The world around the old.., p.27
The World around the Old Testament, page 27
With the expulsion of the Hyksos, Ahmose accomplished the religious and political reunification of Egypt after a century of division. In doing so, he inaugurated the New Kingdom and established his Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295) as the longest and most prosperous in Egyptian history. Ahmose’s success against the Hyksos was matched by similar success in gold-laden Nubia. Through the military ventures of Ahmose and his son Amenhotep I (1525–1504), who succeeded him as king, the Nubians came firmly under Egyptian control and would remain so for generations. With unrivaled supremacy along the Nile, the early Eighteenth Dynasty kings had positioned Egypt to accrue great power and wealth over the ensuing centuries.
Most of the subsequent kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty continued the policies of imperial expansion through extensive use of military force.7 Thutmose I (1504–1492) began his reign by consolidating Egyptian control beyond the third cataract of the Nile. To illustrate his unshakable foothold in Nubia, he sailed back to Thebes from a campaign with a defeated Nubian bowman hanging upside down from the bow of his ship. Such displays effectively conveyed his dominion. Encouraged by his successes and in search of still more, Thutmose sought to extend Egyptian influence into the Levant beyond that which existed during the Hyksos period. Though he probably met stiff resistance from Mittani, a powerful kingdom of northern Mesopotamia whose sphere of influence extended well into Syria, Thutmose ventured as far as Niy on the Orontes River, where he claimed to have hunted elephants. Had he achieved decisive victory over Mittani, he would certainly have celebrated it in his royal annals. The conquest of Syrian elephants was as much as he could claim. Though these campaigns brought less convincing results than those in Nubia, Thutmose’s presence in Syria laid the foundation for the activities of later Eighteenth Dynasty kings in the region.
After a coregency with his aunt and stepmother, Hatshepsut (1473–1458), Thutmose III (1479–1425) assumed an even more adventuresome posture toward Syria-Palestine than that of his grandfather, Thutmose I.8 His seventeen years of campaigning in the Levant achieved unprecedented victories. By conquering critically important fortified cities—especially Megiddo, through a chariot battle and an extended siege—he secured lucrative trade routes through Syria and brought extraordinary wealth into Egypt.
Amenhotep II (1427–1400), famous for his athleticism, continued his father’s Levantine victories. Two campaigns in Syria-Palestine brought back huge amounts of plunder as well as gruesome evidence of Egyptian military supremacy. The royal barge returning up the Nile from the first campaign carried the corpses of seven defeated chiefs hanging upside down for display in Thebes. One of these unfortunate chiefs traveled as far as Napata. This dead Asiatic in Nubia vividly represented the power and reach of the Egyptian Empire.
The spoils of war and the steady flow of tribute from the peripheral regions of the empire further enriched the Eighteenth Dynasty kings. Thutmose IV (1400–1390) and especially Amenhotep III (1390–1352) sought to secure Egypt’s position of power within the Near East more often through treaties and diplomatic marriages than through military campaigns. Though Egyptian princesses were not sent abroad in these diplomatic marriages, the Egyptian kings increasingly married foreign princesses.
Steadily, the perception of foreigners was changing. Ahmose had portrayed the Hyksos as the forces of chaos personified and thus to be destroyed at all costs. Yet in the latter Eighteenth Dynasty, foreigners were increasingly seen as exotic and benign, though certainly inferior and largely under the control of the king. As for the great rulers of Assyria, Babylonia, Hatti, and Mittani, written materials suggest that—at least for the purposes of diplomacy—they belonged to the same noble family of the Egyptian king. With their relationships reinforced by diplomatic marriages, the great kings were the brothers of the pharaoh.
Most of the rulers of Syria-Palestine did not enjoy this sort of relationship, however. They were instead firmly under Egyptian control by the time of the long reign of Amenhotep III, which marked the apogee of Egyptian prosperity and influence in the Near East. In fact, it is difficult to determine the exact nature of the Egyptian “influence” at this time. There is not enough evidence to know precisely how Egypt segmented the provinces of the Levant. It is also unclear whether Egypt maintained a permanent military presence there, and if so, precisely where and for how long. More certain, however, is that the children of Syro-Palestinian nobles were often forcibly deported to Egypt, acculturated, and then returned to their regions to reinforce the empire’s control of the city-states from within. Despite the uncertainty about the precise means of influence, Egyptian artifacts appear virtually everywhere throughout Syria-Palestine during this period. Moreover, the prevalence of Egyptian-style (or Egyptianizing) artifacts produced by local craftsmen from Ugarit to southern Palestine reflects a widespread emulation of Egyptian religion, culture, and art.
The famous cache of 350 cuneiform letters found at el-Amarna, ancient Akhetaten, also attests the dynamics of the relationship between the smaller city-states and Egypt during the latter years of Amenhotep III and the early reign of his son and successor Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten (1352–1336). In addition to correspondence between Egypt and the great powers of Assyria, Babylonia, Hatti, and Mittani, the cache contains numerous letters from the vassal-kings of Syria-Palestine. The tenor of these letters is markedly different from the correspondence with the great powers. Seeking various forms of economic and military assistance, the vassal-kings were doing their best to exploit the pharaoh’s power to their own advantage. Invariably, they did so by assuming a posture of utter humility before and dependence on Egypt.
These letters also witness the remarkable religious and political changes that were underway in Egypt. The minor kings employed a common series of epithets in their opening addresses: “To the king, my lord, my sun.”9 This latter title, particularly, reflects a steadily increasing solar aspect of the royal cult and ideology that began with Amenhotep II and reached a climax during the reign of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten. Throughout the Eighteenth Dynasty, the main Theban god, Amun, had been increasingly associated with the sun god Re and eventually became known in a combined form as the chief god Amun-Re. During the reign of Amenhotep III, the cults of more and more deities likewise became solarized.
Figure 5.3. Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three of their daughters beneath the rays of the Aten (Eighteenth Dynasty, 1352–1336; ÄM 14145) [Joel M. LeMon]
Soon after the installation of Amenhotep IV, the young king replaced the traditional sun god Amun-Re with an iconographically distinct form. The Aten, an orb with hands/rays extending downward from it in all directions, became the official representation of the sun god (fig. 5.3). Corresponding to the shift in religious terminology and iconography, Amenhotep IV disassociated himself and his administration from Amun and Thebes. He took on the name Akhenaten, meaning “he who acts effectively on behalf of the Aten,” and founded a new city in Middle Egypt, Akhetaten, meaning “Horizon of the Aten”—that is, the place where the Aten manifests itself (in the form of the king).
Not long after his move to Akhetaten, Akhenaten outlawed the veneration of Amun and all other gods. At the same time, he associated himself even more intimately with the sun god. With the sole god Aten as his father, Akhenaten was the direct manifestation of the sun and the world’s only mediator of the divine presence. Thus the religious reorganization of the so-called Amarna period corresponds to profound political centralization. The king himself replaced the panoply of Egyptian gods, so all political and religious power stemmed from and accrued to Akhenaten. As a religious and political system, Atenism was obsessed with unity, light, and power. It completely denied the reality of disunity, darkness, and death. And so the religious reforms of Akhenaten were destined to fail.
They began to fail, appropriately enough, with the death of Akhenaten. Uncertainties abound in this period, especially with regard to the identity of the succeeding king Neferneferuaten (1338–1336), who may have been Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti ruling as king under a new name. In any case, it is clear that the boy-king Tutankhaten (1336–1327), Akhenaten’s son, initiated a move back toward the old political and religious establishment. Since this program began so early in Tutankhaten’s reign, we should assume that his military general and coregent Horemheb guided and motivated all the activities. The coregents systematically reversed the reform program of Akhenaten by reestablishing the cults, dismantling the temples to the Aten, and moving the power of the state back to the traditional cities of Memphis and Thebes in Lower and Upper Egypt, respectively. A complete repudiation of the Amarna episode was underway. Accordingly, Tutankhaten (The Living Image of the Aten) changed his name to Tutankhamun (The Living Image of Amun).
While Egypt was undergoing these radical internal changes, the geopolitical situation did not remain static. When the great empire of Mittani fell to the Hittites (ca. 1370), Egypt’s relationship to the Near East began to change dramatically. The shift in power in northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia rendered worthless the long-standing treaties that Egypt had enjoyed with Mittani. Immediately, the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I (ca. 1400) began to exert pressure on northern Syria-Palestine, which had been within Egypt’s sphere of influence for most of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
In this context, Tutankhamun’s untimely and mysterious death had far-reaching implications. A move was underway in the royal court to secure a peace with the Hittites by offering Tutankhamun’s widow as the wife of a Hittite prince, who would then become king of Egypt. This version of diplomatic marriage had no precedent; Egyptian princes had married foreign princesses, but never vice versa. The political implications of Egypt in the role of the submissive partner in a sexual relationship would likely have struck many within the court as completely unacceptable. On a more practical level, the prospect of such a marriage threatened members of the king’s court who aspired to the throne themselves. While the betrothed Hittite prince was en route to Egypt to assume the role of king, someone murdered him. We do not know who the killer was, in part because so many had a strong motive. In any case, from that point forward the Hittites and the Egyptians assumed a posture of war, with the contested region of Syria-Palestine as their primary battleground.
General Horemheb clearly had the most to gain from the death of Tutankhamun and the Hittite prince, for he had officially secured rights to the throne if Tutankhamun died without an heir. He indeed became king after a short reign by Ay (1327–1323), an aged courtier of Tutankhamun and his father Akhenaten. Horemheb’s twenty-seven-year reign (1323–1295) continued the program of reversing the religious and political innovations of the Amarna period. In addition to maintaining an ambitious building program, the general-turned-king succeeded in holding off the Hittites from expanding their sphere of influence beyond Qadesh in northern Syria-Palestine.
The Ramesside Period (Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, 1295–1069)
Horemheb had not come to power through dynastic succession. And he, in turn, did not cede the throne to his offspring. Instead, he chose one of his trusted generals from Sile, a frontier town on the eastern side of the Delta. General Paramessu became known as Ramesses I at his enthronement. Though his rule lasted only one year (1295–1294), perhaps because of his advanced age, he reestablished the tradition of hereditary kingship. Since so many of his successors would assume his name, the remainder of the New Kingdom, the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, would be known as the Ramesside period.
Ramesses’s son Seti I (1294–1279) began a massive restoration program with the goal of bringing the great religious, political, and cultural institutions back from their Amarna nadir. This work also had a clear military component. While fighting off Libyan tribes invading from the west, Seti I continued to seize the material resources of Nubia to the south. He looked to complement these successes by extending Egyptian hegemony farther north and east in Syria-Palestine. Seti I wrested control of Qadesh from the Hittites, though only temporarily. When it reverted to Hittite control during the reign of his son Ramesses II, the stage was set for one of the most famous battles in Egyptian history.
A coregency of uncertain duration affirmed the hereditary succession from Seti I to Ramesses II (1279–1213). Within a few years of assuming kingship, Ramesses II sought to address his father’s unfinished business with the Hittites in northern Syria. In the famous battle of Qadesh (1274), the Hittite king Muwatalli repulsed Ramesses II’s attempts to take the city, with the battle ending in stalemate. In fact, a failure of intelligence left Ramesses II perilously exposed to an overwhelming Hittite force. It was only the arrival of a division of reinforcements at a pivotal moment in the battle that saved him from certain defeat. After Ramesses II’s retreat, as was common in ancient royal annals, the event was cast in the best possible light. In the official Egyptian account, Ramesses portrayed the battle as a victory in which the god Amun personally intervened to save him and rout the Hittites.
While the Egyptians never actually routed the Hittites, by the mid-thirteenth century the Assyrians under Shalmaneser I were threatening to do just that. In 1259, the Hittites and Egyptians perceived that joining forces was their best chance for confronting the emerging Assyrian Empire. Ramesses II confirmed the peace accord by taking a Hittite princess as a bride, a particularly fitting gesture since the Egyptian-Hittite animosity had begun with the murder of the betrothed Hittite prince three-quarters of a century earlier. This new peace accord brought security and renewed prosperity to Egypt thanks to extensive trade that moved through Syria-Palestine as well as through multiple seaports along the Mediterranean basin.
Ramesses II also revived the city of Avaris, the erstwhile Hyksos capital, renaming it Piramesse (the house of Ramesses). Situated as it was in the eastern Delta, this flourishing city had many West Semitic inhabitants, and a great degree of religious syncretism obtained there, with cultic sites for foreign deities like Baal, Resheph, and Astarte, among others. This is the region to be identified with the toponym Rameses/Raamses in the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 47:11; Exod. 1:11; 12:37; Num. 33:3, 5).
Ramesses’s spectacularly long reign—his twelve eldest sons predeceased him—gave way to that of his son Merenptah (1213–1203). Though Merenptah was not a young man, like his father and grandfather before him he felt compelled to prove his royal mettle with campaigns in Syria-Palestine. His victory stela from his fifth year commemorates his subduing the Palestinian cities of Ashekelon, Gezer, and Yenoam (see fig. 4.2, p. 142). Israel, too, appears in his list of conquests, though not as a city but rather as a group of people.
Merenptah was also forced to deal with the outcomes of the most significant human migration in the ancient Mediterranean world. An economic and environmental catastrophe in the latter twelfth century BCE (the details of which are not fully known) forced the so-called Sea Peoples to leave their homes in the Aegean and Anatolia and settle around the Mediterranean basin, including Syria-Palestine and northern Africa. The Sea Peoples who had landed in northern Africa then joined forces with the Libyans to attack the western Delta of the Nile with the aim of settling it for themselves. Merenptah met them in battle and defeated the army of invaders, who also brought along their families and possessions. After his triumph, Merenptah chose to resettle the survivors in the Delta. And so, in a manner of speaking, the Libyans and Sea Peoples actually achieved their ultimate goal. The migration came through defeat rather than victory.
There was no clear succession following Merenptah’s death in 1203. While the historical record is murky, it seems that his sons Seti II (1200–1194) and Amenmessu (1203–1200?) may have contended with each other for control of the entire Nile, ruling in Lower and Upper Egypt, respectively. Seti outlasted Amenmessu, for Seti’s only son Saptah finally ascended the throne (1194–1188). Born of a Syrian concubine and suffering from a crippling disease, the boy-king relied on his stepmother, Tausret, and her extraordinarily powerful courtier Bay, who was a Syrian. This outlander likely continued to play a pivotal role in the governance of Egypt during the brief rule of Tausret (1188–1186), who, like Hatshepsut (and possibly Nefertiti) before her, served as a female king.
Tausret’s death resulted in a general diffusion of political power. Some evidence suggests that Bay usurped the throne and initiated a series of religious and political changes that reflected his West Semitic heritage. Sethnakht, who ultimately deposed him, interpreted Bay’s actions as corrupt, alien, and contrary to the order on which Egyptian society had been built. Indeed, Sethnakht’s actions against the foreigner Bay recall those of Ahmose against the Hyksos at the dawn of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Like Ahmose, Sethnakht founded a dynasty, the Twentieth and last of the New Kingdom. His short reign (1186–1184) gave way to the long and tumultuous rule of Ramesses III (1184–1153).
Ramesses III faced numerous internal and external threats. He led two campaigns against the Libyans, who had continued to insinuate themselves deeper into the western Delta since the time of Merenptah. An even more serious threat came from the Sea Peoples, who had changed the face of the Mediterranean world through a series of astounding military feats along the coast of Anatolia and Syria-Palestine. Now they directly threatened Egypt, a final prize. However, Ramesses III had prepared well for their attack. He repelled marine forces in the Delta and, through the use of strong fortifications, held off a land offensive in southern Palestine. In doing so he preserved the integrity of the Egyptian homeland and virtually all of the Egyptian provinces in Syria-Palestine. His memorials to the victory include some of the most visually stunning reliefs in all of ancient Egyptian art (fig. 5.4). During his relatively long reign, he also weathered numerous internal conflicts, surviving an assassination attempt from within his own court and an extended work stoppage by his craftsmen at Deir el-Medina, who were responsible for most of the monumental construction in Upper Egypt.
