Lives of the Ancient Egyptians, page 27
88 | Montuemhat
GOVERNOR OF THEBES 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.
89 | Padiamenope
OWNER OF THE LARGEST PRIVATE TOMB IN EGYPT
Like Montuemhat (no. 88), Padiamenope lived at Thebes through the turbulent years spanning the end of the 25th and the beginning of the 26th Dynasty. He, too, witnessed the flight of the last Nubian pharaoh, Tanutamani, and the subsequent sack of Thebes by the Assyrians, not only surviving these momentous events but prospering. He, too, was buried in a magnificent tomb, cut into the bedrock in the same part of the Theban necropolis. However, unlike his contemporary, Padiamenope remains something of an enigma. His tomb is the largest private funerary monument in the whole of Thebes, perhaps the whole of Egypt; yet the man himself never rose above the rank of Chief Lector-Priest. The corpus of inscriptions relating to Padiamenope is extensive, comprising shabti figurines, an offering table, a temple text and at least seven statues; yet in none of these does he mention either the kings he served or – even more peculiarly – the name of his father. Padiamenope, it seems, was guarded about the source of his great wealth.
What we do know is that he was a Theban by birth and lived his entire life in that great religious city of Upper Egypt. His mother, Namenkhaset, played the sistrum and sang in the cult of Amun, in common with many wives of high officials. Other than these occasional temple duties, she was a housewife. Padiamenope would therefore have grown up acquainted with some of the mysteries of Karnak temple. On reaching adulthood, he entered the priesthood, more specifically training as a lector-priest, one of the group of learned priest-scholars who guarded, interpreted and developed the liturgy for use in the great temples of the land. Padiamenope evidently excelled at this work, for he rose to be Chief Lector-Priest of Amun, Overseer of Scribes of the Divine Books and Keeper of His God’s Secrets. While these positions gave him an important role within the temple cult, they did not equate to one of the great offices of state and he remained outside the upper echelons of the priesthood.
None the less, Padiamenope was able to commission for himself a truly stupendous tomb. Like those of his near-contemporaries, it was orientated towards a small way-station, built on the ruins of the causeway of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. This small structure was used as a resting-place during the annual Beautiful Festival of the Valley, when the sacred image of Amun-Ra left its sanctuary at Karnak to pay a visit to Deir el-Bahri. Through the proximity of his tomb to the route taken by the divine image, Padiamenope hoped to share in the good fortune bestowed by Amun-Ra, through all eternity. The tomb itself was an impressive piece of architecture. Its sunken outer court measured 31.4 by 23.2 m (103 by 76 ft) and was reached by a flight of steps descending from ground level between two massive mudbrick walls supporting an arched gateway. The first court connected by means of a doorway with an inner court.
The numerous titles and epithets listed inside the tomb included several that hinted at special favour in royal circles: beloved sole companion (rather than the usual ‘sole companion’), Overseer of All the King’s Affairs, ‘who is in the heart of his lord’, ‘king’s beloved acquaintance’, and ‘revered in the king’s presence’. Perhaps this helps to explain the apparent wealth of Padiamenope, even if he thought that it was better not to flaunt such patronage on public monuments like statues. The political upheavals during his lifetime seem to have taught him that discretion was the better part of valour.
In keeping with his professional interest in sacred writings, Padiamenope’s tomb was decorated almost exclusively with religious texts; curiously, they most closely resemble those dating to the late Ramesside Period, some five hundred years earlier. It seems that the historical scholar wished to surround himself in the afterlife with the fruits of his research in the temple library. The 25th and early 26th Dynasties were a period of intense interest in earlier cultural forms, whether literary or artistic, and Padiamenope emerges as a leading figure in this archaizing movement.
90 | Nitiqret (Nitocris)
GOD’S WIFE, KING’S SERVANT
The sacred office of God’s Wife of Amun was not just of great religious significance, it was also politically important: when held by a close female relative, it gave the king the means of controlling the Theban priesthood and, by extension, the southern half of the country. For a monarch such as Psamtik I with a strictly provincial power-base in the northwestern Delta, this would have been a key objective. Moreover the legitimacy conferred by close association with the Amun cult would have been particularly attractive to a new dynasty, particularly one which had come to power as Assyrian vassals. Hence, in the ninth year of his reign, Psamtik I sent his eldest daughter to join the college of priestesses at Karnak with the aim of securing her eventual succession as God’s Wife of Amun.
Nitiqret must have been very young when she was sent to Karnak in spring 656 BC, since she is known to have lived for another seventy years. On the appointed day, she was escorted to the quayside at the royal residence and went aboard her ship for the sixteen-day river journey to Thebes. Details of the voyage, which had all the ceremony of a royal progress, were recorded by the flotilla’s proud commander, Sematawytefnakht (I) (no. 91).
On her arrival at Thebes, Nitiqret was taken immediately to the great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak where she was formally welcomed by an oracle of the god. She was then introduced to the incumbent God’s Wife of Amun, Piye’s daughter Shepenwepet II. An agreement was reached between Psamtik I and the Theban hierarchy whereby Nitiqret would succeed to the office of God’s Wife only after the death of both the current incumbent and her designated successor (Amenirdis II). The formalities over, Nitiqret’s adoption as eventual heir was witnessed by ‘all the prophets, priests and friends of the temple’, and a formal record of the contract was made in writing.
Crucially, it signed over to Nitiqret all the property of the God’s Wife of Amun ‘in country and town’. Indeed, economic considerations were at the heart of the agreement. For his part, Psamtik I claimed that he had endowed Nitiqret ‘better than those who were before her’. This was no idle boast, since her dowry included 1,800 arouras (486 ha, 1118 acres) of land in Upper Egypt and its produce, together with daily and monthly supplies from the royal estate and the temples under the king’s control in the Delta. In return for this sizeable endowment, Nitiqret was to receive daily and monthly supplies from some of Thebes’ most powerful individuals, including Montuemhat (no. 88). Nitiqret’s adoption as heiress to the God’s Wife of Amun thus marked the formal recognition of Saite suzerainty in Thebes, the last stronghold of the previous Kushite dynasty: until the year before, all Theban documents had been dated according to the years of Tanutamani’s reign, even though the last Kushite pharaoh had long since abandoned Egypt.
Although Nitiqret did not expect to become God’s Wife for many decades, she came into her inheritance rather sooner than her adoption contract had stipulated. With the Kushites expelled from Egypt, it was no longer reasonable nor politically expedient for their appointee to wait such a long time to succeed. So, when Shepenwepet II died, some time in the latter years of Psamtik I’s reign, the designated heiress Amenirdis II was passed over, retaining the deputy position of Divine Adoratrice, while Nitiqret became God’s Wife. Once installed, she held office for the next quarter of a century, dying in 586 BC, in the fourth year of the reign of Apries. She was buried, with great ceremony, in a splendid tomb-chapel in the forecourt of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, at the heart of the Theban necropolis. The Delta princess had come to the end of her long journey.
91 | Sematawytefnakht (I)
ROYAL FLOTILLA COMMANDER
On 2 March 656 BC a splendid flotilla set out from the royal residence, bound for the religious capital of Thebes, some 960 km (600 miles) to the south. The ships were fully crewed and laden with provisions. This was no ordinary convoy: its purpose was to convey Nitiqret (no. 90), the king’s daughter, to the great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. There, she would be received by the priesthood and acknowledged as the future God’s Wife of Amun, the most important sacred office in Egypt after the High Priest himself.
In overall charge of the journey was the Flotilla Commander Sematawytefnakht, and the next sixteen days of sailing up the Nile were to be the pinnacle of his career, the most important two weeks of his life. His background, upbringing and rise to prominence are all obscure. He probably came from the town of Herakleopolis (ancient Hnes), a few days’ sailing south of Memphis. By 656 BC he had become governor of the local region, the twentieth nome (province) of Upper Egypt, known to the ancient Egyptians by the charmingly descriptive name of ‘upper pomegranate-tree’. Sematawytefnakht was also Chief of the Harbour at the royal residence, responsible for all river-borne traffic in and out of the most prestigious port in the country. With a combination of courtly, military and logistical experience, Sematawytefnakht was the ideal choice to supervise Nitiqret’s elaborate royal progress.
Planning for the journey had been going on for months in advance. Royal messengers had travelled upstream the length of the route, to persuade and cajole all the provincial governors through whose lands the flotilla would pass to supply provisions for the princess and her enormous retinue. Each nomarch would be responsible for providing the bread, beer, meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables to feed the convoy. In this way, the royal exchequer would be spared the entire burden of financing such a costly undertaking, and the regional potentates would be able to display their loyalty to the ruling dynasty.
By the time the day of departure dawned, all was ready. As marshals cleared the way, Nitiqret went in procession from the king’s private apartments to the harbour side. Sematawytefnakht was probably at the quayside to supervise the embarkation. Sixteen days later, the flotilla under his command arrived safely at Thebes, to be met by throngs of people, shouting and clamouring for a glimpse of the princess. The second she stepped ashore, Sematawytefnakht’s job was finished. He had enjoyed only a brief moment of fame, but it had been enough to secure his immortality.
92 | Ahmose II (Amasis)
USURPER WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE GREEKS
The 26th Dynasty came to power as Assyrian vassals, when Assurbanipal installed Nekau I and his son Psamtik to rule Egypt after the invasion of 667 BC. However, little more than fifty years later, the Assyrian empire crumbled and its capital, Nineveh, was destroyed; Babylonia was the new power in the region. After another half-century, the plates shifted again, and Persia emerged as the dominant force in western Asia, with territorial ambitions stretching from the Aegean to the Indus. As Egypt contemplated the renewed threat from the east, its rulers were compelled to look for strategic support to the only other major force in the eastern Mediterranean, the Greek states.
It was into this complex and dangerous situation that Ahmose II was born, in the early years of the sixth century BC. Little is known of his background. Despite his classically Egyptian name, he was probably of Libyan ancestry, descended from prisoners of war who had settled in the Delta in Ramesside times. His distinctive physiognomy – a long face with eyes set high in his head – certainly suggests non-Egyptian ethnicity. Like many of his time, Ahmose saw the military as a route to the top. He joined the army and rose swiftly, achieving the rank of general towards the end of the reign of Apries (589–570 BC).
Apries was wary of Greek power and, in an attempt to keep it in check, dispatched the Egyptian army in 570 BC to attack the Greek city of Cyrene on the Libyan coast. Unfortunately, the king had not reckoned on his opponents’ military skill. The Egyptian army suffered a disastrous defeat and the native troops rebelled, their resentment against Apries fanned by what they perceived as the privileges enjoyed by the foreign mercenaries fighting alongside them. As the leading Egyptian general, Ahmose was at the centre of the rebellion and seized his chance. Bolstered by the support of his troops, he ousted Apries and claimed the throne. Apries fled the country and sought refuge at the court of his arch-rival, Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. Three years later, Apries attempted a counter-coup against Ahmose II with Babylonian assistance. The two forces met in the Delta and Ahmose inflicted a crushing defeat. Apries was either killed in battle or captured and executed. The new pharaoh reigned unchallenged.
According to later Greek historians, Ahmose II’s humble origins did not fit him for the highest office in the land, and he was incapable of behaving in a properly regal manner. However, this reputation probably reflected Ahmose’s economic policies, which levied particularly high taxes on Greek traders living in Egypt, rather than his true character. The evidence from his forty-four-year reign (570–526BC) suggests that he fulfilled the traditional duties of Egyptian kingship in an exemplary manner. He maintained a strong naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea (staffed with men like Wadjhorresnet, no. 93), to protect Egyptian trade routes. He was a master of domestic policy, reforming Egypt’s judicial system and carrying out a substantial temple-building programme. He commissioned a shrine to the goddess Isis on the island of Philae and a more substantial temple in Memphis. This was the first major centre of the Isis cult in Egypt, paving the way for its great popularity and subsequent expansion across the Mediterranean and as far as Britain.
To boost the Egyptian economy, Ahmose II concentrated all Greek trading activity in the Delta city of Naukratis, where Greeks had first been encouraged to settle in the reign of Psamtik I. Ahmose’s Greek policy was concerned with more than trade, however. Always astute in matters of foreign policy, he took pains to cultivate the friendship of the Aegean states, recognizing that a strong alliance offered the best defence against the Babylonians and Persians – and, indeed, against an invasion of Egypt by the Greeks themselves. Ahmose therefore exchanged diplomatic gifts with Greek rulers, reinforced his army with Greek mercenaries, and made the ultimate diplomatic gesture of friendship by paying for the reconstruction of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi – one of the most important sites of Greek religion – after it had been destroyed by fire in 548 BC. One of Ahmose’s wives may even have been the daughter of a Greek family living in Egypt.
