The structure of ancient Egyptian society mirrored its most distinctive monuments: at the apex of the pyramid was the semi-divine king, at the base was the majority of the population; in between were the various ranks of the administration, ranging from the humble functionary to the highest officials of the land. Within this social pyramid, and especially among its intensely hierarchical upper echelons, nuances of status were all important. They were carefully and deliberately expressed by various means, not least an individual’s titles and dignities. The royal court of the 18th Dynasty seems to have been particularly obsessed with such advertisements. New epithets were invented purely to denote rank rather than office. Officials collected titles like badges, to display their success and importance to their peers. Qenamun, royal steward during the reign of Amenhotep II, took this practice to its logical, though ridiculous, extreme.
During his career he held over eighty different titles and epithets, although few of them signified real office. Instead, most stressed his virtues and his connections at court: member of the elite and high official, Royal Seal-Bearer, confidential companion, dearly beloved companion, Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Fan-bearer of the Lord of the Two Lands, Royal Scribe, aide to the king, Attaché of the King in Every Place, Overseer of the Treasure House, Overseer of the Two Gold Houses, sem-priest, God’s Father, Captain of Bowmen, Head of the Stables, Overseer of the Cattle of Amun, Overseer of Fields, Overseer of the Treasury, Overseer of the Storehouse of Amun, Overseer of the Doorkeepers of the Granaries of Amun… the list is almost endless. One of Qenamun’s titles seems to sum up the general principle: Overseer of All Kinds of Work.
That he was obsessed with rank and status is scarcely surprising, given his upbringing. Qenamun’s mother, Amenemopet, had been a palace nurse – ‘the great nurse who brought up the god’ – and he would therefore have been raised in the company of the royal children, as a foster-brother of the future king Amenhotep II. Loyalty to the sovereign would have been inculcated in Qenamun from an early age, and he revelled in being the monarch’s most ardent supporter, describing himself as ‘doing right by the Lord of the Two Lands’, ‘being loyal to his benefactor’, ‘giving satisfaction to the sovereign’, ‘inspiring the king with perfect confidence’, and being ‘heartily appreciated by Horus’. More than a streak of vanity, pomposity and self-righteousness shines through these ever-more-elaborate formulations.
Qenamun’s actual job was a little more prosaic. He followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming steward of an estate, in his case Perunefer, a country residence used for relaxation by senior members of the royal family. The business of running the estate was punctuated by entertainments of various kinds: troupes of dancing girls, musicians, and the presentation of New Year’s gifts to the king. This last was one of the highlights of the year, recorded in lavish detail in Qenamun’s tomb.
As a childhood companion of the king and now a trusted royal official, Qenamun was ever at his sovereign’s side. He claimed to have accompanied Amenhotep II on his journeys ‘through vile Syria, without deserting the Lord of the Two Lands in battle, in the hour of repulsing the hordes’. With his position at Perunefer, Qenamun was ideally placed to pick up any gossip at court, and in particular any murmurings against the king. His role as steward thus gave him the perfect cover for his undercover operations as Master of Secrets, the head of the king’s internal security apparatus. He boasted of being ‘the eyes of the King of Upper Egypt, the ears of the King of Lower Egypt’. It was Qenamun’s job to be aware of everything, and to report it to his master: ‘when the King is in his palace, he is his eyes.’
This behind-the-scenes power evidently appealed to Qenamun’s temperament, and fuelled still further his egotism. Granted permission for a tomb in the Theban necropolis, he employed the best artists of the day and made sure that the tomb-chapel was designed to provide as much wall space as possible. In pictures and words, Qenamun was determined to trumpet his achievements to posterity. His bragging reached new heights, as he lauded himself with ever more grandiloquence: ‘chief companion of the courtiers, overseer of overseers, leader of leaders, greatest of the great, regent of the whole land’; and, last but not least, ‘one who, if he gives attention to anything in the evening, it is mastered early in the morning at daybreak.’ Yet there are signs in the tomb that this rampant self-promotion, coupled with his work in undercover surveillance, made Qenamun more enemies than friends at court. Many of his images and the writings of his name were deliberately effaced after his death. In ancient Egypt, although advancement was the reward of ultra-loyalty, it was not wise to get above one’s station.
50 | Nakht
H
UMBLE OWNER OF A BEAUTIFUL TOMB
The Tombs of the Nobles at Thebes are one of the great glories of ancient Egypt. The men (women are notable by their absence) for whom they were built represent a ‘who’s who’ of pharaonic society during the New Kingdom. Yet, among the highly decorated sepulchres of viziers, high priests and mayors, there is a small tomb, numbered 52 by modern archaeologists, which was built for a man from the lower ranks of the bureaucracy during the reign of Thutmose IV. Indeed, so lowly was its owner, Nakht, that he had no titles: a striking absence in a society where titles were everything.
It is not even clear why Nakht was able to procure himself a tomb – albeit a modest one – in an area otherwise dominated by impressive funerary monuments. Other than his own burial, he left no trace, made no impact on wider Theban society. In the scanty texts inscribed on its walls, he is referred to simply as a serving-priest of Amun, in other words one of the members of the temple staff at Karnak who, on a rota basis, performed menial, largely non-priestly, tasks. These would have included cleaning the temple precincts and delivering consecrated offerings to their final recipients. Nakht would have worked a fixed period of hours during the day or night, and his temple duties were probably in addition to his (unknown) ‘day job’. Like many of his contemporaries, he would probably have considered it an honour to be summoned to perform a period of service in the greatest of Thebes’ many temples.
His wife Tawy also had a role in the cult of Amun, as a chantress. Again, this was probably a part-time role performed by local women. Husband and wife would thus have shared, in a modest way, in the great religious rites and festivals that dominated the Theban calendar. One of the most popular of these was the annual Beautiful Festival of the Valley, an occasion for popular participation when Thebans visited the tombs of their deceased relatives for a special meal, often accompanied by music or dancing. Nakht and Tawy hoped that their son, Amenemopet, would do likewise for them after their deaths. In the meantime, they evidently took pleasure in their small household, made complete by a pet cat which from time to time would sit under Tawy’s chair eating a fish.
Nakht’s chief fame rests, not with his achievements as husband, father or part-time priest, but with his tomb itself. Although small, it is decorated with finely executed and lively paintings which, rarely for an ancient Egyptian monument, can be attributed to a single artist. The master painter, who used an almost impressionistic style in some scenes, remains nameless, but it is likely that he was a friend of Nakht’s. His work has endured over thirty centuries, bringing unexpected fame to an otherwise faceless functionary, one of the multitude of lowly workers whose unsung dedication built and sustained ancient Egyptian civilization.
51 | Sennefer
M
AYOR OF
T
HEBES
The idealizing image preserved in ancient Egyptian art is almost certainly as false as it is alluring. It is only through the less formal written record of private correspondence that we can catch glimpses of the unvarnished reality. A case in point is Sennefer, Mayor of Thebes in the reign of Amenhotep II.
He had all the attributes of a successful bureaucrat. First, he was fortunate in his relatives. His father had been steward to the God’s Wife of Amun, and his brother had risen even further, becoming Vizier. With such useful connections, it was only to be expected that Sennefer, too, would achieve high office. He served as Overseer of Priests of the God’s Wife, steward of the temple of Amenhotep I and Festival Leader of Thutmose I, before being promoted to the mayoralty. This gave him civic responsibility for one of the great cities of Egypt and oversight of the Amun cult’s cattle, double-granary and timber plantation.
Second, Sennefer was surrounded by a loyal and loving family. He was married twice, to a royal wet-nurse named Senay and a chantress of Amun named Merit. Third, he enjoyed royal favour as ‘one who satisfies the heart of the king’, and could boast that he had ‘reached old age in the praise of the Lord of the Two Lands’. This patronage manifested itself in concrete terms. Sennefer was granted the privilege of a Theban tomb, famous for the ceiling of its burial-chamber, which is covered with a representation of a vine, laden with pendant bunches of black grapes. He may have been responsible for the vineyards of Amun, or perhaps he was just a wine connoisseur and bon viveur, ‘the mayor who spends his time in happiness’. The pillars of the tomb, a feature found in royal sepulchres of the same period, also suggest an owner who aspired to the very best. Indeed, Sennefer may even have usurped a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, originally intended for Hatshepsut, for himself and his family.
Another impressive mark of the king’s esteem was being granted permission to have a granite pair-statue of himself and his wife Senay placed in Karnak temple, where it might receive offerings from worshippers. The statue showed the couple at the height of their prosperity: Senay wearing a formal dress and a huge wig, Sennefer adorned with the gold of honour, the rolls of fat around his torso demonstrating his wealth. He also sported his most treasured possession, an amulet in the shape of two hearts conjoined, inscribed with the throne name of Amenhotep II.
The pair-statue was evidently well used by visitors to Karnak, and the lap was worn away by the repeated presentation of offerings. Unusually, the piece was signed by the sculptors who made it, Amenmes and Djedkhonsu, ‘outline draughtsmen of the temple of Amun’. In this small detail, the two worlds of a high official are revealed: the public reputation and the private relationships. Sennefer seems to have used his contacts within Karnak temple to procure the services of skilled craftsmen for his own personal project. Such arrangements must have happened all the time, but are rarely attested in the written record.
The final piece of evidence for Sennefer’s life and character is an even more remarkable survival: a sealed and unopened letter addressed to a tenant-farmer named Baki who worked in the town of Hu (ancient Hut-sekhem). In the correspondence, Sennefer announced that he was due to arrive in Hu in three days’ time, and ordered Baki to have supplies ready. The tone of the letter is both imperious and hectoring. Sennefer warned Baki: ‘Do not let me find fault with you concerning your post’, and admonished him again a few sentences later: ‘Now mind, you shall not slack, for I know that you are sluggish and fond of eating lying down.’ Baki may, of course, have been particularly lazy or inept, but it is equally possible – and perhaps more likely – that this was the way Sennefer addressed all his subordinates. Egyptian officials were not always as perfect as their tomb reliefs and statues tried to suggest.
52 | Amenhotep III
R
ULER OF A GOLDEN AGE
The conquests of the early 18th Dynasty created an Egyptian empire in the Near East and Nubia, stretching ‘from Karoy [el-Kurru, near the Fourth Cataract] in the south to Naharin [the Kingdom of Mitanni, beyond the Euphrates] in the north’. Egypt prospered from this huge hinterland as exotic and valuable goods flowed into the treasury and royal workshops. Control of the Nubian deserts gave the pharaohs access to unparalleled quantities of gold, promoting trade and increasing national prosperity still further. The late 18th Dynasty was, therefore, quite literally a ‘golden age’ of power and prestige. Its zenith coincided with the reign of a king who consciously surrounded himself with gleaming objects as a metaphor for the brilliance of the sun: Amenhotep III.
He was born around 1403 bc, late in the reign of his grandfather Amenhotep II, after whom he was named. The boy was given the additional epithet mer-khepesh, ‘he who loves strength’; however, the strength of his reign was to be economic rather than military. When Amenhotep was only about two years old, his father acceded to the throne as Thutmose IV. The young prince probably grew up in the royal nursery within the harem palace at Gurob, on the edge of the Fayum. Here, he would have come to appreciate the lavish decoration and furnishings that were to be an abiding passion for the rest of his life.
When he was still a boy, Amenhotep suffered the loss of his older brother, Amenemhat. Not only must this have been a devastating personal bereavement, it also changed Amenhotep’s life forever, since he was now his father’s eldest surviving son and heir. By way of an induction into his new office, the Crown Prince was taken by his father on campaign in Nubia, to experience the military role of kingship at first hand. Amenhotep seems not to have taken to army life: with a single exception (a minor skirmish in Nubia), his reign of thirty-seven years would be devoid of campaigns, in stark contrast to the frequent battles waged by his predecessors.
His preparation for the throne was all too brief. At the tender age of about twelve, he became king in succession to his father. The mix of emotions must have been compounded by the untimely death, in the same year, of his sister Tentamun. The young Amenhotep had to perform the burial rites for both a father and a sister; this was followed soon afterwards by his coronation at Memphis (ancient Ineb-hedj). To complete a momentous year, Amenhotep issued a commemorative scarab announcing his marriage to the lady Tiye (no. 53), the woman who was to be his constant companion throughout his reign.
At first, affairs of state were handled by Amenhotep’s mother, Mutemwia, in her capacity as regent. Amenhotep himself set about demonstrating his virility, in preparation for assuming the reins of power as soon as he reached adolescence. To this end, in the second year of his reign, he took part in a staged bull-hunt in the Wadi Natrun. In a single day’s hunting, he claimed to have killed fifty-six bulls out of a total of 170 slaughtered by the royal party. After resting his horses for four days, he rode out again and killed another forty, commemorating the whole event on another set of specially issued scarabs. Kingship required not just brute strength and mastery of the untamed forces of nature, but also concrete expressions to impress the people and propitiate the gods: temples. So Amenhotep set his architects and builders to work on a series of projects, from a small temple to the vulture-goddess Nekhbet at Elkab (ancient Nekheb) to a limestone shrine at Heliopolis (ancient Iunu). Work was begun on a tenth pylon in the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, and on Amenhotep’s royal tomb in the isolated western branch of the Valley of the Kings.
The pace of building increased with the appointment of Amenhotep son of Hapu (no. 55) to the ministry of works, and the king also took steps to tighten his grip on the powerful priesthoods, appointing his brother-in-law Anen as Second Prophet of Amun in Thebes and Chief of Seers (High Priest of Ra) at Heliopolis. With the wealth of the great temples at his disposal, Amenhotep could lavish ever greater resources on his building projects, magnificent statuary, and the dedication of new cult images.
In the tenth year of his reign he issued a further commemorative scarab to record the number of lions (102) he had killed during his first decade on the throne, and, in the same breath, to note his diplomatic marriage to princess Gilukhepa, daughter of Shuttarna II, king of Mitanni. The lady arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women. She was not Amenhotep’s only foreign wife. He also married two unnamed Babylonian princesses; the daughter of the king of Arzawa; and princess Tadukhepa, the daughter of Tushratta, Shuttarna II’s successor as king of Mitanni.
Despite such a collection of consorts, it was Amenhotep III’s first wife, Tiye, who remained undisputed favourite, and the most influential woman at his court. Her position is reflected in the fifth and final commemorative scarab issued by the king, to mark the excavation of a ceremonial lake for Tiye in her town of Djarukha (perhaps her birth-place, Akhmim). It measured 3,700 by 700 cubits (1,938 x 367 m; 6,358 x 1,204 ft), and the lavish opening ceremony involved the king and queen being rowed on it in the royal barge ‘The Aten Gleams’. This name reflected the increasing focus on solar worship under Amenhotep III: his palace at Thebes was called ‘Splendour of the Aten’, while one of his favourite epithets which he applied to himself was Aten-tjehen, ‘dazzling Aten’. This fixation on the visible disc of the daytime sun as a metaphor for kingship was to be the defining characteristic of his son’s reign.
After more than two decades on the throne, Amenhotep’s thoughts turned to the royal succession, and he appointed his eldest son, Crown Prince Thutmose, to the High Priesthood of Ptah in the capital city of Memphis. Father and son officiated together at the funeral and burial of the Apis bull. Back in Thebes, the king inaugurated work on one of his most significant projects to date, a temple at southern Ipet (Luxor). This bold new edifice, aligned towards Karnak rather than the river, was designed to serve as the backdrop for the annual Opet Festival at which the king communed in secret with the supreme god Amun-Ra, being rejuvenated by the experience and emerging to popular acclaim as ‘Foremost of all the living kas’. The implicit deification of the living king was made rather more explicit in the decoration of one of the inner chambers, which described Amenhotep’s birth as having arisen from a union of his mother and the god Amun. Shortly after work began at Luxor, tragedy struck when Crown Prince Thutmose died; his place as heir was taken by his younger brother, who was to carry Amenhotep’s glorification of the monarchy to its extreme.
The king’s thirtieth anniversary jubilee was an occasion for national rejoicing. The festivities were overseen by the trusted official, Amenhotep son of Hapu, and took place at Thebes, which from now on was the court’s permanent home. At the climax of the celebrations, the king, his mother Mutemwia, his consort Tiye and his daughter Sitamun, newly elevated to the rank of ‘King’s Great Wife’, sailed together across an artificial harbour in a dazzling golden bark. The solar imagery could not have been more explicit, with the three generations of royal women symbolizing the goddess Hathor’s roles as mother, wife and daughter of Ra. Two further jubilee festivals followed, in the king’s thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth years on the throne; at the latter celebrations, Amenhotep appeared covered from head to toe in gold jewelry. But no amount of formal association with the sun god could change his inescapable mortality. After a reign of thirty-seven years, Amenhotep III died, aged about fifty. Egypt’s dazzling sun had finally set.
53 | Tiye
Q
UEEN WITH AN INTEREST IN POWER
