The Book of The Pharaohs

Pascal Vernus and Jean Yoyotte
Translated by David Lorton
The names of ancient Egyptian kings such

as Cheops, Akhenaten, and Ramesses II have
become part of popular culture. Yet, for all
the tombs and statuary that have survived over
the millennia, surprisingly little remains that
speaks to the workings of government, cabals
in the palace, political factions, and the private
lives of the royal families. In The Book of the
Pharaohs, Pascal Vernus and Jean Yoyotte offer
an indispensable, basic reference to the full
human reality of royal Egypt.
The Book of the Pharaohs is an encyclopedia of

short essays on the pharaohs themselves, as
well as on places, dynasties, personages, sub-
jects, and themes relating to the kings and their
rule. Entries range from “Adoratrice” (the title
for the priestesses of Hathor, the Egyptian
Aphrodite, whose role was to arouse the erotic

impulse in the creator gods) and "Amarna”
(the capital created by the heretic pharaoh
Akhenaten) to J i: j. •; v ’ (who ruled before
The Book of the
PHARAOHS
PASCAL VERNUS 6" JEAN YOYOTTE
translated from the French ^ DAVID LORTON
Cornell University Press Ithaca & London

This translation was prepared with the generous assistance of the French
Ministry of Culture—Centre national du livre.
English translation copyright © 2003 by Cornell University

♦ *
>
French edition, Dictionnaire des pharaons,

copyright © 1996 by Editions Noesis
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this

book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage Flouse, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
First published 2003 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vernus, Pascal.
[Dictionnaire des pharaons. English]
The book of the pharaohs / Pascal Vernus and Jean Yoyotte; translated
from the French by David Lorton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8014-4050-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Egypt—Civilization—To 332 B.C.—Dictionaries. 2.
Pharoahs—Dictionaries. I. Yoyotte, Jean. II Lorton, David, 1945-III.
Title.
DT58 .V4713 2003
932’.oi'o3—dc2i
2002014603
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible

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of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks
and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly
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Cloth printing 10 98765432 1

CONTENTS
Preface vii
Translator’s Note ix
Dictionary 1
Bibliography 231
Maps
The Delta and Middle Egypt 235
Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia 236
Upper Nubia 237
Chronology 238
PREFACE
s
What if we tore off King Tuts gold mask? What lies behind the formalism,
the hierarchism, and the majesty of the pharaonic monuments? To tell the
truth, we see but little. The names of kings such as Cheops, Akhenaten,
and Ramesses II have become part of popular culture, inspiring books
and even musical compositions; yet to the historian, these monarchs re-
main rather pallid figures. What a difference there is between the pomp
and ceremony our imagination conjures up at their very mention and the
rags and tatters that scholars can ascribe to them! But this is a superficial
disappointment, and we must get past it. After all, from Pharaoh on down,
both individually and collectively, the Egyptians lived a full, human reality.
But centuries of destruction by humans and at the hands of nature have
spared only a small proportion of the products of their activities, and what
is more, this remainder is ill-apportioned. What remains is essentially that
which the Egyptians fashioned to last—that is, monuments of stone: tem-
ples, tombs, stelae, statues, and the like, monuments that are aesthetically
eloquent but historically silent. And what survives of private tombs or
dwellings for the most part informs us only indirectly of the pharaohs.
Rare are papyri containing official documents and correspondence in-
forming us of the workings of government, cabals in the palace and polit-
ical factions, and a fortiori, the private life of the royal family. All told, one
autobiographical inscription of an official, two passages from literature,
and an incomplete record of a judicial investigation permit us a glimpse
of three conspiracies ... in the course of two whole millennia (see the
entry Conspiracy).
There are thus too few archives for us to observe any given pharaoh in
person from day to day. Temples and official monuments, however, ex-
hibit an abundance of idealized images of the reigning sovereign, accom-
panied by his names. As the sole mediator between the superhuman and
society, Pharaoh dedicated the temples, and on their walls, his images per-
formed the rites. He multiplied his presence by means of his effigies, and
he supplied official accounts of some of his deeds and published some of
his decisions in the form of hieroglyphic texts. Everywhere, his personality
was dissolved in the stereotyped image imposed by ideology. Except in
viii PREFACE
rare cases, historians cannot uncover the individuality of kings, but they
can at least investigate the manner in which each period, and sometimes
each reign, formulated and conducted a policy. Erecting sacred monu-
ments in Pharaoh’s name to foster stability and universal prosperity was as
essential a task as the management of economic activity and foreign pol-
icy; the abundance of temples and the length of their inscriptions served
as global reflections of the achievements of a feign. Notwithstanding
these limitations and the possibilities of analysis, we are constrained to
make an objective characterization of the reigns and personalities of the
“great” pharaohs, such as Tuthmosis III, Akhenaten, and Ramesses II, and
to make such account as we can of the greatest possible number of less
well-known sovereigns. To situate the individual monarchs in the histori-
cal context of their respective periods and thus to compose an account of
those periods, this volume includes entries devoted to the periods — the
“Kingdoms” and the “Intermediate Periods” — and to each of the dynas-
ties as they succeeded one another. To broaden the cultural “landscape,”
brief entries deal with certain prominent nonroyal personalities. In order
to assist the reader in placing the pharaohs within the perceptions and
practices peculiar to ancient Egypt, other entries define essential concepts
(pharaoh, coregency, etc.) and salient points having to do with monu-
ments and institutions. Further, cities that trod the stage of history at one
time or another are considered individually. A chronological table organ-
izes the major periods of Egyptian history and notes the most illustrious
royal names from each of them. The dates in this table, as well as those in
the entries, are approximate: useful in terms of relative chronology, but of
value only for the estimated lengths of reigns and periods; they cannot
pretend to fix in time, precisely and irrevocably, the important moments
and the major events. The textual and archaeological realities condemn
us to this humility ... or rather, to this humiliation.
Since the first edition of this work, excavations, text editions, and
scholarly discussions have brought no truly new and certain facts, though
they have offered many fresh interpretations. We feel it would be prema-
ture to include detailed accounts of all these ideas. Nevertheless, recent
discoveries at predynastic sites are clarifying the problems surrounding
the birth of the pharaonic state, thus justifying entries on Dynasty Zero
and the problem of the Unification.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
/
English-speaking Egyptologists have no single set of conventions for the

rendering of ancient Egyptian and modern Arabic personal and place
names. Most of the names mentioned in this book occur in a standard
reference work, John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt
(New York, 1980), and the renderings here follow those in that volume.
The major exception is the omission of the typographical sign for ayin;
this consonant does not exist in English, and I felt that its inclusion
would only distract the reader.
The Book of the PHARAOHS
/
Adoratrice
This title designates certain priestesses attached to the goddess Hathor
(the Egyptian Aphrodite) or employed in the service of Atum, Min, Amun,
or Sobk. The role of these priestesses was to arouse the sex drive of creator
gods. When the cult of Amun was organized, the presence of the “wife of
the god and hand of the god” was required to carry out various rituals.
Under Ahmose, this office, which would come to be called “divine ado-
ratrice of Amun” in the spoken language, was conferred upon Queen Ah-
mose-Nofretari. She was followed by an outstanding series of princesses,
some of whom became royal wives, among them the future “pharaoh”
Hatshepsut.
In this period, mystical marriage to Amun did not preclude marriage
to a king and motherhood, though the office had nothing to do with the
legends of the divine birth of the king, one of the foundations of dynastic
legitimacy, as was once long believed. Religion and politics were mingled,
as suggested by unexplained changes in the office. After Tuthmosis IV, the
connection between the priestess and the reigning family became less
strict, and there was no adoratrice of Amun under Amenophis III. “Wives”
of the god included Mut-tui, the mother of Ramesses II; Twosre, wife of
Sethos II; and Tity, under Ramesses III. Yet none of the many wives and
daughters of Ramesses II held the office. Princesses who were adoratrices
appeared at Thebes under the Twentieth Dynasty.
In the Twenty-first Dynasty, with Maatkare, the daughter of Pinudjem,
the institution experienced a transformation of great theocratic signifi-
cance. From that time on, the wife of Amun, who was provided with a car-
touche containing a prenomen (which was based on the name of Mut,
Amun’s consort), remained celibate for life. For more than half a century,
queens married only to the supreme god, surrounded by virgin
chan tresses, and served by a rich household managed by powerful “major-
domos of the adoratrice” would join with the pharaohs in embellishing
the sanctuaries of Thebes. Their succession from “mother” to “daughter”
was effected by adoption, and the Libyans, Kushites, and Saites each im-
posed a princess of their blood as spiritual “coregent.” The adoratrices of
the Twenty-second Dynasty (among them Karomama, famous for her
bronze statue) were buried around the Ramesseum, the funerary temple
of Ramesses II. Those of the Twenty-third to the Twenty-sixth Dynasties
were interred at Medinet Habu — Shepenwepet I, Amenirdis, Shepen-
wepet II, Nitocris, Ankhnesneferibre — and their great majordomos lo-
cated their tombs nearby, on the Asasif.
The Persians abolished the royal status of the adoratrice, but virgins
born of local families continued to marry Amun. The name “pallakides
2 THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
(concubines) of Zeus” given to them by the Greeks creates a misimpres-

sion of sacred prostitution.
G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), chapter 2.
Ahmose 1539-1514 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

In Egyptian, Ahmose (Iahmes) means “the moon has given birth.”
“Amasis,” a name we assign to a pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, is
another transcription of the same Egyptian name.
Though we begin the Eighteenth Dynasty with Ahmose, there was no
rupture with the Seventeenth Dynasty, for the king was the grandson of
Tetisheri, the son of Ahhotpe, and the brother of Kamose. The reason for
the commencement of a new dynasty is that his reign was marked by a
major event: the expulsion of the Hyksos, who had occupied Egypt for
more than a century. We can see that the wars of liberation begun by
Kamose required time and effort; Avaris fell only after a lengthy siege. It
was then necessary to eradicate the Hyksos bastions in Palestine, to crush
the Nubian chiefs who sporadically attempted to regain a foothold in
Lower Nubia, which Egypt had just won back, and finally, to punish rebel-
lions led by Egyptians who were either Hyksos collaborators or, perhaps,
ambitious fellow travelers of the Theban pharaohs. Since Ahmose seems
to have ascended the throne while still a minor, his mother, Ahhotpe, ex-
ercised a sort of coregency during part of his reign. When the political sit-
uation became settled, probably around year 20 of his reign, Ahmose
began the great restoration efforts that Egypt so sorely needed. Mines and
quarries were reopened (producing limestone from el-Maasara, alabaster
from Bisra, turquoise from the Sinai), and the traditional exchanges with
Byblos were reestablished. The king’s construction efforts were mostly
concentrated in Upper Egypt, in the areas that had belonged to the na-
tionalist alliance forged by the Seventeenth Dynasty; his erection of a
cenotaph for himself and his grandmother Tetisheri at Abydos made him
a patron saint there. At the same time, the temple domains began to be re-
organized, with special attention to the administration of grain revenues.
Ahmose’s tomb has yet to be discovered. But we know his mummy, like
many others, was deposited in the cachette of Deir el-Bahari to protect it
from the depredations of tomb robbers.
See Ahmose, son of Ebana; Ahmose-Nofretari; Cachettes; Hyksos.
Ahmose, Son of Ebana

A native of el-Kab, Ahmose was the son of a soldier of Seqenenre
named Beb. Ahmose’s fame in antiquity resulted from his exploits, while
AHMOSE-NOFRETARI 3
his celebrity among Egyptologists is due to his detailed autobiography. He

was scarcely married when he enlisted as a sailor in Ahmose’s war of liber-
ation against the Hyksos; he distinguished himself in the sieges of Avaris
and Sharuhen, the latter a fortified Hyksos city in Palestine. Subsequently,
he participated in the king’s campaigns in Nubia and in the suppression of
a revolt in Egypt led by Tetian.
The king’s successor Amenophis I also had to campaign in Nubia. Ah-
mose’s valor earned him the privilege of accompanying his sovereign on
the royal boat, and, when the expedition returned, of being named “war-
rior of the ruler.”
Ahmose also distinguished himself when Tuthmosis I led yet another
expedition to Nubia, and he earned a promotion to “chief of the sailors.”
In a campaign in Syria against the empire of Mitanni, Ahmose figured
prominently in the vanguard of the Egyptian army, capturing a chariot.
Ahmose reached old age prosperous and heaped with honors. On six
occasions, he had been awarded the “gold of valor”; at sword point, he ac-
quired fields and slaves, all inventoried in detail at the end of his autobi-
ography. His affluence enabled him to make and to inscribe a tomb. He
was an outstanding representative of a new social type characteristic of the
New Kingdom, the soldier who rose through the ranks.
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 2: The New Kingdom
(Berkeley, 1976), pp. 12-15.
See Ahmose, Amenophis I, Avaris, Hyksos, Tuthmosis I.
Ahmose-Nofretari
Ahmose-Nofretari was the wife and probably sister or half-sister of Ah-
mose, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty; she survived him, living
through the reign of his successor, Amenophis I, and dying at the begin-
ning of the reign of Tuthmosis I. She was so closely associated with some
of her husband’s accomplishments that it is clear she exercised a sort of
coregency, as the king was long occupied with the war of liberation and its
aftermath. She also exercised quasi-royal powers during the minority of
Amenophis I. Aside from this political role, Ahmose-Nofretari was the first
queen to hold the sacerdotal office of “wife of the god.” The role was en-
dowed with a combination of goods and landed estates by means of a com-
plex legal fiction: the queen was given the position of second prophet of
Amun, which the king soon bought back, underestimating what he paid in
exchange.
In her role as “wife of the god,” which included participation in a com-
plex of ceremonies, she reorganized the cult and introduced a number of
implements and objects sanctioned by her name. The prestige she earned,
along with that of the funerary monuments dedicated to her and her son
Amenophis I, earned her the distinction of becoming a patron saint of the
Theban necropolis. She was often represented in the company of the lat-
ter king in chapels and private tombs, as well as in the temples of the gods,
throughout the New Kingdom; the most popular of her images was a
statue of wood covered with bitumen, which explains why the queen’s
body was often painted black. Her barque would go out on procession on
the occasion of major festivals, the ceremonies of which included a stop at
her funerary temple. After her, and thanks to her, a huge complex of
landed estates and revenues remained attached to the office of “wife of
the god” and “adoratrice of the god.”
M. Gitton, L'Epouse du dieu Ahmes Nefertary, Centre de recherches d’histoire
ancienne 15, Annales litteraires de l’universite de Besangon 172 (Paris, 1981).

See Adoratrice, Ahmose, Amenophis I.
Alexander the Great 332-323 B.C.E.

Leading his Macedonian subjects and the Greek cities in an assault on
the Persian empire, Alexander conquered Anatolia, Syria, and Phoenicia;
in 332, without a blow being struck, he entered Egypt, which was discon-
tented in the wake of its recent reconquest by the Persians. This liberating
Horus from afar, who quickly became “Pharaoh Alexander,” successor of
“Pharaoh Darius,” passed through Memphis and journeyed to Siwa Oasis,
where the god Amun was said to have recognized him as his son. Upon
Alexander’s return, he founded Alexandria, a Greek city and Mediter-
ranean port, on the margin of the Egyptian realm.
His internal system of government was a continuation of that of the
Persians. He installed military governors and garrisons, but he left the
management of civil affairs to Egyptian nomarchs who were supervised by
Cleomenes of Naukratis, a Greek born in Egypt. The brilliant Macedon-
ian then departed to conquer the East, where he died at Babylon in 323,
both a hero in the Greek sense of the word and a despot in the
Achaemenid style. Alexander was “beloved of Re” and “son of Amun” —
and later transformed into the bodily son of this god (or of Nectanebo II),
according to the myth of the divine birth of the king. Alexander’s Egypt-
ian subjects immediately endowed him with the attributes of a pharaoh.
The temple of Luxor, which was restored during his reign, preserves his
cartouches. The rear sanctuary at Karnak was similarly “signed” by his half
brother Philip Arrhidaeus (323-317 B.C.E.), and the hypostyle hall of the
great temple of Thoth at Hermopolis is decorated in the name of Alexan-
ALEXANDRIA 5
der Aigos, his son, the third and last Macedonian pharaoh (317-311
B.C.E.).
Alexander’s body would later be transferred from Babylon to Memphis
and then entombed at Alexandria by order of Ptolemy I, a former com-
mander in the armies of the conqueror and the founder of an Alexandrian
dynasty.
/
^Macedonian (Dynasty), Nectanebo, Ptolemy.
Alexandria
Now the second city of Egypt and more illustrious than ever, this urban
center was founded in 332/331 B.C.E. as the westernmost of the eleven
Alexandreia of which the great conqueror was the eponymous hero. As a
result of the remarkable developments that this Mediterranean port and
its cultural institutions experienced during the Greco-Roman era, its
name symbolizes the birth and the flowering of Hellenistic civilization. In
fact, we might wonder to what extent this city, on which Hellenists have fo-
cused so much attention, even concerns the pharaohs or falls within the
purview of Egyptologists.
Prior to Alexander’s conquest, the small, rocky offshore strip of land at
the northwest corner of the Nile delta separating the sea from the vast
Lake Mariut was occupied only by a post for coast guard ships, while the
marshes of the lake were inhabited by uncouth cowherds. The Egyptian,
Demotic, and Coptic designation of the city of Alexandria continued to be
Raqote (Rakotis), literally, “the construction,” either in the sense of “last-
ing construction” in contrast to the huts of the cowherds, or, according to
a recent hypothesis, the ongoing “construction site” begun by the Greeks.
The isle of Pharos, about 875 yards wide, on which Ptolemy II had a light-
house erected, served as a port of call for sailors coming from the Aegean
before they proceeded east along the coast to present themselves at the
royal customhouse at the entrance to the westernmost branch of the Nile.
The cowherds were responsible for discouraging pirates from infiltrating
Egyptian soil.
An up-to-date city, laid out geometrically in the Greek style, was built
on this quasi no-man’s-land. It was the residence of the dynasty, as well as
the seat of government and of a central administration whose principal
language was Greek. For the first time, the Egyptian state provided a sea-
port for its naval and commercial strategies. Themselves the pupils of
Greek philosophers and amateurs at Greek literature, the Ptolemies made
their capital into a conservatory and a center for the development of the
Hellenic patrimony. The Museum, a sort of permanent seminar, was
founded, along with the famous Library, whose scholars gathered and col-
lated manuscripts containing Greek literary and scholarly works, enhanc-
ing them with learned commentaries. Contrary to a notion that is still cur-
rent, though, nothing indicates that the Museum collected hieroglyphic,
hieratic, or Demotic papyri containing the knowledge accumulated by the
native tradition, nor is there is any basis to the idea that the works of the
Alexandrian thinkers and scholars, Eratosthenes and others, were based
on the sacred lore of the priestly scribes of Memphis, Thebes, and He-
liopolis.
That is not to say, however, that we can simply imagine a purely Greek
“home base” at the edge of Egypt (ad Aegyptum), a colony almost totally
closed to natives and to their beliefs and practices. Various facts lead us to
reconsider the Egyptian aspect of this Hellenic city and to assess in what
ways the pharaonic heritage was present, visible, and alive there:
1. Undeniably, from the beginning, the early Ptolemies chose Osiris-

Apis as the patron of Alexandria. The inhabitants of Memphis, in-
cluding colonists of Greek stock, had already been worshiping him
as the this-worldly and other-worldly form of the supreme deity, who
was at the same time Re, Ptah, and Osiris. In the Serapeum that was
constructed on the highest hill, Bryaxis created a statue of this Ser-
apis that made him resemble Zeus, Hades, and Asclepius, but cer-
tain chapels were conceived and consecrated according to native rit-
ual, as shown by typically pharaonic foundation deposits with
hieroglyphic inscriptions that imply the participation of Egyptian
priests.
2. European travelers were exploring Alexandria as long ago as the
eighteenth century. Since then, the city has been investigated by
local and national archaeological authorities and by the citizens of
Alexandria. Its now submerged parts have been the object of recent
exploration by the Center for Alexandrian Studies and the European
Institute of Underwater Archaeology. Throughout the city, these in-
vestigators have found a remarkable quantity of objects and frag-
ments in pharaonic style, often bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions,
mingled with the remains of Greek style and language. These
Alexandrian aegyptiaca are mostly monuments capable of being
moved — statues, sphinxes, obelisks (including “Cleopatra’s Nee-
dles,” a pair of New Kingdom obelisks now in London and New
York), and so forth — but there are also fragments of architecture:
columns, parts of walls, door frames, and notably, seven unusual,
small walls constructed under kings of Dynasty Twenty-six and under
ALEXANDRIA 7
Nectanebo I of Dynasty Thirty, which are now scattered among the

museums of Bologna, Alexandria, Vienna, and London (where they
are incorrectly said to have stemmed from Rosetta!). Many of these
royal monuments date to earlier dynasties, but they cannot be cited
to affirm that the pharaohs had founded a port city adorned with vast
sanctuaries. Inscriptions attest that they were taken from temples in
the interior of the land, mostly from Heliopolis, as has been known
for more than a century. Moreover, a number of stray stones bear
traces showing they were recut and reused as building material,
sometimes several times, during the Greek and Roman eras.
We must distinguish between works in the pharaonic style that date to

the Ptolemaic Period and those that date to kings earlier than Alexander
and were imported from other sites. The former — notably the colossi of
Lagide kings and Isiac queens found at the foot of the Qayt-Bey fortress
and in the suburb of Eleusis, or the group of Philadelphoi found on
Pharos — show that the Macedonian sovereigns were pleased to exhibit
their divine omnipotence in the guise of pharaohs in the bosom of their
Hellenic city. As elsewhere, the beautiful Egyptian-style statues of native
dignitaries are votive images that these officials set up in the temples of
Alexandria. From the third century on, men from the nomes holding
priestly office frequented the royal court, and in the second and first cen-
turies, some of them, who were both traditional and Hellenized, held high
government offices in the capital, including the all-powerful office of min-
ister of finance.
The question arises of determining under what circumstances, for what
purpose, and at what dates antiquities going back to the Sesostrids, the
Ramessides, the Saites, and the Sebennytic kings were removed to Alexan-
dria. It would seem that the sphinxes, along with the images of kings pre-
senting offerings, were simply incorporated into the ritual furnishings of
the Serapeum and other temples, where they materialized the pharaoh’s
presence and actions while affirming the prestigious and immemorial con-
tinuity of the divine kingship. Architectural elements such as window and
door frames, screen walls, and monolithic columns were perhaps inte-
grated into new buildings for the same reasons, before being abruptly
reused during the reorganizations of the Roman era.
Heliopolis, the principal source of large stone monuments, had appar-
ently declined in importance by the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period.
After the year 30 B.C.E., when its decrepitude was patent, the Roman em-
peror decided to transport obelisks from that city to Rome, in homage to
the Sun and as testimony to the domination he had established over all the
world. Should we or should we not impute the final destruction of the

temples of Heliopolis to the Romans? On many points, the complicated
history of these pharaonica of Alexandria will need to be methodically in-
vestigated in order to determine the place of pharaohs, hieroglyphs, and
Egyptologists in the archaeology of Alexandria.
P. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1972); E. Qoddio et al., Alexandria:

The Submerged Royal Quarters (London, 1998).
See Alexander the Great, Ptolemy.
Amarna
The name Amarna is commonly used in reference to the capital city
created ex nihilo around 1349 B.C.E. by Amenophis IV when he changed
his name to Akhenaten. The city is referred to more exactly as el-Armana
(in Arabic, “the people of the Amran tribe,” which inhabited the site in
more recent times); the designation Tell el-Amarna, widespread though it
might be, is toponymically incorrect. Egyptologists often use the term
“Amarna” to qualify the religion that Akhenaten founded, as well as the
unusual style of statuary and relief that he favored; the term “Atenist”
would be preferable. In fact, the revolution in question did not originate
at Amarna; the city was its (relatively late) manifestation.
It was not until four years after the proclamation of his doctrine and its
new style that the king, inspired by his god Aten, decided to set aside a
vast domain that extended from the eastern to the western mountains a
little south of Hermopolis. Its boundaries were demarcated by a dozen
rock-cut stelae recounting the first visit to the site (year 4), its occupation
(year 6), and the confirmation (year 8) of this permanent foundation,
whose name was Akhetaten, “the Horizon of the Disk.” Its inhabitants, its
soil, and all its resources were to be at the service of the Sun alone.
The new city, whose layout was specified by the king himself, was
quickly built on a vast plain on the east bank of the river. It would be
home to the holy royal family and the spiritual and political center of the
empire. The principal government ministers and departments were set-
tled there. But we must reject the oft-repeated notion that Akhenaten
wished to dwell exclusively in his utopia: he in fact commanded that if he,
Nefertiti, or their eldest daughter happened to die outside Amarna, they
were to be brought back and buried in the rock-cut tomb that he ordered
prepared in the eastern mountain.
Abandoned under Tutankhamun, the capital lasted scarcely longer
than the heresy; after the departure of the court, it quickly declined. Dur-
ing the reign of Ramesses II, its temples were dismantled, and their mate-
AMASIS 9
rials were reused at Hermopolis and Asyut. The abandoned homes col-
lapsed, and their remains were not damaged by later occupation. Amarna
is practically our only evidence of the urban environment in a new city.
The royal city properly speaking, which was rather compact and a bit an-
archic, was located in the center of the plain. Its core was the immense
“house of Aten,” which was linked by a bridge to the huge “house of the
king.” Other Aten sanctuaries and the buildings housing the government
ministries (including the famous office containing the diplomatic
archives) were spread out around them. Two quarters, at the northern and
southern ends of the plain, contained other official buildings, notably the
Maru-Aten in the south, which was both a cult place of the sun god and
the royal family and a pleasantly landscaped residence.
Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the buildings, archaeologists
have been able to reconstruct the plans of the spacious homes of the no-
bles, as well as the houses of the so-called workmen of the Tomb and of the
government bureaucrats. The home of the sculptor Thutmose yielded a
celebrated collection of finished and unfinished works. The scenes and in-
scriptions carved in the rock-cut tombs of the courtiers on the eastern
mountain are our principal source for reconstructing the Atenist doc-
trine, and they furnish many lively representations of temples, palaces,
and religious and secular activities from the time when the Horizon of the
Disk was the pharaoh’s splendid residence.
E. Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (Ithaca, 1999), chapter 5.
Amasis 570-526 B.c.E., Twenty-sixth Dynasty

What we know of this king from his numerous monuments and from
Herodotus illustrates the successes and the tensions of Saite Egypt. Greek
and Carian settlers had been the instruments of the victories effected by
the dynasty that succeeded Psammetichus I. Claiming that it had been sac-
rificed by Apries during his disastrous campaign in Libya, the native mili-
tary caste brought Amasis to power and crushed the foreign auxiliaries by
the sheer force of numbers. “Amasis the king,” as Gaston Maspero well put
it, “forgot the injuries done to Amasis the pretender.” This general from a
small town in the Saite nome understood that the technological future lay
with the cities of Greece, and once he became “son of Neith,” he pursued
a resolutely philhellenic policy: alliance with Cyrene, gifts to Delphi and
Samos, expansion of the trading center of Naukratis, and the transfer of
the Ionian and Carian military colonists to Memphis. His only military
venture was the conquest of Cyprus, whose art was influenced by that of
Egypt. Around 570 B.C.E., Egypt had barely escaped a Babylonian inva-
lO THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
sion, but the prudent Amasis refrained from intervening in Asia while
Cyrus of Persia annexed Anatolia and then the Babylonian realm.
Amasis supposedly invented the obligatory declaration of income. The
evidence seems to confirm his role as legislator in the area of tax and cus-
toms regulations, and it attests to the scale of his monumental programs
(the sacred lake of Sais and the naoi of Sais and Mendes). The introduc-
tion of a gown in the latest style on the statues of high officials perhaps de-
notes the modernism of their master. Amasis’ personality became the sub-
ject of legend (in a Demotic story and Greek anecdotes). He was
supposedly a scandalous drinker and an indelicate practical joker, but his
inscriptions reveal him establishing a permanent cult for his statues and
extending his divine protection to his ministers. Herodotus wrote, “It is
said that the reign of Amasis was a time of unexampled material prosper-
ity for Egypt; the river gave its riches to the earth and the earth to the
people.”
The Persian conqueror had the cartouches of this usurper mutilated in
vain. The people retained an image of the xenophilic parvenu that con-
formed exactly to the theological model of a pharaoh.
A. de Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), p. 199.

Apries, Sais, Saite (Dynasties).
Amenemhet (Amrnenernes)
This name, which means “Amun is in front,” was borne by several
pharaohs of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties. The reigns of those of
the Thirteenth Dynasty—Amenemhet V, VI, and VII—were brief and ob-
scure.
Amenemhet I 1991-1962 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet I was the founder and first king of the Twelfth Dynasty.
Prior to that, he was undoubtedly the vizier of Mentuhotpe IV, the last
king of the Eleventh Dynasty, whose reign was so troubled that ancient
Egyptian historiography did not recognize him at all. Were these troubles
the cause or the result of the attempt at a dynastic change? In any event,
once in power, Amenemhet I clearly marked the advent of a new era by lo-
cating his capital at Lisht (in Egyptian, Itj-taiuy, “the one who seizes the
Two Lands”) in the south of the plain of Memphis. He endeavored to
reestablish an order that had been seriously compromised by civil war,
reestablishing the traditional landholding patterns and favoring the re-
cruitment of administrators. To the latter end, he inspired the writing of
the Summa (in Egyptian, Kemyt), a compilation of standard written for-
AMENEMHET III 11
mulas, and of the Satire of the Trades, which paints a highly disparaging pic-
ture of callings other than that of a scribe. Amenemhet I consolidated the
boundaries of Egypt by means of operations in Nubia, Libya, and Pales-
tine, and especially by constructing the “Wall of the Ruler,” a system of
fortresses protecting the eastern delta from Asiatic infiltration.
It is clear that he was unable to complete this major effort to annul the
effects of the First Intermediate Period. Thus, in Middle Egypt, the no-
marchs maintained the aristocratic and regionalist traditions that had ru-
ined the Old Kingdom. The problem was that the legitimacy of the new
dynasty was fragile. Still, the king endeavored to reinforce it by commis-
sioning a work of propaganda, the Prophecies of Neferti, in which, during
the beneficent reign of good King Snofru, a seer predicted that Egypt
would be rescued from a period of chaos by a savior from the south
named Ameny, an obvious short form of the name Amenemhet. He also
attempted to secure the succession by making his son, Senwosret I, core-
gent in year 20 of his reign, but this effort was in vain. As a result of a con-
spiracy concocted in the harem, Amenemhet I was assassinated in his year
30 and was buried in the pyramid he had erected at Lisht. Senwosret I
then commissioned an apocryphal work, the Instruction of Amenemhet I,
a political testament defending the latter’s accomplishments and advocat-
ing their continuation by his successor.
Amenemhet II 1929-1895 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet II was the third king of the Twelfth Dynasty. He ruled
thirty-eight years, partly as coregent with Sesostris I, his father and prede-
cessor, and partly with Sesostris II, his son and successor. He increased
commercial relations with the exotic trade centers of Punt, Syria-Pales-
tine, and even Cyprus; a treasure of gold and silver objects, some of
Aegean type, was deposited in the foundations of the temple of Tod.
Amenemhet II undertook important construction work in the temple of
Hermopolis, and he built his pyramid at Dahshur, south of Saqqara.
Amenemhet III 1843-1796 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet III was the sixth pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty. During
his long reign, this dynasty, and the Middle Kingdom more generally,
reached its culmination, to the extent that the pharaonic state was able to
tighten its control over the resources and the productive forces of Egypt
and neighboring lands.
The system that Senwosret III had established in Nubia had regularized
commerce with the south. In the north, on the Lebanese coast around By-
blos, principalities developed with a highly Egyptianized ruling elite who
served as intermediaries between Egypt and the Near East (Syria-Pales-

tine, the Aegean).
Willingly or otherwise, a large Asiatic workforce began to settle in
Egypt. Mines and quarries were intensively exploited: diorite from Nubia,
granite from Aswan, hard stone from the Wadi Hammamat, limestone
from Tura, and especially, turquoise and copper from Sinai.
The administrative reform begun by Senwosfef'III was completed. It
led to a multiplication of new titles and the emergence of a middle layer
of minor bureaucrats who achieved sufficient affluence to set up in-
scribed funerary monuments for themselves.
As a result of his control over goods and over the forces of production,
Amenemhet III conducted an intense building program in which tech-
nology served to express an austere classicism. He built two pyramids, one
at Saqqara and the other at Hawara in the Faiyum. The latter’s funerary
temple and associated town constituted an ensemble so complex that the
Greeks called it a Labyrinth; other traces of his construction activities are
still visible at Biahmu. The king’s funerary cult lasted into the Greco-
Roman era, when he was worshiped under the name Lamares, which was
based on his throne name, Nimaatre.
See Senwosret III.
Amenemhet IV 1799-1787 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet IV was the seventh king of the Twelfth Dynasty. He
reigned for twelve years, some of them as coregent with his predecessor,
Amenemhet III, who might have been his uncle. Amenemhet IV contin-
ued the work of his predecessor, maintaining extensive relations with Asia
and constructing temples, especially in the Faiyum.
Amenhotpe, Son of Hapu

This provincial son of a lowly scribe from Athribis, a town in the middle
of the delta, was born in the reign of Tuthmosis III and died in his eighties
in year 31 of Amenophis III. Amenhotpe had one of the most brilliant ca-
reers to which an ordinary private person could aspire in pharaonic
Egypt, thanks to his abilities and to the favor of the king. Amenophis III,
who recognized his talent, appointed him as a royal scribe, assigning him
at first to religious writings. Later, the king made him a “royal scribe of re-
cruits”; Amenhotpe’s duties were to administer the numerous personnel
of the various institutions that composed the state. He also had to organ-
ize the change of status of the serfs of the royal domain, who were trans-
ferred permanently to the domain of Amun. In addition, he oversaw the
AMENOPHIS 13
maintenance and movements of the troops who patrolled the delta coast
and the eastern and western desert plateaus, and he raised and organized
an expeditionary force charged with putting down a revolt in Nubia.
The king was so satisfied with his services that he entrusted him with a
burdensome responsibility: that of supervising, as “overseer of all works,”
the many construction projects he undertook at Thebes. Thus, Arnen-
hotpe directed quarrying at Heliopolis, and then the transport of the
Colossi of Memnon and the colossus of the Tenth Pylon of the temple of
Karnak. These services received their due reward: the king presented him
with statues that were placed in the temple to serve as intermediaries be-
tween Amenhotpe and visitors. The king also entrusted him with the ad-
ministration of the domain of one of his daughters, Satamun, and he put
him in charge of organizing his first jubilee, even permitting him to play
an officiating role in the cermony. Finally, Amenhotpe was granted the
right to erect a funerary temple near that of the king; its personnel bene-
fited from a tax-immune status that would be reconfirmed even after the
New Kingdom. By way of a prebend, he was also awarded the office of
“overseer of prophets of Khentekhtai,” the god of Athribis, his hometown.
Amenhotpe’s tomb must surely have equaled that of contemporaries
such as Ramose and Khaemhet. It has yet to be discovered, though its ap-
proximate location is known; in any case, Egytologists are certain that it
was pillaged and severely damaged, to judge from the remains of it scat-
tered throughout museums and private collections.
His brilliant career made it possible for Amenhotpe to survive to pos-
terity, not only as an intercessor or patron saint, but also as a deity. He was
believed to be the son of the god Apis (because of his father’s name,
Hapu), and he was associated with Imhotep, another deified man. Sanctu-
aries and oratories were built for his worship, and as late as the Ptolemaic
Period, crowds of suppliants came to find the solution to their troubles or
a cure for their ailments, either from his oracle or in the silence of incu-
bation (visions seen in dreams). He was even identified with Asclepius by
the Greeks.
A. Varille, Inscriptions concernant Varchitecte Amenhotep, fils de Hapou, Bibliotheque

d’Etude 44 (Cairo, 1968); D. Wildung, Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt
(New York, 1977).
Amenophis III, Imhotep.
Amenophis
When speaking of kings, Egyptologists often use the Greek form
Amenophis as the equivalent of the Egyptian name Amenhotpe, which
means “Amun is satisfied.” This convention is followed here for the

pharaohs named Amenhotpe in Egyptian. Nevertheless, it should be men-
tioned that the name form rests on a confusion: the Greek name
Amenophis actually transcribes the Egyptian name Amenemope, “Amun
is in Opet”; the actual Greek transcription of Amenhotpe is Amenothes.
«l *•
>
Amenophis I 1514-1493 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Amenophis I was the second king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, son and
successor of Ahmose and Ahmose-Nofretari. He reigned twenty years and
seven months. He was faced with the task of continuing the policy of res-
toration and fresh undertakings that Ahmose had barely begun. Like his
predecessor, he subdued rebellions in Nubia, where permanent Egyptian
occupation would extend as far as the Second Cataract, and which was
placed under the jurisdiction of a special administrator, the viceroy of
Kush; the mining of local gold could thus be systematically organized.
Within Egypt, Amenophis I’s efforts were turned especially to the cities
that had participated in the alliance put together by the Theban kings, in
particular el-Kab, where he built a temple. In the temple of Karnak, he
constructed an alabaster way station for the divine barque. More gener-
ally, Amenophis I breathed new life into Egyptian culture: during his
reign, in both the art and the inscriptions, we can follow the progressive
elimination of the legacy of the Second Intermediate Period and the re-
turn to a classicism inspired by the Middle Kingdom.
Amenophis I stimulated a policy of inventorying and copying old works
that was continued by his successors, in particular Tuthmosis III.
Amenophis I did not hesitate to introduce innovations. He was the first to
separate the royal tomb from the funerary temple, and he founded the
organization charged with excavating and decorating the tomb; he thus
became the patron saint of the workmen of Deir el-Medina, who created
cult places where oracular consultations were carried out near certain of
his monuments and images. Moreover, from the New Kingdom on, the
seventh month of the calendar was called “that of Amenophis,” referring
to the festival of the deified king. In most of his posthumous cults, he was
associated with his mother, Ahmose-Nofretari, who was herself considered
to have been the founder of new practices.
See Ahmose; Ahmose, son of Ebana; Ahmose-Nofretari.
Amenophis II 1428-1401 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Amenophis II was the seventh king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (count-
ing Hatshepsut), son of Tuthmosis III and Queen Merytre-Hatshepsut. He
AMENOPHIS III 15
reigned twenty-eight years (1428-1401), three of them as coregent with

his father. From the beginning of his sole reign, he was obliged to defend
the Egyptian hegemony so brilliantly consolidated in the Levant by Tuth-
mosis III. In his year 7, he led an expedition against a coalition of princes
in the region of Takhsy, between the Orontes and the Euphrates; seven of
them were put to death by Amenophis II himself, and their corpses were
hung from the walls of Thebes and Napata. Nonetheless, it is not certain
that his victory was total; it has even been suspected that Egypt abandoned
certain territories to the allies of Mitanni. In year 9, a second expedition
conducted north of Carmel obtained better results: Mitanni, Babylon, and
the Hittite empire sent offers of peace.
Amenophis II completed the work undertaken by his father in the tem-
ple of Amada, and he continued the embellishment of the sanctuaries of
Thebes and its region without neglecting the rest of the land. He built his
funerary temple south of that of Tuthmosis III. His mummy was discov-
ered in his sparsely decorated tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
With the reign of Amenophis II, a profound change came into play. Al-
though Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III had felt constrained to institute an
artistic and cultural neoclassicism inspired largely by the Middle King-
dom, ideology now began to open up to the times, taking innovations into
account. Egypt’s imperialism in the Levant had opened its civilization to
Asia, and royal terminology came to include metaphors based on Asiatic
deities. A new theme described the king’s physical abilities: Amenophis II
had a passion for horses, which he broke in and maneuvered with great
panache; he steered a boat with the greatest of skill, thanks to his expert
handling of the oar; and his arrows pierced thick sheets of copper. Behind
the obvious rhetoric of such proclamations, we see a genuine state of
mind: most of the high officials of his reign were not chosen from the de-
scendants of powerful lineages, but from the companions of the king’s
youth and military years.
G. Steindorff and K. C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1957),
chapter 8; C. Lalouette, Thebes ou la naissance d’un Empire (Paris, 1986), chapter 6.
See Sport, Tuthmosis III, Tuthmosis IV.
Amenophis III 1391-1353 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

The ninth king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenophis III was the son
of Tuthmosis IV and Queen Mutemwia. He reigned thirty-eight years and
seven months. His chief wife was Queen Teye, whom he associated closely
with the official events of his reign; she influenced the affairs of state, es-
pecially when illness diminished the king’s capacities at the end of his life.
She bore him at least two sons, one of them the future Amenophis
IV/Akhenaten, and four daughters. One of the latter, Satamun, exercised
the ritual functions of a queen, though this does not mean that
Amenophis III actually married her, as is often maintained with a some-
what superficial taste for the spectacular.
The great accomplishments of his reign arouse astonishment and ad-
miration, with no need for embellishment. In fact, if there ever was a
pharaoh who resembled the stereotype of an oriental despot, it was cer-
tainly Amenophis III, with his obvious propensities for refinement, osten-
tation, and perhaps indolence. From his time on, great military cam-
paigns were over; despite a police action in year 5 in Nubia, in the area of
the Fourth Cataract, Amenophis III preferred to assure Egyptian hege-
mony in Asia through diplomacy, repeatedly affirming and consolidating
friendly relations with Mitanni, the great power of the day. In year 10, he
married Gilukhepa, the daughter of Shuttarna, the king of Mitanni; sub-
sequently, he married the sister of Tushratta, another king of that land,
along with the sister of the king of Babylon, and then their daughters and
that of the king of Arzawa. When Amenophis III was ill, Tushratta sent
him the image of the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh, whose healing powers
were renowned. But diplomacy had its limits, and it did not prevent the
king of Amurru from forming a coalition of small states intent on freeing
themselves from the Egyptian sphere of influence.
This reversal occurred only at the end of a reign that otherwise marked
the apogee of Egypt’s power and wealth, thanks to the influx of Nubian
gold and enormous quantities of raw materials and finished products de-
livered by countries that were to one degree or another subject to the
pharaoh. Along with goods came ideas, customs, beliefs, and also people.
Egyptian society became highly cosmopolitan, and there was a change of
style that had already become perceptible under Amenophis II. Art fur-
nishes an excellent example. Without renouncing the traditional conven-
tions, a new delicacy and sensitivity modified Egypt’s strict hierarchism;
who has not admired the reliefs from the tombs of Ramose or Khaemhet?
The style of clothing and jewelry changed, and the hieroglyphic writing
system became progressively more open to the vernacular, which until
then had been written with the cursive script. Religion was also trans-
formed, not only by the introduction of foreign deities, but also by its turn
toward a more concrete concept of the solar cult. Under the name Aten,
the sun disk itself became the object of devotion, and we know to what ex-
tremes Akhenaten would take this tendency.
Amenophis Ill’s style of rule was in tune with the changes in Egyptian
culture. To be sure, ostentation and pomp had always characterized a
AMENOPHIS IV, ALIAS AKHENATEN 17
pharaoh’s acts and deeds, but this king took the splendor of his office to
new heights. Deeming each of his acts to be worthy of more publicity than
would be assured by traditional methods, he issued series of scarabs that
were sent to the four corners of his empire to aggrandize them: they com-
memorated his marriages to Teye and Gilukhepa, his bull hunt in the
desert in year 2, the total number of lions he slaughtered during the first
years of his reign, and sailing on the gigantic hod (irrigation basin) that
was dug near where Teye was born.
Amenophis Ill’s monumental activity was itself a form of publicity. He
erected a series of temples in Nubia, and the reliefs of that at Soleb illus-
trate the royal jubilee. He transformed the small chapel of Luxor into a
temple, the elegantly slender colonnades of which still bear testimony to
the splendor of his epoch. He also effected repairs or additions to many of
the temples of Egypt. Amenophis constructed a palace at el-Malqata,
south of Medinet Habu; in front of it was an artificial lake (Birket Habu)
about 1100 yards wide by 2700 yards long. Of his funerary temple, only its
huge statues, the Colossi of Memnon, remain for tourists to admire today;
at the beginning of the Roman era, one of them was said to emit a moan-
ing sound at dawn, but an earthquake put an end to the phenomenon.
Amenophis Ill’s tomb was located in a branch of the Valley of the Kings;
its decoration, which was painted on stucco, is now in highly damaged
condition. The identification of his mummy is uncertain.
chapter 8; C. Lalouette, Thebes ou la naissance d’un Empire (Paris, 1986), chapter 7;
A. P. Kozloff and B. M. Bryan, Egypt’s Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and His World
(Cleveland, 1992); D. O’Connor and E. Cline (eds.), Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His
Reign (Ann Arbor, 1998).
See Amenhotpe, son of Hapu; Amenophis IV, alias Akhenaten; Teye.
Amenophis IV, alias Akhenaten

1
353_133^ BC
Eighteenth Dynasty
.E.,
A long-standing hypothesis held that the government of the sumptuous
but classical Amenophis III coexisted for more than eleven years with that
of his son, the no less sumptuous but scarcely classical Amenophis IV.
Most specialists today believe that this hypothesis was based on illusory
facts that required us to imagine, contrary to the great mass of evidence,
an unbelievable situation in which the two kings supposedly coexisted in
peace but lived in parallel universes: two courts, two administrations, two
incompatible religions, with both kings ruling the same kingdom while ig-
noring each other. In reality, at the change of reigns, there was an enor-
l8 THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
mous rupture. When he came to power, Amenophis IV behaved like a

prophet, revealing his sole god: “Re-Harakhty who rejoices in the horizon
in his name of Shu (Light) which is in the Disk (Aten) this new formula-
tion was written in two cartouches to express the sovereignty of the sun.
Huge buildings were hastily built of small blocks (talatat) at Karnak, the
home of the cult of Amun, King of the Gods, the foremost patron of
Egypt’s empire. The provincial cults continuedTo'exist, served nominally
by the king but under orders to furnish offerings to the new deity.
In his year 4, the king took the name Akhenaten (“useful to the Disk”)
and had a huge territory called the “Horizon of Aten” (Akhet-Aten) pre-
pared in Middle Egypt, in an area devoid of any earlier temple. A new city
was built in this territory, and in year 6, he moved there with his mother,
Teye, his wife Nefertiti, his daughters, his court, and his government. Aten
temples would be constructed in other cities as well: Sedeinga in the
Sudan, Gurob, Memphis, and Heliopolis.
The hymns copied in the rock-cut tombs of the government officials at
Amarna are addressed to Aten, the unfettered driving force of the physi-
cal cosmos, dispenser of light and air, and salvation of every living being.
They are beautiful outpourings of sentiment, composed in a learned style
that nevertheless borrows a great deal from the spoken language, and they
sing of existence optimistically; in every way, the cosmos of Amarna was
secure and beautiful. Along with Aten, the devotion of the faithful em-
braced only the persons of the earthly king and his wife, “in whom the per-
fections of the Disk are perfect”: they were corporeal manifestations of the
celestial father-mother, and their tender, mystical union was the manifest
model of the sole god on earth. Temples and tombs represented them in
public appearances and in the bosom of the palace, accompanied by their
little daughters, breathing, eating, traveling about, rejoicing, offering,
and praying under the huge sun whose arms radiated life (see figure 1).
These epiphanies of the trinity are the common subject of huge composi-
tions depicting various rites and other activities: fundamental ceremonies,
offerings in the open-air sanctuaries, visits to the temples, reception of
foreign tribute, rewarding of officials, and myriad activities of the royal
subjects, all depicted in a lively style and replete with picturesque details.
The only idols permitted in the homes of Amarna depicted the triad: the
sun, the king, and the queen. Whether as an invention of the imagination
or as the symbolic exploitation of the appearance of the king (see figure
2), the sovereigns are depicted in reliefs and in sculpture in the round
with long faces hovering above androgynous bodies, a strange type that
was generalized to all representations of the human figure. At the outset,
the new iconography displayed a shocking expressionism, as exemplified
FIGURE i. Akhenaten and Nefertiti under the sun disk. Cairo Museum. Photo ©1991 by
David P. Silverman.
FIGURE 2. Colossal statue of

Amenophis IV/Akhenaten. Cairo
Museum. Photo by Nancy J.
Corbin.
by the Karnak colossi of the king, that contrasted with the moderate aes-
thetic of the preceding reign, though at Amarna, it would be treated in a
subtly restrained manner, as illustrated by the busts of Nefertiti.
The doctrine evolved. Signaling a theological purification, the divine
titulary changed: “the Sun, celestial sovereign, rejoices in the Horizon —
in his name Sun-Father (or “Luminosity”) who comes as Aten.” The name
and images of Amun, the erstwhile supreme being who was still too pres-
ent in the hearts of his subjects, were systematically effaced in the old tem-
ples. Vague attempts at censorship were also carried out on mentions of
other deities and on the plural word “gods.” These aberrant signs of what
did not exist had to disappear.
From a handful of references, we know that besides Nefertiti, Akhen-
aten had a secondary wife, Kiya, who could have been the mother of Tu-
tankhamun. But it is no longer believed that discord broke up the great
theological marriage. When Nefertiti disappeared in year 14, Merytaten,
the oldest of the six daughters she had^borne to the king, and then the
third, Akhesenpaaten, formally replaced her in representations of the
epiphany of the royal couple. Akhenaten died during the eighteenth year
of his reign. Archeologists found that the family tomb he had ordered to
be prepared in the mountain of Amarna had been sacked. Everywhere,
his cartouches and representations were destroyed during the reigns that
followed. The Aten temples were dismantled and their blocks were reused
as fill in new constructions. With time, the names and representations of
Amun reappeared on walls. The word aten became what it had once been:
the designation of the visible aspect of the sun and the moon.
In our own time, this “king drunk with God” has been regarded as the
best of the pharaohs, a sympathetic hero, and the illustrious inventor of
monotheism. The positive and simple rationality of his doctrine, the origi-
nal expressions of it that he caused to be made in art and in texts, and the
sudden emergence of an “ego” have a modern ring. His fleeting work
marked a break with the impersonal and (to us) confusing discourse of
the centuries that preceded and followed him. But in his own time, the
man who was called “the enemy in Akhetaten” under Ramesses II was a
misunderstood prophet and a negative monarch. Some histories have
managed to make him an emancipator combating idolatrous obscuran-
tism, a pacifist with ecumenical aims, or an anticlerical populist battling
the oppression exercised by Amun and his priests; but all such portraits
are refuted by the sources or are anachronistically speculative. The pre-
served evidence is insufficient to determine whether his revolution re-
solved an actual conflict between the crown and a supposed Theban
lobby, as has been claimed, or to identify a military pressure group on
which Akhenaten purportedly relied. From the evidence, we derive the
image of an autocrat (as every pharaoh was!) who freed himself from the
standard perceptions of his culture. Presumably filled with sensitivity and
good intentions, he used his power to propose to this entire culture — or
to impose on it—a minority theology with a doctrine of its own, leading
to a radical transformation of the rites, the language of carved inscrip-
tions, and the art. His religion had no impact on the secular administra-
tive organs (government offices, army, police), the leadership of which
was simply entrusted to declared disciples.
Until that time, kings had divine authority for the purpose of maintain-
ing the gods and goddesses, who were resident in their hometowns and in
the souls of the faithful. The king was the administrator of a religion
whose representations and practices, which changed only imperceptibly
in the course of the ages according to a shared logic, were experienced as
manifestations that conformed to a primordial order and an immanent
wisdom. It was not that individuals had been unable to appeal to their
gods in trusting and affectionate terms. It was not that in the Eighteenth
Dynasty, professional priests charged with invoking the divine did not
wonder about the attributes or the ethical function of the gods, or the way
in which this ancient world of names and forms regulating this world and
the next was structured. The Theban conquerors, and all Egypt in their
train, had recognized Amun-Re, patron of Thebes, as the author of impe-
rial expansion. His oracular will had miraculously determined the course
of the dynasty’s history. Immense temporal holdings and a vast clergy lent
expression to his recognition and corroborated his beneficent primacy.
Expanding on the identity of Amun and Re by discursively clarifying the
creative and legislative functions of the head of the pantheon, the Theban
theologians conceived of Amun-Re as a unified and totalizing model of
the notion of “god.”
Relying less on mythological imagery, a new form of discourse empha-
sized the sun alone and described the direct effect of its distant course and
its omnipresent light, its natural (so to speak) effect on all the known uni-
verse and in the existence of each individual. This New Solar Theology,
however, did not exclude the other gods and goddesses; through hierar-
chism and homology, their existence remained compatible with that of
the supreme being in the diversity of their names, idols, myths, and cult
places. The favor the dynasty accorded to Amun had thus done no harm
to the other gods: the pantheon honored by Amenophis III in the jubilees
celebrated during the nine years preceding his death included all the
gods and goddesses of Egypt. In this polytheistic culture in which all be-
liefs and forms were perceived as “natural,” kings did not have to proclaim
a dogma. It is thus wrong of us to refer to a “return to orthodoxy” in defin-
ing the liquidation of the Amarna interlude. It was with Amenophis IV
that a choice (a heresy) instituted an orthodoxy, for his monotheism was
the dogmatic, totalitarian, and intolerant negation of his contemporaries’
religion of the One and the Many.
Given the state of the evidence, it is difficult to catch sight of the an-
tecedents of Atenism. We see no influence of thought introduced from
outside Egypt. Quite the contrary, the structures of theological elabora-
tion, the pharaoh’s monopoly on the cult, the elements of the grammar of
symbolism, the ceremonial forms, the themes of divine praise (notably the
idea that all races are creatures of the creator god), and the confident ex-
pression of faith all proceed from the common background of the Egypt-
ian culture of the time. We see a sign of the recent promotion of the phys-
ical disk into a regal idol in the fact that Amenophis III proclaimed
himself the “dazzling Aten,” a name he had also given to his Theban
palace, to his great processional barque, and to one of the regiments of
his army. Priestly reflection had touched on the unity of the divine, but
without translating it into an expression of contradiction. We imagine
that it was thinkers in Heliopolis who took this step: setting aside the di-
verse formulas, myths, and rites that served to treat the mystery of the di-
vine, these theologians retained no sign of the creator other than the disk
with the luminous (Shu) breath, which was accessible without the rigama-
role of the traditional imaginary realm. In fact, Amenophis IV called his
god Re-Harakhty, he believed the benben-stone and the Mnevis bull to be
the god’s theophanies, and his chief priest was called “greatest of seers”;
these four elements were borrowed from the tradition of Heliopolis. The
“trinity” in which the royal couple shared in the status of the god, the aes-
thetic innovations (which generalized certain existing tendencies), and
the expansive, optimistic expressions of fervor can be imputed to the ge-
nius of the ruler. Akhenaten’s teaching thus consisted of creating an ex-
clusive religion out of the concepts of certain previous thinkers, a religion
he developed personally and which was implemented by artists and scribes
whom he personally instructed.
We have no indication that this despotism provoked open rebellion, yet
the speed with which the normal order returned, without the ravages of
internecine warfare, creates the impression that the heresy had scarcely
seduced either the educated class or the masses. The theophoric names of
peasants had remained unchanged, and the little idols discovered in the
homes at Amarna testify to the everyday survival of polytheistic habits.
The queen mother Teye had passionately called her late husband the
Osiris Amenophis. On his monument, a provincial dignitary had invoked
the unique Aten, but also Osiris-Sokar and Khnum. The logic of the doc-
trine, though supported by the apparatus of the state and the enthusiastic
will of the king, could not prevail against faith or against a nonconflictual
theology from which both humble and learned derived spiritual and ma-
terial benefit. The sources at Amarna inform us only of the resources of
the palaces and the Atenist sanctuaries, but it is scarcely conceivable that
the religious revolution did not diminish the temporal wealth of the old
temples or put their priesthoods out of work. Afterwards, the religious re-
storers would assert that the sanctuaries had been stripped of their goods
and their priests. Still, seventeen years of religious paranoia do not seem
to have diminished the land’s prosperity.
Though the texts expressing the theology scarcely mention the con-
flicts that inevitably occur in the world, certain iconographic themes that
were openly retained demonstrate that the prophet-king endorsed the tra-
ditional bellicose duties according to which the pharaoh was supposed to
ward off and to subject foreign peoples. Toward the middle of Akhen-
aten’s reign, the viceroy of Kush suppressed a Nubian insurrection with
the customary brutality. In Asia, triumphant Egypt had scarcely waged war
during the reign of Amenophis III, despite the expansionist intentions of
the Hittites and Mitanni and the intrigues of some of the vassal kinglets.
Both the diplomatic archives discovered at Amarna and the Hittite
sources show that the situation had deteriorated badly by the time
Amenophis IV ascended the throne. During his own reign, unreliable
high commissioners and the overly restricted movements of the Egyptian
garrison troops proved unable to protect loyal Byblos against the ambi-
tious dynasty of Amurru, or to prevent Hatti from eliminating the Mitan-
nian ally and annexing Syria, or to suppress the depredations of maraud-
ing bands in Palestine. To explain this impotence by asserting that the
sovereign shut himself up in his pious utopia and took no personal inter-
est in armed defense or diplomatic maneuvers is scarcely plausible.
On the king’s reign: C. Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (Brooklyn, 1973); idem,
Akhenaten, King of Egypt, 2d ed. (London, 1988); D.B. Redford, Akhenaten, the Heretic
King (Princeton, 1984); E. Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (Ithaca, 1999);
N. Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet (London, 2001); G. Steindorf and K. C.
Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1957), chapter 14; C. Lalouette,
Thebes ou la naissance d’un Empire (Paris, 1986), pp. 505-46. On the New Solar Theology
and Amarna religion:]. Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, 2001),
chapter 9.
See Amarna, Amenophis III, Aya, Nefertiti, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun.
Ankhtifi
Ankhtifi was one of the strongest leaders during the Ninth Dynasty; his
career lasted through the highly obscure reign of Neferkare. Ankhtifi was
buried at Moalla, the cemetery of ancient Hefat, which was located be-
tween Thebes and el-Kab; the painted decoration of his tomb is in a curi-
ous provincial style, and there is a lengthy autobiography rich in informa-
tion regarding the beginning of the First Intermediate Period. He
succeeded a certain Hetep as nomarch of Nekhen, and he was also cho-
sen, either by an oracle or by the king, as nomarch of the neighboring
APOPHIS 25
nome of Edfu to reestablish order, which had broken down during the
turbulence of the epoch. He did so effectively, and he also placed the
nome of Elephantine in his sphere of influence, leading to his title “over-
seer of foreign countries and overseer of interpreters.” In times of famine,
he not only succeeded in nourishing his own province, but also in sending
grain as far as Dendara. Ankhtifi faced up to the initial displays of Theban
ambition, leading several military expeditions (presented, of course, as
victories) against the coalition formed by Thebes and Koptos. His autobi-
ography is not without literary quality, but it demands a solid mastery of
Egyptian.
J. Vandier, Mo‘alla, Bibliotheque d’Etude 18 (Cairo, 1950).
Ankhu
Ankhu was a vizier in the first part of the Thirteenth Dynasty. He was of
Theban origin, the son of a vizier and of the daughter of a prophet of
Amun. His two sons Reseneb and Iymeru were also viziers, and it is likely
that later viziers belonged to his family. One of Ankhu’s daughters, Seneb-
henaes, married the “overseer of workshops” Wepwawethotpe, the descen-
dant of a powerful family of Abydos. In this period when pharaohs suc-
ceeded one another at a rapid pace, Ankhu served several kings,
including Sebekhotpe II, Khendjer, and Sebekhotpe III. We see him deal-
ing, along with other high officials, with in-kind allocations in the festival
hall of the court of Thebes; assigned by royal decree with intervening in
conflicts involving jurisdiction over forced laborers; entrusting an “over-
seer of the phyle” with cleansing the temple of Abydos; setting up statues
to his parents; and being honored on the monuments of his sons and col-
leagues.
See Sebekhotpe, Thirteenth Dynasty.
Apophis Fifteenth Dynasty

Apophis was the penultimate king of the Fifteenth Dynasty and the best
known of the Hyksos. During his reign of more than thirty-three years, he
conducted himself as an Egyptian king, commissioning construction work
in the temples, such as that at Gebelein, having works of the past copied
(e.g., the mathematical treatise of Papyrus Rhind), and defining his power
by means of an authentically Egyptian titulary, to the point of changing
his throne name three times to give ideological emphasis to the phases of
his reign.
Nevertheless, according to a story entitled The Quarrel of Apophis and Se-
qenenre, he ended his modus vivendi with the Seventeenth Dynasty by im-
posing a humiliating demand, formulated allegorically, on Seqenenre.

He attempted to weaken Seqenenre’s successor, Kamose, by killing the lat-
ter’s Egyptian collaborator at Neferusi and breaking up his alliance with
the ruler of Kush. At the end of his reign, Apophis’ power grew unsteady
under the blows of the Theban nationalists, who would sweep away his suc-
cessor Khamudi.
■v
S^Hyksos, Kamose, Seqenenre Tao, Seventeenth Dynasty.
Apries 589-570 B.c.E., Twenty-sixth Dynasty

Son of the ambitious Necho II, Apries intervened in Phoenicia. Despite
his aid, Jerusalem, which had revolted against Babylon, was retaken by
Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jewish people were deported. Egypt accepted
some fugitives, among them the prophet Jeremiah. Apries also intervened
in the west to aid the Libyan tribes against the Greeks of Cyrene. The fail-
ure of his Egyptian expeditionary force turned them against him and cost
him the throne. This unfortunate Saite king is less well known from his
monuments than from traditions about Amasis, who supplanted him.
Archaic (Period)
According to the historian Manetho, the period covered by the first two
dynasties (beginning c. 3000-2950 B.C.E.) was governed by kings from
Thinis, near Abydos in Upper Egypt. In fact, a series of very ancient tombs
has been found at Abydos, many of which can be attributed to the
pharaohs of the First and Second Dynasties, thanks to stelae that identify
their owners. But at the Memphite cemetery of Saqqara, a British archae-
ologist, Walter B. Emery, discovered still larger tombs dated to the same
period by a great number of sealings (but no stelae). This situation trig-
gered a lengthy debate: were these the tombs of pharaohs? And if they
were, were they real tombs, and were the tombs of Abydos cenotaphs?
(The custom of building cenotaphs is well-known from a later date.) In
fact, objects bearing the name of the same pharaoh were found in many
tombs at Saqqara, while other tombs of similar size were built at other
sites: Naqada, Giza, Abu Rawash, Tarkhan. Scholars are therefore inclined
to attribute most of the tombs at Saqqara not to kings of the first two dy-
nasties, but to their high officials, courtiers, and family members — cate-
gories that overlapped in this period.
In any case, their presence at a site where nothing earlier is known is
not a matter of chance: it corresponds to a new policy formulated by the
first pharaohs who were worthy of that name, that is to say, who ruled over
a unified Egypt. This unification, which opened the historical period, was
ARCHAIC (PERIOD) 27
less the subjection of one kingdom by another than the extension of an al-
ready highly organized state in Upper Egypt into regions, more or less or-
ganized, of the delta (and perhaps Middle Egypt). Memphis was founded
at the apex of the delta to facilitate better control of the newly integrated
territories.
The list of First Dynasty kings includes Narmer/Menes, Aha (or,
Aha/Menes), Djer, Wadj, Den, Adjib, Semerkhet, and Qaa. We know al-
most nothing of the political events in their reigns, except that even then,
succession to the throne was not always a smooth one: a queen,
Meretneith, seems to have exercised a regency that was contested, for her
name and that of Adjib were systematically effaced on pottery of theirs
that was found in the tomb of Semerkhet. The reign of Den manifested
perceptible ideological changes that probably reflect political readjust-
ments.
Though we do not know the details, it was probably political conflict
that caused the sudden emergence of a new line of kings, the Second Dy-
nasty (2780-2635 B.C.E.). The change occurred in a context of violence,
for the First Dynasty tombs at Saqqara were pillaged and burned at that
time. The kings of the new dynasty were: Hetepsekhemwy, Reneb, Ninet-
jer, Wadjenes, Weneg, Senedj, Nubnefer, Neferka, Neferka-Sokar, Perib-
sen, Sekhemib, and Khasekhemwy.
This linear enumeration can deceive; in fact, we are assured of neither
its completeness nor its lack of redundancy, for the same sovereign might
have been listed under two different names. Furthermore, the rifts led to
the division of the land into two kingdoms, and it is probable that Wad-
jenes, Weneg, and Senedj ruled at Memphis, while Peribsen and
Sekhemib made Abydos their capital. In fact, royal ideology codified these
political conflicts, in which some have wished to recognize the ancient an-
tagonism between an aristocracy rooted in the tradition of nomadic
hunters and commoners composed of descendants of the agricultural
populations of the valley. Certain changes in the writings of the Horus
names of the kings of the Second Dynasty could be characterized as a pro-
cess of thesis (Horus), antithesis (Seth), and synthesis (Horus and Seth).
In any event, Khasekhemwy put an end to these conflicts, triumphing over
a revolt by Lower Egypt and creating conditions that were propitious for a
qualitative leap in the development of Egyptian civilization.
Aside from its political manifestations, Egypt of the first two dynasties
was a state that was closely organized around the person of the pharaoh.
The collection, preparation, and administration of consumable goods
were assured by various institutions: the administration of granaries, the
treasury (for manufactured goods), royal domains producing wine and
oil (whose vintages were carefully dated and authenticated by the name
of the responsible official); biennial inventories of gold and cultivable
fields. According to a custom that probably predated the historical pe-
riod, the king periodically toured the nomes to collect imposts. Lower
Egypt was administered by officials who bore its seal (“sealbearer of the
king of Lower Egypt”). The procurement of certain precious products
that were lacking in the Nile valley (such as wood for construction) was
assured by economic-military expeditions to the mines and quarries of
the desert or through commercial relations, as with Byblos. The army
had to be regularly used to maintain the security of the borders against
incursions or raids by Libyans, Asiatic nomads, or Nubian peoples.
Linked to the physical person of the pharaoh were institutions such as
the palace (of which there were several for each king), the harem (which
had an economic role), and officials charged with assuring his personal
maintenance.
The organization of the state had its symbolic counterpart in a highly
elaborate ideological system, the keystone of which was the king. He rep-
resented the supreme power in the hierarchy around which the world was
organized. His entire person, as well as any objects or beings coming into
contact with him, were invested with a part of that power. The institutions
of the state were in some sense hypostases of the pharaoh, and their per-
sonnel acted as officiants responsible for the maintenance of one of his
many manifestations. Events that affected society were interpreted and
codified via a fixed repertoire of royal acts. Year by year, annals listed what
was considered significant, such as the erection of statues or temples to
the gods, kingship rituals (jubilee, ritual run around the walls, Uniting of
the Two Lands, Reception of Upper and Lower Egypt), biennial counts,
suppression of revolts, and victories over neighboring peoples. The
chronological references necessary for administration were not based on
the numerical position of a year in the reign, but rather by characterizing
the year by the principal events that marked it. This ideological codifica-
tion remained open; thus, the royal titulary (a king’s names and accom-
panying titles) was still in the process of development.
Although the contemporary documents are laconic and formulaic, cer-
tain indications suggest that already at this time, the kings inspired the de-
velopment of religious and magico-medical literature. Thus, while main-
taining, at least at its beginning, certain highly archaic traits (such as
funerals marked by the killing of servants to accompany an important per-
sonage in the tomb), the Archaic Period witnessed the development of
most of the characteristic elements of Egyptian civilization.
ASIA 29
W. B. Emery, Archaic Egypt (Baltimore, 1961); T. A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt

(London, 1999).
See Khasekhemwy, Menes, Narmer, Peribsen, Pharaoh.
Asia
In ancient Egypt, the Nile marked the frontier between Africa and Asia;
Egypt was thus the link between these two continents. The “Asia” of
pharaonic civilization was, of course, much smaller than what the term
means to us today; it was essentially the Near East.
There was a strong Asiatic influence during the period when pharaonic
civilization was taking form; in particular, Mesopotamian inspiration is
perceptible in certain iconographic themes of the predynastic period and
in certain predynastic objects, such as cylinder seals. Throughout its his-
tory, Egypt of the pharaohs would be induced to maintain relations with
the Asiatic world.
One reason for this phenomenon was the exploitation of its eastern
desert: the galena of Gebel Zeit, the gold mines of Barramiya and Samut,
and the gold mines and bekhen-stone (graywacke) in the area of the Wadi
Hammamat. The latter was also a passageway: dismantled at Koptos, boats
were transported via the Wadi Hammamat to the shore of the Red Sea,
where they were reassembled at the ports of Quseir and Wadi Gawasis.
From those ports expeditions would depart for Africa (Punt) or for the
Sinai peninsula and its indispensable mines of turquoise and copper at
Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi Maghara. During such enterprises, Egyptians
encountered Asiatic nomads, sometimes peaceful and ready to barter, but
most often hostile and posing a threat to the expeditionary forces and
their encampments.
The other reason was that the easternmost delta was a zone of perma-
nent contact. The frontier extending from the Mediterranean shore to
the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, on the one hand, and on the other hand,
to the Gulf of Suez, was lined by a series of lakes: the Lake of Horus, near
the eastern end of the present-day Lake Menzala, Lake Bala, Lake Timsah,
and the Bitter Lakes. There were two main routes across this border. One
was via the Wadi Tumilat; dried out today, it was covered with marshes and
overgrowth through much of the pharaonic era. Its access was defended
by the town of Pithom, and biblical tradition identifies it as one of the
routes of the Exodus. The other was the depression of el-Qantara, which
in the New Kingdom was controlled by the fortress of Sile and linked to
the Lake of Horus and the Pelusiac branch of the Nile by a canal. Until it
was silted up at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E., it was the
principal communication artery with the Mediterranean and the Near

East. Its main port was located not on the shore, but in the delta, where
the desert met the cultivated land; it was there that Avaris was founded, the
city that became the Hyksos capital and then Pi-Riamsese. When the Pelu-
siac branch became unusable, the Tanite branch, a little to the north,
served as the communication route with Asia.
These passageways had two functions. The Egyptians made use of
them, but so did Asiatics. Archaeology has in fact revealed the presence of
the latter’s settlements, often ancient ones, along the axes that crossed the
easternmost delta; their size varied with historical circumstances.
During the Old Kingdom, relations with Asia remained relatively spo-
radic: police operations on the shores of the Red Sea against nomads who
threatened the port installations, expeditions to the Sinai, and especially
expeditions to Byblos on the Lebanese coast, where the Egyptians went in
search of pine and cedar, wood they needed for building. During the First
Intermediate Period, the pressure from Asiatic infiltrators became so
great on the eastern borders of Lower Egypt that the pharaohs of Herak-
leopolis were obliged to establish a huge defensive system there.
The effort was evidently insufficient, for Amenemhet I, the first king of
the Twelfth Dynasty, boasted of having put an end to the incessant Asiatic
infiltrations by means of a fortification system called “Wall of the Ruler.”
Additionally, the new dynasty intensified exploitation of the Sinai and
commercial ties with Byblos, which from that time on would be ruled by
highly Egyptianized native potentates. Egypt also opened itself to the
world of Syria-Palestine; the Execration Texts display a good knowledge of
the political geography of the area as far as the region of Damascus, while
the Story of Sinuhe introduced the ruling classes to its exoticism. Military
expeditions — one of them marked by the capture of Shekhem—were
sometimes necessary to assure the regularity of imports, which included
cattle and, in particular, copper, gold, lapis lazuli, other precious stones,
and objects that were manufactured locally or obtained from Cyprus and
the Aegean world. In the reign of Amenemhet II, four coffers filled with
these raw materials and manufactured objects were buried in the founda-
tions of the temple of Tod.
At the same time, a large number of Asiatics immigrated to Egypt,
where they were employed as domestics or enrolled (willingly or by force)
as workers in the major departments of the state bureaucracy. At the end
of the Twelfth Dynasty, there was already a large colony of Asiatics at
Avaris, the great port that gave access to Asia. Toward the middle of the
following dynasty, they were an important component of a principality
that made itself independent of the sovereignty of the Theban pharaohs,
ASIA 31
preparing the way, so to speak, for the Hyksos conquest of Egypt some
decades later. The latter would establish an empire that straddled Egypt
and the Palestinian world.
It was for this reason that the early pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty
had to penetrate into Palestine in their effort to eradicate the domination
of the Hyksos. This action was the preliminary to a new Asiatic policy; dur-
ing the New Kingdom, Egypt would establish a protectorate over Syria-
Palestine, one that was guaranteed by Egyptian garrisons planted in strate-
gic locales and reinforced by skillful diplomatic measures that included
hostages and marriages. Egypt defended its protectorate with varying de-
grees of success against the competing imperialists of Mitanni, and then
the Hittite empire. As often occurs, the culture of the conquered influ-
enced that of the conquerors, and Egypt benefited greatly from the prod-
ucts and technologies of Asia. With objects and materials came vocabu-
lary, and the Egyptian language was enriched by an ample stock of Asiatic
words, some of them Hurrian or Indo-European, but most of them Se-
mitic. Indeed, a veritable Semitic fad swept over Egypt, encouraged by the
status of Akkadian, a Semitic tongue, as the language of diplomacy. Every
literate person was obliged to master Canaanite idioms, and Semitic
words sometimes replaced ordinary Egyptian ones; this fashion was a
form of snobbism. Even Asiatic deities were introduced into the already
densely populated pantheon of Egypt. Obviously, people accompanied
these words, objects, and deities; numerous Asiatic colonies were installed
in Egypt, in places such as Perunefer, the great port of Memphis. Many of
these Asiatics were laborers assigned to the humblest and most difficult of
tasks; this was the context of the story in the book of Exodus. Yet some en-
joyed brilliant careers in the upper levels of the Egyptian administration
and even found their way into the court, often with the title “royal butler.”
After the New Kingdom, Egypt’s claims of domination over Asia came
screeching to a halt; the prince of Byblos was well aware of this when, dur-
ing the Twenty-first Dynasty, he cruelly snubbed Wenamun, the envoy of
the god Amun, letting him know clearly that the days of hegemonic arro-
gance were over. In fact, Shoshenq I’s campaigns in Palestine were the
swan song of Egyptian imperialism. They did not end in the political sub-
jection of the Hebrew monarchy, but simply in the reinforcement of its
cultural ties with Egypt, thus accounting for the borrowings from Egypt-
ian wisdom literature in certain books of the Bible and for the use of hier-
atic numerals in the bookkeeping of the kingdom of Israel. After that,
Egyptians looked to Asia not with the greedy gaze of a conqueror, but
rather to calculate the appetite of the next invader. Egypt became subject
to the Assyrians, and then, on two occasions, to the Persians. During the
interludes of independence, relations were confined to commerce, and

such few military ventures as those of Taharqa and Necho II came quickly
to an end.
See Amenemhet I, Hittites, Hurrians, Hyksos, Necho II, Ramesses II, Sethos I,
Shoshenq, Sinuhe, Taharqa, Tuthmosis III.
Autobiography
The autobiographical genre flourished in pharaonic Egypt because of
beliefs in survival. To survive in the hereafter, deceased persons needed
for the living to recite the necessary formulas, in particular the offering
formulas, on their behalf. But the living had to be persuaded to do so.
Passers-by reading the inscriptions on a funerary monument would be all
the more inclined to pronounce these formulas if they judged its owner to
have been a philanthropist; in the afterlife, those who had been philan-
thropic had the ear of the gods, and thus they could use their credit with
them in favor of living persons who recited the formulas on their behalf.
There was nothing like a flattering self-portrait to set the cycle of reci-
procity in motion. This was the goal of an autobiography, which was usu-
ally preceded by the titles and name of the deceased.
Autobiographies were often limited to an accumulation of cliches that
described an ideal character and the norms of conduct; examples are “I
was one with a just heart,” “a truly silent one, excellent of character,” and
“I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty.” Other repertoires were
adapted to various sectors of professional activity; thus, a priest would
boast of having “pure hands when carrying out the ritual,” while a
courtier took pride in having been “a confidant of the king before the
Two Lands.”
The term “cliche” should not mislead; wording and repertoires varied
from one period to another, reflecting the spirit and the important trends
of the times. Thus, in periods of disorder, accent was placed on exalting
personal success, while when the monarchy was strong, the cliches in-
cluded loyalist proclamations.
Sometimes, when its author considered the story of his life and career
to be edifying and satisfying, an autobiography became a personal history.
Such cases are providential for the historian, who often finds detailed in-
formation in them. Autobiographies are major sources for more than one
period of history. What would Egyptology be without the autobiography
of Weni for the Sixth Dynasty, that of Khnumhotpe for the beginning of
the Twelfth Dynasty, or that of Ahmose, son of Ebana, for the birth of the
AYA 33
New Kingdom? Other valuable autobiographies include those of Bak-

enkhons, the Third Intermediate Period priests of Amun, Udjahorresnet,
Sematawytefnakht, Djedhor-the-savior, and Petosiris of the Late Period.
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom: A Study

and an Anthology, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 84 (Freiburg and Gottingen, 1988);
idem, Moral Values in Ancient Egypt, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 155 (Freiburg and
Gottingen, 1997).
Ahmose, son of Ebana; Sinuhe; Udjahorresnet; Weni.
Avaris
The translation of the word Avaris, Hut-waret, is “the mansion of the
sloping plot of land.” Avaris was a riverine port in the eastern delta on the
Pelusiac branch of the Nile, at the margin of the cultivable land; its local
god was Seth, lord of uninhabited areas. Given its location, Avaris con-
trolled the outlet of the “Ways of Horus,” a route leading to Asia, and in
particular, to Byblos and the Phoenician coast. Avaris thus had both a
strategic and a commercial function, and it attracted the interest of
pharaohs who fortified it under the dynasties of Herakleopolis and made
it their summer residence during the Middle Kingdom. Intensification of
trade with Byblos led to the growth of a colony of Asiatics who took charge
of working the copper imported from Cyprus. During the Thirteenth Dy-
nasty, Nehesy made this city, with its considerable foreign population, the
capital of the kingdom he had founded around 1720 B.C.E.; in the middle
of the seventeenth century B.C.E., it would be overwhelmed by a new in-
flux of Asiatics, the Hyksos. After taking Memphis, the Hyksos imposed
their domination over all Egypt from their capital of Avaris, which was ev-
idently pillaged when the land was liberated under Ahmose. But its loca-
tion was so advantageous that Ramesses II chose to construct his new cap-
ital of Pi-Riamsese on its site. After the Pelusiac branch silted up, the site
was abandoned. Modern archaeology has rediscovered Avaris around
present-day Tell el-Daba.
M. Bietak, Avaris and Piramesse: Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta
(Oxford, 1981).
See Ahmose; Ahmose, son of Ebana; Dynasties; Hyksos; Kamose.
Aya 1326-1323 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Aya’s career was closely connected with the royal house; he was a reli-
gious renegade who became king at the end of a dramatic era. We distin-
guish three stages in his career:
1. He was chief of the chariotry and one of the ministers whom

Amenophis IV/Akhenaten instructed in his doctrine. Aya was un-
doubtedly a native of Akhmim. He had the rank of “god’s father,” for
his wife Teye was the nurse of Queen Nefertiti. His tomb at Amarna
expresses his total loyalty to Atenism and his devotion to the inspired
royal couple.
*> *
2. One of Tutankhamun’s viziers was none other than the same “god’s
father,” who participated in the restoration of the traditional reli-
gion.
3. The “god’s father Aya”—with his title and name enclosed in a car-
touche— became king, and invested with that office, he presided
over the funeral of Tutankhamun. His four years of reign were not
enough time to create many monuments, although the speos (rock-
cut chapel) of Akhmim, architraves associating the elderly king with
his predecessor at Karnak, a huge funerary temple at Medinet Habu,
and a rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Monkeys were undertaken.
Aya’s representations and names were mutilated, his sarcophagus was

smashed, and his mummy has yet to be found. His successor Haremhab,
and later tradition as well, endeavored to wipe out his memory.
See Amarna, Amenophis IV, Haremhab, Tutankhamun.

Berenike
Thanks to French dramatist Jean Racine, this women’s name is famous
as that of the young Jewish princess from the family of the Herods whom
the Roman emperor Titus refused to marry. In fact, the name was popular
throughout the areas of the Hellenized east that were at some time subject
to the Ptolemies of Egypt; and Greco-Macedonian though it was, it be-
came typically Egyptian. Borne by the mother of Ptolemy II, in whose
honor the famous port of Berenike on the Red Sea was named, it passed
from mother to daughter within the dynasty, and it was a common name
among the people as well. There were four queens of Egypt and at least
two famous princesses named Berenike.
The Greek poet Callimachus wrote of a miracle: Berenike II suppos-
edly dedicated a lock of her hair to the divine while pronouncing a wish
that her husband, Ptolemy III Euergetes, would return safely from war
(246 B.C.E.), and the lock was transported into the northern sky, where it
could be observed from then on as the constellation Coma Berenices, be-
tween Taurus and Leo. When her daughter died in her adolescence in 238
B.C.E., priests from all of Egypt convened in Canopus and proclaimed the
apotheosis of this new incarnation of the Eye of Re, making detailed pro-
visions for a national cult of this young Berenike. Another poetic touch,
but in the pharaonic style: to adorn her commemorative statues, the
priestly scribes conceived a crown made of four objects that were both hi-
eroglyphs writing out the name Berenike and symbols of her divine power
and the promise of youthful fecundity.
See Ptolemy, Queens.
Bocclioris 720-715 B.C.E., Twenty-fourth Dynasty

Son of the Saite prince (and possible king) Tefnakhte, this sole king of
the historian Manetho’s Twenty-fourth Dynasty continued his father’s poli-
cies. For six years, Sais imposed its own pharaoh on Memphis, Tanis, and
Herakleopolis. Shabaka, king of Kush, defeated Bocchoris and had him
burned alive as a rebel. The unfortunate king is known from several mon-
uments. Two of them are vases, one ancient and the other an eighteenth-
century copy, that were discovered in Italy (hence the name “tomb of Boc-
choris” given to an Etruscan tomb at Corneto). A rich fictitious tradition
surrounded his memory: he was supposedly a legislator who was benefi-
cent to the poor, and a wise judge as well, and it was in his reign that a
lamb prophesied the misfortunes of foreign invasions and the ultimate re-
demption of Egypt. Herodotus’ picturesque description of Mycerinus as
the wise king who built the third pyramid probably draws on anecdotes
about Bocchoris.
&?<?Kushite (Dynasty), Sais, Saite (Dynasties), Third Intermediate Period.
Bubastis
Bubastis, a city in the eastern delta, was situated on the easternmost
branch of the Nile at a point where the basin of this branch is immediately
contiguous with that of the Tanitic branch and about twelve and a half
miles west of the outlet of the Wadi Tumilat. The site, located near
Zagazig, the modern metropolis of the region, retains its ancient name:
Tell Basta. Bubastis was originally called Bast, from which the name of the
goddess Bastet (“she of Bast”) was derived; later, it was known as “the
house of Bastet” (Greek Boubastis, Latin Bubastis). The city and its cult of
the lion-headed goddess were founded during the earliest dynasties.
Bastet, who was in the sphere of influence of the Heliopolitan pan-
theon, was a local variant of Sakhmet, the feminine personification of the
dangerous but pacifiable power of the sun. In the royal temples of the Old
Kingdom, she was a patroness of the sovereign, and the cult of this “mis-
tress of the life of the Two Lands” would later enjoy a long existence north
of Memphis (the Bubastieion and the subterranean cat cemetery at
Saqqara).
The importance of Bubastis in the Sixth Dynasty is attested at the site
by the remains of buildings of Teti and Pepy I and by a private cemetery.
The city’s temple was embellished by a series of pharaohs, from Amen-
emhet I to Nectanebo II, and the prestige of its physicians and of its
“house of life” was recognized under the Ramessides. The strategic posi-
tion of Bubastis doubtless led to the settling of Libyan Meshwesh there
during the Tanite era.
Shoshenq I and other members of his dynasty called themselves “son of
Bastet,” and the personal names of the Libyan Period reflect the growing
popularity of this goddess. From that time on, animal worship would view
cats as manifestations of Bastet, and we have wonderful Saite bronzes from
the city’s animal cemetery. Bastet was understood to be the “soul of Isis,”
and her worship became universal. According to Herodotus, her joyous
festivals were the best attended of all those in Egypt.
Buto
As early as the Archaic Period, this city in the extreme north of the west-
ern delta, near the marshes, bore the double name Pe-Dep, which is prob-
ably a sign of the duality of its original organization. Its principal deity was
BUTO 37
the goddess Wadjit, who was simultaneously the uraeus (i.e., cobra) who
adorned the pharaoh’s brow, the goddess of the red crown of Lower
Egypt, and a dangerous lion. Behind the Greek name Buto lies an Egypt-
ian expression meaning “house of Wadjit.” Horus of Pe, prototype of the
king, also had a long-standing cult there. According to a tradition, Horus
and his mother, Isis, took refuge in the thicket of Chemmis, located in a
lake on the outskirts of Buto, from which he later emerged to win his
throne. From the Old Kingdom on, ritual symbolism made Pe-Dep sym-
metrical with Upper Egyptian Hierakonpolis (Nekhen). The pshent crown
resulted from the union of Wadjit and Nekhbet, “the White One of
Nekhen,” the goddess of the white crown of Upper Egypt, who was resi-
dent in the predynastic city of el-Kab. The divine “souls” of Buto were the
counterpart of the “souls” of Hierakonpolis. These parallelisms clearly
stem from the concept that the balanced union of the two lands was the re-
alization of the plenitude of the power and harmony of the universe.
Nevertheless, several rituals that appear to be archaic — including the
incantation for the censing of the uraeus, the mime of the royal funeral,
and the consecration of the sanctuary—allude only to Buto and neigh-
boring towns, as if they concerned only that region.
Historians no longer assert that at the end of the fourth millennium,
there was a “kingdom of Buto” whose conquest by the south supposedly
unified the land and inaugurated the historical period. But it would be in-
correct to maintain that Buto was only a frontier dreamed up by dualistic
thinking to serve as a counterpart to Hierakonpolis: recently, deep
drillings demonstrated that human occupation at Buto went back to the
beginning of the third millennium. A cardinal point in the imaginary
organization of space and center of the immemorial cult of the royal
uraeus, Buto was a part of the principality of Sais in the eighth century
B.C.E. Herodotus reported that the oracle of its goddess was the one most
venerated by the Egyptians. Founded anew by the Saites and despoiled
under Xerxes, its great temple saw the landholdings that had been guar-
anteed by the rebel pharaoh Khababash restored to it by the satrap
Ptolemy.
See Crowns.
Cachettes
Guarded by police and protected by a fort, the Valley of the Kings, where
the royal tombs were excavated into the hillsides, was assuredly sacrosanct.
Still, though the entrances to the sepulchers were walled and banked up,
their location was no secret, at least to the administration and the workmen
of the Tomb. Even tombs found inviolate in our own time were not entirely
unscathed: objects were missing and disarray was evident in the tomb of Tu-
tankhamun (no doubt consequences of a transfer), and precious objects
had been removed from that of the in-laws of Amenophis III. Other enig-
matic examples include the mysterious Tomb 55 (possibly of Smenkhkare)
with its contents in disarray and the cache of forgotten jewels in Tomb 56.
Tragically, attacks on the dead became routine toward the end of the New
Kingdom. The outbreak of greed that culminated in the ravaging of all the
royal and private tombs on the west bank of Thebes is well-known. Records
describe inquiries that were conducted to detect, determine the extent of,
and punish the acts of pillage carried out by the small gangs that had been
formed among the personnel of the funerary temples and among the
“workmen of the Tomb.” The preserved reports deal with the cemeteries of
the Eleventh and Seventeenth Dynasties (e.g., Dra Abu el-Naga), the Valley
of the Queens, and the royal tombs and funerary temples. During the reign
of Ramesses IX, the robberies occurred against a backdrop of poverty,
strikes, Libyan incursions, and malfeasance in high places. The damage was
considerable, but with the collusion of the vizier, the prefect of the west
bank, who was responsible for the cemeteries, attempted to conceal its ex-
tent, much to the scandal of his colleague on the east bank. Under
Ramesses XI, the pillaging took place in a context of famine, civil war, and
struggles for power; the inquiry was more vigorous and successful, but the
troubles persisted. Nearly all the burials of the kings and queens were bro-
ken into; their furnishings were trashed, and the tombs were stripped of
metal objects and the precious jewels that adorned the dead.
With the rise of the Theban theocracy, Herihor was reduced to restoring
the mummies of Sethos I and Ramesses II, which were placed in borrowed
coffins. Confidence was not restored under this Twenty-first Dynasty, and
the dead were grouped in collective burials (such as the second cachette of
Deir el-Bahari, which contained the bodies of priests of Amun). The high
priests of Thebes preoccupied themselves with saving at least the bruised
hides of the “great gods” (that is, the royal dead). Many inspections were
made under Pinudjem I, and a number of the royal mummies were
rewrapped. After various attempts to group them together, the bodies of
most of the New Kingdom pharaohs ended up in two cachettes, each of the
pharaohs in a reused coffin and deprived of all burial goods:
CAESAR 39
THE TOMB OF AMENOPHIS II

This tomb had already been pillaged when it was opened by Victor
Loret in 1898. Besides Amenophis II, it sheltered Tuthmosis IV,
Amenophis III, Siptah, Sethos II, Ramesses IV, Ramesses V, and Ramesses
VI, along with three anonymous individuals, one of whom might be Teye,
the wife of Amenophis III, according to a much-debated medical assess-
ment. This cache was sealed up under Pinudjem I.
THE “ROYAL CACHETTE” OF DEIR EL-BAHARI

This cachette, which was discovered by the Abd el-Rasul brothers in the
1870s, was emptied in 1881 by a team directed by Gaston Maspero. The
burial place, which was sunk into a crevice of the rock wall on the margin
of the bay of Deir el-Bahari, contained two series of inhumations:
(a) A collection of dead “vagabonds” of the Seventeenth through the
Twentieth Dynasties: Seqenenre, Ahmose, Amenophis I (along with eight
ladies and two princes who were closely related to him), Tuthmosis I,
Tuthmosis II, and Tuthmosis III, Ramesses I, Sethos I, Ramesses II,
Merneptah, Ramesses III, and Ramesses IX.
(b) The mummies (all in their original coffins and accompanied by
varying quantities of burial equipment) of the high priest and king Pin-
udjem I, his successors the high priests Masaharta and Pinudjem II, and
six queens and princesses of this pontifical family.
There is considerable debate regarding the chronology of the transfers
that resulted in this double morgue. According to the latest theory, it was
created by Pinudjem II, who desired to shelter his own and his relatives’
remains, along with those of the sacred royalty of the past. The cachette
received at least one final “guest” under Shoshenq I.
N. Reeves and R. H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of
Egypt’s Greatest Pharaohs (London, 1996), pp. 194-207; K. Mysliwiec, The Twilight of
Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E. (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 35-40.
See Valley of the Kings.
Caesar
For three centuries, the famous name of the conqueror of the Gauls, of
the Julius who crossed the Rubicon, would have a fine career in the Who
Was Who of the pharaohs. This career began in 43 B.C.E., when the child of
the Roman dictator and Cleopatra VII ascended the throne in association
with his mother, with the name “Ptolemy surnamed Caesar, beloved of his
father, beloved of his mother.” The poor lad, who was ridiculed by the
nickname Caesarion, “little Caesar,” was killed in 30 B.C.E. by the agents of

another pharaonic Caesar: his half brother Octavian, whom the Divine
Julius had adopted according to Roman law as his son and heir, and whose
victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra carried him to the throne of
Egypt.
In 27 B.C.E., the Senate and the People of Rome sanctified the full pow-
ers of this imperator (military autocrat) by conferring on him the holy title
of augustus. The emperor Augustus’ Latin titulary was translated into
Greek, which remained the administrative language of the eastern
provinces; in both Demotic documents and hieroglyphic cartouches, this
pharaoh is therefore called “Autocrator Caesar Sebastos.” Beginning with
Tiberius, the series of emperors who assumed the title of Caesar and the
role of pharaoh would continue to employ this basic titulary on temple
walls at Dendara, Kom Ombo, Philae, and other sites.
Cambyses 525-522 B.C.E., Twenty-seventh Dynasty

Cambyses was the second king of the Persians and the Medes. He ruled
Egypt for two years, founding the Twenty-seventh Dynasty. His father, the
illustrious Cyrus, had already united Iran, Anatolia, and the Babylonian
empire under his scepter. In 525 B.C.E., the great Persian army defeated
Psammetichus III near Pelusium and seized Memphis. Cambyses was
crowned pharaoh by the clergy of Sais, the native city of the preceding dy-
nasty. This immediate acceptance of a foreigner who had come suddenly
from afar into the dynastic theology was a momentous event. It was as
though the doctrine of the conquered, which postulated the cosmic om-
nipotence of the ruler, immediately took advantage of its chauvinistic sen-
sibility to co-opt the effectively ecumenical power of the conqueror.
An Apis bull had just died; its splendid sarcophagus was carved with a
dedication in the name of Cambyses. Nevertheless, Herodotus reported
that the latter killed the animal with his own hand; Herodotus then de-
scribed the excesses, the madness, and the cruelty of the son of Cyrus, as
well as the failures he experienced in Nubia and in the Libyan desert. The
supposed murder of Apis was one of the examples by which fifth-century
Egyptians came to stigmatize their foreign rulers as profaners. Added to
the bad press that Persian opinion gave to Cambyses under Darius, the
rancor in Egypt toward the Asiatic occupiers fed Herodotus’ caricature of
a mad tyrant who was preceded and followed by two wise rulers, Cyrus and
Darius.
See Cleopatra, Romans.

CHRONOLOGY 41
Cheops ( OT Khufu) 2538-2516 B.c.E., Fourth Dynasty

Second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty and son of Snofru and Queen
Hetepheres, Cheops reigned for twenty-three years. He exercised as rigor-
ous a control over the means of production as his predecessor, Snofru,
both at home and abroad, in the Sinai and at the diorite quarry in Nubia.
It was evidently thanks to this control that he was able to erect the Great
Pyramid of Giza (height 481 feet, lengtfi at the base 756 feet), which he
provided with a funerary complex that also included the pyramids of his
queens (Meritites and Henutsen) and the tombs of his sons. He also re-
buried his mother, Hetepheres, after her original tomb was pillaged.
A monument like the Great Pyramid could be built only through sweat
and suffering. Thus originated the bad reputation that was attached to the
name of Cheops and which reached the ears of Herodotus; it contrasted
with the popularity of his father, Snofru.
J. P. Lauer, Le Probleme des pyramides d’Egypte (Paris, 1952); I.E.S. Edwards, The
Pyramids of Egypt, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1985); M. Lehner, The Complete Pyramids
(New York, 1997).
See Fourth Dynasty.
Ch.eph.rexi (or Rakhaef) 2509-2484 B.C.E., Fourth Dynasty

Fourth pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty and son of Cheops, Chephren
reigned for twenty-six years. The pyramid he built at Giza (height 469 feet,
length at the base 705 feet) is second in size only to that of Cheops. The
funerary temple east of the pyramid is linked by a causeway to the valley
temple, the massive, austere granite architecture of which remains im-
pressive to this day. The Great Sphinx of Giza was created from a rocky
outcrop near the causeway; posterity would regard this monument as an
image of Re-Harmachis. A number of life-size statues of Chephren have
survived.
C. Zivie-Coche, Sphinx: History of a Monument (Ithaca, 2002).

See Fourth Dynasty.
Chronology
Pharaonic civilization is lost in the darkness of the ages. The dates of
the reign of a king of Egypt are among the questions that specialists most
often pose. They must be forgiven, however, for usually being able to sup-
ply only a vague answer, situating a given king in terms of decades or half
a century, or even a century for very early periods, or for being able to say
with certainty only that a given pharaoh reigned for a minimum of x
years. In the present work, the dates prior to 700 B.C.E. aim only at estab-
lishing plausible lengths for reigns, and there should be no reason for
surprise if they differ somewhat from those in the chronological tables of
other, excellent works on Egyptian history. In what ways can we approach,
at least, the dating of events in Egyptian history, and, more important, ar-
rive at the best estimate of the lengths of the eras of that history? We arrive
at these goals by two successive steps: establishing a relative chronology,
determining the order of kings and events, and then seeking an “absolute
chronology,” situating the events according to an agreed-upon
calendar—in our case, the Common Era (that is, the era determined by
the conventional date for the birth of Christ).
Each reign was a renewal of the original creation of the cosmos, and it
constituted an era that ended with the death of the sovereign. The change
of year was marked by the heliacal rising of the star Sothis (Sirius). In the
Middle Kingdom, the year 1 of a king was officially postponed until the
beginning of the “civil” year that followed his coronation. In the New
Kingdom, year 2 began 365 days after the day of his coronation. In the
Late Period, year 2 began on the day of the heliacal rising of Sothis that
followed the coronation, which could thus entail the shortening of year 1
to only a few days. Knowing these specifics, it should be easy to establish a
perfect chronology by adding the reign lengths of the sovereigns. But
unfortunately, the documentation at our disposal fails to furnish us with
the final date of the reign of every king, and there are even kings whom
we know only by name. On the whole, the succession of kings is well es-
tablished, but there were times when, because of coregencies that saw two
monarchs associated on the throne or because of political rivalries, there
were two or more of them at the same time.
One means of mitigating the gaps and obscurities in our sources lies in
the few works of Egyptian historical writing that are known to us. Of the
history composed in Greek by the priest Manetho, we have a summary
that was used by chronologists of the Roman and Byzantine eras; it fur-
nishes a list of kings, divided into thirty dynasties, with an indication of the
length of each reign as a raw number of years. The work of this Greco-
Egyptian historian, whose figures were unfortunately often altered in the
process of copying, was derived from earlier king lists. By good fortune,
we have a papyrus from the reign of Ramesses II, the Royal Canon of
Turin, which lists the lengths of reigns almost to the day, but it survives to
us only in tatters. The Palermo Stone and its fragments, a precious monu-
ment though it is also mutilated, lists the important events of each reign,
from the beginning of history down to the Fifth Dynasty; even scholars
CHRONOLOGY 43
who consider it to be an archaizing copy or compilation made during the

Twenty-fifth Dynasty accept it as a trustworthy source. The data in these
synthetic works can be cross-checked with those in the more or less ex-
haustive lists of kings carved, for religious reasons, in temples (Abydos)
and tombs (Saqqara) and with those in occasional autobiographies of
kings and commoners.
The individual reigns and dynastic Sequences furnish a broad frame-
work within which materials that do not bear an exact date can be ap-
proximately dated, with objects whose text or context includes a royal car-
touche or a name dated to a reign serving as a typological reference point.
The method can be used for all artifacts, from architectural remains to
objects of daily use. The various products of the material culture can be
dated ever more closely, period by period and sometimes with great pre-
cision. The results of relative chronology have been corroborated and il-
lustrated by the study of the stratigraphy of occupation sites, of the addi-
tions and alterations made to monuments such as temples, of the growth
in the size of cemeteries, and of changes in funerary practices.
To link this relative chronology to absolute chronology, Egyptology has
a tool that is peculiar to it, one that derives from the calendrical system of
the Egyptians. They counted only 365 days in a year, with the result that
the calendar deviated progressively from the actual year by one day every
four years and one month every 120 years. The season of the calendar
called “Harvest” could thus fall in the midst of the “Inundation” season of
the real year, and the official calendar would again coincide with the real
year only after 1,456 years had passed. The Egyptians accommodated
themselves so well to this shifting year and to this inaccurate calendar that
Ptolemy III failed to induce them to accept the introduction of leap years,
which the emperor Augustus would eventually impose on them. They did,
however, note that the heliacal rising of Sothis coincided with the begin-
ning of the inundation, and they made it a day of festival.
For us to be able to fix the astronomical date to within a four-year pe-
riod, we need only one text stating that a “rising of Sothis” was celebrated
on a particular day during the reign of a king, the givens of relative
chronology being sufficient to avoid any hesitation regarding the cycle of
1,456 years in which the event took place. We have only five documents of
this sort, one from the Middle Kingdom, and four from the New Kingdom.
Royal dates complemented by an allusion to a phase of the moon invite
attempts to specify dates down to the day, but they involve a brief cycle,
and the interpretation of the data is often debated. Application of the
“Sothic theory” confronts theoretical criticisms, in addition to the uncer-
tainties regarding matters of detail, such as the latitude at which the helia-
cal rising was observed.
The Sothic theory offers some solid steps toward a chronology whose
validity can be confirmed by other kinds of information. One of these
means is the approximate dating of objects by measuring the residual ra-
dioactivity of a carbon isotope that is in all organic material so as to deter-
mine how long an organism has been dead. This Carbon 14 dating, the
methods of which have been refined to reduce margins of error (den-
drochronological calibration), is especially valuable for the earliest peri-
ods. This last is also true for the dating of pottery by thermoluminescence.
Further means of cross-checking are furnished by two sets — one ar-
chaeological and the other textual — of synchronisms with neighboring
civilizations. The archaeological synchronisms are the less precise. At first
sight, the presence of Egyptian artifacts from an established dynasty at a
site in western Asia or the Aegean suggests that this site is contemporary
with the dynasty in question, and, vice versa, the discovery of Asiatic or
Aegean objects in an Egyptian excavation site suggests that the latter ex-
isted when these objects were made. But an isolated object can at best fur-
nish only a terminus ad quern for the presumed exchange.
When one finds a number of imported objects in a number of deposits
belonging to the same chronologically determined culture, however, the
contemporaneity of the importing and exporting cultures is clear. The re-
sults obtained by Assyriologists and Near Eastern archaeologists square
with the conclusions of Egyptologists working with Sothic dates. Textual
synchronisms are obviously more precise, but more localized in time.
They are furnished mostly by historical accounts and diplomatic archives
that explicitly inform us that a particular king of Egypt was contemporary
with a particular Near Eastern monarch.
From 720 B.C.E. on, our dates are exact, or at worst, valid to within a
year. Thanks to Sothic dates and to a number of synchronisms with for-
eign kingdoms, there is no doubt as to the chronological placement of the
Eighteenth through the Twentieth Dynasties: recent readjustments ac-
cording to a “short chronology” have brought Ramesses II’s accession date
at
of 1290 (that given in the Cambridge Ancient History) down to 1279 the
latest. The Twelfth Dynasty is solidly established at the beginning of the
second millennium, thanks to Sothic dating. In any event, expected
progress in physical technologies will bear on the third millennium, for
which we have no precise synchronisms with foreign lands, or any Sothic
dates. Adding the lengths of the reigns of the Thinite and Memphite peri-
ods, as best we know them from contemporary documents and from tra-
dition, corresponds roughly with the total obtained by the Royal Canon of
CLEOPATRA 45
Turin for this era (about nine and a half centuries). But even recently, a
discrepancy of about three centuries has remained with regard to the date
of Menes, the first king of Egypt.
See Dynasties, Sources for History.
x
Cleopatra
Among all the famous queens of Egypt, Cleopatra, the last representa-
tive of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was chronologically the fourth, after Hat-
shepsut, Teye, and Nefertiti. Of these four women, who lived through
times of obscure political crises and thus belong as much to dreams as to
history, it is she who has been the most vivid, both in memory and in the
contemporary spotlight. In our own day, her sex appeal, which the Ro-
mans denounced, qualifies her to promote beauty products and items of
finery.
But this torrid charmer of Caesar and Mark Antony also symbolizes the
final moments of independent Egypt, the African land where civilization
was born. Afrocentrists thus ask why painters and filmmakers have turned
to white models and actresses to represent Cleopatra—notwithstanding
the fact that she was the issue of an often incestuous line from the Balkans.
On at least four occasions, Hollywood has incarnated her in the most il-
lustrious stars of their day, in films with scripts derived from Shakespeare
and with directors inspired by lurid paintings in the style of Egyptomania.
The Renaissance, as well as the classical and Romantic eras, inherited what
the Greek and Latin authors had written. Those authors included
Plutarch, who collected the information of earlier writers in his Lives, and
certain writers who were contemporary with the events, all of them repre-
senting the Roman point of view, as well as later historians who were even
more hostile than they toward the Ptolemies.
Even in Egypt, Cleopatra’s extraordinary personality was the stuff of
dreams. Hermetists counted her among the magicians expert in the oc-
cult sciences. In Arab folklore, a small bay in Alexandria became “Cleopa-
tra’s Baths,” and the two New Kingdom obelisks from Heliopolis that by
chance were reerected on the site of the temple of the deified Julius Cae-
sar in Alexandria were called “Cleopatra’s Needles.” Even at the end of the
twentieth century, when underwater archaeology located the island of An-
tirhodos, where the heroine lived during her final weeks, the media an-
nounced the “discovery of Cleopatra’s palace,” though nothing remained
there but the meager ruins of some buildings of Roman date.
For two millennia, only one Cleopatra has been the subject of dreams,
literature, and speculation. But in fact, she was the seventh queen to bear
that name (which means “of illustrious paternity”), which had been that
of figures from the heroic age of Hellas, and which had long been fash-
ionable among the ruling family of Macedonia. The destinies of the ear-
lier Cleopatras of Egypt, and in particular, the family dramas and the po-
litical role of the first three, were anything but quiet and insignificant.
When she became a widow, Cleopatra I, a Syrian princess who had mar-
ried Ptolemy V Epiphanes (194/193 B.C.E.), exercised a judicious regency
during the four years (180-176 B.C.E.) when her oldest son, Ptolemy VI
(surnamed Philometor, “he who loves his mother”), was still a minor. The
latter married his sister, Cleopatra II (173 B.C.E.), who bore him two boys
named Ptolemy and two Cleopatras, one of them the future Cleopatra III.
Not long thereafter, under Ptolemy VI to Ptolemy IX, there ensued a con-
fused period of hatreds and reconciliations, of murders within the royal
family, and of internecine warfare complicated by foreign wars. Cleopatra
II and Cleopatra III — the latter married to her uncle, Ptolemy VIII Euer-
getes II—were redoubtable women, partisans, and sovereigns. Despite dy-
nastic quarrels, social upheavals, and economic crises, Egypt continued to
be administered tolerably well by its Greco-Egyptian bureaucracy.
Except for the period 205-186 B.C.E., when an insurgent Upper Egypt
escaped the government of Alexandria, decorative programs were contin-
ued in the temples. In the mammisi (birth house) of Dendara, and at
Edfu, Ombos, and other sites, we see the standardized images of pharaohs
and sister-wives accompanied by the titularies of these Ptolemies and
Cleopatras, though the cartouches were sometimes left blank when local
notables were uncertain who the actual sovereigns were. Nevertheless, the
situation invited the intervention of foreign powers: the Seleucids of
Syria, from whom the Ptolemies tried in vain to wrest Palestine, and the
Romans, who step by step pursued their subjection of the east. In 168
B.C.E., the authority of the Roman legate Popilius halted the Seleucid king
Antiochus III at the gates of Alexandria. In 51 B.C.E., Ptolemy XII (called
“the Flutist”), who was in debt to the Romans, called on them in his will to
protect the joint reign of his children, Cleopatra VII and her younger
brother, Ptolemy XIII. We know what finally became of this protectorate:
twenty years later, the pharaoh was a Caesar, and Egypt was a province of
his empire.
Though it had been troubled for a century and was supposedly ruined,
the kingdom was nevertheless alive and still rich in resources in 51 B.C.E.
In that year, it found itself drawn into the tumult of the Roman civil wars,
while the disunited pacifiers of the Mediterranean world were directly in-
volved in the customary Lagide and Alexandrian quarrels. In 48 B.C.E.,
after the great Pompey was treacherously murdered by the ministers of

CLEOPATRA 47
young Ptolemy XIII, Cleopatra, who was about twenty years of age, made
her appearance before Julius Caesar and seduced him. In the Alexandrian
war that ensued, the Roman general prevailed over the city and the army
of the young pharaoh, who drowned as he attempted to flee. The queen
persuaded her lover to visit Upper Egypt with her; she was already preg-
nant with a new Ptolemy, who would be named Ptolemy Caesar. From 46
to 44 B.C.E., she resided at Rome, where she was an ambassador of Hel-
lenistic refinement, a representative of an unusual religion, and a disturb-
ing symbol of the monarchic principle — a shocking triumph.
After Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C.E., Cleopatra retreated to her
kingdom. Ptolemy XIV, her second younger brother and coregent, died in
his turn — poisoned, it would be claimed, at her order.
From then on, the coregent was Ptolemy Caesar, who was aptly styled
“beloved of his father and beloved of his mother.” While Egypt remained
neutral, the Caesarians defeated the murderers of the Divine Julius, and
their leaders — Octavian, whom Caesar had adopted as his son, and Mark
Antony—divided up the task of pacifying and governing the world.
Antony, who received the Hellenized east and was imbued with a
Dionysiac spirit, summoned Cleopatra to Cilicia in 41 B.C.E. The queen ar-
rived at Tarsus by boat, in the guise of Aphrodite and surrounded by lux-
ury. By way of paying homage, she invited him to feast on board her ship.
Already in his forties, the general succumbed to the charms and the pres-
tige of the heiress of the Ptolemies, who was only twenty-eight; he found
himself drawn into the Alexandrian lifestyle and its Bacchic revelries.
Thus began, at the highest level of power, an undisguised liaison that is
difficult for historians to evaluate, for they have no information beyond
the accusations of the Augustinian propaganda that made Antony into a
good soldier who was depraved by a Levantine adventuress, and Cleopatra
into a paragon of feminine wantonness and superficiality. The couple’s
monarchic ambitions, which balanced the Caesarian views of Octavian,
and their practices inspired by Dionysiac ideology, which was ill received
by Roman purists, were the basis of the accusation of this total debauchery
that would be unleashed throughout the “Nights of Cleopatra.” Of these
famous nights, there were few enough in the ten years that followed. They
were interrupted by the two pregnancies of the beautiful queen and by the
double life of Antony, who was often carried away from Alexandria by the
necessities of his military obligations and his politico-familial diplomacy.
Antony was fighting on two major fronts. In the east, he had to protect
Syria and control its Armenian borders, which were under constant threat
from the Parthians of Iran; in fact, his efforts met with more failures than
successes, and the latter were precarious. In the west, he needed to main-
tain his partisans in Italy and to negotiate a modus vivendi with Octavian,
which led him into Roman family affairs: his Roman marriage to Octavia,
the latter’s sister, plunged him into a scandalous triangle.
These setbacks did not alter the political aspirations of Cleopatra VII.
Immediately after their encounter of 37/36 B.C.E., she got her lover to
eliminate her sister Arsinoe, who had presented herself as a rival in Cae-
sar’s day and had then taken refuge in Ephesus. At that time, they cele-
brated an Egyptian-style marriage that culminated in a grant to the queen
of Coele-Syria and other domains in Asia. Later, in 34 B.C.E., Antony
solemnly constituted, on behalf of “the new goddess” and what we could
call the Roman branch of the Lagides, a domain consisting largely of the
territories that had belonged to the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. The
kingdoms and their revenues were divided among the queen, her son
Ptolemy XV Caesar, the firstborn (in 40/39 B.C.E.) twins of Antony—
Alexander-the-Sun and Cleopatra-the-Moon — and their third child,
Ptolemy Philadelphus (born in 34 B.C.E.). The names received by the di-
vine progeny of the “queen of kings”—Alexander, Philadelphus, Caesar,
and Cleopatra—were themselves a program. Such a system of princely ap-
panages, though on a much more modest scale, had already been in use
under the Ptolemies. The couple’s ambitious imperial dream could only
be realized by force of arms, provided the ruler of the east could defeat his
western rival. Once begun, their war ended with the disaster at Actium.
We know the dramatic events that ensued: after the final frenzied revel-
ries, the crisis of Antony and Cleopatra preparing her death; the suicide
and agony of Antony and his misunderstanding regarding Cleopatra, who
had shut herself up in her tomb; and the queen’s death by means of a ser-
pent’s venom.
The Roman historians Polybius and Diodorus had not been kind
toward the Hellenistic sovereigns, and the severity of historians’ criticism
would increase over time. On the whole, Cleopatra VII Philopator does
not appear to have been any more vindictive, cruel, or rapacious than her
Lagide predecessors, and it would seem that she was without the perversi-
ties of some of them. She was, after all, the loyal mistress of two successive
lovers and an attentive mother toward her three royal children. Her
charm was not due so much to her physical traits, according to contem-
porary writers. Her face, known from busts and coins, and which resem-
bled that of her father, is not disagreeable, though her nose was a bit too
aquiline. She owed her successes and her reputation as an enchantress to
her eyes, her voice, her presence, her culture, and her intellect. If we must
characterize Cleopatra VII, her genius is to be found in her audacious
force of character and her regal political intellect. In the worst of circum-
CLEOPATRA 49
FIGURE 3. Far right, Cleopatra VII and her son Ptolemy XV Caesarion worshiping the
pantheon of Dendara. Photo by Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad.
stances, she twice seized the occasion to make a reality, for herself and her
children, of the ideal program of the Egyptian monarchy: divine rule over
the entire world, as had been achieved by Darius and Alexander.
How did Egypt fare during the twenty years of Ptolemy XIII, Ptolemy
XIV, and Ptolemy XV, when Cleopatra ruled the land? As chance would
have it, there are few administrative documents on stone and few private
archives to shed light on the internal situation. A decree (dated to 41
B.C.E.) guaranteeing tax exemptions to Alexandrians who owned land in
two nomes seems at least to show that the government bureaus were func-
tioning normally. A decree issued by the priests of Karnak in 3g B.C.E. al-
ludes to a recent troubled period and to a famine, but determining the
extent of this crisis is impossible. Documents from Thebes and other cities
of the south expressing thanks to the strategos Callimachus attest to the ex-
tensive power of native dynasts, though we cannot speak of a disintegra-
tion of the state. As before, construction activity continued in some of the
temples. At Dendara, the naos (shrine) of Hathor-Aphrodite and Isis,
which was begun in 54 B.C.E., as well as the Osirian chapels on the roof of
the temple, were largely built and decorated during Cleopatra’s lifetime.
The cartouches of the queen and of the Ptolemies with whom she carried
out the rituals were left blank, except on the lofty exterior wall where she
is depicted officiating behind Ptolemy Caesar (see figure 3). Also com-
pleted under Cleopatra VII and Caesarion was the mammisi of Hermon-
this, which, like the other mammisis, served to celebrate the mystery of
Hathor’s eternal birthing of the divine child engendered by Amun, a mys-
tery that assured the perpetuity of the office of kingship. Though Roman
writers cruelly defamed this final Lagide ruler, the Roman authorities did
not proscribe her memory or her statues in her own land. As before, many
girls received her name: the Cleopatra whose once famous mummy ended
up in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris was a young Theban girl who
lived during the Roman Period.
M. Grant, Cleopatra (New York, 1972); E. Flamarion, Cleopatra: The Life
and Death of a Pharaoh (New York, 1997); E.E. Rice, Cleopatra (Stroud,
Gloucestershire, 1999); M. Chauveau, Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra (Ithaca,
2000), chapters 1 and 2; idem, Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth (Ithaca, 2002).
See Alexandria, Caesar, Ptolemy, Queens.
Clergy
When referring to pharaonic Egypt, the term “clergy” obviously does
not cover precisely the same social realities as in our modern societies.
There were basically three types of priestly activities, depending on who
benefited from them:
1. On behalf of the pharaoh: According to the most ancient concepts,

all care lavished on the physical person of the pharaoh, from provid-
ing his meals and ablutions to maintaining his wig and his false
beard, were considered to be priestly offices. These offices became
honorific duties that were awarded to members of his entourage or
the elite of the courtiers. Additionally, many priestly offices were at-
tached not only to the king’s funerary cult, but also to the institu-
tions of which he was the eponym.
2. For the post-mortem benefit of a private person: To assure chances
of survival in the hereafter, the deceased had to be the object of a
cult entailing the recitation of formulas, as well as libations and the
consecration of offerings. During their lifetimes, Egyptians often
drew up contracts with priests for the perpetuation of their mortu-
ary cult.
3. For the benefit of deities: The maintenance of the order of the cos-
mos required that the hypostases (effigies, statues, sacred animals)
of the deities who represented its principles receive a cult in the tem-
ples. A daily cult ritual consisted of clothing and anointing the
image, libations, fumigations with incense, and the presentation of
CLERGY 51
offerings (especially food offerings). On the occasion of festivals, the

statue of a deity would leave the temple in procession, visiting way
stations and the sanctuaries of associated deities.
In the funerary temples of the pharaohs, and especially in the temples

of deities, the organization of the clergy could be complex. If the temple
was of some size, the clergy was organized into a hierarchy and specialized
according to function, from the simple “pure’’-priest (wab) to the
“prophets” (who spoke in the name of the deity; they did not predict the
future). The clergy was sometimes divided into four classes, from “ritual
priest” and “god’s fathers” down to specialists of all sorts (scribe of the di-
vine writings, astronomers, musicians, etc.). In principle, priestly service
was organized into four (later, five) staffs, called “phyles,” that rotated on
a monthly basis.
The three types of priestly service were in no way exclusive. Moreover,
they involved the same basic principles, including the fact that the service
was compensated, in general by a share of the offerings after they were
consecrated, but often also by the usufruct of fields or by statutory rev-
enues. This was an important matter in pharaonic history: a priestly office
entailed both a sacerdotal duty and the advantages that constituted its
compensation, and frequently more the latter than the former. For an ex-
ample, an architect named Minmes boasted of having received the offices
of prophet and pure-priest {wab) in the temples where he had worked,
which were in locales stretching from Upper Egypt to the eastern delta. It
is evident that he had a right to the benefits tied to these offices, while the
actual services for which these were the compensation were surely sub-
contracted. The Egyptian clergy was thus a class of holders of material
privileges.
The clergy could hope to control more, as well. The temples were in
fact economic units; they had fields, cattle, precious materials (including
gold), boats, equipment, and numerous personnel — in short, a whole
complex that was often large, or even immense in the case of temples
such as those of Re of Heliopolis, Ptah of Memphis, and especially Amun
of Thebes. The administration of these complexes was the object of com-
petition between the pharaohs, who aimed to entrust them to loyal men
through whom they could control the temple administrations, and the
clergy, who regarded this responsibility as their own prerogative. This
conflict, which was endemic, is illustrated in particular by the history of
the high priests of Amun during the New Kingdom; the theocratic con-
cept that was imposed under the Twenty-first Dynasty was the ideological
sanction of a balance of power that ultimately favored the clergy of
Amun. From then on, the oracle of Amun, and through it the clergy who
manipulated it, became the supreme decision-making authority, to
which even the pharaoh submitted his political program. The region that
belonged to this theocracy was coextensive with the territory that was
mostly controlled by the domain of Amun — that is, Upper Egypt and
Middle Egypt as far as el-Hiba. In earlier periods, Egyptian history had
been punctuated by the alternation of phases. During some phases, the
central power managed to subject the administration of the temple do-
mains to its own representatives (as in the Middle Kingdom, when the
nomarchs were also “overseers of prophets”). At other times, this admin-
istration escaped them, as when royal decrees guaranteed the autonomy
of temples, or a balance of power enabled the clergy to take charge of
their domains.
Thus, the clergy held a double advantage: the material compensation
associated with every priestly office, and the possibility—which was often
a reality, according to the political situation — of controlling and thus
profiting from the administration of the goods belonging to the temple.
But what category of the population constituted the clergy?
During much of the history of pharaonic Egypt, the conditions for ac-
cess to priestly service were not very restrictive: literacy, undoubtedly, and
when it was necessary to officiate, a state of ritual purity (shaved head, sex-
ual abstinence, linen clothing, no fish consumption). Neither an act of
faith nor a spiritual commitment was a prerequisite. Down to the New
Kingdom, at least, we often see an accumulation of priestly, military, and
administrative offices in the hands of the same family, or even a single per-
son. Priestly offices could be bought or sold, in whole or in part, or ac-
quired by co-optation, heredity, or royal nomination, for the king re-
tained a say in their transmission, which he exercised to the extent he
could in regard to the most important ones. In any case, the caste spirit,
which made its appearance here and there, became predominant in the
Late Period. From then on, heredity became a condition of access to
priestly office, and it was proclaimed as such: among the arguments they
invoked to obtain the favor of deities, priests pointed out that they were
the sons of priests. Herodotus, who visited Egypt during the first Persian
domination, explicitly described the Egyptian clergy as a closed caste, and
everything leads us to believe that he observed correctly.
S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, 2000); G. Lefebvre, Histoire des
grands pretres d’Amon de Karnak jusqu a la XXIe dynastie (Paris, 1929).
See High Priest of Amun.
CONSPIRACY 53
Colossi
Measurable achievements materialized the divinity of the pharaoh, as
recalled by the incredible pyramids of Cheops and Chephren. The mak-
ing of royal effigies 40 feet tall, or even more than 65 feet, carved in gran-
ite or metamorphosed sandstone (quartzite), reached its apogee under
Amenophis III and Ramesses II. These hypostases of the monarch were
proportionate in size to the immense roâl and divine temples, and they
were set up in the parts of the sacred enclosures that were open to the
people, so that they could adore the statues, which were defined by spe-
cific epithets: “ruler of rulers,” “ruler of the Two Lands,” or “beloved” of
this or that deity. The most spectacular colossi still standing are the so-
called Colossi of Memnon at Thebes and the “small” colossi of Amenophis
III at Luxor, along with that of Ramesses II originally from Memphis and
now in front of the railroad station in Cairo. We can also calculate the
sizes of the collapsed colossi of Memphis and the Ramesseum. Two frag-
ments reused at Tanis once belonged to the largest known example,
which was nearly 89 feet high. The rock-cut statues of Abu Simbel are
beautiful examples of this oversized statuary, though their creation did
not pose the same problems of transport and erection as their movable
relatives at Thebes, Memphis, and Pi-Riamsese.
Conspiracy
The pomp, the luxury, and the power inherent in the office of the
pharaoh could not have failed to arouse ambitions, and they were multi-
plied as the size of the royal family grew through polygamy. In the atmo-
sphere of eastern courts, they blossomed into so many intrigues and ca-
bals. This culture of conspiracy found sanction in the ultimate principle of
royal legitimacy, the free choice of the sun god, which facilitated after-the-
fact justifications. In fact, in the Late Period, the theme of conspiracy had
become so familiar that it served as the basis for the prologue of a wisdom
text known as the Instruction of Ankhsheshonqy.
For earlier periods, the existence of conspiracies is especially de-
tectable through conflicts over succession or through changes in dynasty,
though our sources are rather reticent regarding such matters. In any
case, three conspiracies are known to us; the amount of surviving detail
differs, but all three originated or were developed in the harem.
Weni was named judge in an exceptional inquiry that was initiated to
judge an unnamed queen under Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty.
The first king of the Twelfth Dynasty, Amenemhet I, faced strong op-
position; the last of the plots fomented against him, when his son and
coregent was returning from an expedition in Libya, ended in his assassi-

nation. News of this assassination provoked the flight of Sinuhe, in the
story that bears his name, not because he had taken part in the plot, but
because it had been prepared in the harem, to which he was attached.
The harem was also the center of a conspiracy hatched by one of the
wives of Ramesses III, Teye, who planned to assassinate the king and to re-
place him with her son, Pentaweret. She was joined in her attempt by a
number of high officials: a chamberlain, an overseer of pure-priests of
Sakhmet, a general, the commandant of troops in Nubia, and others. The
conspirators resorted to drastic measures — that is, drastic measures for
that era—for they planned to cast a spell on the guards to gain entry to
the palace of Medinet Habu. It is quite probable, though not definitively
proven, that the conspiracy led to the death of Ramesses III. In any case,
the reaction was severe. The principal conspirators were condemned to
commit suicide, while others had their nose and ears cut off. Other pun-
ishments were less bloody, but nevertheless feared by ancient Egyptians:
names were changed to make their meanings unfavorable, with the result
that one of the principal conspirators, the chamberlain, was from then on
called Mesedsure, “Re hates him”; and retrospectively, mentions of the of-
fices they had exercised so unworthily were eradicated by invoking an ap-
propriate formula.
P. Vernus, Affaires et scandales sous les Ramses (Paris, 1993), chapter 5.
See Amenemhet I, Ramesses III, Sinuhe, Weni.
Coregency
As in most ancient Near Eastern civilizations, royal succession in
pharaonic Egypt was a tricky matter: ambitions, intrigues, and plots would
spring up, all the more so in that there was no formal rule, the succession
from father to son having only the force of custom. Pharaohs thus had to
take steps to strengthen the position of their chosen successor.
Aanong the means at their disposal was coregency; during the lifetime
of a king, his successor was associated with him on the throne as a
pharaoh in his own right and with all the attributes of the office, in partic-
ular, a complete titulary. Moreover, events could be dated to the two part-
ners simultaneously by juxtaposing the year dates of their respective
reigns.
Coregency was not easy to reconcile with fundamental royal dogma, in
that the pharaoh was supposed to be the earthly representative of the cre-
ator god, whose uniqueness was his principal characteristic. To avoid the
difficulty, ideology drew on the corpus of available representations. The
CROWNS 55
younger partner was assimilated to the god Horus-who-protects-his-father,

a reference to the myth of Osiris, or he acted as a “staff of old age,” a cus-
tom according to which a man who had reached old age shared his office
with his son. In practice, the younger partner often assumed the more ac-
tive duties, such as leading military expeditions. An example is Senwosret
I, whom scholars consider the “dynamic” element of the coregency that
associated him with his father, Amenemliet I, though he recognized the
latter’s theoretical superiority by “making reports” to him.
This type of coregency is clearly attested during the Twelfth Dynasty,
but it was not the only type. Besides parallel reigns during periods when
Egypt was politically divided, we know of forced coregencies. Thus, prior
to year 7 of Tuthmosis III, and against his will, Hatshepsut had herself
crowned as a pharaoh, associating herself Actively with her father, Tuth-
mosis I, and reigning jointly with Tuthmosis III until her death.
Aside from reasonably well-established coregencies (e.g., Tuthmosis III
and Amenophis II), many remain uncertain and debated; one of the fa-
vorite pastimes of Egyptologists, in fact, is to propose or to disprove one
or another coregency involving some pharaoh or other. The succession
from Amenophis III to Amenophis IV, for example, annually inspires a
host of dense and ingenious scholarly studies. We may smile, but it must
be admitted that our sources remain unusually vague regarding coregen-
cies, for as effective as this institution could be in practice, it was difficult
to integrate into the traditions and phraseology of royal documents.
W.J. Murnane, Ancient Egyptian Coregencies, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization

40 (Chicago, 1977).
See Amenemhet I, Pharaoh, Senwosret I, Sinuhe.
Crowns
Accession to royal office was principally marked by the assumption of
crowns, and when he entered a temple to officiate, a king was first
crowned by its deity. Different headdresses revealed the divine quality of
the sovereign, who shared the headdresses, for the most part, with certain
major gods. The simplest and most convenient and doubtless the most
common, were the head covering of pleated fabric (called nemes in Egyp-
tian, and formerly called klaft by Egyptologists) and the diadem of pre-
cious metal with two strips of cloth that hung down behind the neck. The
white crown, a tall miter with a bulbous top, and the red crown, which was
topped by a stiff, stalk-like appendage and one that was thin and spiraling,
were perennial symbols of kingship over Upper and Lower Egypt, respec-
tively. The former enclosed in the latter formed the pshent, the “Two Pow-
FIGURE 4. (a) white crown, (b) red crown, (c) double crown (also called pshent). From
Adolf Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, trans. H.M. Tirard (London, 1894), p. 60.
ers” that, joined together, expressed the beneficent advent of peacemak-

ing power (see figure 4). The khepresh, a blue cap covered with little cir-
cles, appeared at the end of the Middle Kingdom. The list includes many
other headdresses, from the simplest and oldest, such as the bag-shaped
head covering, to extravagant concoctions like the henu and the hemhem,
on which feathers, sun disks, serpents, falcons, and horns were combined.
The common and nearly indispensable feature of all royal headdresses
was the uraeus (i.e., cobra) attached to the front. These symbols of royal
power, which were handled by initiated chamberlains, priests of the god-
dess “Great-of-magic,” all seem to have contained the same redoubtable
power: each headdress provided with a uraeus was itself the uraeus, which
was in its turn identified with the Eye of Re. The latter shared in the na-
ture of the blazing goddesses Sakhmet, Wadjit, and Nekhbet. To the ex-
tent that the theological equivalence of the crowns seems obvious, it is dif-
ficult to make out the mythologies and practices that were specific to each
of them.
A. M.J. Abubaker, Untersuchungen iiber die agyptischen Kronen (Gliickstadt, 1937).

Darius I 522-485 B.C.E., Twenty-seventh Dynasty
Darius, son of Hystaspes the Achaemenid, was the second of the Persian
pharaohs. Master of the empire after the death of Cambyses, he easily re-
conquered Egypt, which had revolted (possibly under Petubastis III). He
eliminated the satrap (governor) Aryandes, who was behaving like an in-
dependent sovereign, and on at least one occasion, he visited his rich pos-
session in Africa. He demonstrated his concern for the deities of Egypt,
and he had the “house of life” at Sais restored. At his command, a project
begun by Necho II was completed: connecting the eastern branch of the
Nile to the Red Sea by a canal dug through the Wadi Tumilat and the Isth-
mus of Suez. Large stelae with inscriptions in three languages (Egyptian,
Old Persian, and Babylonian) were set up along the watercourse. Eco-
nomically and strategically, this undertaking integrated the satrapy into
the empire.
Because Darius ordered a written compilation of the customs of Egypt,
he was later counted as one of the great lawgivers of the land. In an atmo-
sphere of peace, the traditional arts, and statuary in particular, flourished
in the best Saite tradition. A monumental portrait of a standing Darius,
sculpted in Egypt of graywacke from the Wadi Hammamat, was dug up by
archaeologists in a palace at Susa. According to its trilingual dedication in
cuneiform, this statue commemorated the emperor’s conquest of Egypt,
but its lengthy hieroglyphic titulary proclaims that Atum and Neith con-
ferred the role of maintaining the order of the universe on the son of Hys-
taspes. Darius’ clothing is Persian, but his pose is Egyptian. On the base,
the symbolic image of the Uniting of the Two Lands introduces a pictorial
listing of the peoples of the empire, from India to Ionia.
In Egypt, Darius would later be considered a model pharaoh: the fron-
tiers that late historiography attributed to the conquests effected by the
legendary Sesostris were none other than those of the Achaemenid em-
pire.
K. Mysliwiec, The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E. (Ithaca, 2000),
pp. 136-54.
See Persians, Udjahorresnet.
Diplomacy
Warfare, both defensive and offensive, was inherent in the pharaoh’s
role as incarnation of the creator god. In principle, diplomacy was not, for
there was no common ground between this god, who was son of a god and
the sun on earth, and the rulers of foreign lands. When scribes write that
the king granted the “breath of life” to “rebel” princes who came to him
bearing their goods, they do not tell us whether this peace was negotiated
or whether these gifts were trade goods. Of course, even when his partners
from Khatti, Babylon, or Assyria accorded him an official primacy, the
pharaoh negotiated at least as often as he battled. Egypt sent and received
ambassadors, interfered in the affairs of others, combated the intrigues of
rival empires, distributed the gold in which it was so rich, loaned royal
physicians to other courts, and signed treaties. Pharaohs and their foreign
colleagues exchanged official letters, and as needed, the ladies and
princes of their respective families showered one another with epistolary
civilities. It is improbable that Egypt contributed much to the develop-
ment of international law, which was the work of rival and allied states in
the Fertile Crescent. The correspondence informing us of pharaonic
diplomacy in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries was written in Baby-
lonian (on cuneiform tablets from Amarna, Ugarit, and Boghazkoi,
among others).
Exceptionally, Ramesses II had the text of a treaty carved on the walls
of the temple of Karnak and of the Ramesseum. The hieroglyphic transla-
tion of a Babylonian text, this fully reciprocal document provides for
peace and mutual assistance, as agreed upon with the Hittite king. Never-
theless, in a preamble, the king of the Hittites is presented as requesting
this peace, for it was always maintained that Egypt’s “Bull of Rulers” could
set his boundaries where he wanted!
Diplomatic marriages were a common practice among the great pow-
ers of the second millennium. Amenophis Ill’s boast, in a letter to the
king of Babylon, that the king of Egypt never gave his daughters in mar-
riage seems in fact to have corresponded to reality. Amenophis III took
Babylonian and Mittanian princesses as wives, and among his wives,
Ramesses II counted two daughters of the Hittite king Hattusilis. Times
had changed when King Solomon of Israel obtained the daughter of a
Tanite king as his bride!
Djoser 2617-2599 B.C.E.
Djoser was the second king of the Third Dynasty; his Horus name was
Netjerykhet. He ruled for nineteen years. We know almost nothing of his
reign, except that he was undoubtedly the first pharaoh to place the Sinai
peninsula and its mineral resources (copper, turquoise) under Egyptian
control. His monuments are few, but the quality makes up for the quan-
tity. It was he, in fact, who erected the great monumental complex at
Saqqara to which tourists still flock: a niched enclosure wall with a perime-
ter of 5250 feet shelters a series of buildings that are models of palaces
and jubilee structures, and which complement the royal tomb. The tomb,
DUALISMS 59
in turn, comprises a network of subterranean galleries and rooms sur-

mounted by a six-stepped pyramid that is nearly 197 feet high. The archi-
tecture, which was explicitly conceived as the transposition into stone of
buildings of light materials (wood, reeds), attained perfection; Djoser’s
statue is the first known life-size statue. These advances in technology are
attributed to Imhotep.
Djoser left behind such a prestigious memory that two and a half mil-
lennia later, during the Ptolemaic Period, an apocryphal work was written
in his name. This account, carved on the island of Sehel and known as the
Famine Stela, was intended to use events of his reign to justify possessions
in Nubia that belonged to the temple of Khnum in the Ptolemaic era.
See Imhotep, Pyramids, Third Dynasty.
Dreams
Sleep was considered both a delicate and a privileged phase, in which
one could enter into contact with the dead and with the gods in dreams,
both spontaneous ones and dreams solicited by the practice of incubation
(spending the night in the funerary chapel of a deceased person or in the
sanctuary of a deity). What was true for ordinary private persons was obvi-
ously true for pharaohs, to whom the gods revealed themselves in dreams,
as they otherwise revealed themselves by means of miracles and oracles, or
even by direct inspiration. The message transmitted in the dream was po-
litical or historical. For example, the god might request the king to restore
his sanctuary, which had fallen into ruin — such was the justification for
Senwosret I’s work in the temple of Elephantine — or promise victory on
the eve of battle, as in the cases of Amenophis II and Merneptah, or in-
form the future pharaoh that he had chosen him for the royal office, as in
the case of Tantamani. That dream, once explained, revealed that Tanta-
mani would hold power over Kush and Egypt. In a dream of Tuthmosis IV,
Harmachis was said to have promised the throne, provided that Tuthmo-
sis IV clear the Great Sphinx of Giza, one of his hypostases, from the
sands.
S. Sauneron, Les Songes et leur interpretation, Sources Orientales 2 (Paris, 1959).

See Famine, Tuthmosis IV.
Dualisms
In all its manifestations, ancient Egyptian kingship was conceived as a
dual institution by means of which the north and the south of the land
were united. By turns, the king wore the white crown of Upper Egypt or
the red crown of Lower Egypt; he could also wear both of them together,
6o THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
the double crown known as the pshent. He was “lord of the Two Lands,” the
“king of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt,” protected by the “Two Ladies,”
that is, Nekhbet, the vulture goddess of el-Kab in Upper Egypt, and Wad-
jit, the cobra goddess of Buto in Lower Egypt; he was also protected by
Seth as lord of Upper Egypt. We could make no end of listing the string of
dualistic expressions and representations that formulated the dogma of
kingship and culminated in rituals like that of the coronation or the sed-
festival (a sort of royal jubilee).
These frequent proclamations of dualism have not failed to strike Egyp-
tologists. One of them, Kurt Sethe, developed a complex theory according
to which this dualism reflects political events that occurred in prehistoric
times (Urgeschichte), episodes in which kingdoms of Lower and Upper
Egypt supposedly took turns exercising hegemony over the entire land.
Contemporary Egyptology has distanced itself from this theory, which
somewhat naively and mechanically postulates a political event behind
each dualistic image in pharaonic ideology. In fact, it was characteristic
of Egyptian civilization to express a reality as the union of two opposites;
thus, “to comport oneself” was “to sit and stand up,” while “totality” was
“that which exists and does not exist.” This form of thinking was surely at
work in the dualisms of royal dogma. As a political unity of which the
pharaoh was both symbol and guarantor, the Egyptian state was the
union of Upper and Lower Egypt, primarily because the geographical
distinctness of the two regions was obvious to a style of thinking that in-
voked contrasting pairs. Cultural distinctions also could have corre-
sponded to this geographical opposition when the pharaonic state was
born. In addition, this birth was the culmination of an extension into the
north of an already organized society in the south (which is not the same
as saying a conquest of a Lower Egyptian kingdom by an Upper Egyptian
kingdom).
Generally speaking, the pairs utilized by royal ideology had a basis in
reality; after all, a small kingdom in the northern delta, centered on Buto,
could have existed at a certain point in prehistory, while Nekhbet’s city of
el-Kab was important in predynastic times. But systematic thought in an-
cient Egypt worked in such a way as to make pairs of such realities, forcing
them into an artificial symmetry based on analogies that were formal
rather than historical or political.
H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the
Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago, 1948).
See Crowns.
DYNASTIES 6l
Dynasties
Egyptologists group the kings of ancient Egypt into dynasties num-
bered from one to thirty. This classification is borrowed from Manetho,
an Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek during the reign
of Ptolemy II; his work has come down to us only in fragments. Manetho
characterized each dynasty by referring it to a city, or, in the case of for-
eign kings, by giving them ethnic desigrfations: Hyksos, Ethiopians (i.e.,
Kushites), Persians. The geographical adjectives refer to the nome whose
forces imposed a new power, to the city whose deity was the patron of that
power (which amounts to the same thing), or to the place where the
tombs of the kings in question were located.
But it is uncertain whether the notion of “dynasty” meant, for Manetho,
the concept of hereditary succession within a family that is familiar to us.
His dynastic divisions take appropriate account of certain actual disconti-
nuities in Egyptian political history, such as the transition from the Seven-
teenth to the Eighteenth Dynasty, which corresponded to the expulsion of
the Hyksos, but without a change in family or city, or the successive tri-
umphs of cities of the delta from the Twenty-first Dynasty on. But it is clear
that the framework of these dynasties cannot be applied to all of the so-
cioeconomic and cultural developments that occurred during the
pharaonic period.
See Chronology.
Eighth Dynasty
The Eighth Dynasty, which sprang from the struggles over dynastic suc-
cession after the death of Nitocris, was incapable of restoring order during
the little time it managed to remain in power (2140-2130 B.C.E.). Though
filled with uncertainties, the list of the kings who composed it is as follows:
Neferkare the Younger . •,

Neferkamin
Ibi, reign: two years and one month
Neferkaure, reign: four years, two months
Neferkauhor, reign: two years, one month
Neferirkare (Horus name: Demedjibtawy), reign: one and a half years
To the extent they could, these kings perpetuated the model of the Old
Kingdom; the pyramid of one of them, Ibi, is located at Saqqara. They
resided at Memphis, while Abydos functioned as the administrative center
of Upper Egypt, and they promulgated decrees that employed the tradi-
tional formulas. But they had to deal with a powerful family of Koptos,
that of the vizier Shemay, who had power over the first seven nomes of the
south in his capacity of governor of Upper Egypt. Shemay married Nebet,
the daughter of King Neferkauhor, and he secured a number of advan-
tages for his own funerary cult and for those of his sons, one of whom was
named Idy. Those advantages included personnel devoted to the mainte-
nance of their cult foundations, chapels in most of the sanctuaries, and
the pharaoh’s special protection of these monuments.
See First Intermediate Period, Nitocris.
Eleventh Dynasty
The ancestor of the Eleventh Dynasty, who was honored as such by his
posterity, was a “prince” and “governor” named Inyotef, son of Iku; In-
yotef was a contemporary of the last kings of the Eighth Dynasty. He
breathed ambition into a region that until then had been snoozing in
provincial obscurity. Under the Ninth Dynasty, Thebes and Koptos
formed an alliance that was opposed by Akkhtifi, potentate of the extreme
south of Egypt, though he did not succeed in destroying it. Quite the con-
trary, Thebes’ power and influence increased under Mentuhotpe and his
son Inyotef to the point that the latter proclaimed himself pharaoh and
the former was retrospectively promoted to that supreme office as the first
king of the Eleventh Dynasty, though he had in fact never reigned. But the
new dynasty had to reckon with another one, that of Herakleopolis, which
controlled the delta and a part of Middle Egypt; the region of Thinis and
ERASURES 63
Abydos, which the two parties conquered and lost by turns, constituted
the frontier zone. Hostilities continued, and a king of Herakleopolis
counseled his son Merykare to pursue a policy of peaceful coexistence.
This advice was useless in the face of the irrepressible ambition of Thebes,
however. This ambition succeeded in triumphing over the dynasty of Her-
akleopolis and reunifying Egypt during the reign of Mentuhotpe II, at a
date that remains uncertain (c. 2022 B.C.E.).
From that time on, the Eleventh Dynasty disposed of natural and cultural
resources that enabled it to revive the traditional policies of great pharaohs:
expeditions to the mines and quarries, as well as to foreign ports, restora-
tion of temples, and construction of huge funerary monuments. But
scarcely had the Eleventh Dynasty eliminated its Herakleopolitan rival than
a pretender to a new legitimacy arose in its ruling class: Amenemhet, the
vizier of Mentuhotpe IV, took advantage of the weakness of the pharaoh,
who was in fact not recognized as such in the later annals, to seize power in
a civil war. The list of the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty is as follows:
Mentuhotpe I and Inyotef I, 2130-2115 B.C.E.
Inyotef II, 2115-2066 B.C.E.
Inyotef III, 2066-2059 B.C.E.
Mentuhotpe II, 2059-2009 B.C.E.
Mentuhotpe III, 2009-1997 B.C.E.
Mentuhotpe IV, 1997-1991 B.C.E.
SÂnkhtifi, Henenu, Inyotef, Mentuhotpe, Ninth and Tenth Dynasties.
Erasures
“Annihilating” persons by destroying their names in all accessible in-
scriptions was a means of cursing both the living and the dead, and it was
one of the sanctions that accompanied the death penalty. The effacing of
the names and sometimes the images of disgraced dignitaries or hated
family members occurred in tombs in all periods of Egyptian history. Era-
sures of the names, and sometimes the destruction of the effigies, of kings
are obvious indications of political crises. The names of a sovereign con-
signed to oblivion were often replaced by the titulary of the later king who
censored his memory. Certain usurpations do not indicate hostility, but
simply the appropriation or restoration of a monument, however. The
most famous cases of erasure are:
Tuthmosis III persecuted the memory of the pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Akhenaten’s name was mutilated and his buildings were dismantled
when the traditional religion was restored.
Haremhab substituted mentions of himself for those of

Tutankhamun.
Memory of the usurper Amenmesse was persecuted by Sethos II.
Sethnakhte did the same to Siptah, Twosre, and the treasurer Bay.
The memory of the six Kushite kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty was
retrospectively proscribed by the Saite Psammetichus II, who waged
war against their Sudanese successors.
Amasis suffered the same fate under the Persian Cambyses.
This type of postmortem damnation by eradicating the memory of dis-

avowed rulers is attested in many other societies. More particular to the
Egyptian mentality is the elimination by erasure of divine persons. The
two known cases are different:
Akhenaten had the names and images of Amun chiseled out. His
intention was to communicate the god’s futility (and perhaps, since
Amun means “hidden,” to indicate that the mystery of divine
identity was eliminated by the revelation of Aten, the visible sun).
From the ninth century on, the names and images of the god Seth
were effaced on older monuments. The idea was to combat a real
being who, since he was no longer venerated as a naturally
necessary agent of the divine order, was now considered merely a
demon, the murderer of Osiris and the enemy of gods and men.
Famine
For its staples, particularly grains, Egyptian agriculture depended en-
tirely on the Nile inundation, which was often irregular. Too low an inun-
dation— or worse, several years of them—would result in a lack of grain,
food shortages, and famine, the latter sometimes leading to acts of canni-
balism. A well organized state could at least partly ward off such disasters
by means of judicious stockpiling, but famines were especially bad during
periods of disorder. At such times, amid the general suffering, a local po-
tentate who had been astute enough to lay aside reserves would succeed
in feeding his city, and even allied cities as well.
An apocryphal stela, dated to Djoser but in fact carved during the
Ptolemaic Period, reports that for seven years — surely a significant
figure — Plapy (that is, the Nile inundation) did not arrive on time; grain
was thus in short supply, the people were hungry, and disorder set in.
Imhotep went in search of the reasons for this disaster, and the god
Khnum announced to him that he would use his influence with Hapy—
and this influence was substantial, for the sources of the Nile were located
near Khnum’s city of Elephantine. This text, called the “Famine Stela,”
was intended to justify the rights of the temple of Khnum to territory in
Nubia, but it is based on one of the sad realities of pharaonic Egypt.
J. Vandier, La Famine dans CEgypte ancienne, Recherches d’archeologie, de philologie

et d’histoire 7 (Cairo, 1936); K. W. Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study
in Cultural Ecology (Chicago, 1976); W. Schenkel, Die Bewasserungsrevolution im alten
Agypten (Mainz, 1978).
See Djoser, Imhotep, Strikes.
Fifteenth Dynasty
See Hyksos.
Fifth Dynasty 2450-2321 B.C.E.

A myth demoted to a popular tale (Papyrus Westcar) explains the dy-
nastic change from the Fourth to the Fifth Dynasty: the god Re, assuming
the form of a pure-priest of Horus of Sakhebu, impregnated Ruddjedet,
the priest’s wife, with three children who would be the first three kings of
the Fifth Dynasty, contrary to the wishes of Cheops. Behind the person of
Ruddjedet undoubtedly lies Queen Khentkaus, mother of the first three
pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty. The kings of this dynasty were:
Userkaf (2450-2444 B.C.E.); he built his pyramid at Saqqara, not far

from that of Djoser, while his sun temple was at Abusir
Sahure (2444-2433 B.C.E.)
Neferirkare Kakai (2433-2414 B.C.E.)
Raneferef, son of the preceding, whose funerary complex he

completed (2414-2408 B.C.E.)
Shepseskare (2408 B.C.E.); perhaps a son of Userkaf, he scarcely

managed to maintain his legitimacy for more than a few months
Neuserre Ini (2407-2384 B.C.E.); perhaps a son of Neferirkare
Menkauhor (2384-2377 B.C.E.)
Djedkare Izezi (2377-2350); he built his pyramid between Saqqara

and Dahshur
Wenis (2350-2321)
An extremely important change took root in the Fifth Dynasty.

Pharaoh, who had previously been the supreme power, ceded this role to
the god Re, with whom he entered into a relationship of filiation; in fact,
the title “son of Re” would from then on appear regularly in the royal tit-
ulary. As a monumental expression of this change, the pharaohs of the
Fifth Dynasty, except for the last two, built temples to the sun. At the
heart of these sacred complexes was a platform representing the primor-
dial mound, upon which an obelisk was erected; around it, there was a
vast open-air esplanade containing an altar for the celebration of a cult
inspired by nature (an inspiration that can be observed in Neuserre’s
“chamber of the world”). The sun temple was closely related to the fu-
nerary temple, to which it forwarded offerings after they were conse-
crated.
An important sociological change can also be discerned in the Fifth Dy-
nasty, one that was either the cause or the effect of the king’s (relative)
loss of ideological status: the highest offices were no longer reserved ex-
clusively for members of the royal family. Thus, the office of vizier fell to
private persons with no blood tie to the king. An increasing number of
private autobiographies stress personal merit, even if exercised in the ser-
vice of Pharaoh. Finally, in the course of the dynasty, we see the first great
lineages of high officials, as the hereditary principle began to counterbal-
ance the free choice of the kings.
Otherwise, the kings continued to build pyramids, but much smaller in
size than those of the Fourth Dynasty. They also continued to send expe-
ditions to the diorite quarries of Nubia, to the Sinai, and to Byblos, and
they assured the security of the borders by means of operations against the
Libyans, the Nubians, and the bedouins. A high level of artistic technique
was maintained during the Fifth Dynasty, as is especially evident in bas-re-
lief and statuary.
FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD 67
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1: The Old and
Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 219-21; I.E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt,
rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 150.
See Khentkaus, Neferirkare Kakai, Neuserre Ini, Ptahwash, Sahure, Wenis.
First Dynasty
See Archaic (Period).
First Intermediate Period

The period beginning with the collapse of the Old Kingdom at the end
of the Sixth Dynasty (2140 B.C.E.) and ending with the definitive victory of
the Theban dynasty and the reunification of Egypt during the reign of
Mentuhotpe II (2022 B.C.E.) is called the First Intermediate Period; the re-
unification marked the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. The First In-
termediate Period thus includes the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth
Dynasties, and part of the Eleventh.
The unity of this period consists in some sense in the dismemberment of
the unity of Egypt at the end of a progressive decline of royal power in the
face of local separatism and the assertion of the principle of hereditary trans-
mission of offices, a process that was aggravated by the consequences of cli-
matic change. In fact, the nomarchs, who viewed their office as family prop-
erty, behaved like potentates in their nomes, relying on a clientele whom
they maintained and rewarded just as Pharaoh did his courtiers. They ig-
nored the feeble sovereign of the moment, or acknowledged only his purely
nominal sovereignty. They accumulated civil titles (“governor,” “great nome
chief”) and religious titles (“overseer of prophets,” implying control of tem-
ple property), and they often also took the title “overseer of the south,”
which originally indicated supervision of the nomes of Upper Egypt, or at
least a part of that region. Evidently, many of these nomarchs allowed them-
selves to be tempted by ambition: in one way or another, they associated
themselves with other nomes to form a bloc that was likely to dispute with a
neighboring one, alliances forming and dissolving by turns. The conse-
quence of these quasi-feudal rifts was the multiplication of famines, which
the inscriptions mention almost obsessively; a powerful nomarch could deal
with such problems, but woe to the region that did not enter the sphere of
influence of a coalition favored by the balance of power at the moment!
Little by little, antagonism polarized a Herakleopolitan monarchy that con-
trolled the delta and part of Middle Egypt by relying on the powerful family
of nomarchs at Asyut, and the ambitious dynasty of Thebes, which had sub-
jugated Upper Egypt with the aid of Koptos. This Theban dynasty would suc-
ceed in imposing its power on the entire land, putting an end to the First In-
termediate Period.
This period left a profound mark on the civilization of Egypt, not only
physically through damage and destruction, but above all, intellectually
and ideologically. It gave birth to a pessimistic vision of the world, one
that would nourish a current of thought that would remain part of the cul-
tural patrimony of the literate. A “democratization” of funerary beliefs
also occurred: from then on, ordinary private persons would lay claim to
the solar postmortem destiny that had been the exclusive privilege of
Pharaoh. Texts describing this destiny were written on their behalf; these
were the Coffin Texts, which were largely inspired by the corpus of texts
from the royal pyramids.
Ankhtifi, Eighth Dynasty, Eleventh Dynasty, Inyotef, Mentuhotpe, Merykare,

Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, Seventh Dynasty .
Fourteenth Dynasty
The Fourteenth Dynasty actually encompassed at least two kingdoms lo-
cated in different areas of Lower Egypt, in part contemporaneously:
One kingdom was ruled by pharaohs at Xois who controlled part of the
western delta. We know almost nothing about them, except that they
might already have been ruling contemporaneously with Sebekhotpe IV
(1730-1723 B.C.E.).
The other kingdom was founded in the eastern delta by Nehesy around
1720 B.C.E.; its capital was Avaris, a riverine port that served as a conduit
for trade with Asia. Its kingship was Egyptian in style, though the territory
was densely populated by Asiatics. This kingdom was swept away by the
wave of Hyksos who extended their domination over Egypt from their base
in its territory.
See Avaris, Hyksos, Xois.
Fourth Dynasty
The reasons for the transition from the Third to the Fourth Dynasty,
and the conditions under which it occurred, remain obscure. The succes-
sion of pharaohs is more or less as follows:
Snofru (2561-2538 B.C.E.)
Cheops, his son (2538-2516 B.C.E.)
Radjedef, son of Cheops, buried at Abu Rawash (2516-2509 B.C.E.)

FUNERARY TEMPLES 69
Khephren, son of Cheops (2509-2484 B.C.E.)

Two lines of pretenders: on the one hand, two kings, one of whom was
named Baka (Bicheris), son of Radjedef, and on the other hand,
Mycerinus, who reigned contemporaneously until he succeeded in
imposing himself as the legitimate pharaoh (2484-2467 B.C.E.).
Shepseskaf, son of Mycerinus (2467-2464 B.C.E.); he completed his
father’s funerary complex at Giza, but for himself, he built a curious
monument in the shape of a sarcophagus (the Mastabet el-Faraun),
located between Saqqara and Dahshur.
The end of the dynasty was dominated by the quarrels of pretenders;
only one name emerges, that of Ptahdjedef (Manetho’s Thamphthis).
The Fourth Dynasty was above all the dynasty of the builders of the
Great Pyramids. What better symbol of a period when Pharaoh was the
supreme value around whom all of society was organized? In fact, not only
did he drain the resources of the land for his own benefit, but also high
administrative and religious offices were entrusted only to members of his
family. It is an easy but doubtless justified cliche to feel sorry for the Egyp-
tian people, “who crushed the granite for the hemmed-in Cheops,” ac-
cording to the verse of Sully-Prudhomme.
The art of the period, in particular the royal statuary, reflects the mas-
sive and overwhelming perfection attained by the institution of kingship.
The Fourth Dynasty represented the culmination of a logic that was born
in the Archaic Period and already highly evolved under the Third Dynasty.
But at the very moment when this evolution reached its acme, we discern
the first signs of a new development that would challenge the pharaoh’s
ideological status.
See Cheops, Chephren, Hardjedef, Metjen, Mycerinus, Snofru.
Funerary Temples
In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, each pyramid was accompanied by a
temple composed of two buildings: a building at the foot of the pyramid
(called the funerary temple) and a building in the valley (called the valley
temple) that received the body of the deceased king. In these buildings,
the king is depicted serving the gods, carrying out real and/or symbolic
acts linked to his office, and receiving offerings. Endowments of land sup-
plied the altars and nourished a numerous clergy, along with the inhabi-
tants of the “pyramid town.” These “funerary” monuments, the size of
which testifies to the divine status of the sovereign, began to function
while the king was still alive. As far as we know, in these same periods, the
temples of local deities were much smaller. In addition, there is reason to

think that the temples erected for the gods in the New Kingdom largely
inherited the architectural forms and the iconographic mechanisms with
which the king had once communicated with the divine in his own tem-
ple, both in this life and the next, so as to maintain the order of the uni-
verse.
For the Old Kingdom, the best known funerary complexes are those of
Snofru (Dahshur), Chephren (with the adjacent Sphinx of Giza), Sahure
(Abusir), Wenis (Saqqara north), and Pepy I and Pepy II (Saqqara south).
From that of Neferirkare (Abusir), we have many fragments from papyrus
archives, giving us a glimpse of the functioning of these institutions,
which were the principal cult places of the kingdom and important ele-
ments in the economic development of the Memphite region. The re-
mains of the funerary temples constitute nearly the only source enabling
us to form a picture of what the divine kingship was like in the age of pyr-
amids. The remains include statues of the sovereign, rows of deities, and
scenes depicting jubilees, hunts, triumphs in war, parades on land and in
boats on the river, processions of personified domains, and statues repre-
senting bound foreign peoples. The funerary temples were the place
shared by the permanent (the king) and the evanescent that corroborated
the permanent. In them, we see the commemoration of exemplary deeds
and experiences: the arrival of Sahure’s fleet, returning from Asia; the
transport by boat of palmiform columns of granite from Aswan; or the
misery of starving bedouins in the temple of Wenis. But the representa-
tion of a triumph over Libyan princes, repeated with the same details on
the walls of at least four successive funerary temples, became an atempo-
ral sign of the king’s effectiveness in war, just like the depictions of the
smiting of groups of enemies or those of a griffin attacking barbarians.
From the Middle Kingdom, the only well-known funerary complexes
are that of Senwosret I at Lisht and that of Senwosret II, with its work-
men’s village, at el-Lahun. The vast and complex monument that serviced
one of the pyramids of Amenemhet III at Hawara was known to Greek
travelers by the name Labyrinth and classified as one of the Seven Won-
ders of the World. Demolished, it is today barely recognizable.
At Thebes in the New Kingdom, the royal tombs in the Valley of the
Kings were separate from their funerary temples. With the cliffs as back-
drop, each king erected his own “mansion of millions of years in the
house of Amun in the west of Thebes.” Each temple was above all a temple
of Amun-Re, with whom the king’s spirit more or less merged. In it, the
king had a chapel of his own, and the funerary deities were present there,
along with a court for the worship of the sun. Each year, on the “Festival of
FUNERARY TEMPLES 71
the Valley,” Amun left Karnak to visit these royal temples. Their cults were
already functioning while their founders were still alive, and the great
Ramessides also had “mansions of millions of years” at Memphis, “in the
house of Ptah,” and at Heliopolis, “in the house of Re.” These temples of
eternity, whose decoration was similar to that of contemporary divine
temples, were thus much more than funerary monuments. They differed
radically from the chapels in the tombs of officials. In these royal monu-
ments, as in the temples of gods and goddesses, life on earth was reduced
to representations of the great festivals presided over by Pharaoh and to
textbook commemorations of actual exploits, such as the expedition dis-
patched by Hatshepsut to Punt or the wars of the Ramesside kings. Ad-
ministered by a sm-priest, the royal temple was surrounded by a palace,
workshops, storerooms, and offices, and was provided with much landed
property; the complex constituted a complete enterprise that was fiscally
attached to the house of the god with whom it was theologically related.
The best preserved of the funerary temples of Thebes are those of Hat-
shepsut (Deir el-Bahari), Sethos I (Gurna), Ramesses II (Ramesseum),
and Ramesses III (Medinet Habu). The hugest of all was the “mansion”
built by Amenophis III and placed under the joint patronage of Amun-Re
and the funerary god Sokar; nothing of this temple survives except the
Colossi of Memnon. On the east bank, the hypostyle hall of Karnak was it-
self part of the “mansion of millions of years” of Sethos I, and the lateral
temple of Ramesses III and the bark shrine of Sethos II in front of it were
classed in the same category of perpetual foundations.
G. Haeny, in Byron E. Shafer, ed., Temples of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, 1997)?

pp. 86-126.
See Pyramids.
Hardjedef
Hardjedef, son of Cheops, was buried at Giza. He might have been
caught up in the struggles over the dynastic succession. His fame did not
result from politics, however, but from his abilities as a man of letters. The
wisdom text he wrote, the Instruction of Hardjedef, led him to be counted
among the great writers and thus a paragon of culture, along with Amen-
hotpe, son of Hapu; Khaemwese; and Imhotep. One of the stories in a
cycle of tales (Papyrus Westcar) shows him contacting a famous magician
named Djedi and taking him in charge. So great was his prestige that tra-
dition selected him (no doubt Actively) as the finder of several chapters of
the Book of the Dead, at Hermopolis, which he discovered on the occa-
sion of tours of inspection and inventorying in the temples.
Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 58-59.
Harem
In wealthy homes, the wife (there was normally only one) and her ser-
vants had living quarters of their own. But Egypt never had the equivalent
of a Turkish harem or of the gynecea in which women lived separately,
more or less in seclusion. In New Kingdom temples, noble ladies formed
groups of musicians and singers that we call, using a highly approximate
term, the “harem” of the god.
In the New Kingdom, institutions that housed a large number of
women also existed. (The Egyptian term for these means “enclosure,” a
place where persons are kept.) Administered on behalf of queens who
resided in them, these were not mere instruments of the pharaoh’s sexu-
ality. Located at Thebes, Memphis, and Gurob, these “royal harems” drew
income from fields and from the yield of certain taxes. In them, young for-
eign captives were given an Egyptian education, while large numbers of
women worked on textile production. These enterprises were adminis-
tered and served by a large corps of masculine functionaries (overseer,
deputy, scribes, men who collected and delivered fish, salesmen, guards),
but we have no evidence that this staff included eunuchs.
E. Reiser, Der kdnigliche Harim im alten Agypten und seine Verwaltung, Dissertationen
der Universitat Wien 77 (Vienna, 1972).
Haremhab 1323-1293 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

A native of Hut-Nesut in Middle Egypt, this royal scribe had a career
whose first stages recall those of Amenhotpe, son of Hapu (scribe of re-
cruits and overseer of work in the quartzite quarries). After he became
HAREMHAB 73
generalissimo and high steward, we find him at Memphis under Tu-

tankhamun, honored with the title of prince (erpa), which had also distin-
guished the wise minister of Amenophis III. In the future, this title, which
indicated a higher rank than that of vizier, would serve to distinguish the
prince and deputy whom the king destined to succeed him. It was at this
time of his life that Haremhab dedicated his beautiful scribal statues at
Thebes and Memphis, and that he built his huge funerary monument,
which was recently rediscovered at Saqqara. Among the lively reliefs com-
memorating his activities in the north and the south, we find a presenta-
tion to the king of tribute and captives from Syria and Nubia. This evi-
dence could be interpreted to mean that he led military operations for
the purpose of consolidating what remained of the empire.
At the death of Tutankhamun, Haremhab accepted the aged Aya as
sovereign, but it was not the erpa Nakhtmin, surely the latter’s son, who
succeeded him on the throne. At the instigation of Horus, the erpa
Haremhab went to Thebes, where he was crowned by Amun. He had his
own names carved over those of Tutankhamun, including those on the
stela proclaiming the general restoration of the traditional order and
those on the effigies of Amun to which the young king had lent his visage.
An important decree proclaimed measures to protect private property
and means of transportation against racketeering, as well as to restructure
the military districts and administrative councils in the provinces. The en-
largement of Karnak was resolutely undertaken: the Ninth and Tenth Py-
lons were added on the south, and on the west, the Second Pylon, which
would be left to the first Ramessides to decorate. To build these pylons,
Haremhab began to dismantle the Aten temples and to reuse the talatat
(small stone blocks) of which they were made.
Haremhab appropriated and enlarged the funerary temple of Aya. His
large and beautiful tomb in the Valley of the Kings contains our earliest
copy of the Book of Gates, a symbolic depiction of the regeneration of the
sun. In his Memphite tomb, a uraeus was added to the brow of his non-
royal images; Mutnodjmet, his chief wife, was buried there.
Haremhab rebuilt the clergies with men chosen from the army, a pol-
icy that seems to indicate the elimination of the heirs of the Amarna
courtiers and the promotion of new men. As his vizier and heir presump-
tive, this military man chose a colleague in the military, Ramesses. The lat-
ter succeeded him, and Ramesses quickly associated his son Sethos, who
was also a soldier, with his rule. By usurping the works of Tutankhamun
(whose tomb he nevertheless respected), by posthumously proscribing
Aya and Nakhtmin, and by his own acts, Haremhab brought an end to an
era and presented himself as the initiator of a new one. He was recognized
as such by the Ramesside dynasty, which he basically created. Under

Ramesses II, he was counted as the direct successor of Amenophis III.
C. Lalouette, Thebes ou la naissance d’un Empire (Paris, 1958), pp. 573-84; G.

Steindorff and K. C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled, the East, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1957),
pp. 242-47.
SccAya, Erasures, Tutankhamun. • •„
Harkhuf
Harkhuf was overseer of dragomen and overseer of all the foreign
countries of the south under Merenre and Pepy II. He was buried at Ele-
phantine. By virtue of his offices, Harkhuf participated actively in the pol-
icy of expansion in Nubia conducted by the pharaohs of the Sixth Dy-
nasty. He participated in and then led several expeditions—either
departing from Elephantine or via the oasis road (more or less the mod-
ern Darb el-Arbain) —to various lands, including Yam, a principality that
was probably located near Kerma in the Dongola region. Harkhuf re-
turned from these expeditions laden with exotic products: incense,
ebony, panther skins, elephant tusks, and even a dancing pygmy. While
the expedition was returning home, Pepy II learned of the pygmy and was
unable to contain his impatience. He addressed a decree, which is repro-
duced in Harkhuf’s autobiography, commanding him to drop everything
and conduct the pygmy to the capital, taking great care regarding this
precious person: “If he takes a boat with you, place competent men who
will be around him on both sides of the boat, lest he fall in the water. If he
sleeps at night, place competent men who will sleep around him in the
cabin!” Even pharaohs could be trivial!
A. Roccatti, La Litterature historique sous Tancien Empire egyptien (Paris, 1982),

pp. 200-7; M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1: The Old
and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 23-27.
Hatshepsut 1471-1456 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Tuthmosis I and Ahmose and wife of
Tuthmosis II, to whom she bore only a daughter, Nefrure. At the death of
Tuthmosis II (1478 B.C.E.), succession to the throne fell to a son he had
had by a concubine named Isis; but this son, Tuthmosis III, who was mar-
ried for the occasion to Nefrure, was still a young boy. Hatshepsut was
therefore called to exercise the regency, according to an often attested
custom, in particular at the beginning of the dynasty (Ahmose-Nofretari).
But, driven by ambition, she transformed this regency into a formal core-
gency. In fact, a little before year 7 of Tuthmosis III, she had herself
HATSHEPSUT 75
crowned, assuming the titulary, the regalia (including the false beard),
and the epithets (including that of “bull”) proper to a pharaoh. Her legit-
imacy was supported by oracles and was justified by invoking the wishes of
her father, Tuthmosis I, through whom the choice of Amun himself was
supposedly manifested (theogamy). This was not really a usurpation of
the throne; events were dated to the regnal years of Tuthmosis III, who
was duly included in displays of royal power. Nevertheless, in formal men-
tions of the two monarchs, Hatshepsut was always accorded the primacy,
whether by a subtle detail indicating her preeminence, or by giving only a
minimal reference to the young king. Clearly, Hatshepsut benefited from
significant support, in particular that of the upper clergy of Amun and his
high priest Hapusonb, and she was able to win the devotion of loyal men
such as Senenmut. She maintained the bulk of the power until her death,
under obscure circumstances, around year 22 of Tuthmosis III. The latter
had been displeased at having been kept in the background for such a
long time, and after the queen’s death, he had her cartouches erased and
replaced by those of Tuthmosis I and Tuthmosis II, and by his own.
Though Egypt’s influence now extended beyond the Third Cataract in
Nubia, the reign of Hatshepsut was not distinguished by great conquests.
It did, however, see the completion of the policy of restoration that had
begun after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The first kings of the Eighteenth
Dynasty had concentrated their restoration efforts in the Theban region,
somewhat neglecting the remainder of the land. Hatshepsut rebuilt and
renewed the cults of sanctuaries that had been virtually abandoned since
the Hyksos, such as the Speos Artemidos.
Obviously, she did not neglect Thebes, the dynastic city. The temple of
Montu and the processional route from Luxor to Karnak were objects of
her care. Even more so was the temple of Karnak, where she built, among
other things, a barque sanctuary (the “red chapel”) and erected two pairs
of obelisks (the transportation of the first pair is represented in her tem-
ple at Deir el-Bahari). Building materials and the products necessary for
the temples to function were available thanks to intense exploitation of
quarries and mines, and to commercial relations with exotic trade part-
ners, in particular Punt. (The texts and images of the famous reliefs of
Deir el-Bahari record an expedition she sent there.)
Beyond the purely material aspect of these accomplishments, Hatshep-
sut’s attempt to restore the primordial order entailed the beginning of a
new classicism based on imitation of Middle Kingdom works. The last
traces of Second Intermediate Period style were now eliminated from art
and literature.
That Hatshepsut’s funerary temple was built at Deir el-Bahari, near
that of Mentuhotpe II, indicates her choice of the Middle Kingdom as a

model. This temple rises in two superimposed terraces bordered by porti-
cos and is ascended via a ramp that is the continuation of a lengthy cause-
way. On the upper terrace, a colonnaded court leads to the sanctuary,
which was excavated into the rock wall that overhangs the monument; the
design of the temple was thus suggested by the site itself. Aside from a
tomb that had been prepared when she was the wife of Tuthmosis II, Hat-
shepsut had a tomb excavated for herself as pharaoh; it is in the Valley of
the Kings, near that of her father, Tuthmosis I.
S. Ratie, La Reine Hatchepsout: Sources et problemes, Orientalia Monspeliensia 1

(Leiden, 1979) ;J. A. Tyldesley, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (London, 1996).
See Erasures, Senenmut, Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis II, Tuthmosis III.
Heliopolis
In Egyptian, Heliopolis was called Iunu, which was the origin of the
name On in the Bible. This “city of the sun” (the meaning of the Greek
name) was located near the eastern desert, slightly downstream from the
apex of the delta. It was undoubtedly founded at least as early as the Ar-
chaic Period. Its increase in religious importance seems to have paralleled
the growth in political and agricultural importance of the nearby Mem-
phite region, in the time of the builders of the pyramids. Although the
“kingdom of Heliopolis,” which supposedly unified predynastic Egypt, is
but a figment of scholarly imagination, there is no doubt that the city was
the origin of the mythology that identified the sun as the creator of the
universe and was the keystone of all Egyptian religion and the basis of
royal ideology.
Imhotep, the architect who invented the Step Pyramid and thus archi-
tecture on a monumental scale, was also “greatest of seers,” the high priest
of Heliopolis. Legend would recount that the founder of the Fifth Dynasty,
whose kings built temples to the sun, held this same office before assum-
ing the throne.
The Pyramid Texts gave the deceased king access to the perpetual des-
tiny of the sun. The mysteries and offerings of Heliopolis became a major
theme in funerary magic. Heliopolis was the high place par excellence
from which Re created the world. Creation occurred on the soil of He-
liopolis, and obelisks would reproduce the city’s benben stone, the manifes-
tation of the emergence of light. The bird who was eternally reborn made
his appearance in the “Mansion of the Phoenix.” The lawsuit pitting Osiris
and Horus against Seth, which resulted in the survival of Osiris and the
pacification of the kingdom, took place in the “House of the Magistrate.”
HENENU 77
The Ennead of deities who participated in creation resided in the “Great

Mansion.”
We could make no end of listing the archetypal myths and ritual models
that tradition attached to Heliopolis. The sun was worshiped under vari-
ous names and images: Re-Harakhty, an identification of the daytime sun
with a celestial Horus, depicted as a falcon crowned with a sun disk; Atum,
“lord of the Two Lands,” crowned with a pshent and identified with the set-
ting sun; and Khepri, “the one who comes into being,” a rather abstract
entity, the reborn sun symbolized by the scarab. A form of Hathor named
Nebet-hetepet or Iusaas represented the desire of the creator god and the
hand that stimulated this desire. A sacred bull, Mnevis, was the represen-
tative of Re on earth.
The “House of the Sun,” the primordial residence of Re, was the theo-
logical cradle of the monarchy. From Djoser to Ptolemy II, considerable
royal construction activity occurred at Heliopolis, especially under Sen-
wosret I, Tuthmosis III, and Ramesses II; the latter’s political theology and
personal foundations honored Re more than Amun. The solar monothe-
ism of Amenophis IV seems indeed to have had its origin in the reflection
of Heliopolitan priests. Greeks would extol this City of the Sun as a seat of
learning and wisdom. The heroes of various stories (including Potiphar of
the Bible) were learned men from this city.
The premier holy place in religious representations and the second me-
tropolis after Thebes in the New Kingdom, Heliopolis is better known
from texts than from the dismembered remnants of its once sumptuous
edifices and the now dispersed vestiges of its vast cemeteries. Many of its
obelisks and statues were exported in the age of the Caesars. In the Middle
Ages, dismantled temple walls were used in the construction of Cairo,
which has grown to the extent that it now includes the very soil occupied
by the prestigious ancient capital. All that remain above ground are an
Arabic place name, Ain Shams (source of the sun), and an obelisk of Sen-
wosret I, now enclosed in a little garden serving as a museum, along with
a stunted tell from which beautiful bits of Ramesside temples and houses
still project and several obelisks in Rome, London, and New York.
See Imhotep, Old Kingdom.
Henenu
Henenu was a chief steward in the reigns of Mentuhotpe II and Men-
tuhotpe III; he was buried at Deir el-Bahari. He was first charged with ad-
ministering the newly conquered regions between Thinis and the area
north of the nome of Aphroditopolis. After earning the king’s esteem
through his effective administration, he was entrusted with the leadership

of major expeditions to the quarries. Mentuhotpe III renewed this trust,
and in year 8 of the king’s reign, Henenu was in charge of an extremely
important mission. Departing from Koptos, he crossed the Eastern Desert
via the Wadi Hammamat to the coast of the Red Sea. There, he con-
structed seagoing ships and set out for Punt, on the Sudanese coast, from
which he brought back precious items that were indispensable but un-
available in Egypt. On his return journey, he took advantage of the prox-
imity of the quarries to extract stone needed for temple statues.
See Eleventh Dynasty.
Heqaib
Heqaib was the surname of Pepynakht, an overseer of foreign coun-
tries and of dragomen under Pepy II; he was buried at Aswan. He was so
effective at defeating and pacifying Nubian lands that posterity consid-
ered him a paragon of a warrior. Several centuries after his death, the sur-
name of this great man would again be given to children of families at
Elephantine.
His tomb became a place of pilgrimage, and when it got to be too
small, a chapel was built for him on the island of Elephantine, next to the
temple of Satis. During the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Dynasties,
kings and commoners left monuments (naoi, statues, stelae, offering
tables) inscribed with their names in the enclosure of this chapel, reckon-
ing that such a great man would be an excellent intercessor with the gods.
Thus, like Izi, Imhotep, and Amenhotpe, son of Hapu, Heqaib was one of
the “deified” men of pharaonic Egypt.
See Amenhotpe, son of Hapu; Imhotep; Izi.
Herakleopolis Magna
Herakleopolis Magna, the capital of the twentieth nome of Upper
Egypt, was slightly south of the place where the Bahr Yusuf flows into the
Faiyum, at the site of the modern village of Ihnasya el-Medina. The name
of the village derives from the Egyptian name of the ancient city, Hut-nen-
nesu, “the mansion of the royal child.”
Its principal deity was Herishef (in Greek, Harsaphes), originally a ram
in front of a pond; in this form, he was already worshiped during the First
Dynasty. But it was not until the First Intermediate Period that Hera-
kleopolis Magna assumed an important role in history, as the native city of
the pharaohs of the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties.
HERIHOR 79
After a return to more ordinary status, Herakleopolis again rose to

prominence in the Third Intermediate Period because of its strategic po-
sition on the political map of the time. In fact, the city commanded the
zone bordering the territory of the theocracy of Amun (Upper Egypt and
Middle Egypt as far as el-Hiba). Libyan chiefs took control of the
fortresses and bases of operations that had been established in the region
since the Ramesside Period; after they seized power (Twenty-second Dy-
nasty) , they were careful to appoint their sons to the high local offices, in-
cluding the pontificate of Harsaphes and the command of the district
founded by Osorkon I at the entrance to the Faiyum. The holders of these
offices would manage to elevate themselves to pharaohs (e.g., Pef-
tjauawybast) at the time of the Kushite conquest.
Under the Saites, Herakleopolis was the fief of a powerful family of ad-
mirals who were charged with collecting the royal tax. The family was
founded by Sematawytefnakht.
Another Sematawytefnakht (the name is derived from a local god, Se-
matawy) of Herakleopolis had a rather interesting claim to fame. Accord-
ing to the so-called Naples Stela, he participated in the battle of Arbela, in
the army that Darius III deployed against Alexander the Great.
M. el-Din Mokhtar, Ihnasya el-Medina (Herakleopolis magna), Bibliotheque d’Etude 40

(Cairo, 1983).
See Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, Third Intermediate Period.
Herihor
In Upper Egypt, a vizier (one of two) was in charge of administrative,
fiscal, and judicial matters. In Nubia, a viceroy commanded the garrisons,
levied auxiliary troops, and directed the exploitation of the gold mines.
The first prophet of Amun headed the personnel and the domains of the
god who had become by far the richest landowner in the country and who
was, through his oracle, the obligatory arbiter of every decision. In addi-
tion to these offices, a generalissimo served at the head of all the military
forces.
Under Ramesses XI, at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, a single man
was invested with all these offices for the first time: Herihor, without doubt
one of the greatest power grabbers in history. Master of all the resources
of the south, he was the “guide of the army of all Egypt.” In Lower Egypt,
a certain Smendes was more or less his homologue, and the two men
maintained cooperative ties in matters of cultural undertakings and com-
mercial relations.
8o THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
Though he recognized his own human condition and the sacral su-
premacy of the ghostly Ramesses for a time, at least, Herihor soon
usurped the pharaoh’s supernatural privileges. He was “son of Amun”; his
name and his title of high priest were enclosed in cartouches. In place of
the king, and dressed as a king, he officiated on the walls of the temple of
Khons at Karnak and restored the famous hypostyle hall of Amun. Under
his leadership, measures were taken to restore and to protect the mum-
mies of Sethos I and Ramesses II.
This extraordinary career seems to have been brief (1080-1064 B.C.E.) ,
however, and Herihor’s legitimacy was sometimes contested: his image
and name were effaced on a stela he had dedicated at Abydos. But he
founded a regime that would last more than three centuries. Upper Egypt
would be a politically sovereign principality governed by a high priest who
was also head of the armed forces. Herihor’s astonishing personality re-
mains a mystery. His pompous inscriptions never name his parents, as was
normal for pharaohs (and only for pharaohs), but mentions of him in ad-
ministrative and private sources also ignore the customary indications of
parentage, suggesting a rather obscure origin. His own name was Egyp-
tian, but several of his sons had typically Libyan names, leading us to think
that he was a scion of the military colonists or newly Egyptianized invaders
who at that time constituted the majority of the armed forces. His wife,
Nodjmet, who died long after him and whose burial was found in the ca-
chette of Deir el-Bahari, passed away bearing the title “king’s mother.”
This circumstance has led some scholars to think that the couple were the
parents of Smendes, the founder of the Twenty-first Dynasty, though an-
other hypothesis is possible. Recently, the unexpected appearance of a
bracelet inscribed with the name of Herihor on the art market served as a
reminder that the burial place of the creator of the Theban theocratic
state remains unknown, though this piece of jewelry could have been one
of the objects removed from the cachette of Deir el-Bahari during the
1870s.
pp. 17-22.
See High Priest of Amun, Twentieth Dynasty.
Hermopolis Magna
This city was the capital of the fifteenth nome (called the Hare nome),
located in the heart of Middle Egypt, in the vast plain bordered on the
east by the Nile and on the west by its arm, the Bahr Yusuf. The remains of
HIERAKONPOLIS (NEKHEN) AND EILEITHYIASPOLIS (NEKHEB) 8l
its temples are visible near the modem village of el-Ashmunein, whose
name is derived from Shmun, the ancient Egyptian name of the city. About
six miles away, its cemetery of Tuna el-Gebel lies at the foot of the desert
hills. Hermopolis was one of the most famous religious centers, thanks to
the prestige of its principal deity, Thoth, whom the Greeks identified with
Hermes (hence the name Hermopolis). The city dominated a region that
was economically important because of its rich fields, and because of the
proximity of the alabaster quarries of Hatnub. These material advantages
sometimes led those who controlled it to set themselves up as indepen-
dent potentates when the central power was weak; thus, at the end of the
Seventeenth Dynasty, the region fell under the control of Tetian, an
Egyptian collaborator of the Hyksos, who ruled from the neighboring
town of Neferusy. During the Third Intermediate Period, several local
chiefs, including a certain Djehutiemhet, again assumed the attributes of
a pharaoh.
Akhenaten himself included the region of Hermopolis in the territory
of his new retreat, Akhetaten. But aside from these brief episodes and oth-
ers like them (such as during the First Intermediate Period, when local no-
marchs exercised their power), Hermopolis opened up to history at a rel-
atively late date. In the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, the fascination that
Thoth exerted on the Greeks brought many of them to Hermopolis,
where an original synthesis of pharaonic civilization and Hellenistic cul-
ture developed; the famous tomb of Petosiris is the most spectacular evi-
dence of this phenomenon.
Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) and Eileithyiaspolis

(Nekheb)
These cities were the capitals of the third nome of Upper Egypt, situ-
ated on each side of the Nile, facing each other; Hierakonpolis (Kom el-
Ahmar) was situated on the west bank, and Eileithyiaspolis (el-Kab) on the
east bank. This area is distinguished by its traces of very early eras: the pre-
historic, the predynastic, the protodynastic, and the Archaic Period. At
Kom el-Ahmar, archaeologists discovered a very early decorated tomb,
and in several cachettes of a temple erected within a vast enclosure wall,
they found votive objects such as the Narmer Palette and the mace heads
of Narmer and Scorpion.
The prominent role that these two cities played in the formation of
pharaonic civilization explains the use of their cuitic traditions in Egypt’s
fundamental symbolism. Nekhen and Nekheb were the southern pendants
of the twin cities of the northern delta, Pe and Dep (Buto), thus forming
one of the dualisms expressing the unity of the land through the associa-
tion of Upper and Lower Egypt; Nekhbet, the vulture goddess of Nekheb,
was paired with Wadjit, the cobra goddess of Buto.
See Buto, Dualisms, Narmer, Scorpion.
High Priest of Amun

The literal translation of this priestly title is “first god’s servant of
Amun-Re, King of the Gods,” and it is often rendered as “first prophet of
Amun.” In the Ptolemaic Period, Greek nomenclature in fact applied the
word “prophet” to the highest rank of priests — ahead of the “god’s-fa-
thers” and the “pure-priests” (zvab)—undoubtedly because it fell to them
to express the oracular will of the gods. In the Seventeenth and Eigh-
teenth Dynasties, sovereigns from Thebes expelled the Hyksos and then
put together a vast and prosperous empire. Amun, the patron god of their
city, supposedly sired these kings, and he sometimes confirmed them
through his oracles. His providential effectiveness was both acknowl-
edged and reinforced by additions to his temple complex, by the celebra-
tion of his annual festivals, and by donations, proportionate to his pri-
macy, of fields, livestock, gold mines, and workshops. His revenues
furnished his altar and maintained a numerous clergy. A large bureau-
cracy was put in place to administer his goods. Many secular officials re-
ceived benefices of “prophets of Amun,” while their wives were
“songstresses of Amun.” With time, and despite the Atenist interlude, the
“house of Amun” became an economic and social power comparable to
the “king’s house,” and far richer than those of the other gods and god-
desses. Outranking the second, third, and fourth prophets, the high priest
ruled an immense cultic enterprise that was both spiritual and temporal.
The position was filled by royal appointment (Ramesses II named Neb-
wenenef, who had been head of the clergy at Dendara, as well as a former
military officer, Bekenkhons).
During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, it was rare for the of-
fice to pass from father to son. In Dynasty Twenty-one, a process was set in
motion that would make the high priest of Amun an autonomous political
power for about half a century. Theological reflection and devotion to the
primordial and omnipresent organizer of the universe increased the
king’s (and everyone’s) dependence vis-a-vis Amun-Re and his oracle. As
specialization in sacred knowledge and ritual techniques grew, a privi-
leged group of priests of Amun was formed through heredity and mar-
riage. From Ramesses IV to Ramesses XI, several generations of a single
family monopolized the pontifical seat itself, and with it, temporal rule
HITTITES 83
over the domain of Amun. Then, an upstart generalissimo named Heri-

hor became first prophet of Amun and inaugurated a “theocratic” regime.
Under the Twenty-first Dynasty, which emerged from this Theban theoc-
racy, and then under the princedoms of the Twenty-second and Twenty-
third Dynasties, the high priest was an independent ruler who governed
Upper Egypt under the sanction of oracles, though not without having to
take account of the agitation of priestly^lobbies. After the Kushite Har-
emakhet, son of Taharqa, this dangerous pontifical office gave way to the
spiritual and regal power of the “adoratrice,” daughter of the Saite
pharaoh.
See Adoratrice, Clergy, Herihor, Pinudjem.
Hittites
Even in imperialism, competition exists everywhere. As they extended
their domination over Syria-Palestine, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom
encountered greed equal to their own. It was during the reign of Akhen-
aten that the Hittite empire — a state with an Indo-European population
whose center was in Anatolia—began to complicate the power struggle
between Egypt and Mitanni. After some direct confrontations, as well as
indirect ones through allied states, the Hittite king Suppiluliumas judged
it convenient to establish a provisional modus vivendi with Egypt so as to
leave him free to pursue the defeat of Mitanni. The weak pharaohs of the
day were delighted not to have to wage war against so redoubtable a sov-
ereign; at the death of Tutankhamun, an Egyptian queen even offered to
marry a Hittite prince. But of course, this peaceful coexistence scarcely
survived the collapse of Mitanni, which left the appetites of Egypt and
Hath to face one another. The conflicts that began under Sethos I culmi-
nated in the famous battle of Qadesh, which Ramesses II, in year 5 of his
reign, “lost victoriously” to the Hittite king Muwatallis. In his year 21, after
further indecisive conflicts, this pharaoh signed a peace treaty with Hat-
tusilis, Muwatallis’ successor. Both the Egyptian and the Hittite versions of
the treaty text have survived. It appears to sanction a division of influence,
which could not have satisfied Ramesses II, though he was obliged to
make do with it; the treaty established a lasting peace that was later sealed
by his marriage to a daughter of Hattusilis in year 34. During the reign of
Ramesses III, the Hittite empire suffered gravely from the invasion of the
Sea Peoples, though whether it disappeared entirely under their blows is
uncertain.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramses (Paris, 1985), pp. 123-38; G. Steindorff and K. C.
Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1957), chapters 14-16.
Hurrians
Originally from the region of Lake Van, Hurrians spoke a language
that was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, but related to Urartian. They
spread through Mesopotamia and then through Syria during the second
millennium B.C.E., and some of them undoubtedly were among the Hyk-
sos who invaded Egypt. But it was at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dy-
nasty that Egyptians took them into account by creating the name Kharu,
at first to designate the Hurrians settled in Palestine, and later as a geo-
graphical term not only for Syria-Palestine, but for all of western Asia
north of Egypt. Hurrians were a major component of the population of
the kingdom of Mitanni, which the Egyptians also called Naharin, a Se-
mitic name meaning “(the land of the) two rivers”; during the Eighteenth
Dynasty, Mitanni was the principal power the Egyptians had to confront in
their expansion into Asia.
Revue hittite et asianique 36 (1978).

See Hyksos.
HyksOS Fifteenth Dynasty

“Hyksos” is the Greek form of the Egyptian expression heqa khasut,
which originally meant “ruler of foreign lands”; later, it was reinterpreted
as “shepherd kings.” We use the term to designate the Asiatic people,
mostly Semitic but with Hurrian elements, who overran the eastern delta
kingdom that had been founded by Nehesy and was already densely popu-
lated by Asiatics. From Avaris, the capital of this kingdom, a Hyksos chief
named Salitis established his domination over Egypt by having himself
crowned at Memphis (1650 B.C.E.). This domination was exercised in var-
ious ways: absolute control over the eastern delta; relinquishment of the
remainder of Lower Egypt to Asiatic vassal chieftains; installation of
Egyptian collaborators in Middle Egypt; surveillance of Upper Egypt and
its Theban dynasty by garrisons installed in strategic places (e.g.,
Gebelein); and alliances with Nubian potentates. Additionally, a part of
Palestine bowed under Hyksos rule. All these territories were subject to
tribute collected by an administrator with the Egyptian title “overseer of
the treasury.”
It appears that Egyptian tradition blackened the Hyksos occupation to
an extreme degree, imputing barbarism and impiety to these foreigners.
The documentation, however, requires a more nuanced approach. It is
true that the Hyksos imposed their own culture in Avaris and its region:
house burials, donkey sacrifice, cults of Canaanite deities (and the
Canaanization of the local god Seth); and it is true that they pillaged
HYKSOS 85
Egyptian cemeteries and cities, with the result that many monuments
were transported from Memphis to Avaris and reused there. But other-
wise, they did not scorn Egyptian civilization, and their kings adopted the
titulary and the traditional apparatus of pharaohs, to the point of entrust-
ing Egyptian hirelings with the task of writing texts in praise of them. The
Hyksos erected monuments in the temples (and usurped many others!),
and they patronized culture and the sciences, as witnessed by a copy of a
mathematical treatise that was made under Apophis. Finally, they intro-
duced new weapons (axe and dagger) into Egypt, and perhaps the horse
as well.
The Hyksos dynasty reigned in Egypt for about a century (1650-1539
B.C.E.) , and they were defeated only at the end of an arduous struggle that
cost the life of at least one of the nationalist Egyptian pharaohs (Seqe-
nenre Tao). Ramose began the war of liberation, but it was Ahmose who
finally eradicated Hyksos domination by taking Avaris and the city of
Sharuhen in Palestine. The list of Hyksos pharaohs (not without uncer-
tainties) is as follows:
Salitis (Sharek)
Bnon
Apachnan
Apophis
Khamudi
M. Bietak, “Avaris and Piramesse: Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile
Delta,” Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979): 225-90.

See Ahmose; Ahmose, son of Ebana; Apophis; Avaris; Ramose; Second Intermediate
Period; Sequenenre Tao; Seventeenth Dynasty; Sixteenth Dynasty.
Imhotep (orlmuthes)
During the reign of Djoser, Imhotep was high priest of Heliopolis, the
capital of priestly learning. For this reason he was chosen by the king to
oversee the construction of his monumental complex. This was a difficult
task, because at that time, there was no solidly established tradition of
stone architecture for such a large construction. For a trial run, this was a
masterful stroke. Posterity made no mistake in according Imhotep a glori-
ous destiny.
A wisdom text written by him (or attributed to him) was included
among the classics of literature, and he was considered to be the patron of
scribes. He also became part of the pantheon of Memphis as the son of
Ptah and a mortal woman, Kherduankh. Other cities of Egypt made him
the architect of their temple, contrary to all historical fact. Sanctuaries
were erected to him, especially at Thebes, often in association with Amen-
hotpe, son of Hapu; persons who were ill would go to these temples to
seek a remedy for their suffering by consulting his oracle or through in-
cubation. Under the Greek name Imuthes, he was sometimes identified
with Asclepius.
D. Wildung, Egyptian Saints: Deification in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1977).

Amenhotpe, son of Hapu; Djoser; Famine.
Inyotef Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Seventeenth Dynasties

Like Mentuhotpe, the name Inyotef was borne by kings of the Eleventh
Dynasty, as well as by kings of the end of the Middle Kingdom and of the
Second Intermediate Period.
ELEVENTH DYNASTY
Inyotef I (Horus name Sehertawy) was undoubtedly the first of the The-
ban potentates to proclaim himself king, though the title was retrospec-
tively attributed to his father, Mentuhotpe I (2115-2068 B.C.E. for the two
of them). He was buried in the Asasif.
Inyotef II (Horus name Wahankh) had a lengthy reign (2115-2066
B.C.E.) marked by war with the kingdom of Herakleopolis. The two armies
confronted each other in the region of Abydos, and by turns, they seized
and lost the city of Thinis. When all was said and done, Inyotef extended
his realm slightly farther north, to the borders of the nome of Hypselis. In
his tomb, which was already pillaged during the Twentieth Dynasty, a stela
was discovered on which he is represented along with his pet dogs, who
are designated by their names (which are of Berber origin).
Inyotef III (Horus name Nakhtnebtepnufer) was the son of the pre-
INYOTEFOftER 87
ceding king. During his brief reign (2066-2059 B.C.E.), he endeavored to

consolidate the gains of his predecessors.
END OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM AND

SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
Along with an obscure Inyotef IV ofjthe Thirteenth Dynasty, certain
kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty bore the name Inyotef, undoubtedly a
conscious reference to the Inyotefs of the Eleventh Dynasty, near whose
tombs they built their own at Dra Abu el-Naga. The reason was that they,
too, intended to restore the unity of Egypt from their base in Thebes.
Inyotef V (throne name: Nubkheperre) might well have been the
founder of the Seventeenth Dynasty (c. 1650 B.C.E.). He married Se-
bekemzaf, a woman from a powerful family of governors of Edfu who
were themselves allied by marriage to the preceding pharaohs. In doing
so, Inyotef V intended to assure the loyalty of the provinces of the Thebais
in order to form an alliance capable of keeping the Hyksos power at bay.
Koptos and Abydos were members of this alliance. He dismissed a high of-
ficial of the temple of Koptos for a grave offense (perhaps embezzle-
ment) , and he built at the temple of Abydos. He no doubt had to wage war
to obtain his epithet “victorious.”
Inyotef VI (throne name: Sekhemre-wepmaat) and Inyotef VII (throne
name: Sekhemre-herhermaat) were sons of Sebekemzaf II. These kings
had very short reigns and are known only by what remains of their tombs.
See Eleventh Dynasty, First Intermediate Period, Mentuhotpe, Second Intermediate

Period.
Inyotefoqer
Inyotefoqer held the office of vizier at least from the coregency of
Amenemhet I and Senwosret I, and during a large part of the sole reign of
the latter. Because of his high office, he supervised all major undertak-
ings, such as the construction of an edifice at Abydos, expeditions to the
amethyst mines of Wadi el-Hudi, and still others to the shores of Punt on
the Sudanese coast. Additionally, Inyotefoqer took part in military opera-
tions in Nubia and had a fortress built in a strategic location. His glorious
career was clouded by the sad fate of his son, also called Inyotefoqer; for
having committed a serious crime, he underwent not only physical pun-
ishment but also a magical punishment in the form of the execration of a
figurine bearing his name. Vizier Inyotefoqer built a mastaba at Lisht, as
well as a tomb at Thebes, the latter undoubtedly intended for his mother,
Senet, and his wife.
Izi
Nomarch of Edfu, Izi was appointed to this position by Teti after spend-
ing the first part of his career in the central administration at Memphis
during the reigns of Djedkare Izezi and Wenis. Posterity treated him as a
model administrator, posthumously calling him “vizier,” an office he
never held. Moreover, like Heqaib at Elephantine, he became a patron
saint at Edfu. His name enriched the stock of local proper names, and his
mastaba in the cemetery of Edfu became a chapel. During the Eleventh,
Twelfth, and Thirteenth Dynasties, private persons deposited their funer-
ary monuments (shawabtis, naoi, statues, stelae, offering tables) there,
convinced that because Izi’s prestige had brought him into contact with
the world of the gods (hence his epithet “the divine, the living”), he would
be an effective intercessor.
See Heqaib.
Jubilee (^/-Festival)
The sgrf-festival, or jubilee,” was a complex ceremony intended to reaf-
firm and to renew the pharaoh’s powers. The notion that it concealed a rit-
ual execution, as in certain monarchies of Africa, remains a pure hypothe-
sis. Though they do not allow a clear reconstruction of the ceremonies,
representations allow us to discern its main points. Dressed in a character-
istic short mantle, the king went on procession to meet the “royal chil-
dren,” who were carried on litters. Afterward, in the jubilee pavilion, as
king of the south and then as king of the north, he received the homage of
the officials and the people of Upper and Lower Egypt while gazing upon
the tribute that was brought for this occasion — in particular, cattle. He ran
a ritual course wearing a kilt with a false tail. He offered to the deities and
visited their primitive sanctuaries, preceded by a cortege of priests carrying
standards. Finally, he shot arrows toward the four cardinal points, affirm-
ing his assumption of power over the universe. The elements of the cere-
mony date back through the Archaic Period into protohistory.
Ideally, the jubilee marked the end of a cycle of thirty years. But al-
though it indeed occurred in the thirtieth year of the reigns of a number
of kings, the cycle was far from regularly respected. Some kings celebrated
a second or third jubilee only a few years after the first one.
In any event, preparations for the serf-festival mobilized the people and
the resources of the land well in advance, perhaps inspiring military expe-
ditions to procure the necessary cattle. Statues and obelisks were set up,
and rooms in temples or even pavilions, such as the famous “white chapel”
of Senwosret I, were constructed for the serf-festival. The officials most fa-
vored by the king participated as officiants in the jubilee rituals; others re-
ceived commemorative objects, often vases, which at their death became
the pride of their funerary equipment.
As an event, the ^-festival was simultaneously religious, political, so-
cial, and economic—when it was in fact celebrated. There were very few
kings who we are certain or can reasonably suppose actually had a jubilee.
Among the approximately ten were Pepy I, Pepy II, Senwosret I, Amen-
emhet III, Tuthmosis III, Amenophis III, Ramesses II, and Ramesses III.
Otherwise, the many mentions of the serf-festival refer only to an isolated
act from the entire ritual or are mere wishes that a king might celebrate
jubilees. Moreover, pharaohs were believed to celebrate them as part of
their postmortem destiny; thus, the false buildings in the enclosure of the
Step Pyramid of Djoser were intended to assure the king the possibility of
celebrating his jubilees in the hereafter.
E. Homung and E. Staehelin, Studien zum Sedfest, Aegyptiaca Helvetica 1 (Geneva, 1974).
Kagemni
Kagemni was a vizier who began as an administrator under Wenis and
reached the apogee of his career under Teti, near whose pyramid his
mastaba was found. In addition, we have an instruction addressed to a
Kagemni, who is appointed vizier by Snofru in its conclusion. It is possible
that this is the same person, and that posterity, playing with history, dis-
* V
placed the beneficiary of the instruction into the blessed reign of Snofru
in order to bestow the aura of this most popular of kings on the text.
A. Roccati, La Litterature historique sous VAncien Empire egyptien (Paris, 1982), p. 139;
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms
(Berkeley, 1975), p.59.
See Snofru, Teti.
Kamose 1542-1539 B.C.E., Seventeenth Dynasty

Kamose, the last king of the Seventeenth Dynasty, ruled at least three
years. During his third year, he began the war of liberation against the
Hyksos by seizing Neferusi, a city held by their collaborators, and then
pressing forward to the environs of Avaris, though he did not capture it.
Threatened from his rear by the ruler of Kush, who was allied with the
Hyksos king Apophis, he turned back. The ruler of Kush in fact had seri-
ous grievances with Kamose, who had earlier attempted the reconquest of
Nubia by retaking Buhen. Like other pharaohs of the Seventeenth Dy-
nasty, Kamose was buried at Dra Abu el-Naga.
See Apophis, Avaris, Hyksos, Second Intermediate Period, Seventeenth Dynasty.
Khaemwese
Fourth son of Ramesses II and second born of his chief wife, Isetnofret,
Khaemwese was appointed by his father to the office of high priest of Ptah
at Memphis. During his long pontificate, he displayed great care for the
deceased Apis bulls, opening the smaller gallery at the Serapeum, where
his own tomb would be located. Khaemwese, who would be remembered
often, and sometimes in highly original ways, was interested in theological
rarities and in the monuments of the past. He had restoration work done
on Old Kingdom pyramids and on the statue of one of the sons of Cheops.
This lettered prince passed into legend as a magician who was curious
about ancient inscriptions and who kept the company of ghosts, for better
or for worse.
See Ramesses II.

KHENTKAUS 91
Khasekhemwy 2660-2635 B.C.E., Second Dynasty

The name of this pharaoh, who ruled at the end of the Second Dy-
nasty, proclaims an era of reconciliation. It does so by its wording, “ap-
pearance of the two powers (khasekemwy), in whom the two gods are rec-
onciled,” and by the way it is written, with the usual palace facade in fact
surmounted by the images of Horus and Seth facing each other (thus
replacing the image of Horus alone, or the image of Seth alone in the
case of Peribsen). This king aimed to put an end to the political con-
flicts between one movement, which had taken Horus as its emblem,
and an opposing one symbolized by Seth. The restoration of national
unity was reinforced by the defeat of Nubians in the south and Libyans
in the north.
With order established both internally and externally, Egyptian civiliza-
tion took the qualitative leap that brought it from the Archaic Period into
the Old Kingdom. Technological development benefited not only metal-
lurgy— from that time on, artisans knew how to cast statues of copper—
but especially architecture. Stone was no longer confined to marginal
uses, but began to be used and worked with mastery, as demonstrated by
the chamber fashioned of limestone in Khasekhemwy s tomb at Abydos
and by his carved granite doorjamb from Hierakonpolis. The way was pre-
pared for the genius of Imhotep.
W. B. Emery, Archaic Egypt (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 101-3.

See Archaic (Period), Djoser, Imhotep, Peribsen.
Khentkaus
Khentkaus was queen at the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty. Her excep-
tional importance is shown by several indications: her sarcophagus-
shaped tomb north of the causeway of the pyramid of Mycerinus, her fu-
nerary temple, her titulary designating her as mother of two kings
(Userkaf and Sahure). Her third son, Neferirkare Kakai, came to the
throne only after her death, and he established a cult for her near his own
tomb. This queen inspired one of the tales from the cycle of stories known
from Papyrus Westcar: it recounts how Re created a new dynasty by im-
pregnating the wife of a priest of Sakhebu with three sons. The destiny of
this queen also partly nourished the Greek legend of Rhodopis, who was
considered to be the builder of the third pyramid at Giza (as was Ni-
tocris).
See Fifth Dynasty, Neferirkare Kakai, Sahure.

Kusli
Kush was originally the name of a small region of Nubia, south of the
Second Cataract. First attested under the Twelfth Dynasty, the term was
later extended to all the territories of the south. During the Second Inter-
mediate Period, a powerful kingdom, Sudanese in culture and with
Kerma as its capital, extended from Dongola to the Second Cataract. Its
chief was called “ruler of Kush” by the Egyptian scribes in his service and
by the chancery of the pharaoh in Thebes. The first Tuthmosids destroyed
this state and pushed still further south.
During the New Kingdom, all the territory from el-Kab to the Fourth
Cataract was administered by a viceroy who bore the title “king’s son of
Kush” (the filiation being purely honorific). This vast domain was subdi-
vided into two zones, each one entrusted to a lieutenant: Wawat, north of
the Second Cataract, and Kush proper to the south. As chief military, reli-
gious, and civil leader, the “king’s son” organized the collection of tribute
by the mayors of towns and the Nubian chiefs, conducted punitive raids
on the rare occasions of frontier rebellion, and supervised the exploita-
tion of the gold mines and the construction of monuments.
What remained of the sedentary native population was rapidly Egyp-
tianized during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Black peoples from the southern
steppes delivered cattle, panthers, giraffes, and other products of the
African interior. In the colonial towns, numerous temples and speoi
(rock-cut chapels) were constructed in the king’s name to the major
deities of Egypt and to the local Horuses and Hathors. A number of these
have survived almost intact: Amada and Buhen under the Tuthmosids;
Soleb, Sedeinga, and Sesebi under the Amenophises; and especially the
prestigious series of temples under Ramesses II, including Abu Simbel, el-
Derr, Whdi el-Sebua, Gerf Hussein, Beit el-Wali, and many others. These
sumptuous viceroys dedicated many monuments in Nubia, but since they
were loyal administrators dispatched by the king, not regional potentates,
they made their tombs at Thebes or in their hometowns. The Theban
tomb of Huy at Qurnet Murai is known especially for its colorful repre-
sentation of Nubians bearing tribute for Tutankhamun. Though classified
as a foreign land, just like Kharu (i.e., Syria-Palestine), Kush was directly
ruled as a single domain and thus almost as subject to the royal adminis-
tration as the provinces of Egypt itself.
After the Ramessides, Egypt lost nearly all its foreign empire, maintain-
ing fairly continuous control over only the pastoral and mineral resources
of a nearly depopulated Lower Nubia. In the Twenty-first Dynasty, the title
“king’s son of Kush” was awarded as a benefice to the wife of Pinudjem,
the high priest of Amun, and in the Twenty-second Dynasty, it was borne
KUSHITE (DYNASTY) 93
by a grandson of Osorkon II resident at Elephantine; this city was once

again the Nubian frontier. In the eighth century B.C.E., Kush was once
more a state, one whose history was determined by the successive dynas-
ties of Napata and Meroe. Like the Assyrians and the Persians, the He-
brews would retain the name of Kush (“son of Ham,” according to them)
to designate the kingdom the Greeks called Ethiopia.
W.A. Adams, Corridor to Africa (London, 1977); B.G. Trigger, Nubia under the
Pharaohs (Boulder, Colo., 1976); Histoire generate de VAfrique, vol. 2: Afrique ancienne
(UNESCO, 1980), pp. 239-94.
SeeKushite (Dynasty), Meroe, Napata, Nubia.
Kushite (Dynasty)
The ancient Greek word Ethiopia was a vague term for the immense
area including all the lands south of the First Cataract of the Nile, corre-
sponding to what the Arabs call Sudan. This is why Manetho used the term
“Ethiopian” to designate the Twenty-fifth Dynasty from Napata in Nubia,
which ruled both its native Sudan and Egypt for five decades. Earlier still,
in his Histories, Herodotus had described “King Sabacos” (i.e., Shabaka),
who personified the entirety of his dynasty, as an “Ethiopian.” Today, the
term Ethiopia is the name of a multiracial nation above the eastern horn
of Africa; forged by the Abyssinian dynasty founded by Tewodros II, its ter-
ritory includes none of the area ruled by the ancient kings of Napata and
Meroe. It is thus convenient to calls these pharaohs Kushites, a term de-
rived from “Kush,” which was their own name for their native land.
After the Twentieth Dynasty, Nubia, which had become extremely
Egyptianized during the New Kingdom, was abandoned by the Egyptian
garrisons; later “viceroys of Kush,” contemporary with the Tanites and the
Libyans, do not seem to have been able to exercise power over very much
territory. In the distant and fertile Dongola, a local power took root dur-
ing the ninth and eighth centuries; this series of princes, anonymous to
us, were buried at el-Kurru, near Napata.
Napata, site of a major cult of Amun, had been the southernmost me-
tropolis of Egyptian rule, and although the culture of the Napatan domain
picked up the thread of its Sudanese patrimony, a pharaonic cultural tra-
dition nevertheless remained. The ruler of Napata adopted pharaonic ti-
tles and regalia, putting him on an equal ideological footing with the rival
Libyan kings among whom Egypt was divided. We cannot say whether the
adoption of this prestigious model was the cause or the result of the north-
ward expansion of the Kushites.
Toward 750 B.C.E., Kashta was recognized at Elephantine. Under his
son Piye, all the Thebais, where the Shoshenqide line had been elimi-
nated, was annexed. Despite the efforts of Tefnakhte, ruler of the west,
Piye extended his protectorate to all the principalities downstream.
Shabaka, Piye’s brother, eliminated King Bocchoris, Tefnakhte’s son:
there was now only one pharaoh between the Sudanese Sahel and the
Mediterranean. It is with this Shabaka (716-702 B.C.E.) that Manetho be-
gins his Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Under this king, the custom of placing two
uraei (cobras) on the front of the royal diadem made its appearance; this
innovation corresponded to the ancient theme of the unification of the
Two Lands, a theme that now expressed the joining of two vast kingdoms.
Shabaka was succeeded by two sons of Piye, Shabataka (702-690 B.C.E.)
and Taharqa (690-664 B.C.E.), and then by Tantamani, Taharqa’s nephew

(664-656 B.C.E.) .
The policies and the construction activity of the Kushites differed in

size and range, depending on whether we are considering the Sudan or
the two parts of Egypt. From the gezira of Meroe to the Third Cataract,
urban and rural life prospered in the habitable portion of the Sudan. At
Napata, Sanam, Kawa, and Pnubs (Kerma), the importation of Egyptian
artisans endowed the sanctuaries of Amun with small but magnificent
temples. As Egyptianized as it was, the kingship remained deliberately Su-
danese. The transfer of the kingship from brother to brother was not
Egyptian, and the pyramids of the kings were located in the ancestral
cemetery of el-Kurru, except for that of Taharqa, who chose Nuri, a short
distance from Napata. But there were few exotic elements in the raiment
of these rulers: a special diadem, jewels of an original type that repre-
sented the head of the ram of Amun.
In the Thebais, the local priestly families rallied to the Napatan
pharaoh. This devotee of Amun from the distant south recognized the au-
tonomy that the Tanite and Libyan high priests had gained for this polity.
Kushite adoratrices—Amenirdis, daughter of Kashta, and Shepenwepet,
daughter of Piye — took up the torch of their Shoshenqide predecessors.
The temples of Thebes benefited from remarkable embellishments car-
ried out in the name of the king or the god’s wife. Generally small and
styled with restraint, these monuments represented an archaizing renais-
sance in temple decoration.
The Twenty-fifth Dynasty seems to have had an almost permanent hold
on Memphis. Its control of the delta was weaker; the kingdom of Sais,
which proclaimed a new dynasty, the Twenty-sixth, constituted a tenacious
obstacle for a conqueror come from so far, and there were also “great
chiefs” and minor Tanite pharaohs. To judge from his building activity
and the memory he left behind, Taharqa ruled supreme for some years
KUSHITE (DYNASTY) 95
over his outsized Nilotic empire. Around 700 B.C.E., the Egypto-Sudanese
proved unable to prevent the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib from rav-
aging Palestine. Under Esarhaddon, and then Assurbanipal, the Assyrian
war machine forced its way into Egypt: Memphis (671 B.C.E.), then Thebes
(666 B.C.E.) were captured. This intervention ended by reinforcing Sais
and the independent realms in the north. A counterattack by Tantamani
unleashed the return of Assurbanipal, which ended in the spectacular
sack of Thebes (663 B.C.E.). Subsequently, the Saite Psammetichus drove
the Napatan dynasty back beyond Assuan (656 B.C.E.).
N. M. Serif, J. Leclant, and A. Hakem, Histoire generate de VAfrique, vol. 2: Afrique

ancienne (UNESCO, 1980), pp. 259-346; K. Mysliwiec, The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First
Millennium B.C.E. (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 68-109.
See Adoratrice.
Leontopolis
The city called Taremu (land of the fishes) by the Egyptians became
Greek Leontopolis, “city of the lions,” because of the tawny beasts that
were kept there; they were sacred to Mahes, the “Terrifying Lion,” son of
the goddess Bastet. This obscure city in the eastern delta became impor-
tant under the Osorkons of the Twenty-second Dynasty, who were devo-
tees of these deities. Toward the end of the Libyan anarchy, a minor king,
the pharaoh Iuput II, had his principal residence there, but the hypothe-
sis that the entire Twenty-third Dynasty was Leontopolite is highly debat-
able. This Leontopolis, present-day Tell el-Muqdam, should not be con-
fused with the like-named city, present-day Tell el-Yahudiya, located in the
Heliopolitan nome, where the Jewish high priest Onias built a temple dur-
ing the Ptolemaic Period.
Libyans
In the Sixth Dynasty, a people called Tjemehu were noted as being in
the margin of Lower Nubia, “toward the western corner of the sky.” From
the Archaic Period on, we have mentions of the name of the Tjehenu, who
are to be located in Marmarica, just west of the delta. The scenes of
“Libyan booty” in funerary temples of the Old Kingdom represent these
Tjehenu as anthropologically similar to the Egyptians, but ethnographi-
cally different: the men have long hair, and they wear crossed shoulder
straps and penis sheaths. At that time, Mediterranean Marmarica and the
grassy steppes of the Sahara were much better watered than they are
today, and the Tjehenu devoted themselves to cattle raising and arboricul-
ture. The original differences (racial, ethnic, or geographical) between
the Tjehenu and the Tjemehu remain indeterminate. One specious the-
ory holds that the former were a brown-skinned people and the latter
were light-skinned, blond-haired Libyans who were first attested in the
Twelfth Dynasty. From the Middle Kingdom on, these two terms for
Egypt’s western neighbors were practically synonymous. Until the middle
of the second millennium — and in spite of the progressive desiccation
that began around 2400 B.C.E. — these impoverished populations were of
scant bother to Pharaoh. Compared with Asiatics and Nubians, the
Libyans occurred rarely in mentions of hostile peoples during this period.
Raids were conducted against them, and they furnished warriors. Reli-
gious imagination associated them with the cult of Hathor-Sakhmet, mis-
tress of the confines of Libya.
Around 1400 B.C.E., groups called the Meshwesh and the Libu (the ori-
gin of the name Libya, which comes to us via Greek) appeared in Mar-
marica. Their domain covered the hilly seashore and the hinterland
LIBYANS 97
steppes between the comer of Lake Mariut and the present-day border of
Egypt and Libya. Unified under great chiefs, they increasingly left their
homeland, moving their camps and their herds ever closer to the oases,
and especially to the delta. These were white-skinned savages, both tat-
tooed warriors and archers whose “uniform” included a war feather and a
finely plaited lock of hair on the side of the head. They delivered cattle
and fat as tribute to Amenophis III, who listed them by name among the
dangerous lands. In the twelfth and eleventh centuries, these barbarians
entered the international arena, weakening and finally destabilizing
Egypt. Already aggressive and combated by Sethos I, they were dealt with
vigorously by Ramesses II, who constructed a series of fortresses between
el-Gharbaniyat and Marsa Matruh to keep an eye on them. Equipped with
light chariots and bronze weapons, and reinforced by Mediterranean pi-
rates, the Libu, along with the Meshwesh, were barely stopped by Merne-
ptah, and Ramesses III was obliged to expel both of them and other re-
lated ethnic groups from the western delta. These victorious pharaohs
transplanted captured Libyan warriors to the east, where they aided in the
defense of the eastern borders of Lower Egypt.
Under the increasingly weak rule of the later Ramessides, these
colonists — and, undoubtedly, fresh waves of Libyans — achieved military
domination over the delta and the north of Middle Egypt. Bubastis in the
east and Herakleopolis to the south became bastions of the supreme chief-
tainship of the Meshwesh, from which the Twenty-second Dynasty would
emerge; meanwhile, the Libu overran the western confines of the delta,
while other peoples settled in various locales. After they seized power,
these conquerors retained their tribal structure: the title “great chief of
the Meshwesh” was proudly borne by the ruling families of Shoshenqide
blood, and it also designated the chiefs of local population groups.
The Libyans’ most visible contribution to the history of Egypt was their
monopolization of the military profession in the north, along with a lack
of discipline that deviated from Egyptian ideals and practices and led to
anarchic decentralization in the seventh century B.C.E. Intentionally sub-
jected to linguistic Egyptianization since Ramesside times, and rapidly as-
similated to the superior culture of the conquered, the Libyans intro-
duced almost nothing of their own culture. Their few introductions
included personal names that would be handed down to the Saite Period
and beyond, in particular names that had belonged to Meshwesh
pharaohs and princes; a feather stuck in or flattened against the hair of
the “great chiefs”; some mysterious titles, perhaps pertaining to clans; and
perhaps the enigmatic goddess Shahdedet.
In Marmarica, the Meshwesh and the Libu were replaced by other peo-
g8 THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
pies, whom the Egyptians collectively designated Tjemehu, Tjehenu, or

Pyut. At first posing a threat that was repelled by Osorkon II and Psam-
metichus I, and then contained by the Saite garrison of Marea, they even-
tually aided the Egyptians as auxiliaries under Tefnakhte and during the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty. In the fifth century, resistance to the Persians would
owe much to the Libyans Inaros (whose name was Egyptian) and his son
Ithanyras (a Libyan name).
A. Leahy, ed., Libya and Egypt c. iyoo-yyo B.C. (London, 1990).
Lisht
Near the village of Lisht stretch the remains of the capital founded by
Amenemhet I. Its name, Amenemhet-itj-tawy, “Amenemhet is the one who
seized the Two Lands,” was abbreviated to Itj-tawy. The pharaohs of the
Twelfth Dynasty wanted a capital that was strategically located at the junc-
ture of Upper and Lower Egypt, while escaping the direct influence of
Memphis, some twenty miles to the north. Though only Amenemhet I and
Senwosret I built their funerary complexes there, Lisht remained the cap-
ital into the Thirteenth Dynasty. The city was again a strategic location in
the Third Intermediate Period. The prestige of the Middle Kingdom cap-
ital was such that at a later date, the hieroglyphs for Itj-tawy were read as
the word khenu, “residence, capital.”
See Amenemhet I, Middle Kingdom, Senwosret I.
Loyalism
As the earthly representative of the creator god, Pharaoh was the key-
stone of the physical and social universe of Egypt. He made no secret of it;
on the stelae and the statues he set up, on the walls of the temples, a thou-
sand inscriptions trumpet the omnipotence of his office and sing a stony
hymn to his glory.
Of course, his humble subjects adhered to this vision of the world, on
which ancient Egypt based its identity—or at least they behaved as if they
did. Still, the intensity with which they participated in the pharaoh’s gi-
gantic panegyric varied from period to period. In troubled times, the ex-
altation of personal merit and individualism prevailed. But when the
monarchy was strong, loyalist proclamations blossomed on the monu-
ments of private persons who could afford them, that is to say, the ruling
class. In their autobiographies, they vaunted Pharaoh’s perceptiveness
and benevolence, and their largely rhetorical praise credited the pharaoh
with elevating them from rags to riches. As though reciting a rosary, they
intoned the favors they received from the sovereign, dissolving their pride
LOYALISM 99
in sycophantic behavior. Private inscriptions sometimes turned to overt

thanksgiving (“I wish to adore Pharaoh, so great is his power”), to which
readers were invited to associate themselves (“give praise to the king”),
with extravagant praises taking the place of reasoned statements.
This loyalistic phraseology was rooted in the education given to the
sons of the ruling elite. In fact, the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty hired
writers to produce works (the Loyalist Instruction, the Instruction of a
Man for His Son) that took the form of wisdom texts and inculcated in stu-
dents the notion that their conduct on earth should be loyalty and faithful
service to the king. In such conduct, the noble found his honors, and the
sons of the middle classes their prosperity, while the dissident was con-
demned to annihilation without burial. Though these works were dictated
by the difficulties of the Twelfth Dynasty in imposing its legitimacy, they
were still judged worthy of interest—that is to say, capable of producing
loyal and docile subjects — in the New Kingdom.
See Middle Kingdom, Twelfth Dynasty.

Macedonian (Dynasty)
The name “Macedonian” is somedmes applied to the Argead dynasty,
which must be distinguished from that of the Ptolemies, though both
were of Macedonian origin. This Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt consisted of
three kings. The first was Alexander III of Macedonia (Alexander the
Great), whom the Egyptians recognized as a legitimate universal lord,
V
child of the creator god, a sovereign destined by the latter to rule the
world, as was every pharaoh. This divine quality was automatically trans-
mitted to his successors, his half brother, Philip Arrhidaeus (323-317
B.C.E.), and his posthumous son, Alexander Aigos (317-311 B.C.E.), who
were called on to rule, if only nominally, Macedonia and the empire built
by Alexander. “Pharaoh Alexander (I)” spent less than six months in
Egypt. “Pharaoh Philip” and the second Pharaoh Alexander never visited
the land; they were mere puppets dangling between Asia and Europe,
hostages in the hands of the diadochi (successors), and were quickly elimi-
nated. Philip, a mentally disabled youth, and Alexander II, a little boy,
were depicted on the walls of Egyptian temples as adult, virile pharaohs
making offerings to the gods. In those days, what was important was to in-
scribe the name of the predestined lord of the inhabited world.
Âlexander the Great, Ptolemy.
Memphis
Capital of the first nome of Lower Egypt, Memphis was located below
the apex of the delta, about twelve miles from the modern city of Cairo,
on the west bank of the Nile. The name Memphis derives from that of the
pyramid of Pepy I: (Meryre)-men-nefer, “Meryre is enduring of beauty.” The
original name of Memphis, however, was Ineb-hedj, “the white wall.” The
urban area and its temple quarter, which was delimited by an enclosure
wall, are located near (and under) the modern village of Mit Rahina. In
the desert to the west, its immense cemetery area extends more than
eighteen miles, from Abu Rawash in the north, via Giza, Zawyet el-Aryan,
Abusir, and Saqqara, to Dahshur in the south.
The city owed its brilliant history to its strategic location at the junction
of Upper and Lower Egypt; hence its epithet Mekhat-tazvy, “balance of the
Two Lands.” Is it not in fact significant that Memphis was founded by
Menes, the pharaoh who unified Egypt? Once their supremacy extended
over all of Egypt, the kings of the Archaic Period, who were from Upper
Egypt, wanted an administrative center from which they could easily man-
age the landed estates they established in Lower Egypt. Thus, they ap-
pointed high officials who resided in Memphis and whose tombs were lo-
MEMPHIS lOl
cated at Saqqara. As early as the Second Dynasty, certain kings were

buried there. But it was with the Third Dynasty and the beginning of the
Old Kingdom that Memphis was promoted to capital and official resi-
dence (khenu) of the pharaohs. Though the Twelfth Dynasty founded a
new capital, Lisht, farther to the south, the political and strategic advan-
tages of Memphis’ location imposed themselves again in the New King-
dom, all the more so because Asia had become the prime objective of
Egyptian imperialism. Thus, from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dy-
nasty, the crown prince resided there; the pharaohs often stayed there,
and it was there that Amenophis II was born. Haremhab made the city his
principal residence. Though Ramesses II moved his capital to Pi-Riamsese
in the eastern delta, Memphis would remain one of the principal cities
throughout the New Kingdom. The city retained its prominence during
the upheavals of the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period.
When pharaohs chose other cities as capital, they displayed special devo-
tion to the temples and ceremonies of Memphis, and some of them (Boc-
choris, Khababash) even reigned there.
Throughout all political fluctuations, Memphis weighed heavily in
Egyptian history for three main reasons. First, a great deal of economic
activity was concentrated there, not only around its temples and major
cemeteries, but also in the city itself. Crafts, and especially metalworking,
were an ancient tradition at Memphis, and in the New Kingdom the city
had a large shipyard. The city’s function as port commanding the complex
network of Nile branches and canals in Lower Egypt was enlarged in the
early Eighteenth Dynasty by the establishment of the port of Perunefer,
where a large workforce from Asia was concentrated. This opening of
Memphis to the outside world, and its resulting cosmopolitanism, were re-
newed in the reign of Amasis with the settling of Greek and Carian
colonists there.
Throughout the history of Egypt, Memphis was also a center of culture,
art, and intellectual activity. Its libraries, its temple laboratories, and its
workshops preserved the manuals, treatises, canons, and know-how re-
lated to monuments that were regarded as sacred. If a part of Egypt was
cut off from Memphis, it experienced a decline in artistic technique and
hieroglyphic writing; this was especially the case during the Second Inter-
mediate Period.
Finally, and especially, Memphis was the greatest religious center in the
land. Its original god was Ptah, who was later associated in a triad with
Sakhmet and Nefertem. Among the many other deities of the city were
Hathor, “mistress of the sycamore”; Sokar, god of the necropolis, who was
identified with Osiris; and the Apis bull, whose hypostases were buried in
the Serapeum amid displays of popular fervor. Moreover, the great cere-
monies that lent religious sanction to the kingship took place at Memphis;
in this connection, it is revealing that annalistic tradition began the Hyk-
sos domination with the coronation of Salitis in this city, and that Alexan-
der the Great was crowned there. Furthermore, some pharaohs (Ramesses
II, Ramesses III) chose to celebrate their jubilees at Memphis, or to locate
funerary temples (Amenophis III, Shoshenq I) there, far from their burial
places. In short, Memphis was the place par excellence of ideological le-
gitimation.
That Memphis was the very essence of Egyptian civilization explains
how the words “Copt” and “Egypt” derive from the Egyptian expression
Hut-ka-Ptah, “mansion of the ka of Ptah,” one of the ancient names of the
city.
H. Kees, Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography (London, 1961), chapter 6.
Mendes
This brief name, the Greek version of the pronunciation P-bended,
stands for a lengthy Egyptian toponym meaning “the house of the Ram,
lord of Djedit”; the ancient name survives in that of the village of Tmai el-
Amdid. A city in the eastern delta, on a secondary branch of the Nile,
Djedit is attested from as early as the Old Kingdom. Its patron god took
the form of a ram (or, in later periods, a billy goat). From the Middle
Kingdom on, he was considered to be a manifestation of Re and Osiris;
later, he was believed to incarnate the four gods of the elements (Re/fire,
Shu/air, Geb/earth, Osiris/water) and to be the driving force behind ani-
mal reproduction, “the male who covers the females.” The latter function
earned this local god a small place in the royal pantheon when Ramesses
II boasted of having been engendered by him.
The city retained its prestige throughout the ages. It was the capital of a
vigorous principality during the Libyan anarchy, and it was honored by
the Saites (naos of Arnasis). Its importance grew as military might and
economic prosperity became concentrated in the north of the delta, and
it gave Egypt its Twenty-ninth Dynasty.
StfcMendesian (Dynasty).
Mendesian (Dynasty)
A military blow inaugurated the Twenty-ninth Dynasty, from Mendes.
Amyrtaios of Sais, the sole king of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty, had driven
the Persian garrisons out of nearly all of Egypt. A certain Nepherites of
MENES 103
Mendes (398-392 B.C.E.) overthrew him and completed the work of liber-
ation. After the death of Nepherites, Psammuthis’ succession to the
throne was disputed by Hakoris; the latter became king, proclaiming him-
self “the chosen one of the Ram, lord of Mendes.” His successor,
Nepherites II, was in turn overthrown by General Nectanebo of Sebenny-
tos (378 B.C.E.) . The Mendesian dynasty’sjrise to power, its turmoil, and its
fall undoubtedly reflected the undisciplined ambitions of the military
leaders who held the principal cities of the delta in the wake of the expul-
sion of the Persians. Hakoris (390-386 B.C.E.) is the least badly known
member of the dynasty, thanks notably to a small chapel at Karnak that he
usurped from Psammuthis and where his Cypriot mercenaries left their
signatures. Hakoris’ foreign policy included the hiring of Greek soldiers,
alliances with Hellenic cities and with the Pisidians, and interventions in
Phoenicia and Salamis. In its efforts to preserve the land from reconquest
by the Persians, the policy prefigured that of the Sebennytic dynasty.
See Mendes, Sebennytic (Dynasty).
Menes 2950 B.C.E., First Dynasty

From the New Kingdom on, Egyptian tradition (and later, the Greek
authors who drew inspiration from it) held that the first pharaoh to rule
over a unified Egypt was called Menes. This name has been sought in the
documents from the First Dynasty, and there is indeed an attested name
Men, which could be the origin of the Greek form Menes, but it occurs on
a seal of Narmer and a tablet of Aha. Everything thus depends on the sta-
tus of Men on these objects, and scholars have postulated identifications
of both Narmer and Aha with Menes. The debate is highly technical, but
it seems clear that Men is the name of a private person (a prince) on the
seal of Narmer, while on the tablet of Aha, it is a royal name, perhaps that
of a deceased king who was honored by his successor. It has been conjec-
tured that the name Menes simply comes from the Egyptian word men,
“so-and-so,” a designation forged by tradition to evoke a king whose name
had been forgotten.
Menes supposedly inaugurated dynastic history by founding Memphis
and the cult of Ptah, a claim that nothing has invalidated. But because he
was the first king, tradition also credited him with cultural inventions
(writing) and religious innovations. Either ignorance or the desire to jus-
tify a local tradition by assigning it a prestigious founder surely played a
role in this tendency.
Manetho records that Menes was killed by a hippopotamus. Though we
cannot be certain of the accuracy of this claim, we can note that there are
mentions of hippopotamus hunting in the annals of the kings of the Ar-

chaic Period.
W. B. Emery, Archaic Egypt (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 32-37.

See Archaic (Period), Narmer.
Mentuhotpe Eleventh and Thirteenth Dynasties

Like the name Inyotef, the name Montuhotpe was borne both by
pharaohs of the Eleventh Dynasty and by pharaohs of the end of the
Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period.
ELEVENTH DYNASTY
Mentuhotpe I (2130 B.C.E.) did not actually reign, but posterity
counted him among the pharaohs because he was the father of the first
two kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, Inyotef I and Inyotef II. His Horus
name “Ancestor” clearly hints that his titulary was concocted after his
death.
Mentuhotpe II (throne name Nebhepetre), son of Inyotef III, reigned
from 2059 to 2009. During his reign, he achieved a decisive victory over
the dynasty of Herakleopolis, reunifying Egypt and thus putting an end to
the First Intermediate Period and inaugurating the Middle Kingdom. The
exact date of this reunification is uncertain; it seems to have been a bit
earlier than year 39 of his reign, no doubt around 2022 B.C.E. The king
marked the event by adopting a new Horus name, “He who reunites the
Two Lands,” and by making certain changes in the writing of his throne
name, Nebhepetre. With Egypt once again unified, and with the borders
secured by operations in Nubia, Mentuhotpe proceeded to the restora-
tion of the temples of Upper Egypt, at such sites as Gebelein, Tod, Her-
monthis, Dendara, and Abydos. To accomplish this restoration, and to as-
sure the functioning of the cults, he sent numerous expeditions to the
mines and quarries (in Hatnub, Wadi Hammamat, Aswan, and Nubia)
and to exotic trading centers (Punt and the Syro-Lebanese coast). When
the reunification made it possible for him to do so, he also drew on Mem-
phite cultural tradition, which was undoubtedly the reason for changes in
the original concept of his funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari. Located at
the foot of the cliff there, the temple consisted of a terrace that stood at
the far end of a causeway connecting it to the king’s valley temple. On the
terrace, there was an edifice surrounded on three sides by a columned
ambulatory, and atop the edifice was a construction representing the
mound on which the sun rose when the world was created. Integrated into
the temple were six burial places for women of the royal family. At a short
MERNEPTAH 105
distance from the cliff, the king honored sixty of his soldiers who had
fallen in battle with a collective burial.
Mentuhotpe III (throne name Sankhkare) reigned from 2009 B.C.E.
until 1997 B.C.E. The son of Mentuhotpe II, he pursued his father’s policy
of restoring the temples; he was active at Hermonthis and Abydos, and he
dispatched an expedition to Punt. He planned a funerary temple at Deir
el-Bahari, not far from that of his father, but he died before it was com-
pleted.
Mentuhotpe IV (throne name Nebtawyre) reigned from 1997 to 1991
B.C.E. Egyptian annalistic tradition did not recognize this pharaoh, though
monuments clearly indicate that he did indeed rule for at least two years.
But Egypt was soon caught up in a civil war, which the vizier Amenemhet
ended by founding the Twelfth Dynasty.
THIRTEENTH DYNASTY
At least three pharaohs of the Thirteenth Dynasty bore the name Men-
tuhotpe. We know practically nothing about two of them. The third, Men-
tuhotepi (throne name Sankhenre), has been placed in the Seventeenth Dy-
nasty, but it is more likely that he ruled at the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty,
when weak Theban pharaohs bowed before the Hyksos advance. A stela of
this king seems to allude to campaigns he conducted against the Hyksos.
See First Intermediate Period, Second Intermediate Period.
Merneptah 1213-1204 B.C.E., Nineteenth Dynasty

Thirteenth son of Ramesses II and his chief wife, Isetnofret, he as-
cended the throne at an already advanced age and ruled for only eight
years. His accomplishments obviously cannot be compared with those of
his father, but his legacy is reflected in his funerary temple and his tomb
at Thebes, a palace and work at the temple of Ptah in Memphis, and rock-
cut chapels at el-Siririya and Gebel el-Silsila. In addition, his name is to be
found added to the walls of earlier monuments at many sites in Egypt. The
events of Merneptah’s reign show that Egypt’s military might and external
security had diminished during the final years of Ramesses’ reign.
In year 5 of Merneptah, the powerful Libu tribe, assisted by the related
Meshwesh and Kehek and by contingents of pirates from the Aegean,
moved eastward. As they headed toward Memphis, the invaders were
stopped at Perire on the edge of the delta, at the price of a hard battle.
The Libu chief was deposed, and the booty in arms, captives, and cattle
was considerable. Merneptah also had to suppress a serious insurrection
in Lower Nubia.
To assure a continued Egyptian presence in Palestine, actions were car-

ried out against three Canaanite cities, Askalon, Gezer, and Yenoham, and
against the people of Israel. One of the inscriptions lauding the victory
over the Libyans and briefly mentioning these interventions in Asia is the
only Egyptian text containing the word Israel, which is by far the most an-
cient mention of this name. This “Israel Stela” has contributed to the
fame of Merneptah, but contrary to a distressingly persistent old idea, this
king cannot be considered as the pharaoh under whom the Exodus took
place. Merneptah’s mummy was found in the cachette in the tomb of
Amenophis II.
C. Lalouette, La Gloire des Ramses (Paris, 1985), pp. 265-95.

See Libyans, Nineteenth Dynasty.
Meroe
“Meroe” is the Greek transcription of the Sudanese term Merua, the
name of the capital of the kingdom of Kush (which the Greeks called
“Ethiopia”) between 550 B.C.E. and 350 C.E. It was located slightly down-
stream from present-day Shendi in the Butana steppe, above the conflu-
ence of the Nile and the Atbara. From the end of the eighth century B.C.E.
on, the region was part of the Egypto-Nubian empire of Napata. Meroe
seems to have been one of the residences of the sovereign of Kush at the
beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. The transfer of the principal seat of
the kingship from Napata to this southern city took place at the end of the
same century, according to Herodotus, but the royal cemetery was not
shifted from Nuri (near Napata) to Meroe until around 300 B.C.E.
The reasons the Sudanese kingdom shifted its center upstream could
have been strategic (the threat posed by the Saites, and then by the Per-
sians) or, more likely, economic and demographic (settlement of the pop-
ulations of the Sahel at a crossroads between the Red Sea, the upper Nile,
and Chad). In any case, it led to the growth of important cities in the Bu-
tana, to something of a start of iron working (slag heaps at Meroe, whose
pan-African importance cannot be exaggerated), and to the extension of
agriculture (retention basins for rainwater at the mouths of the large
wadis).
A new civilization took form and spread, combining the native and the
Egyptian heritages and taking in luxury products and even influences from
the Hellenized world. Its governance was characterized by the moral influ-
ence of the god Amun (and sometimes his priests) and the eminent posi-
tion of the mothers and wives of the king, the Candaces, which is so appar-
ent in the temples and the cemeteries. There was sometimes a veritable
MEROE 107
coregency of the pharaoh (Meroitic: kor) and the queen (Meroitic: ketke),
but there was no matriarchal devolvement of the throne, as a long-fashion-
able theory once held, much less an exclusively female dynasty, as the Ro-
mans believed.
The sanctuaries of Amun throughout the realm (Napata, Sanam, Kawa,
Pnubs, Amara) received solemn visits from the sovereigns, who consider-
ably embellished them. Osiris, Isis, and Xnubis were still the gods of the
dead, but temples were built for certain strictly Meroitic deities, such as
Apedemak and Sbomeker. Small, elegant (but rather steep) pyramids of
queens, princes, and kings filled the vast cemeteries of Meroe (and
Sedeinga), while temples large and small multiplied in the Butana, at
Meroe itself, and at Basa, Wad Ban Naqa, and Musawwarat el-Sufra. The
images of deities and sovereigns were inspired by Egyptian style, and their
repertoire of ritual poses and attributes on the whole conformed to
Egypto-Kushite prototypes (double uraeus, rams of Amun). But the ex-
travagant clothing, the enormous and baroque items of jewelry, and in
particular, the fleshy corpulence of the human figures make for an origi-
nal style of relief sculpture that can be called “Meroitic.” Relations con-
tinued to be close between the Kushite clergy and that of contemporary
Egypt, as shown by Ptolemaic-style hymns to the gods. The most surprising
innovation was the creation, in the second century B.C.E. at the latest, of
an alphabet for writing the Sudanese language. The alphabet has been de-
ciphered, and the structures of the language have been to some extent
elucidated, but its relationship to the modern tongues of the region is
hotly debated. The alphabet borrowed its principle from the Greek writ-
ing system, but its twenty-three signs are Egyptian; it had both a monu-
mental (hieroglyphic) form and a cursive (Demotic) version.
In the Ptolemaic Period, the northern boundary of the Meroitic realm
lay between the Third and the Second Cataracts. But north of the unin-
habited regions, some kings, such as Ergamenes, exercised a sort of reli-
gious condominium that extended as far as the ramparts of Lagide Egypt,
as evidenced at the temples of el-Dakka, Dabod, and Philae; they also in-
stalled Kushite garrisons in some locales downstream from Wadi Haifa
(Primis). Meroe reached its apogee around the turn of the era, in the time
of King Ketakamani and Candace Amanitere. It was scarcely troubled by a
military clash with Rome, which had recently become mistress of Egypt: in
23 B.C.E., the Kushites took Philae, and the Romans launched a retaliatory
raid that pushed south as far as Napata. The frontier was finally fixed at el-
Maharraqa, where it had been under the Ptolemies.
Defeated in warfare, the Kushites took their revenge. During the sec-
ond and third centuries of our own era, Lower Nubia was intensively re-
settled, and agriculture was resumed there. The inhabitants adopted the
language and culture of Meroe and declared themselves vassals of the dis-
tant sovereign of the south, as did the priests of Isis on the island of Philae.
During the fourth century, the settlements of the Butana somehow fell
under the blows of the Nuba and the Axumites, while the Ballana culture
of Lower Nubia collapsed in the wake of raids by the Blemmyes of the east-
ern desert. The last pagan rulers of Lower Nubia, who were contemporary
with the first Byzantine emperors, were buried with jewel-encrusted silver
crowns similar to those of the kings of Meroe; these crowns were the final
manifestations of pharaonic iconography.
W.Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (London, 1977), pp. 294-429; Histoire generate
de I’Afrique, vol. 2: Afrique ancienne (UNESCO, 1980), pp. 295-346.
S^Kush.
Merykare c. 2090 B.c.E., Tenth Dynasty

Merykare was a pharaoh of the second half of the Tenth Dynasty.
Aside from other mentions, he is known from a text, the Instruction for
Merykare, that was addressed to him by his father, who might have been
a king named Khety. The poor quality and the lacunae of the preserved
manuscripts are all the more to be regretted in that the work is excep-
tional. It is less one of those many pedestrian and conformist wisdom
texts that have come down to us from pharaonic Egypt than an authen-
tic treatise on governance. It contains pieces of political advice based on
the royal author’s personal experience and is thus an assessment of his
reign. The author also admits his own errors, such as the sack of Abydos
by his victorious troops. He advocates peaceful coexistence with the
south — that is, with the Theban principality—and more generally, hu-
mane and even benevolent conduct toward ordinary mortals, his sub-
jects. Because the creator god watches over the world order that he insti-
tuted, he doles out just deserts for human actions, even the pharaoh’s.
This work is undoubtedly apocryphal: Merykare ascribed his own ideas
to his father to lend prestigious support to the new policy he intended to
carry out.
See First Intermediate Period, Ninth and Tenth Dynasties.
Metjen
Metjen was a high official whose career spanned the end of the Third
and the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty; he is famous for the inscriptions
MIDDLE KINGDOM 109
in his tomb at Saqqara, which are undoubtedly the earliest private inscrip-
tions with autobiographical content. They consist of a series of excerpts
from official documents confirming Metjen’s promotions and the rev-
enues attached to them during his career as an administrator of royal do-
mains in Lower and Middle Egypt. The emphasis is mostly on the estates
or the sources of income that could be used to set up and provision his fu-
nerary cult. Thus, the content of what can be called the most ancient au-
tobiography from pharaonic Egypt was already conditioned by the nature
of the monument in which it was located — the tomb.
A. Roccati, La Litterature historique sous VAncient Empire egyptien (Paris, 1982),

pp. 82-88.
See Autobiography.
Middle Kingdom
Scholars agree in beginning the Middle Kingdom with the reunifica-
tion of Egypt under Mentuhotpe II (2022 B.C.E.). But although there is no
consensus as to the date when it ended, it is reasonable to consider the
Hyksos capture of Memphis (1650 B.C.E.) as marking its end and the be-
ginning of the Second Intermediate Period. The event is all the more sig-
nificant in that it led to a clean break in monumental style. Thus defined,
the Middle Kingdom includes:
the end of the Eleventh Dynasty

the Twelfth Dynasty
most of the Thirteenth Dynasty, down to the pharaohs who lost
Memphis
the Fourteenth Dynasty, which in fact includes two realms that were
partly concurrent with the Thirteenth Dynasty
It was thus a period of more than 350 years, and it contributed much to
Egyptian civilization.
First, a reorganization of the habitable environment occurred. Inter-
nally, careful planning led to the reclamation of part of the Faiyum, which
had been covered with marshes and thus devoted solely to the pleasures of
fishing and fowling (which is the title of a literary work of the Middle
Kingdom). Compared with that of the Old Kingdom, foreign policy
changed in scope. To the south, the valley of Lower Nubia was integrated
into the territory of Egypt. To the north, traditional relations with Byblos
intensified to the point that the local rulers were Egyptianized. The world
of Syria-Palestine ceased to be confined to the role of an exotic trinket
and initiated a dialogue with Egyptian civilization, if only via a massive in-
HO THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
flux of Asiatic immigrants beginning in the Twelfth Dynasty; the Middle

Kingdom sowed the seeds of the New Kingdom expansion into Asia. Fi-
nally, Egypt also had trade relations with the Mediterranean world
(Cyprus, the Aegean).
A restructuring of society also occurred. With the reform of the royal
administration, there was a qualitative leap that entailed the end of “re-
gional feudalism.” The literate elite increased, and correlatively, a petty
bourgeoisie arose that managed to acquire what had been a privilege of
the upper ruling class, the setting up of inscribed votive monuments. In a
parallel development, since the funerary beliefs that centered on Osiris
were widespread in Egypt, this god’s city of Abydos became an enormous
religious metropolis where pilgrims and travelers came to leave ex-votos,
and the city’s political influence increased accordingly.
The new distribution of centers of influence also saw the rise of
Thebes, which was either the capital of the Eleventh Dynasty or simply its
city of origin. Patronized by the pharaohs of the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Dynasties, Thebes played an influential role in politics and ideology from
that time on. Administrators of Theban origin rose to high office, the do-
mains of its temples were enlarged, and during the Twelfth Dynasty, one
of its deities, Amun, took on national dimensions.
By synthesizing the legacy of the Old Kingdom and what had been
gained from historical evolution, the Middle Kingdom founded a new
classicism that would serve as a model, and even a cultural and artistic
norm, at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty and in the Saite Period.
Even so, the vestiges of the Middle Kingdom seem far less impressive than
those of the Old Kingdom: of the pyramids of the Twelfth Dynasty, there
remain only the unattractive masses of their mud brick fill, for their lime-
stone casings have long since been removed. The funerary temple of
Mentuhotpe II cuts a poor figure because of the destruction it has experi-
enced, but Hatshepsut drew inspiration from it in building her own. Yet
the Middle Kingdom has left us some masterpieces, such as the White
Chapel of Senwosret I at Karnak. Moreover, the Middle Kingdom intro-
duced certain innovations, such as block statues (see figure 5), and in par-
ticular, it invested portraiture with a sense of individualization, which the
Late Period would again exploit.
But it was especially in literature that the Middle Kingdom produced
classics that would become constitutive of Egyptian culture. The Middle
Kingdom breathed new air into an old genre, such as wisdom texts, by put-
ting it in the service of political commitment (e.g., Loyalist Instruction, In-
struction of Khety, Instruction of Amenemhet I). It drew on the horrors of
the First Intermediate Period to nourish the so-called pessimistic litera-
FIGURE 5. Block statue of Yamunedjeh. Dynasty 18. Luxor Museum. Photo by Nancy J.
Corbin.
ture, with its highly original tone: the Dispute between a Man and His Ba,
the Admonitions of Ipuwer, and the Complaints of Khakheperresonb. The
literature of the Middle Kingdom abounds in works of various sorts:
poems, like the Hymn to the Nile, and rhetoric, like the Tale of the Elo-
quent Peasant. And it shines most radiantly in works of narrative fiction
like the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and especially the Story of Sinuhe,
which might be one of the masterpieces of world literature.
Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, 1973); D. Wildung, De VAge d’or de VEgypte: Le Moyen Empire
(Fribourg, 1984).
SÂmenemhet, Ankhu, Eleventh Dynasty, Inyotefoqer, Senwosret, Sinuhe,
Thirteenth Dynasty, Twelfth Dynasty.
Mycerinus {orMenkaure)
2480-2462 B.C.E., Fourth Dynasty
Son of Chephren, Mycerinus established his legitimacy only after turn-
ing back challenges from other pretenders who perhaps ruled contempo-
raneously with him. Of his activity as pharaoh, there remains essentially
the third pyramid of Giza. It was much smaller (height 218 feet, length
354 feet at the base) than the other two, but sumptuously conceived, for it
was intended to be covered with a casing of granite, of which only the
lower courses remain.
Dyads and triads also remain, our earliest examples of group statues.
They depict the king accompanied by his queen or by a goddess and a per-
sonification of a nome. Mycerinus’ tomb was restored in the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty.
See the bibliography of the entry Cheops.

See Fourth Dynasty.
Napata
Napata is the name, Sudanese in origin, of a territory in which present-
day Kareima is located, in a zone where the Nile flows from north to
south, slightly downstream from the Fourth Cataract. This territory in-
cludes several magnificent sites: Gebel Barkal, Sanam, and the cemeteries
of el-Kurru and Nuri. At the foot of the enormous butte of Gebel Barkal
(which the ancient Egyptians called the “Pure Mountain”), the Eighteenth
Dynasty founded a temple to “Amun, lord of the thrones of the Two
Lands,” which the Ramessides then embellished; finds at the site include
stelae of Tuthmosis III and Sethos I, as well as lions and sphinxes of
Amenophis III. Dedicated to the premier patron of the Theban monar-
chy, Napata marked the southernmost point of his expansion into Kushite
territory.
At some point after the withdrawal of the Egyptian administration
toward the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, the region became the seat of an
obscure native principality. The tombs of thirteen chiefs, whose burials
were of Sudanese type — recumbent on a bed (and not in a coffin) under
circular tumuli — have been excavated at el-Kurru. The material found in
them reveals the loss and then the resumption of communications with
Egypt, and the historical sequel suggests a continuity of the local cult of
Amun. During the eighth century B.C.E., under Kashta and Piye, this dy-
nasty of Napata extended its domination north of the First Cataract, as-
sumed the attributes of pharaohs, gave Egypt its Twenty-fifth (Kushite)
Dynasty, and Egyptianized its homeland.
Piye and then Taharqa lavishly embellished the temples of Amun at the
foot of Gebel Barkal, from which we have stelae of the former king and
beautiful effigies of the latter. At Sanam on the left bank of the river,
Taharqa founded a city and a temple dedicated to “Amun, bull of Nubia.”
At el-Kurru, and then at Nuri, where the pyramid of Taharqa was the cen-
ter of a new royal cemetery, the tombs of kings and queens took the form
of pyramids endowed with funerary texts, sarcophagi, shawabtis (funerary
figurines), and other typically Egyptian means of survival in the afterlife.
This Egyptianization and the monumental use of the Egyptian language
would continue after the loss of Egypt, when a second dynasty of Napata
continued to dominate the Sudan: from about 650 to 300 B.C.E., a good
twenty kings were buried at Nuri. Until the fourth century B.C.E., an
evolved form of Late Egyptian served to write official inscriptions.
Amun, whose temple of Barkal would preserve statues bearing impor-
tant inscriptions of Atlanarsa, Senkamanisen, Harsiotef, and Sastesen, re-
mained the patron of the monarchy, even after the capital was moved to
Meroe. The Meroitic kings traveled to Napata to receive the insignia of
their power; two pyramid fields behind the Pure Mountain date to their
era. In 23 B.C.E., the Romans drove the Kushites out of Lower Nubia and
sacked Napata.
W.Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (London, 1977), pp. 246-93.

See Kush, Kushite (Dynasty).
* *
>
Warmer c. 3000 B.C.E.

The name of this king occurs on a fairly large number of objects, some
of them as far away as Palestine (where they were evidently taken as trade
goods). His schist palette, the fame of which is deserved both for the per-
fection of its style and the interest of its decoration, evokes a victory over
what seems to be a people dwelling in the marshes, perhaps in Lower
Egypt; but does it commemorate an actual event, or is it a theme that had
already become conventional? In any case, Narmer alternately wears the
crowns that were those of Upper and Lower Egypt in the historical period.
Otherwise, not only are the composition and the themes pharaonic, as on
the mace head of King Scorpion, but the name of the king is also enclosed
in a representation of a palace facade, according to a usage attested ear-
lier but that would now become standard. Many scholars have identified
Narmer with Menes, the first pharaoh, in particular because the two
names are associated on a seal, though in a manner that offers no assur-
ance that only one person is involved. Those who reject this identification
do not deny that Narmer was at least the immediate predecessor of the
first pharaoh.
See Menes, Scorpion.
Necho II 610-595 B
-C.E., Twenty-sixth Dynasty
Though rather few monuments of his reign have survived, the Bible
and Herodotus inform us of a number of spectacular events during his
reign. By sending contingents to the Euphrates, he tried in vain to prevent
the Babylonians from putting an end to Assyria and expanding into Syria.
In the course of an operation that he led personally, he crushed the pious
Kingjosiah of Judah at the Battle of Megiddo. For three years, Egypt dom-
inated Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, as it had under Tuthmosis III, but
Necho’s army was defeated at Carchemish by Nebuchadnezzar, who ex-
tended the Babylonian empire as far as the border of Egypt. According to
Herodotus, Necho (otherwise called Necos) undertook the digging of a
canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea (which archaeology seems to
confirm), but he supposedly did not complete this undertaking. He is also
said to have dispatched a Phoenician fleet to the Red Sea, which, via a
NEFERHOTEPI 115
lengthy, coast-hugging journey, circumnavigated Africa—a fine tale of

exploration that is undoubtedly a fable. This pharaoh, who resolutely
opened Saite Egypt to the outside world, seems to have encountered op-
position: his name was erased in many of his inscriptions.
Herodotus, Histories, book 2, 158-59 and book 4, 42; see A. de Selincourt, Herodotus:
The Histories, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex 1972), pp. 193 and 283-84.
See Saite (Dynasties).
Nectanebo Thirtieth Dynasty

By habitually using this Greek name, Egyptologists confuse two differ-
ent Egyptian names: Nakhtnebef (Greek Nectenebes), which was the
name of the founder of the Thirtieth Dynasty, and Nakhtharemhebit
(Greek Nectanabo), which was that of his grandson. The former (378-360
B.C.E.) donated a tenth of the imports and products of the Greek trading
city of Naukratis to the temple of Neith at Sais. The intense resumption of
architectural activity in the temples, from Philae in the south to Behbeit
and Tanis in the north, illustrates the material wealth of the land and indi-
cates a deliberate policy of recourse to divine providence. Stopped by the
fortifications of Pelusium, a Persian attack perished in the flooded
marshes of the Mendesian branch of the Nile: Egypt was saved for a quar-
ter of a century. The works of Nectanebo II (359-341 B.C.E.), who de-
posed his uncle Teos, were comparable in number to those of his grand-
father. His confrontation with the Great King Artaxerxes III, who tried
from 351 B.C.E. on to reconquer Egypt, ended in a Persian victory and in-
vasion. The Egyptian king managed to remain in Upper Egypt for eight-
een months before taking refuge in Nubia.
In truth, we do not know the ultimate fate of this last great sovereign of
native blood, who became the stuff of legend. National pride was pleased
to recount that this king, a magician disguised as a god, actually procre-
ated Alexander the Great. Under the Ptolemies, Egyptians continued to
adore the beautiful falcon statues that he had caused to be carved in order
to assimilate him to the god Horus. The magnificent sarcophagus that
Nectanebo II had prepared for his burial was found in Alexandria, where
until recently it passed in local folklore for the tomb of Alexander.
See Sebennytic (Dynasty).
Neferhotep I 1740-1730 B.C.E., Thirteenth Dynasty

Neferhotep I (throne name Khasekhemre) was the twenty-first king of
the Thirteenth Dynasty. Of common origin — his grandfather was a mere
militiaman — he managed to remain on the throne for eleven years and to

establish the legitimacy of his line firmly enough that his two brothers, Si-
hathor and Sebekhotpe IV, were also able to assume the crown. He paid
special attention to Abydos, the holy city of Osiris, putting the temple
there back in order and reorganizing its ceremonies to conform with tra-
dition as recorded in the sacred archives. At Byblos, the Egyptianized local
dynasty continued to pledge him its allegiance. His reputation made him
so significant a symbol that later, the Hyksos took the trouble to mutilate
his images on consecrated objects that they appropriated in the course of
their conquest.
See Hyksos, Sebekhotpe, Thirteenth Dynasty.
Neferirkare Kakai 2433-2414 B.C.E., Fifth Dynasty

Third king of the Fifth Dynasty, Neferirkare built a sun temple, the
exact location of which remains unknown. He also built a funerary com-
plex with a pyramid (height 226 feet) that was completed by his successor.
Neferirkare owes his fame in particular to the hazards of discovery: ar-
chaeologists found part of the archives reflecting the activity of his funer-
ary temple during the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents have
proven to be a windfall for Egyptologists, providing insights into the orga-
nization and functioning of these funerary temples (lists of rituals, inven-
tories of temple furnishings, accounts of income, receipts for allocations,
etc.), which had earlier been known only from archaeological remains
and titles borne by individuals.
See Fifth Dynasty, Khentkaus, Ptahwash.
Nefertiti
Nefertiti was the wife of Amenophis IV/Akhenaten, to whom she bore
six daughters. She had her name preceded by the qualifier Nefer-neferu-
aten, designating her as the one in whom “the perfections of the sun disk
are perfected.” She formed a sort of triad with her husband and the Aten,
who was depicted bestowing his blessings. Charming details in the Aten
temples of Thebes, and in particular, in the private tombs of Amarna,
bring the tender relationship of the royal couple to life. In a bizarre twist,
however, artists endowed the queen and her daughters with anatomy that
was identical to that of Akhenaten. But the busts discovered at Amarna,
the quartzite trial pieces, and the famous polychrome bust now in Berlin
(for some reason, it has only one eye) reproduce a marvelous visage. This
NEUSERRE INI 117
beauty, along with Nefertiti’s close association with the world’s first
monotheistic prophet, have made her a renowned figure. Her actual per-
sonality is as unknown as her symbolic function is striking: she was the ter-
restrial incarnation of the feminine aspect of the divine creation.
SÂmenophis IV, Queens.

/
Nekhebu
Nekhebu, who was also called Merptahankhmeryre, belonged to a fam-
ily of overseers of construction works who were active during the Fifth and
Sixth Dynasties; their family tomb complex was constructed at Giza, west
of the pyramid of Cheops. In his rather detailed autobiography, Nekhebu
recounts how, after completing his apprenticeship and making his way up
the hierarchy in the shadow of his brother, he became overseer of all
works and acquitted himself brilliantly in challenging assignments en-
trusted to him by Pepy II. These projects included the construction of
royal &<2-chapels in Lower Egypt—which necessitated a difficult procure-
ment of wood for carpentry—the digging of canals in the region of
Chemmis (at the marshy edge of the seashore) and in the region of Cusae
(in Middle Egypt), and the construction of royal monuments at Heliopo-
lis. His activities took Nekhebu as far as the quarries of Wadi Hammamat,
where his name occurs in graffiti.
A. Roccati, La Litterature historique sous VAncien Empire egyptien (Paris, 1982), p. 181.
Neuserre Ini 2407-2 384 B.C.E.

This pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty built a pyramid (height 170 feet) at
Abusir and a sun temple not far from there, at Abu Ghurab. Bas-reliefs
decorating certain parts of the latter represent the 5cd-festival, a sort of
royal jubilee. Other reliefs depict his era’s doctrine of nature; thus, the
“chamber of the world” is devoted to the three seasons of the year (inun-
dation, winter, and summer). In each case the art depicts the life forms
with which the god Re had filled Egypt: the growth of vegetation, animal
reproduction and habits, and human activities. Today very much dam-
aged, these bas-reliefs demonstrate the Egyptians’ keen sense of observa-
tion: they even noted the annual migration of mullets from the brackish
water of the marshes along the seashore to the fresh water of the First
Cataract at Elephantine. Various indications suggest that the reign of
Neuserre Ini was the culminating point of the Fifth Dynasty.
See Fifth Dynasty.

Nile
The Nile was called item (the pronunciation changed over time to ior),
a word that could be applied to any permanent river. The plural form of
the word, na-iore, which designated the branches that flow through the
delta, was probably the origin of Greek Neilos and Latin Nilus. Surpris-
ingly, the Nile played no central role in political theology. In the New
Kingdom, the famous Hymn to the Nile lent chofce expression to popular
fervor, but it did not derive from official rituals, and there was scarcely any
true religion of the Nile prior to the Greco-Roman Period. The ancient
Egyptians did not deify the watercourse itself, but rather Hapy, the myste-
rious subterranean being whose dynamism manifested itself once each
year, when the waters rose. Hapy, who was consubstantial with Nun, the
primordial waters, was depicted with the appearance common to fecun-
dity figures — a god dressed in the short loincloth of a fisherman and en-
dowed with a bloated belly and pendulous breasts. Two habitats were as-
cribed to this god, from which he was thought to gush forth at the
beginning of each year: one was at the apex of the delta, at the locale of
present-day Old Cairo, and the other was near Elephantine. The cult of
this cosmic figure remained localized, and as an auxiliary to major deities,
Hapy was a relatively minor figure in temple iconographies.
Some misconceptions about the Nile persist. Though the rapid devel-
opment of a high culture in Egypt was undeniably conditioned by the fer-
tility of the silt-laden valley, which was renewed annually by its river, the
birth of the pharaonic state did not result from any necessity for collective
management of the distribution of the water. The earliest evidence for ir-
rigation by means of basins — the result of desiccation — dates to around
2000 B.C.E., long after the Old Kingdom and the mighty builders of the
pyramids.
The pharaoh was not a magician who brought the inundation, like rain-
making sorcerers, nor even a direct mediator between the river and those
who worked the land. Hapy’s activity resulted from the providential will of
a supreme deity. The arrival of the flood was the manifestation of a regu-
lar order assured by ritual acts performed for the gods, in particular, liba-
tion offerings of nourishing, purifying water. Bad years were one of sev-
eral aspects of a disorder that resulted from subversion, ignorance, or
negligence. In fact, kings displayed little concern for the Nile itself,
though there were offerings to Hapy at Gebel el-Silsila and Heliopolis.
The kings took practical steps, and they also rendered thanks to Amun at
the arrival of a desirable inundation or of one that was high but did not
cause much damage. Only one pharaoh mentioned Hapy in his official
titulary: Siptah, whose Horus name proclaimed him “beloved of Hapy.”
NINETEENTH DYNASTY 119
Pharaonic ideology was solar, as well as Horian (that is, political), but not
hydraulic.
Nineteenth Dynasty
Conventionally counted as the last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the
general Haremhab, who restored the traditional order after the Amarna
heresy, designated his colleague Ramessesas his successor. This Ramesses
I (1293-1291 B.C.E.) established the family line of the first Ramesside dy-
nasty, whose history was divided into two contrasting phases: a “golden
age” and a period of internal conflicts. The former is attested by a huge
number of temples, tombs, and inscriptions; the latter is revealed espe-
cially by the mutilation of cartouches and by scanty monumental produc-
tion during a period of about twenty years.
FIRST PHASE
Sethos I (1291-1279) and Ramesses II (1279-1213) maintained an
Egyptian hegemony in Asia. From the Fourth Cataract to the region of
Damascus, their empire was filled with their religious foundations.
Merneptah (1213-1204) beat back the Libyans and maintained his rule
over Palestine. This period was characterized by a growing number of
courtiers and soldiers of foreign origin; by the development of the delta;
by an economic structure that was partly in the hands of the temples,
whose clergies remained under royal control; by the exaltation of the
“Ramesside triad” of Amun of Thebes, Re of Heliopolis, and Ptah of Mem-
phis, along with the worship of Seth, the patron god of the royal family;
and by the ostentatious cult of the sovereign incarnate in colossi. With his
architectural gigantism and epigraphic prolixity, Ramesses the Great cre-
ated a style of power and renewed literature and the arts.
SECOND PHASE
Sethos II (1204-1198 B.C.E.) , son of Merneptah, was challenged by the
usurper Amenmesse. Sethos’ son, the infirm Siptah (1198-1192 B.C.E.),
reigned under the tutelage of the dowager queen Twosre, who, like Hat-
shepsut before her, assumed the royal office (1192-1190 B.C.E.), and of
the great treasurer Bay. “Many years without a chief,” and then “empty
years”: thirty-three years later, a history writer would describe this brief in-
termediate period somewhat bombastically as one during which Egypt,
lacking decisive authority, passed into the hands of dignitaries and local
leaders. A “self-made” Syrian (Bay, or an imitator) managed to install him-
self as a potentate, governing the land while his minions engaged in plun-
der. The gods were treated no better than the people, and the temples
were stripped of their revenues. Later king lists would mention no mon-
arch between Sethos II and Sethnakhte, the founder of the Twentieth Dy-
nasty.
All the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty had rock-cut tombs prepared
for themselves in the Valley of the Kings. Thebes remained the capital of
the empire, but Memphis and Pi-Riamsese shared the functions of royal
seat and administrative center.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramses (Paris, 1985).

See Pi-Riamsese, Ramesses II, Ramessides, Sethos I, Twosre.
Ninth and Tenth Dynasties

The capital of these two dynasties was Herakleopolis Magna, a city in
Middle Egypt, located south of the oasis of the Faiyum; it was otherwise
capital of the twentieth nome of Upper Egypt. The Ninth Dynasty was
founded by a pharaoh named Khety, the Achthoes of Greek tradition,
which depicted him as a cruel tyrant who was devoured by a crocodile. Be-
sides this king, there were three others, one whose name remains un-
known, a Neferkare who is mentioned in the tomb of the nomarch
Ankhtih, and a third, Khety II. The dynasty seems to have extended over
several generations, to judge by the genealogies of contemporary high of-
ficials (2130-2090 B.C.E.), and it appears to have claimed sovereignty, al-
beit a nominal one, over all of Egypt.
The reasons for the dynastic change from the Ninth to the Tenth Dy-
nasty are obscure, all the more so in that the names of the kings suggest
continuity, while the Egyptians used a single term, “the house of Khety,” to
designate them. We cannot exclude the possibility that Manetho’s division
of the pharaohs of Herakleopolis into two dynasties resulted from a rein-
terpretation of the list of Egyptian kings. Whatever the case, the Tenth Dy-
nasty consisted of fourteen pharaohs, whose names are mostly unknown
to us and whose reigns were mostly quite brief (2090-2022 B.C.E.). From
this overall anonymity emerge a Neferkare, a Khety, and especially a
Merykare, whose father addressed a famous instruction to him. Unlike the
Ninth Dynasty, the Tenth Dynasty no longer pretended to control the en-
tire land, and it recognized the existence of the rival dynasty of Thebes in
Upper Egypt. The region of Abydos and Thinis, which was lost and recon-
quered by turns, was the frontier zone between the two kingdoms. The
Tenth Dynasty drew inspiration from the tradition of the Old Kingdom,
for it had control of Memphis, the home of that tradition. In fact,
Merykare seems to have erected his pyramid at Saqqara. In the delta, the
dynasty seems to have maintained its borders against the Asiatics. It pre-
NUBIA 121
served the cultural heritage of the Old Kingdom reasonably well, to the
point that after their victory, the Theban pharaohs called on artists and
bureaucrats from the defeated kingdom.
See Ankhtifi, Eleventh Dynasty, First Intermediate Period, Merykare.
Nitocris s
Nitocris, the Greek form of Neithiqerty, is the name of a queen who be-
came pharaoh at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, as was later also the case
with Nefrusobk, Hatshepsut, and Twosre. She supposedly reigned either
six or twelve years. Manetho credits her with building the third pyramid
(that of Mycerinus), undoubtedly because she did significant repair work
on it. In fact, we have no monument bearing the name of Nitocris. She
was known for having an especially clear complexion and for avenging the
assassination of her brother by drowning his murderers in the room
where they were feasting. The latter anecdote probably reflects the strug-
gles over the succession that ruined the monarchy during the troubled
times at the end of the Sixth Dynasty.
A. de Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,

1972), p. 166.
See Sixth Dynasty.
Nubia
The term Nubia is applied to the territory stretching south from the
First Cataract of the Nile, at Aswan, to the region of Dongola, or even be-
yond the Fourth Cataract; in our own day, this territory is divided between
the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of the Sudan. In Nubia, the
Nile made its way through a narrow valley with little cultivable area, ex-
cept in Dongola; navigation was difficult because of the cataracts, and it
was sometimes necessary to avoid these obstacles by transporting boats
overland using slides. On each side of the narrow valley were desert
plateaus, but in the western desert, there were oases (Dunqul, Selima)
that were linked to the oases of Egypt by caravan trails.
Throughout the pharaonic period, Nubia was a constant preoccupa-
tion for Egypt. This was true, first, for reasons of security: protection was
needed against potential incursions by various Nubian peoples. There
were economic reasons as well; in itself, or as an access route to the inte-
rior of Africa, Nubia offered many resources: cattle (goats and cows), os-
trich plumes, mercenaries (the term Medjoi, which originally designated
a Nubian people, became the name of a profession, “policeman”),
amethyst, diorite, and above all, gold (the name Nubia comes from Egypt-
ian nub, “gold”). Nubian imports also included ivory, ebony, incense, pan-
ther skins, giraffes, and pygmies.
The predynastic cultures of Egypt had already spread into Nubia. From
the Archaic Period to the end of the Old Kingdom, relations took the
form of military expeditions intended to assure the exploitation of the re-
sources of Lower Nubia. Beyond the Second Cataract, the Egyptians con-
■V
tented themselves with expeditions for the sake of trade, or with explo-
ration (e.g., Harkhuf) aimed at establishing ties with Nubian
principalities.
The disorder of the First Intermediate Period evidently diverted Egypt-
ian attention from Nubia. But many Nubians flocked to Egypt to enroll as
mercenaries in the service of the potentates who were vying for power.
With the Middle Kingdom and the restoration of national unity, the
pharaohs began a policy of retaking Nubia that was completed under Sen-
wosret III. A system of eight massive fortresses sealed the border, which
was at that time fixed at Semna, south of the Second Cataract; the
fortresses prevented incursions by desert nomads and controlled traffic
on the river. At the foot of one of these fortresses, that of Mirgissa, a trad-
ing post saw intense exchanges with the part of Nubia that remained in-
dependent: farther to the south, Kerma was the capital of a Nubian prin-
cipality that had achieved an original synthesis of the local cultures and
Egyptian influence. Profiting from (or provoking) the Egyptian retreat in
the Seventeenth Dynasty, this principality expanded into Lower Nubia
and allied itself with the Hyksos kingdom against the nationalistic dynasts
of Thebes, though the Nubian rulers themselves employed many Egyp-
tians.
The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the victorious successors of
those dynasts, remembered, and they endeavored to establish a definitive
supremacy over Nubia. The campaigns of Ahmose, Amenophis I, Tuthmo-
sis I, Tuthmosis III, Amenophis II, and Tuthmosis IV ultimately extended
the southern border of the empire south of the Fourth Cataract. Nubia was
annexed and placed under a special administration headed by the “king’s
son (i.e., viceroy) of Kush,” who was assisted by two deputies. Throughout
the New Kingdom, all the local resources were systematically exploited, es-
pecially the gold mines, while African products continued to flow into
Egypt. A number of temples were built in Nubia, including that of Abu
Simbel, which is the most famous of the series erected by Ramesses II.
Wracked by internecine warfare, Egypt was unable to maintain its dom-
ination over Nubia during the Third Intermediate Period. At Napata, a
city downstream from the Fourth Cataract that was undoubtedly founded
by Tuthmosis III, a native but highly Egyptianized dynasty undertook the
NUBIA 123
conquest of Nubia, and then of Egypt, which was weakened by its political
divisions. Piankhy (Piye) established a new dynasty, the Twenty-fifth, also
called the Kushite dynasty, for Kush was one of the Egyptian names for
Nubia. Driven from Egypt by the Twenty-sixth (Saite) Dynasty, the
Kushites retreated to Napata, and then, after 270 B.C.E., to Meroe, slightly
downstream of the Sixth Cataract. There, an original civilization devel-
oped, the Meroitic culture, which used a writing system with signs bor-
rowed from those of Egypt (hieroglyphic and Demotic), but which were
used to write a native language that remains poorly understood.
F. Hintze and U. Hintze, Les Civilisations du Soudan antique (Leipzig, 1967); W.Y.
Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (London, 1977).
See Ahmose, Amenophis I, Harkhuf, Heqaib, Ramose, Kush, Kushite (Dynasty),
Meroe, Ramesses II, Senwosret III, Sethos I, Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III, Tuthmosis IV.
Obelisks
With its rigorous geometry, an obelisk is a quintessential^ Egyptian
variant on a pillar of stone. Universal symbol of theophany, the obelisk
leaves no doubt that it derived from the benben, a sacred stone that lent
material expression to the emergence of the sun at the moment of cre-
ation, according to a myth of Heliopolis. Imitating the appearance of the
benben, a single obelisk of bricks, perched on a raised platform, was the
idol that was worshiped in the royal sun temples of the Fifth Dynasty. The
earliest pairs of obelisks known, which date to the beginning of the Sixth
Dynasty, were intended especially for the temple of Re at Heliopolis. The
many surviving obelisks, now dispersed throughout the world, along with
what the classical and Arab historians have to say, remind us of the enor-
mous quantity of obelisks that once stood in the City of the Sun, where we
can still gaze upon one of the two obelisks erected by Senwosret I when he
rebuilt the temple there. The pharaohs of the New Kingdom erected
many of these stone “needles” at Thebes, at Pi-Riamsese, and at the tem-
ples of various gods who were identified with the sun. Some obelisks were
objects of worship, set up on the axis of a temple, such as the “unique
obelisk” of Rarnak, which is now on the square of St. John Lateran in
Rome. Most obelisks were erected in pairs, one on each side of the en-
trance to a pylon. Such obelisks continued to be set up in front of temples
into the Ptolemaic Period, as at Edfu and Philae.
The pointed top (called a pyramidion) of an obelisk was sheathed in
gold or electrum. These monolithic pillars, which were generally made of
hard, dense stones such as granite and quartzite, were of varying size,
ranging from 6 to 130 feet in height, or even 190 feet, according to a lit-
erary text. Their extraction from the quarries, their removal with the help
of the high waters of the inundation, their overland transport, and even
more, the erection without breakage of these shafts weighing hundreds of
tons are among the most astonishing accomplishments of pharaonic engi-
neering. An obelisk was lifted onto its base with a rocking movement,
using huge ramps and tall galleries filled with sand.
Dedicated in the name of the king, and elevating the radiant presence
of the god skyward, these formidable monuments were called “Pharaoh’s
needles” by the Arabs, a term that suits them better than the ironic
“skewer” (obeliskos) of the Greeks. The Romans appreciated the symbolic
prestige and the monumental presence of obelisks. From Augustus to
Constantius II, the ancient obelisks of Karnak, Heliopolis, and Sais were
relocated to adorn their capitals (two at the Caesarium of Alexandria,
nine in Rome, and one in Constantinople). Dedicated to the sun, the
obelisk on the Campus Martius in Rome functioned as the gnomon of an
OLD KINGDOM 125
immense sundial. Obelisks in Rome that lack hieroglyphic inscriptions,

such as the one in the Vatican, were probably quarried in Egypt by com-
mand of Augustus. Domitian and Hadrian commissioned obelisks bearing
hieroglyphic inscriptions that included their names. Popes of the Renais-
sance and later periods reerected these tall stones from Egypt in the four
corners of the Eternal City. Napoleon, too, wanted the capital of his em-
pire to have at least one of them; his wisfi came true only in the reign of
Louis-Philippe (Place de la Concorde, 1832). Paris was imitated by Lon-
don (1878), New York (1881), and ultimately Cairo (1962 and 1984).
Whether a commemorative or a funerary monument, whether adorning a
garden or a fireplace, the obelisk is the sole invention of pharaonic art to
have entered into our own culture without being cheapened.
L. Habachi, The Obelisks of Egypt: Skyscrapers of the Past (New York, 1977).
Old Kingdom
We give the name Old Kingdom to the period that followed the Archaic
Period and comprised the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties
(2635-2140 B.C.E.). It was characterized by a refined state organization
that was capable of systematically controlling the goods and the workforce
of the land, as well as of assuring the security of the borders and the ob-
taining of exotic imports. The efficient apparatus that was put in place si-
phoned off enough resources and mobilized enough energy to enable the
pharaohs to erect immense pyramids and their associated complexes. Res-
ident in Memphis, the capital, the king ruled over a united Egypt, the cen-
ter of the universe. Certain foreign regions were to various degrees in the
Egyptian sphere of influence: el-Dakhla oasis was integrated into the eco-
nomic and social fabric of the land; the Sinai peninsula was regularly ex-
ploited by expeditions that focused on mining; Lower Nubia was kept
under strict surveillance; contacts with the south reached farther and far-
ther, to Punt and even to the principalities of Dongola; and Byblos and the
Lebanese coast became indispensable trade partners. There was no policy
of expansion into Asia, but rather only police operations to subdue trou-
blemaking bedouins, as was also the case with Libyans in the west. It was
not yet time for pharaonic conquest in the lands of Syria-Palestine.
In fact, the pharaoh was essentially occupied with the administration of
domestic affairs, in which he relied on a class of high officials: the vizier,
upper-level bureaucrats, and local managers whom he dispatched to the
provinces. The officials were compensated by grants of land, prebends
(often attached to a priestly office in the royal funerary cult), and gifts of
goods or services, in particular the services of royal artisans who saw to the
preparation of their funerary monuments. These high officials supervised

large staffs of literate bureaucrats who administered the labor force and
assessed, registered, calculated, and archived everything that was pro-
duced. This socioeconomic organization was justified by an ideological
system that was centered, obviously, on the pharaoh, who in principle
owned all the land and its resources. The various areas of economic activ-
ity corresponded to aspects of his person: personal property of the crown,
funerary foundations, funerary temples and “pyramid cities,” palace, per-
sonnel charged with his day-to-day care, and so forth. Even the adminis-
tration of temples did not escape the attention of agents of the crown.
In the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh’s power thus seems to have reached
as high as the pyramid of Cheops. Nevertheless, a double contradiction
developed. One was in the area of ideology. In the Archaic Period, when
the world was limited to the experience of the senses, the pharaoh’s posi-
tion in the hierarchy was supreme; but later, when a more universalistic
conception prevailed, the solar creator god became the supreme being.
The pharaoh was thus relegated to the obviously prestigious, but never-
theless subaltern, role of earthly vicar of this god: metaphorically and
mythologically, his “son.” The creator god chose this vicar as he pleased,
even if that sometimes meant a change of dynasty. Thus, in a myth that
was downgraded into a popular tale, the origin of the Fifth Dynasty was as-
cribed to the sun god’s union with the wife of a humble priest from
Sakhebu to impregnate her with the first three kings of that dynasty.
The second contradiction was in the exercise of power. In the Archaic
Period, a prevalent concept required high dignitaries to belong to the
royal family, to the extent that the exercise of their offices entailed their
being invested with part of the power incarnate in the pharaoh. This re-
quirement gradually disappeared, and beginning with the Fifth Dynasty,
high offices could be awarded to private persons with no blood relation-
ship to the king. Moreover, in line with the custom of hereditary transmis-
sion of office, these offices tended to be treated as if they were the prop-
erty of lines of descent. The same tendency occurred at the level of local
institutions (funerary temples of former kings, temples of gods and god-
desses) and local administrators (nomarchs), to the point that in the Sixth
Dynasty, the king had to come to terms with regional powers, if only by
means of matrimonial alliances. Thus, despite the precariousness of the
sources, we glimpse the birth and development of a process that resulted
in autonomy vis-a-vis the king, a process that ended by bringing about the
collapse of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Sixth Dynasty.
The ancients themselves were aware that the Old Kingdom was the clas-
sical epoch of Egyptian civilization, for afterward, they accepted it as a
ORACLES 127
model that they imitated either well or badly, more often the latter. In
that period all the basic elements of the culture were either invented or
systematically codified and elaborated (some of these elements had ap-
peared in the Archaic Period). Above all, these cultural elements were
brought into fruition in works of a perfection that would never be
equaled: what funerary complex would ever compare with that of Djoser
or those of the Great Pyramids? The mbnarchs of the Middle Kingdom
also built pyramids, but they were smaller and less carefully conceived.
Old Kingdom sculpture in the round and bas-reliefs also reflect an unsur-
passable mastery. To be sure, later pieces are sometimes also affecting —
the bust of Nefertiti provokes a gut-level reaction — but the reflective ap-
preciation of the connoisseur will turn to the statue of Rehotpe. Works of
gold, jewelry, products of the minor arts that good luck has preserved
from the ravages of the millennia, all proclaim a know-how that no other
epoch was able to equal. Some technologies, such as the manufacture of
stone vases, disappeared after the Old Kingdom.
Otherwise, despite the gaps in our documentation, we can see that this
period produced works of literature (wisdom texts) and religious and sci-
entific (medical) treatises that enriched pharaonic culture until its extinc-
tion. But the genre of fiction would have to await the Middle Kingdom for
its classics.
C. Aldred, Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom (New York, 1965); A. Roccati, La
Eitterature historique sous VAncien Empire egyptien (Paris, 1982).
See Fifth Dynasty, Fourth Dynasty, Pyramids, Sixth Dynasty, Third Dynasty.
Oracles
The practice of oracles is not attested prior to the New Kingdom; is this
due purely to the hazards of documentation? In any event, in oracles the
god expressed himself through the movements of his processional bar-
que, which was carried by priests on the occasion of major festivals. He
signaled his approval by a forward movement or inclination of the bar-
que, and his disapproval by making it move backward or keeping it still. In
this way, he decided cases that were presented to him orally, or even in
writing, on two tablets, one with the positive version of the question and
the other with the negative version. Spoken oracles — for instance, via a
conduit passing through a divine statue — are not attested until the Late
Period.
Many oracles, generally given by particular forms (statue, image) of
major deities, or even deified men (such as King Amenophis I at Thebes)
and sacred animals, punctuated the life of private persons. Their inquiries
involved such matters as the appropriateness of a trip, the validity of the

purchase of a donkey, or the chances that a newly born child would es-
cape death (hence personal names like “The god X says that he will live”).
Oracles also served as a judicial authority to resolve many disputes or to
establish the culpability of a criminal; in fact, they were cumulative, so that
if someone was not satisfied with the response of one oracle, he could
have recourse to one or more others.
The political role of oracles changed over time. During the Eighteenth
Dynasty, it intervened only exceptionally, without being consulted, to
choose the future king, as in the cases of Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III.
But if pharaohs consulted the god regarding an important project—such
as an expedition to Punt under Hatshepsut, a campaign in Nubia under
Tuthmosis IV—it was in the intimacy of the sanctuary and via direct inspi-
ration. From the Ramesside Period on, as the domain of the temple of
Amun grew, so did the importance of his oracle; Ramesses II consulted it
to name the high priest of Amun, Nebwenenef. With the Twenty-first Dy-
nasty and the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period, the advent of
the Theban theocracy entailed a qualitative leap in the status of oracles. In
the areas that were under the jurisdiction of the domain of Amun — that
is, in Upper and Middle Egypt and at Tanis—Amun was believed to gov-
ern directly through his oracle, which was consulted by the high priest or
by the king. This oracle intervened regularly, not only injudicial matters,
but also as guarantor of private transactions and of funerary rituals and
objects. It settled political matters, such as the question of the amnesty
granted to those who had been banished to the oases, and it even con-
trolled the power of the pharaoh. That is why Osorkon II, Taharqa, and
undoubtedly many other pharaohs submitted their program of gover-
nance to the oracle of Amun for approval. Suffice it to say that the real
power was thus in the hands of those who manipulated the oracle — the
high clergy.
J. Leclant, in A. Caquot and M. Leibovici (eds.), La Divination (Paris, 1968),

pp. 1-23; S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 96-103.
Origins (Prehistory, Predynastic)

The first traces of human beings — mainly stone tools — appeared in
what would be Egypt during the final phases of the transition from the
Pliocene epoch to the Pleistocene, when the Nile dug its bed deeper
through the accumulations that had previously filled it. There is nothing
regionally specific about these tools, and prehistorians easily recognize
the well-known types of the European Paleolithic period, the names of
ORIGINS (PREHISTORY, PREDYNASTIC) 12Q
which often derive from sites in France, including the Paris area (Chel-
lean, Acheulean, Levalloisian). But with the last phases of the Paleolithic,
we find more highly differentiated cultures that are clearly related to
those of the nomadic hunters of the Maghreb, the Sahara, and Sudan.
And with them developed rock engravings in which typically African
fauna (giraffes, elephants, ostriches, etc.J try in vain to frustrate the ef-
forts of hunters wearing penis sheaths, who were as skilled at shooting ar-
rows as they were at setting ingenious traps. Certain symbolic themes, such
as the disk between the horns of a bovine, enriched the cultural patrimony
of pharaonic Egypt. The Paleolithic cultures lasted for a long time in
Egypt, for they are still attested around 6000 B.C.E., at the edge of the Nile.
In fact, the Neolithic had barely emerged in the fifth millennium
B.C.E.: on high plateaus overlooking the Faiyum and the valley, and where
desiccation was incomplete, populations had somewhat crude pottery,
along with basket making, textiles, the ability to cultivate grains (wheat,
barley), and the technology needed to do so (sickles, flails, silos).
Nonetheless, agriculture appeared in Egypt much later than in western
Asia. Contrasting with this somewhat crude Neolithic culture of the
Faiyum and Merimda (in Lower Egypt, near present-day Cairo), and also
during the fifth millennium but in Upper Egypt, there were cultures
called Eneolithic or Chalcolithic because of their use of copper, which
was apparently restricted to prestigious objects. These cultures, which had
attained a remarkable mastery of pottery making and ivory working, are
designated Badarian.
The period covering more or less the fourth millennium B.C.E. is called
the Predynastic. It is characterized by a civilization attested in Upper
Egypt and known chiefly through abundant and highly elaborate grave
goods: vessels of stone (granite, basalt, alabaster), artistically decorated
pottery, toilette objects and ivory figurines, copper amulets and needles,
cosmetic palettes of schist, and votive weapons. This Naqada civilization
developed in two distinct phases, Naqada I, or Amratian, and Naqada II,
or Gerzean, which are distinguished in particular by stylistic trends. In the
beginning, a taste for geometric simplification, and even abstraction,
dominated the Amratian, while the Gerzean demonstrated a propensity
for a certain realism. Moreover, we see clear influence from the
Mesopotamian world, not only in the form of imported cylinder seals —
which could be merely isolated objects — but also in style and mono-
graphic themes (a man attacked from both sides by two lions, two mon-
sters face to face). From this period, we also have wall paintings (tomb at
Hierakonpolis) and objects decorated in relief (Gebel el-Araq knife, Bull
Palette, Gazelle Palette).
The final phase of the Gerzean (sometimes called Naqada III) merits
the name Protodynastic, for pharaonic elements (nome emblems, royal
crown and attributes) appeared in it. In addition, artistic conventions re-
flected a vision of the world quite close to that which would prevail in the
dynastic era: division of scenes into registers and half-registers, symbiosis
of text and image (the first steps toward writing are perceptible), and
* V
“ideological realism” (the proportions of persons reflect their hierarchi-

cal status). It is thus difficult to tell whether the Narmer Palette belongs to
the extreme end of the Protodynastic Period, or whether it is one of the
first monuments of the dynastic era. In any event, it is obvious that at the
end of the Predynastic Period, societies had already developed on a scale
larger than that of a village or region, endowed with institutions control-
ling the production of certain consumable goods and affirming, both ma-
terially and symbolically, the unification of Upper Egypt, or a part of it,
into a single kingdom.
Clearly, Egyptian civilization was the product of various population
groups and influences. Certain anthropological indications reveal the sub-
sistence of a strong ethnic element (dolichocephalic Mediterranean)
from the Paleolithic to the Predynastic Periods, an element with which
other populations were mingled. Thus, in the fourth millennium B.C.E.,
there was an irruption into the valley of a brachycephalic people of Ar-

menoid type (perhaps in connection with the Mesopotamian influence).
From a linguistic point of view, Egyptian is one of the branches of Afroasi-
atic, along with Semitic, Libyco-Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic; but its clos-
est affinities are with the Semitic (i.e., Asiatic) languages.
E.I. Baumgartel, The Cultures of Predynastic Egypt, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1955-1960);

L’Egypte avant lespyramides: IV millenaire (Paris, 1973); K. W. Butzer, Early Hydraulic
Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology (Chicago, 1976); M.A. Hoffmann, Egypt
before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundations of Egyptian Civilization (New York, 1979).
See Narmer, Scorpion.
Osorkon Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties

Around 1080 B.C.E., the typically Libyan name Osorkon was already
borne by a son of Herihor, the creator of the theocratic state of Thebes.
Around 980 B.C.E., Osorkon the Elder, who is presumed to be the uncle of
Shoshenq I, ruled as king during the Twenty-first Dynasty. Osorkon I
(924-889 B.C.E.) maintained the order established by this Shoshenq, who
was his father; he founded a residence near el-Lahun. Surviving reliefs
and capitals at Bubastis illustrate his architectural activity in the city that
had given birth to the Twenty-second Dynasty. Osorkon also richly en-
OSORKON 131
dowed the temples of Heliopolis. His statue at Byblos bears witness to re-
lations with the Lebanon.
Thanks to chance discovery, it is the reign of his grandson, Osorkon II
(874-850 B.C.E.), that best illustrates the apogee of the Shoshenqides. At
Bubastis, a monumental granite gate commemorates the celebration of
the royal jubilee. At Tanis and Bubastis, fine palmiform columns removed
from Pi-Riamsese, with Osorkon’s names taking the place of those of the
original owners, attest the proscription of the god Seth. Beautiful reliefs
were sculpted in the tomb he appropriated for his own use at Tanis and in
the vault constructed at Memphis by his eldest son, Shoshenq, who was
high priest of Ptah. The mementos of his private secretary, Harmes, along
with the funerary equipment of prince Harnakhte, the first prophet of
Amun, who was buried at Tanis, and that of the Memphite pontiff
Shoshenq represent a fine collection of the applied arts. Osorkon II dedi-
cated a chapel at Thebes, which was governed by another of his sons, Nim-
lot, who was first prophet of Amun. Osorkon II had the main temple at
Elephantine restored by the viceroy of Kush, who was his grandson. The
king presented the god Amun with a political testament requesting that
his progeny remain in the lucrative offices he had conferred upon them
and expressing the wish that “brother not envy brother.” In the following
generation and thereafter, the heirs to these offices and the sons of new
kings would find themselves in conflict. From the lengthy inscriptions
carved at Karnak by a grandson of Osorkon II, we learn that this system
failed: this eldest son of Takelot II, the “prince Osorkon,” who was pro-
moted to first prophet of Amun, and who used royal phraseology and cov-
ered his political actions and pious works under oracular decisions of
Amun and Herishef, was obliged on a number of occasions to reconquer
his seat against competitors from collateral branches of the royal family.
Osorkon III (787-757 B.C.E.), who was both first prophet of Amun and
pharaoh, governed only Upper Egypt south of Herakleopolis. Monu-
ments at Thebes bear witness to the ability of his sculptors and display the
first manifestations of the archaizing renaissance that was just beginning.
Ensconced in the eastern delta, Osorkon IV (730-715 B.C.E.) was one
of the last Shoshenqide pharaohs. He was an impotent bystander during
the rise of Sais, the Kushite expansion into Egypt, and the advance of the
Assyrians to the borders of Egypt.
Tanis: L’Or des pharaons (Paris, 1987).

See Bubastis, Third Intermediate Period.
Palace
Because of the needs of the major local cults and the constraints of do-
mestic and foreign policy, the king and his entourage were often on the
move. Palaces were therefore numerous: Memphis, which was the princi-
pal residence; Lisht, which replaced it during the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Dynasties; Thebes; and Amarna, the latter’s ephemeral rival. Palaces also
existed in Heliopolis, Tanis, Sais, Pi-Riamsese, and Gurob (from which the
court would go for recreation in the Faiyum). It is likely that in the Old
Kingdom, each new pyramid city included, in principle, a royal dwelling.
Each major divine sanctuary was supposed to include a palace from which
the king would emerge when he went to officiate in the temple. Small
palaces were adjacent to the royal funerary temples of Thebes. Texts in-
form us that from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Dynasty, nearly
all the kings founded a personal “house,” with fields for their own provi-
sioning, at Memphis, Heliopolis, Thebes, or elsewhere.
These buildings were made of mud brick and wood; only certain fea-
tures, such as door frames, were of stone. Well preserved remains of
palaces are therefore rare. The niched facades of Archaic Period funerary
monuments are generally considered as reproducing the appearance of
the earliest palatial dwellings. We know little about the palaces of the ear-
liest periods, though some Middle Kingdom remnants at Bubastis and
Avaris have been identified as palaces. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Dynasty palaces at Balias were spacious buildings on a terrace made of
caissons, a type also attested from the Late Period in the palace of Apries
at Memphis. At el-Malqata, where Amenophis III constructed his “House
of the Radiant Disk,” and at Amarna under Amenophis IV, we find vast
royal cities that included official buildings, production annexes, temples,
gardens, and the king’s principal residence. The latter included apart-
ments with bedchambers, dressing rooms, showers, a throne room, and a
hypostyle reception room. The same structure survived, naturally, in the
Ramesside Period, from which we have the remains of the walls of a palace
of Merneptah at Memphis, and the palace of Ramesses III at Medinet
Habu. A beautiful series of faience tiles employed as wall decoration re-
mind us of the luxury of the palaces of Sethos I, Ramesses II at Pi-Ri-
amsese, and Ramesses III.
In New Kingdom palaces, the decoration of the private chambers was
rustic and prophylactic (depictions of the god Bes figures), while that of
the official areas, like the decoration of temples, symbolized the tri-
umphant might of the king. This type of decoration was particularly ex-
pressive on the dais that supported the throne and below the huge “win-
dows of appearance” from which the king presided over parades.
PEDUBASTE 133
Pedubaste Third Intermediate Period

This name, which means “gift of Bastet,” refers to the lion and cat god-
dess of Bubastis. Patroness of the Libyan pharaohs, she enjoyed a growing
popularity from the tenth century on.
Manetho makes a Pedubaste the first king of a dynasty of four “Tanite”
monarchs, but as transmitted by the writers who cited excerpts from
Manetho’s history, the list of this dynasty seems corrupt; it is in no way
confirmed by contemporary sources. The latter enable us to ascertain that
at a time when the land was suffering from internecine warfare, a certain
Pedubaste, “son of Bastet” (c. 818-793 B.C.E.), ruled contemporaneously
with Shoshenq III, and that Pedubaste was recognized at Bubastis, Herak-
leopolis, Memphis, and Thebes. There is no mention of him, however, at
Tanis. Later, a Pedubaste II, “king of Tanis,” was one of the petty kings
B
who ruled at the time of the Assyrian invasions (c. 680-665 >C.E.). Some
monuments of his have been found at Tanis and Memphis.
We cannot exclude the possibility that Manetho’s Pedubaste is derived
from these two personalities, as is undoubtedly the case with the “Pharaoh
Pedubaste” of Tanis in whose time the epic adventures of a number of
heroic warriors were believed to have occurred. These adventures are re-
counted in several romances that Egyptians of the Greek and Roman eras
read in Demotic. In this “Pedubaste Cycle,” we encounter a melange of
recollections of the princely battles and court customs of the Libyan Pe-
riod, marginal allusions to the Assyrians (who were held at bay, according
to the texts), and a proclamation of imperialist pretensions in a world as
large as that of Alexander the Great. These texts reflect an obvious influ-
ence from Homer and from the events of the Hellenistic era. Pedubaste’s
vassals range beyond Babylon to fight and ally themselves with the queen
of the Amazons, and they penetrate into India. Warriors from Tanis,
Mendes, Sebennytos, and Leontopolis quarrel and joust with contingents
from other provinces. A priest of Buto leads herdsmen from the marshes
all the way to Thebes and takes the processional barque of Amun hostage,
with a priestly benefice the ransom. In an Egypt brought to heel and dom-
inated by foreigners, the men of letters who transmitted these glorious
creations discovered, in the reign of this “Pharaoh Pedubaste,” a dream of
manly deeds and restive independence.
G. Maspero, Les Contes populaires de I’Egypte ancienne, 2d ed. (Paris, 1889).

See Third Intermediate Period.
Pepy I 2289-2247 B.C.E., Sixth Dynasty

Pepy I was the son of Teti and Queen Iput I. For a time, the usurper
Userkare prevented him from succeeding his father. When he finally as-
cended the throne, he had a long reign, during the course of which he
changed his throne name from Nefersahor to Meryre. He had to suppress
a conspiracy fomented in the harem. He married two daughters of a fam-
ily of Abydos, each named Akhnesmeryre; a certain Djau, who bore the
title of vizier, might have been their brother.
Many traces remain of Pepy Is monumental activity: at Elephantine
(naos), Abydos, Bubastis (ka-chapel), as well as a famous copper statue
found at Hierakonpolis.
In promulgating a decree of immunity in favor of the pyramid city of
Snofru, Pepy I made a concession to the autonomist pressure of provinces
and institutions; that pressure increased during the dynasty. Expeditions
to Byblos, Sinai, and Nubia, as well as military operations against Asiatics,
punctuated his foreign policy. Pepy I built a pyramid at Saqqara; it was
rather modest in size, but its name was the origin of the word “Memphis.”
See Memphis, Nekhebu, Old Kingdom, Sixth Dynasty, Weni.
Pepy II 2241-2148 B.C.E., Sixth Dynasty

Fifth king of the Sixth Dynasty, Pepy II was the son of Pepy I and a half
brother of Merenre. Since he came to the throne when he was still a child,
his mother, Ankhnesmeryre, acted as regent, while the vizier Djau was an
eminence grise. He had a long reign — ninety-four years, which was too
long, undoubtedly. In studying how the reign progressed, we feel we can
perceive the progressive weakening of the central power in the face of af-
firmations of local particularism. Thus, Pepy II promulgated two decrees
of immunity, exempting the persons and goods of the temple of Min at
Koptos from any imposition or requisition by the central administration.
Moreover, the nomarchs tended to assume titles such as “overseer of
Upper Egypt” or “vizier,” which are clear proclamations of their preten-
sions to autonomy. Foreign policy also reveals the progressive crumbling
of pharaonic power. To be sure, the expeditions to the mines and quarries
of Sinai and Lower Nubia continued, as did the quest for exotic products
from Byblos and Punt; the search for trading partners was even taken as
far as the principalities of the Dongola region. Still, the inscriptions reveal
the vulnerability of Egyptian caravans and the impotence of their armed
escorts; the prestige of one official lay in his having recovered the body of
a colleague massacred by bedouins during an expedition.
Pepy II erected his pyramid in the southern part of the plateau of
PERSIANS 135
Saqqara; of middling size (barely more than 170 feet tall), it had the pe-
culiarity of having had its base enclosed in a girdle wall, no doubt second-
arily. Three small pyramids, each with its own enclosure, were dedicated
to three of the queens of Pepy II: Wedjebten, Iput II, and Neit.
See Harkhuf, Heqaib, Old Kingdom, Sixth Dynasty.

/'
Peribsen c. 2700 B.c.E., Second Dynasty

This pharaoh of the Second Dynasty reigned during the first half of the
twenty-seventh century B.C.E. He is especially distinctive in that his Horns
name, which is inscribed in the palace facade, is not surmounted by the
usual image of Horus, but by that of Seth; one of his successors,
Khasekhemwy, would have both deities represented there, face to face.
During the Second Dynasty, there was thus a dialectical movement in the
ideological structure — Horus, Seth, then Horus and Seth — that probably
conceals a political process. But what process? Antagonism between an
aristocracy brought up in the tradition of nomadic hunters and peasant
commoners, followed by a reconciliation? It is also possible that Peribsen
ruled over the south, while the north was controlled by a Memphite line
that was concurrent, but not necessarily hostile. A chapel dedicated to
Peribsen was erected in the funerary temple of King Senedj — a beautiful
example of cohabitation, if only in the hereafter!
See Archaic (Period), Khasekhemwy, Pharaoh.
Persians
On two occasions, Egypt was integrated into the Persian empire. The
first Persian domination lasted for 120 years (525-404 B.C.E.). The Great
Kings were represented at Memphis by a satrap and a treasurer, but on
the ideological level, these emperors were the successors of the Saite kings
and composed Manetho’s Twenty-seventh Dynasty. Liberated and valiantly
defended from 404 to 342 B.C.E., the land would experience a second Per-
sian domination that would last for only nine years.
Since the Saites had enabled the economy and the culture of Egypt to
flourish brilliantly, Cambyses and Darius I acquired an especially lucrative
province. These same Saites had opened Egypt to the outside world and
introduced immigrants (Greeks, Carians, Phoenicians, Jews) into their
kingdom, though they restricted them and confined them to their settle-
ments. While the Persians recruited native officials who were highly quali-
fied to administer the land, they also settled or reinforced the foreign gar-
risons (the Judeo-Aramaeans of Elephantine) and gave Greek and
Phoenician merchants a freer hand. It was around 445 B.C.E., under Ar-
taxerxes I, that Herodotus visited Egypt, asking Greeks and priests about
the past and present marvels of the land. In the opposite direction, Egypt-
ian physicians went to the court of the Great King, Egyptian workmen par-
ticipated in the decoration of his palaces, and Egyptian sailors and sol-
diers participated in his wars with the Medes. During this time Egypt also
acquired some Asiatic features: the camel, the white lotus, and astrology.
•v
With the first Persian pharaohs, the dominator and the dominated
seem to have accepted one another entirely: Cambyses (525-522 B.C.E.),
though he was later maligned, and especially Darius I (522-485 B.C.E.),
were depicted as genuine pharaohs on both public and private monu-

ments. Things took a turn for the worse, however, under the kings who
followed. The satrap’s exploitation of the land and the restrictions he im-
posed on the temples grew more burdensome as the Median wars exposed
the weaknesses of the empire. There was a revolt on the eve of Marathon,
quickly put down by Xerxes (486 B.C.E.); a more serious revolt, supported
by Athens, under Artaxerxes I (460 B.C.E.); and finally, the decisive revolt
under Darius II, in the final years of the fifth century B.C.E. Quantitatively
and qualitatively, there is a telling contrast between the canonical monu-
ments and ritual objects bearing the cartouche of Darius I and the alabas-
tra, the humble gifts of tributaries, inscribed with the cartouche and the
cuneiform titulary of Xerxes and Artaxerxes. In their inscriptions, the
elite no longer cited the name of the Achaemenid king, who was named
only in legal documents. A sort of theological nationalism would come to
identify the Asiatic invader with Seth, the murderer of Osiris and dis-
rupter of temples. Persian reprisals extended even to the removal of cult
statues from the land, while the Egyptians went so far as to degrade the
person of Artaxerxes III into the figure of a donkey, the animal of Seth.
The Great King who succeeded (not without difficulty) in once again
reducing Egypt to a satrapy (342 B.C.E.) struck coins depicting him
dressed as a Persian but crowned with the pshent. Notaries writing in De-
motic were obliged to date their legal documents to “Pharaoh Artax-
erxes,” but the people would recount that this emperor had made a ban-
quet of the Apis bull and the ram of Mendes. After his death (338 B.C.E.),
a native king, Khababash, was recognized for a time. In 330 B.C.E., after
vanquishing Darius III Codomanus, Alexander substituted a new domina-
tion, that of the Greeks.
E. Bresciani, “Egypt in the Persian Empire,” in H. Bengston, ed., The Greeks and the
Persians (London, 1968), pp-333-53; K. Mysliwiec, The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First
Millennium B.C.E. (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 135-58.
See Cambyses, Darius I, Saite (Dynasties), Udjahorresnet.
PHARAOH 137
Pharaoh
The term “pharaoh” derives from Egyptian per-aa, “great house,” which
originally designated the palace (as an institution) , and which from the
New Kingdom on was applied to the person of the king. The king was oth-
erwise called nesu, as well as “his/my majesty,” often followed by the for-
mula “life, prosperity, health.” His titulary consisted of five names, each
preceded by a title: Horus, Two Ladies, Horus of Gold, King of Upper and
Lower Egypt (the name that followed this title is referred to as the
“prenomen” or “throne name”), and Son of Re (this title preceded the
name the king received at birth). The last two of these names were written
in a “cartouche,” originally a magic circle that was elongated into an oval
to make it suitable for writing the names.
The appearance, the attributes, the activities — indeed, every aspect of
the pharaoh’s person—were highly codified and ritualized. He disposed
of a complex set of insignia, including a false beard, scepters, crowns (es-
pecially the white crown of Upper Egypt, the red crown of Lower Egypt,
and a combination of the two, the pshent), a uraeus (a diadem in the form
of a cobra), and an animal tail. The storage and maintenance of the royal
insignia, vestments, and jewels, as well as the personal care of the king,
were conceived of as priestly tasks that were entrusted to high officials,
who at first were exclusively members of the royal family. In fact, everyone
who could come into physical contact with the king was impregnated with
a sort of mana that demanded veneration and precaution: among the fur-
nishings from the tomb of Tutankhamun is a sack to contain the kohl
sticks used in his infancy!
Pharaoh’s reign was punctuated by complex ceremonies, including his
coronation, confirmation of his power each New Year, and a jubilee (sed-
festival), originally intended to affirm and renew his capacities. Likewise,
his funerary appurtenances — tomb, funerary temples, furnishings, mor-
tuary cult—set an enormous ritual machinery into motion. All these cere-
monies, along with the fact that the pharaoh was represented on the same
scale as the gods and goddesses, suffice to show that the Egyptian monar-
chy was a “divine kingship.”
FUNCTIONS AND ROLES OF THE EGYPTIAN KINGSHIP

The kingship originated with the creator god, who transmitted it to the
gods who succeeded him, and then to demigods, the “followers of Horus,”
who immediately precede the historical pharaohs in the king lists. As rule
by one man alone, the kingship reflected its very origin, for the principle
quality of the creator god was to be “one.” The pharaoh’s essential func-
tion was to prolong the work of the creator by maintaining the order he
had instituted, called maat, and by subjecting the flow of history to this
order. That is, the pharaoh was to reduce history to the repetition of ar-
chetypes established at the moment of creation. All of Pharaoh’s roles
lead back to that function.
Pharaoh’s Person
Events were dated by reference to the years of a reign, and by adding
up the succession of reigns, to creation itself. Like the creator god, who
named because he created, the pharaoh lent his own name to the territo-
ries conquered from neighboring peoples or reclaimed in Egypt itself
from marshes, watercourses, or uncultivated areas. These new founda-
tions— agricultural domains, units of production created to respond to
the needs of the moment—were organized into institutions defined by an
aspect of the personality of the king and could therefore be embodied in
a temple, a pyramid, or a statue. Such embodiments were the object of a
cult: thus, we see Ramesses II officiating before a statue of himself, which
is the hypostasis of an institution called “Ramesses-meryamun-ruler-of-
rulers”!
Divine Cult
Maintaining the order of the cosmos was to “satisfy” the deities who gov-
erned its major principles. It was thus the pharaoh’s duty to build, restore,
and enlarge their temples, and to see to their cults. He was the agent par
excellence of the rites carried out on their behalf, and in the representa-
tions carved on the walls, it is he alone who officiates. In practice, he dele-
gated this duty to the clergy, whose membership he officially controlled.
The pharaoh’s duties to the gods and goddesses were those of a son to his
ancestors. They were just as much his ancestors as were his predecessors on
the throne; thus, care for the divine temples and maintenance of the fu-
nerary cult of the royal ancestors were equally incumbent on him.
Foreign Relations
Just as the creator god made being arise from nonbeing and ceaselessly
repelled the latter’s return, so the pharaoh was obliged to create being by
“extending the boundaries” and defending Egypt from the assaults of
neighboring peoples in whom the threat of chaos was made manifest. He
was thus in charge of the army and of diplomacy.
The Government of the Land

As representative of the creator god, the pharaoh was master of all the
lands, goods, and people. In principle, he administered all the workforce
PHARAOH 139
and all the means of production via a labyrinth of institutions and the
people assigned to them: crown lands, the central administration and its
bureaus, temple domains, private funerary foundations. These all had
varying degrees of autonomy, but they were all subject to the pharaoh,
who had the power to impose taxes or compulsory labor on them, except
when they had been granted immunity. He arbitrated conflicts over juris-
diction, saw to it that statutes that had been violated were respected, set-
tled disputes over landholdings, reestablished or reorganized what had
fallen into obsolescence, took social or economic initiatives as circum-
stances required, named or confirmed officeholders, and so forth.
EXERCISE OF POWER
In his exercise of power, the pharaoh depended on his vizier, a sort of
prime minister who saw to it that the king’s decisions were carried out.
These decisions were made after consulting a council of courtiers and
high officials; in the official genre called the “royal novel,” their indeci-
sion and timidity serve as a foil to the pharaoh’s spirit of initiative. But
the pharaoh had the great advantage of being inspired by divine speech
(Hu) and perception (Sia), which permeated him. Every word he spoke
under the force of this inspiration was set down in writing and was issued
with the formal pomp that authenticated it as a “royal decree” (udj
nesu). These decrees were addressed to individuals and groups, and their
content ranged from greetings to decisions of general interest. There
was no independent legislation to which the king was obliged to refer,
but only an aggregate of “laws” that represented the normative content
of all the “royal decrees” and “ancient writings.” He consulted these an-
cient writings because his exercise of power was dominated by the need
to maintain the original order that constituted both its justification and
its limit.
THE LEGITIMACY OF THE KING

In the dogma, the basis of Pharaoh’s legitimacy lay in his divine de-
scent: the solar creator god had engendered him by uniting with a human
woman in the guise of her husband. In practice, this belief was subject to
various interpretations.
Since kingship was an office, the customary principles that regulated
the inheritance of offices applied to it: male primogeniture, or, by default,
inheritance by the oldest brother. In fact, succession from father to son or
from brother to brother occurred often in Egyptian history.
If there was no male heir, the office could fall to a female member of
the royal family. But women rarely held the office as pharaohs in their
own right (as in the cases of Nitocris, Nefrusobk, Hatshepsut, and

Twosre); most often, a female pharaoh was simply the person who held
the power until she transferred it to her husband. This fact, however, in
no way means that royal legitimacy in general was based on marriage with
a female relative; incest has too often been asserted, either for lack of crit-
ical sense or for love of the spectacular.
The creator god could even choose a pharaoh whom neither the cus-
tomary principles of succession nor even his own social or geographical
origin seemed to predispose for this office. In such cases, he signaled his
choice by some sign: by a prodigious birth (the first three kings of the
Fifth Dynasty), by a dream granted to the lucky choice (Tuthmosis IV was
promised the throne while sleeping at the foot of the Sphinx), or by an
oracle or unexpected event (Hatshepsut, Haremhab). We can easily imag-
ine the ideological manipulations carried out by factions or individuals
desirous of sanctioning their coups d’etat by means of fabricated miracles.
In a pinch, any pharaoh could legitimate his assumption of the kingship
by emphasizing that the circumstances that brought him to office were a
manifestation of divine will, relying on an ancient belief that the royal of-
fice found its justification in the very ability to exercise it. This belief ex-
plains the archaic rituals of the scd-festival, which affirmed the abilities of
the king, as well as the theme of the “sporting” king, which made its ap-
pearance in the New Kingdom.
There was thus no objective rule defining the legitimacy of a king. And we
can easily see how every succession to the throne aroused its share of ambi-
tions, cabals, and rivalries. That is why a pharaoh did his utmost to consoli-
date the pretensions of his eldest son or his chosen successor by naming him
erpa (hereditary prince) and head of the army, or even associating him on
the throne as coregent. Conversely, that is why a newly crowned pharaoh
had to endeavor to solidify his position through intense propaganda—for
example, by publishing an apologetic assessment of the reign of his prede-
cessor, as in the case of the Instruction of Amenemhet I, written in the reign
of his son Senwosret I, and Papyrus Harris, a summary of the reign of
Ramesses III, which was composed under his son Ramesses IV.
PHARAOH: HUMAN DIVINITY OR DIVINE HUMAN?

In contrast to the official texts that heap laudatory epithets on
pharaohs — to the point of assimilating them to the gods — some literary
sources depict historical pharaohs in terms that are scarcely flattering.
The examples range from Cheops, rebuked for his lack of respect for
human life, to Pepy II, scrambling nightly via a ladder to satisfy his passion
for his general. Close examination of the official texts reveals their rhetor-
PINUDJEM 141
ical character. What was divine was the royal office. He who held it was
chosen by the creator god as the vehicle of his will; although divine inspi-
ration flowed through the king, divine power in no way inhabited him.
The pharaoh sometimes benefited from miracles, but never did he per-
form any himself; far from acting as a god, he was acted on by the divine.
In short, he was only an intercessor through whose mediation the plans of
the gods descended to invest the world; or conversely, thanks to him,
human activities were organized so as to consummate the order estab-
lished by the gods.
H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the
Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago, 1948); G. Posener, De la divinite du pharaon,
Cahiers de la Societe Asiatique 15 (Paris, i960); P. Vernus, in E. Le Roy Ladurie, ed.,
Les Monarchies (Paris, 1986), pp. 29-42; D. O’Connor and D. P. Silverman, Ancient
Egyptian Kingship (Leiden, 1995).
See Amenemhet I, Conspiracy, Coregency, Loyalism, Merykare, Ramesses III,
Sources for History, Third Intermediate Period.
Pinudjem 1070-1032 B.C.E., Twenty-first Dynasty

Piankh, a soldier of obscure origin, had succeeded Herihor as head of
Upper Egypt during the final years of Ramesses XI. After him, his son Pin-
udjem became first prophet of Amun and generalissimo. His monumental
policy was comparable to Herihor’s: embellishments and restorations at
Karnak and Medinet Habu, care of the mummies of former kings (ca-
chette in the tomb of Amenophis II). His career was also comparable to
that of the founder of the Theban theocracy in the south, though he car-
ried matters further. After about fifteen years of rule, Pinudjem assumed
the canonical attributes of a pharaoh, thus becoming the colleague of
Smendes, the founder of the Twenty-first Dynasty. With his wife Henuttawy,
who was descended from the Ramesside family, he formed a sort of pivot in
the redistribution of power. One of his sons, Psusennes I, who was married
to his own sister Mutnodjmet, went to Tanis as the successor of Smendes.
Pinudjem’s daughter Maatkare was the first virgin bride of Amun. Two of
his sons, Masaharta and Menkheperre, would each inherit the pontificate,
which would then pass through the generations of the latter’s descendants.
The bodies of King Pinudjem and his family—with the exception of those
of the pontiffs Menkheperre and Smendes, which are still being sought—
were found in the royal cachette of Deir el-Bahari. They had been re-
grouped, just like the bodies of former kings, with the burials of the high
priest Pinudjem II, grandson of Pinudjem I, and his wives and daughters.
See Cachettes, Herihor, High Priest of Amun, Third Intermediate Period.

Pi-Riamsese
The name Pi-Riamsese means “house of Ramesses,” or, in its complete
form, “house of Ramesses-beloved-of-Amun, great of victories”; during the
reign of Ramesses, it was renamed “house of Ramesses-beloved-of-Amun,
the great ka of Re-Harakhty.” The two names summarize the program of
Ramesses II: political offensives and exaltation of the solar aura of the
monarch. The city was the most important of the many foundations of this
great king, a new capital city whose core was the former Avaris.
Located on the easternmost branch of the Nile between the river and
the eastern desert, the former Hyksos capital of Avaris and its old temple
of Seth had experienced new activity at the end of the Eighteenth Dy-
nasty. Under Sethos I, the godson of Seth and a military man who was
born in the region, a royal residence was installed there, and Ramesses II
developed it into a vast city when he ascended the throne. As at Amarna,
there was a prestigious ensemble of palaces, temples, government build-
ings, villas, and quarters inhabited by common people. The city included
Avaris in the south and stretched far beyond it to the north. The “store
city” named “Ramses,” on which the Children of Israel were forced to
labor, was none other than Pi-Riamsese. The promotion of the ancestral
home of the Nineteenth Dynasty was an act of strategic importance in the
face of the recurrent restlessness of the bedouins of the Isthmus of Suez
and the thrust of the Hittites toward Palestine. At Avaris, the king’s resi-
dence, the quarters of his armed forces, and the shipyards of his fleet
would be better placed to control the eastern borders of the delta and to
intervene more quickly in Canaan and Phoenicia. The city functioned
fully as a capital again under Ramesses III. Like everything else, it de-
clined under the following Ramessides. Doomed by a reduction in the
flow of the eastern branch of the Nile, and exposed to Libyan and Asiatic
incursions, it was replaced by Tanis as seat of government and port around
the year 1 too B.C.E.
Pi-Riamsese is located slightly north of Faqus, between Tell el-Daba,

Khatana, and Qantir, and it lies deep below the level of the cultivation.
Three categories of sources permit us a picture of its ancient functions
and splendor, a fine corpus of texts and two sets of archaeological data:
1. Carved in stone, many accounts give us a glimpse of this city. These

accounts include details of the deeds of Ramesses II, along with ad-
ministrative and technical documents, the titularies of high officials,
and literary texts written in praise of the city. It was a parade ground
and a naval base at the frontier between Egyptian and Asiatic terri-
tory; it was also a pleasant place to visit or to settle in. It was the
PITHOM 143
sumptuous residence where the pharaoh received his tributaries and

celebrated his jubilees, and where offerings were made to the three
major gods of the state, Amun, Re, and Ptah, to the dynastic god
Seth, to other “gods of Ramesses,” and to various hypostases of the
royal person manifested in mighty colossi.
2. After the metropolis declined, it became a quarry and a warehouse
for the kings of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties, who
carried off a striking series of monuments that were reused at Tanis,
along with pieces that have been found at Bubastis and Leontopolis.
The remnants of these monuments reveal the proportions and the
excellent workmanship of Ramesside statuary, as well as the pan-
theon worshiped in Ramesses’ temples. The remains include colossi
(among them a fragment of the largest one known), original statues
and older statues to which the Ramessides added their own names,
tall columns and monolithic chapels, obelisks large and small, frag-
ments of immense walls, and stelae lauding the piety and the victo-
ries of Ramesses II, all of it fashioned in all sorts of stones that the
founder of the city commanded to be brought from the deserts and
the cataract. A unique inscription, the 400-Year Stela, commemo-
rates Ramesses’ god Seth-Baal and the ancestors of the king.
3. The soil of Qantir and its environs contains scarcely more than
sparse remains of temples, but it has yielded many noteworthy finds:
the brilliantly decorated ceramic wall coverings of a palace, molds
used in issuing scarabs glorifying the kingship and colossi that were
worshiped, vestiges of workshops where arms were manufactured,
door and window frames of villas in which princes and ministers
lived, and many stelae on which soldiers and hirelings had them-
selves represented adoring colossal effigies of Ramesses II.
M. Bietak, “Avaris and Piramesse: Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile

Delta,” Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979): 225-90.
See Avaris, Ramesses II.
Pithom
The city of Pithom was otherwise called “House of the god Atum in the
territory of Tjeku.” Along with Ramses (i.e., Pi-Riamsese), Pithom was one
of the two store cities whose bricks the Children of Israel were obliged to
make, according to the biblical book of Exodus. Located at Tell el-Rataba,
an earlier Pithom was a small Ramesside foundation, a secondary base
with a fortress that controlled access from the Isthmus of Suez. Its temple
to Atum was still functioning in the time of Osorkon II. In the Saite Pe-
riod, the base and its temple of Atum, along with some of the statues that
adorned it, were moved several miles east to Tell el-Maskhuta, which later
served as a stop along the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea that was
dug under Necho II and Darius I.
Piye ( Of Piankhy) 747-716 B.c.E., Kushite Dynasty

Piye is the first Sudanese pharaoh from Napata who is well-known to us,
thanks to his tomb at el-Kurru, his temple at Gebel Barkal, and especially
to two stelae discovered at the latter site. His name is written Piankhy in
hieroglyphs, literally “Living One,” but it seems that this writing conceals
a Sudanese word, piye, with the same meaning, which was written phonet-
ically as py in hieratic. One of the stelae evokes the creation of an Egypto-
Sudanese empire, proclaiming that by the will of Amun of Napata, the
sovereign of Kush made and unmade, as he pleased, kings and leaders in
both Egypt and Nubia. The other stela, often called the Triumphal Stela,
contains a detailed account of how Piye, beating back a northern coalition
led by Tefnakhte, extended Kushite sovereignty over the delta.
The Triumphal Stela is an exceptional document that represents an ini-
tial adaptation of Egyptian literary conventions and pharaonic ideological
standards to the interests of the dynasty that emerged from the south. This
original work stresses Piye’s strict devotion, his respect for traditional
taboos, and his solicitude toward the royal stables. With a sort of naive ob-
jectivity, it reflects the give and take between the universalistic concepts of
an outsider who incarnated the theocracy of Amun and a recognition of
the pretensions to royalty that the final successors of Shoshenq I dis-
played. Thanks to the new school of scribes who worked at Napata, we
catch a glimpse, for once, of the personality of a general and diplomat,
and at the same time, of the complex political situation at the end of the
eighth century B.C.E.
PP- 73-85-
See Kush, Kushite (Dynasty), Napata.
Princes, Princesses
The boys and girls born to the king bore the titles “king’s son” and
“king’s daughter.” In various periods, this title was extended to nonroyal
individuals. At the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, true “king’s sons”
were among the highest officials.
Under later dynasties, some of their descendants, now less influential,
bore the titles of princes and princesses. Delegation of power could entail
PRINCES,PRINCESSES *45
FIGURE 6. Ramesside prince with “sidelock of youth” wrapped in a band of cloth. From
J.-F. Champollion, Monuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie, vol. 3 (Paris, 1843), pi. 213.
the assigning of seich titles, and we find hypothetical “king’s sons” among
the local governors of the Second Intermediate Period. This usage was re-
tained in the New Kingdom to designate those who conducted divine pro-
cessions in place of the king (“king’s sons” of Amun and of Nekhbet) and
the viceroy of Nubia, the “King’s Son of Kush.”
Certain actual daughters of the king were closely associated with their
father on monuments and in the cults; their names were enclosed in car-
touches, which was not at all the case with royal sons. Even adult princes
and princesses were depicted wearing a false sidelock, a sign of youth.
Until the Eighteenth Dynasty, the lock was braided; afterward, it hung
down and was wrapped in a band of cloth (see figure 6).
During the well-attested reign of Ramesses II, who commissioned repre-
sentations of endless processions of both his sons and his daughters, a num-
ber of princes were invested with military and priestly offices, a practice that
seems to have been infrequent in Egyptian history. At the end of the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty, an old title, erpa (originally iry-pat, which meant something
like “member of the landed nobility”), was used to designate the highest-
ranking individual in the kingdom. In the Ramesside Period, this title, which
is conveniently translated as “prince,” distinguished the son whom the reign-
ing monarch had chosen to be his deputy and his heir presumptive.
Psammetichus Twenty-sixth Dynasty

This name, perhaps of Libyan origin, was borne by three kings who
reigned at critical moments in the Saite dynasty: its rise, its apogee, and its
sudden fall. Herodotus tells a number of stories about Psammetichus I
(664-610 B.C.E.): how he eliminated approximately twelve other kings,
how he recruited Greek and Carian pirates, how his Egyptian soldiers, de-
prived of their privileges, migrated to the Sudafi, and how he created a
corps of interpreters to forge fruitful and permanent links with the Greek
world. Egyptian sources are in accord with these traditions.
In 664 B.C.E. , the Kushites, who had just reconquered the principalities
of the delta, were driven back to the Sudan by the Assyrians. Psam-
metichus prevented a return of the Kushites and eliminated the Mesh-
wesh chieftainships of the north. In 656 B.C.E., he annexed the Thebais,
where his daughter Nitocris became “adoratrice of Amun.” In Upper and
Middle Egypt, his administrators were new supporters or notables from
the delta, where autonomous “great chiefs” now disappeared.
Militarily and diplomatically, the state once again became strong. A
general mobilization put an end to Libyan incursions, the Scythian hordes
were turned back from Egypt, a raid penetrated into Lower Nubia, and
Psammatichus was even able to send troops to the Euphrates in an at-
tempt to aid the dying Assyrian empire.
The reign of the first Psammetichus was remarkably long. That of his
grandson, Psammetichus II (595-589 B.C.E.), was quite brief. Nonetheless,
the great number and the sculptural quality of the monuments that have
come down to us from the latter and his ministers are significant. The
major event of his reign was his war against the Kushite kingdom of Nap-
ata; his Egyptian soldiers and foreign auxiliaries penetrated beyond the
Third Cataract and undoubtedly went as far as the city of Napata itself. In
a final manifestation of the old enmity between the Saites and the
Kushites, the names of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty kings were erased, retro-
spectively annulling their pretensions to rule over Egypt.
Down to the Ptolemaic Period, many Egyptians were baptized with the
glorious name of Psammetichus. One of them, the son of the usurper
Amasis, had the misfortune of coming to the throne just when the Per-
sians attacked Egypt. His reign lasted only six months (526-525 B.C.E.).
The Great King Cambyses dethroned him and then forced him to commit
suicide.
A. de Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,

1972), pp. 129, 139-40, and 190-94.
See Adoratrice, Amasis, Erasures, Kushite (Dynasty), Saite (Dynasties).
PTAHHOTPE 147
Psusennes 1040-993 B.c.E., Twenty-first Dynasty

This son of the Theban pontiff Pinudjem went to Tanis and succeeded
Smendes. His reign was especially long. On occasion, he took the name
“Ramesses Psusennes,” styling himself a successor of the Twentieth Dy-
nasty, but the deeds of this personage, who proclaimed himself both king
and first prophet of Amun, characterize him as one who established a
Lower Egyptian regime dominated by Theban theology. On eleven acres
of the flat, sandy hilltop of Tanis, he founded a temenos dedicated to
Amun. Beautiful old statues, the famous so-called Hyksos monuments,
embellished its temple. In building his tomb at Tanis, Psusennes broke
with the tradition of preparing the pharaoh’s final resting place in the Val-
ley of the Kings. The subterranean areas of this tomb, miraculously unrav-
aged, were excavated and explored by Pierre Montet between 1939 and
1946. This pharaoh, whose reign spanned the turn of the first millen-
nium, thus owes his fame today to his gold mask, his silver coffin, his pre-
cious vessels, and his abundant collection of jewelry, which are comple-
mented by the treasures of his minister Undebaunded and his successor
Amenemope. The quantity of precious metals shows that the royal treas-
ury was relatively full at this time, though Egyptian expansion was on the
wane. It was in the reign of Psusennes that Saul, and then the young
David, laid the foundations of Judah and Israel with no intervention from
Egypt.
P. Montet, La Necropole royale de Tanis, vol. 2: Les Constructions et le tombeau de

Psousennes (Paris, 1951).
See Pinudjem, Tanis, Third Intermediate Period.
Ptahhotpe
Tradition credited Ptahhotpe, who was supposedly the vizier of Djed-
kare Izezi, with authoring a wisdom text (the Instruction of Ptahhotpe) so
famous that it even influenced the monastic ideal of the Copts. The his-
torical reality of Ptahhotpe is far from certain, but the spirit that animates
the work seems indeed to be that of the Old Kingdom; the world is ruled
by an immanent order (maat), which punishes transgressors more or less
automatically, while the creator god who established this order remains
somewhat aloof.
Ptahwash (orWashptab)
Ptahwash was overseer of works and vizier during the reigns of Sahure
and Neferirkare. He had an experience so prodigious that the latter king
commanded that an account of it be carved in Ptahwash s tomb. Unfor-
tunately, the inscription has come down to us in a highly damaged condi-
tion. We can see, however, that this adventure brought him both glory and
death. In fact, he was struck by an illness that had such unusual symptoms
that ancient writings had to be consulted — in vain, though, for he could
not be saved. The king made a point of assuring him a sumptuous funeral.
A. Roccati, La Litterature historique sous Vancient empire egyptien (Paris, 1982), p. 108.
Ptolemy
Satrap of Egypt when the empire of Alexander the Great was divided up,
the Macedonian general Ptolemy, son of Lagos, became its king —
“Pharaoh Ptolemy” to the native inhabitants — after the disappearance of
his very nominal sovereign, Alexander Aigos (309 B.C.E.) . His name would
be borne by his fourteen successors on the throne of Alexandria, and this
Ptolemaic (or Lagide) dynasty would rule nearly three centuries (323-30
B.C.E.) . The dynasty was part of the political and cultural history of both
the young Hellenistic world and the ancient world of Egypt. It thus had two
aspects, one Alexandrian and the other pharaonic. The Ptolemies, who
practiced consanguineous marriage, endowed themselves with Greek epi-
thets characterizing their family relationships, which were presumed to be
affectionate, or attributing to them certain virtues that the Greek morality
of the times conferred on an ideal sovereign. The epithets included
Philadelphos (brother loving), Philopator (father loving), Philometor
(mother loving), Soter (savior), Euergetes (beneficent), Epiphanes (re-
vealed), and Eucharistos (endowed with divine grace). Translated into
Egyptian, these epithets took their place in the kings’ hieroglyphic titular-
ies, along with native epithets that related or associated them with the
deities of the land: Re, Amun, Ptah, Isis, and the Apis bull. The Ptolemies
also were distinguished by the major political role played by the sister-
queens, from Arsinoe Philadelphos, the divine companion of Ptolemy II,
to the marvelous Cleopatra VII.
Though Hecataeus of Abdera had written a philosophical treatment of
the merits of the ancient monarchy for the information of Ptolemy I, and
though Manetho, a priest from Sebennytos, had written works in Greek
about the history and beliefs of his native land, there is nothing pharaonic
in what history has to say about the bloody quarrels that eventually tore
apart the royal family and threw Alexandria into turmoil. Egyptian priests
PTOLEMY 149
were rarely caught up in these quarrels. In Alexandria, politics involved

the royal circle, the soldiery, and the people; legislation, customs, dress,
architecture, sculpture, language, science, and culture were essentially
Greek, except in the mixed quarter where the Serapeum was located. For-
eign policy was conducted on the scale of the Hellenized world; as geopol-
itics obliged, the first three Lagides conquered Palestine and southern
Syria, as the Ramessides had done long ago, but their Greek and seafaring
horizon also led them to dominate the Aegean, Cyrenaica, Cilicia, Caria,
and Cyprus. Their military force consisted of Greeks and others, who were
settled en masse and were granted the benefit of hereditary land tenure. It
was Ptolemy IV who rearmed the Egyptian military caste, who played a de-
cisive role in the defensive victory over the Syrian adversary Antiochus III
at Raphia in 217 B.C.E. This reawakened native population would turn
against the regime on more than one occasion. A number of nationalist
revolts broke out, and under Ptolemy V, the native pharaohs Harwennofre
and Ankhwennofre even liberated the Thebais.
During the second and first centuries B.C.E., resistance in the provinces
and the weakness of the government in Alexandria increased the auton-
omy of the clergies, economic powers well placed to influence the psy-
chology of the people. These hereditary priests, who controlled the sacred
revenues and preserved the ancestral writings and arts, thoroughly inte-
grated the Greco-Macedonian kings and queens into their ritual system. A
typical product of the times was the drafting of honorific decrees by
priestly synods to exalt the victories and the pious deeds of the Ptolemies;
the texts were issued in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. In the course of
journeys in the delta, or even as far as Upper Egypt, certain Lagides
donned the clothing and performed the immemorial ritual acts of a
pharaoh: coronations at Memphis, visits to sacred animals, foundation or
consecration of temples. The high priests of Memphis frequented the
Alexandrian court, and the latter even received communications from a
minor priest and visionary who lived at Saqqara. Along with Sarapis, who
was identified with Osiris-Apis, Isis became a Greek deity, and the Hel-
lenic rulers borrowed her insignia.
Under the Lagide dynasty, the temples in many cities were enlarged or
entirely rebuilt in pure Egyptian style. Philae, Ombos (Kom Ombo), Edfu,
Esna, Dendara, and el-Madamud are the best preserved of the great con-
structions that were begun in the names of the Ptolemies. The learned
scribes who composed the inscriptions covering the walls of these temples
used a complex writing system that radically expanded the expressive po-
tential of written characters that were also images; at the same time, they
refined the architectural semantics and the ornamental grammar of the
language. To a greater extent than ever, they used representations and

texts to make explicit records of the rituals necessary for the security of the
cosmos, as well as of the myths that determined its configuration. As had
always been the case, in the reliefs and in the texts that accompanied them,
the king was the sole mediator, performing the rituals that maintained the
gods and goddesses and receiving their blessings on the kingdom and its
inhabitants. It is thus the vast, intact Ptolemaic temples, with their super-
abundance of inscriptions, that have preserved the most extensive sources
for reconstructing the pharaonic ideological system and understanding its
symbols. And yet, under these Ptolemies, another aesthetic, another de-
scription of power and of man, and other interpretations of the universe
were winning over the elites of the land.
M. Chauveau, Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra (Ithaca, 2000), chapters 1 and 2.

See Alexandria, Cleopatra.
Punt
When the sun rose, it appeared “to the southeast, behind the land of
Punt.” This distant land is sometimes mentioned in royal inscriptions and
private autobiographies as the destination of peaceful expeditions dis-
patched by the king, principally to obtain incense, myrrh, and olibanum,
products that were indispensable to the cults of the gods and to human
luxury (censings, unguents). This land of aromatic substances was some-
times accessed by ship. Prefabricated boats were carried along the trails of
the eastern desert and were launched on the Red Sea at Quseir or Wadi
Gawasis, and the journey to Punt was sometimes combined with an expe-
dition to the Sinai. The Puntites also sailed small boats of their own to the
shores of Egypt. Egyptologists have long since given up on locating Punt
in Arabia Felix (Yemen), or on equating it with the biblical land of Ophir
and its “mines of King Solomon.” In fact, there was also a land route that
brought the products of Punt to Egypt; the “mountain of Punt” and its au-
riferous pools clearly lay on the borders of Kush, in the Nile valley of
Nubia. Scholars no longer feel a need to go as far as Zanzibar or Socotra,
or even to Somalia in search of Punt.
Punt was home to various incense-bearing trees (Boswellia and Corrt-
miphera, which thrive on low rainfall), dom-palms, and species of hard,
black trees called heben in Egyptian, the origin of our own word “ebony.”
Visitors to Punt encountered panthers and cheetahs, monkeys and ba-
boons (the latter on dry hills), as well as giraffes and rhinoceroses, ani-
mals that dwelled in the plains. Gold also came from Punt. In the middle
of summer, rain fell on the mountain of Punt only in the miraculous form
PYRAMIDS 151
of veritable deluges. These details gleaned from texts enable us to locate

the famous shores of Punt and their vast hinterland. The land called Punt
included a desert region and a Sahelian region between the 22nd and the
18th parallel N. The south of Punt might have included the present-day
province of Kassala and the north of Eritrea. To the west and the north-
west, an undefinable border separated it from Kush and the land of the
Medjoi (roughly Etbaya).
Egyptian explorers could get to Punt by land, though they had to cross
vast stretches of mountains and desert. Punt could also be reached by sea,
but at the cost of huge logistical efforts and a lengthy, coast-hugging jour-
ney. Even so, the land was both divine and familiar. Min of Koptos, the pa-
tron god of the trails in the eastern desert, was the prototype of the Med-
joi from Punt and of the wanderers who explored that land. The sky
goddess Hathor, patroness of major voyages to foreign lands, was “mis-
tress of Punt.”
The importing of precious incense “from hand to hand and at the price
of numerous exchanges” was unpredictable and irregular. Sending a naval
expedition meant exposure to the perils of the sea and to the mysteries of
the ends of the earth. (It was on a voyage to those regions that the hero of
the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor found himself on the ephemeral island
of a divine serpent.) For a king of Egypt, to send a large fleet to this dis-
tant land of incense, gold, and exotic African products was an act of
considerable economic and religious significance. Such an act, inspired
by the god Amun, was the sole major foreign exploit during the reign of
Queen Hatshepsut, who had the happy circumstances recorded in beauti-
ful texts and picturesque images.
The first known mentions of relations with Punt date to the Fifth Dy-
nasty, and thus to the twenty-fifth century B.C.E. (in the reign of Sahure,
and then that of Izezi, to whom a pygmy was brought). The latest attested
expeditions to that land date to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. We may wonder
whether, when he planned a canal linking the two seas and when he
launched Phoenician triremes on the Red Sea, Necho I intended to com-
pete with southern Arabia by introducing aromatics and other products
from Punt into the Mediterranean market.
C. Lalouette, Thebes ou la naissance d’un empire (Paris, 1986), pp. 246-56.

See Hatshepsut, Henenu, Inyotefoqer, Ramesses III, Sahure.
Pyramids
As mediator between the people and the universe ruled by the divine,
the royal office conferred a divine nature on the one who exercised it, and
this higher destiny continued after death. As early as the Archaic Period,
rituals and buildings intended for the burial of the pharaoh were different
from those that benefited his subjects. The Old Kingdom was an inordi-
nate example of the difference. Large brick structures (called mastabas)
were erected above the burial vaults of the Archaic kings. Under Djoser, a
series of stone mastabas placed one atop the other yielded the Step Pyra-
mid, which was surrounded by a vast imitation jubilee palace. Under
Snofru, the “true” pyramid was achieved in stages: the step pyramid of
Maidum, the “rhomboidal” southern pyramid of Dahshur, and the true
northern pyramid of Dahshur. Cheops created the largest of the pyra-
mids, while that of Chephren is nearly as tall. At Giza, Saqqara, and
Abusir, the pharaohs who succeeded them contented themselves with far
less ambitious mountains of stone, but there is still a marked difference
between these monuments and the surrounding mastabas of their offi-
cials. Constructed on the western plateau above the plain of Memphis,
each pyramid had a funerary temple at its foot; this temple was connected
by a roofed causeway to a valley temple and a “pyramid city” whose resi-
dents farmed the countryside. Smaller pyramids were built next to that of
the king to receive the burials of his queens.
Beginning with Wenis, the Pyramid Texts were copied in the king’s
(and later the queens’) burial chamber; these were formulas whose recita-
tion enabled the king, identified with Osiris, to regain his corporal in-
tegrity, to ascend to the sky, to share in the eternity of the sun, to escape
the dangers of the netherworld, and to take nourishment. The Step Pyra-
mid surely represented the idea of ascension, while the shape of the true
pyramid can only be the object of conjecture (projecting sunbeams, pri-
mordial mound). Specialists in ancient architecture continue to debate
certain details of how the pyramids were constructed, principally the
method of constructing the ramps used to lift the stones. The specialists
recognize the increasing know-how of those who built them and the unde-
niable process of trial and error they went through. Despite earlier specu-
lation, scholars now know that the Memphite pyramids were not con-
ceived to ward off plunderers, who would have been unimaginable at that
time, or to transmit some message to our own day. The volume of the fills
is enormous relative to that of the access corridors and the chambers,
which is not practical. But a pyramid was not just a funerary locale; it was
the pinnacle of the monument that each reign represented.
With the exception of Mentuhotpe II, at least, who had a sort of
stepped mastaba with porticos at Deir el-Bahari, the pharaohs of the
Middle Kingdom endowed their tombs with a pyramidal form. These in-
clude the cemeteries of el-Tarif (Eleventh Dynasty); of Lisht, el-Lahun,
PYRAMIDS 153
Dahshur, and Hawara (Twelfth Dynasty); of Mazghuna and Saqqara South

(Thirteenth Dynasty); and of Dra Abu el-Naga (Seventeenth Dynasty).
From the Eleventh Dynasty on, the Pyramid Texts became accessible to
private persons, and — though in reduced size — the pyramid form be-
came common atop the funerary chapels of the nobles in the New King-
dom. The monarchs of the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Dynasties
prepared rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and later pharaohs lo-
cated their funerary monuments in the temples of cities. But the Kushite
kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty returned to the ancient custom, erecting
royal pyramids in Nubia, as did their Napatan and Meroitic successors.
J.-P. Lauer, Le Probleme des pyramides d’Egypte (Paris, 1952); G. Goyon, Le Secret des
bdtisseurs des grandes pyramides (Paris, 1977); I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, rev.
ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985); M. Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (New York,
1
997)-
Queens
Egyptian couples were singularly modern. Men had only one official
wife at a time. Women had their own property and enjoyed full legal
rights, and in the iconography, they were depicted on the same scale as
their husbands. Exogamy was the rule; consanguineous marriage did not
become widespread until the Hellenistic era. The king, however, was su-
perhuman; this was reflected in his matrimonial arrangements and in the
status of his wives. He had a number of wives, one of whom, from the
Twelfth Dynasty on, was titled “great king’s wife.” He could even marry his
sister. In the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the “great wife” was reg-
ularly the king’s half sister, and this practice was almost a rule in the Mace-
donian family of the Ptolemies. Sometimes, a “king’s daughter” assumed
the rank of “great wife.” Princes generally took wives from among the sub-
jects, while the king sometimes welcomed the daughter of an allied sover-
eign as his bride.
Pharaonic matriarchy, along with a principle of a necessary solar con-
sanguinity, is a speculative model in which we can no longer believe. The
role of the womb in transmitting legitimacy was passive and doctrinally
limited to a mythic “theogamy”: the mother of the king was believed to
have been impregnated with a predestined child by the supreme deity,
who was incarnated in the body of the physical father. Nor did a private
person who managed to ascend the throne have to legitimize himself by
marrying an heiress of the preceding dynasty; verified cases of such
unions, whose importance was more political than juridical, are quite
rare.
From as early as the Archaic Period, as demonstrated by their titles and
their tombs, queens enjoyed a status that distinguished them from ordi-
nary women. In the Old Kingdom, their burial place was not a simple
mastaba, but rather a small pyramid. In the New Kingdom, they would be
buried in the Valley of the Queens. The headdress in the form of a vulture
(symbolic of the goddess Nekhbet) is first attested in the Fifth Dynasty; the
frontal uraeus (symbolic of the goddess Wadjit) is first attested in the
Sixth Dynasty. The custom of enclosing the names of certain wives and
daughters of the king in a cartouche made its appearance in the Middle
Kingdom. The many titles employed in the course of the centuries sum-
marize what it meant to be a royal wife: daughter of a god, united with the
crowns, mistress of the Two Lands, divine mistress of the world. The titles
also praise her gracious beauty and identify her as the fragrant source of
joy in the palace, model of ritual purity, and sovereign among all women.
The queens had priestly functions; it was they who shook the sistra (rat-
tles) and the rustling collars (called menat) as they stood before the gods
aUEENS 155
and goddesses. Queens were the only human beings who shared the head-
dresses of pharaohs (the uraeus) and goddesses (Hathor horns, plumes,
vulture). In monumental statues and representations of rituals, the mother
and wives of the king are frequently present, as well as certain of his daugh-
ters, who are distinguished by the same insignia. This participation of two
generations of women in representationsôf royal theophany is easily ex-
plained by reference to the double function—wife and daughter—of the
divine consort of the sun, who was the companion, the creatrix, and the
generative organ of the creator god. The informal representations of Ne-
fertiti and her little daughters in the Atenist imagery is a somewhat extrav-
agant example of this sacral function. But the religious interpretation of
these themes cannot erase our visceral impression of monarchs nursing a
genuine affection for their wives (Amenophis III and Teye, Ramesses II
and Nofretari), given that conjugal love was a virtue in Egyptian wisdom lit-
erature. Both in sculpture in the round and in reliefs, Egyptian art affirmed
the perfect beauty and the eternal freshness of every woman represented.
The charming images of queens adorned as goddesses clearly conform to
this principle. Of course, queens had their own households (residence,
landed property, personnel) and shared in the administration and the in-
come of large “harems.”
These lovely persons who ritually incarnated the female component of
divine kingship were well placed to participate occasionally in the exer-
cise of earthly sovereignty. At the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty,
the dowager queens Ahhotpe and Ahmose-Nofretari were clearly political
personalities, and their regencies undoubtedly paved the way for the as-
tonishing career of Hatshepsut, the queen who became a king. Appar-
ently in the reign of Ninetjer, the third king of the distant Second Dynasty,
it was decided that a woman could exercise the office of king, and the
name Uadjenes, which tradition preserved as that of the fourth ruler of
that dynasty, is indeed a feminine name. In fact, the precedent was fol-
lowed on only four occasions, widely dispersed in time, each of which
present problems for scholars today:
Nitocris, at the end of the Sixth Dynasty; according to legend, she

committed suicide.
Nefrusobk, reportedly feeble-minded, but who marked the end of the
Twelfth Dynasty.
Hatshepsut, whose memory was obliterated both by her coregent,
Tuthmosis III, and by tradition.
Twosre, the last sovereign of the Nineteenth Dynasty, who also
suffered postmortem condemnation.
We might have imagined that the religious prestige of royal wives and
daughters, along with the high moral and legal standing of Egyptian
women, would have entailed equal opportunity and success for both gen-
ders in the matter of kingship. Such, however, was not the case. As we have
seen, the cases in which circumstances enabled a woman to become a
king in her own right were exceptional and short-lived, and in the two
■v
cases best known to us, they were condemned after the fact. Theology in-
tegrated femininity into myth and ritual, to be sure, but wisdom literature
and custom restricted the role of women to that of mistress of the house-
hold and of honored companion and mother. We know little of female
scribes and physicians, and queens usually had no administrative respon-
sibilities in areas other than religion. Control over warriors and adminis-
trators remained a man’s affair.
L. Troy, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History, Boreas 14 (Uppsala,
ig86); G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), chapters 1-2.
See Adoratrice; Ahmose-Nofretari; Erasures; Harem; Hatshepsut; Nefertiti; Nitocris;
Princes, Princesses; Teye; Twosre.
Harnesses II 1279-1213 B.C.E., Nineteenth Dynasty
Ramesses II was the son of Sethos I and Muttuya (or Tuya). His father
had familiarized him at an early age with the royal profession, and, to con-
solidate the young dynasty, he conferred the crowns and a complete titu-
lary on Ramesses while he himself was still alive. During this coregency,
Ramesses founded temples of his own (Abydos, Beit el-Wali). He began
his sole reign with an increase in activity in the gold mines, the quarries,
and the construction sites (including development of Pi-Riamsese). After
that, foreign policy long occupied this haughty warrior; the policy is well
attested by the monumental texts of Ramesses himself as well as by the
Hittite archives.
In year 4, a military excursion penetrated as far as Phoenicia, and the
land of Amurru (the Lebanon) removed itself from the Hittite sphere of
influence. In year 5, open warfare occurred. The Hittite king Muwatallis
concentrated an enormous coalition of his Anatolian and Syrian vassals in
the vicinity of Qadesh. Ramesses, who was leading the first division of the
Egyptian army, was deceived by enemy agents and found himself attacked
in his camp, while his three remaining divisions were still on the march
far behind him. The desperate resistance of the king and his Sherden
guard threw the attacking Hittite chariotry into confusion, and disaster
was avoided by the arrival of Egyptian reinforcements. The respite that
followed was scarcely a success for Egypt, which again lost Amurru. But
the heroism of Ramesses (with the moral support of Amun) revealed him
exemplifying the ideal of a king as sole agent of his victories. The Qadesh
Poem, along with immense temple reliefs commemorating the Battle of
Qadesh, turned the event into personal propaganda for the sovereign.
In the wake of the battle, however, Ramesses was obliged to pacify his
restive possessions in Canaan and Transjordan. After that, he launched
raids into Syria and found himself in a position to intervene diplomatically
in the internal quarrels of the Hittites (Urkhi-Teshub against Hattusilis).
The threat posed by Assyria finally led the two adversaries to put an end to
sixteen years of conflict with a treaty in Ramesses’ year 21, and then to a
cooperation that entailed two successive marriages of Ramesses II to
daughters of Hattusilis.
The Egyptian frontier included the south of the Lebanon and the plain
of Damascus, a Syrian capital where a stela carved in local rock, depicting
Ramesses II paying homage to Baal-Seth, was discovered in 1993. The land
of Kush remained quiet and was well administered by devoted viceroys
who made displays of their luxury. Great courtiers, whose loyalty to the
ruler and whose personal wealth are attested by their magnificent votive
and funerary monuments, clearly knew how to make peace and prosperity
reign in Egypt. Ramesses the warrior repulsed marginal peoples who dis-
turbed the delta: the Shasu, bedouin troublemakers in the east; the Sher-
den, pirates held in check by Egyptian warships; and the Libyan hordes of
Marmarica, who were kept under surveillance by a string of fortresses.
Adding his own name to them, Ramesses II completed the decoration
of temples built by his father (e.g., Abydos, Gurna, Hypostyle Hall of Kar-
nak) or by still earlier kings (rear exterior wall of Karnak). He also re-
stored images that had been effaced under Akhenaten. But above all, he
inaugurated scores of new foundations and buildings. From Napata to
Palestine, there are few sites where some stone bearing his name has not
been found. The projects he initiated reflect new styles of carving in
stone: massive geometrical forms (including monostyle columns, group
statues in raised relief, and statues backing onto walls). We also witness the
spread of sunk relief (from “solar” symbolism), the apogee of the histori-
cal genre of texts, and epigraphic prolixity. The works include the two
temples of Abu Simbel (see figure 7), his Theban temple (called the
Ramesseum), his obelisks, and his colossi. Though it has long been dis-
liked by historians of art, the reign of Ramesses created a new style, har-
monious in its enormousness, and not corrupt or slapdash. He usurped
far fewer old works than has been claimed (and rather late in his life).
Between his year 30 and his death at the age of ninety, Ramesses II cel-
ebrated at least thirteen jubilees. He was buried in an especially vast tomb
in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy was found in the cachette of Deir
el-Bahari; he had been a redhead, like the god Seth, the patron of his fam-
ily. His various “great wives” (Nefertari was the first of them, and one of
the last was Maathor-Nefrure, a Hittite princess) and his other wives bore
him many sons and daughters (about one hundred princes and princesses
have been counted). He honored Canaanite deities, and his eldest daugh-
ter and one of his dogs were named after the goddess Anat. To mark his
direct and intimate relations with all the deities, he even set up special
idols called “gods of Ramesses” for adoration; he also multiplied the theo-
logical aspects of his own person, which were incorporated in colossi. At
Karnak and elsewhere, he justified his epithet Meryamun, “beloved of
Amun,” yet his foundations and pious acts favored the Heliopolitan cult of
the sun and the cult of the fearsome god Seth, patron of his family.
Unlike that of Amenophis IV, the case of Ramesses II, who completed
the work of Haremhab and Sethos I, demonstrates how a strong personal-
ity could find fulfillment and assert itself in the traditional role of a
pharaoh. The monumental and epigraphic style of his reign served as a
reference point down to the end of the Libyan Period. Though overshad-
owed by that of the legendary Sesostris, the glory of Ramesses, as estab-
RAMESSES III 159
FIGURE 7. Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. Photo by Nancy J. Corbin.
lished by his formidable construcdons and his victory bulletins, was still
remembered in the Roman era (Diodorus’ Osymandias, Tacitus’ Ramses).
Two of his foundations preserved the name of Ramesses in cultural mem-
ory (the store city of Ramses in the Bible) and on the soil of Egypt (Ramsis
of Beherah). He is the only pharaoh to have a major street in Cairo
named after him.
K.A. Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II (Warminster,
1982); Ramses le Grand (Paris, 1976).
See Diplomacy, Khaemwese, Merneptah, Nineteenth Dynasty, Ramessides, Sethos I.
Harnesses III 1187-1156 B.C.E., Twentieth Dynasty

The funerary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, which is almost
entirely preserved, is the most expressive example of the “mansions of
millions of years” erected by the Ramessides on the west bank of Thebes.
Its general plan, its decorative program, the phraseology of its inscrip-
tions, and the composition of its reliefs imitate the Ramesseum, the ho-
mologous (though more spacious) monument of Ramesses II. With great
panache, Ramesses III, who was the second member of a new dynasty, em-
ulated the royal “look” that had embodied the grandeur of the preceding
dynasty. But the situation of the kingdom was no longer the same.
Ramesses II had fought on the Orontes, while Ramesses III fought for the
security of the delta. On land, he was obliged to clear the entire western
delta of Libyan hordes, and to conduct two wars to confine them to Mar-
marica. The second Libyan war is one of the epics recorded at Medinet
Habu in dramatic reliefs and verbose poems. Another epic in that temple
is dedicated to the battles that saved Egypt from the Sea Peoples: the
Philistines, the Tjeker, and the Danaeans. Their fleet was defeated by land
and sea forces at the entry of a branch of the Nile; families of immigrants
arriving from Asia in ox-drawn chariots were massacred or captured.
Ramesses III was able to maintain some bases in Canaan (e.g., Beth Shan)
to pacif y the bedouins of Idumaea and exploit the copper of Timna on the
Gulf of Aqaba, and to dispatch a fleet to Punt.
Three dossiers on papyrus illustrate what was happening on the domes-
tic front. The Great Papyrus Harris, written under Ramesses IV, enumer-
ates the foundations and calculates the donations that his father had made
to the gods. In this papyrus, Amun of Thebes appears as by far the pre-
ponderant economic power. This document, and other texts as well, con-
vey a sense of an increasing subordination of royal to divine power. The
Strike Papyrus testifies to difficulties in provisioning: the workmen of Deir
el-Medina demanded the payment of their in-kind salary from a finan-
cially strapped administration. Four transcripts drawn up after the king’s
death list top servants of the palace, including a physician and military
leaders, who, in collusion with the women of the harem, plotted to fo-
ment uprisings and to make an attempt on the life of the king with the
help of magic. An ostracon informs us that the actions of an “enemy” trou-
bled the peace of Thebes toward the end of the reign. We do not know
whether Ramesses III died as a result of the plot or of the evil spells, but
his mummy, which was buried in the Valley of the Kings (KV 11) and was
found in the royal cachette of Deir el-Bahari, bears no trace of violence.
Beautiful rock-cut tombs prepared for four of his daughters and two of his
queens (Isis and Tity) are located in the Valley of the Queens. We have
lovely faience plaques from his two palaces at Medinet Habu and Tell el-
Yahudiya.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramses (Paris, 1985), pp. 298-344.

See Libyans, Ramessides, Strikes, Twentieth Dynasty.
Ramesses IV 1156-1150 B.C.E., Twentieth Dynasty

Ramesses IV was the son of Ramesses III and his designated successor.
We do not know why he changed his throne name in the second year of
RAMESSIDES 161
his reign. His building activity in the temples amounted to little: the dec-
oration of the rear of the temple of Khons at Karnak and the widespread
reconsecration or restoration of existing edifices, marked by bands of hi-
eroglyphic texts in the margins of bas-reliefs or by the insertion of his car-
touches. Although he laid the foundations for an immense funerary tem-
ple, ultimately he contented himself withâ building of rather modest size.
Aside from inscriptions left in the Wadi Hammamat by large expedi-
tions sent to quarry bekhen (graywacke) intended for statues, the most
vivid mementos of this king are the two stelae on which he prays in per-
sonal terms to the deities of Abydos. In particular, when he reached the
age of forty, he prayed to Amun and Osiris for a reign as long as that of
Ramesses II (67 years!), or in other words, for the longest lifetime that
Egyptians considered possible (110 years). In support of his request, he
asserted that in four years, he had enriched the gods more than his for-
midable predecessor had done in all his reign. To accelerate the prepara-
tion of his tomb, he radically increased the workforce in the Valley of the
Kings; perhaps he was in fear for his health. He died in his year 6.
Ramesses IV, who was the first of the obscure Ramessides, gives the im-
pression of having had a spirit that was more religious than political. Ex-
cept for mining expeditions to the Sinai, we have no attestation of activity
in Asia during his reign. His mummy was found in the cachette in the
tomb of Amenophis II.
See Ramessides, Twentieth Dynasty.
Ramessides
The term “Ramesside” is an adequate designation of both the period of
a little more than two centuries that constituted the second part of the
New Kingdom (1293-1069 B.C.E.) and the kings of that period, who com-
posed our Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. The adjective comes from
the name Ramesses, variant Ramses, two Greek transcriptions of the
Egyptian Re-mes-su, “Re has created him.”
With the possible exception of Amenmesse, all the kings of the Nine-
teenth Dynasty, the best-known of whom was Ramesses II, were descended
from the vizier Ramesses, son of Sethos, who became Ramesses I. Seth-
nakhte, the founder of the Twentieth Dynasty, was succeeded by his son
and grandson, Ramesses III and Ramesses IV. All the kings descended
from Ramesses III placed the name Ramesses in front of the names they
had been given at birth (e.g., Ramesses VI and Ramesses IX both called
themselves Ramesses-Amenhirkhopshef).
It is apposite to extend the qualification “Ramesside” to the institu-
tions, the art, and the culture. The entire period displays a style that took
shape, for the most part, during the lengthy reign of Ramesses II.
While continuing to hand down classic works of the Old and Middle
Kingdoms, the scribes of the period produced a teeming wealth of litera-
ture written in Late Egyptian. Miscellanies (collections of satirical essays,
well-turned model administrative letters, brief hymns, poems in praise of
the king, etc.) were used in the training of students. In the same genre,
the lengthy Letter of Hori furnishes a lively picture of the tasks and the
competencies of scribes during the reign of Ramesses II. Stories of various
sorts were also penned: moralizing (Truth and Falsehood), mythological
(Contendings of Horus and Seth), and fantastic (The Doomed Prince,
The Two Brothers). New wisdom texts were written, in particular the fa-
mous Instruction of Any and Instruction of Amenemope.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramses (Paris, 1985); G. Steindorff and K. C. Seele, When
Egypt Ruled the East, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1957), chapter 16.
See Nineteenth Dynasty, Ramesses II, Twentieth Dynasty.
Rekhmire
Rekhmire was a vizier from the second part of the reign of Tuthmosis
III to the beginning of the reign of Amenophis II. He was a descendant of
a family of viziers (his grandfather Amtju and his uncle User(amun) had
also exercised that office) but also the last member of the family to hold
the office. Among other tasks, it fell to him to supervise the erection of the
temple of Tuthmosis III at Deir el-Bahari. But Rekhmire owes his fame
above all to his tomb in the Theban necropolis, in which two basic texts
dealing with the office of vizier were copied: the Installation of the Vizier
and the Duties of the Vizier. Additionally, many scenes in the tomb depict
Rekhmire at work, overseeing the efficiency of the workshops of the tem-
ple of Amun and receiving tribute from a number of foreign lands, in par-
ticular those of the Aegean world.
T.G.H. James, Pharaoh’s People: Scenes from Imperial Egypt (London, 1984), pp. 56-71;
G. P.F. van den Boom, The Duties of the Vizier: Civil Administration in the Early Nezv
Kingdom (London, 1988).
See Amenophis II, Tuthmosis III.
Romans
Octavian conquered Egypt in the year 30 B.C.E. The last Lagide descen-
dant, Ptolemy Caesarion, the son whom Cleopatra had borne to Julius
Caesar, was liquidated. The kingdom became a province of the Roman re-
public, but a province with imperial status: it was the princeps alone who
ROMANS 163
appointed a prefect and equestrian procurators at Alexandria. Only rarely

would the Roman army in Egypt play a role in the designation of emper-
ors. The Hellenized gentry and the masses in the countryside had no po-
litical weight in their overly exploited land. The Romans secularized the
temple lands and turned the priests into functionaries. Nevertheless, the
clergy maintained the pharaonic concept, and traces of it can be found
even in Hermetic philosophy. The Roman principate was not a kingship,
but for the sacred scribes, who were little inclined to revise their lore, the
absence of the immutable Lord of the Two Lands was existentially incon-
ceivable. On the temple walls, and in the documents drawn up by notaries
writing in Demotic, Augustus Caesar and the Caesars who followed him
became “Pharaoh.” Two cartouches surrounded their names and titles,
and like the pharaohs of old, a Tiberius, a Marcus Aurelius, and a Cara-
calla were depicted officiating before the gods wearing a kilt and crowned
with a nemes, a pshent, or some other crown adorned with a uraeus. For Au-
gustus and his successors, the priests composed lengthy synthetic titularies
that not only recalled the domination they exerted over the universe from
Rome, but also affirmed their ties to the primordial deities and the sacred
animals that Roman authors often mocked. Still, there was innovation:
Caesar no longer received a prenomen that included the name of the sun
god Re, or the canonical, fivefold royal titulary.
The imperial cult was organized in the Roman fashion, but sometimes,
as under Caracalla, an Egyptian-style colossus was erected to honor the
lord of the world. Even emperors who sympathized with the religion of
Isis, which was practiced by Roman men and women, seem never to have
donned the costume of a pharaoh. Few of the Caesars visited Alexandria,
much less made a tour of Upper Egypt, as did Hadrian and the Severans.
The priests, whose activities were strictly supervised under the watchful
eye of an official called the Idios Logos, continued to include the name of
the distant god-king in their hymns. Temples continued to be constructed
and decorated in the distinctive Ptolemaic style, and the Antonine period
even marked a singular renaissance of sacred arts and writing. The for-
midable hypostyle hall of Esna was begun under Claudius and was deco-
rated principally under Domitian, Trajan, and Hadrian; the cartouches of
various emperors, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, can be read on a
large number of monuments in Upper Egypt. A sacred scribe from Egypt
went to Rome to write the text carved on an obelisk that Hadrian in-
tended for the tomb of his favorite, Antinous.
With the crises of the third century C.E., construction work and inscrip-
tions (Egyptian as well as Greek) became rare, and the remaining carvers
of hieroglyphs became less and less competent; after the name of Decius
was written at Esna, all work ceased there. The last known official hiero-
glyphic stela known to us is the epitaph of a Buchis bull, the sacred animal
of Hermonthis, who died in 340 C.E. At that date, under Constantius II,
son of Constantine the Great, Christianity prevailed in the empire. The
priests posthumously dated the stela to the era of Diocletian, rallying to
the cartouche of the last great emperor who stoutly defended polytheism,
* A-
and to whom Egypt could still attach the cosmic role of the pharaoh.
P. Derchain, Le dernier obelisque (Brussels, 1987); H.I. Bell, Cults and Creeds in Graeco-
Roman Egypt (Liverpool, 1953).
See Pharaoh.
Sallure 2444-2433 B.c.E., Fifth Dynasty
Sahure was the second pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty. He built a sun
temple, the exact location of which remains unknown, and a funerary
complex with a pyramid (height: 161 feet) at Abusir. The bas-reliefs of the
pyramid’s funerary temple and valley temple depict, among other things,
different types of relations with foreign peoples: war against Libyans, but
the dispatching of a peaceful expedition to Asia (probably Byblos). The
reliefs also include picturesque details of foreign climes (e.g., representa-
tions of bears). Official chronicles credited Sahure not only with expedi-
tions to the Sinai and the diorite quarries of Nubia, but also to Punt (prob-
ably on the Sudanese coast).
See Fifth Dynasty, Khentkaus, Punt.
Sais
This city in the western delta was situated on the present-day Rosetta
branch of the Nile. The site, which still bears its ancient name, Sa (el-
Hagar), is deplorably destroyed. Its goddess Neith, whose red crown of
Lower Egypt and whose bow were her emblems, was widely depicted in re-
ligious representations from the Archaic Period on. She was identified with
the cow goddess Mehet-weret, the image of the primordial ocean. The
city’s political promotion, however, was late. After becoming the capital of
a vast kingdom put together in the eighth century B.C.E. by the great chiefs
of the Libu, the city was home to the Twenty-fourth and the Twenty-sixth
Dynasties, which fought from 730 to 650 B.C.E to reunify a dismembered
Egypt. During the Saite renaissance (664-525 B.C.E.), and then under the
Persians (525-404 B.C.E.), Neith, mother of Re, supplanted Amun as pre-
mier patron of the kingship. Magnificently embellished by Psammetichus
I, Psammetichus II, and Amasis, Sais became a prestigious center of sacred
lore, as noted by Plato and other Greek writers. Its rulers were well posi-
tioned to mount an effective resistance to the Persians, thanks to the city’s
strategic position: in contact with Libya, with two branches of the Nile that
flowed into the Mediterranean, and with the nearby marshes, which were
the refuge and habitat of a fierce population (the herdsmen, or boukoloi).
Amyrtaios of Sais founded the Twenty-eighth Dynasty.
See Amasis, Bocchoris, Persians, Psammetichus, Saite (Dynasties), Tefnakhte,

Udjahorresnet.
Saite (Dynasties)
At the time of the “Libyan anarchy” of the eighth century B.C.E., the
chiefs of the Libu and the Meshwesh unified the nomes of the western
delta around Sais, while the rest of the land remained divided. This ter-
ritory, adjacent to Libya and the Mediterranean, was able to recruit for-
eign reinforcements (Libyans, then Greeks) and constituted a strong-
hold in the face of the assaults of conquerors from afar, both Kushites
and Assyrians. Between 730 and 665 B.C.E., under Tefnakhte and Boc-
choris of the Twenty-fourth Dynasty and then under the first, obscure
kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, this kingdom impeded the undertak-
ings of the Kushites and rivaled them for control of Memphis. Posterity
would remember the wise Bocchoris, as well as Nechepso, reputed to be
an expert in astrology, and Necho I, who died in battle. Psammetichus I,
son of this Necho and whose realm was hemmed in between Kushites,
Assyrians, and petty rulers, would reunify Egypt in 656 B.C.E. From the
regional dynasty it had been, the Twenty-sixth Dynasty became the sole
national dynasty.
Loyal to their native city, its members located their tombs at Sais, while
Neith, their patron goddess, became a dominant figure in the royal pan-
theon. The real capital was at Memphis, but we speak of a “Saite Period” to
characterize the regime and the culture of the era ruled by kings named
Psammetichus, Necho, Apries, and Amasis (664-625 B.C.E.). It was a pe-
riod of peace and economic prosperity, and of artistic accomplishments in
which innovation was slipped into an archaizing mold. This “Saite renais-
sance” saw Egypt take its place in a new international alliance, which in-
cluded not only recruitment of Greek and Carian hoplites, Jewish auxil-
iaries, and Phoenician shipowners but also maritime activity and
exchanges with Greek cities. Confrontation with the Kushites and the
Babylonians led to a lengthy combat in which the kings were unable to es-
tablish a lasting dominion in Asia or to save Judah, but managed at least to
keep Egyptian territory inviolate and prestigious. Thanks to their incom-
mensurably superior military force, the Persians would defeat this house
of Sais, but the first of these pharaohs from Iran, who were proclaimed
sons of Neith, would maintain religious forms and resources inherited
from the Saites.
In the fifth century B.C.E., a man from Sais named Amyrtaios led a re-
volt against the Persians. A second Amyrtaios (404-398 B.C.E.) was the sole
ruler of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty.
K. Mysliwiec, The Txuilight of Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E. (Ithaca, 2000),
pp. 110-34.
See Amasis, Apries, Bocchoris, Libyans, Necho II, Psammetichus, Sais, Tefnakhte.
SEBEKHOTPE 167
Scorpion Protodynastic Period

SCORPION I
Scorpion I was probably the first king of Dynasty Zero (c. 3150 B.C.E.).
His tomb, which was discovered in 1988 in the Archaic Period cemetery at
Abydos, had rich tomb furnishings, including many inscribed objects,
such as jars with painted inscriptions and ivory labels.
SCORPION II
Scorpion II was a king of the Protodynastic Period. His name is written
with the scorpion sign, but its reading is uncertain. The name is known es-
pecially from the fragments of a historiated limestone mace head found at
Hierakonpolis. On this mace head, the king is represented wearing the
crown that would be the Upper Egyptian crown of pharaonic Egypt; with
a hoe in his hand, he solemnly inaugurates irrigation works. The decora-
tion already exhibits an organization and themes that would be customary
during the historical period, in particular, nome emblems with lapwings
hanging from them. These birds represented the commoners in the pop-
ulation of Egypt; thus, not only the symbol, but also its semiotic use, be-
long to the properly pharaonic cultural repertoire. Scorpion is thus unan-
imously considered one of the immediate predecessors of Narmer; he
would have reigned shortly before the historical period.
See Narmer, Origins (Prehistory, Predynastic), Zero (Dynasty).
Sebekhotpe Thirteenth Dynasty

The name Sebekhotpe, which means “the god Sobek is satisfied,” was
borne by eight pharaohs whose reigns spanned nearly all of the Thir-
teenth Dynasty.
Sebekhotpe I, Sebekhotpe V, Sebekhotpe VI, and Sebekhotpe VII are
known only from a few uninformative monuments. Sebekhotpe VIII
reigned when Hyksos pressure was probably already making itself felt. He
also is known for erecting a stela at Karnak relating the measures he took
to preserve the temple from an exceptionally high Nile inundation. Three
other kings of this name emerge, however vaguely, from the shadows sur-
rounding those just mentioned:
Sebekhotpe II (throne name Sekhemre-khutawy), fifteenth king of

the Thirteenth Dynasty. He carried out a somewhat active building
policy in the south of Upper Egypt (Madamud), and also in Nubia,
where he conducted a military campaign. He also warrants
attention because it is from his reign that we have an account book
from his court at Thebes (Papyrus Boulaq 18).
Sebekhotpe III (throne name Sekhemre-swadjtawy), twentieth king of

the Thirteenth Dynasty. He ruled three years and some months. He
merits the same comment as the preceding for his activity in Upper
Egypt, and for also having escaped the humdrum, thanks to the
chance preservation of a document: from his reign, we have the
verso of a roster of prisoners that is of exceptional interest for our
knowledge of the organization of the work force in this period.
Sebekhotpe IV (throne name Khaneferre). He ruled at least eight
years (1730-1723), succeeding his brothers Neferhotep I and
Sihathor, with whom he constituted one of the most powerful — or
least insignificant—lines of the dynasty. He worked on a great
number of temples in Upper Egypt, obtaining materials through
expeditions conducted to the mines and quarries, while many of his
predecessors and successors contented themselves with usurping
older monuments. He marked his attachment to Thebes, his native
city, by increasing the offerings to Amun with provisions for which
administrative offices were responsible. He overcame hostilities that
broke out in Nubia. But though he still held Lisht and Memphis, it
seems that an independent kingdom had already formed around
Xois in the delta.
SÂnkhu, Neferhotep I, Thirteenth Dynasty.
Sebennytic (Dynasty)
The Thirtieth Dynasty took up the torch of the Twenty-ninth (Mende-
sian) Dynasty when Nectanebo, a general from Sebennytos, dethroned
Nepherites II by force. In thirty-seven years (378-341 B.C.E.), three
pharaohs — Nectanebo I, Teos, and Nectanebo II—wrote the fearsome
epic of the “last native dynasty,” succeeding, despite palace crises, in dot-
ting the land with splendid monuments of stone and maintaining a pros-
perous, independent status for Egypt, which remained alone in the face of
the enormous Persian empire. Technically, the national defense was as-
sured by mercenaries led by great commanders, such as the fearsome Age-
silaus of Sparta and Chabrias of Athens: in military matters, the Egyptian
nation would no longer be master of its own fate. In the religious realm,
the priests who represented Egypt watched over its safety with their rituals.
Brilliantly assuming the security role of the divine king, the two Nectane-
bos scrupulously provided for the maintenance of the gods and the burial
of sacred animals. In the temples, they undertook vast programs of archi-
tectural embellishment (including enclosure walls, propylons, proces-
sional roads, shrines, and monoliths), thus assuring a rejuvenation of
SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD 169
Saite art. Eight years after the disappearance of the last native Egyptian
king, the Greeks, under Alexander, took possession of an Egypt whose na-
tional culture would long continue to flourish.
See Nectanebo, Sebennytos, Teos.
Sebennytos >
The name, which survives as Arabic Samannud, is the Greek transcrip-
tion of Egyptian Tjebenuti. The city is located in the delta, on the central
branch of the Nile, slightly south of el-Mansura. Its early history is practi-
cally unknown. In the present state of our sources, Sebennytos makes its
historical appearance in the Libyan Period. Its pantheon, the warrior god
Onuris and his companion, the lion goddess Tefnut (otherwise called
Mehyt), made it a religious branch of Thinis. Seat of a principality around
730 B.C.E., Sebennytos was one of the ambitious cities of the northern
delta, and it would be the home of the last native dynasty, the Thirtieth Dy-
nasty, two of whose rulers would call themselves “chosen by Onuris.” The
few archaeological traces found at the site date to this dynasty and to the
first Greco-Macedonian kings.
Known from texts beginning with the New Kingdom and the center of
a cult of Isis, Hebyt (present-day Behbeit el-Hagar) was part of the Seben-
nytic nome. The city was already honored by the Saites, and Nectanebo II
(who called himself “beloved of Isis”) and Ptolemy II endowed it with a
large and magnificent temple made of granite.
See Nectanebo, Sebennytic (Dynasty), Teos.
Second Dynasty
See Archaic (Period).
Second Intermediate Period

Some scholars begin the Second Intermediate Period with the advent
of the Thirteenth Dynasty, ignoring its obvious social, ideological, and
artistic continuity with the second half of the Twelfth Dynasty. A more log-
ical starting point is the Hyksos capture of Memphis (1650 B.C.E.) and the
patent decline in the style of monuments and inscriptions that resulted
from it. The Thirteenth Dynasty seems to have lasted for a short while
after that date, before being supplanted at Thebes by the Seventeenth Dy-
nasty. At the same time, the Hyksos pharaohs of Avaris (Fifteenth Dynasty)
ruled in the northeast of the land, while the rest of Egypt was divided into
Asiatic chiefdoms and principalities that were in the hands of Egyptian
collaborators of the occupying power. The fortresses controlling the Nile
valley of Lower Nubia were eventually evacuated under pressure from Nu-
bians who seized Buhen (near Wadi Haifa) and founded an independent
principality, even going so far as to hire Egyptian administrators.
Though we have no war account other than that of Ramose, the titles and
epithets of private persons and pharaohs, along with archaeological discov-
eries (e.g., InyotefV buried with bows and arrows), clearly indicate that this
was a time of armed conflict. The Hyksos had prevailed because of their mil-
itary technology, and advances continued in that domain. In addition, the
Egyptians recruited excellent warriors from among a Nubian group called
the Medjoi, who had ties to the so-called pan-grave culture. The militariza-
tion of society entailed in the reform of the state apparatus during the
Middle Kingdom reawakened “feudal” tendencies when unity collapsed.
Protected by the ramparts and garrisons of their cities, the nomarchs, espe-
cially at Edfu and el-Kab, acted like potentates, even though the Theban
pharaohs used periodically renewed matrimonial alliances to confine them
to their spheres of influence. In any case, expressions of loyalism began to
disappear from autobiographies, while individualism and the exaltation of
personal success reemerged; the inscriptions employed phraseology bor-
rowed from the repertoire of the First Intermediate Period. Famines also re-
curred, and again the problems were dealt with on a purely local basis.
The loss of centers of tradition like Memphis and Lisht led to a decline in
culture. Knowledge of the hieratic script and of administrative techniques
was maintained, but without education on a national scale, hieroglyphic
writing and monumental art degenerated. Scribes blundered when tran-
scribing their cursive drafts, confusing some signs and deforming others
with outlandish strokes. Knowledge of the canons was lost, and both two-
and three-dimensional sculpture became clumsy and heavy. The beginning
of the Eighteenth Dynasty would continue to reflect this decline in quality.
Although the times continued to be troubled, they were undoubtedly
less barbarous than those of the Second Intermediate Period. We define
the latter’s end as the coronation of Ahmose and the beginning of the
Eighteenth Dynasty (1539 B.C.E.), though the Hyksos occupation was
eliminated only during Ahmose’s reign.
Apophis, Avaris, Hyksos, Inyotef, Kamose, Seqenenre Tao, Seventeenth Dynasty,

Sixteenth Dynasty, Thirteenth Dynasty.
Senenmut
Son of a middle-class family of Hermonthis, Senenmut owed his emi-
nent position to his staunch devotion to Queen Hatshepsut; he was her fa-
SENWOSRET (OR SESOSTRIS) 171
vorite, and perhaps her lover. He accumulated administrative offices in

the domain of Amun (steward, overseer of the two granaries, overseer of
fields) and in the personal domains of members of the royal family. As
“overseer of works” of the king and of Amun, he supervised the great un-
dertakings of the reign, such as the carving, transportation, and erection
of a pair of obelisks in the temple of Karnak, and the construction of Hat-
shepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari. He bore other titles that asso-
ciated him directly with the royal family itself: thus, he was the tutor of Ne-
frure, the daughter of Tuthmosis II and Hatshepsut, and he was in charge
of the queen-pharaoh’s adornments and insignia on the occasion of her
jubilee. Far from being an uncouth upstart, Senenmut pretended to eru-
dition: he invented sophisticated cryptograms by exploiting the resources
peculiar to the hieroglyphic writing system.
His social success can be measured by the number and the quality of his
monuments. He placed more than twenty statues of himself in the tem-
ples of Thebes and Upper Egypt, he constructed a cenotaph at Gebel el-
Silsila, and he had two tombs excavated for himself. One of them, con-
cealed in a corner of the court of the funerary temple of Hatshepsut,
contained a sarcophagus of a type otherwise reserved for pharaohs. What
is more, he was even depicted in this temple, a rare privilege for an ordi-
nary private person, even if these representations were rendered unob-
trusive by their clever placement.
Senenmut illustrated what often happens to this sort of favorite, how-
ever: the higher they rise, the harder they fall. He fell into disgrace even
before the death of Hatshepsut, and he was subjected to a relentless
damnatio memoriae: his name and his images were mutilated, and his mon-
uments were smashed.
T. G. H. James, Pharaoh’s People: Scenes from Life in Imperial Egypt (London, 1984),
PP-3l~37-
See Erasures, Hatshepsut.
Senwosret (orSesostris) Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties

This name, which means “man of the goddess Usret,” was borne by
pharaohs of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties.
*
Two kings of the Thirteenth Dynasty had the name Senwosret, and they
can thus be counted as Senwosret IV and Senwosret V. This is about as
much as can be said about them, given the very small number and the un-
informative nature of their monuments.
Senwosret I 1971-1926 B.c.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Senwosret I was the second king of the Twelfth Dynasty. He was return-
ing from an expedition against the Libyans when he was informed of the
assassination of his father, Amenemhet I, with whom he had served as
coregent for ten years. He thus had to overcome a serious political crisis.
He not only succeeded; he also solidly established the legitimacy of the
Twelfth Dynasty, which had been contested. He did so by inspiring hired
intellectuals to write works whose literary quality made their apologetic
content easily acceptable. The works were: the Instruction of Amenemhet
I, a political testament in the form of a posthumous speech by the assassi-
nated king to his son and successor; the Story of Sinuhe, the masterpiece
of Egyptian literature, illustrating the theme of Sesostris I’s famed
clemency; and the Loyalist Instruction, a plea for allegiance to the king in
the form of a traditional instruction text.
This propaganda, which was obviously addressed to the literate elite,
was reinforced by practical measures, including the continuation of the
practice of coregency with the chosen successor, in this case Amenemhet
II, Senwosret’s son. With stability thus established at home, and external
security assured by operations in Nubia, Senwosret I could complete the
task that his father had undertaken but not completed: restoring an order
like that of old — that of the creator god—while taking account of con-
temporary realities. This policy accounts not only for the commemoration
of Snofru and Sahure, prestigious pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, but also
that of the ancestor of the Theban dynasties, the “prince” Inyotef. While
drawing on the spirit of the Old Kingdom, Senwosret also demonstrated
his attachment to the city where the Middle Kingdom originated; it was at
this time that the theme of “victorious Thebes” was elaborated.
In practical terms, the order of the creator god was foremost the
smooth functioning of the temples, many of which had suffered from the
earlier disorders and civil wars. A systematic program of construction and
restoration was begun, to the point that, from Bubastis to Elephantine,
there were scarcely any cities whose sanctuaries were not the object of the
king’s attention. Such work included construction of a new temple, addi-
tions, setting up of obelisks and statues, and increases in the offerings. The
needed materials were furnished through intensive exploitation of the
mines and quarries; an expedition to the Wadi Hammamat in year 38 of
Senwosret I consisted of 17,000 men, and it brought back no fewer than
60 sphinxes and 150 statues.
But this impressive balance sheet had a debit column. The new dynasty
still had to deal with a strong “feudal” tradition, especially in Middle
Egypt, where the nomarchs kept their offices in their families, even if the
SENWOSRET III 173
king’s assent was required for each transmission. Generally speaking, the
organization of institutions and of the administrative apparatus con-
formed, mutatis mutandis, to the old model.
Senwosret I built his pyramid complex at Lisht, where his funerary cult
was long perpetuated. The major accomplishments of his reign, along
with those of certain other kings, were the source of the Greek legend of
Sesostris.
Senwosret II 1897-1878 B.c.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Senwosret II was the son and successor of Amenemhet II, with whom he
shared the throne as coregent for three years. His reign, whose length has
not been precisely established, constituted a transition between the two
parts of the Twelfth Dynasty. On the one hand, he continued the previous
policy of drawing inspiration from the traditional order without disown-
ing the Theban roots of his dynasty. On the other hand, his reign planted
the seeds of the major innovations of the second half of the dynasty: the es-
tablishment of a system of fortifications in the Nile valley of Lower Nubia
and, especially, the beginning of the reclamation of the marshes of the
Faiyum. In fact, Senwosret II built his pyramid complex, with its town of
workmen, at el-Lahun, where the Bahr Yusuf, a branch of the Nile, enters
the depression of the Faiyum to flow into its lake.
Senwosret III 1878-1843 B.c.E., Twelfth Dynasty

This son of Senwosret II is noted for two salient accomplishments in his
reign, aside from the usual construction activity in the temples and the
capture of Shechem in Palestine.
One of these was the integration of Lower Nubia into Egyptian terri-
tory. A canal was dug at Sehel to facilitate passage through the rapids of
the First Cataract. There were four campaigns (in years 8, 10, 16, and 19)
to bring hostile populations to heel. A system of eight massive fortresses
was set in place to keep watch over the Nile valley as far as the Second
Cataract; from that time on, no Nubian was to enter Lower Nubia except
to go on a mission or to conduct business in the trading post established at
the foot of the fortress of Mirgissa. This policy led to the deification of
Senwosret III in Nubia, and he was one of the pharaohs who inspired the
Greek legend of Sesostris.
The other achievement was a reorganization of the administration.
Under Senwosret III, the last family lines of old-style nomarchs came to an
end. At the same time, titles appeared that reflected a reorganization of
the administrative apparatus and of the central institutions. The men who
held these titles constituted a lower rank of the ruling class, but they
shared the elite’s ability to erect inscribed funerary monuments, even if

they were of middling, even mediocre quality.
Senwosret III built his pyramid complex at Dahshur. Archaeologists
discovered important cachettes there, which included jewelry and cere-
monial finery.
« *
■V
Seqenenre Tao 1550 B.C.E., Seventeenth Dynasty

Seqenenre Tao was the next to the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth Dy-
nasty. A story that we know of from a Ramesside copy, the Quarrel of
Apophis and Seqenenre, narrates how the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis pro-
voked Seqenenre by demanding that he “do away with his hippopotamus
pool,” because the noise displeased him. This allegorical formulation
cloaks a humiliating demand, undoubtedly that the Thebans cease prac-
ticing the ritual killing of hippopotami, which were animals of Seth, the
god adopted by the Hyksos. Since the manuscript of the story is incom-
plete, we do not know how the story ended. Scholars postulate that Seqe-
nenre was caught up in a war in which he died; the numerous wounds vis-
ible on his mummy seem to have been made by weapons of Hyksos type.
J. A. Wilson, in J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, 2d ed. (Princeton, 1955), pp. 231-32.
See Apophis, Hyksos, Seventeenth Dynasty.
Sethnakhte 1190-1189 B.C.E., Twentieth Dynasty

A number of the rare surviving mentions of the founder of the Twen-
tieth Dynasty consist of his name replacing erasures on usurped monu-
ments from the condemned sovereigns of the end of the Nineteenth
Dynasty, or of homages rendered to him by his successors. We do not
know where this man, who was probably a soldier, came from when he
ended the civil war and the moral anarchy that were weakening Egypt
only decades after Ramesses II. His grandson Ramesses IV character-
ized him as the one whom the neglected gods had designated to elimi-
nate dissidents, rehabilitate the royal office, and restore the economy of
the temples. A stela from Elephantine preserves a beautiful proclama-
tion by Sethnakhte himself that confirms this picture: assuming the
sun’s role as creator god, deploying the energy of Seth, his patron, and
mandated by divine oracles, he expelled the bad leaders and their Asi-
atic auxiliaries. Certain high officials (a vizier, the viceroy of Kush) re-
mained in place.
Sethnakhte was buried in the enlarged rock-cut tomb of Twosre, the fe-
male pharaoh who had preceded him. The reign of this restorer did not
SETHOS I 175
last more than two years. His son and designated successor, Ramesses III,
then assumed the throne.

See Erasures, Ramesses III, Twosre.
Sethos I 1291-1279 B.C.E., Nineteenth Dynasty

Ramesses I, the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, ruled for no more
than two years. As his designated successor, his son Sethos conducted af-
fairs and was perhaps even invested as coregent. Continuing the policies
of Haremhab, he solidified the reestablishment of Egypt as an interna-
tional power, and he carried out a vigorous building program on behalf of
the gods. Though his reign was relatively brief, we have many beautiful in-
scriptions and a number of intact buildings from it. At Abydos, there is a
“temple of millions of years,” flanked by a subterranean cenotaph. This,
along with his other funerary temple, located at Thebes, and his immense
rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings offer some of the finest surviving
bas-reliefs. The gigantic hypostyle hall at Karnak was completed under
Sethos I and was partially decorated in his name. The Flaminius obelisk
now in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome is a souvenir of the major embell-
ishments carried out at Heliopolis. Beautiful enameled tiles have survived
from the palace he constructed at Avaris. In the Wadi Miya, on one of the
trails in the eastern desert, a speos (rock-cut chapel) recounts the mea-
sures that were taken to resume exploitation of the gold mines.
Prosperous and tranquil from Napata to the Mediterranean, Egypt
once again took the initiative beyond its borders. A campaign to the west
was the first of a series of actions by means of which the Libyans, who had
become a threat, were put in their place. In the east, Sethos first pacified
the bedouins of the Isthmus of Sinai, whose activities were disturbing the
eastern border and traffic to Gaza. Palestine and Transjordan were con-
quered once again. A stela from Beth Shan describes the tactics Sethos
employed to break up rebel bands north of Mount Carmel. The advance
toward the north provoked an open clash with the Hittites at Qadesh on
the Orontes.
When Sethos died, he left the throne to Ramesses II, on whom he had
conferred certain formal attributes of the kingship during his lifetime. By
then, Egypt had recovered the southern portion of its former empire in
Asia, the gods were well served, and the upper administration was solid
and loyal (according to the dossier of the vizier Paser). The mummy of the
king, who passed away in his fifties, was found in the royal cachette of Deir
el-Bahari.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire des Ramses (Paris, 1985), pp. 88-104; K.A. Kitchen, Pharaoh
Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II (Warminster, 1982).
See Nineteenth Dynasty, Ramessides.
Seventeenth Dynasty
The Seventeenth Dynasty was the direct successor of the Thirteenth Dy-
nasty, under conditions that remain obscure. The Seventeenth Dynasty
undoubtedly came to power slightly after Hyskos supremacy was estab-
lished in 1650 B.C.E. The dynasty controlled only Upper Egypt and a part
of Middle Egypt, as far as Cusae, the remainder belonging to Asiatic chief-
doms that were vassals of the Hyksos, to Egyptian collaborators, or to the
Hyksos themselves. The pharaohs of the Seventeenth Dynasty were
obliged to pay tribute to these Hyksos and to tolerate their garrisons,
which were installed in strategic places, such as Gebelein. Moreover, the
fortresses in Lower Nubia had been abandoned, and the southern bound-
ary was now at Elephantine. The Theban dynasts thus had to cope with a
difficult situation. They relied on an alliance with other provinces, such as
those of Edfu and el-Kab, whose temple domains were closely associated
with that of Amun. The spirit of reconquest animated the Seventeenth Dy-
nasty, but it was hampered by an unfavorable balance of power due to the
superiority of Hyksos military technology. Phases of hostility, with victo-
ries and defeats on both sides alternated with phases of peaceful coexis-
tence. The actual war of liberation, which was conducted using large con-
tingents of Nubian mercenaries (Medjoi), began with Kamose and ended
during the reign of his successor Ahmose. Neither the order nor all the
names of the pharaohs of the Seventeenth Dynasty are certain: Inyotef V
(Nubkheperre), undoubtedly the founder; Rehotpe; Sebekemzaf I (Wadj-
khau), an active king who reigned for 16 years; Djehuty; Sewadjen [...];
Nebireyeraw I; Nebireyeraw II; Semenneferre; Seuserenre; Sebekemzaf II
(Sekhemre-shedwaset); Inyotef VI and Inyotef VII; Senakhtenre; Seqe-
nenre Tao; Kamose.
These pharaohs had a residence at Balias (Ombos, not far from Kop-
tos), but they evidently reigned at Thebes, where they were buried in
tombs surmounted by brick pyramids. These tombs, which were at Dra
Abu el-Naga, next to the cemetery of the Eleventh Dynasty (a symbolic lo-
cation) , were pillaged under the Ramessides.
SÂpophis, Hyksos, Inyotef, Kamose, Second Intermediate Period, Seqenenre Tao,

Sixteenth Dynasty.
SHOSHENa 177
Seventh Dynasty
According to Manetho, the Seventh Dynasty consisted of seventy
pharaohs who each reigned seventy days. This obviously legendary formu-
lation reveals the disarray of Egyptian annalistic tradition confronted with
a period during which multiple pretenders disputed the throne without
any of them succeeding in imposing himself, probably after the death of
Nitocris (2140 B.C.E.).
See First Intermediate Period, Nitocris.
Shoshenq Twenty-second Dynasty

This Libyan name illustrates the fortunes, which would last for nearly
five centuries, of the pharaohs of Libyan descent, who are otherwise
called “Shoshenqides.” In the obscure beginnings of the tenth century,
under the Twenty-first (Tanite) Dynasty, parts of the Meshwesh, an ethnic
group that had long inhabited the delta and had settled as far as the bor-
ders of the Laiyum, dominated the armed forces. The supreme com-
mander, Shoshenq the Elder, was strong enough for one of his sons to im-
pose himself as pharaoh. Eorty years later, his grandson Shoshenq, “great
chief of the Meshwesh and chief of chiefs,” whose residence was at
Bubastis, dominated the state; he was master of an army and a treasury of
his own. The royal puppet of Tanis asked Amun to guarantee that
Shoshenq would transmit his power to his heirs, but the latter achieved
even more: he succeeded Psusennes II, founding the Twenty-second Dy-
nasty. His reign (945-924 B.C.E.) saw a great deal of restoration: a renewal
of building activity at places such as Karnak, el-Hiba, and Tanis, reorga-
nization of the territory divided among the privileged Libyan princes, and
the successful resumption of activities in Asia. Around 925 B.C.E., the king
(the Shishak of the Bible) led his Egyptian, Libyan, and Nubian contin-
gents through Philistia, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the Negeb,
imposing a heavy war tribute on Jerusalem. Traditional relations between
Egypt and the Lebanese port of Byblos were reestablished. This Shoshenq,
who was sometimes confused with Sesostris (the Greek form of the name
Senwosret), would be cited by tradition as one of the great Egyptian con-
querors.
Shoshenq III (825-773 B.C.E.) and Shoshenq V (767-730 B.C.E.) both
had especially long reigns, so they are frequently mentioned in the dates
of private stelae. Under Shoshenq III, a rival arose in the person of
Petubastis, and violent struggles occurred over the pontificate of Amun
and the governorship of Herakleopolis, while the cities of the delta passed
into the hands of autonomous “great chiefs.” Shoshenq III completed the
great temple of Tanis, where his burial vault was discovered. Shoshenq V
ruled only a north that was divided into principalities. A large and beauti-
ful temple to the god Khons was constructed in his name at Tanis.
Tanis: L’Or des Pharaons (Paris, 1987).

See Bubastis, Libyans, Third Intermediate Period.
* "V
Sinuhe
Scholars today agree that the Story of Sinuhe is the masterpiece of
pharaonic literature. Even the Egyptians counted it as one of the classics
that they chose for the purpose of training apprentice scribes or delight-
ing those enamored of fine writing.
In the form of an autobiography, Sinuhe narrates the tribulations he
experienced abroad. Traveling in the following of Senwosret I when the
latter was returning from an expedition to Libya, Sinuhe overheard the
announcement of the death of Amenemhet I. Fearing he would be impli-
cated in the plot that led to this death, he deserted. After traversing the
delta, he arrived in Palestine, dying of thirst; a sheikh saved him, and he
continued his journey in Asia, passing through Byblos. Eventually, the
prince of Upper Retjenu took him in sympathetically, presenting Sinuhe
with his daughter and a fief. Sinuhe prospered in the service of the
prince, to the point that he aroused envy. An arrogant Asiatic challenged
him, with the intent of despoiling him, but Sinuhe triumphed. With age,
his nostalgia for Egypt grew. Happily, Senwosret I authorized his return,
and in a formal audience, he granted him a pardon and heaped honors
on him.
The story is an extremely rich work that incorporates various text gen-
res: hymn, royal decree, narration, folklore. Its historical background is
precisely documented: succession crisis, realistic description of Asiatic
customs, foreign names, historical personages. It draws considerable in-
spiration from the loyalist propaganda that the new dynasty spread with
the help of excellent paid writers. (This propaganda also included apolo-
gies of Amenemhet I and Senwosret I, the theme of royal clemency, and a
call for an active foreign policy.)
See Autobiography, Senwosret I, Twelfth Dynasty.
Sixteenth Dynasty
This dynasty comprises Asiatic chieftains, vassals of the Hyksos, who di-
vided Lower Egypt (outside the eastern delta) among themselves, and
SIXTH DYNASTY 179
small kingdoms in Middle Egypt ruled by Egyptians who collaborated with

the occupiers. These rulers held power concurrently with the Fifteenth
and Seventeenth Dynasties.
See Hyksos, Second Intermediate Period, Seventeenth Dynasty.
Sixth Dynasty >

The reasons for the change from the Fifth to the Sixth Dynasty remain un-
known, but the transition does not seem to have occurred in a context of po-
litical turbulence. The list of the pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty is as follows:
Teti (2321-2289 B.C.E.), founder of the dynasty

Userkare (2289-? B.C.E.), a usurper who apparently had a short reign
Pepy I (2289-2247 B.C.E.); son of Teti, he reestablished the legitimate
succession
Merenre (2247-2241 B.C.E.), who succeeded Pepy I at a very young age;
his mother might have acted as regent at the beginning of his reign
Pepy II (2241-2148 B.C.E.), half brother of Merenre, had an extremely
long reign during which he progressively lost control of the country
Merenre-Nemtyemzaf, son of Pepy II, came to the throne at a time of
trouble and unrest and could not have maintained his rule for long
(perhaps a year and a month)
Nitocris (Neithiqerty), a woman who, like Hatshepsut and Twosre,
became pharaoh; she ruled for six or twelve years in the context of
plots and disorder that marked the end of the Sixth Dynasty and the
beginning of the First Intermediate Period
The Sixth Dynasty saw the continuation of a process that had begun
during the Fifth Dynasty of diminishment of the pharaoh’s control over
the country:
Certain institutions—“pyramid cities” and regional temples —

obtained a status of immunity, exempting them from subjection to
the imposts and requisitions of the central administration.
High officials increasingly imposed the principle of the hereditary
transmission of office to the detriment of the free choice of the
king, thereby forming family lines of office holders.
This tendency was especially strong at the regional level; the nomarchs
set themselves up as local potentates, arrogating to themselves titles
of the central administration (vizier, overseer of the south) and
sometimes becoming so powerful that the king had to come to
terms with them (thus, Pepy I married two daughters of an
influential family of Abydos).
It is clear that the collapse of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Sixth Dy-
nasty proceeded essentially, even if not exclusively, from the exacerbation
of these tendencies toward autonomy.
The process was gradual, however, and on the whole, the Sixth Dy-
nasty maintained the high cultural level of the period that preceded it.
The supplies of exotic commodities and products from the Sinai, Byb-
los, and Punt continued; in fact, Egyptian perietration into Nubia ex-
tended into the principalities of the Dongola region, through which
Egypt entered into contact with the African interior (e.g., the pygmy
brought back by Harkhuf). In the same vein, we cannot really speak of a
decadence in craftsmanship during the Sixth Dynasty; its bas-reliefs and
statues are not lacking in finesse, though the powerful massiveness of
the Fourth and Fifth dynasties was on the wane. The pharaohs still built
pyramids with complexes consisting of a funerary temple and a valley
temple, more or less in accordance with the pattern established by
Wenis. These pyramids were built of blocks bonded with a mortar of
Nile silt and covered with a limestone casing, though they were smaller
(a little over 160 feet in height) than those of the Fourth Dynasty.
Considerable architectural skill continued to manifest itself in the fu-
nerary temples, but the use of “expensive” materials (granite, quartzite)
diminished over time.
I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985),
pp. 176-90.
See Harkhuf, Heqaib, Izi, Kagemni, Nekhebu, Pepy I, Pepy II, Teti, Wenis.
Smendes 1069-1043 B.C.E., Twenty-first Dynasty

This king’s name refers to the cult of the ram god of Mendes. Smendes
was undoubtedly a native of this ancient city of the eastern delta. The ac-
count of Wenamun (c. 1080 B.C.E.) depicts him residing farther to the
east, at Tanis, from which he administered Lower Egypt and traded with
Asia. When Ramesses XI died, he became king, founding the Twenty-first
(Tanite) Dynasty; he reestablished internal peace, if we believe the high-
flown titulary he gave himself. His reign evidently lasted about a quarter
of a century, but his monuments are regrettably rare. Two of his canopic
jars were secretly spirited away from the royal necropolis of Tanis, where
he was probably the first occupant.
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 2: The New Kingdom
(Berkeley, 1976), pp. 224-30.
See Mendes, Tanis, Third Intermediate Period.
SNOFRU 181
Smenkhkare 1337-1335 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

This little-attested personal name is once associated with the
prenomen “Ankhkheprure, beloved of Neferkheprure (= Akhenaten),”
and this prenomen sometimes also occurs with the personal name “Nefer-
nefruaten, beloved of the Unique One of Re (= Akhenaten).” This phan-
tom-like figure is known only from rare mentions of his name in inscrip-
tions, from small objects, and from items of burial equipment that, either
in pristine condition or usurped, ended up as part of the tomb furnishings
of Tutankhamun. Smenkhkare was married to Merytaten, the eldest
daughter of Akhenaten, and he ruled for two years. Scholars debate all
other matters regarding this sovereign. Some items from Tutankhamun’s
tomb might depict him, but reliefs from Amarna in which some have be-
lieved they have seen him associated with Akhenaten could very well rep-
resent a queen. No argument enables us to state with certainty whether he
was the coregent or simply the successor of the heretic king. It has even
been suggested that Smenkhkare was a woman, and even more, that he
was Nefertiti become pharaoh, a thesis that many specialists in Amarna
view as unsound. It goes without saying that his genealogy is also debated.
His successor, Tutankhamun, might have been his brother (according to
cranial measurements). He has been identified with a male body found in
the rear of Tomb 55 of the Valley of the Kings, lying in a gilded coffin that
supposedly belonged to a queen, but which profaners rendered anony-
mous by obliterating the names and the faces. The coffin was found sur-
rounded by disparate and incomplete tomb furnishings, items that had
once belonged to the queen mother Teye, to Queen Kiya, and to Akhen-
aten: none bear the names of Smenkhkare. Some Egyptologists and med-
ical authorities have concluded that this body is Akhenaten’s.
Fortunately, one definite trace of his reign lends him some substance:
our pharaoh had a funerary temple at Thebes, “in the domain of Amun,”
thus reviving a basic pre-Atenist practice. An obscure priest attested to the
existence of the temple in a pious graffito that expresses his profound de-
sire to see, with his eyes and in his heart, the consoling presence of the re-
turned Amun. The restoration that took place under Tutankhamun was
thus begun during the reign of his ephemeral predecessor.
See Amenophis IV, alias Akhenaten; Tutankhamun.
Snofru 2561-2538 B.C.E., Fourth Dynasty

First pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, Snofru reigned at least twenty-four
years, and perhaps longer. No fewer than four pyramids are associated
with his name:
The pyramid of Maidum (south of the plain of Memphis), conceived

as a step pyramid, was perhaps originally intended for Snofru’s
predecessor; it remained uncompleted.
Two pyramids at Dahshur. The southern pyramid is called
“rhomboidal,” because its slope exhibits a sudden change of angle
at mid height. The northern, true pyramid has an angle (about 450)
which is consistently that of the upper part'of the “rhomboidal”
pyramid. The two pyramids comprised a huge ensemble onto which
a socioeconomic complex was grafted (a pyramid city, conceived as
a government-controlled institution).
Recent excavations have shown that we must also credit Snofru with
the small pyramid of Seila in the Faiyum, not far from Maidum.
That Snofru could have undertaken such vast enterprises indicates his
strict control over the means of production and their effective deploy-
ment; in fact, in his reign, cattle counts were added to the already-known
inventories of other consumables. Resources from abroad did not escape
this pharaoh. An expedition consisting of forty ships was sent to the
Lebanon in search of wood (pine, cedar). The Sinai was so effectively ex-
ploited during the reign of Snofru that he became a local deity, though he
was not the first to have dispatched troops of soldiers and workmen there.
Operations carried out in Nubia and on the Libyan frontier assured the
security of the marches and a huge booty of cattle.
The famous statues of Rehotpe and Nofret bear clear testimony to the
technical mastery attained by artists in the reign of Snofru. This reign was
so fondly remembered that posterity viewed him as the most popular of
all the pharaohs of Egypt. Not only were his local cults maintained for a
long time at Dahshur and in the Sinai, but literature, both stories and
works of propaganda, depicted him as a good-natured and sympathetic
sovereign whose patronage continued to reward those kings who laid
claim to it.
See Fourth Dynasty, Kagemni.
Sources for History

What sources, and for what history? Such are the questions that tor-
ment modern scholars. In attempting to deal with pharaonic Egypt, they
are overwhelmed by the quantity and the difficulty of the documentation,
and at the same time, frustrated by the poverty of its informative content.
On the whole, the sources can be divided into four categories that are
quantitatively and qualitatively disparate.
SOURCES FOR HISTORY 183
EGYPTIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
There was indeed an Egyptian historiography, though we suspect that it
worked with a concept of history far different from the modern one. It re-
sponded to two necessities. One of these was practical: juridical and ad-
ministrative activities — in particular, those having to do with taxation —
obviously required a chronology. Since the^year count was set back to zero
at the outset of each reign, it was necessary to keep lists of pharaohs in
order to have precise chronological reference points.
There was also an ideological necessity: since history was conceived of
as the prolonging or repetition of creation, it was necessary to make a
record of events, or what were considered events, to reduce them to basic
stereotypes and to set them as such into a sacral framework. Thus, scribes
made chronicles of Pharaoh’s activities; when he was engaged in an im-
portant undertaking, such as a war, it was their task to create journals of
the campaign. Sometimes, these documents served as sources for tri-
umphal compositions, such as the Annals of Tuthmosis III. In the case of
the Battle of Qadesh, which was fought by Ramesses II, we have a double
account, a literary and a pictographic one, carved in several temples, as
well as a parallel account that was circulated in the form of a poem. These
reign chronicles were food for a genuine annalistic tradition: thus, the
Palermo Stone enumerates the memorable deed of each reign of the first
five dynasties, examples being the celebration of festivals, the construc-
tion of temples, the setting up of statues, and military expeditions.
The Royal Canon of Turin lists all the pharaohs and the lengths of their
reigns; this list has a modicum of organization, in that it distinguishes
groups of kings who are characterized, for example, by the city they chose
as their capital or by their city of origin. This attempt at periodization re-
veals the beginning of historical reflection, and the Royal Canon of Turin
thus contrasts with other lists, compiled in temples, which seek only to
commemorate pharaohs who had worked in those temples and whose
construction activity must have been recorded as the temples were being
enlarged.
Finally, during the reigns of the first two Ptolemies, Manetho, an Egypt-
ian priest writing in Greek, composed a history of Egypt using historio-
graphic documentation from the pharaonic period. Unfortunately, it has
been preserved only in the form of extracts cited by summarizers and by
writers who used his history for purposes of their own.
We thus have only vestiges of the products of Egyptian historiography,
and they are quite incomplete. This situation is all the more regrettable in
that recent criticism has recognized a certain value in them, mutatis mu-
tandis; they are in no way tissues of poppycock and legends, as they had
once been called, when Egyptology was still young and scholars were dis-
satisfied with the early decipherments.
ANCIENT SOURCES FROM OUTSIDE EGYPT

As one of the great powers of the Near East for nearly three millennia,
pharaonic Egypt could not fail to enter into the preoccupations of other
* -v
civilizations, and thus to appear in the documentation they left to us. The
Hittite archives, and later, the chronicles of the kings of Assyria, grant
ample space to their relations and their wrangles with Egypt. Further-
more, the Bible turns more than once to this land so closely linked to the
most ancient history of the Hebrew people and whose culture was an im-
portant source of inspiration to them.
But it is the Greek and Latin authors who furnish the most important
of our ancient sources, for Hellenism was fascinated by pharaonic Egypt.
Contacts were established as early as the Minoan era. These contacts in-
tensified with the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, with its concession of the port of
Naukratis to the Greeks, and even more with the Ptolemaic Period and
with Egypt’s annexation into the Roman empire. The accounts of curi-
ous visitors, the recollections of traders, soldiers, and administrators
who went to Egypt for professional reasons, and even the hearsay passed
along from port to port nourished a dense classical tradition regarding
Egypt. This tradition was a mixture of complex strata of pure legend,
jumbles of chronologically heterogeneous notations, distortions and
reinterpretations of facts, and of authentic information. The particularly
outstanding classical works are that by Plutarch (46-120 C.E.), which is
especially oriented toward religion; the Bibliotheca of Diodorus Siculus
(first century C.E.), much of which is devoted to pharaonic Egypt and
takes earlier writings into account, as well as offering some personal ob-
servations; book 17 of the Geography of Strabo (first century C.E.), a curi-
ous spirit who knew how to enrich his travel notes from Egypt with in-
formation derived from earlier geographers and ethnographers; and,
finally, the Histories of Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E.). Setting out to
describe the Persian empire that the Greeks had just defeated,
Herodotus dwells at length (in book 2 and part of book 3) on one of its
provinces, Egypt, which he takes to be the most astonishing. His work is
a veritable treatise on cultural history that draws on various sources, in-
cluding earlier writers and the tales of dragomen who he says guided
him during his visit (which certain scholars have claimed never oc-
curred). It is not all nonsense, especially when he reports on events that
occurred close in time to his own century, and an excellent Egyptologist
has even devoted a learned thesis to the value of the information he sup-
plies regarding the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
On the whole, the classical sources offer rather uneven material for the
history of pharaonic Egypt. The systematic distortion of the information
by interpretatio graeca (or romana) requires such critical acumen that it is
far more often the case that Egyptology sheds light on a classical account
than the other way around.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Inspired by research on the prehistoric period, archaeology has shown
how much it can bring to history, thanks to the techniques and methods it
has forged for itself. At the same time, the heroic era of pharaonic ar-
chaeology appears, with the advantage of hindsight, to be an age of ob-
scurantism: obsessed with their quest for inscriptions and beautiful ob-
jects, the experts were little concerned with stratigraphy, and they quickly
eradicated everything that was not built of stone. Since these excavators
were working at major sites, the amount of information thus lost was
considerable.
Somewhat later than neighboring disciplines such as Assyriology, Egyp-
tology opened itself to archaeology, justly (though sometimes with some
indulgence) denouncing the methods and customs of the past. Ceramic
typologies were elaborated, stratigraphy held no more secrets, and re-
searchers deployed the arsenal of modern techniques, such as aerial pho-
tography, proton magnetometers, and thermoluminescence. Some results
were spectacular: the model excavations of Manfred Bietak at the site of
Avaris facilitated the determination of the various phases of Asiatic settle-
ment there, upsetting the traditional picture of a Hyksos invasion. Addi-
tionally, these excavations shed light on the historical geography of the
eastern delta and explained the choice of the site of Pi-Riamsese as capital,
as well as its later abandonment in favor of Tanis.
With good reason, we expect fresh information regarding the history
of Egypt from modern excavations. Still, we should not entertain too
much hope. Although it is easy to besmirch the earliest excavators, the
conditions peculiar to archaeology in Egypt must be taken into account.
Over the millennia, the great majority of sites suffered extensive damage
from pillagers, treasure hunters, and the removal of earth for brick mak-
ing or sebakh—that is, when the remains of ancient sites did not disappear
under modern settlements. Thus, even when they are well conducted, ex-
cavations cannot always yield the results that are theoretically anticipated.
In particular, urban archaeology, one of the most informative areas for
historians, is irremediably handicapped, for rare are the settlements that

offer some hope, such as the Old Kingdom town of Balat in el-Dakhla
Oasis.
The reevaluation of archaeology has entailed a renewal of interest in
uninscribed material: tools and objects of daily life, as well as nonmonu-
mental architecture. Inventories, descriptions, classifications, and typolo-
gies demand laborious, unspectacular work, but in the last analysis, such
work can contribute to our knowledge of the chronology and the ethnol-
ogy of the historical period.
Still, one point remains incontrovertible. As precious as archaeology
has proven to be, when it comes to the history of pharaonic Egypt, it can
never be more than an indispensable complement to the written sources.
WRITTEN SOURCES
At first sight, the written sources are disconcerting in the variety of
their type and their content. Still, it is pertinent to divide them into two
major groups that correspond to the status assigned to them by the an-
cient Egyptians themselves. One group consists of purely mundane
texts, most often written in cursive (hieratic) script on perishable mate-
rials: papyri, wooden tablets, and ostraca (splinters of stone or frag-
ments of pottery with a surface smooth enough to be written on). The
other group comprises religiously weighted inscriptions, most often in
hieroglyphs on more durable materials (stone, metal, wood), precisely
because they were made to last and thus to perpetuate the vision of the
world invoked by the monuments on which they were written. The same
document—a royal decree, for example — could be published in two
versions: a secular version for the archives, preserving the entire text
with the formal attributes that authenticated it, and a religiously
weighted version, set up in an appropriate place and provided with an
ideological apparatus (divine images, phraseology) that inserted it into
a vision of the world. The impact of the latter version most often worked
to the detriment of the literal content of the original, which could be
abridged to the point of reducing it to the basics. Any critical work on
the written sources must begin with a recognition of the dichotomy be-
tween these two types of documents.
Secular Sources
To one surveying what has survived to us of the immense production of
secular texts in pharaonic Egypt, the number seems quite large: private
letters, administrative correspondence, account books of institutions, reg-
istry office contracts, tax registers, contracts of sale or rental of goods or
persons, minutes of trials, compendia of customs . . . the complete inven-

tory would be rather lengthy. Unfortunately, a more attentive examina-
tion results in disenchantment. The number of documents, which is
considerable on the scale of the scholar who must interpret them, is actu-
ally small for more than two and a half millennia of history. Moreover,
many of the documents are filled with lacunae or are incomplete, or they
survive only as scarcely informative membra disjecta of groups of texts in
which they originally made sense.
And what are we to say of their distribution in time and space? For en-
tire centuries, there is an absolute, or near absolute, silence. The third
millennium has yielded only the archives from Gebelein and those of two
funerary temples of the Fifth Dynasty. From the Middle Kingdom, we
have only the archives of a private domain run by a certain Heqanakht,
the archives of a construction site near Abydos, jumbles of paperwork
from the pyramid cities of el-Lahun, some pages from an accounting book
of the court of Thebes under Sebekhotpe II, and a roster of prisoners. In
the New Kingdom, the situation improves, thanks to the abundant docu-
mentation from Deir el-Medina; we are finally able to follow, with some
precision, the functioning of the institution of the royal tomb, the daily
life of its members, both administrators and workmen. Figures accumu-
late with some consistency to the point that an eminent scholar, Jaroslav
V -
Cerny, succeeded in making quantitative studies on the evolution of

prices, which is unthinkable for other periods. The situation is none too
good for the Third Intermediate Period, not only because the sources are
scarce, but also because they still resist total decipherment. With the Late
Period, a rather abundant documentation written in Demotic emerges,
but the hour for its synthesis has not yet arrived.
Beyond the unevenness of the distribution of evidence for administra-
tive and juridical practice, the historian constantly comes up against prob-
lems in interpreting them. Neither the functioning of institutions nor the
status of institutions and persons can easily be discerned; in particular,
taxation, so fertile a field for historians, remains highly obscure for Egyp-
tologists, despite a fortunate gift of chance, Papyrus Wilbour. This pa-
pyrus, which is more than thirty-two feet long, is a tax register produced
by a commission of surveyors working in a ninety-three-mile area of
Middle Egypt under Ramesses V. That such a document—for once nearly
complete — raises such difficulties demonstrates the scarcely enviable lot
of economic and social historians (and perhaps all historians) of
pharaonic Egypt.
Another type of secular source offers a meager consolation: literature.
Many works that survive to us are rich in historical information, often be-
cause they are politically oriented. Pharaohs in fact paid authors to spread
political or propaganda messages via attractive writings; typical cases are
the Story of Sinuhe and the Instruction for Merykare. Even when they are
free of such aims, many works are grist for the historian’s mill, because
they are rooted in an explicit social experience — most often, obviously,
that of the ruling class. But literature itself cannot compensate for the in-
V
sufficiency of other secular sources. Historians must therefore make max-

imum use of religiously weighted sources.
Religious Sources
If religious sources abound, it is because the prime characteristic of
sacralization was recording on durable material. We shall distinguish be-
tween private sources and royal sources.
Private Sources Every Egyptian who had the means to do so sought to

increase his chances of survival after death, not only by erecting a tomb
that was provided with an abundance of inscribed tomb furnishings, but
also by setting up stelae, statues, or offering tables in the temples. We thus
have an enormous quantity of private documents, and while they most
often contain only a religious formula, the names and titles of these
persons constitute precious supplementary information for the historian.
In fact, thanks to meticulous efforts of classification and inventorying,
scholars have been able to elaborate prosopographic groupings by region,
by type of activity, or by family, and their results are richly informative.
Working out genealogies, they have followed the transmission or loss of
offices, as well as the accumulation of offices, matrimonial strategies, and
the gain or loss of the favor of the ruler. The quality of funerary
monuments enables scholars to appreciate the relative wealth of their
owners. Some of our knowledge — and the great bulk of it for some
periods — rests on these methods. They sometimes give us a glimpse of
the crest, at least, of the great waves that shook Egyptian society, and
especially its ruling class: the transfer of high offices outside the royal
family under the Fifth Dynasty, the rise of a middle class during the second
part of the Middle Kingdom, the multiplication of parvenus in the New
Kingdom, and so forth.
All these private monuments contain at least some information. Even
when they consist only of a string of cliches, autobiographies can be pre-
cious, for at the very least these cliches reflect the spirit of an age. When
they are lengthy and detailed, they constitute some of our basic sources,
and their contents sometimes dovetail with those found in other docu-
ments, such as royal sources.
Royal Sources Obviously enough, the pharaohs placed their names on a

great number of monuments. They did this first because like others, they
wanted to assure their survival; to this end, they set in motion the
enormous means that the eminence of their position put at their disposal.
Secondly, and especially, they did this because the very exercise of
Egyptian kingship implied the multiplication of inscribed monuments. In
fact, as successor to the creator god, each pharaoh prolonged the act of
creation by transforming history into a manifestation of the order that
was instituted at the First Moment. This highly ideological activity
demanded that each undertaking be authenticated by the name of the
pharaoh who was responsible for it, and that this authentication be
inscribed on durable material. A godsend for the historian? That would
be saying too much; historians must content themselves with what they
have, which most often means cartouches or brief inscriptions carved in
various parts of temples. For one of the prime duties of a pharaoh was to
construct and to restore temples. And for many kings, the bulk of our
documentation indeed consists of an inventory of the religious edifices
that they erected, enlarged, or rebuilt, or in which they dedicated statues
or set up obelisks. Although such monumental activity reflects a king’s
power — and beyond that, the political and economic conditions of his
era — this is a somewhat crude means of evaluation, all the more so in that
the hazards of destruction or preservation contribute to inaccurate
conclusions. Alas, historians must all too often resign themselves to these
realities.
Fortunately, pharaohs sometimes made voluble use of the “creative ut-
terance” with which they were endowed to inscribe their words for poster-
ity. We thus have monumental versions of decrees, of lengthy enumera-
tions of offerings or favors granted to the deities, detailed accounts of
military campaigns and of conquests, with lists of subjected regions and
peoples, commemorations of ceremonies conducted with great pomp,
acts of familial and ancestral piety, and so forth. In such cases, the sources
are expansive, and the doors stand ajar for the historian’s eye. The glance
thus obtained is often a fleeting one, for the rhetorical scope of these
highly ideological inscriptions masks the poverty of their informative con-
tent. Nevertheless, newly discovered royal inscriptions sometimes contain
veritable revelations, such as the stela of Ramose, which sheds light on the
political situation in Egypt under the Hyksos.
This survey of the sources for pharaonic history must conclude with a
somewhat disenchanted assertion: the lot of the historian is scarcely satis-
fying. The documentation is apparently abundant, but it is very unevenly
distributed. The earliest periods are ill served, not only because time has
had more opportunity to accomplish its work of destruction, but also be-
cause they produced fewer documents; as time went on, Egypt produced
more texts of use to the historian. Unequal distribution, then, but also
equal difficulty: few documents have survived to us intact, and when they
are, their interpretation remains a delicate matter, for we do not have a
perfect mastery of the writing system and the language, nor do we have
the background information that the documents presuppose. Finally, the
efforts required by interpretation often end in deception. The ancient
Egyptians did not have the advantage of reading our treatises on the writ-
ing of history; for three millennia, they persisted in reporting their expe-
rience as they saw it, not as we would like them to have seen it. Egyptolo-
gists therefore cannot even stammer an answer to the most elementary
questions that specialists in modern history begin by asking of their
sources. Clio, the muse of history, does not deign to adorn herself with the
gold of Tutankhamun.
S. Donadoni, ed., LeFonti indirette della storia egiziana, Studi Semitici 7 (Rome,
1963); K. Weeks, ed., Egyptology and the Social Sciences (Cairo, 1979); D. B. Redford,
Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian
Sense of History, SSEA Publication 4 (Mississauga, Ontario, 1986).
Sport
As war chief, the pharaoh had to train. The divine king had to demon-
strate his vigor by combating animals that embodied evil forces. The mas-
ter of the palace amused himself with the same diversions as the nobles of
his court. He went to hunt waterfowl and to fish in the marshes of the
Faiyum, and to shoot gazelles behind Giza or Heliopolis, wild oxen in the
Wadi el-Natrun, and onagers in Syria. He hunted lions and hippopotami
at close quarters. He thus knew how to use the bow and the spear. The rit-
ual character of certain hunts reflected the traditional damning of ani-
mals incarnating chaos, just as the “run with the Apis bull” and other rit-
ual runs had a religious aim. But these activities were also a means of
recalling the infallible capability and the youthful vigor of the ruling sov-
ereign. Tuthmosis III commemorated a rhinoceros hunt that occurred on
the Sudanese steppes. Amenophis III dedicated an issue of commemora-
tive scarabs to his killing of 102 lions in ten years. Ostrich feathers stuck in
a fan belonging to Tutankhamun had been brought back by the boy king
from a hunt east of Heliopolis.
One sovereign testified that physical training was part of the education
of a prince: Amenophis II made media events of the feats of which he was
capable from the age of eighteen on. Likewise, he exhibited his taste for
STRIKES 191
violence by relating the blows he personally struck in Asia and his brutal
reprisals against his enemies in battle. These were cases of egoistic justifi-
cations of his predisposition for kingship; his insistence on anecdotes
shows that his exploits were in no way required by a supposed “initiation
ritual” that conferred access to the throne. No one could catch up with
the young Amenophis in a footrace. He tested a series of the stiffest bows.
He maneuvered a parade vessel by himself, after its two hundred oarsmen
had worn themselves out. He personally trained his horses, which he har-
nessed and took on long rides. Riding his chariot at full speed, he unfail-
ingly shot his arrows through metal targets that were three inches thick.
See Pharaoh.
Strikes
Yes, there were strikes in the time of the pharaohs, or at least during
the Twentieth Dynasty. The workmen who labored on the royal tombs
were paid in the form of allotments of consumable goods furnished by the
state; but these allotments were regular only when the granaries and
storehouses were full. In year 29 of Ramesses III, a crisis struck that would
darken the end of the New Kingdom: the rations ceased to be distributed
in due course. Driven by necessity, the workmen left their village (the
present-day Deir el-Medina) to occupy the funerary temples — first that of
Tuthmosis III, then those of Ramesses II and Sethos I — at the margin of
the cultivated fields. To do so, they passed by the five fortified posts that
guarded access to these temples from the mountain, marking their breach
with the normal; thus, in their day, “pass by the (five) fortified posts” was
the equivalent of our expression “go on strike.” These movements were
spontaneous and unorganized, and the demands of the strikers were basic:
If we went there, it was because of hunger, because of thirst; there are

no clothes, no unguent, no fish, no vegetables. Write about it to
Pharaoh, life, prosperity, health, our goodly lord, and write to the
vizier, our superior, so that he might procure us a means of living.
When all was said and done, the allocations were delivered, and the
strikers went back to work. But other strikes broke out shortly thereafter,
and they would be repeated until the end of the Twentieth Dynasty. The
authorities attempted to deal with the most urgent matters first, employ-
ing captious rhetoric and half measures, such as furnishing a portion of
the rations owed, until eventually they came up with the means of satisfy-
ing the legitimate demands of the workmen. Conflict resolution was more
complicated, however, when the motive of the strike was to denounce the
corruption, the dishonesty, and the scandals that were rampant in the in-
stitution of the Tomb; in such cases, our sources become curiously reti-
cent regarding the measures that were taken!
P. Vernus, Affaires et scandales sous les Ramses (Paris, 1993), chapter 2.
Sun Temples
During the Fifth Dynasty, from Userkaf to Menkauhor, six successive
kings erected sanctuaries to the sun god Re, in their own names and in the
proximity of their funerary temples. These cult places, which were almost
entirely open to the sky, were dominated by a monumental obelisk. The
sun temple of Neuserre (Abu Ghurab) is the one that has been the best
studied. It is famous for its remains of a small “chamber of the world” in
which bas-reliefs representing the cycle of the year, undoubtedly the most
ancient treatise on natural history, evoke the reproductive process of
mammals, birds, and fish.
See Fifth Dynasty.

Taharqa 690-664 B.C.E., Twenty-fifth Dynasty
In 701 B.C.E., when Jerusalem was threatened by Assyria, it was aided by
Taharqa, the brother and designated heir of the king of Egypt and Kush.
In the book of Kings, the Jewish scribes credited this intervention to the
memorable “Taharqa, king of Kush.” This is a minor anachronism, but no
error with regard to the person. From Gebel Barkal to Tanis, we have
many remains of his buildings, and high'quality statues depicting the sov-
ereign wearing the tall plumes of the god Onuris. We also have an excep-
tional quantity of lengthy, diverse, and detailed inscriptions informing us
that Taharqa, a ruler born in the Sudan but crowned king at Memphis,
was the most opulent of all the kings of the Twenty-fifth, Kushite Dynasty.
An immense column in the first court of Karnak reminds visitors of his
enormous building activity.
From the originality of the form and the content of his proclamations,
Taharqa seems to have been a highly personal author of both official and
devout literature. In the political and ethical program that he submitted
to Amun of Karnak and in many other texts, the king provides extraordi-
nary details about his youth, his role as mediator, and his initiatives. One
proclamation was disseminated everywhere to draw a lesson from a terri-
fying Nile inundation that occurred in his year 6, only to be followed by
an especially successful agricultural season. One stela relates how the king
organized a training course for his army in the desert outside Memphis. In
the Sudan, written accounts and inventories detail the circumstances of
the construction and endowment of the temples of Sanam and Kawa. For
himself, Taharqa built an enormous pyramid on the virgin site of el-
Kurru, near Napata, and a more modest one at Sedeinga. No doubt be-
cause of the many inscriptions that multiplied during the first sixteen
years of his rule, tradition would count him as one of the warrior kings.
But the thirteen years that followed were pitiful indeed: the Assyrians pen-
etrated Egypt all the way to Thebes, dealing decisive blows to the Egypto-
Sudanese empire that the name of Taharqa had come to symbolize.
Kush, Kushite (Dynasty), Napata.
Takelot Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties

Three kings of the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Dynasties bore the
Libyan name Takelot, and every one of them was as obscure as the others.
Takelot I (889-874 B.C.E.) is a mere name between the illustrious Os-
orkon I and Osorkon II; we do not have a single monument of his. The
reign of Takelot II (886-840 B.C.E.), whose plundered coffin was discov-
ered at Tanis, saw the outbreak of a civil war that marked the outset of the
1Q4 THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOHS
breakup of the Libyan regime. Episodes of the war are narrated in the in-
scription left at Karnak by his eldest son, the high priest Osorkon. Takelot
III (764-757 B.C.E.) is the next to the last known king of the Twenty-third
Dynasty; his control was confined to Upper Egypt.

* *■
■V
Tanis
Situated near the northeast corner of the delta, the immense site of
Tanis still bears its ancient name Djame, which is now pronounced San. A
high hill of sand emerging from the midst of recent silt, with the young
Tanitic branch of the Nile running alongside it, Tanis made a relatively
late entrance onto the stage of history; earlier, the city had been fre-
quented solely by poor population groups who buried their dead there. At
the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, a man named Smendes took up resi-
dence at Tanis, from which he administered Lower Egypt as representa-
tive of the god Amun. Around 1069 B.C.E., he founded the Twenty-first,
Tanite Dynasty. Psusennes, Siamun, and then the kings of the Twenty-sec-
ond, Libyan Dynasty built great temples there to the Theban gods, using
stones and portable monuments taken from Pi-Riamsese to construct and
adorn them. After Smendes, and at least until the reign of Shoshenq III,
the kings had themselves buried in the temple of Amun.
Bocchoris of Sais and the Kushite Taharqa secured recognition at Tanis
during the period of conflict over the reunification of Egypt. Meanwhile,
highly obscure kinglets whose power was confined to the eastern delta—
the Horus Sankhtawy (alias Sekhemkare), Gemenefkhonsubak, and a
king with the throne name Neferkare—were still active in the temple of
Khons. Tanis, which had served as the northern counterpart of the city of
Thebes, lost its status of royal city after Pedubaste II, but its temples were
embellished by later pharaohs and were repaired in the Ptolemaic Period.
J. Yoyotte, in Tanis: L’Or des pharaons (Paris, 1987), pp. 25-48.

See Osorkon, Psusennes, Shoshenq, Smendes, Third Intermediate Period.
Tefnakhte
With Sais as his capital, this “great chief of the western provinces” of the
delta formed a coalition of the principalities of Lower Egypt, and around
730 B.C.E., he attempted to reconquer the south from the Kushites. Piye
repelled the northern army and forced the princes to accept his nominal
sovereignty, but the account of his campaign testifies that the Saite king-
dom remained inviolate. From Diodorus Siculus, we know that Tefnakhte
was the father of the pharaoh Bocchoris.
TETI 195
Two donation stelae inform us of a man of royal status named Tef-

nakhte, who called himself “son of Neith,” goddess of Sais. He might have
been Piye’s adversary, crowned pharaoh after the withdrawal of the
Kushite forces, or he might have been the Stephinates (to be corrected
into Tefinastes) whom Manetho places at the beginning of his Twenty-
sixth, Saite Dynasty and who must have reigned around 700 B.C.E. In any
event, according to the Kushite testimony, Tefnakhte symbolized the dy-
namism of the Egyptians of the western delta, who attempted for three
quarters of a century to restore unity.
SccPiye, Sais, Saite (Dynasties), Third Intermediate Period.
Tenth Dynasty
See Ninth and Tenth Dynasties.
Teos (or Tachos) 361-359 B.C.E., Thirtieth Dynasty

Teos was the second pharaoh of the Thirtieth (Sebennytic) Dynasty.
From his ephemeral reign, we have only a few fragments of temple deco-
ration. His personality is nonetheless famous because of what is related in
the Oikonomika of Pseudo-Aristotle and the Stratagemata of Polyaenus. He
was preoccupied by the offensive war against the Persian empire, and this
activity had an enormous financial and social impact. At the advice of the
Athenian leader Chabrias, the king requisitioned all the precious metal in
the land and extorted nearly all the revenue of the temples. He led an
army of 90,000 men to occupy Syria. His brother, the regent Tjahapimu,
who governed Egypt in his absence, turned against this despoiler of gods
and men, putting his own son, Nectanebo II, on the throne. Teos fled to
the court of the king of Persia, whose strike force he had (luckily for his
successor) broken. He died in Persia. Of this first pharaoh to strike coins,
we have only the image of a cosmopolitan financier, contrasting with the
traditional religious style of his father, Nectanebo I, and his nephew,
Nectanebo II.
See Persians, Sebennytic (Dynasty).
Teti 2321-2289 B.C.E., Sixth Dynasty

Teti was the first king of the Sixth Dynasty. He might have been assassi-
nated, perhaps to the profit of the usurper Userkare. During his reign, he
maintained the traditional policy of trade relations with Byblos, and he
began to extend Egyptian penetration deeper into Nubia. He built his
pyramid northeast of the complex of Djoser, with two satellite pyramids
for his queens, Iput and Khuit; like those of Wenis and the other pharaohs
of the Sixth Dynasty, the walls of his subterranean chambers are inscribed
with the Pyramid Texts.
See Kagemni, Sixth Dynasty, Wenis.
Teye
A native of Akhmim (Panopolis), Teye was the daughter of a prophet of
Min named Yuya and a “chief of the harem of Min” named Tuya. Teye
married Amenophis III at the beginning of his reign. She survived him
and died at some point after year 8 of the reign of her son, Amenophis
IV/Akhenaten. Since the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, certain
queens had played an important role, but Teye’s position was more emi-
nent still. Her husband associated her with all the events of his reign, mak-
ing her an officiant in his jubilee ceremony and treating her as the hy-
postasis of personifications specific to ideology, such as the goddess Maat
(who represented the order of the world), or even as a sphinx trampling
enemies! Temples were dedicated to the royal couple, such as that of
Sedeinga in Nubia; in addition, the name of Teye survives in the Nubian
toponym Adeye (derived from Hut-Teye, “mansion of Teye”), and perhaps
also in another toponym, Tahta, the name of a village in the region of Pa-
nopolis. Amenophis III had built a huge irrigation basin (hod) in the
queen’s name in her native province and had commemorated the event by
issuing scarabs. Teye’s importance was not purely ritual or eponymous; in
fact, the letters that survive to us from Amarna reveal that she conducted
Egyptian diplomacy while her husband was incapacitated by illness at the
end of his reign: she exercised a de facto, if not a de jure, regency. Among
the portraits of Teye, the most famous is probably the ebony head in the
Berlin Museum that has been attributed to her. Some of her tomb fur-
nishings have been found, but the identification of her mummy is still the
subject of debate.
See Amenophis III.
Thebes
The Egyptian name of Thebes was Waset, “the scepter”; it was the capi-
tal of the fourth nome of Upper Egypt, which was called “The Throne.”
Later, Thebes was called Nut, or No, “the city” (par excellence). The
name Thebes comes from a Greek interpretation of Djamet, the name of
Medinet Habu.
Though the site had already been occupied during the Predynastic Pe-
riod, Thebes remained an obscure town during the Old Kingdom, and few
monuments from that period have been found there. Moreover, Hermon-
THEBES 197
this competed with it for preeminence in the nome. Thebes owed its prodi-
gious fate to an accident of history. On two occasions, national unity was
restored by Theban dynasts: the reunification of Egypt and the rise of the
Middle Kingdom under Mentuhotpe II (2022 B.C.E.), and the expulsion of
the Hyksos and the rise of the New Kingdom under Ahmose (1554 B.C.E.).
On each of these occasions, the pharaohs favored their native city, pri-
marily by increasing the fields and the offerings of Amun, who had im-
posed himself as the chief god of the city at the end of the Eleventh Dy-
nasty, at the expense of Montu, who was nevertheless worshiped
throughout the region (at Thebes, Hermonthis, Tod, and el-Madamud).
What is more, the Middle Kingdom began to develop a doctrine of the
supremacy of Thebes: the city, which was called “victorious, the regent of
all the cities,” was personified with the attributes of a warrior goddess,
armed with a bow, a club, and later a scimitar. Myths also situated the cre-
ation of the world in this city. But although Thebes was the dynastic city of
the Middle Kingdom and the Eighteenth Dynasty, and the city of the
greatest national god during the remainder of the New Kingdom, its loca-
tion in the deep south was scarcely favorable for the role of capital of the
land. The city became even less suitable for that of capital of the Egyptian
empire when the latter extended into Asia. Thus, while pharaohs built
palaces and resided there on the occasion of major festivals, and even had
themselves buried there (except in the Twelfth Dynasty), they preferred to
govern from cities with a more central location: Lisht in the Middle King-
dom, Memphis in the New Kingdom, or Pi-Riamsese under the Rames-
sides, all of them closer to Asia. In the Third Intermediate Period, Thebes
became the capital of the theocracy of Amun, whose territory comprised
Upper Egypt and Middle Egypt as far as el-Hiba, and which was consid-
ered an autonomous principality in the Assyrian chronicles contemporary
with the end of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. In the Saite Period, when Thebes
was administered by the bureaucracy of the “divine adoratress of Amun,”
the city lost its political importance. Under the Romans, a part of its terri-
tory was administratively attached to Hermonthis, its old rival.
The region of Thebes covered both banks of the Nile. On the east
bank, the temple of Amun of Karnak and those of Montu, Khonsu, Mut,
and other deities were located in the north, while to the south, linked to
these temples by a processional way nearly two miles long, was the temple
of the ithyphallic Amun of Luxor. On the west bank, at the border of the
cultivated land, was a row of huge funerary temples, from that of Sethos I
(Gurna) in the north to that of Ramesses III (Medinet Habu), and to the
south of the latter, the palace of Amenophis III at el-Malqata. At the foot
of the cliffs were the temples of Deir el-Bahari and the private cemeteries
(Dra Abu el-Naga, Asasif, el-Khokha, Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, Qurnet

Murai). Finally, in the wadis of the mountain were the Valley of the Kings,
the Valley of the Queens, and the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina.
The unity of the region was symbolically affirmed on the occasion of
major festivals, when the barque of Amun of Karnak would leave his sanc-
tuary on solemn processions to visit Amun of Luxor, the temples of Deir
>
el-Bahari, or those of the primordial deities at Medinet Habu. In the

Middle Kingdom and in the Eighteenth Dynasty, the political and admin-
istrative centers were located on the east bank. Under the Ramessides,
however, they were moved to the west bank, at Medinet Habu, where the
massive enclosure walls of this funerary temple of Ramesses III, along
with those of other temples (in particular the Ramesseum), assured pro-
tection against incursions of brigands or Libyans from the desert. From
that time on, the east bank had its own mayor, and the bulk of the eco-
nomic activity was concentrated there.
Despite millennia of destruction, beginning with that wreaked by
Akhenaten and then against him, and of pillaging, beginning with the end
of the Ramesside Period, Thebes still offers an astonishing quantity of
ruins and standing monuments. Let us remember that the temple of
Luxor was an Egyptian temple, and then the heart of a Roman military
camp, and later a basilica, before becoming home to a mosque!
H. Kees, Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography (Chicago, 1961), chapter 10; C.F.
Nims, Thebes of the Pharaohs: Pattern for Every City (New York, 1965); N. Strudwick and
H. Strudwick, Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor (Ithaca,
1999)-
See Adoratrice, Middle Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period.
Third Dynasty
The Old Kingdom begins with the Third Dynasty. But from the view-
point only of events, the transition from the Second to the Third Dynasty
seems to have occurred without a rupture. The first king of the Third Dy-
nasty set up a statue to his predecessor, and what is more, a queen named
Nimaathapi, who was called “mother of the royal children” under
Khasekhemwy, the last king of the Second Dynasty, was called “king’s
mother” under Djoser, the second king of the Third Dynasty, suggesting
that the two dynasties were united by family ties. The list of the pharaohs
of the Third Dynasty is as follows:
Nebka (2635-2617 B.C.E.)
Djoser, Horus name Netjerykhet (2617-2599 B.C.E.), the builder of

the Step Pyramid at Saqqara
THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD 199
Djoserty, Horus name Sekhemkhet (2599-2594 B.C.E.), whose

uncompleted funerary monument was found south of that of Djoser
Nebkare (?), Horus name Zanakht (?) (2594-2589? B.C.E.), who also
was able to take the construction of his funerary monument no
further than its enclosure wall; he was apparently so insignificant
that Egyptian annalistic tradition lost track of his name
Huni, Horus name Khaba (?) (2583-2561 B.C.E.), who constructed a
fortress on the island of Elephantine, and a pyramid at Zawyet al-
Aryan; the predecessor of Snofru
An enigmatic pharaoh with the Horus name Zahedjet, who awaits
identification with one of the preceding kings
The pharaohs of the Third Dynasty, who reigned at Memphis, laid the
foundations of classical Egyptian civilization. From that time on, the mon-
umental use of stone was mastered, and the copper and turquoise re-
sources of the Sinai were regularly exploited. The tradition of itinerant
tax collection, which went back to the Predynastic Period, was given up in
favor of a biennial inventory of wealth over which an improved bureau-
cracy attempted to maintain better control. (The first known vizier,
Menka, appears in the Third Dynasty.) The high officials of the period
were notable in particular for their ability to administer the organization
of craftsmanship and the creation of manufactured products. The bas-re-
liefs of Akhetaa and the sculpted wooden panels of Hezyre illustrate the
social stratum of the ruling elite.
N.M.A. Swelim, Some Problems on the History of the Third Dynasty, Publications of the
Archaeological Society of Alexandria 7 (Alexandria, 1983).
See Djoser, Imhotep, Pyramids.
Third Intermediate Period 1069-664 B.C.E.
AJI eventful period of more than four centuries separated the faded era
of the last Ramessides from the day when the reunification of the land by
Psammetichus I inaugurated the magnificent Saite renaissance. Scholars
long referred to the period as “pre-Saite,” while more recently, the term
“Late New Kingdom” has been advocated, though Egypt was not a united
kingdom through much of the period. The multiplication of regional
powers led to the coexistence of several pharaohs at a time and to the
weakening of Egyptian imperial expansion; the land was even infiltrated
and then invaded by foreigners. As in the case of the preceding two “in-
termediate periods,” these circumstances justify the employment of a neu-
tral term. The term refers to a known geopolitical model and signifies how
these difficult times served as a transition between Ramesside culture and

institutions and the renascent institutions and culture that took form
under the Kushites and Saites.
The turbulence of the period included the predominance of Libyan
warriors, lack of public safety and pillaging of tombs, promotion of Amun
by his priests, and weakness of the royal government. This intermediate
period began under the final Ramessides, but scholars find it convenient
to begin it around 1080 B.C.E., when the general and pontiff Herihor as-
sumed quasi-royal power at Thebes, while Smendes controlled the admin-
istration of Lower Egypt from Tanis. What followed this illusory, self-styled
“renewal” (uhem-mesut) can be divided into four phases:
The period of Tanite kings and “priest-kings ” (1069—945 B.C.E.) Smendes

inaugurated the Twenty-first Dynasty, whose most illustrious ruler would
be Psusennes I, the son of the Theban pontiff and king Pinudjem. The
line of high priests of Amun would govern the south, while Libyans spread
through Lower and Middle Egypt.
The apogee of the kings of Libyan descent (945—850 B.C.E.) Shoshenq I
founded a Twenty-second, Bubastite dynasty. For a century, Egypt
recovered some power beyond its borders, and monumental activity was
begun anew (Osorkon II). Royal sons were appointed high priests of
Amun and governors of Herakleopolis.
The “Libyan anarchy,” a period of progressive dismemberment (850—550
B.C.E.) This period saw internecine warfare, competition among various
lines of subordinate princes, the coexistence of two pharaohs, and finally,
around 780 B.C.E., rupture between Lower and Tipper Egypt. Ultimately,
the land was divided among five persons pretending to the rank of king,
while in the northern provinces, a good ten “great chiefs” recognized at
best the religious suzerainty of one or another of these minor pharaohs.
The struggle for the unification (550—656 B.C.E.) The Kushite dynasty
definitively annexed the south, where the “intermediate period” thus
came to an end. The pacifier from Kush trampled his enemies in the
north, though the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties from Sais
hotly disputed with him over control of Memphis and the delta.
Assyrian invasions caused the precipitous abandonment of Egypt by the
Kushites. Thanks to the void created by their retreat and then by the
sudden decline of Assyria, the Saite ruler rapidly restored the unity of
the land, whose divisions had not prevented the beginning of a cultural
renewal.
From inscriptions carved on stone, we can see that on a formal level,
THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD 201
royal ideology was maintained throughout these uncertain times, even

when there were five “Lords of the Two Lands.” The palace — the “great
house” (per-aa)—continued to be considered the seat of universal em-
pire. It was under the Libyans that the custom (which has become our
own) began of using per-aa as a title preceding the birth name of the king
(thus, “Pharaoh Osorkon”). In reality, Pharaoh was assuredly less august
than his inscriptions and images would make him seem: princes came to
date their inscriptions to the years of one of the competing kings, al-
though they left his cartouche blank. The devout pharaoh Piye refused to
receive two of his petty Egyptian colleagues, who did not respect the rules
of purity that were obligatory in the “house of the king.” Despite the theo-
cratic ideology cultivated by the “priest-kings” and the great Libyans and
Kushites who subordinated their political affairs to the will of Amun,
priestly ritualism continued to preserve the fundamental role of the royal
name as mediator.
In the history of the kingship during this period, we note two salient,
connected aspects: the supremacy accorded by propaganda to divine
power over human powers, and the importance assumed by priestly fami-
lies responsible for the temple cults and property. Under the Tanites and
the Libyans, recourse to the sanction of Amun’s oracle was generalized to
regulate public affairs. The local chiefs, who were both commandants of
troops and overseers of priests, were believed to have received their pow-
ers, and sometimes the royal office, from the deity of their city. It was also
during the Third Intermediate Period that the traits of Saite Egypt ap-
peared or developed: the primacy of the cities of the delta, the cults of sa-
cred animals, recourse to ancient models, the solar spiritualization of fu-
nerary practices, the appearance of priestly titles reflecting local myths,
the popularity of Osiris in everyday life, the demonization of Seth, and fer-
vor for the child forms of gods.
Notwithstanding internal conflicts and invasions from without, the pe-
riod assured the preservation and enrichment of Egypt’s literary and artis-
tic patrimony in forms whose study has only just begun. In the time of the
“priest-kings,” erudition in the matter of funerary theology and magic had
increased in the priestly circles of Thebes (e.g., collection of “supplemen-
tary chapters” to the Book of the Dead, final compilation of Papyrus
Greenfield, and popularization of the Amduat). Chance has preserved a
few of the literary works that were appreciated or created by the scribes of
the period: the Tale of Wenamun, an edifying adventure; a letter in which
the Heliopolitan priest Wermai recounts his woes; the Onomasticon of
Amenemope, a list of words for geographic, social, and economic realities
of the Ramesside Period. The traditional genres of inscriptions experi-

enced a rejuvenation (e.g., autobiographies of the Shoshenqide era).
K.A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period, 2d ed. (Warminster, 1986); Tanis: L’Or
des pharaons (Paris, 1987).
SccHerihor, High Priest of Amun, Kushite (Dynasty), Libyans, Osorkon, Pedubaste,
Pinudjem, Psusennes, Saite (Dynasties), Shoshenq, Smendes, Tefnakhte.
Thirteenth Dynasty
The Twelfth Dynasty came to an end with the reign of Nefrusobk, but
the dynastic change entailed little rupture in the functioning of the state
or in the style of monuments and inscriptions. But while the preceding dy-
nasty had constituted a familial unity, this was not the case with the Thir-
teenth Dynasty. About sixty kings succeeded one another during a cen-
tury and a half, most of them occupying the throne for only a brief
period — a few months to a few years. Very few of them succeeded in
founding a line, and when they did so, the lines were ephemeral. A num-
ber of these kings were commoners, soldiers, or foreigners (Asiatics), as
shown by their original names, which they employed as their throne
names or associated with the latter in their cartouches. The succession
principle was obviously in crisis, with the legitimacy of the reigning
pharaoh no longer conferring sufficient credibility for his son or another
member of his family to impose himself as successor. The reasons for this
crisis escape us: election of pharaohs on a temporary basis by a college of
high officials? Decisive influence of certain army corps who made and un-
made kings, after the fashion of the Praetorian Guard at Rome, thanks to
their hold on the court of Thebes? These pharaohs claimed a Theban ori-
gin, and in fact, the Egyptian annalistic tradition characterized the Thir-
teenth Dynasty as Theban. Lisht, however, remained the administrative
capital. And paradoxically, while the throne was agitated by incessant jolts,
the state apparatus set in place during the second half of the Twelfth Dy-
nasty remained in place. Moreover, high officials remained in office
through successions of ephemeral reigns, sometimes marrying a princess
of the moment and often succeeding in passing their office along to their
sons, or at least to one of their other family members (thus, the vizier
Ankhu). Thanks to this administrative stability, the pharaohs of the Thir-
teenth Dynasty carried out their duties like any other kings: they built or
restored temples, maintained or increased the offerings of the gods, and
erected statues and pyramids for themselves (thus, Auibre, Khendjer,
Meremkha, and Aya). They could do this because they still had disposal,
albeit limited, of the organization of property and people. The workforce
THIRTEENTH DYNASTY 203
remained strictly supervised, expeditions were sent to the mines and quar-
ries (Wadi Hammamat, Wadi el-Hudi), and the system of fortresses pro-
tecting the Nile valley of Lower Nubia remained in place; in addition, the
Egyptianized kinglets of Byblos continued to pledge their loyalty. Until at
least the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period, the Thirteenth Dy-
nasty so directly continued the latter half of the Twelfth that the attribu-
tion of specific monuments to one or die other dynasty is often a tricky
matter.
Nevertheless, we must qualify this somewhat overly idyllic picture. The
extent of the territory controlled by the administration of the Thirteenth
Dynasty was progressively reduced. The dismantling began in Lower
Egypt, with the appearance of an independent kingdom (Fourteenth Dy-
nasty) at Xois, near the marshy fringe of the northwest delta, and the ap-
pearance, around 1720 B.C.E., of another dynasty at Avaris, the riverine
port leading to Asia and Byblos. (The latter dynasty is also included under
the label Fourteenth Dynasty.)By supplanting the rulers of Avaris, the
Hyksos began their hold on Egypt, which was sanctioned by their capture
of Memphis, beginning the Second Intermediate Period around 1650
B.C.E. This weakening of the pharaohs can be attributed not only to their
ephemeral reigns, but also to an excessive multiplication of state offices,
which tended to be awarded purely as benefices, draining the resources of
the state.
We cannot present an exhaustive list of the pharaohs of the Thirteenth
Dynasty, for too many of them are little known or unknown. Here are the
salient points:
After Wegaf, the first pharaoh of the Thirteenth Dynasty, there were
fifteen minor kings, including Auibre, Amehemhet V, Amenemhet
VI, Amenemhet VII, and Sebekhotpe I.
The Thirteenth Dynasty culminated, if that is quite the right term for
it, with a group of kings including Sebekhotpe II, Khendjer,
Sebekhotpe III, Neferhotep I, Sebekhotpe IV, Ibyau, and Aya
(i75°-l685)-
With a final group of pharaohs, we glimpse a serious deterioration in
the situation: Neferhotep-Iykhernofret boasted of having saved
Thebes from famine in the course of struggles that put him in
opposition to Asiatics and their Egyptian collaborators; it is clear
that the Hyksos were making their presence felt. Around 1650
B.C.E., the fall of Memphis, the center of cultural and artistic
traditions, led to a striking decline in the quality of monuments and
inscriptions during the reigns of the last kings of the Thirteenth
Dynasty, beginning with that of Dedumose. Drained, the Thirteenth

Dynasty huddled in Upper Egypt, from Asyut to Aswan.
Amenemhet, Ankhu, Mentuhotpe, Neferhotep I, Sebekhotpe.
Thirtieth Dynasty
Sebennytic (Dynasty). * '>
Tutankhamun 1335-1326 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

The “king’s son Tutankhaten” makes his appearance toward the end of
the reign of Amenophis IV/Akhenaten on a fragment from an Amarna
temple found at Hermopolis. The debate concerning his parentage has
subsided somewhat. Viewing him as a child of Amenophis III and Teye
seems impossible; the arguments for doing so, which entail postulating a
lengthy coregency of Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, are quite weak in
the face of a mass of contrary evidence. The easiest solution is to see him
as a son of Akhenaten by a wife other than Nefertiti. He was married to
Ankhesenpaaten, the third of the daughters that Nefertiti bore to the
heretic king. At the young age of about nine, the couple ascended the
throne after the disappearance of Smenkhkare. The exclusivist cult of the
Disk (Aten) still reigned at Amarna, but at Thebes, and undoubtedly else-
where, the long-awaited restoration of the polytheistic order was begun.
Soon, Tutankhaten (“Aten is entirely alive’’) became Tutankhamun, and
the name of Ankhesenpaaten (“she lives for the Aten”) was changed to
Ankhesenamun. Amarna was abandoned by the state bureaucracy, and
from then on, the court would frequent Thebes, Heliopolis (where the
young king hunted), and especially Memphis.
The strong men were the “divine father” and future pharaoh Aya, a re-
pentent old Atenist; the great majordomo and future pharaoh Haremhab;
and the treasurer Maya. The latter two men constructed vast tombs at
Saqqara that serve as splendid illustrations of domestic and colonial pros-
perity, as well as of a new style of bas-reliefs in which Amarna style blends
with the classicism of Amenophis III. In his year 4, while resident at Mem-
phis, the king ordered the making of new cult statues and divine barques,
and the reconstitution of the priestly personnel and the temporal goods of
all the temples. In the belief that impiety had ruined the government and
the nation, and that the abandoned gods had turned their backs on hu-
mankind, Tutankhamun ordained a restoration of harmony and well-
being. The former theologico-political discourse was resumed, along with
normal relations between the human and the divine realms. After twenty
years, Amun regained his preeminence at the summit of Egypt’s supernat-
TUTHMOSIS I 205
ural edifice and religious institudons. An impressive colonnade was begun

at Karnak; beautiful statues were sculpted, giving the king of the gods, as
was customary, the visage of the reigning sovereign. A “mansion of mil-
lions of years,” which has yet to be located, was founded on the west bank
of Thebes.
Dead at the age of about eighteen,^ in year 10 of his reign, Tu-
tankhamun was buried by Aya in a minuscule tomb in the Valley of the
Kings that does not seem to have been the one he had prepared for him-
self. Miraculously preserved, it is the only royal burial of the New King-
dom that has yielded an intact selection of the sacred objects that assured
Pharaoh’s eternity. It also concealed a prestigious selection of furniture
and utensils that bring to life an opulent luxury that was served by the re-
fined arts. These treasures define the image of what it was to be a tri-
umphant king, both in life and in death. An epilogue stresses the distance
between this ideal image and the harsh reality of the exercise of power: as
widow, Ankhesenamun asked the Hittite king to send her one of his sons
so that she might make him her husband and the king of Egypt. The
prince was assassinated on route. After his death, the king was not cred-
ited with the restoration he had accomplished. On his monuments,
Haremhab substituted his own name for Tutankhamun’s, and tradition
erased his memory, just as it did that of Akhenaten and Aya—all of them,
repented or not, tainted by the affair of Amarna.
C. Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamun: Life and Death of a Pharaoh (New York,

1963); I.E.S. Edwards, The Treasures of Tutankhamun (New York, 1972).
See Amarna; Amenophis IV, alias Akhenaten.
Tuthmosis
Tuthmosis is the Greek form of the Egyptian name Djehutymose, which
was borne by four pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. It means “Thoth is
born.”
Tuthmosis I 1493-1481 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Third pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Tuthmosis I was the son of
the lady Seniseneb and a father whose name remains unknown. Tuthmo-
sis was thus evidently not a blood relative of his predecessor Amenophis I.
He married an Ahmose whose relationship to the royal family is uncer-
tain, and who bore him the future Hatshepsut; the future Tuthmosis II was
the product of his marriage to another woman, named Mutnofret. During
his eleven years and nine months on the throne, Tuthmosis I established
the basics of the policies that would be followed by the other kings of the
Eighteenth Dynasty. In year 2 of his reign, he traveled upstream to Nubia

to put down a revolt; he established his southern boundary at the Third
Cataract, constructed a fortress, and divided the surrounding territories
into five principalities that were entrusted to Nubian vassals. On his re-
turn to Egypt, he cleared the canal at Sehel, and he prepared for a new ex-
tension of Egyptian influence farther to the south.
>
During a long tour of Syria-Palestine that took him as far as Carchemish

and the Euphrates, the king signaled similar pretensions with regard to
the northern regions. For the first time, he clashed with the kingdom of
Mitanni, which would later be both the partner and the principal adver-
sary of Egyptian policy in Asia. On his return trip, he hunted elephants in
the territory of Niy. From that time on, Asia was the avowed object of
Egyptian imperialism, and Tuthmosis I prepared for the future by making
Memphis a base for departure: he created Perunefer, a riverine port di-
rected toward the lands of the north, he established a palace, and he sta-
tioned an army equipped with chariots, and which was under the com-
mand of the heir apparent. The ancient residence of the Old Kingdom was
better situated to keep watch over Asia than was Thebes, the dynastic city.
Thebes was not neglected, however. The king began enlarging the tem-
ple of Amun at Karnak by constructing a hypostyle hall in front of the
bark sanctuary and erecting a pair of obelisks in front of the fourth pylon;
he also surrounded the temple with an enclosure wall. All these works
were supervised by the architect Ineni.
Ineni was also charged with preparing the king’s tomb, which for the
first time was located in the Valley of the Kings; it was decorated and in-
scribed with a new funerary composition, the Amduat. Tuthmosis Is
mummy was found in the cachette of Deir el-Bahari.
C. Lalouette, Textes sacres et textes profanes de Vancienne Egypte: Des Pharaons et des
hommes (Paris, 1984), pp.91-92.
SÂhmose, son of Ebana; Amenophis I; Hatshepsut; Tuthmosis II.
Tuthmosis II 1481-1478 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Tuthmosis II was the fourth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. He
was the third son of Tuthmosis I, and after that king’s first two sons, Wadj-
mose and Amenmose, predeceased him, Tuthmosis became his succes-
sor. He married his half sister Hatshepsut, daughter of Tuthmosis I and
Ahmose (his own mother was Mutnofret), and they had a daughter
named Nefrure. Isis, another of his wives, was the mother of the future
Tuthmosis III.
His reign was quite short, probably three years. Like his predecessors,
TUTHMOSIS III 207
he had to suppress a revolt in Nubia; the expedition he dispatched appar-

ently ended the pretensions of the descendants of the Nubian potentates
who had reigned during the Second Intermediate Period. Otherwise, he
conducted a police operation against the bedouins of Palestine.
Tuthmosis II was able to make noticeable progress in the enlargement
and embellishment of the temple of Karnak; in particular, he erected a
pair of obelisks and a pair of colossi. But he did not have time to complete
either his tomb or his funerary temple north of Medinet Habu, which was
finished by Tuthmosis III. His mummy, which was found in the cachette of
Deir el-Bahari, confirms that he died young, at the age of twenty-five to
thirty.
See Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III.
Tuthmosis III 1478- 1426 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

The fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Tuthmosis III was the son
of Tuthmosis II and a concubine, Isis. He was designated successor to the
throne by an oracle of Amun, and he reigned for fifty-three years. But this
long reign was anything but bliss. In fact, since Tuthmosis was still a young
child when he was crowned, his aunt Hatshepsut, widow of Tuthmosis II,
exercised a regency that she soon transformed into a coregency that was
made official by her own coronation as pharaoh. Without being entirely
ousted — events continued to be dated by his regnal years — Tuthmosis III
remained somewhat excluded from the reality of power, especially in do-
mestic policy. As he grew older, Tuthmosis became more and more impa-
tient with this situation. Thus, when Hatshepsut’s death in approximately
year 22 of his reign left him sole ruler, he had the queen’s cartouches mu-
tilated, substituting his own or those of his father and grandfather, Tuth-
mosis II and Tuthmosis I. At the end of his reign, a new—this time volun-
tary— coregency was established between him and Amenophis II, his son
by one of his wives, Merytre-Hatshepsut.
Tuthmosis III carried Egyptian imperialism to its acme. In Nubia, he
extended his power to the area between the Third and the Fourth
Cataracts, which was commanded by the city of Napata, while the regions
to the south were placed under close surveillance; he even set up a border
stela at Kurgus, midway between the Fourth and the Fifth Cataracts. In
Asia, at the price of fifteen campaigns, he affirmed and consolidated
Egyptian supremacy in Syria-Palestine.
The first of these campaigns was conducted to eliminate the serious
threat posed by a coalition of Syrian princes led by the ruler of Qadesh, a
city located at the mouth of the Beqaa Valley. In year 23, after making his
way via a difficult route that led to Megiddo, Tuthmosis III and his army
defeated the enemy coalition, who were awaiting them at the end of the
easier route. Megiddo itself fell after a seven-month siege. Scarcely had
the ruler of Qadesh been conquered than a new opponent to Egyptian
pretensions arose, the ruler of Tunip; after several defeats, his threat was
neutralized by the sack of his city. But Egypt’s most dangerous rival was
Mitanni (Naharin), a state with a Hurrian population that was ruled by an
Indo-European aristocracy. Tuthmosis III prevailed over Mitanni, thanks
to a clever strategy: ships were conveyed by chariot from the Lebanese
coast to the Euphrates, whose banks were ravaged by Tuthmosis. He
erected a border stela as testimony to his victory, and then, on his journey
home, he gave himself a well-earned diversion by confronting a herd of
120 elephants.
The Egyptian hegemony assured by these brilliant campaigns was solid-
ified by a system of control: though they retained a certain autonomy, the
cities of Syria-Palestine had to pay tribute to an Egyptian administration
that relied on garrisons placed in strategic locations. Sanctuaries dedi-
cated to Egyptian deities constituted the symbolic pendant to this military
presence. Furthermore, the sons of the local potentates were taken as
hostages to Egypt, where they were carefully educated in the royal palace,
so that if they returned to their native lands to succeed their fathers, they
returned entirely Egyptianized. Some of them remained in Egypt, where
they made careers, sometimes brilliant ones, for themselves.
This triumphant imperialism brought riches pouring into Egypt in the
form of booty and annual tribute. Most of this wealth was dedicated to the
domain of Amun, as shown by the Annals of Tuthmosis III, a text that was
copied near the holy of holies of the temple of Karnak. As was only to be
expected, the temple itself was considerably enlarged and embellished.
Wooden columns were replaced by columns of stone, a new bark sanctu-
ary was constructed, the Middle Kingdom court was reworked for the
erection of the Akh-menu (a jubilee temple), a new pylon was added,
obelisks (one of them now in Istanbul) were erected, and the sacred area
was surrounded by a new enclosure wall. Otherwise, Tuthmosis Ill’s build-
ing activity was manifest in most of the temples from Nubia, via Upper,
Middle, and Lower Egypt, all the way to Byblos; Minmose, “overseer of
works in the sanctuaries of the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt,” reports
that he worked in nineteen temples. In addition to the construction activ-
ity, cubic objects were renewed and multiplied. Moreover, besides being a
brave warrior, Thuthmosis III was a cultivated man who was enamored of
literature; his researches in the sacred archives not only led him to recopy
ancient religious texts, beginning with the Pyramid Texts, but also to es-
TUTHMOSIS IV 209
tablish new rituals and ceremonies that were still celebrated in the Greco-
Roman era.
Paradoxically, quite unlike that of Hatshepsut, the funerary temple of
Tuthmosis III was in no way out of the ordinary. The same is true of his
tomb, which was excavated in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy, which
was found in the cachette of Deir el-Bahari, indicates that like many great
men, he was of short stature.
And he was indeed a great man, undoubtedly the greatest pharaoh of
ancient Egypt. His cult still played a part in personal piety under the
Ptolemies, and his throne name Menkheperre became a talisman that was
reproduced on innumerable scarabs down to the Saite Period and on
Egyptianizing objects manufactured elsewhere in the Mediterranean
basin.
chapter 7;J.A. Wilson, inJ.B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the
an
Old Testament, 2d ed. (Princeton, 1955), pp. 234-44, 373~75> d 446-47.
See Amenophis II, Hatshepsut, Rekhmire, Tuthmosis II.
Tuthmosis IV 1401-1391 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Tuthmosis IV was the eighth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Son of
Amenophis II and Queen Tia, he reigned nine years and eight months;
examination of his mummy revealed that he evidently died around the
age of thirty. In foreign policy, aside from some police operations against
bedouins and Nubians, his principal accomplishment was the peaceful
resolution of the Mitannian problem. Amenophis II had obtained only a
fragile truce. After a military expedition against Mitanni, Tuthmosis IV
concluded a peace treaty with its king, Artatama, and it was sealed with the
introduction of a daughter of that king into the pharaoh’s harem after
lengthy negotiations.
Of his monumental activity, notable accomplishments were his com-
pletion an obelisk of Tuthmosis III at Karnak that had been lying uncom-
pleted for forty-two years (it is now in the Lateran) and his clearing of the
Great Sphinx of Giza, which he protected with a wall. In fact, while he was
sleeping, exhausted from one of his adolescent escapades in the Mem-
phite necropolis, Harmachis, whose hypostasis was the Sphinx, had ap-
peared to him in a dream and promised him the kingship if he would
clear the monument from the sands that covered it.
Tuthmosis IV’s funerary temple was built southwest of that of his father,
Amenophis II. His tomb in the Valley of the Kings needed repair in year 8
of Haremhab, who put the architect Maya in charge of the job. Tuthmosis’
mummy was transferred to the tomb of Amenophis II in the Twenty-first

Dynasty.
B.M. Bryan, The Reign ofThutmose TV {Baltimore, 1991); C. Zivie-Coche, Sphinx:

History of a Monument (Ithaca, 2002), pp. 47-51.
See Amenophis II, Amenophis III.
Twelfth Dynasty
Founded by Amenemhet I, the former vizier of the last king of the
Eleventh Dynasty, the Twelfth Dynasty had to struggle to impose its legiti-
macy on the partisans of the preceding line. But it succeeded, notwith-
standing crises — such as that provoked by the assassination of its
founder—thanks to effective propaganda disseminated by talented writ-
ers. It maintained power for more than two hundred years, and it lost it
only after the reign of Nefrusobk, a queen who became pharaoh under
circumstances that escape us; but its policies and its spirit were continued
under the dynasty that followed it.
The succession of kings was as follows:
Amenemhet I (1991-1962 B.C.E.)
Senwosret I, his son and coregent (1971-1926 B.C.E.)
Amenemhet II, son and coregent of the preceding (1929-1895 B.C.E.)
Senwosret II, son and coregent of the preceding (1897-1878(7] B.C.E.)
Senwosret III, son of the preceding (i8y8[?]—1843 B.C.E.)
Amenemhet III (1843-1796 B.C.E.)
Amenemhet IV, nephew (?) and coregent of the preceding

(1799-1787 B.C.E.)
Nefrusobk, daughter of Amenemhet III and wife of Amenemhet IV;
reigned as pharaoh (1787-1784 B.C.E.) after the death of her
husband, assuming the prerogatives and the duties (maintaining the
temples) of the royal office.
The history of the Twelfth Dynasty can be divided into two periods.
From Amenemhet I to Senwosret II, the pharaohs tried to balance the
Theban heritage of the First Intermediate Period (they saw themselves as
continuers of the Eleventh Dynasty) with the traditional model of the Old
Kingdom. This policy accounts for their choice of Lisht as their adminis-
trative capital; it was sufficiently close to Memphis to benefit from its cul-
tural aura (arts and sacred lore), but far enough south to mark its speci-
ficity and to signify a search for a happy medium between Upper and
Lower Egypt. Even as they forged the concept of ‘Victorious Thebes,” the
pharaohs erected pyramids, as had been done in the Old Kingdom.
TWELFTH DYNASTY 211
Though they recruited their ruling elite mostly from their native province,
they maintained the overall social organization of olden times; in particu-
lar, powerful families of nomarchs still exercised their office in the spirit
and with the pomp of the Sixth Dynasty.
After the reign of Senwosret II, a major change occurred in the appa-
ratus of the state. New offices, a new hierarchy, and new titles were cre-
ated, and there was a redistribution of assfgnments and responsibilities in
the framework of the forces and the administration of production. The
system of nomarchs died out, and they were replaced by leaders at the
municipal level, not at that of the nome; these leaders were assisted and
supervised by “heralds” who were under the immediate jurisdiction of the
vizier. All of Egypt was divided into three “departments,” which were
themselves managed by “heralds.”
The supervision of the workforce received great attention because
there were never enough workers. A “bureau of the distribution of men”
was set up, along with an agency called the “prison,” which administered
common-law prisoners condemned to forced labor, as well as many Asiatic
immigrants or prisoners of war, and statutory laborers who were ever
quick to flee the fields or construction sites assigned to them. Order was
assured by militias organized into various corps: “followers,” “followers of
the ruler,” “guardians of the table companions of the ruler,” “residents of
the city,” and so forth.
These reforms led to the emergence of a middle class of bureaucrats
who worked in the offices of the state and were well enough compensated
to be able to provide themselves with inscribed funerary monuments,
which had previously been the prerogative of the elite of the high officials.
This change in the sociological landscape, which was marked by the mul-
tiplication of stelae, statues, and offering tables of middling quality, was
one of the most striking traits of the second half of the Twelfth Dynasty.
As a whole, this dynasty extended the geographical range of pharaonic
activity. It began the exploitation of the Faiyum, which had previously
been covered with marshes, and it forged a veritable foreign policy based
on a good knowledge of neighboring lands. This knowledge was demon-
strated by the Execration Texts, in which all the names of foreign coun-
tries and their rulers are listed in detail on vases or figurines that were
used in execration rituals. On a more practical level, the Nile valley of
Lower Nubia was integrated into Egypt by means of a complex system of
fortresses. In Asia, traditional relations with Byblos were strengthened to
the point that its rulers became highly Egyptianized; more generally,
trade with Syria-Palestine intensified, and via that area, trade with the
Aegean world. Meanwhile, many Asiatics immigrated to Egypt.
The Story of Sinuhe is a good reflection of its times, for most of its ac-
tion takes place in this Asiatic world to which Egypt had opened itself. It is
no accident that this masterpiece of Egyptian literature is set in the reign
of Senwosret I. The Twelfth Dynasty’s most splendid legacy to Egyptian civ-
ilization was its fiction (Story of Sinuhe, Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor),
its prophecy (Prophecies of Neferti), its wisdom texts (Instruction of
Amenemhet I, Instruction of Khety, Loyalist Instruction, Instruction of a
Man for his Son), and its poems (Hymn to the Nile), which would remain
classics until the end of the dynastic period.
G. Posener, Litterature et politique dans VEgypte de la XIIe dynastie, Bibliotheque de

l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes 307 (Paris, 1956); M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian
Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley, 1973).
See Amenemhet, Inyotefoqer, Senwosret, Sinuhe.
Twentieth Dynasty
Claiming the patronage of Amun, Sethnakhte (1190-1187 B.C.E.) put
an end to the disorders that undid the Nineteenth Dynasty, and he
founded the second line of Ramesside kings, which included the nine
kings named Ramesses whose reigns followed his own. All these monarchs
made their tombs at Thebes, in the Valley of the Kings (that of Ramesses
VIII remains undiscovered). The last mention of Pi-Riamsese, the north-
ern capital that Ramesses III often visited, dates to Ramesses VIII; the di-
minishing flow of water in the easternmost branch of the Nile in the delta
led to the abandonment of the city. In any case, the last Ramesside kings
seem to have resided permanently in the delta, rather than at Thebes.
Ramesses III (1187-1156 B.C.E.), son of Sethnakhte, saved Egypt from at-
tacks by Libyans and Sea Peoples and maintained bases in Canaan. He bla-
tantly copied the style of Ramesses II, while emphasizing the spiritual hold
and the revenues of Amun.
Egypt experienced a brief apogee, but it did not outlast the reign of the
pious Ramesses IV (1156-1150 B.C.E.); the next three quarters of a cen-
tury saw a lengthy decline. All the Near East, undoubtedly affected by an
adverse climate change, sank into a period of convulsions. Hebrews and
Philistines disputed over control of Palestine, Aramaeans poured into
Syria, and the empires of Assyria and Babylon declined. Egypt continued
to dominate the Sudan, but it withdrew from the coast of Asia: Egyptians
did not even set foot in the Sinai after Ramesses VI. In the temples, con-
struction activity was meager: the titularies of these last Ramessides were
carved in the blank margins of existing decorations, and only a few statues
were sculpted, though they were elegant (Ramesses VI, Ramesses IX).
TWENTIETH DYNASTY 213
Toward the end, under Ramesses XI, work was begun anew at the temple
of Khonsu at Karnak.
Fortunately, two sources enable us to catch a glimpse of the circum-
stances of this period when the political will and ritual role of the king ex-
pressed themselves more feebly in the south than the decisions and initia-
tives of the Theban pontiffs. One of these sources is the papyri and ostraca
from Deir el-Medina, the village occupied^by the workmen charged with
excavating and decorating the royal tombs. The other, also from the The-
ban area, consists of dossiers detailing several judicial inquiries and the in-
scriptions left by the high priests of Amun at Karnak. Difficulties in subsis-
tence (which led to strikes) and disturbances affecting the public order
(conspiracies at the royal court, armed movements) began to occur in the
reign of Ramesses III. Descendants of Libyan prisoners of war who had
been recruited as soldiers, as well as newcomers driven out of the Sahara
by famine, eventually inundated the delta and even began to disturb the
south. Over several generations, one family in the Thebais won control
over the clergy and the property of Amun, while this priesthood, which
had disposal of the worldly goods of the god and steeped itself in spiritual
culture, became ever more autonomous and wealthy.
Under Ramesses IX, the high priest Amenhotpe was the actual ruler of
Thebes. But during this reign, strikes and shortages of provisions re-
curred. Tombs were pillaged, even those of the “great gods,” the deceased
kings. Things worsened under Ramesses XI (1098-1069 B.C.E.), with
famine, more tomb violations, the ousting of the high priest Amenhotpe,
the appearance of Libyans, military intervention by the viceroy of Nubia,
who conducted operations as far north as Middle Egypt, and violence by
bands of foreigners. In year 19 of Ramesses XI, a new era was begun; it was
called the “renewal of births” (uhem-mesut). Its year count ran parallel to
the king’s, and its purpose was to proclaim a rebirth of the cosmic order,
not the substitution of a new family line. Far from this weakling of a
Ramesses who lived in the north, Herihor and then Piankh, newcomers
who were both high priests of Thebes and military commanders, ruled
Upper Egypt like kings under the cloak of the oracle of Amun. They were
contemporaries of Smendes, the future founder of the Twenty-first Dy-
nasty, under whom Tanis would supplant Pi-Riamsese as the northern cap-
ital. The end of the New Kingdom (which was no longer a single king-
dom) bore the seeds of the Third Intermediate Period: the weakening of
the moral presence of the pharaoh; the promotion of Amun-Re, the tran-
scendent creator god, into the source of both governance and individual
destiny; and the rise of two ambitious powers — the priesthood of that god
and the Libyan chiefs who were becoming Egyptianized.

.S^Herihor, High Priest of Amun, Libyans, Ramesses III, Ramesses IV, Ramessides,
Sethnakhte.
Twenty-eighth Dynasty
S^Saite (Dynasties).
* >
Twenty-fifth Dynasty
S^Kushite (Dynasty).
Twenty-first Dynasty
Twenty-ninth Dynasty
S^Mendesian (Dynasty).
Twenty-second Dynasty
Twenty-seventh Dynasty
See Persians.
Twenty-sixth Dynasty
S^Saite (Dynasties).
Twenty-third Dynasty
Twosre 1192-1190 B.C.E., Nineteenth Dynasty

Her name—Tahoser, as Champoliion transcribed it—was borrowed by
Theophile Gautier to baptize the pretty mummy in his novel. However ex-
traordinary her destiny, the Twosre who is the object of historians’ atten-
tions had nothing in common with the invented heroine. The chief wife of
Sethos II (1204-1198 B.C.E.), Twosre survived her husband. At first, she ex-
ercised a sort of regency on behalf of Siptah, the son of a secondary wife,
whom the great treasurer Bay “maintained on the throne of his father.”
Then she succeeded Siptah as pharaoh in her own right. She adopted a
throne name and founded a funerary temple of her own at Thebes.
Thus, fifteen years after the death of Ramesses the Great, the monarchy
went through a grave crisis. Power was torn between the protagonists of a
bizarre triarchy, each of whom had a tomb excavated in the Valley of the
TWOSRE 215
Kings. One member of this triarchy, a canonical pharaoh who was a

minor and infirm, changed his name from Ramesses-Siptah to Mernep-
tah-Siptah in the second year of his reign, a sure sign of a change of pro-
gram. The second was a kingmaker who scholars have every reason to
think was of foreign origin, one of those hostages who were raised at the
court of Ramesses II and became court officials. The third, Twosre, was a
dowager queen, no doubt of royal blood, who in any case exemplified the
feminine dimension of royalty in association with the young king and
ended up as the fourth female pharaoh in history. Her own reign, which
was quite brief, marked the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty. A vase bearing
her cartouche has been found at Deir Alla in Jordan. At this time, Egypt-
ian influence was in fact on the wane in Asia, while courtiers of Asiatic de-
scent and the Syrian recruits of the factious power holders dictated the law
of the land. As usual, erasures and name replacements were the manifes-
tations, either immediate or deferred, of the settling of scores. Under the
Twentieth Dynasty, tradition would ignore the reigns of Siptah and
Twosre.
C. Lalouette, L’Empire de Ramses (Paris, 1985), pp. 290-94.

See Erasures, Nineteenth Dynasty, Queens.
Udjahorresnet
One could say that Udjahorresnet was a “pharaoh maker,” though in
an undoubtedly anachronistic manner, he has often been denounced as a
“collaborator.” This Saite priest had administered the royal fleet under
the last two kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and exercised various ad-
ministrative offices when, in 525 B.C.E., the Persians occupied Egypt.
Taken on as chief physician by Cambyses, he composed the Egyptian titu-
lary of this conqueror and persuaded him to agree that the Persian garri-
son would cease to pollute the temenos of the goddess Neith with its pres-
ence. Later, while resident at Susa, he was commanded by Darius I to
return home and to restore the “house of life” (institute of priestly knowl-
edge) at Sais. In his autobiography, Udjahorresnet recounts in simple
terms how he introduced the new masters of Egypt to the theology of his
native country and initiated them into the ritual duties of a Lord of the
Two Lands. His compatriots were less severe than present-day historians in
their estimation of this maintainer of sacred order and moral security:
one hundred seventy-seven years later, a Memphite priest restored a
statue of him in order to perpetuate his memory.
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 3: The Late Period
(Berkeley, 1980), pp. 36-41.
See Cambyses, Darius I, Persians.
Unification
The establishment of the pharaonic state and the evidently sudden
emergence of its characteristic traits — in other words, the transition from
prehistory to history—were for a long time described as a single event:
the moment when Upper and Lower Egypt were united, at some time be-
tween 3200 and 2900 B.C.E. Menes, the first name in the king lists of the
New Kingdom — and, according to Manetho, the first king of the first
human dynasty—supposedly unified the land, making Memphis its capi-
tal and laying the foundations of its institutions, its economy, and its cul-
ture. He was also credited with the organization of a system of irrigation
basins, the redistribution of tribes into nomes, and the founding of a cen-
tral administration that used writing.
This story, which is still sometimes told in discussing the problem of
the unification, stems from the conjunction of two sources. One of them is
what we read about Menes in the ancient Greek sources; the other consists
of the ancient Egyptian concept of the monarchy as a dual one.
According to Herodotus (c. 450 B.C.E.), “Min” reclaimed the land on
which he built Memphis from the floodwaters of the Nile, and the subse-
UNIFICATION 217
quent accumulation of silt created the delta. Manetho (c. 290 B.C.E.) char-
acterized Menes as a conqueror of foreign lands. The Greco-Egyptian sto-
ries and anecdotes transmitted by Diodorus made him a sovereign who
imposed written laws (attributed hctively to Hermes-Thoth), the inventor
of material comfort, and the founder of the sacred rites and animal cults.
From the first dynasties on, mythological and iconographic themes pre-
sented the kingship as a double one, with different images distinguishing
(but also uniting) an Upper Egypt and a Lower Egypt; the former had
precedence over the latter. A word for “king of Lower Egypt” was paired
with one for “king of Upper Egypt.” The gods Seth (the south) and Horus
(the north) were united in the person of the sovereign. The goddess
Nekhbet of el-Kab had a counterpart in Wadjit of Buto, and they were the
mistresses of the white crown and the red crown, respectively; when the
former was placed inside the latter, the two crowns together formed the
pshent, the double crown. The “souls of Hierakonpolis” in the south
formed a symmetry with the “souls of Buto” in the north. The order im-
posed by the state was symbolized by a scene of the “uniting of the Two
Lands”: under the pharaoh’s feet, or on the side of his throne (see figure
8), the stalks of the plants symbolizing the south and the north were tied
together around the hieroglyph for the word “unite” (sema).
Carved during the Old Kingdom, retrospective annals called the
“Palermo Stone” listed kings wearing only the red crown in the place
where New Kingdom historiography located the “Followers of Horus” or
“demigods.” Prior to World War II, Egyptologists who relied on this
source, along with certain ritual texts, took it as a given that there was a
northern kingdom of Buto whose conquest by kings of the south from Hi-
erakonpolis and el-Kab effected the unification of the Two Lands. In the
same vein, in consideration of noted cultural differences between predy-
nastic sites at the apex of the delta and in Upper Egypt, a fashionable the-
ory once claimed (rather arbitrarily) that an “African,” pastoral south had
annexed an “Asiatic,” agricultural north.
Scholars who studied pharaonic thought were soon obliged to chal-
lenge these reconstructions: the theme of a united duality was entirely
symbolic and could not commemorate a genuinely historical founding
event. Supposedly uninhabitable (contrary to paleographic and other evi-
dence), Buto was chosen, according to these scholars, as the counterpart
of Hierakonpolis, the two sites ideally marking the two boundaries of the
kingdom. More recently, archaeological progress has radically changed
our view of the issue, which had relied principally on the interpretation of
texts and images expressive of ideological traditions.
Considering the parallelism between the sequence of kings attested by
FIGURE 8. King Haremhab seated on a throne, the side of which is decorated with the
symbol for “uniting the Two Lands.” From J.-F. Champollion, Monuments de l’Egypte et
de la Nubie, vol. 2, (Paris, 1845), pi. 111.
the monuments of the First Dynasty and the king lists of the New King-
dom, Horus Aha seems to correspond to Menes; in both the Abydos re-
gion and the Memphite necropolis, Aha’s reign is marked by the size of
the elite tombs and the richness of their furnishings. But there is no point
in seeking to authenticate the accomplishments credited to Menes by a
writer like Diodorus; those achievements are those of a fictitious culture
hero and legislator. In classical literature, such traits are otherwise as-
signed to the legendary Sesostris (whose name is also given as Sesoosis
and Osiris). Such figures were borrowed from Egypt by Hellenistic histo-
riography at a relatively late point, when traditional mythology held that
the basics of Egypt’s institutions had been created in the primordial time
of the gods: Re had instituted maat, the just order of the world; Shu had
organized the land; Thoth had been the first vizier and the inventor of
UEAEUS 219
writing; Horns and Seth had contended for control over the Two Lands
and divided these two parts of Egypt between them; grain had sprung
from Osiris; and so forth.
The discovery of protohistorical settlements at Buto and at neighbor-
ing sites has lent some substance to the idea that late in the fourth millen-
nium B.C.E., a northern kingdom was conquered by kings of the south.
But in both the valley and the delta, excavations have shown that the cul-
tural expansion of the south was a lengthy process, and that the pace that
led to the prevalence of a uniform culture and to the pharaonic regime
quickened at the time of Dynasty Zero. We must henceforth dissociate the
historical birth of the Egyptian state from the ideological structure of the
unification of the Two Lands.
See Buto, Crowns, Dualisms, Hierakonpolis and Eileithyiaspolis, Memphis, Menes,

Zero (Dynasty).
Uraeus
This word from the earliest Egyptological jargon is the Latinized form
of Greek ouraios, which according to the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo sup-
posedly designated, in Egyptian, the serpent known as the basilisk (from
Greek basilikos, “royal”). But the snake was not, as this Alexandrian
philosopher believed, the large male reptile that symbolized cosmic eter-
nity, but rather a rearing cobra, a female entity called iarat that repre-
sented the magical power of crowns and the blazing heat of the sun. This
divine being was merged with Wadjit, the goddess of the crown of the
north, but also, as the “Eye of Re,” with many other goddesses, notably the
lion-headed Sakhmet. The uraeus, either alone or in a pair (like the royal
crowns), was suspended from a sun disc in the iconography. From the
Fourth Dynasty on, a single cobra, an exclusive insignia of the royal office
in this life, crept along the axis of the pharaoh’s headdress and reared its
inflated hood in the middle of his brow. Certain princesses shared this in-
signia, and in the New Kingdom, multiple uraei adorned the crowns of
goddesses and queens. In the temples, rearing cobras formed protective
friezes at the tops of walls.
See Crowns, Pharaoh.

Valley of the Kings
Buried according to custom in the west of their dynastic home, the The-
ban kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty had pyramids of middling size built
for themselves at Dra Abu el-Naga, at the foot of the mountain across the
river from Karnak. The founders of the Eighteenth Dynasty were also
buried on the west bank of Thebes; the mummies of Ahmose and
Amenophis I were found in the cachette of Deir el-Bahari, though unfor-
tunately, the exact location of their tombs has not been identified. Appar-
ently under Tuthmosis I, the decision was made to excavate rock-cut
tombs for the kings in the mountainside. This custom would be followed
by all his successors down through Ramesses XI. In contrast to the summit
of the pyramid shape dominating the gebel, the tombs of nearly all the
kings of the three dynasties of the New Kingdom are thus at the bottom of
the steep sides of two wadis that run together into a dry valley, the Valley
of the Kings (Arabic Biban el-Moluk, “the gates of the kings”). Amenophis
III and Aya were buried farther away, in the so-called Valley of the Mon-
keys. (Amenophis IV/Akhenaten, of course, made his tomb in the eastern
mountain of Amarna). Certain privileged individuals were admitted into
the Valley of the Kings: the prince Maherpra, and then the in-laws of
Amenophis III, Yuya and Tuya, in the Eighteenth Dynasty; the upstart
treasurer Bay, a contemporary of Siptah and Twosre, in the Nineteenth
Dynasty; and the crown prince Mentuherkhopshef, son of Ramesses IX, in
the Twentieth Dynasty. Royal wives and mothers, princesses, and other
children of the king were normally buried in a wadi to the south that ends
behind Medinet Habu, the Valley of the Queens (or Biban el-Harim).
Sixty-one tombs are presently known in the Valley of the Kings. A typi-
cal rock-cut tomb consisted of a fairly lengthy succession of corridors,
some of them flanked by small side rooms, leading to the burial chamber
(see figure 9). The walls of the passages, and the pillars as well, were ex-
haustively decorated, representing the Osiris-king’s encounter with the
gods of the afterlife, and reproducing compositions that identified the
tomb with the depths into which the sun sank at night. These fantastic an-
notated illustrations symbolized the phases of the regeneration of the
heavenly body that rose again in the morning. The earliest of these was the
Book of the Hidden Room (or Amduat), which was followed, on the eve of
Amarna, by the Book of Gates, and later by the Book of Caverns and other
cryptic works. Representing different approaches to the mystery of regen-
eration, these esoteric rows of illustrations describe the life of the blessed
dead and the extermination of the damned. Their chronology and their
topography are centered on the nightly navigation of the sun along the
river of the netherworld. They recount the defeat of the cosmic enemy
✓
FIGURE 9. Layout of a typical New Kingdom, royal

tomb as illustrated by a plan of the tomb of Sethos I.
A, first corridor; B, second corridor; C, third
corridor; D, shaft; E, first pillared hall; F, side
chamber; G—H, lower corridors; I, antechamber; J,
sarcophagus chamber; K, “crypt ”; L—0, side
chambers; P, end room. From E. Hornung and E.
Staehelin, Sethos—ein Pharaonengrab (Basel,
1991), p.44.
Apopis, the transformations of the body of the sun god and the corollary
rebirth of Osiris, and the transfer of power between the dead and the liv-
ing. These recondite treatises were believed to contain total knowledge of
the mechanisms of the immanent world. Down through the Twentieth Dy-
nasty, they would be a monopoly of the royal tombs.
The reign of Tuthmosis I saw the creation of the corps of “workmen of
the Tomb” and their village of Deir el-Medina. The quarrymen and deco-
rators whose job was to prepare the tombs of the kings and queens were
settled there, in the proximity of their workplaces. Their monuments,
both tombs and chapels, along with surviving administrative and personal
archives, inform us of how their work was organized, and of the daily life,
the culture, and the piety of these people. Indirectly, their monuments
also reflect the economic and political difficulties that affected Thebes
and the kingdom.
The immense size and the perfection of certain royal tombs, and the
uncompleted status or the usurpation of certain others, reflect the lengths
of reigns and the apogees and crises of power.
J. Cerny, The Valley of the Kings (Cairo, 1973); D. Valbelle, “Les Ouvriers de la Tombe”:
Deir el-Medineh a Vepoque ramesside, Bibliotheque d’Etude 96 (Cairo, 1986); M.
Bierbrier, The Tomb-Builders of the Pharaohs (New York, 1984); N. Reeves and R. H.
Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt’s Greatest
Pharaohs (London, 1996); L. H. Lesko, ed., Pharaoh’s Workers: The Villagers of Deir el-
Medina (Ithaca, 1994); E. Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (Ithaca,
1999)-
See Cachettes.
Vizier
Egyptologists conventionally translate the Egyptian title tjaty as “vizier,”
and this convention should be understood as just that. It suggests an anal-
ogy, but evidently not a close resemblance to what the term covered in its
original use.
In ancient Egypt, the vizier was the highest official in the land, the chief
of the bureaucracy through which the pharaoh administered the country;
the vizier was a sort of prime minister. This administration relied primar-
ily on writing; above all, the vizier had to control the immense bureau-
cratic machine that assured the maintenance of the pharaonic order, a
fact that helps us understand how it was that Thoth, the god of scribes, was
also the vizier of the gods. In fact, the vizier sealed the decrees promul-
gated by the pharaoh, and large archives were stored in his office. He kept
not only copies of private legal documents, especially those called imyt-per
VIZIER 223
(records of property transfers), but also registers of cultivable lands,

which were referred to in cases of dispute when it was time to measure the
taxable land surfaces. The vizier had the right to access the archives of
other institutions, which were obligated to forward the documents he re-
quested of them, according to procedures that were detailed in writing,
and which differed according to whether they were classified as “confi-
dential.” It was above all because he maintained archives that the vizier
played a major role that we would characterize as judicial, though in an-
cient Egypt there was scarcely any distinction between the judiciary and
the executive branch of the government. The vizier searched the written
documents to weigh the merits of requests, to resolve disputes according
to regulations, and to apply punishments according to the “laws,” which
were more a matter of the normative substance of decrees and customs
than of general and abstract principles.
With these means at his disposal, the vizier controlled production. The
natural phenomena that lent rhythm to the agricultural cycle (the heliacal
rising of Sothis, the arrival of the annual inundation, episodic rainfalls)
were reported to him, and he gave local administrators orders to con-
struct dikes to retain the silt-laden water in the irrigation basins and to
prepare the arable soil. He fixed the taxes on the harvests, calculating any
arrears, and he supervised the transport and distribution of large cattle. In
collaboration with the “overseers of that which is sealed,” he saw to the
storing of precious commodities, and he assured their procurement by
sending expeditions to the mines and quarries, or to distant trade centers.
The vizier controlled the circulation of goods and labor by controlling
the round trips made by boats, by moving paramilitary personnel to where
they were needed, and by seeing to it that the divine offerings were fur-
nished to the temples. He was able to mobilize these means and forces of
production for special tasks, such as the construction or repair of build-
ings, royal ceremonies, and the preparation of royal funerary monu-
ments. Finally, he had oversight over civil and religious offices.
The scope of the job was so burdensome that in the Eighteenth Dy-
nasty, if not already in the Middle Kingdom, it was divided between a
vizier of Upper Egypt, in charge at Thebes, and a vizier of Lower Egypt, in
charge in the northern residence (Memphis, Pi-Riamsese, or Lisht). Dur-
ing the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the family line of Amtju,
User(amun), and Rekhmire perfected a sort of vizierial tradition that was
expressed through a specialized literature that consisted in part of the Du-
ties of the Vizier and the Installation of the Vizier. The former was an enu-
meration (though more laudatory than systematic) of the vizier’s tasks;
the latter aimed to define the ethical aspect of the office.
At the beginning of the Old Kingdom, the viziers were members of the
royal family, but in the Fifth Dynasty, they began to be recruited from out-
side it; conversely, the weakening of royal power under the Sixth Dynasty
is signaled by the fact that Pepi I was obliged to marry the sisters of the
vizier Djau, who was a member of an influential family of Abydos. During
the Thirteenth Dynasty, when ephemeral pharaohs rapidly succeeded one
another on the throne, the family of the vizier Ankhu imperturbably con-
trolled the conduct of business. Sometimes the importance of the office
aroused the ambition of its holder to the point of inciting him to aim
higher, as in the case of Amenemhet I, who founded the Twelfth Dynasty,
after having been the vizier of Mentuhotpe IV, the last king of the
Eleventh Dynasty. In the Third Intermediate Period, the rise of a theoc-
racy that reduced the pharaoh’s sovereignty, which was no longer imma-
nent but rather subject to the divine oracle, had repercussions in the
weakening of the vizierial office. From that time on, the viziers seem to
have been pale figures, compared with the administrators of the domain
of Amun.
T. G. H. James, Pharaoh’s People: Scenes from Life in Imperial Egypt (London, 1984),
chapter 2; G. P.F. van den Boom, The Duties of the Vizier: Civil Administration in the Early
New Kingdom (London, 1988).
See Ankhu, Herihor, Inyotefoqer, Kagemni, Ptahhotpe, Rekhmire.
War
Protecting his subjects from minor incursions and major invasions was
the task of the king, as was the profitable expansion of Egypt’s frontiers;
theologically, the gods granted these powers to him alone. On the facades
of temples, huge scenes of “smiting the enemies” in the presence of a
deity lend material expression to this protective action; they do not, how-
ever, depict human sacrifice. The presentation of a sword to the king by a
god and the presentation of rows of bound prisoners (represented by
“fortress cartouches”; see figure to) to the god by the king express a ritual
exchange of victorious force for booty.
Pharaoh’s battles and his victorious return from war were archetypal
events exemplifying his maintenance of a providential order, and their
representations on temple walls actualized their ceremonial meaning.
Along with assurances of his divinity and of his pious activities on behalf
of temples, epithets describing his success in war and his personal
prowess fill the titularies and the panegyrics to be found in the inscrip-
tions carved under every king, even those who were minors or whose
armies were inactive. In the New Kingdom, a period well-known for con-
flicts between great empires, a distinction was made between expeditions
led by the sovereign himself at the head of huge contingents, and actions
led by officers to pacify tributaries on a local scale. The latter were dis-
plays of the “strong arm of Pharaoh.” Beyond the sentiment that could al-
ways be aroused by representations of the triumph of the incarnation of
the creator god, the accounts left behind by kings such as Kamose, Tuth-
mosis III, Amenophis II, and Ramesses II reveal them to have been in-
spiring leaders (though not always enlightened strategists). Two gods
FIGURE 10. Foreign lands depicted as “fortress cartouches.” Temple of Karnak. From J.-F.
Champollion, Monuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie, vol. 4 (Paris, 1845), pi. 294.
were prototypes of the royal warrior: Montu, the original patron of the
kings of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, and Seth, the violent de-
fender of the sun barque.
Weni
A high official of the Sixth Dynasty, Weni is famous because of the au-
tobiography carved in his mastaba at Abydos, which has impressed not
only Egyptologists but also the ancient Egyptian themselves, to judge from
the number of implicit citations in later works.
Weni’s career spanned the reigns of Teti, Pepy I, and Merenre, pro-
gressing through the following stages: “overseer of the work house,” “in-
spector of the managers of units of production of the Great House,” “com-
panion, prophet of the pyramid city of Pepy I,” ‘judge, mouth of Nekhen,”
“sole companion, overseer of the managers of units of production of the
Great House,” “guardian of the Great Mansion, sandal bearer,” and fi-
nally, “governor, overseer of Upper Egypt.” Weni’s success was due to the
competence with which he handled delicate matters. His assignments in-
cluded judging the persons implicated in a plot fomented in the harem,
conducting several military campaigns in the south of Palestine, and lead-
ing expeditions to the quarries of Hatnub, Elephantine, and Ibhat to ex-
tract the materials needed for the offering table, the false door, the sar-
cophagus, and the casing of the pyramid of Merenre. Conversely, one
king had items of fine limestone procured for Weni’s tomb. With its clar-
ity, its precision, and its literary qualities (it includes a passage in poetic
style), Weni’s autobiography is one of the most accomplished of its genre
from Egyptian civilization.
Wenis 2350-2321 B.C.E., Fifth Dynasty

Wenis was the last pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty. His funerary complex
behind the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara is fairly well preserved. The
causeway that connected the funerary temple to the valley temple was dec-
orated with bas-reliefs illustrating various themes: a battle with bedouins,
artisans at work, and market scenes that contrast with the mournful repre-
sentation of a famine.
Wenis’ pyramid is scarcely more than 130 feet in height; it was restored
by Khaemwese during the reign of Ramesses II. In this pyramid, for the
first time, the walls of the sarcophagus chamber and the entrance corridor
WENIS 227
were covered with inscriptions reproducing the collection of funerary

spells called the Pyramid Texts.
A. Piankoff, The Pyramid of Unas, Egyptian Texts and Representations 5 (Princeton,

1968); E. Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (Ithaca, 1999), pp. 1-6.
See Fifth Dynasty.
Xois
Xois was a city of the northern delta, traces of which remain near the
modern village of Sakha; in fact, this Arab name comes from the Egyptian
name, with a metathesis. Until the Middle Kingdom, Xois seems to have
been a town of little importance, located near the marshes at the border
of the delta. It was the capital of a nome whose emblem represented a bull
in a pothole, which was later interpreted as a bull in an undulating desert
landscape. During the Thirteenth Dynasty Xois became the capital of an
independent kingdom of which no monument survives. Xois became im-
portant again in the New Kingdom, but the local myths that made it the
“place of the monarchies of Re” were perhaps based on its past. Xois was
greatly expanded in the Greco-Roman Period.
See Fourteenth Dynasty.

Zero (Dynasty)
This designation is certainly strange, but it appropriately indicates the
uncertainties that weigh on the most ancient periods of pharaonic Egypt.
When Egyptologists began to reconstruct the history of this land, they
adopted the division into dynasties that had been established by Manetho.
The First Dynasty thus consisted of the earliest pharaohs who ruled Egypt
after it was unified by the first of them, the mysterious Menes, who would
have been either Narmer or Aha, or perhaps a fictive pharaoh modeled by
tradition on both of them. Still, several indications furnished by royal an-
nals (the Palermo Stone) and by inscribed objects gave reason to think
that before Menes, potentates provided with certain attributes that were
later assumed by the pharaohs had reigned over regions of Egypt. The ar-
chaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie proposed making them into
a “Dynasty Zero.” Colleagues ignored his suggestion, but half a century
later, archaeology supplied him with a posthumous revenge. Excavations
by the German Institute of Archaeology in the Archaic Period cemetery of
Abydos uncovered the burials of kings who antedated the unification:
Scorpion I (to be distinguished from Scorpion II, the immediate prede-
cessor of Narmer), Iri-Hor (?), and Ka (or Sekhen).
The rich furnishings of these tombs included royal emblems
(scepters), jugs of wine imported from Palestine, and above all, many in-
scribed objects proving definitively that writing was already in use around
3150 B.C.E., and thus prior to the pharaonic period. The study of these
finds has barely begun, and many conclusions remain to be drawn. At the
very least, the notion of a Dynasty Zero has been resuscitated as a desig-
nation for this group of kings, along with a few others who are known
from small objects but whose tombs have yet to be discovered. Even if they
ruled over Upper Egypt and even if they were culturally linked to the First
Dynasty, however, these kings cannot be considered as full pharaohs, be-
cause they did not control the kingdom of Buto in the delta. It was their
successors, particularly Menes, who accomplished the unification between
3000 and 2950 B.C.E. The symbol of this unification and thus of the begin-
ning of the properly pharaonic period was the foundation of Memphis,
where the earliest pharaohs and/or their high officials built funerary
complexes. We thus now know that the First Dynasty emerged not from
nothing, but from Zero; there is no stopping progress!
See Archaic (Period), Menes, Narmer, Origins (Prehistory, Predynastic), Scorpion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
For the most part, the references at the end of entries have been chosen according
to the criterion of accessibility, with emphasis on books that are available in af-
fordable editions or in college or public libraries. These will be sufficient for most
educated readers in search of more information on a given point.
But those who wish to confront the technical details of a given question will
need to consult the basic scholarly publications in the field of Egyptology, which
are for the most part written in English, French, and German. For those who can
do so, there are certain basic resources.
Egyptology has a basic encyclopedia of its own, in which the entire universe of
Egyptian civilization is covered by alphabetically arranged articles that are pro-
vided with rich bibliographies: W. Helk and E. Otto, eds., Lexikon der Agyptologie, 6
vols. (Wiesbaden, 1972-1986). All research must begin with this resource, the ar-
ticles of which are written in the three major languages of the field, and it includes
an exhaustive index.
Other valuable scholarship is listed in the yearly volumes of the Annual Egypto-
logical Bibliography; it has been published since 1947, and it is currently edited by
L. M.J. Zonhoven and published by Aris 8c Philips, Warminster, England. It is now
in the process of being made available on the Internet at http://www.
leidenuniv.nl/nino/aeb.html. These volumes have a section entitled “History,”
but it should not be consulted exclusively, for other sections often include contri-
butions touching on this topic.
Those who wish to delve into the field of Egyptology will also profit from the
excellent bibliography published by E. Hornung, Einfuhrung in die Agyptologie
(Darmstadt, 1967).
Readers of English also have the benefit of two magisterial encyclopedias. One
of these isj. M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, 4 vols. (New York,
1995). It has many chapters devoted to the history and civilization of ancient
Egypt. The other is D.B. Redford, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 3
vols. (New York, 2001).
The list that follows is a selection of recent works on pharaonic Egypt.
ORIGINS
Hoffman, M.A. Egypt before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundations of Egyptian
Civilization. New York, 1979.
Midant-Reynes, B. The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First
Pharaohs. Malden, Mass., 2000.
Spencer, E. Early Egypt: The Birth of Civilization in the Nile Valley. London, 1993.
HISTORY OF THE PHARAOHS
The Cambridge Ancient History, 3d ed. Cambridge, 1970-1975.

Clayton, P. A. Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and
Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. New York, 1994.
232 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dodson, A. Monarchs of the Nile, 2d ed. Cairo, 2000.

Dunand, F., and C. Zivie-Coche. Dieux et hommes enEgypte. Paris, 1991.
Grimal, N. A History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford, 1992.
Hornung, E. History of Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. Ithaca, 1999.
Husson, G., and D. Valbelle. L’Etat et les institutions enEgypte despremierspharaons
aux empereurs romains. Paris, 1992.
Shaw, I., ed. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. New York, 2000.
Trigger, B.G, B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A. B. Lloyd. Ancient Egypt: A Social
History. Cambridge, 1983.
Valbelle, D. Les Neuf Arcs. Paris, 1990.
Vandersleyen, C. L’Egypte et la vallee du Nil. Vol. 2, De la fin de UAncien Empire a la
fin du Nouvel Empire. Paris, 1995. (Despite some aberrant geographical
paradoxes.)
Vercoutter, J. L’Egypte et la vallee du Nil. Vol. 1, Des Origines a la fin de TAncien
Empire. Paris, 1992.
KINGS AND PERIODS
Amenophis, le Pharaon-Soleil. Paris, 1993.

Desroches-Noblecourt, C. Ramses II, la veritable histoire. Paris, 1996.
Grandet, P. Ramses III: Histoire d’un regne. Paris, 1993.
Hornung, E. Akhenaten and the Religion of Light. Ithaca, 1999.
Kitchen, K.A. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II King of Egypt.
Warminster, 1982.
. The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100—650 B.C.) . Warminster, 1986.
Kozloff, A. P., and B. M. Bryan. Egypt’s Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and His World.
Cleveland, 1992.
Mysliwiec, K. The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.c.E. Ithaca, 2000.
Redford, D.B. Akhenaten, the Heretic King. Princeton, 1984.
Schneider, T. Lexikon der Pharaonen: Die altagyptischen Konige von derFruhzeit bis zur
Romerherrschaft. 2d ed. Diisseldorf, 1997.
Welsby, D.A. The Kingdom of Kush: The Nap atan and Meroitic Empires. London,
1996-
ASPECTS OF PHARAONIC CULTURE
Baines, J., andj. Malek, Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt. New York, 2000.
Bonheme, M.-A., and A. Forgeau. Pharaon: Les Secrets du pouvoir. Paris,
1988.
Donadoni, S., ed. L’Homme egyptien. Paris, 1992.
Grandet, P., ed. L’Egypte ancienne. Paris, 1996.
Quirke, S., andj. Spencer. The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt. London,
!992-
Romer, J. Valley of the Kings. New York, 1989.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 233
Shaw, I., and P. Nicholson. British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. London,
1995 -
Vernus, P. Affaires et scandales sous les Ramses: La Crise des valeurs dans VEgypte du
Nouvel Empire. Paris, 1993.
. Essai sur la conscience de Vhistoire dans VEgypte pharaonique. Paris, 1995.
*■
* *'
THE DELTA AND MIDDLE EGYPT
UPPER EGYPT AND LOWER NUBIA
UPPER NUBIA
CHRONOLOGY
Except as otherwise noted, the dates in the table that follows are B.C.E.
Prior to 700, dates can be taken only as plausible indications of spans of
time.
C/3
G C/D
• PH
G G C/D
• PH
• PH
SH G ^H
15 P^
15 £ 0
#\ HH
C/3
15 • PH
G
in
2 SH
SH
z
v—
phren,
o 15 G
i • PH
C/3
E 73 G G 15
15
G
r G
oC
C/3
G
E
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15
2
CJ
rs & c\
u 15 G C ■ M
15 M
l-H
rG O G U
G
15
X a
a;
2
£
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a
c\ G
SH
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a
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G C/D -H
15
O O, G G 0 15 OH
• PH
15 15 G G 15 G „
O. n c/3 qj si G 15 HH
S-H
O G G
15
15
a
C/3 v
CO U z
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nG
*\
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OH
ju
CO C/3 C/3
OH >G (H 3" SH OH
3 • P'11 *
G 15
be G G P.
SH 73' !-H G G C/3
0
• PH
G O O w w o G 4->
15 15 G n r15
2 E X CO CO CO CO H
o 0 o m PH
O rH 0 0
o o 00 CO CO m Cf 7h CO
0 0 J> CO m 7^ CO PH pH
CO CO Cf
1
Cf
1
Cf
1
Cf
i
Cf
1
Cf
i
ci
1 1 1 i 1
o 15 0 O m PH
0 pH O
o m 00 CO co m Cf
m CO m CO m 7h CO PH
CO Cf Cf Cf Cf Cf Cf ct
u
Q
O
2 Q
w
OH O
u
p O C/3
C3 Q C/D (O
CO G c/3 c/D
O G 03 <3
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Q 2 G
Q Q ►*
73
G
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Q Q
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O Q ^
SH G H->
u G
S
OH
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• PH
G
X
• PH
CO
o O
m TF
05 H
Cl Cl
"0
fi L4 s-T
CCS -G QJ
o £7
C/3
G G
2
1 <G
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M 2 • V'
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-G QJ CL
■M
G
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c & -G
QJ ~'- •I—I
in G be £ be
QJ G G G QJ
• pH
QJ • PH
ob
s 2 CO 2 2 c/3
O Cl 0 PH ■O1 H-1 O
CG Cl co CG 00 00 U3
0 0 PH O r- CD
Cl Cl Cl i—i PH PH PH
I 1 i 1 1
1 1
O 0 Cl rH O
CO CG Cl CG ID
rH 0 O CG i>
Cl Cl Cl PH PH
C/3
• pH
HH u
HH
c3
4J G
Cl. <
| 3 .2
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0
cb G
-G
G)
G ob C/D
j"P* G C/3 o
♦ rM
G nn
G G QJ 22 O ^
ob cb o 2 >-
X • l-H
•M 2 §
cb
QJ U •M X
> ^ ob QJ
D> G C/3
G
• PH
O
CL
^
t/3
be -G
HH G
G
G 27
cb ob G 2b
O
CJ G iC Nx
C/3
^
o Q 4^ -G
■s o C/3 ’So -G
O-H CM C^ cb SH g S' s S-i
G Q QJ 1J • PH
G CL
f i
QJ a G4 E 3 5 0 cb
w
GH S t2 H W > Q (H U
o CM O O
CO W <M ID
H O l> CD
cr Cl
oc
G
QJ
u 0
c c/3
QJ
42 42
G CL, * O
QJ 42
cr 3 a C4
QJ
§ 42 W
cn « OH
a £
jb’ -G QJ QJ
4H
C/3
4-> S3 S
o "C O X
N 1 X ^ M
C/D
QJ
44 I g
^ QJ
QJ
C/D
C/D
42
QJ C/D
60
^
G~
QJ QJ X
QJ fi
o? G
4
C/3
i
QJ
QO
W5 K
• PH
44 •
C/D a
<G
o
Pi
o
C/D
o > QJ QJ
~ C/D
O 42 £ o;
C/D
G 4H C/3 44 C/3 C/D
QJ s a
G o G o qj QJ
G3 ° s § ’S
O 42
4—>
QJ G
QJ
Q
S' J
M HH <3 E2 H co
QJ /?> a
o CO 0 CO CO to CO 0 CO
tO CO to CO CO CO CO 05 CD
tO tO CD to CM CO CM PH O
PH PH rH PH rH rH rH rH rH
1 1 1 | l | l |
1 1 1 1
0 O O CO CO to CO O
to tO CO CO to CO CO CO
CD C£5 CD to CO CO CM rH
PH PH rH PH rH rH PH PH
G
QJ O
• pH
C/3
be
• PH
"QJ
4
42
<
G
42 o
C/3
o
C/3
44
ffi
ro
C/D
QJ c3 c/3
c cb
-G
4—1 O
4-i Q Q £
o Q
O 42
4-> 42
G
O
Z G
• i-H QJ QJ
C/D • PH
F 1 < QJ W
4—1
G >
42 fl
O- ^ QJ
bJD
X g • pH
w Z w £
05 CO in
CO to CO
to CO CO
H M
HH
3
0
L3
3 LI
3 0
rl C/3
s
73 0
♦ fH l-H
hH l-H
cn HH C/D
J_l C/3 fi cr
a
r
*. o o L3
OH T3 o
3 32 O ,0 L3 32 (73
35 C/3 L u 32
be
15
fH 0 33 u 73
• rH
3 32 M £ O 32
X GO C/3 3 £ Z o PQ cr>
m m 775 0 0 m CD
r-1 r-1 XT5 71 iH ID
05
1 05 J> I> i CD1
1 1
05 l> o
CO 00 CM rH
O x>
rH
C/3
£ ^
•L 15
35 \3
C/3 C/3
3 3 3 3 73
L
o O O * & L3
• PH • PH
W 73
QJ 32 •HP
73 <73 £ a
w 73 fl-
3 3 -a
C/3 ^ •L 35
PH ic ~
73 • fH
H->
• PH
32 C/3
W 32 W w
32 HJ HJ "a? ” HJ
15 3 3 4H • PH
•*—i 3 HH 0 0 OH • PH -D s:
• -H
15 15 73 -t-j 73 C/D
3 CQ 15
4H So 3 CO L
.73 CL - 3
C/3 15
73 W
xT L > ^
C/3 32 C/3 C/3
73 73 73 XT D t5 C/3 C/3 w
C/D C/D 32 73
XT 3 3 rC 3 OH L
c/3 T3 • PH
c3 T2 3 •3 oo
15 3 32 OH 0 13
3 73
73 s L 73
3 Q DH Q OH Q P 73 L £ be 3
Q •p >-^
<-M LH d O
73 15
3 qj
0 32
3 32
H-1
£
15
r3
3 ■3
Q
pH 0
T2
3 32
DH
33
1 5
LH
t a
15
0 35 qj O 0 3 0 L -3
15 1H £ L
S; • |H o >
L
15 • fH 15
0
15 Cs
w
15
15
3 +-> 0
15 cr 3 qj T5 15 be 32 • PH 15 0 C/3 C/3
c3 C/3
1 3 73 C/3
1 rj 3 C/3
■ W •M1
w C/3
I
15
/H c3
L
i<H
Cv o V 15 15
<L> 0 73 3 • HJ
XT r-< 73 XT • fH xr L XT X br f—1
3H
3 C/D 15 3 C/D
• fH
73
HH 3 qj 3 15 3 L 3 cr 32 3
l) 0 OH 15 15 CL 15 3 15 3 15 3 C/3 15
£ 32 OH £ • PH £ OH £ 3 £ c2
MH o 3 £
H CO C H Q Q H P
H < H H
o
oo 00 o ID
o H H
H 00 i>
s
o C/3
C/3
OL. S-H
<D S C/3
04 43 o5 o
od CD i—i
KH <D QO
42
0
CD C/3 X H u
C/3 z .£ o
0 >-> 'o
c3 QO
0 o
d 03
03 Q 4— 1
73 C/5 Q C/3
-X
OH
<V
0
0>
C/3
<D
C/3
C/D
0
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£ S OJ
X
5- 4
<D
73
be Od •C § S-i
c 4— 1 v S <D 0
JD 42
HH 5- 4 JC ^
w X d
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£ a >- os X
CD OH U
4-)
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03
O H U 2 Z 3
o O m 00 00 00 rH o CO
CO o Cl 05 O) J> Tt-1 CO Cl
CO m CO CO CO CO co CO
1 1 i I 1 1
1 l 1
m T)-
1
00 00 i-H 0
Cl 0 CO l> co
m ^t1 co CO CO co
C/3 d
 u
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5- 4 O
O a;
7$ -C 4J
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OH
03
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5-4 <D
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a; OH
Z>-s <D
o3
cj
£ ^ 05
ST* c/3 -O 73
HQ U 4—>
• pH 0
s
o3
CO 03
cn
73
0
d
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be 5- H 0 Q
X X HJ 0 • PH
• PH
C/3
<D • PH
IB
• PH
<D
 «D 4—> <D .0
o <3 03
HJ H H O t5 73 H E2 H H
30 m 00 H O
m Cl 05 TfH CO
CO m CO CO CO
$
cb
M ’cb
Q
cb C/5
SH
1 5
3
l-H cb 3
• PH
3u
3i 0 a
• PH
i— V
JV X
cb
'o U
4-J £
3H cjJ
J O
u 1)
V C/5
4-1
c/f 3
0 4-J
o C/5
X 3
l—H be
C3
1
X f <u'(
fH
3
3 T3 <
jb
• PH
a
'o O
4-> X
OH X
0 1 w w w
CO W
1 d u u
CO u Cl
CM CO 0
a rH <M o
CO
CO CO co
o
CO O
3
O
3 • pH
cb • H
be C/5
• PH
JD
T>
C/5 cb SH "cl
a
4->
cb V CJ
3 X
o w OJ
4-J
Q C/5
.O C/5 <L> 3
'v'
TJ g. Q
x
o
o
a cb
be
cb
• —< cb
be 0,0 SH o OH
,w 2
cb cb 
C/3
SH X
QJ .a 35
o <L> W O1
+-> cb X C4H P
1
i
3H U u O u
o
CO
the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt)
and “Zero Dynasty" (the designation for
pre-pharaonic Egypt). In addition, Vernus
and Yoyotte include a substantial essay on the
sources for Egyptian history, a bibliography of
books for general readers, and a chronological
table that organizes the major periods of
Egyptian history and notes the most illustri-
ous royal names from each.
PASCAL VERNUSis Director of Studies

/ /
at l’Ecole Pratique des Elautes Etudes and
the author of many works in French.
JEAN YOYOTTE, Chair of Egyptology at
the College de France, is the author of three
books in French. DAVID LORTON, an
Egyptologist, lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Photo on front: Statue of Amenophis II from Karnak, Eigh-

teenth Dynasty. I ,u :."i . © 1995, A1 Berens, Suretiesign
Graphics. Photo j r !: aa:.: bistatue oi Yamunedjeh. Dynasty
18. Luxor Museiii r:.!'I n s i;n i aney J. Corbin.
m
VX'&'r:
muni
Cornell University Press

ITHACA <5C LONDON
wwwxornellpressxornell.edu
ISBN 0-8014-4050-5
90000
<r 9 780801 440502

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Pascal Vernus and Jean Yoyotte

Translated by David Lorton

The names of ancient Egyptian kings such

The Book of the Pharaohs is an encyclopedia of

Aphrodite, whose role was to arouse the erotic

PASCAL VERNUS 6" JEAN YOYOTTE

translated from the French ^ DAVID LORTON

Cornell University Press Ithaca & London

English translation copyright © 2003 by Cornell University

French edition, Dictionnaire des pharaons,

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this

First published 2003 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible

Cloth printing 10 98765432 1

The Delta and Middle Egypt 235

Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia 236

Upper Nubia 237

English-speaking Egyptologists have no single set of conventions for the

(concubines) of Zeus” given to them by the Greeks creates a misimpres-

G. Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), chapter 2.

Ahmose 1539-1514 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

See Ahmose, son of Ebana; Ahmose-Nofretari; Cachettes; Hyksos.

Ahmose, Son of Ebana

his celebrity among Egyptologists is due to his detailed autobiography. He

M. Gitton, L'Epouse du dieu Ahmes Nefertary, Centre de recherches d’histoire

ancienne 15, Annales litteraires de l’universite de Besangon 172 (Paris, 1981).

Alexander the Great 332-323 B.C.E.

^Macedonian (Dynasty), Nectanebo, Ptolemy.

1. Undeniably, from the beginning, the early Ptolemies chose Osiris-

Nectanebo I of Dynasty Thirty, which are now scattered among the

We must distinguish between works in the pharaonic style that date to

world. Should we or should we not impute the final destruction of the

P. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1972); E. Qoddio et al., Alexandria:

E. Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (Ithaca, 1999), chapter 5.

Amasis 570-526 B.c.E., Twenty-sixth Dynasty

A. de Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), p. 199.

Amenemhet I 1991-1962 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet II 1929-1895 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenemhet III 1843-1796 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

served as intermediaries between Egypt and the Near East (Syria-Pales-

See Senwosret III.

Amenemhet IV 1799-1787 B.C.E., Twelfth Dynasty

Amenhotpe, Son of Hapu

A. Varille, Inscriptions concernant Varchitecte Amenhotep, fils de Hapou, Bibliotheque

means “Amun is satisfied.” This convention is followed here for the

Amenophis I 1514-1493 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

See Ahmose; Ahmose, son of Ebana; Ahmose-Nofretari.

Amenophis II 1428-1401 B.c.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

reigned twenty-eight years (1428-1401), three of them as coregent with

Amenophis III 1391-1353 B.C.E., Eighteenth Dynasty

Amenophis IV, alias Akhenaten

mous rupture. When he came to power, Amenophis IV behaved like a

FIGURE 2. Colossal statue of

J. Vandier, Mo‘alla, Bibliotheque d’Etude 18 (Cairo, 1950).

See Sebekhotpe, Thirteenth Dynasty.

Apophis Fifteenth Dynasty

posing a humiliating demand, formulated allegorically, on Seqenenre.