. His son, Amenhotep IV (now known as the heretic King Akhenaten, ‘Serviceable to the Aten’), took this policy to extremes by completely rejecting the traditional polytheistic religion and imposing a new monotheistic cult based on the worship of the sun disc, or Aten, on his people. This radical change, which included the establishment of a new capital in the desert of Middle Egypt, was too extreme for the conservative Egyptians, and far too much of a threat to the power of Amen. It was doomed to failure. By Year 3 of his successor's reign, the old gods, including Amen, had been reinstated and the new king had changed his name from Tutankhaten, ‘Living Image of the Aten’, to Tutankhamen, ‘Living Image of Amen’.
... all the wealth that goes into Thebes of Egypt, where treasures in greatest store are laid up in men's houses. Thebes, which is the city of an hundred gates and from each issue forth to do battle two hundred doughty warriors with horses and chariots.17
The early 18th Dynasty rulers broke with tradition when they established their capital at their home-city of Thebes. Thebes, or Thebai, is the Greek name for the southern city which the Egyptians officially knew as Waset but which they referred to simply as ‘The City’ (literally Niwt), and which modern Egyptians now call Luxor. The new capital lay on the east bank of the Nile in the 4th Upper Egyptian province, close enough to both Nubia and the Eastern Desert to be able to benefit from the lucrative trade routes, and far enough away from the northern capital Memphis to have always maintained semi-independent status. Thebes had been an unimportant provincial town throughout the Old Kingdom, and it was not until the civil unrest of the First Intermediate Period that the local Theban rulers started to gain in power and influence. By the time of Ahmose, Thebes had expanded to become an extensive city, and the Theban necropolis on the west bank of the Nile had become the main burial ground for the pharaohs, their families and the higher-ranking court officials. During the 18th Dynasty, however, the old city mound was completely flattened to allow the redevelopment of the Karnak temple, and the residential area was rebuilt on relatively low-lying ground which now lies below the water-table and which is consequently lost from the archaeological record.
Living conditions within Thebes must have been, for all but the most wealthy, somewhat unpleasant during the hot summer months. There was a permanent shortage of building land, made much worse by the extension of the Karnak and Luxor temples, and there was no formal planning policy so that, as the city expanded, the houses were packed more and more closely together, blocking the light from the crowded and twisting streets. The lack of any form of official sanitation combined with the habit of keeping animals within the home to create an undesirable, vermin-ridden environment that must have been highly unhealthy for the unfortunate citizens. However, although many were forced by the nature of their employment to live in the overcrowded towns and cities, Egypt was still a predominantly rural country and the majority of Egyptians lived relatively healthy lives working as peasant farmers in small and politically insignificant agricultural communities. Throughout the New Kingdom it was fashionable to despise city life as a necessary evil while rural life strongly – romanticized – was considered to be ideal. Just as modern city dwellers dream of owning a cottage in the country, so Egyptian officials yearned for a spacious single-storey villa set in its own grounds away from the bustle, noise and smells of the city. For the higher echelons of society, this dream could become a reality which would continue into the Afterlife; their heaven took the form of the ‘Field of Reeds’, an idyllic rural retreat where noblemen, their wives and daughters would spend eternity supervising the labours of others less fortunate than themselves.
Thebes did, however, boast one example of a well-planned community. The workmen's village of Deir el-Medina, simply ‘the Village’ to its inhabitants, was founded by Amenhotep I and largely built by Tuthmosis I in order to provide a convenient base for those employed in the cutting and decoration of the royal tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. Situated on the West Bank, opposite Thebes and over a mile away from the River Nile, the Village was of necessity built of a combination of stone and mud-brick. For this reason the Village has survived where others, built entirely of mud-brick, have crumbled to dust, and is now able to provide us with a vivid insight into the daily lives of a specialized section of Egypt's middle and working classes. Deir el-Medina experienced over four hundred years of continuous occupation by not only the workmen and their supervisors but their families, dependants, pets and those providing ancillary services such as potters, priests and laundry workers. By the 19th Dynasty up to seventy families – about three hundred people – lived in the modest rectangular houses which had been laid out with all the precision of a modern American city, within a defining wall. Beyond the wall there was a cemetery, a collection of chapels for private worship, and possibly a subsidiary village intended to house the lowest-ranking servants and serfs. Every month a gang of male workers would leave the Village and head for the Valley of the Kings, where they lodged in temporary accommodation for up to twenty-seven working days. Back at the Village, daily life continued as in any normal Egyptian town or city for as long as the king was able to provide the rations which served as wages. During the 18th Dynasty, a period of economic strength and efficient administration, the workmen's Village functioned well.
Although Thebes may be regarded as the new state capital, and certainly as the new religious capital, the idea of the single predominant city was now of far less importance than it had been during the Old Kingdom when Egypt had been ruled from the northern city of Memphis. Memphis was at that time not only the largest Egyptian city, it was the site of the main royal residence and the administrative centre, and nearby were both the royal burial grounds and the major cult centre of Re. In many ways her geographical position made Memphis a far more suitable capital city than Thebes. Situated at the crossroads between the two traditional regions of Upper (Southern) and Lower (Northern, or Delta) Egypt, Memphis enjoyed excellent communications with both north and south. Although an inland city, Memphis, on the River Nile, was the site of the royal dockyards, and the city flourished as a marine trading centre. Furthermore, Memphis made an ideal base for the army. Following the southern campaigns of Tuthmosis I, Nubia, although given to frequent rebellions, could offer no real threat to the might of Egypt. The real danger was perceived as coming from the Levant, where semi-independent city-states were starting to unite under the banners of the powerful rulers of Kadesh, Mitanni and the Hittites. We know that Tuthmosis I built a large palace/barrack at Memphis, and it seems likely that throughout the 18th Dynasty the state bureaucracy was still controlled to a large extent from that city. Unfortunately, little of ancient Memphis has survived to be excavated.
Just as the 18th Dynasty rulers refused to commit themselves to a single capital city, they did not restrict themselves to one principal palace. Instead they adopted a mobile court, perhaps inspired by their experiences of military campaigns, and toured the country with a small entourage, travelling by river to inspect and impose control on the various regions and staying in short-term palaces known as the ‘Mooring Places of Pharaoh’, which were often little more than elaborate rest-houses situated at strategic points along the Nile. The journey from Memphis to Thebes would have been a slow one of perhaps two to three weeks and it made sense that the less mobile members of the royal household, including the majority of the women, their children and their retinues, were maintained in permanent harem-palaces away from the main royal residences. By the 19th Dynasty the country had become even more de-centralized. The official capital was by then Pa-Ramesses in the Delta but the largest centre of population was still Memphis, while Thebes remained both the main cult centre and the burial place of kings.
The Mooring Places should be considered as palaces in the sense that they provided a home for the king and his retinue, but they should not be imagined as the ancient equivalent of Buckingham Palace or Versailles. The idea of the settled palace, or indeed the settled upper-class household, is a relatively modern one. In fourteenth-century England, for example, even a gentleman of relatively modest means might be the lord of several manors, all of which he needed to oversee in person, while a great lord would own many estates throughout the land. When such a landowner moved from one estate to another he was accompanied by his household (family, dependants and servants), his furniture, plate and clothing, all travelling through the countryside in a style intended to impress his wealth and dignity on the less fortunate locals. A move every two to three weeks would not have been seen as excessive, and it was not until the end of the fourteenth century that the great households became relatively static, moving perhaps two or three times a year.18
The palaces scattered along the Nile were never intended to act as impressive stone testimonies to the glories of a particular king's reign; instead they were constructed quickly and relatively cheaply from mud-brick wherever and whenever required. The use of mud-brick meant that the palaces could be designed on the spot to fit the exact requirements of their occupants, unlike the more or less standard plans used for the stone-built temples and tombs. However, the use of mud-brick also meant that the palaces were vulnerable to decay, and we now have few surviving palace buildings. The royal progression from palace to palace ensured that the authority of the king became a reality to those in even the most distant provinces and, at a more practical level, may well have been an efficient cost-cutting exercise. Although each Mooring Place was provided with its own farm and granary this did not necessarily provide enough food for a visit, and it was often necessary to make the local mayor responsible for provisioning the royal household. Local officials presumably came to dread the news of an impending royal visit.19 A 19th Dynasty scribal exercise gives some indication of the preparations considered necessary to welcome a pharaoh:
Get on with having everything ready for pharaoh's [arrival]… have made ready 100 ring stands for bouquets of flowers… 1,000 loaves of fine flour… Cakes, 100 baskets… Dried meat, 100 baskets… Milk, 60 measures… Grapes, 50 sacks… 20
By the end of Ahmose's reign the Egyptian economy was booming. Egypt was naturally a very wealthy country and once unity and central control had been re-established it was possible to co-ordinate the management of her ample natural resources, taxing the primary producers – the peasants and their landlords – to support the bureaucratic and priestly superstructure and storing up surpluses to provide against harsher times. The Greek historian Herodotus commented admiringly:
In no other country do they gather their seed with so little labour. They have no need to break up the ground with the plough, nor to use the hoe, nor indeed to do any of the hard work which the rest of mankind finds necessary if they are to get a crop. Instead the farmer simply waits until the river has, of its own volition, spread itself over the fields and withdrawn again to its bed, and then he sows his plot of land…21
While the farmer's life was almost certainly somewhat harder than the idyllic existence outlined by Herodotus, it is clear that the peasant labour force, without undue exertion, was well able to support Egypt's population of approximately 3,000,000 during the early New Kingdom. During the period of inundation when the land was flooded and all routine agricultural work ceased, they provided an unemployed workforce available to work on major state projects such as the building of royal monuments. The knowledge that the state and temple warehouses were brimming with grain must have been intensely reassuring to the 18th Dynasty monarchs who knew that repeated famine, just like freak floods, could bring about a quick change of dynasty.
Away from the immediate Nile Valley, Egypt was rich in building stone, both the softer limestone and sandstone and harder, more exotic, stones such as granite, which was quarried at the First Cataract, quartzite, which came from the Gebel Ahmar near modern Cairo, basalt from the Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern Desert and alabaster from Hatnub, Middle Egypt. Although there were no precious gems, the semi-precious amethyst, carnelian and jasper could all be found within Egypt's borders, there was gold in the Eastern Desert and Sinai was mined for both copper and turquoise. The only valuable commodities which were missing were silver and wood; these could be imported from the Aegean and from the Near East as and when needed.
Egypt's newly re-imposed control over Nubia led to increased supplies of gold and highly desirable exotica such as ivory, baboons, pygmies, ostrich eggs and feathers. This in turn provided surplus items for barter with Egypt's Mediterranean neighbours; diplomatic and trading links had been established with Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, the Hittite Empire and the Greek islands, and Egypt was able to supply gold, grain and linen, receiving silver, wood, copper, oil and wine in return. As the Egyptian sphere of influence slowly expanded throughout the Near East, the treasury coffers opened wide to receive a steadily increasing stream of tribute from client states which, together with the trade surplus, internal taxation and the plunder seized from those unwise enough to resist Egypt's advances, made Egypt the most wealthy and influential country in the Mediterranean world. By the time of Amenhotep III, almost one century after Hatchepsut's reign, an envious King Tushrata of Mitanni was appealing to his fellow monarch: ‘So let my brother send me gold in very great quantity without measure. For in my brother's land gold is as plentiful as dust.’22
The flourishing economy led directly to a rapid expansion of the civil service as more and more bureaucrats were required to collect, supervise and re-distribute the nation's newfound surpluses. Less than five per cent of the New Kingdom population was literate, and the sudden demand for efficient administrators or scribes combined with the availability of land for private rental from the temples to allow the middle classes a greater political influence, and far greater personal wealth and freedom, than had ever been known in Egypt. The increased demand for scribes led in turn to an expansion in the education system, and we now find many texts written specifically for use in schools. One of these texts, Papyrus Lansing, was very specific about the joys – and potential economic rewards – which could be attained through devotion to study: ‘Befriend the scroll, the palette. It pleases more than wine. Writing for him who knows it is better than all other professions.23 With the exception of these school texts, the literature of the early 18th Dynasty remained firmly rooted in the traditions of the Middle Kingdom, and there was no startling advance in either style or genre at this time.
Most of Egypt's new wealth went directly to the palace, making it possible for the pharaoh to finance ambitious building works, thereby enhancing his own status in the eyes of his people and ensuring that his name, permanently linked to his monuments, would live for ever. Artists and sculptors, benefiting from the improved financial climate, again sought their inspiration in Egypt's past, and the artistic conventions of the 12th Dynasty provided a solid basis for the new-style art. Painting in particular flourished as, with the new custom of burial in rock-cut tombs whose crumbling walls were often unsuitable for carving, it was now necessary to paint funerary scenes. To the modern observer looking backwards, it seems that there was at this time a new confidence throughout the country and a new awareness of the exciting foreign influences which were beginning to filter southwards towards Thebes, so that the art of the early 18th Dynasty may be regarded as falling halfway between the restrained and formal styles of the 12th Dynasty and the intricate informality of the Empire. The artists now appear far more assured in their work and their ‘subjects are depicted with a restrained professionalism. Gone are the intimate, soul-revealing pharaohs of the 12th Dynasty; instead we are presented with the rounded cheeks and faint smile of a king secure in his personal power. Contemporary private painting, again heavily influenced by the Middle Kingdom tradition, slowly started to relax and abandon the slightly stiff poses popular during the Middle Kingdom until ‘a new breadth is given to already established forms, but with a restraint and simplicity which seems happily suited to the Egyptian spirit’.24 This growing trend towards less formal artforms was reflected in the more stylish garments being worn at this time. The standard Old and Middle Kingdom upper-class clothing (simple kilt or ‘bag tunic’ for men, long sheath dress and shawl for women) gradually became less formal and more ornate, until by the late 18th Dynasty the rather understated Old and Middle Kingdom elegance had been lost and wealthy Egyptians were dressing in a far more frivolous style involving yards of closely pleated linen and rows of elaborate fringes.
By the time of Hatchepsut's succession, some fifty years after the reunification of the country, a well-defined social pyramid had evolved. As in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the divine pharaoh owned the land and everyone in it; in theory, at least, he remained king, chief priest of every cult, head of the civil service, lord chief justice and supreme commander of the army. He was supported in his onerous tasks by an élite band of nobles, all of whom were male and many of whom were his immediate relations and, one step further down the social scale, by the prominent local families who gave their allegiance to the king and who administered local government. This upper tier of society and their families numbered no more than two or three thousand people, while the total population of Egypt during the New Kingdom has been estimated at between three and four million. The literate middle classes were now enjoying unprecedented prosperity, working as administrators, soldiers, minor priests and artisans while the semi-educated lower-middle classes were apprenticed into trades. The lowest and largest layer of society included foot soldiers, labourers, servants and the peasants who worked the land owned either by the king, the temples or private estates. Herodotus, omitting to mention the farmers who were the mainstay of the Egyptian economy, informs us that there were seven principal trades: ‘These are, the priests, the warriors, the cowherds, the swineherds, the tradesmen, the interpreters and the boatmen’;25 it would appear that these were the Egyptians whom he himself most frequently encountered on his travels.
At first sight this was a social structure identical to that found in earlier periods of Egyptian history, and indeed the Egyptians themselves rejoiced that their land had returned to the correct social pattern established at the time of creation. However, subtle changes in emphasis may be detected. The pharaoh remained the ultimate ruler, but he was now all too aware that his authority was not absolute and could, under certain circumstances, be challenged and even lost. Eighteenth Dynasty kings therefore found it prudent to stress the importance of their role by public displays of heroism, wealth and piety, and by the incessant use of self-justifying propaganda texts, myths and ritual. The pharaoh now ruled over a more economically developed country where the army, the civil service and the priesthood had become important state institutions; the priesthood in particular was now both semi-independent and economically very powerful. Egypt's increasing wealth had had a beneficial effect on the internal economy, and the literate and skilled middle classes found themselves in great demand. Only the lower classes, in particular the peasants, would have found little change from life in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. These workers continued with the daily routines established by their fathers and grandfathers before them. To the Egyptians, who prized continuity above almost everything, this was a very reassuring state of affairs.