The remaining years of the 20th Dynasty following the death of Ramesses III were characterized by a swift succession of kings, as one heir after another succumbed after only a few years on the throne. Yet alongside and in contrast to this unsettling transience in the office of kingship, Egypt witnessed some remarkably lengthy and stable careers among the upper echelons of the administration. It was as if the mantle of national continuity had passed from the pharaoh to his high officials. One such man was the High Priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht.
Unusually for someone who was to become head of the all-powerful Amun priesthood, Ramessesnakht was not a Theban by birth. His family came from Hermopolis (ancient Khemnu) in Middle Egypt, where his father, Meribast, held a raft of important local offices. Ramessesnakht married a woman named Adjitsherit and started a family, before finally attaining high office in his thirties or forties, when he was promoted by Ramesses IV to the office of High Priest of Amun. The new king thereby signalled his independence, presumably passing over other, Theban candidates (who might have expected promotion) in favour of a talented outsider. Ramessesnakht swiftly assumed responsibility for matters far beyond his primary religious duties. In the third year of Ramesses IV’s reign, he was put in charge of an expedition to the siltstone-quarries of the Wadi Hammamat. With 9,000 men, it was the biggest such expedition since the reign of Senusret I in the early 12th Dynasty.
Just a few years later Ramesses IV was dead. For the next two decades, kings came and went; but Ramessesnakht continued in post. In a term of office lasting at least twenty-seven years, he served under six monarchs, from Ramesses IV to Ramesses IX. He also succeeded in making his family’s control of the High Priesthood unassailable: first one son (Nesamun) then another (Amenhotep) succeeded him in that office, while his daughter Aatnmeret married another senior cleric. When Ramessesnakht died, in his late sixties or seventies, he had achieved everything dreamt of by an ancient Egyptian official: a lifetime of service to the king (or, in his case, six); a goodly burial in the west (in his case, a fine tomb in the Theban necropolis); and, best of all, the inauguration of his own, family dynasty.
80 | Naunakht
W
OMAN WHO DISINHERITED HER UNGRATEFUL CHILDREN
Despite the relatively low profile of women in the official record of ancient Egypt, they enjoyed far greater equality in social and legal matters than their counterparts in other civilizations of the ancient world. Indeed, the position of women in many modern states has not yet reached the same level of equality as in ancient Egypt. The legal status of women was on an equal footing with that of men – if they wished, wives could testify against their husbands – and they maintained control of their own property, even after marrying. Women were also free to dispose of their wealth as they wished. The best and most famous example of an ancient Egyptian woman doing exactly this is contained in the last will and testament of Naunakht, an inhabitant of Thebes in the late Ramesside Period.
Naunakht was a woman of modest means. She held no particular rank, describing herself simply as ‘a free woman’, although she may occasionally have served as a songstress of Amun in the temple of Karnak. Her first husband was a scribe named Qenhirkhepeshef. He had been involved in work on the royal tombs, and was probably therefore a man of means. It may thus have been a marriage motivated by financial considerations rather than a love-match. Certainly, it seems to have produced no offspring. Naunakht’s second marriage, to a servant in the Place of Truth named Khaemnun, was altogether more fruitful. They had eight children, four boys and four girls.
To be blessed with many children was the ancient Egyptian ideal, for in a society without social security, the next generation offered the only means of being looked after in old age. But some of Naunakht’s offspring did not exactly live up to their mother’s, or society’s, expectations. The unvarnished details are all contained in Naunakht’s will, declared before a court and recorded in writing on the fifth day of the fourth month of the season of inundation in the third year of the reign of Ramesses V – around November 1147 BC. The court comprised fourteen individuals, varying in rank from humble workmen to district officers. Naunakht was about to disinherit three of her children, and she did not mince her words:
‘I brought up these eight servants of yours… But see, I am grown old, and see, they are not looking after me in my turn.’
The trade-off was simple:
‘Whoever of them has aided me, to him I will give of my property; he who has not given to me, to him I will not give of my property.’
The losers were Naunakht’s two daughters, Wosnakht and Manenakht. While they could not be prevented from inheriting the two-thirds of the matrimonial property that under law belonged to the husband (Khaemnun), they could, and would, be excluded from any part of Naunakht’s share:
‘They shall not participate in the division of my one-third.’
In a similar vein, one of Naunakht’s sons, Neferhotep, was cut out of the will because he had already received more than his fair share in the form of copper vessels, which he had squandered. By contrast, his brother Qenhirkhepeshef was singled out for special favour ‘over and above his fellows’, receiving not only his one-fifth share of Naunakht’s estate but also her single most valuable asset, a bronze washing-bowl.
A year or two after the testament was made verbally and in writing, the whole family – Khaemnun and the eight children – had to suffer the indignity of appearing before a second legal hearing to confirm that they were content with, and would respect, the terms of the will. Even though none of Naunakht’s possessions was worth very much, being mostly pieces of furniture and kitchen utensils, the rebuke to her wayward daughters must have been keenly felt. They had learned the hard way what could be expected by the ungrateful children of a woman who knew her own mind.
81 | Thutmose
C
ORRESPONDENT IN A TIME OF TROUBLE
Literacy was restricted to a tiny minority in ancient Egypt. Although quite a few people would have been able to recognize some common hieroglyphs, no more than five to ten per cent of the population could read and write proficiently. These skills, acquired through rigorous, sometimes laborious training at a scribal school, brought with them the possibility of a career in government. But on a more mundane level, literacy also conferred the ability to communicate with friends and family. Those Egyptians who could read and write seem to have been enthusiastic correspondents, concerning themselves with the usual range of weighty and trivial subjects. These are well illustrated in the letters of Thutmose, penned at the very end of the New Kingdom.
Thutmose was a scribe by profession, attached to the Theban necropolis during the second half of the reign of Ramesses XI. Thutmose’s official title was ‘scribe of the great and noble necropolis of millions of years of pharaoh (life, prosperity, health)’, a post he held for at least sixteen years, and his duties included supervising the records of taxation of cereal farming. He lived in western Thebes but travelled to other parts of the country on business. One such trip took him to Middle Egypt, from where he sent numerous letters back home, to check on the state of his affairs and the health of his relatives, especially his mother Tanet-tabekhen and his brother Paykamun.
However, it was a much longer journey away from Thebes, in altogether more trying circumstances, that gave Thutmose the opportunity for his most extensive correspondence. In the tenth year of the ‘Renaissance’ (the official designation given to the last third of Ramesses XI’s reign), Thutmose was conscripted for duty in the Egyptian army. The reason was a rebellion led by the disgraced Viceroy of Kush, Panehsy (no. 82). Leading the counter-attack on behalf of the government forces was the general Paiankh. Thutmose first travelled south to Edfu where he was met by Paiankh’s men; he was then escorted to Abu (Elephantine), the traditional launching point for military expeditions against Nubia.
Once the campaign began, Thutmose found himself in an unaccustomed role, surrounded by people he did not know, in an alien land. His letters to his son Butehamun, at home in Thebes, spoke eloquently of his homesickness and increasing despair.
‘Please tell Amun and the gods of the temple to bring me back alive from the enemy’ he wrote to Butehamun; and, on another occasion, ‘I tell Horus of Kubban, Horus of Aniba [both Nubian gods] and Atum, the lord of the earth, to give you life, prosperity, health; a long lifetime, and a good ripe old age; and to let Amun of the Thrones of the Two Lands, my good lord, bring me back alive from… the place where I am abandoned in this far-off land, and let me fill my embrace with you.’
Thutmose wrote in similar vein to one of his friends, the guardian Kar:
‘Tell Amun to bring me back sound from [this] hell-hole, the place where I am abandoned.’
At other times, however, Thutmose’s thoughts turned from his own situation to more down-to-earth matters concerning his household and business. He urged his son to look after members of the extended family. He also advised Butehamun not to neglect the cultivation of grain and the planting of vegetables. Of critical importance were the arrangements for the transport of the harvested grain, for if these were not properly made, the crop risked being lost and the family would face food shortages. Butehamun wrote to assure his father that donkeys had been readied for transporting grain; but he then evidently lost interest in the matter and went off on a tangent, detailing some of the minutiae of daily life back home. We can sense the father’s exasperation in a subsequent letter to his son, giving the clearest of instructions:
‘As soon as this water floods, you shall receive this transport boat which I have sent to you and give it to the fishermen and the Medjay (police) [to transport grain].’
Thutmose also knew from experience that management of the family’s affairs required the maintenance of good discipline where contracted workmen were concerned. Keen that nothing should go awry during his absence, he wrote to Butehamun:
‘Take care to reprimand any man who has quarrelled with another’. If matters got out of control, the Medjay could always be called upon, and Thutmose was evidently on good terms with at least two officers, Kas and Hadnakht. The reference in one letter to a Sherden (foreign mercenary) called Hori illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of Theban society in the late New Kingdom.
Thutmose the disciplinarian also had a gentler side. In one of his letters home, he told Butehamun to look after the children and other family members, the conscript soldiers, the labourers in the fields and house guests. Thutmose’s concern for his neighbours was obviously reciprocated, since some of his friends wrote back to him saying ‘You are the one we wish to see’. Butehamun and some of Thutmose’s friends were concerned enough about his condition to write to the general Paiankh in grovelling terms.
Thutmose could not push the uncertainties of his situation to the back of his mind for long, and in his letters home he soon returned to his own plight. The campaigning in Nubia had taken its toll on his health and he asked his son to help by making a libation to the god of Thebes:
‘You shall take water to Amun of the thrones of the Two Lands and tell him to save [me]… Tell Amun to remove the illness which is in me.’
The prayer was answered, for Thutmose later wrote that extra rations of bread, and especially beer, had made him well again. A popular member of the community whose family and business affairs occupied his thoughts while far from home, the scribe Thutmose presents a strangely familiar picture.
82 | Panehsy
S
TRONGMAN WHO CHALLENGED ROYAL POWER
Early in the second decade of Ramesses XI’s reign, Thebes was racked by unrest and civil strife. Egypt’s most important religious centre, the power-base of the Amun priesthood, was in upheaval. Pressures came from many sources. Disastrous harvests had caused a severe famine, which contemporary sources referred to – obliquely, yet graphically – as ‘the year of the hyenas’. Gangs of marauding Libyans were attacking the city of Thebes with virtual impunity. Tombs and temples on the west bank were subject to unprecedented levels of robbery, adding to the heightened sense of insecurity and crisis. As Theban society began to crumble, the king was in his Delta residence of Per-Ramesses: at a safe distance yet dangerously remote from events. With the High Priest of Amun, Amenhotep (son of Ramessesnakht, no. 79), seemingly powerless to act, a decisive leader was needed to restore order. That man was Panehsy, Viceroy of Kush.
As the king’s representative in Nubia and Overseer of the Southern Countries, Panehsy had two major and immediate advantages: financial resources (derived from Nubia’s famed gold reserves) and military forces (the Viceroy controlled a string of fortresses and garrisons that stretched from the First Cataract southwards into Upper Nubia). Panehsy’s military role was reflected in his subsidiary titles – Overseer of the Army, Royal Scribe of the Army, and Foremost of the Troops of Pharaoh. Probably at the king’s command, Panehsy and his army arrived in Thebes to put an end to the violence and looting. He was faced with the immediate problem of how to feed his soldiers. The city was in economic crisis, and the only major stocks of grain were held by the Amun priesthood. Panehsy acted decisively by assuming (or usurping) the important office of Overseer of Granaries, in order to gain access to these crucial supplies. Although this was a necessary step in the circumstances, it nevertheless put him in direct conflict with the High Priest, Amenhotep.
The two most powerful men in the country – one military, the other religious, both with economic and political muscle – now faced off against each other for ultimate authority. True to his military instincts, Panehsy besieged Amenhotep in his fortified temple compound at Medinet Habu (ancient Djeme). The High Priest appealed to the king for help and Ramesses, his authority weakened by recent events, perhaps felt he had no alternative but to yield to the interests of the Amun priesthood. Egypt stood on the brink of civil war.
