RULERS OF AN EMPIRE.
The New Kingdom. (1570-1070 BC )
There can be little doubt that the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, spanning half a millennium of Egyptian history, were indeed god-like beins on earth. their immense works, temples and fortresses have left their stamp upon the face of Egypt. We can gaze upon many of their actual faces for, by a strange quirk of fate, the despoiled mummies of the major pharaohs of the period were preserved hidden in two great caches of bodies found in the last century at Deir el- Bahari and in the tomb of Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings. Here lay Tuthmosis III, the 'Napoleon' of ancient egypt; Ramesses II, great soldier,builder and the original of Shelly's 'Ozymandias,Kings of Kings'; and Ramesses III, who repulsed the sea Peoples and left graphic representations of his land and sea battles at Medinet Habu.
There are other, perhaps to some people more emotive, names: Akhenaten- was he a heretic, the first monotheist in history, or simply a religious maniac? And most famously, the pitiful remains of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, found in his virtually intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, surrounded by gold,his slim teenage body encased in a solid gold coffin.
DYNASTY 18
1570-1546
Ahmose I
1570-1524
Amenhotep I
1551-1524
Tuthmosis I
1524-1518
Tuthmosis II
1518-1504
Tuthmosis III
1504-1450
Queen Hatshepsut
1498-1483
Amenhotep II
1453-1419
Tuthmosis IV
1419-1386
Amenhotep III
1386-1349
Amenhotep IV
(Akhenaten)
1350-1334
Smenkhkare
1334-1325
Tutankhamun
1334-1325
Ay
1325-1321
Horemheb
1321-1293
DYNASTY 19
1293-1185
Remesses I
1293-1291
Seti I
1291-1278
Remesses II
1279-1212
Ahmose I
1570-1546
With the expulsion of the Hyksos, the princes of Thebes now reigned supreme. The war against the Hyksos had not been without cost: Ahmose lost his father Seqenere II and his brother Kahmose within about 3 years of each other, leaving him heir to the throne at a very young age. His mother, the redoubtable Queen Aahotep, was a powerful force in the land and may have been co- regent with him in the early years of reign.
After exprlling the Hyksos, Ahmose was faced with the task of consolidating Egypt's borders, which he did with a series of rapid campaigns that scaled the Syrian border and brought Nubia (Kush) to heel. there must also been much to do domestically and Ahmose seems to have deveolved a great deal of the responsibility on to local governors in the nomes. He encouraged support for his regime with gifts of land as recorded by Ahmose son of Ebana in his tomb at el-Kab and initiated temple building projects, the best evidence of which comes from remains and inscriptions at Abydos.
Manento gives Ahmose I a reign of 25 years to 26 years, which is substained by Josephus, who allocates 25 years and 4 months to thw king. After his death, Ahmose was buried in the Dra Abu el- Naga area of the Theban necropolis, in front of the Theban hills. Curiously, although his well- preserved mummy was in the great royal cache of 1818, and Wallis Budge bought a unique limestone potraid ushabti of the king for the British Museum in the 1890s, the location of his tomb is unknown.
Amenhotep I
1551-1524
Amenhotep I, who reigned for a quarter of a century like his father Ahmose I, has left us few records. according to Ahmose son of Ebana, the king led a military expedition to Kush, where 'His Majesty captured that Nubian Troglodyte int he midst of his army.' A contemporary of Ahmose at el-Kab, Ahmose-Pen-Nekhbet, also mentions a Nubian campaign, and possible a Libyan one. The king initiated building work at the temple of Karnak, too, as is attested in the autobiographical inscription of Ineni the architect, 'Chief of all Works at Karnak' (Theban tomb 81).
Amenhotep appears to have been the first king to take the radical decision to site his mortuary temple away from his burial place. The location of the latter, however, is uncertain, for although an uninscribed tomb at the Dra Abu el-Naga has been assigned to him, some suggest that a small, undecorated and anciently robbed tomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV 39) belonged to him. Wherever the tomb was, the commission of inspection in Year 16 of Ramesses IX reported it to be intact, according to the Abbott Papyrus. Like his father Ahmose, Amenhotep I's mummy was found in execellent condition in the 1881 royal mummy cache.
TUTHMOSIS I
1524-1518
Amenhotep I was succeeded not by his son (a break with tradition that would usually indicate a change in dynasty), but by a military man, Tuthmosis, already in middle-age when he achieved supreme power. He may have partly legitimized his rule by acting as co-regent with Amenhotep in the last years of the old king's reign. His main claim to the throne, however, was through his wife, the princess Ahmose, who was the daughter of Ahmose I and Queen Ahmose Nefertary. Since ancient Egypt was a matrilineal society, he had thus married into the royal blood line.
Although Tuthmosis had a short reign of only about six years, it was marked by a series of brilliant military campaigns taht were to set the seal on most of the rest of the 18th Dynasty (the Amarna period). Presumably some start or preparation must have been made in the last years of Amenhotep I for tuthmosis to have been able to inaugurate his military movements so rapidly and effectively. Ahmose son of Ebana was still on active service during this period, and he recounts how he was prompted to admiral, was highly successful in the Nubian campaign and return there from with 'that wretched Nubian Troglodyte being hanged head downward at the prow of the barge of His Majesty'
Under Tuthmosis the grip of the priests of Anum at Karnak began to take hold, as the king extensively remodeled and restored the great temple to the chief of the gods under his architech Ineni. On his great Abydos stele, Tuthmosis records not only his vast building work there but also the fact that 'I made the boundaries of Egypt as far as that which the sun encircles... I made Egypt the superior of every land.'
TUTHMOSIS II
1524-1518
Tuthmosis I died in about 1518BC, leaving behind a complicated situation vis a vis his successor to his throne. His two elder sons- the princes Wadjmore and Amenmose - predeceased their father, so young third son became heir. Also called Tuthmosis, the new king was son of a minor royal wife, the princess Mutnefert (sister of Tuthmosis I's queen Ahmose). In order to strengthen the youngster's position, therefore, he was married to his half-sister Hatshepsut, elder daughter of Tuthmosis I and Queen Ahmose. Together Tuthmosis II and Hatshepsut reign about 14 years until he died in his early thirties. Despite his apparent poor health, the king prosecuted successful campaigns in both Syria and Nubia, attested by a short inscription temple at Deir el-Bahari and a rock incription at Aswan. Old retainers such as Ineni the archictect were still serving the court: 'I was a favourite of the king in his every place... I attain the old age of the revered, I possesed the favour of His Majesty every day. I was supplied from the table of the king with bread.'
Tuthmosis II had one son, likewise Tuthmosis by Isis, a harem-girl. He may also have had a daughter, Nuferure, by Hatshepsut. The king must have realized the overweening ambition of his wife and half-sister and endeavoured to curtail it by declaring his son his successor before he died. In an event, Tuthmosis III was still a young child when he succeded to the throne and his aunt and aunt Hatshepsut initially acted as regent for the young king. As Ineni's autobiography succinctly noted, 'His son [Tuthmosis III] stood in his [Tuthmosis II's] place as King of the Two Lands, having become ruler upon the throne of the one who begat him. His sister the Divine Consort, Hatshepaut, settle the affairs of The Two Lands by reason of her plans. Egypt was made to labour with bowed head for her, the excellence seed of the god,which cane forth from him.' Ineni, however, remained in the queen's favour: 'Her Majesty praised me, she loved me, she recognized my worth at court, she presented me with thingd, she magnified me... I increased beyond everything.'
By regnal year of the young Tuthmosis III, Hatshepsut had her propaganda machine in place and working, and usurped her stepson's position.
HATSHEPSUT
1498-1483
As Tuthmosis II had realize early on, Hatshepsut was a strong-willed women who would not let anyone or anything stand in her way. By Year 2 of her co-regency with the child king Tuthmosis III she had begun her legacy to subvert his position. Initially, she had been content to be represent in reliefs standing behind Tuthmosis III and to be identified simply by her title as 'great king's wife' of Tuthmosis II. This changed as she gathered support from the highly placed officials, and it was not long before she began to build her splendid mortuary temple in the bay of the cliffs at Deir el-Bahari.
Deir el-Bahari
Contruction under the supervision of the queen's steward Senenmut - who was to rise to the highest offices during her reign - Hatshepsut's temple took its basic inspiration from the 12th Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep, adjacent to the site on the south. The final plan of the temple made it unique in Egyptian architecture: built largely of limestone, it rose in three broad, colonnade-fronted terraces to a central rock-cut sanctuary on the upper terrace. The primary dedication was to Amun but there were also smaller shrines to Hathor (who earlier had a small cave shrine on the site) and Anubis, respectively located on the south and north sides of the second terrace. A feature of the temple was its alignment to the east directly with the great temple of Amun across the Nile at Karnak.
Hatshepsut recorded that she had built her mortuary temple as a 'garden for my father Amun'.Certainly, its was a garden, with small trees and shrubs lining the entrance ramps to the temple. Her focus on Amun was strengthened in the temple by a propaganda relief, known as the 'birth relief', on the walls of the northern half of the middle terrace. Here Amun is shown visiting Hatshepsut's mother, Queen Ahmose, while nearby are the appropriate deities of childbirth (the ram-headed khnum and the frog-headed goddess Heqet) and the seven 'fairy-god-mother' Hathors. The thrust of all this was to emphasize that she, Hatshepsut had been deliberately conceived and chosen by Amun to be king. She was accordingly potrayed with all the regalia of kingship, even down to the official royal false beard.
To symbolize her new position as king of Egypt, Hatshepsut took the titles of the Female Horus Wosretkau, 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt' ; Maat-ka-re, 'Trust is the soul and Khenemetamun Hatsheput, ‘she who embraces Amun, the foremost of women’. Her coronation as a child in the present of the god is represented in direct continuation of the birth relief at Deir el-Bahari, subsequently confirmed by Atum at Heliopolis. The propaganda also indicated that she had been crowned before the court in the presence of her father Tuthmosis 1 who, according to the inscription, deliberately chose New Year’s Day as an auspicious day for the event !the whole text is fictitious and, just like her miraculous conception, a political exercise. In pursuing this Hatshpsut makes great play upon the support of her long-dead but still highly revered father, Tuthmosis 1.
The cult of Amun had gradually gained in importance during the Middle Kingdom under the patronage of the princess of Thebes. Now the more powerful New Kingdom kings associated the deity with their own fortunes. Hatshpsut had built her mortuary temple for Amun on the west bank, and further embellished the god huge temple on the east bank. Her great major-domo, Senemut, was heavily involved in all her building works and was also responsible for the erection of a pair of red granite obelisks to the god at Karnak. Their removal from the quarries at Aswan is recorded in inscription there, while their actual transport, butt-ended on low rafts calculated to be over 300ft (100 m) long and 100ft (30 m) wide, is represented in reliefs at the Deir el-Bahari temple. A second pair was cut later Aswan and erected at Karnak under the direction of Senenmut’s colleague, Amunhotep; one of them still stands in the temple.
Hatshepsut had her tomb dug in the Valley of the Kings by her vizier and High Priest of Amun, Hapuseneb. She had previously had a tomb cut for herself as queen regnant under Tuthmosis 2, its entrance 220 ft (72 m) up a 350 ft (91 m) cliff face in a remote valley west of the Valley of the Kings. This was found by local people in 1916 and investigated by Howard Carter in rather dangerous circumstances. The tomb had never been used and still held the sandstone sarcophagus inscribed for the queen. Carter wrote: as a king, it was clearly necessary for her to have her tomb in The Valley it had none. A king she would be, and a king’s fate she shared.
Hatsheput died in about 1483 BC. Some suggest the Tuthmosis 3, keep so long in waiting, and may have had a hand in her death. Certainly he hated her enough to destroy many of the queen’s monuments and those of her closest adherents. Perhaps the greatest posthumous humiliation she was the suffer, however, was to be ommited from the carved king list: her reign was too disgraceful an episode to be recorded.
AMENHOTEP II
1453-1519
Amenhotep 2 seems to have been athletic youngster. Several representations of the king show him engaged in successful sporting pursuits, and he was keen to establish an equally good reputation in the military field. An opportunity to do just this presented itself early in his reign when, on receiving the news of the news of the death of Tuthmosis 3, the Asiatic cities rose up in revolt. Amenhotep2 was not slow in showing the rebels that he was not to be toyed with. In April of year 2 he moved swiftly overland with the army, advanced into northern Palestine, fought this way across the Orontes river in Syria, and subdued all before him.
One city, Niy,had learnt its lesson under Tuthmosis 3 and welcomed his son. The area tikshi seems to have been the focal point o the trouble and Amenhotep 2 captured seven princes there, returning with them in the autumn to the temple of great god Amun at Karnak. He was also accompanied by much booty, which largely went to swell the coffers of Amun. Amenhotep 2 was laid to rest in the Valley of the Kings-but not for long, for his tomb was plundered before the end of the 20th dynasty. When Victor Loret entered it in March 1898 he found the usual debris, but the king still lay in his sarcophagus where the priest had partly rewrapped the body after its desecration. Impression preserved in the resin indicated the jewellery that had once lain on the body. Amenhotep was not, however, alone in his tomb. It had been used by the priest in antiquity as a hiding place for other royal mummies.
SMENKHKARE
1334-1325
Akhenaten’s nominal successor was Smenkhkare, probably a younger brother of the king, but it appears that may have died within months of each other. Smenkhkare’s two-year reign was in reality a coregency during the lat years of Akhenaten’s life. A gaffito in the tomb of Pairi at Thebes records a third regnal year. He was married to Merytaten, the senior heiress of the royal blood line, but she seems to have predeceased him. Her sister Akhenaten , named after her and was married to the young Tutankhaten, the heir apparent (who was later to change his name Tutankhamun). A great deal of controversy surrounds the question of Smenkhkare’s mummy and burial. In January 1907, discovered a badly water-damaged content of an unfinished tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The cartouches on it had all been hacked out. The damaged boy was identified as female- and published it as such. Subsequently the body changed sex and was ideni fied as Akhenaten. More detailed forensic examination, however, now suggest that the body belonged to Smenkhkare, and serological examination (blood grouping) of tissue, as well as close skull measurement comparisons, indicate that the occupant was a brother, or possibly half-brother, of Tutankamun- the entrance to whose tomb is a mere 15 yards away across the valley floor. The cartouches on the coffin had all been deliberately hacked out, literally to deny the occupant access to the next world because loss of name was a terrible thing. The texts still in place, however, had feminine endings to the appropriate words, indicating that coffin had been made for a royal female. This was thought possibly to have been Merytaten, Smenkhkare’s wife, or now, Kiya. The Cartouches, it was suggested, had been hacked out because the perpetrators believed that the occupant was the hated Akhenaten. It seems that they hoped to remove the bodies of Queen Tiy and and Smenkhkare from the contamination of association with the heretic king Akhnenaten, but made a mistake and removed Akhnaten’s body instead. On that basis, somewhere in a small undiscovered tomb or cache in or near the Valley of the Kings, Akhnaten’s body may still lie undisturbed. It will accompanied by whatever of Smenkhkare’s funerary equipment was removed from tomb 55, and that should include ushabti figures for Smenkhkare because, although examples are known for the rest of the royal family, not even a fragment of one survives bearing his name.
TUTHMOSIS III
1504-1450
With Hatsheput’s death Tuthmosis 3 into his rightful inheritance. Senenmut, Hatsheput’s powerful minister and supporter, had died about a year before the queen and could no longer stand in Tuthmosis’ way. Hatsheput had maintained her position with the support of powerful minister but, above all, by virtue of her impeccable royal lineage. Tuthmosis, too, was to draw on his family credentials, because he had been married to the princess Neferure- daughter of Tuthmosis 2 by Hatsheput. Neferure died some time before year 11, so Tuthmosis 3 was a widower when he came to the throne; he then took Hatshepsut-Merytre as his principal queen who has to be the mother of his heir, Amenhotep 2. Once Tuthmosis 3 had aclear field, he set about expunging the memory of his stepmother Hatshepsut from the monuments. He exacted retribution at her temple at Deir el-Bahari, destroying many of the relief and smashing numerous of her statue into a quarry just in front of the temple. The tombs of her courtiers were also attacked. Moreover, the obelisk which Senenmut had proudly brought from the granite quarries at Aswan to Karnak were walled up and their inscription in pristine condition, and they have now been revealed again. Nearby, Tuthmosis half a rock-cut sanctuary dedicated cow goddess Hathor. The shrine was found by accident in the last century during clearance work. A sudden rock exposed the opening to a painted shrine which, local graffiti indicated, had been a placed of worship until Ramesside time. The shrine was dedicated by Tuthmosis , accompanied in the wall paintings by his wife Merytre.
In year 2 of his independent reign (nominally his year 23), Tuthmosis 3 opened up his Near Eastern campaign. A reasonably trustworthy account of the battles was inscribe on the inside walls surrounding the granite sanctuary at Karnak. The author of those so-called Annals was the archivist, royal scribe and army commander, Thanuny must be one of the earliest official war correspondents. By recording details of the war in the great temple of Karnak, Tuthmosis 3 was not only glorying his own name, but also promoting the god Amun- under whose banner he literally marched and whose estate were to reap such rich rewards from the spoils of war. The whole campaign was a masterpiece of planning and nerve. He marched to Gaza in ten days, took the city, and press to Yehem, aiming for Megiddo which was held by the rebellious prince of Kadesh. Here a problem arose as the troop approached Megiddo.
Tuthmosis marched at the head of the column with almost total disregard for his personal safety, but the gamble off. Emerging from the mouth of the wadi he saw that his enemies had wrongly anticipated that he would take one of the easier routes-and he had in fact come out between the north and south wings of their army. The next battle day was joined and the enemy decisively routed. In less than five month Tuthmosis 3 had travelled from Thebes right the Syrian coast, fought decisive battles, captured three cities and returned to his capital to celebrate his celebrate his victories. The 17 campaigns into western Asia were military apotheosis of Tuthmosis’ reign and it is not for nothing that he was called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt. The king also mounted punitive expiditions into Nubia, where he built temples at amada and Semna. For the last dozen or so years of his life he was able to rest content that the empire was now widely spread, and in good order to be handed on to his heir. Many temples were enriched and embellished from the spoils of the campaigns, none more so than the temple of Karnak. Wall relief near the sanctuary represent of the some of the gold jewellery, costly furniture, valuable oils and unguents and other gifts offered by Tuthmosis, as well as the two obelisk that were erected.
Tuthmosis’ principal queen was Hatshepsut-Merytre but there were other minor queens, several of whom had been acquired almost as diplomatic exchanges. The court was further expanded for a while by a number of foreign princes, who were held hostage while they received strict instruction in Egyptian ways; they would then be returned to their homelands, duly groomed as obedient vassals of Egypt. The reign of Tuthmosis 3 was noted for its opulence and this is reflected in the superb quality of the tombs of some of the high nobles that have survived. Principal amongst these is that of the vizier, with its teeming scenes of daily life and crafts, and especially the two long inscription that provide valuable information on the installation and office of a vizier. The tomb of the High Priest of Amun- Re, Menkheperreson, Rekhmire’s religious opposite number, was also nearby. When Tuthmosis 3 died in 1450 BC, his principal queen and mother of his heir, survived him into the reign of her son as Queen Mother. Tuthmosis was interred in a tomb in the Valley of the King.
TUTHMOSIS IV
1419-1386
Known as the Dream Stele, it tells how the young prince Tuthmosis was out hunting in the desert when he fell asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx. Re-Harakhte, the son god embodied in the Sphinx, appeared to him in a dream and promised that if the sand engulfing the great limestone body was cleared away, the prince would become king. Needless to say, the sand- clearing operation was immediately carried out and the prince became the fourth king of his name. little of a military nature appears to have occurred during Tuthmosis’s reign, although our knowledge may be marred by the the lack of texts.
It is from the reign of Tuthmosis that some of the best known decorated private tombs survive in the Theban necropolis, such as those of Nakht and Menna. Tuthmosis’s own anciently robbed tomb in the Valley of Kings. The king’s Mummy, however, was not present in splendidly decorated granite sarcophagus: it had been found five years earlier, as one of those hidden in the tomb of Amenhotep 2.
Amenhotep IV
(Akhenaten)
1350-1334
Amenhotep 6-better known as Akhnaten, the new name he took early on his reign. The Amarna Interlude, as it is called saw the removal of the seat the government to a short lived new capital city, Akhnaten (modern el-Amarna, the introduction of a new art style, and the evelation of the cult of sun disc. This last heresy in particular was to bring down on Akhnaten and his immediate successor the opprobrium of later king. The beginning of Akhnaten’s reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak but, like his father, he married a lady of non royal blood, Nefertiti, the daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been a brother of Queen Tiy and a son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti’s mother is not known, she may have died in childbirth or shortly afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who would then be her stepmother. There can little doubt that the new king was far more of a thinker and philosopher than his forebears. Amenhotep 3 had recognized the growing power of the priesthood of Amun and had sought to curb it, his son was to take the matter a lot further by introducing a new monotheistic cult of sun-worship that was incarnate in the sun’s disc, the Aten. It is evident from the art of the Amarna period that the court officially emulated the king’s unusual physical characteristics. Thus individuals such as the young princesses are with elongated skulls and excessive adiposity, while Bek- the chief sculptor and Master of Works- potrays himself in the likeness of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that he was taught by His Majesty and that the court sculptors were instructed to represent what they saw. Although the Famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with an elongated neck , the queen is not subject to quite the extremes as others in Amarna art, by virtue of being elegantly female. Indeed, there several curious aspects of Nefertiti representations. Nefertiti appears to have died soon after year 12, although some suggest that she was suggest that she was disgraced because her name was replaced in several instance by that her daughter Mrytaten-tastherit, also possibly fathered by Akhnaten. Merytaten was to become wife of Smenkhkare, Akhnaten’s brief successor. Nefertiti was buried in the royal tomb at Amarna. Akhnaten died 1334, probably in his 16th regnal year. Evidence found by Professor Geofrey during re-excavation of he royal tomb at Amarna showed that blocking had been put in place in the burial chamber, suggesting Akhnaten was buried there initially. His body did not remain at armana : a burnt mummy seen outside the royal tomb in the 1880s, and associated with jewellary from the tomb was probably Coptic, as was other jewellery nearby.
AMENHOTEP III
1386-1349
Amenhotep 3’s long reign of almost 40 years was one of the most prosperous and stable in Egyptian history. His great-grandfather, Tuthmosis 3, had laid foundation of the Egyptians empire by his campaigns into Syria, Nubia and Libya. Hardly any military activity was called for under Amenhotep. Amenhotep 3 was the son of Tuthmosis 6 by one of his chief wives, Queen Mutemwiya. It is possible that she was the daughter of the Mitannian king, Artatama, sent to the Egyptian court as part of diplomatic arrangement to cement the alliance between the strong militarist state of mittani in Syria and Egypt. The king’s royal birth is depicted in a series of reliefs in a room on the east side of the temple of luxor which amenhotep built for Amun. The creator God, the ram-headed Khnum of Elephantine, is seen fashioning the young king and his ka on a potter’s wheel, watched by the goddess Isis.
Amenhotep 3 had a large-and ever increasing number of ladies in his harem, several of them were foreign princess, the result of diplomatic marriages, but his chief wife was a woman of non-royal rank whom he had married before he came to the throne. This was Tiy, the daughter of the noble called Yuya and his wife, Tuya. Tiy gave birth to six or more children; one of them was the Akhnaten, heir to the throne. Amenhotep 3 also married two of his daughters; first Isis and then in year 30 Sitamun. Evidence for this comes from a series of kohl eyeliner tubes inscribed for the king togheter with a cartouche of each royal lady. Amenhotep’s reign falls essentially into two unequal part. The first decade reflected a yaoung and vigorous king, promoting the sportsman image laid down by his processors and with some minor military activity.
The last 25 years of Amenhotep’s reign seem to have been a period of great building works and luxury at court and in the arts. The laudatory epithets that accompany the king’s name are more grandiose metaphors than records of facts: he took the Horus name “great of strength who smites the Asiatic”. Some magnificent statuary dates from the reign of Amhotep 3, such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lion originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia. His robbed tomb rediscovered by French expedition in 1799 in the western Valley of the Kings. Amongst the debris, they found a large number of ushabits of the kings, some complete but mostly broken.the tomb was eventually used for Amenhotep 3, and also for Queen Tiy to judge from the fragments found of several different ushabtis of he Queen. Amenhotep 3 mummy’s was probably one of those found by Loret in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep 2, although recently it has been suggested that this body was wrongly identified by ancient priest when it was transferred to the new tomb.
TUTANKHAMUM
1334-1325
Before the spectacular discovery of his almost intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings(KV 62) in November 1922, Tutankhamun was a shadowy and little known figure of the late 18th Dynasty. To a certain extent he still is, despite the prominence he has acquired from the contents of his tomb.
Tutankhamun’s name was known in the early from this century of a few references, but his exact place in the sequence of the `Amarna kings’ was uncertain. Like Akhenaten and Ay, his name had been omitted from the classic king lists of Abydos and Karnak, which simply jump from Amenhotep III to Horemheb. Indeed, Tutankhamun’s exact identity and his parentage is still a matter of some conjecture, although it is clear that the young prince was brought up at Amarna, probably in the North Palace. A number of items found in his tomb are relics of his life at the Aten court, notably the Aten’s disc shown protecting him and his young wife, Ankhensenpaaten, on the pictorial back panel of his gold-inlaid throne.
Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign the senior members of the court, especially Ay and Horemheb, probably realized that things could not go on as they were. Smenkhkare, Akhenaten’s brother and co-regent, must have come to the same conclusion since he had left Akhenaten and moved back to the old secular capital, Memphis, where he may have been in contact with the proscribed members of the priesthood of Amun before his death and burial at Thebes. Soon after Akhenaten’s death, Tutankhaten (as he then was) was crowned at Memphis. Aged about nine when he succeeded, the young king would have had no close female relatives left – his probable mother Kiya, his stepmother Nefertiti and his elder step-sisters all being dead. He was probably under the direct care and influence of Ay, the senior civil servant, and Horemheb, the military man. Tutankhaten’s wife, Ankhesenpaaten, was evidently older than he since she was already child-bearing age, seemingly having had a daughter by her father, Akhenaten.
As soon as the new king had been installed, a move was made back to the old religion. This was signified radically in Year 2 when both king and queen changed the -aten ending of their names to –amun. Tutankhamun probably had little to do with this or indeed many other decisions – his `advisors’ were the ones who held the reins and manipulated the puppet strings of the boy-king. A great `Restoration’ stele records the installation of the old religion of Amun and the reopening and rebuilding of the temples. The stele is known for two copies, both of which were later usurped by Horemheb, as were many other monuments of Tutankhamun. A large number of reliefs and statues have been identified as originally belonging to Tutankhamun, for although the inscription have been changed, the king’s boyish features are clearly recognizable. Extensive building works were carried out at Karnak and Luxor in Tutankhamun’s name, especially the great colonnade and the relief scenes of the Festival of Opet atLuxor, but all were subsequently taken over by Horemheb.
Apart from the pivotal return to Thebes and the cult of Amun, few events from Tutankhamun’s reign have been documented. Military campaigns were apparently mounted in Nubia and Palestine/Syria, suggested by a brightly painted gesso box from Tutankhamun’s tomb which has four spirited scenes featuring the king. One shows him hunting lions in the desert, another gazelles, whilst on the third and fourth he furiously attacks Nubians and then Syrians, who fall to his arrows. Finely carved scenes of prisoners in the Memphite tomb of the military commander-in-chief, Horemheb, lend some veracity to the scenes on the gesso box, as does the painting in the tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Nubia, which shows subservient Nubian princes and piles of tribute. It is doubtful, however, that Tutankhamun actually took part in any of the campaign.
In addition to the two premier figures of Ay and Horemheb, the names of other high officials who served during Tutankhamun’s reign are known to us. Two of them were accorded the privilege of donating objects to the king’s burial. One was Nakhtmin, a military officer under Horemheb and a relative of Ay. He presented five large wooden ushabits, each inscribed with his name under the feet. There is a fine portrait head of Nakhtmin in Cairo, broken from a dyad statue with his beautiful but unnamed wife. Another official was Maya, who was Tutankhamun’s Treasurer and also Overseer of the Place of Eternity, where his name is also known from a graffito in a fine hand on a wall in the tomb of Tuthmosis IV recording restorations being carried out, presumably the checking and rewrapping of the royal mummy. To Tutankhamun’s tomb Maya contributed a fine large wooden ushabti, and a beautifully carved effigy of the mummified king on a lion-headed bier with two delightful ka and ba birds watching over him. Maya’s tomb was located at Saqqara in 1843 by Richard Lepsius when the splendid statues of him and his wife Meryt were removed to Leiden. In 1986 the tomb was rediscovered by Professor Geoffrey Martin through a robbers’ tunnel from a nearby tomb.
Another high official to have a tomb at Thebes was Huy, Viceroy of Nubia. A vast wall painting, about 17 ft long, shows Huy in the full finery of his office presenting the prices of north and south Nubia, together with their families and retainers, to the king. Not least amongst the representations is the entourage of a Nubian princess, she in her chariot, and the vast piles of tribute. This may all be the result of Horemheb’s military foray into Nubia.
Tutankhamun died young, probably during his ninth regnal year. Evidence for this is twofold. First, forensic analysis of his mummy has put his age at death at about 17. Secondly, clay seals on wine jars found in his tomb record not only the type of wine, the vineyard and the name of the chief vintner, but also the king’s regnal year when each wine was laid down. The highest recorded date is Year 9, suggesting that Tutankhamun died in that year.
There is no positive evidence on Tutankhamun’s mummy as to how he met his death: he certainly did not die of consumption as was once though. However, autopsies and X-rays have located a small sliver of bone withen the upper cranial cavity. It may have arrived there as the result of a blow, but whether deliberately struck, to indicate murder, or the result of an accident, such as a fall from a chariot, it is not possible to say.
AY
1325-1321
Ay, now an old man, apparently became king by marrying Tutankhamun’s widow, Ankhesenamun – probably against her wishes since she was actually marrying her grandfather. Evidence for the marriage came from the bezel of a ring seen by Professor Percy Newberry in Cairo in the 1920s which carried the cartouches of Ankhesenamun and Ay side by side: a normal way of indicating a marriage. The wedding must have taken place rapidly because Ay officiated at Tutankhamun’s funeral as a king wearing the Blue Crown. Furthermore, by burying his predecessor he also consolidated his claim to the throne.
Tombs of the pharoahs.
In view of his age, it is small wonder that Ay’s reign was brief: a mere four year. There are few monuments that can be identified as his – partly, no doubt, because many of them were usurped by Horemheb. At any rate, work continued on Tomb 23 in theWestern Valley, and the walls were extensively painted. It is to be noted that the lady accompanying Ay in the paintings is not Ankhesenamun but his older wife, Tiy. A large stone sarcophagus was provided for Ay which, like Tutankhamun’s, had goddesses enfolding the corners with their wings. The tomb was found by Belzoni in 1816, the sarcophagus in fragments. Its complete and domed lid was only rediscovered in the burial chamber debris in 1972. Ay’s mummy has not been identified, although Professor Wente and Harris suggested in 1990 that the mummy from the 1881 cache hitherto identified as Amenhotep III might be that of Ay. In fact it is highly unlikely that Ay’s mummy survives in view of the destruction wreaked in his tomb. Not only was the sarcophagus smashed, but his figure was hacked out and his name excised in the wall paintings and texts. No ushabti figures are known to exist fro him either. This damnation memoriae seems to have been carried out on the instructions of Ay’s successor, Horemheb, which raises the curious question as to why he did not order Tutankhamun’s tomb to be similarly attacked and robbed – after all, he could not have forgotten its location in less than a decade, particularly since he was so involved with the burial.
In his mortuary temple at Thebes near Medinet Habu, Ay inscribed his name on two quartzite colossi of Tutankhamun, taken from the latter’s temple nearby. Even these statues were usurped by Horemheb when he took over Ay’s temple. It would appear that Ankhesenamun did not survive Ay and there is no later record of her after the ring bezel mentioned above. With her died the last of the true Amarna royal blood line.
HOREMHEB
1321-1293
Horemheb’s background is virtually unknown except that he came from Herakleopolis near the entrance to the Faiyum and was obviously a career officer whose capabilities were early recognized. First serving under Amenhotep III, he became Great Commander of the Army under Akhenaten and was later appointed King’s Deputy by Tutankhamun. He was obviously a highly ambitious man, and the death of Ay offered the perfect opportunity to restore to Egypt the strong leadership he left she needed. Horemheb therefore declare himself king in 1321, consolidating his claim to the throne through his marriage to a lady named Mutnodjme, the sister of Nefertiti. He thus formed a link back to the female royal blood line, albeit a tenuous one. From evidence in his recently rediscovered tomb at Saqqara he appears to have had an earlier wife, but her name is not known.
Horemheb must have been in middle age when he became king and he immediately set about restoring the status quo, reopening the temples, repairing them where necessary, and bringing back the priesthood of Amun. Here he did make a change, however: realizing the stranglehold they have endeavoured to put on Amenhotep III, he reappointed priests from the army, now that he was really no longer primarily a military man, he divided it under two separate commanders, one for the north and one for the south.
Horemheb usurped the monuments of his immediate predecessors Ay and Tutankhamun. To the two great `Restoration’ stele that detailed the good works of Tutankhamun simply added his own name. Embellishments were carried out at the great temple of Amun atKarnak where he initiated the great Hypostyle Hall and added a tall pylon, No. 9. here we achieves two subjects: first, he built the pylon to the glory of Amun on the south side of Karnak, and secondly, he destroyed the hated temple to the Aten erected by Akhenaten by simply dismantling it and using its small talatat (`two-hands width’) blocks as interior filling for the hollow pylon. Archaeologists have recovered thousands of these blocks during the restoration of the pylon and have been able to reconstruct great Amarna scenes. In one sense, therefore, Horemheb’s destructive scheme backfired: by hiding the blocks in the pylon he preserved them for posterity.
Horemheb took over Ay’s mortuary temple on the west bank at Medinet Habu, together with the two colossal quartzite statues of Tutankhamun that Ay had himself usurped. Thus he set about completely expunging from the record any trace of his four Amarna predecessors. He dated his reign from the death of Amenhotep III, adding the intervening years to his own total, none of the Amarna names appeared in any of the Ramesside king lists at Abydos and Karnak. Furthermore, in the early 19th Dynasty tomb of a certain Amenmosi at Thebes, where two rows of seated statues of kings and queens are decipted on the west wall, Horemheb is placed between Amenhotep III and Ramesses I. Kings of the 19th Dynasty were to regard them as the founder of their line, and this probably explains why a number of tombs of officials, as well as that of Ramesses II’s sister, the princess Tia, were deliberately placed near his Saqqara tomb. Although the official records of Horemheb’s reign go as high as Year 59, his actual reign of almost 30 years was spent in consolidation. There is little evidence of external contact except for a campaign in Kush and a trading expedition to the south.
Horemheb began his funerary preparations long before he had any inkling that he would become pharaoh, meaning that he already had a private tomb at Saqqara when, as king, he started to build himself a large tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb atSaqqara had been partly discovered in the early 19th century when sculptures and reliefs were removed from both to European collections, but it was lost again until the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society in 1975. Excavations at the Saqqaratomb revealed that the walls were superbly carved with scenes of Horemheb’s military and court career. From these we learn that there were at least two small campaigns during Tutankhamun’s reign against Libyans and Syrians – the faces of the prisoners are especially well represented in the carvings. The tomb funerary furniture and reliefs and a superb openwork gold earring that the robbers must have dropped to testify that Horemheb’s tomb was one of the finest in the area. He himself was not buried in the Saqqara tomb because of his elevation, although it appears that his two wives may have been. After Horemheb became pharaoh, he sent workmen to add the royal uraeus to his brow in the sculpted reliefs, even though he himself was not going to make use of the tomb.
Horemheb’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found by Theodore Davis in 1908. As with all the tombs in the royal valley, it was unfinished and had been robbed. Davisfound large quantities of shattered furniture and wooden figures of the king, example of which some 14 years later, were to be found complete in Tutankhamun’s tomb, such as the king standing on the back of a striding panther. The painting of several rooms in the tomb had been finished to a very high standard. Work in other rooms, however, was still in progress when the king died, and these are particularly interesting because they show the manner of working – the outline grids and the corrections made. In the burial hall Davis found Horemheb’s great red granite sarcophagus. Horemheb’s mummy was not discovered, although the remains of four individuals were scattered in the burial hall and a side chamber.
These were probably members of Horemheb’s family, although it has been suggested that Ay’s body may have been brought here from his tomb in the Western Valley after it had been robbed. It is possible that graffito found in the tomb refers to Horemheb’s body being moved to the tomb of Twosret and Setnakhte for restoration, but other then that there is no trace of it.
RAMESSES I
1293-1291
The 19th Dynasty, despite its later luminaries, began on a fairly low note. Ramesses I, from whom the main part of the period takes its name, `Ramesside’, came to be pharaoh almost by default. He was previously the vizier, close friend and confidant of the pharaoh Horemheb, who – having failed to produce an heir – appears to have bestowed the succession on his comrade. Ramesses must have been of advanced years, probabli into his fifties, and was not of royal blood. He was a `career’ army officer, the son of the troop commander, Seti. Their family came from the north-eastern Delta area of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos invaders of 400 years earlier.
The short reign of Ramesses I, probably only about two years, gave him hardly any time to make his mark on history. There are some reliefs on the Second Pylon atKarnak and a stele dated early in his second regnal year found at Wadi Halfa. His small tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found by Belzoni on 10/11 October 1817 and showed all the signs of a hasty interment. The burial chamber was unfinished, in fact it had been intended to be merely an antechamber to a much larger tomb. As so often, the tomb had been robbed in antiquity, although some of the burial provisions still remained, notably the large granite sarcophagus, a pair of almost 2m high wooden statues of the king once covered with thin gold foil, and a number of wooden statuettes of underworld deities with curious animal heads. Robbers had damaged the sarcophagus as they prised the lid off and there is evidence that they actually hurled some of the smaller statuettes against the tomb walls in destructive fury, since tiny slivers of gold foil have been observed attached to the painted plaster. Ramesses’ mummy may not have survived, although it does appear to have been taken from the tomb before 968BC, around the time when the number of the royal mummies were being moved to safety, eventually to be deposited in the tombs of Amenhotep II and Queen Inhapi. The burial of Ramesses’ wife, Queen Sitre, broke with earlier traditions where the queen was apparently buried in her husband’s tomb at a later date, is she outlived him. Sitre’s tomb set a new precedent: it was place in what is now known as the Valley of the Queens at Thebes. Like her husband’s tomb, Sitre’s was unfinished, with only a few paintings on the walls of the first chamber.
SETI I
1291-1278
Seti I had held the same titles of Vizier and Troop Commander as his father, Ramesses I, whom he rapidly succeeded. In order to restore Egyptian fortunes after the instability under the Amarna kings, he inaugurated a policy of major building at home and a committed foreign policy abroad. He took the additional title of `Repeater of Births’, signifying the beginning of a new and legitimate era. In was indeed a period of rebirth for Egypt, and during Seti’s 13-year reign Egyptian art and culture achieved a maturity and sophistication that were scarcely equaled in later centuries. Seti married within his own military `caste’, choosing Tuya, the daughter of a lieutenant of chariotry, Raia. Their first child was a boy, who died young, and their second a daughter, Tia. Their third, another boy, took his grandfather’s name and later became Egypt’s mightiest pharaoh, Ramesses II. A second daughter, born much later, was called Henutmire and she was to become a minor queen of her elder brother in due course.
Seti lead a military expedition into Syria as early as the first year of his reign. The records of his campaign and several subsequent once over a least the initial six years of Seti’s rule ape preserved on the outer north and east walls of the greattemple of Amun at Karnak. They follow a basic pattern of the army on the march, where Seti followed his predecessors Tuthmosis III’s tactic of swift movement up through the Gaza Strip and Palestinian coast, thereby securing his flank and supply lines by sea into Phoenician ports. Fortresses are shown being attacked Syrians captured, bound and carried off, the whole culminating in a huge representation of prisoners being slain before Amun. Other campaigns were waged against the Libyans of the western desert, and there was a renewed attack upon Syria and Lebanon where, for the first time, Egyptian met Hittite in battle. One scene at Karnak shows the capture of Kadesh that was to be the focus of the famous battle in later years under Seti’s son, Ramesses II. All the while Seti was endeavoring to restore the past glories of the earlier 18th Dynasty pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep III.
RAMESSES II
1279-1212
Ramesses II, who acceded to power at the age of 25, can rightly be said to merit his popular title, `Ramesses the Great’. During his long reign of 67 years, everything was done on a grand scale. No other pharaoh constructed so many temples or erected so many colossal statues and obelisks. No other pharaoh sired so many children. Ramesses’ `victory’ over the Hittite at Kadesh was celebrated in one of the most repeated Egyptian texts ever put on record. By the time he died, aged more than 90, he had set his stamp indelibly on the face of Egypt.
As a young prince, Ramesses was imbued with the military tradition establish by his grandfather, after whom he was named. From his earliest years all hopes for the new dynasty were pinned on him. At the age of 10 he was recognize as `Eldest King’s Son’ by title, and by his mid-teens he is found associated with Seti as a diminutive figure in the reliefs of the Libyan campaign at Karnak. Ramesses was allowed to participate in Seti’s subsequent campaigns against the Hittite in Syria. The young prince rode well in harness alongside his experienced father, learning his trade of statecraft. Ramesses is often found referred to in inscriptions, overseeing the cutting of obelisks from the granite quarries at Aswan, involved in Seti’s great building projects, and also inaugurating his own temple to Osiris at Abydos. Many inscriptions of up-and-coming young men attest to Seti’s keen and acute eye I spotting the high flyers, which were to grow up alongside Ramesses and serve him well in his turn.
The youthful Ramesses took his two principal wives, Nefertari and Istnofret, at least ten years before Seti’s death. The old king thus saw his grandchildren around him – at least 5 sons and 2 daughters by them, as well as possibly another 10 to 15 children from other ladies of the harem. No wonder that in early years and after further marriages, Ramesses could boast of over 100 sons and daughters that simply were not numbered. Virtually nothing is known of the background of either Nefertari or Istnofret except that Nefertari was always the Chief Queen until her death in about Year 24 of the reign. Her recently restored tomb in the Valley of the Queens is one of the wonders of ancient Thebes. Istnofret took Nefertari’s place, but only for some 10 years as she seems to have died about Year 34. Nefertari bore Ramesses’ first son, the Crown Prince Amenhirkhopshef, and at least three other sons and two daughters. Istnofret bore a son named Ramesses, plus two other important sons, Khaemwaset and Merneptah. Khaemwaset later become famous as a ‘magician’, and is often referred to today as the first archaeologists thanks to his interest in ancient monuments and their restoration. The 5th Dynasty pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, for example, bears his inscription high up on the south face.
Following royal custom, Ramesses took many of his other and subsequent wives from his immediate family. They include Henutmire, his younger sister, and three of his daughter: Meryetamun, Bint-Anath and Nebettawy. After peace had been concluded with the Hittite, Ramesses cemented the new alliance by taking a Hittite princess as his bride, given the Egyptian name Maathorneferure. Seven years later, in 1239BC, a second Hittite princess joined the court. In his old age, Ramesses’ harem was nothing if not cosmopolitan, numbering another Hittite princess together with Syrians and Babylonian royal ladies.
In Year 67 Ramesses II, perhaps 92 years of age, was called to the west to join the gods. His tomb had long been prepared in the Valley of the Kings, and was a large, if not larger than area, than that of his father Seti I, although not so well decorated. Now it is much damaged and virtually inaccessible. The splendour of the contents of the tomb must have been incredible, if only by comparison with that of the tomb of the short-lived Tutankhamun. Few items, however, survive that can be associated with the burial: a wooden statuette of the king, four pseudo-canopic jars (Louvre), the upper half of a hollow-cast, flattened bronze ushabti, and two large wooden ushabtis. The mummy of Ramesses was found in the great cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahari in 1881. a docket written in hieratic on the coffin in which it lay recorded that the body was moved in Year 15 of Smendes from its previous resting place to the tomb of his father, Seti I, whence it was taken to its last secret hiding place. In 1976 the mummy was flown to Paris where a great Ramesses II exhibition was staged.
Deterioration had been notice on tha body and the journey was also for Ramesses to receive the best conservation treatment available. The mummy was examined by xero-radiography which revealed that Ramesses’ distinctly aquiline nose had retained its shape because the ancient embalmers had packed it full of peppercorns. As befitted visiting royalty, although he had been dead for nearly 3200 years, Ramesses was greeted at the Paris airport by a full Presidential Guard of Honour.
