Episode 009 The New Kingdom: Maritime War and Maritime Peace Let’s head back to ancient Egypt and pick up where we left off last time, the Second Intermediate Period. We saw how the Middle Kingdom declined around 1750 BC, a point that was relatively contemporaneous with the death of Hammurabi, the decline of the First Babylonian Empire, and the drying up of Mesopotamian sea trade. While the Persian Gulf trade of Mesopotamia steadily declined over a period of 150 years or so, Egypt entered the Second Intermediate Period rather abruptly. We saw how the decline of the Middle Kingdom may have steadily led to the cliff where that abrupt drop happened, but once it did happen, Egypt’s long-distance sea trade also fell off precipitously. From the death of Sobekneferu which ended the 12th Dynasty, Egypt underwent a fracturing of power that saw several different dynasties ruling contemporaneously. Then, around 1650 BC, a weakened Egypt was easily invaded by a warring people known as the Hyksos. They actually established their own dynasty, the 15th, and gained a large measure of control over most of Egypt, but since there is practically no maritime evidence connected to the Hyksos, I’ll have to leave a discussion of their invasion to some of the other fine podcasts out there covering ancient history. There is one interesting maritime reference connected to the Hyksos, but other than that it’s sufficient to say that Egypt remained fractured and under partial control of the Hyksos until approximately 1550 BC when the last two 17th Dynasty Theban kings— Seqenenre Tao and his son Kamose—led the Egyptians in a final victory over the Hyksos to accomplish Egypt’s liberation. One of those kings, Kamose, is the king who we have to thank for the maritime evidence from the end of the Second Intermediate Period. Two stelae connected to Kamose both recount the king’s efforts to wrest cities in Middle Egypt from the control of the Hyksos. His strategy was to carry out a ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign against the Middle Egyptian towns that supported the Hyksos, hoping to win them back easily and weaken the morale of the Hyksos without much cost. The Carnarvon Tablet tells us that Kamose wisely utilized the highway of the Nile to move at least part of his army north to the city of Avaris, a focal point of his campaign. Episode 009 1 The tablet records Kamose as saying “I sailed downstream a victor to drive out the Asiatics according to the command of Amun . my brave army in front of me like a blast of fire.” A second stela attributed to Kamose goes into further detail about how exactly he utilized boats in attacking Avaris. “I put in at Per-djedken, my heart happy, so that I might let Apopy [who was the Hysksos king also known as Apophis], so that I might let Apopy experience a bad time, that Syrian prince with weak arms, who conceives brave things which never come about for him! I arrived at Yenyet-of- the-southward-journey, and I crossed over to them to greet them. I put the fleet, already equipped, in order, one behind the other, in order that I might take the lead, setting the course with my braves, flying over the river as does a falcon, my flag-ship of gold at their head, something like a divine being at their front. I made the mighty transport boat beach at the edge of the cultivation, with the fleet behind it, as the sparrow-hawk uproots (plants) upon the flats of Avaris!” It appears then from this inscription that Kamose used transport boats and smaller ships as amphibious vessels to launch an attack on the city of Avaris, fighting from the ships onto land, rather than from ship-to-ship as in a naval battle. The conclusion of the inscription gives the impression that Kamose was successful in his attack, although some scholars have said that Kamose may have inflated the records of his accomplishments. The stela goes on to quote Kamose as boating “I have not left a plank to the hundreds of ships of fresh cedar which were filled with gold, lapis, silver, turquoise, bronze axes without number, over and above the moringa-oil, incense, fat, honey, willow, box-wood, sticks and all their fine woods - all the fine products of Retenu - I have The second Kamose stela, detailing his confiscated all of it! I haven't left a thing to reconquest of Avaris. Avaris to her (own) destitution: the Asiatic has perished!” Episode 009 2 The location ‘Retenu’ in that inscription refers to the southern Levant, so it’s obvious that goods from the Levant were still traveling up the Nile even under Hyksos control, but these inscriptions from Kamose give us our best glimpse into the state of maritime trade in the Second Intermediate Period, even if they record the moments that the period was in its last stages. When Kamose died, he’d accomplished much of the task of driving the Hyksos north. His successor, Ahmose I, is seen as the first pharaoh of Egypt’s New Kingdom. Also the first king of the 18th Dynasty, Ahmose I spent his reign working to reestablish a centralized government like those that had existed in Egypt’s past. Once the government was again solidified, the earliest pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty focused all of Egypt’s resources on expanding territorial control once again. In the south, they waged a campaign to retake control of Nubia, a campaign that was waged on land, by and large.The northern campaign saw the Hyksos pushed north back to their original home in the Levant. As Egypt followed on the Hyksos’ heels, the 18th Dynasty pharaohs added more and more northern territory to their kingdoms. By the time Thutmose III took the throne in 1479 BC, he led numerous military campaigns to take control of more territory to Egypt’s north. Thutmose III pushed so far north that Egypt technically controlled territory in southern Syria. However, Egypt had become so extended by reaching that far north that Thutmose’s administration of his territory in the Levant was dependent on his maintaining control of the port cities such as those at Byblos and Ulazza. This situation is revealed to us in the text of the Napata Stela, also sometimes called the Gebel Barkal Stela. The stela describes Thutmose III’s northern campaigns against the Hyksos and the Mittani, a group that rose to power in the region of central Mesopotamia and into northern Syria. The stela describes Thutmose “sailing to the northern border of Asia” where he “ordered that many ships be built of cedar from the mountains of God's Land in the neighbourhood of the Mistress of Byblos.” In preparing for his Syrian campaign, the stela tells how “every harbour his majesty came to was supplied with fine bread, various breads, oil, incense, wine, honey, fruit more numerous than anything, beyond the comprehension of his majesty’s army—and that’s no exaggeration!” After describing his victory at the Battle of Megiddo, the stela also describes how Thutmose required tribute of his subjects: “All chiefs of Lebanon built the royal boats in order to sail south in them (and) bring all the precious things of Lebanon to the palace.” Episode 009 3 The same Napata Stela, named after the city of Napata in Nubia to Egypt’s south, tells of Thutmose’s exploits on the southern front, in Nubia where the stela was actually discovered. After describing his victory over the Nubians, it describes how Thutmose also required tribute from his Nubian subjects: “They pay me (tribute) as one (man), being taxable millions of times in numerous things of the top of the earth, much gold from Wawat, its amount without bounds. One built there for the palace every year Eight-boats and many transporters for the crews, beside the tribute, the Nubians bring ivory and ebony. Precious wood from Kush was brought to me as beams of doum palms and wooden things without number as acacia wood from the Southland. My army made them in Kush, which existed there in millions, besides Eight-boats and many transporters made of doum palms which my Majesty had fetched by force. One built for me in Djahi every year, from genuine cedars of the Lebanon, which were brought to the palace.” Evidence of the tribute being received by Thutmose can be found in the tomb of his vizier, a man named Rekhmire. His Luxor tomb is lavishly decorated and painted depictions of events from his life abound. One depiction shows him making a journey by ship to go receive a decoration from the pharaoh. Perhaps the more historically important image from Rekhmire’s tomb is the depiction of the various people groups who paid tribute to Thutmose III. Among them, the Nubians are clearly identifiable as bringing various African animals that are common to the area then called Nubia. The Syrians are also identifiable by their commonly depicted style in ancient Egyptian imagery. The most interesting group is a group bringing gifts of vases and small statues. The style of dress and hair with which this group is depicted has led many scholars to identify them as natives of Crete, an island that would at that time still have been under the control of the Minoans. Egypt called these people “The People of the Isles in the midst of the Sea,” and the possible connections between Egypt and the Minoans are fascinating theories, but I’m going to leave them until our discussion of the Minoan civilization itself.