Panehsy was not a man to take a challenge lying down. He marched north to engage the king’s forces on their way from the royal residence. The Viceroy’s army reached the settlement of Hardai in Middle Egypt, and ransacked it. It was a fleeting moment of triumph. The king’s forces, under the command of an equally brilliant general, Paiankh, soon engaged Panehsy’s troops. The superior strength of the royal army quickly proved itself on the battlefield. To avoid a crushing defeat, Panehsy was forced to retreat southwards, eventually ceding control of Upper Egypt and returning to his original power-base in Nubia. For the next few years, he faced continued military attack by Egyptian armies. Yet, in the land he knew best, the Viceroy could outwit his opponents. To Paiankh’s frustration, Panehsy lived on in relative prosperity, eventually dying and being buried in Nubia.
In the course of a few turbulent years, his reputation had plummeted from national saviour to renegade. The twists and turns of his extraordinary career mirror the death-throes of imperial Egypt, as the Ramesside court, buffeted on all sides by unpredictable forces, faced its inevitable end.
83 | Herihor
G
REAT
O
VERSEER OF THE
A
RMY
The expulsion of Panehsy (no. 82) and his forces from Thebes by the General Paiankh marked a decisive new phase in the reign of Ramesses XI. Indeed, official documents proclaimed the beginning of a Renaissance, and for the next decade events were dated according to this era. But a rebirth of royal power was illusory. It was not Ramesses who had regained control of Thebes, but his general. Paiankh consolidated his power by adding the offices of Vizier and High Priest of Amun to his control of the army. Judicial, administrative, religious and military authority were now vested in a single individual. However, the process still had some way to run before it reached its logical conclusion: the man responsible for the ultimate act of lèse-majesté would be Paiankh’s successor, Herihor.
Herihor’s early life and career remain shrouded in mystery. Some of his children were given Libyan names, suggesting a possible Libyan ancestry. Prisoners of war from Egypt’s troublesome western neighbour had been settled in the Nile Valley since the early 19th Dynasty. They subsequently became assimilated and many of their descendants entered the Egyptian army, where their innate bravery found a suitable outlet. Herihor, too, is likely to have been an officer in the army before his meteoric rise to power as Paiankh’s successor. There were certainly family ties between the two men, and Herihor may well have been hand picked to take up Paiankh’s baton. He showed straight away his intention to carry forward the same policies, not least in the way he aggregated to himself ever greater honours and jurisdictions. Where Paiankh had been merely general, Herihor now took the title generalissimo (literally Great Overseer of the Army). This he held in tandem with the vizierate and the High Priesthood of Amun. It was perhaps predictable, therefore, that when, in due course, Ramesses XI died, Herihor would take the ultimate step of proclaiming himself king.
His kingship is by no means universally attested. Its principal monument is the Temple of Khonsu inside the great enclosure of Amun-Ra at Karnak. As High Priest, Herihor had control over everything that happened inside Karnak; perhaps it was only here that his royal aspirations could be made a reality. If his kingship was limited in its geographical scope, he certainly made up for it by saturation coverage: the court of the Temple of Khonsu contains over a hundred representations of Herihor as king. He also took pains to stress his fecundity as a royal paterfamilias, showing himself with nineteen sons and five daughters. Egyptian monarchy demanded a royal couple at the pinnacle of society, and Herihor had at his side the lady Nedjmet. This union seems to have been a marriage of true love, the epithets given to Nedjmet by her husband suggesting real affection: ‘great of favours, Lady of the Two Lands, possessor of charm, sweet of love, the King’s Great Wife, his beloved.’
For a man of military background, Herihor seems, rather surprisingly, to have stressed the sacral aspects of kingship during his brief reign. The reliefs in the Temple of Khonsu show him wearing the priestly leopard skin, and he publicly acknowledged the religious office that had preceded his assumption of the kingship by taking ‘High Priest of Amun’ as his throne name. The most prominent event of his reign was also intimately connected with the Amun cult: the construction of a new bark for Amun-Ra to be used in the annual Opet Festival. Herihor went to great lengths to acquire supplies of precious cedar wood from Lebanon for this project. The contemporary text known as the Report of Wenamun, which describes the journey of a royal envoy to Byblos ‘to fetch timber for the great noble bark of Amun-Ra, King of the Gods’, may be an account of the actual mission. As king, Herihor certainly ensured that scenes of him celebrating the Opet Festival were included in the decorative programme of the Temple of Khonsu.
The Report of Wenamun also noted the formal division of Egypt that had occurred after the demise of Ramesses XI, with Herihor ruling in the south from Thebes and Smendes ruling in the north from Tanis. Hence, while Herihor had been born under the centralized rule of the Ramessides, he would die in a divided country. His life and career spanned the transition between the last great period of pharaonic authority and the more uncertain times that followed.
PART 7
Twilight of the Gods
Third Intermediate Period, Late Period and Ptolemaic Period
The ten centuries between the collapse of the New Kingdom and Egypt’s absorption into the Roman empire constitute one-third of ancient Egyptian history, and witnessed a plethora of artistic and cultural developments, yet they remain one of the least-studied phases of pharaonic civilization. This is partly due to the fragmentary and often confusing nature of the evidence, and partly to the mistaken impression that Egypt after the New Kingdom was a culture in decline. Although the Third Intermediate Period, Late Period and Ptolemaic Period can, to some extent, be characterized as ancient Egypt’s twilight years, they are none the less full of interest and of interesting individuals.
The end of Ramesses XI’s reign was followed by the formal division of the country into northern and southern realms, with kings continuing to rule from the Delta while the High Priests of Amun exercised authority in Thebes and throughout much of Upper Egypt. There were ambitious men on both sides whose fortunes depended upon gaining and retaining royal favour. In the north, Wendjebaendjedet (no. 84) rose to prominence as one of the king’s most trusted officials. In the south, the Libyan prince Osorkon (no. 85) succeeded – after an epic series of struggles – in claiming the kingship of Thebes for himself. Their stories illustrate the internal conflicts that beset Egypt’s rival courts during the Third Intermediate Period.
National unity of a sort was re-established by the kings of the 25th and 26th Dynasties, even though the former were foreigners and the latter had come to power as foreign vassals. The Nubian pharaoh Piye (no. 86) seems to have regarded reunification as his sacred duty, since his devotion to the god Amun was as strong as any native Egyptian’s. Having defeated the rival dynasts and asserted his sovereignty over the whole country, he promptly returned to his Nubian homeland, never to return. But his lasting achievement was to restore order and stability, allowing local dynasties of high officials to govern their own regions under the rule of law. The Theban aristocracy of this period is particularly prominent; men such as Harwa (no. 87), Montuemhat (no. 88) and Padiamenope (no. 89) commissioned for themselves funerary monuments on a truly regal scale. Indeed, Egyptian culture enjoyed something of a renaissance as the Late Period kings and their wealthy subjects sought inspiration from the great monuments of the past.
A new innovation was the political influence vested in the God’s Wife of Amun, the most senior office in the Theban priesthood. By granting this title to his eldest daughter, a king could ensure royal control over the Amun cult, with its great wealth and extensive landholdings, and hence over Upper Egypt as a whole. The transfer of power in the south of the country from the Nubian 25th Dynasty to the Saite 26th Dynasty was achieved in this way, by having the incumbent God’s Wife Shepenwepet II (the daughter of Piye) adopt as her successor princess Nitiqret (no. 90), daughter of the new Saite monarch Psamtik I. The magnificent river-borne procession that accompanied Nitiqret on her journey to Thebes, vividly described by the commander of the flotilla, Sematawytefnakht (I) (no. 91), must have been one of the great spectacles of the Late Period.
Unfortunately, a smooth succession did not take place at the end of the 26th Dynasty, because after Ahmose II (no. 92), the last Saite king, Psamtik III, lost his throne not to a rival royal family but to a Persian conqueror. During the years of occupation, liberation and re-occupation that followed, Egyptian officials often took a pragmatic stance, reaching accommodations with whichever regime was in power. The trials and tribulations of serving under successive Egyptian and Persian rulers are graphically documented in the autobiographical inscriptions of men like Wadjhorresnet (no. 93), Wennefer (no. 94) and Sematawytefnakht (II) (no. 96). Egypt enjoyed a final, brief period of independence and national renewal under the 30th Dynasty, before its last monarch, Nakhthorheb (no. 95), himself succumbed to a Persian invasion. Egypt would not truly regain national autonomy until the mid-twentieth century AD.
However, the second period of Persian domination was mercifully brief, and was brought to an end by an even mightier conqueror, in the person of Alexander the Great. For the next 300 years, Egypt was ruled by Greek-speaking Macedonians: first Alexander and his ephemeral heirs, then a new dynasty founded by one of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy (no. 98). Beyond the new maritime capital, Alexandria, literate Egyptians adopted a hybrid Graeco-Egyptian culture, influenced equally by their new rulers and their own, deep-rooted traditions. The effects of this cultural mixing can be seen in the art and in the wider world-view of the period, as exemplified in the tomb of the priest Padiusir (Petosiris) (no. 97) and the historical writings of his near-contemporary Manetho (no. 99).
Under the Ptolemies, Egypt changed from being a North African nation with a primary interest in Nubia to a Mediterranean-oriented country whose fate was inextricably bound up with the other great powers in the region. In the centuries after Alexander, the baton of authority in the Mediterranean world had passed from Greece to Rome. Egypt with its legendary wealth was a tempting prize for Rome’s ambitious rulers, and its fate was sealed long before its last resident ruler, Cleopatra VII (no. 100), made her ill-starred alliance with Mark Antony. But ancient Egypt did not altogether die with the tragic queen. Through its influence on Rome, and thence on western civilization, the age-old culture of the pharaohs shaped the modern world. Two thousand years after Cleopatra, five thousand years after Narmer, interest in the pharaohs, their monuments and the lives of their subjects remains as powerful as ever. Ancient Egypt still holds us in its thrall.
84 | Wendjebaendjedet
R
OYAL FAVOURITE
Alongside the famous contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb, there is another golden treasure from ancient Egypt, almost as sumptuous but virtually unknown to non-specialists. This is the treasure of Tanis, dating from the 21st Dynasty. As might be expected, some of the most notable pieces, such as the gold funerary mask of Psusennes I, were commissioned for kings. However, a large proportion of the total hoard was made, not for a pharaoh, but for a non-royal individual, a man named Wendjebaendjedet. Inside his decorated burial chamber, set within the limestone walls of Psusennes I’s own royal tomb, his funerary equipment included a granite sarcophagus (reused from the New Kingdom); a coffin of gilded wood containing a silver coffin; gold statuettes of gods and goddesses; a set of four divine figures in shrines; a green feldspar heart scarab on a gold chain; and a gold gadrooned cup shaped like a daisy, with inlays of coloured paste, inscribed with Wendjebaendjedet’s name and titles. The sumptuousness of his grave goods demonstrates his status, yet there is no indication that he was related to the royal family. Who, then, was this uncommonly exalted commoner?
His background is obscure, although both his name and the fact that he was a priest of Osiris, Lord of Djedet (Busiris, modern Abusir), suggest that this town in the central Delta was his birthplace. The name of his father is unknown, and only two members of his family, both women, are named on objects from his tomb: Tarudet and Hererit may have been his mother and grandmother, or alternatively his wife and mother-in-law. His priestly responsibilities extended beyond his home town to the dynastic capital, Tanis (ancient Djanet, modern San el-Hagar), where he was a priest and steward of the god Khonsu. The latter office would have brought him into contact with the royal family, and it seems that Wendjebaendjedet’s qualities were recognized by the king.
Wendjebaendjedet was appointed to three important roles simultaneously, one religious, one military and one courtly. As Superintendent of the Prophets of All the Gods, he may have acted as the king’s deputy in the daily cult activities at Tanis, standing in for Psusennes I at all but the most important ceremonies. As General and Army Leader of Pharaoh, he was second only to the Crown Prince in the military hierarchy. The titles member of the elite and Royal Seal-Bearer were mere indications of rank, held by numerous high officials in each reign; but to these Wendjebaendjedet added the unique distinction of Superintendent of the Sole Companions, suggesting that he was the king’s chief courtier, the most favoured of all those with direct access to the monarch. This may be the clue to his extraordinary status, reflected in tomb equipment that was so far above the standard of normal non-royal burials. Among the gold statuettes, jewelry and vessels, there was also a ring inscribed with the name of Ramesses IX, evidently an heirloom from the royal treasury; and a magnificent footed cup in the shape of an open flower, its petals made alternately from gold and electrum, inscribed with the names of the king, Psusennes I, and his wife Mutnodjmet. There could be no better indication of Wendjebaendjedet’s closeness to the royal couple.
At court he must have struck an imposing figure, adorned with earrings, a gold statuette of the goddess Isis suspended around his neck on a long gold chain. On the face of it, his combination of religious, military and civil offices would have given him great authority; but, on closer inspection, all his titles were connected with the king’s private sphere, and all may have been tokens of royal esteem, not executive functions. Wendjebaendjedet stands as the most prominent ancient Egyptian example of that most pampered and envied of court figures, the royal favourite.
85 | Osorkon
P
RINCE CAUGHT UP IN A BITTER POWER STRUGGLE
The Third Intermediate Period was a turbulent time, with rival dynasties competing for power and regional governors constantly shifting their allegiances. A vivid insight into Egyptian politics during this period is provided by the autobiographical Chronicle of Prince Osorkon.
He was one of at least seven children, and was probably born and grew up in Thebes. Two of his sisters married local dignitaries, while Osorkon himself entered the priesthood of Amun, the most powerful institution in the whole of Upper Egypt. At an early age, he was appointed High Priest of Amun; but his rapid rise may reflect the political importance of his family rather than exceptional individual ability. He might have looked forward to a long and distinguished career at the head of the Amun priesthood, but a dramatic decision by his father Takelot was to change his life irrevocably.
Ever since the death of Ramesses XI, some 230 years before, Egypt had in effect been a divided state: power in the north was wielded by kings ruling from Memphis or the Delta, while authority in the south of the country resided in Thebes. Even if the city’s governors paid lip service to the idea of a single pharaoh, in reality royal control ceased abruptly not far south of Memphis. Takelot, the most powerful man in Thebes, decided to dispense with the fiction of a united monarchy and formalize his position as de facto king of Upper Egypt. He therefore proclaimed himself pharaoh of a new, Theban, royal line, equal in every respect to the Libyan 22nd Dynasty ruling from Tanis.
The formal establishment of a rival dynasty unleashed the pent-up forces of internal strife, and Osorkon found himself in the middle of events. While he was in Middle Egypt, enemies tried to dislodge him from the High Priesthood of Amun. So he set sail for Thebes immediately, and had to overcome a number of minor rebellions en route. Once safely arrived in the city, he acted ruthlessly to quell all opposition and re-establish his authority. After making offerings to Amun in the temple, he had the leaders of the plot to unseat him executed; to send a powerful message to any other would-be rebels, their bodies were burned, denying them any chance of rebirth.
The tactic worked, and just two years after nearly losing his position, Osorkon was confident and powerful enough to carry out the duties of the High Priest during the three great annual Theban festivals. But the calm did not last. Osorkon’s heavy-handed treatment of his opponents must have caused great resentment, and the plotters now found a new standard-bearer in the form of man called Pedubast who proclaimed himself king of Thebes, in opposition to Takelot. The result, inevitably, was civil war, and raged for nine, gruelling years. Once again, Osorkon was in the thick of the fighting.
Eventually, with neither side able to make a decisive breakthrough, an agreement was brokered by which Takelot remained king and Osorkon resumed the office of High Priest but relinquished his place in the succession. Hence, when Takelot died, the throne passed not to Osorkon but to a co-regency between Pedubast and another man named Iuput. Although by its very existence this regime perpetuated the territorial division of Egypt, it nevertheless showed its true, ‘loyalist’ colours by recognizing the sovereignty of the 22nd Dynasty ruling from Tanis. Osorkon was not a man to take lightly either this snub to his father’s achievements, or his own exclusion from his rightful inheritance, the throne of Thebes. It was, therefore, inevitable that the unsatisfactory compromise that had ended the civil war would soon fall apart.
