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The New Kingdom of Egypt, Part 3 (Akhenaten to Ramses II)

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The New Kingdom of Egypt, Part 3 (Akhenaten to Ramses II) Section 6.3: The New Kingdom of Egypt, Part 3 (Akhenaten to Ramses II) In the last lecture we ended by looking at the reign of Akhenaten and the reforms he enacted in Egyptian religion, with special focus on the impact the aten cult may have had on Hebrew monotheism. But we didn’t ask a central question: why did Akhenaten effect these changes? Clearly, he was attempting to diminish the power that the Amun Priesthood exerted within Egypt and reduce its access to financial resources. That was most likely driven by the pharaoh’s interest in asserting a stronger personal control over Egypt, as is visible in the people he chose for leadership positions in his new religion. Most were from the lower classes and were honored to have been elevated by the king to such high standing in society. They boast of this in inscriptions on the walls of their tombs. But that raises another, even more difficult question: how did Akhenaten effect such dramatic changes? Even with all the power a pharaoh had, he would have needed some sort of ally in his war on the well-established Amun Priesthood. And there is really only one possible candidate for that co-conspirator, the only other major power in Egypt at that time, the army. We know next to nothing about what generals and soldiers were doing during this period, but it’s hard to imagine they would have sat back and passively watched such a radical revolution unfold. But it’s equally hard to image the leaders of the the army working with such an outlandish figure as Akhenaten. Still, we must remember that, as odd as Akhenaten might seem to us, his misshaped image and weird behavior may not have appeared all that strange to Egyptians in the day. Nor was he the pacifist some modern historians make him out to be. He went on at least one campaign — 1 granted, a minor one to Nubia — and his reliefs at El-Amarna depict soldiers. There is even one piece of art showing Nefertiti holding the decapitated head of an enemy. Akhenaten appears to have died peacefully of natural causes — there is some evidence, however, of a plague striking Egypt around this time — and was originally buried no doubt somewhere in the vicinity of Akhetaten. His body was later moved to the Valley of the Kings. The site of his original tomb is unknown. He was succeeded by a mysterious figure named Smenkhare, who first appears in the historical record about two years before the end of Akhenaten’s reign. 2 About that same time a curious thing happens. Nefertiti disappears from the records at Amarna. One theory is that, after having failed to provide a male heir, Akhenaten pushed her aside for the son of a secondary wife, Smenkhare who marries one of Akhenaten’s daughters by Nefertiti to seal his claim on the throne, a pattern seen often in ancient Egyptian history. But that’s only way to read the evidence, and there are problems with seeing things that way. The sudden dismissal of a figure so prominent as Nefertiti who was part of the royal family — the god’s family! — seems out of line with other, well-attested patterns of behavior. This has led some scholars to make a startling suggestion: Smenkhare was Nefertiti! As Hatshepsut had done a century before, she took on male attributes. She’d already been seen wearing crowns normally reserved only for male kings. This way, she could carry on Akhenaten’s religion after his death. It’s an outlandish theory first proposed in the 1990’s after which it fell out of favor but is now making a comeback. In any case, Smenkhare, whoever they were, did not last long on the throne, only two years. 3 They were succeeded by one of the most famous people in history, “King Tut” whose full name was Tutankhamun though he was called Tutankh(u)aten at the time of his accession. In his day, Tut was a weak and insignificant ruler because he had come to the throne as a nine-year-old child and died at nineteen. At the time of his death he was still being groomed for kingship and never had the chance to play any real role in governing Egypt. He married one of Akhenaten’s daughters, Ankhesenpaaten (later Ankhesenamun), no doubt, to secure his place on the throne because he was the son of one of Akhenaten’s secondary wives, not Nefertiti. 4 During his short reign, the Egyptian government began rolling back Akhenaten’s reforms. The center of political life was returned to Memphis. Thebes, the home of the Amun cult, became again the thriving religious capital it had been before the rise of the aten cult. The right to sell copies of The Book of the Dead, a major industry for the Amun priesthood, was restored. And at some point after he was made king, Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun, the name by which we know him, in deference to traditional beliefs, now newly revived.The reasons for Tut’s death have been much debated. It’s always tempting to look for some sort of fatal genetic defect in a person whose family has been inbreeding for as long as his, but there’s little evidence to support that. 5 Scans of his mummy show that he suffered a serious fracture in his thigh at some point before he died. That alone could have killed him. Broken bones often became infected in antiquity and caused septicemia (blood poisoning). His mummy also shows another peculiarity. The left side of the chest is badly damaged which may explain why his tomb had no canopic jar to hold his heart. The organ was too badly damaged to preserve. Why? Some historians theorize that he was killed in an accident in which one side of his body was crushed by a chariot, a not unlikely scenario if he were preparing to go on campaign. Otherwise, the body is so badly damaged it’s impossible to make definitive conclusions about the cause of death. For one, the preparations of his mummy were clearly made in haste. He was put in his coffin even before the oils used to soak the wrappings had dried and, being very volatile, they caught fire and would have burned the body entirely if there had been more oxygen in the coffin. For another, when his tomb was discovered, the body was not treated with care and much damage was done. The tomb itself, however, not the mummy, is the real treasure archaeologically. It was discovered and opened by an American archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, while he was working in the Valley of the Kings (on the west side of the Nile across from Thebes). 6 Many pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried there among the desert escarpments and rugged cliffs of its dry gulches. Tut’s tomb is the one lucky site to have avoided the greedy hordes of looters in antiquity who broke into the tombs and stole the grave goods of all other kings. One reason is that its entrance was hidden by the camp site of later workers excavating the tomb of Ramses VI. 7 There is also evidence that changes in weather in the century following Tut’s death created violent rainstorms which flooded the valley and left behind sediment that hardened and made access to the entrance very difficult. Indeed, Carter had to chisel his way through concrete-like accretions in the tunnel leading down to the doorway. When he finally reached the doors to the tomb itself, Carter found them still sealed exactly as they had been by Egyptian priests three millennia earlier. Actually, it’s the way the tomb had been not sealed but resealed after robbers were caught in the act of plundering the site. In the inner chambers, Carter found further evidence that the king’s burial was as yet undisturbed, door blockings stamped with images of a protective spirit in jackal form. 8 The tomb itself proved to be very small by pharaonic standards, a moderate four-room apartment (with no elevator) … … but crammed with goods made of precious metals and exotic wood, much of it thrown around in haphazard heaps, no doubt, the work of the robbers who had broken in and were searching for the most expensive items. 9 Inside a series of elegant, gold-encrusted coffins Carter found Tut’s mummified body … … covered with solid gold death mask. Egyptians believed that the gods had skin made of gold, so it was only natural to provide a new god his proper sheathing. Cleaned up, Tut’s death-mask became one of the most famous discoveries in archaeological history. Can you see the mix of gender characteristics in the facial features? The full lips but strong jaw? The soft cheeks and long neck against the regalia of male power? If you look closely, it’s even possible to see the lines where a new face was welded onto the head. If this 10 striking work of beauty was a rush job, what must the mask of a real pharaoh like Ramses II have looked like? With Tut’s death, only one adult male of the royal line was left alive to rule, Ay the brother of Tiye. He was by then a very old man, probably in his eighties. His demise represented the end of a royal line that stretched back as far as Tuthmosis I, perhaps even Ahmose.
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