Leadership Under Fire: the Pressures of Warfare in Ancient Egypt
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20 Leadership under fire: Anthony Spalinger the pressures Four leçons at the Collège de France of warfare Paris, June 2019 in Ancient Egypt Anthony John Spalinger. Professor of Ancient History (Egyptology), University of Auckland.Author of: Aspects of the Military Documents of the Ancient Egyptians (Yale University Press: New Haven and London; 1982); Three Studies on Egyptian Feasts (Halgo Press: Johns Hopkins, Baltimore; 1992); (ed.), Revolutions in Egyptian Calendrics (Van Siclen Books: San Antonio, TX; 1994); The Private Feast Lists of Ancient Egypt (Ägyptologische Abhandlungen, Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 1996); The Transformation of an Ancient Egyptian Narrative: P. Sallier III and the Battle of Kadesh (Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 2002).; War in Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom. (Blackwells: Oxford; 2004); Five Views on Egypt (University of Göttingen: Göttingen; 2006); The Great Dedicatory Inscription of Ramesses II: A Solar-Osirian Tractate at Abydos (Brill: Leiden and Boston; 2008); Icons of Power: A Strategy of Reinterpretation (Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts: Prague; 2011); with Jeremy Armstrong (eds.), Rituals of Triumph in the Mediterranean World (Leiden and Boston: Brill; 2013); Time and the Egyptians: Feasts and Fights (New Haven: Yale Egyptological Seminar; 2018); The Persistence of Memory in Kush. Pianchy and his Temple. (Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts: Prague; 2019) • Leadership under fire: the pressures Anthony Spalinger of warfare in Ancient Egypt to Mathew Trundle sorely missed 12 october 1965-12 july 2019 acknowledgements page 5 preface 9 chapter 1 Generalship and Leadership: 4 an Introduction 21 chapter 2 Thutmose III: table of contents of table Strategic commander 79 chapter 3 Ramesses II: Pharaoh as Warrior 137 chapter 4 Pianchy: The Multi-Tasked General 201 chapter 5 Historical Observations of three military personalities 243 list of plates 277 bibliography 281 indices 325 •••••••••••••••••••••••• the pressures of warfare in Ancient Egypt This work is a final result of a series of four lectures given by me at the Collège de France in June 2019. The fifth chapter was not presented then. I must thank Prof. Nicolas Grimal for his kind invitation to allow me to discuss these matters of generalship and leadership 5 in pharaonic Egypt. I am also thankful for Prof. Grimal in providing all the facilities for this period of time. I am, as well, acknowledgements in his debt for allowing me to have the lectures published. Much more could have been said and written. I have, however, preferred to let the concentration of three warrior pharaohs remain. Additional thanks can be given to Olivier Cabon who has persevered in setting up this study, a not simple or easy task. The result of his excellent assistance can be now seen and read. 6 Leadership under fire: the pressures Anthony Spalinger of warfare in Ancient Egypt 8 The abbreviations in this study follow those of the Egyptologists’ Electronic Forum (EEF): http://www.egyptologyforum.org/EEFrefs.html Leadership under fire The investigation of the personal aspects of ancient Egyptian pharaohs is a hazardous undertaking owing to the purposeful orientation of our textual records.1 Most studies on their reigns concentrate upon the series of monuments and written accounts which have been left to us as well as the numerous high ranking private individuals who worked and performed their duties under the aegis of various rulers. Yet, as is known to every Egyptologist, all of the royal material is particularly difficult to analyze owing to their purposeful orientations. Specifically, what the monarchs wanted to publicize was not their innermost feel- ings at any specific time and place as we would wish but instead indi- cate certain reactions to specific events, usually for them very impor- tant ones, and most certainly not a psychological summary of their identities. Researchers therefore have to sift though a quantity of dis- parate sources in order to limn the monarch’s persona. On the other 10 hand, so long as the royal accounts are detailed enough some distinct characteristics of a pharaoh can be discerned. Fortunately, when it came to war, the New Kingdom pharaohs, and Pianchy of Kush as well, were determined to provide extensive records of their major campaigns, both pictorially and textually. The following chapters attempt to do just that.2 This volume expressly avoids extensive linguistic coverage of the key narratives, partly because of the theme but equally due to the already well-researched histo- riographic studies that appear. I can refer to Donald Redford’s volume on the “Annals” of Thutmose III,3 Thomas von der Way’s very helpful study of the Kadesh material 4 — a study which appears to have been engendered by a remarkable analysis of Jan Assmann 5 — and a plethora of small research investigations dealing with the Kushite ruler Pianchy.6 By and large, these three leaders have provided us with the nec- essary information in order that an attempt can be made to categorize their actions and hence describe their military complexions.7 Thutmose’s Megiddo campaign stands side-by-side with Ramesses’s Kadesh Poem and Bulletin, not to mention his pictorial records: Pianchy commissioned on a very large granite stela, undoubtedly originally set up at Karnak, to record his great campaign in Egypt.8 Hence, there is enough documentation at hand to enable one to pursue this task of reconstruction. How else could we investigate these warrior-pharaohs and attempt any evaluation of their abilities? It is one thing to critique the major inscriptions with regard to their literary aspects but a far different approach is needed to delineate their features of leadership, and in particular their abilities in war. •••••••••••••••••••••••• the pressures of warfare in Ancient Egypt The first chapter, “Generalship and Leadership,” is an attempt to circum- scribe our theme, and therefore presents somewhat of a methodological approach based to no small degree on the key seminal works related to warfare that concentrate upon the “captains of the host” as well as their armies in battle. Qualities of command must come to the fore before the exercise of individual behaviour, and this implies that a reasonable back- ground of non-Egyptological research is necessary in order to prepare our discussion of these three important pharaoh-generals. None of those men was a novice in the art of war. They were all trained in their early life to fight, and it was expected of them to perform admirably. How commenda- ble were their abilities and how their own dynamism affected the outcomes of battle is my aim. True, each of them, and any other Egyptian mon- arch as well, provided for the future a concatenation of differing personal temperaments that they desired to promulgate. But within those royal accounts one can find many details that allow the scholar to re-arrange the 11 depiction in order to evoke a different interpretation of the leader that he originally preferred and broadcasted. This does not mean that what was said in our cases, written or visually shown, was false. The military record of a Thutmose III, for example, effectively reflects his psyche. Charisma enters in addition to logistical superiority. I have placed in the headings to Chapters 2-4 my evaluation of the individual pharaohs as generals. Thus one will find Thutmose a “strategic commander,” Ramesses a “hero,” and Pianchy a “multi-tasked general.” I am sure that the second wanted it that way. Does not the account of his famous war record at Kadesh, the Poem, provide a side of his generalship that is not merely a reflection of his single-minded victory? Of course, all of these men won — Thutmose III at Megiddo, Ramesses II at Kadesh, and Pianchy within Egypt. And we all know that such was not necessarily the case, or at least that serious difficulties were encountered by each of them in the field, events which curtailed some of their ambitions. In the heat of battle as well as in the preceding fog of war the original objectives altered, perhaps somewhat but even more so to a large degree. But it is within the historical record that we discover these pharaohs coping with the unexpected, and from their immediate deci- sions and ensuing actions a relatively judicious study of their characters can be made. Of course, we are not blessed with the far larger amount of source material that is available to the Classical scholar.9 And political issues relating to warfare and strategy, such as Pericles’ funeral oration or the Melian debate, cannot be found in the Egyptian texts. Leadership under fire The final chapter covers the historiographic and structural background to the key historical narratives of all three generals. Previously I had cov- ered, but now do so in more detail, their striking personalities, at least in combat. But more important was to link those evaluations of mine with the various literary nature of the discourses preferred by the authors and their pharaohs. I can do no better than to highlight my judgements by quoting Hans Delbrück, “Legend and poetry do not paint falsely when they paint with other colors than does history. They simply speak another language, and it is a question of translating correctly from this language into that of history.” 10 To some degree this work has relied upon the numerous and sig- nificant works of John Keegan. His The Face of Battle 11 as well as his Mask of Command 12 cannot but be referred to here. I can add his further work on military intelligence (spies and scouts) 13 and the terrain of war.14 He 12 is to be cited at first owing to the impact that his studies have had on the field of military history.