Hostilities broke out again just a couple of years after Takelot’s death. Iuput was probably deposed or killed. But there was no easy victory for Osorkon. Instead, he was expelled once again from the High Priesthood of Amun, to be replaced by a Pedubast supporter. Worse still, he was forced to leave Thebes itself. His exile lasted nearly a decade. Osorkon and his siblings now joined forces to restore their fortunes. The initial moves were taken by Osorkon’s younger brother, Bakenptah. With significant military support, he managed to secure for himself the governorship of Herakleopolis, dislodging those loyal to Pedubast. This new power-base provided the crucial springboard for an all-out assault on Thebes. Osorkon and his brother set sail for Upper Egypt at the head of their forces. In a surprisingly swift campaign, they defeated all their enemies and marked their victory by celebrating the festival of Amun. Takelot’s heirs were back in full control of Thebes after three decades of conflict.
Now around fifty years old, Osorkon’s appetite for power had not diminished in the years of fighting. He set the seal on his return by having himself proclaimed king (Osorkon III) at Thebes, installing his own son, another Takelot, as High Priest of Amun, and appointing his daughter Shepenwepet as God’s Wife of Amun. The kingship and the two highest religious offices of Thebes were now safely in the hands of Osorkon and his immediate family. Moreover, with the young Takelot succeeding his uncle as governor of Herakleopolis, Osorkon had secured undisputed authority over the whole of Upper Egypt.
The remainder of Osorkon’s life seems to have passed in relative peace and stability. When he reached his mid-seventies, after twenty-five years on the throne, and a few years before his death, he appointed his elder son Takelot (III) as his formal co-regent, to ensure a smooth and undisputed transfer of power. Father and son made as their joint monument a new temple for the god Osiris, at Thebes’ great temple of Karnak. In succession to Takelot, the High Priesthood of Amun was transferred to his son (Osorkon’s grandson and namesake); while another member of the royal family, Peftjauawybast, took over at Herakleopolis. As the last ruling representative of the Theban 23rd Dynasty, his eventual fate would be decided, not by internal political factions, but by intervention from a wholly unexpected direction.
86 | Piye
T
HE FIRST BLACK PHARAOH
Throughout the New Kingdom, Nubia’s bountiful gold reserves filled Egypt’s coffers and funded pharaonic building projects on a lavish scale. In Egyptian tombs of the period, Nubians are shown paying tribute – literally as well as metaphorically – to their Egyptian overlords; on temple walls, the message is even more explicit, as the king smites one or more token Nubians, symbolizing their utter subjugation to Egypt’s might. After this state of affairs had existed for 500 years, the Egyptians could have been mistaken for thinking that Nubia was predestined to be their vassal. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth.
During the Third Intermediate Period, while Egypt was politically fragmented and absorbed in its own divisions, Nubia was quietly rising from the ashes of Egyptian domination. In the fertile Dongola Reach, beyond the Third Cataract, a line of native, Nubian rulers emerged; unnoticed by Egypt, they re-established the once-great Kingdom of Kush. At its heart was the great temple of Amun-Ra at Gebel Barkal. Although this had been an Egyptian foundation, the cult of Amun had gained such a stronghold in the area that the Kushites continued to observe the daily rituals in the temple. Indeed they regarded themselves as particularly devout followers of Amun. This was what made them especially dangerous to an unsuspecting and enfeebled Egypt: in some ways, the Kushite dynasty saw itself as more Egyptian than the Egyptians.
In 747 BC, the throne of Kush passed to a man named Piye. Little is known about the first two decades of his reign, although his chosen throne name – Usermaatra, after the great pharaoh Ramesses II – surely gave an indication of his sense of destiny. In 728 BC he burst onto the Egyptian stage, in response to the expansionary ambitions of Tefnakht, ruler of the Delta city of Sais. Tefnakht had already brought the entire western half of the Delta under his sway. He now laid siege to Herakleopolis (ancient Hnes) and succeeded in extending his control over much of Middle Egypt. Only Hermopolis stood between Tefnakht and the sacred sites of Upper Egypt, Abydos and Thebes itself. Reports of the situation reached Piye but he bided his time. The defection of the ruler of Hermopolis, Nimlot, to Tefnakht’s side changed the whole situation. Piye immediately ordered his forces inside Egypt to re-conquer Hermopolis, and dispatched further contingents northwards to provide support. In the course of two battles waged near Herakleopolis, Tefnakht’s southward expansion was halted.
When he had finished celebrating the New Year festival at Napata, at the beginning of his twenty-first year as king of Kush, Piye decided to set forth for Egypt at the head of his army. His first stop was Thebes where, in the manner of a rightful pharaoh, he took part in the Opet Festival. After this brief pause, Piye continued northwards and besieged Hermopolis. With the city’s food supplies exhausted and its population on the brink of starvation, Nimlot surrendered and sued for mercy. To show his disgust, Piye had his enemy’s female relatives and retainers brought before him but, instead of looking at them, walked straight out and headed for his royal stables. He told Nimlot: ‘I swear, as Ra loves me and as my nostrils are rejuvenated with life, it is more grievous in my heart that my horses have suffered hunger than any evil deed you have done in the prosecution of your desire.’ Horses and horsemanship were key elements of Kushite court culture, and Piye had evidently inherited these national passions; but his indifference to the suffering of Nimlot’s women-folk also shows a ruthless streak. Piye was in no mood for compromise; nothing less than the complete surrender of Egypt would satisfy him.
True to form, his next move was to relieve the siege of Herakleopolis; its ruler, Peftjauawybast, greeted his Nubian liberators with joy. On the way north to the capital, another three towns surrendered to Piye’s forces. Memphis itself, however, presented more of a challenge. The city shut its gates against the Kushite army and put up stiff resistance. Piye’s tactics were as effective as they were inspired. He captured all the boats in the harbour of Memphis and used their masts and rigging to construct scaling ladders. With these, his soldiers managed to climb over the city walls. Fierce fighting ensued, with much loss of life, but the outcome was never in doubt: Piye appeared in the temple of Ptah, the city’s grandest, to claim victory.
With the whole of Upper Egypt and the capital city in Nubian hands, the remaining Delta rebels knew they had no alternative but to surrender. In total, four kings, the prince of the West, four Great Chiefs of the Ma and a host of local chiefs and city mayors capitulated to Piye and his Nubian forces. His re-conquest of Egypt was complete and he headed for home. On his journey south, he paused only in Thebes, to present booty to the temple of Amun, and to have his relative, Amenirdis I, adopted by the incumbent God’s Wife of Amun as her successor. This would guarantee the Kushite’s continued control of the Theban region. Piye then continued on to Napata, never again to set foot in Egypt.
He used the occasion of the next New Year festival to celebrate his famous victory by commissioning an enormous stela, copies of which were set up in the temples at Gebel Barkal, Karnak and Memphis. During his thrust north through Egypt, Piye must have seen at first hand many of the monuments built by the great pharaohs of the past, and they evidently left a lasting impression. He consciously modelled the style of his victory inscription on earlier texts, beginning an archaizing trend that was to characterize the court culture of the 25th Dynasty.
Surrounded by his five wives, six daughters and three sons, Piye must have been a satisfied man as he reached the end of his life. He had inherited a small state in Upper Nubia but would bequeath to his heir a kingdom that stretched over a thousand miles, from the Fourth Cataract to the Mediterranean Sea. He had reversed the pattern of history, conquering the erstwhile conquerors and imposing Nubian rule on the land of the pharaohs. Though he could not have realized it, his campaign of reunification would also, within a few years, bring to an end nearly three centuries of political division in Egypt, ushering in the final period of high culture known as the Late Period.
87 | Harwa
S
TEWARD OF THE
D
IVINE
A
DORATRICE
In the Third Intermediate Period and the centuries following, Thebes was the largest and most important regional centre in Upper Egypt, the effective ‘capital of the south’; its great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak was the grandest, wealthiest and politically most influential religious establishment in the country. These two, closely intertwined factors gave the city a major voice in national affairs and its governors economic and political power to rival any Memphite official.
Few men exemplify this better than Harwa. He was born around 720 BC into a family of Theban priests. He followed this same career path, achieving one of the highest positions in the Amun priesthood, High Steward to the Divine Adoratrice. As one of the king’s personal representatives at Thebes, the Divine Adoratrice held enormous symbolic power which, in reality, was exercised by her High Steward, as head of her household. Harwa served both Amenirdis I, installed by Piye, and her successor, Shepenwepet II, Piye’s own daughter.
His authority and influence are highlighted by the fact that eight statues of him survive, a remarkable number for a person of non-royal birth. One of them shows Harwa with a large face, almond-shaped eyes and a thin-lipped mouth – the image of determination – and an enormously corpulent body, demonstrating his great wealth. The statues’ inscriptions listed Harwa’s many titles and offices and boasted of the esteem in which he was held by his royal mistress and the king. Equally striking are the new metaphors which Harwa used to describe himself: ‘a refuge for the wretched, a float for the drowning, a ladder for him who is in the abyss.’ The man of power was perhaps also a man of letters.
As politically the most influential person in Thebes, responsible for a territory stretching from Middle Egypt to the First Cataract, Harwa commissioned for himself a tomb of appropriate grandeur. Consciously modelled on the Osireion (‘tomb’ of Osiris) at Abydos, each part of the monument symbolized a different step on the path to eternal life. Yet, despite Harwa’s long career, his tomb was never finished. However, one of his grave goods left no doubt as to his power and self-image. A servant figurine (shabti) with royal attributes suggests that he was effectively viceroy of Upper Egypt, governing on the king’s behalf. Even so, this assumption of royal attributes by a commoner was unparalleled: perhaps even being Governor of Upper Egypt was not enough for a man of Harwa’s vaunting ambition.
88 | Montuemhat
G
OVERNOR OF
T
HEBES IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
The Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 667 BC and the capture and sack of Thebes three years later echoed around the ancient world and fundamentally altered the politics of the Near East. Fearing the approaching onslaught, the last Kushite king of Egypt, Tanutamani, fled back to his dynasty’s homeland in Upper Nubia, abandoning Thebes to its fate. Once the Assyrians had made their point, they withdrew back to their own Mesopotamian heartland, leaving Egypt in the hands of a satrap, Nekau, and his son, Psamtik. Although technically an Assyrian vassal, Psamtik of Sais promptly declared himself king and ruled as an independent pharaoh. To begin with, his authority was confined to the north of the country, leaving a power vacuum in Upper Egypt. However, a Theban potentate named Montuemhat was able to ride the storm and survive every vicissitude. His is a remarkable story of resilience and survival in the face of political turmoil.
Montuemhat came from an important Theban family, which seems to have included among its members both Harwa (no. 87) and Padiamenope (no. 89). This local dynasty held all the main levers of power in Thebes. Montuemhat himself – named in honour of the ancient god of Thebes, Montu – combined several key offices: Prince of Thebes, Governor of Upper Egypt, and Fourth Prophet of Amun. This last gave him a role in the Karnak priesthood which remained one of the wealthiest and most influential bodies in the country.
He first achieved high office under the Kushite pharaoh Taharqo, in 700 BC, and his subsequent career spanned half a century. The brief reign of Tanutamani and the Assyrian invasion were momentous events, but Montuemhat came through unscathed. In the early years of the 26th Dynasty, he and the High Stewards of the God’s Wife Shepenwepet II ruled Upper Egypt together as a virtually autonomous state, their jurisdiction reaching from Elephantine (ancient Abu) in the south to Hermopolis (ancient Khemnu) in the north. Through his wise administration, Montuemhat ‘placed Upper Egypt on the right path when the whole land was upside down’.
His primary concern, in the wake of the Assyrian destruction of his home city, was to restore and rebuild the great temples of Thebes. His accomplishments in this sphere were his proudest achievement, recorded in an autobiographical inscription at Karnak:
‘I have renewed the temple of Mut-the-Great… so that it is more beautiful than before.
I adorned her bark with electrum, all its images with genuine stones.
I renewed the bark of Khonsu-the-Child… the bark of Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands…
I rebuilt the divine boat of Osiris in Abydos, when I found it gone to ruin.’
The installation of princess Nitiqret (no. 90), daughter of Psamtik I, as God’s Wife of Amun-elect marked the transfer of power in Thebes from the old regime to the Saite dynasty. As prince of Thebes, Montuemhat had to agree to provide Nitiqret with regular provisions: bread, milk, cake and herbs every day; and three oxen and five geese every month. Montuemhat’s eldest son Nesptah and his wife Wedjarenes made similar commitments. Against expectations, Psamtik decided to retain Montuemhat’s services, confirming him in his position. A man of such fortitude and experience was more useful on the king’s side than agitating in the background.
With renewed security of tenure, Montuemhat turned his attention to posterity, in particular his magnificent tomb on the Asasif near Deir el-Bahri and the statues he intended to set up at Karnak. The tomb, featuring a sun-court, was decorated with exceptionally fine reliefs; its first court featured huge carved panels depicting symmetrically arranged pairs of papyrus plants. As for his statues, they revealed the artistic energy of Late Period Thebes, as well as the desire to hark back to earlier models, to reaffirm Egyptian cultural values in the face of foreign domination. Their quantity and quality have, as Montuemhat would have wished, made him one of the best-attested individuals from this turbulent period of Egyptian history.
