posted
Kara Cooney needs to get a tan. Damn she is so pale complexioned. If she hates Ancient Khemit Kings so much why doesn't she focus on her Celtic tribal heritage, her Roman, Teutonic, or Viking tribal ancestry? She's just spewing negativity since Ancient Khemit was an African Empire built by Black Africans.
-------------------- Tehutimes Posts: 115 | From: north america | Registered: Jan 2014
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now (ie pre-20th century) in the hands of male Imenokalen?
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ I don't want to turn this thread into a sex vs. gender argument, but it seems Lioness is bringing us there.
She brings up the feminist talking points about a "glass ceiling" while ignoring the fact that political executive leadership has traditionally been held by men because they were warriors/soldiers who displayed prowess in defense and this was especially true of monarchs from royal families. Princes received military training from childhood and from adolescence took part in war campaigns and expeditions. This military role in political leadership has continued only until recent times where in modern so-called 'Democracies' leaders can be elected to office without having any military service. Defense service aside, it's gotten to the point where any man (or woman for that matter) could be elected to office based on nice sounding talking points and slogans.
Again, historically there were women who fulfilled the role of political executors or heads of state. But these were exceptions to the rule. The majority of female executors in history whether tribal chieftains or queens started out as spiritual leaders to their people first and through some extraordinary circumstances were thrust into the role of political leadership since religion and politics were always intertwined and in some instances one and the same. In other occasions women became queens due to their economic ingenuity and business savvy. For example, the only woman in the Sumerian King List was Kubaba who was originally a beermaker and tavern owner who founded her own dynasty. In pre-Islamic Indonesia there were kingdoms founded by female merchants who plied trade in their textiles etc. Only in more rare instances do women rise to power as heads from the political sphere alone usually through proving themselves by overcoming certain odds especially during times of war or conflict not necessarily as the bold 'female warriors' that many fantasize in modern times especially Hollywood, but as diplomatic peace-makers and negotiators.
By the way, when it comes to female monarchs the term 'queen' gets thrown out a lot but there were specific 'types' of queens. The most common is queen-consort which is queen by marriage to a king; there is queen-mother which is mother to a reigning king; queen-regent is a queen who rules temporarily while the heir is to throne is too young; queen-coregent is a queen who rules alongside her king; queen-dowager is a widowed queen; and finally queen-regnant is a queen who rules in her own right. The last especially in patrilineal societies only happens when there are no male heirs to the throne. As you may have noticed, all categories of queen are in relation to the king who was typically the ruling monarch. Note that traditionally queens in the royal court even if they were not the reigning monarch still held significant influence if not power since they managed the royal household or palace.
quote:Originally posted by Tehutimes: Kara Cooney needs to get a tan. Damn she is so pale complexioned. If she hates Ancient Khemit Kings so much why doesn't she focus on her Celtic tribal heritage, her Roman, Teutonic, or Viking tribal ancestry? She's just spewing negativity since Ancient Khemit was an African Empire built by Black Africans.
It wasn't built by "black africans" nor do you have anything to do with ancient "khemit"
Posts: 1779 | From: Somewhere In the Rif Mountains | Registered: Nov 2021
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quote:Originally posted by Tehutimes: Kara Cooney needs to get a tan. Damn she is so pale complexioned. If she hates Ancient Khemit Kings so much why doesn't she focus on her Celtic tribal heritage, her Roman, Teutonic, or Viking tribal ancestry? She's just spewing negativity since Ancient Khemit was an African Empire built by Black Africans.
It wasn't built by "black africans" nor do you have anything to do with ancient "khemit"
It was built by "black" Africans no matter how much your delusional azz wants to deny it.
Posts: 45 | From: U.S | Registered: Nov 2021
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quote:Originally posted by Tehutimes: Kara Cooney needs to get a tan. Damn she is so pale complexioned. If she hates Ancient Khemit Kings so much why doesn't she focus on her Celtic tribal heritage, her Roman, Teutonic, or Viking tribal ancestry? She's just spewing negativity since Ancient Khemit was an African Empire built by Black Africans.
It wasn't built by "black africans" nor do you have anything to do with ancient "khemit"
It was built by "black" Africans no matter how much your delusional azz wants to deny it.
nope it was built by people who looked and were related to modern egyptians certainly not some afro-americans with 20% of anglo ancestry.
Posts: 1779 | From: Somewhere In the Rif Mountains | Registered: Nov 2021
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posted
^^ please let's not go off topic into a "was Egypt black?" picture war, thanks
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Quay quai and take a seat!
How you gonna tell ppl what MY THREAD is for.
It's not about that woman.
It's about the concept many have of painting AE in pastel colors ignoring the dogged reality this bronze-iron age super civilization was one none of us would really want to live in due to HR standards below America and 2nd World political-economies.
TUBALYA23 and that other respondant can post whatever in the world they feel like with my express permission -- though that theme is old and played out since before I got here in 2004.
It's about the concept many have of painting AE in pastel colors ignoring the dogged reality
Ok, I didn't realize that was the topic
Would you mind not blanking out your comments, especially after being responded to. It's poor etiquette.
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posted
I forgot my exact words, if this is a court record somebody let me know exactly what I said in case I left off a dot on an i
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I see you're back.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
???
I have taken hiatus of varying lengths many times over the last 18 years.
One such hiatus led to Rey successfully contacting Sammi and acquiring ADMIN status of this sight. Rey was kind enough to ask me permission to do so. That was unnecessary but i did appreciate the respect he showed to me by doing so.
I will take hiatus many more times in the future before I wear myself out over inconsequentials.
I hear that she sends a little needle sting to what is probably meant to be the "Vintage Egyptologist" concerning appropriate clothing when going to Egypt and participating in fieldwork there.
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: If you don't like it lump it and GTFA
Bit and pieces of my life are somehow regularly shattered regularly ragged due to "white v black stuff". Its basis? I can't just be a person, a human being, but I must be, pending attire, swagger, and diction, a suspect Old Gangbanger ex-con or at best "the black guy."
If you were black you'd know that feeling and wouldn't try to play off the crippling real life negative consequences of white black stuff. Being white you don't suffer its consequences and resent hearing we the bearers groan at the weight forced upon us or one of your fellows truly empathize.
This is my thread You will not dictate its direction.
Stop the whining, you are not the only one in the world that has been a victim of prejudice and racism.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2687 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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I hear that she sends a little needle sting to what is probably meant to be the "Vintage Egyptologist" concerning appropriate clothing when going to Egypt and participating in fieldwork there.
So the colonial era vintage garb is the appropriate?
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Quay qui you insensitive Wino voice of clueless white privilege.
Yes the Africans in Ukraine are the latest example of black-white stuff you'll never ever experience.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx:
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: If you don't like it lump it and GTFA
Bit and pieces of my life are somehow regularly shattered regularly ragged due to "white v black stuff". Its basis? I can't just be a person, a human being, but I must be, pending attire, swagger, and diction, a suspect Old Gangbanger ex-con or at best "the black guy."
If you were black you'd know that feeling and wouldn't try to play off the crippling real life negative consequences of white black stuff. Being white you don't suffer its consequences and resent hearing we the bearers groan at the weight forced upon us or one of your fellows truly empathize.
This is my thread You will not dictate its direction.
Stop the whining, you are not the only one in the world that has been a victim of prejudice and racism.
Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
THIS IS MY THREAD
I said enough of centralizing that white woman.
Time to focus on the real topic Romanticizing ancient Egypt in particular and any and all previous civilizations or nation states before our times.
Guarantee you all none of you would want to live in any of them because their human rights records are atrocious compared to any 1st or 2nd World political economies we're quite used to and comfortable living in.
DEAR MOD PLEASE DELETE ANY POSTS CONTINUING TO FOCUS ON THAT WOMAN INSTEAD OF EGYPT ETC AND THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD. THANK YOU.
Except for Barbados and the US of A there's no other Anglophone places I'd rather spend my life in.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness So the colonial ara vintage garb is the appropriate?
Obviously it is not forbidden in Egypt since they can dress like that.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2687 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:Originally posted by Techtronics: Not to mention the fact nothing sexier than Woman has been found in the Universe. 😎
Rule number #1. Don't discuss sex with *******. 😎
.
Very insightful and a precusor to a sub-theme of this my thread.
Is it not woman's beauty or mystique that made for the Pliestocene 'Venus' figurines of Alpine Europe? Sex seems their emphasis and many suppose both sacred and temporal POWER is what they also had behind them. [no pun intended]
6300 BCE Neolithic Venus figurine called "Red hair goddess” made of terracotta, from the lost Starčevo culture
Can't say much about Gambuto's(sp) matriarchal theories but The Matriarchy is as much romanticized as the later male dominated post mid-Holocene civs.
Perhaps the beauty and sexiness of boobies somewhat dominated or pacified male rule and aggression after the Age of the Venuses?
I think mostly of Minoa and priestesses after temporal rule passed on to male hands as society progressed beyond foraging groups. But in ancient days sacred officiants ruled just as much as kings and chiefs.
Then there's that Kel taMasheq aMazigh female thing.
posted
Please,enlightened me. Also, venus of monruz was "dropping it low" back then.😲😲😲😲😏😏😏😏
Posts: 1123 | From: New York | Registered: Feb 2016
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:Originally posted by Thereal: Please,enlightened me. Also, venus of monruz was "dropping it low" back then.😲😲😲😲😏😏😏😏
Hahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Venus of Monruz was no Marilyn Monroe, ... oh!
Shoo, I was shocked to find they was Boogey Night-ing it way back in the Stuttgart of the geneticists sampling era! And now this
OK long story short.
Based on parasha B*reshiyth shebi`iy-maftir (Genesis 6.1-8)
Angels challenged the Eternal why haAdam (humanity) instead of themselve were given the Torah adding that they could never be swayed by woman like Adam was by Eve.
The Eternal rejoined: "You could resist my Crown of Creation no better than he. You'd be worse."
So some of them angels, biblical Sons of God, banded together and materialized on our Earth. Now male physical bodies, their noses were open.
They took whatever biblical Daughters of Men they desired engendering the Nephilim but not before inventing mascara et al, accentuating bead work for waist, hips, breasts, and thighs, clothes that leave a woman more 'naked' even though fully dressed, and other things enhancing the, already God intended, irresistible feminine ... ... cough, cough ... 'mystique'.
So the Eternal sent the Great Flood to cleanse the corruption fleshed angels introduced in the earth who went as far as forcing crossed species sex onto the animal kingdom as they themselves crossed species to sex women birthing what Greeks would call demi-gods, the biblical Mighty Men of Old.
You can go for the whole megila in midrashic works or check out Graves & PataiThe Hebrew Myths which I DO NOT recommend for devout pious readers who must not regard biblical writings as part of any kind of comparative mythology. I do not want to shake anyone's faith.
From the colossal temples of Luxor to Tutankhamun’s golden death mask, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt’s golden age created some of history’s greatest treasures. Yet, writes Guy de la Bédoyère, behind the glittering facade lay a society built on brutality, inequality and staggering levels of corruption
[A statue of Thutmose III] By Elinor Evans Published: December 7, 2022 at 7:19 am
On 26 November 1922, when Howard Carter reported what he could make out in the gloom of a dusty chamber in the Valley of the Kings, a new phase of Egyptomania began. For more than 100 years, since Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign at the turn of the 19th century, Europeans and North Americans had been enthralled by the architecture, art, design and dress of this ancient civilisation.
Carter’s discovery was different, though. “Everywhere the glint of gold!” he famously recalled of the moment he first saw the wonders of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The scene was set for an international fixation with this gilded young pharaoh who presided over a glittering court of fabulous wealth. Tutankhamun seduced the world, further sensationalising the popular image of Egypt at its height during the 18th Dynasty (c1550–1295 BC).
Monuments such as the temples at Luxor and Karnak in southern Egypt had already stunned visitors and archaeologists alike. They spoke of a Bronze Age imperialist state possessed of astonishing confidence, led by chariot-borne pharaohs firing off a fusillade of arrows at their cowering foes.
Amenhotep III’s Sun Court at the temple of Luxor. Sites such as this wowed later visitors and archaeologists who were dazzled by Egypt’s golden age. (Image by Getty Images)
Yet look beyond the dazzling architecture, the power and the riches, and there’s a darker tale to be told about ancient Egypt’s so-called golden age. It’s a story of wealth, glory and political power being monopolised by a tiny, spectacularly self-entitled elite, while everyone else was left to scrabble around in the dirt.
Dynamic forces
The 18th Dynasty was born out of an episode of disorder known today as the Second Intermediate Period. Around 1550 BC, a warrior king called Ahmose I emerged from obscurity to expel the Asiatic Hyksos from the Nile Delta region. Adapting the Hyksos’s horse-drawn chariot, Ahmose transformed Egypt’s army into a dynamic force that tore through the near east and Nubia (north-east Africa). He also created the Egyptian royal liberation myth that legitimated the dynasty’s hold on power, posing as the protector of maat (truth and harmony) from the forces of chaos.
Ahmose and his successors diverted Egypt’s resources into self-glorification and the magnificence of temples to the gods who backed their power. No wonder most of them claimed to have been sired by the king of the gods, Amun himself. Indeed, Amun’s temple at Karnak became a state within a state.
The kings were gleefully backed by the elites, who were on the make just as much as their rulers. Take Ahmes, son of Ibana, a brilliantly successful soldier – or so he claimed – under the first three kings of the 18th Dynasty: Ahmose, Amenhotep I and Thutmose I. His tomb biography itemises his derring-do, recounting how his admiring kings handed him shares of booty, slaves and land, as well as promoting him to the highest position in the armed forces. “I have been rewarded with gold seven times before the entire land, and also with male and female slaves. I have been endowed with many fields,” he bragged.
A detail of the gilt shrine of Tutankhamun which originally contained statuettes of the royal couple. (Image by AKG Images)
Thutmose I was equally boastful. A typically tendentious stela inscription from one of his Nubian wars claimed that so many of the enemy archers had been killed that the valleys were “flooded with their innards”, and all of the local birds were unable to carry off the body parts. This was routine pharaonic bombast: inscriptions always portrayed the king as a dynamic superhero, and his hapless Nubian or Asiatic foes as witless cowards led by imbeciles.
War profits were mostly spent on conspicuous waste, but helped create an illusion of permanence. State vanity building projects were designed to glorify the regime as part of that mirage. Take as an example the works of Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I. Widowed after the death of her husband (also her half-brother) Thutmose II in 1479 BC, she acted as regent for her half-nephew, the child Thutmose III, before declaring herself king alongside him. Because Egypt had no concept of the queen regnant, she had to redefine their role as a composite king and queen.
Exulting in her power and wealth, Hatshepsut commissioned her vast terraced mortuary temple in western Thebes (now Luxor), designed by her steward and admirer-in-chief, Senenmut. At Karnak she erected several obelisks, including two that towered over the temple, tipped with glittering electrum. These honoured Amun, her divine father, who had chosen her – so she claimed – to be king. Inscriptions on them record her musing: “My imagination runs riot, wondering what the common people who see my monument in the years to come will say.”
quote:The pharaohs diverted Egypt’s resources into self-glorification and temples to the gods who backed their power
Following her death in 1458 BC, the now-adult Thutmose III roared into action with a vigour that left the near-eastern kings shaking in their sandals. Leading his army with bravado and recklessness, Thutmose conquered more territory than any other pharaoh.
Thutmose III’s Annals, inscribed on a wall at Karnak, comprise a triumphant account of systematic brutalisation and greedy acquisitiveness, itemising his booty with covetous precision. In the first year of conquest alone, the haul included 924 chariots from the enemy army and allied princes. Livestock seized included 20,500 sheep, and he also took several thousand slaves and a “silver statue with a golden head”. The detailed inventory lists everything from knives to “one large jar of Syrian workmanship” and 207,300 sacks of wheat. Year on year, more piled in, along with several trophy wives for Thutmose’s harem.
Royal profiteering
During this period, Egypt’s only interest was profiteering, backed by a constant threat of violence. Nothing was done to create a sustainable system of provincial government. Instead, a teetering hierarchy of avaricious, nepotistic officials and priests squabbled over position and power. They poured their kickbacks into tombs and chapels to memorialise themselves and advertise their families’ greatness, much like the “prodigy houses” of Elizabethan England 3,000 years later.
One such official was Rekhmire, vizier to Thutmose III and his son Amenhotep II. This swaggering bigwig (who indeed wore a big wig to prove his status) built himself an extravagant memorial chapel at Thebes. Scenes inscribed there depict the great man lording it over his underlings as they slaved on various projects, and tribute bearers from foreign lands carrying in epic quantities of goods for the Egyptian state.
Texts at his chapel boast how “greatly loved” and “greatly respected” Rekhmire was, and that he was the beneficiary of royal favour. This chapel was an extravagant monument showcasing his status, paid for out of the profits of high office, legitimate or otherwise. It was later desecrated, suggesting that he fell from favour – a fate that befell more than a few major officials. In the superheated context and bitter rivalries of a Bronze Age superstate court, the stakes were enormous.
quote:The creation of huge statues and monuments involved startling levels of labour and danger for ordinary Egyptians
One gets the measure of these pompous martinets from a letter sent by Sennefer, another high official under Amenhotep II, to a farmer, demanding that food and flowers be made ready for his visit. “Do not let me find fault with you concerning your post,” he ranted. “Do not have it lacking in good order… You shall not slack, for I know that you are sluggish and fond of eating lying down.”
Theft was endemic, a consequence of the staggering inequality pervasive in Egypt at the time. Of course, there’s no point in judging a Bronze Age nation by the standards of today, but in Egypt the gap steadily widened as the elite abused its power. Egyptian kings and high officials happily took from other nations and even from each other. Kings purloined or demolished their predecessors’ monuments, absorbed their achievements, and sometimes even helped themselves to grave goods.
Egypt’s downtrodden underclass were also fully aware of the spoils waiting for those courageous enough to raid graves, often helped or even commissioned by corrupt officials. Tomb-robbing really took off in the centuries following the 18th Dynasty, but two break-ins at Tutankhamun’s tomb soon after his burial in c1327 BC show that gangs were already at work then. All were prepared to risk the brutal punishments meted out to criminals, including mutilation and impalement.
Heights of extravagance
Many of the kings of the 18th Dynasty were young adults or even infants when they succeeded to the throne. So it was with Amenhotep III (ruled c1390–1352 BC), great-grandson of Thutmose III, who was still a child when he became king. Yet so embedded was the system and the divine myth with which the royal line had surrounded itself that such young kings ruled unchallenged. The otiose Amenhotep III and his fiercely dominant wife, Tiye, presided over a culture of solar worship, with the king as the supreme mortal. His reign reached new heights of extravagance.
Most foreign nations handed over tribute rather than risk conflict. Surviving diplomatic correspondence shows that Amenhotep III’s neighbours constantly sought his friendship and benevolence. They took infantile pleasure in receiving evidence of his approval and good intent in the form of letters and gifts. And they grew petulant and worried if these seemed in any way to devalue their conceits about their standing in his eyes.
Amenhotep III built a sprawling palace complex on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, and a memorial mortuary temple nearby, with courts and pylons fronted by colossi depicting himself. The temple was filled with slaves, and accommodated “the children of the princes of all the countries of the captivity of His Majesty”. It was also surrounded by “settlements of Syrians, colonised by the children of princes”, showcasing Amenhotep’s power.
The temple’s two front statues, the so-called Colossi of Memnon, still stand. In his dedication speech, Amenhotep mentioned the “great rejoicing because of their size”. These vast statues, each more than 18 metres high and weighing perhaps 700 tonnes, were carved from blocks of stone brought from near the site of modern Cairo. They were far from accurate depictions, though. If the mummy believed to be his has been correctly identified, Amenhotep was a man barely over 5ft tall, afflicted with rotten teeth, obesity and his inbred dynasty’s congenital overbite.
Such figures were designed to show that the king was bigger and more powerful than anyone else, but also to trumpet the capabilities of the Egyptian state. The creation of such statues, and most of the gigantic monuments, palaces and temples, involved startling levels of labour and danger for ordinary Egyptians and foreign slaves. Most of these projects were never finished; perhaps going slow was one way for the workers to fight back.
Aten’s agents on Earth
Akhenaten, son of Amenhotep III and Tiye, and his queen Nefertiti launched a religious revolution. He famously shut down the cult of Amun and that of most other gods, supplanting them with worship of the Aten, the solar disc. The Aten was not new, but the idea of putting it centre stage was. Akhenaten and Nefertiti were the Aten’s agents on Earth – the supreme medium through which the Aten’s powers could be accessed.
A huge Aten complex was built at Karnak using forced labour. In the face of resistance from established interests, though, around 1348 BC Akhenaten and Nefertiti abandoned Thebes and moved the whole court north to the site now known as Tell el-Amarna (or simply Amarna), on the Nile roughly midway between Luxor and Cairo. Here they established a new city, Akhet-aten (“Horizon of the Aten”), with palaces and temples where they could indulge their ecstatic cult, bathed in the rays of the Aten. They cruised down the Amarna strip in their chariots, substituting themselves for the old cult statues and posing in tableaux vivants as the intermediaries between ordinary mortals and the gods.
The complex theology of Atenism was built on an idealised state of affairs epitomised in Akhenaten’s “Hymn to the Aten”. “You rise in perfect beauty from the sky’s horizon, the living Aten who begins life”, Akhenaten said, comparing night to death, and musing on how sunrise brought renewal and triggered life in a mother’s womb.
Theirs was one of the most outrageous conceits in history, possible only in a system where the word of the king was unquestioned. For all the bizarre mystery of Atenism and the artistic revolution over which Akhenaten presided, his dreams came at a terrible price for his people (see box, below). The general stress under which the Amarna population lived resulted in an adult population unusually short in stature for dynastic times, when compared to studies from other sites and periods. Men averaged just 5ft 4ins (1.63 metres) in height, and women only 5ft (1.52 metres). And for all their religious idealism and utopian vision, Akhenaten and Nefertiti had little to offer most of their people. They relied on the existing social structure and the traditional acceptance by those lower down the ladder of their position in the hierarchy.
Demise of a dynasty
It’s possible that Nefertiti ruled briefly as king after Akhenaten’s death, but their religious revolution was soon abandoned as fast as it had begun. The dynasty foundered with Tutankhamun, who was probably Akhenaten’s son and married that king’s third daughter, Ankhesenamun. Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun’s childless, decade-long reign, and the sickly king’s premature death, left the royal line in a tight corner. Foreign powers – especially the rising Hittites – spotted Egypt’s weakness and began to muscle in.
For a few years after Tutankhamun’s death, an elderly career official called Ay – who was also possibly a relative – wielded power before being displaced in 1323 BC by a remarkable figure called Horemheb. Though believed to be of lowly origins, Horemheb had forged a brilliant military career that brought him fame and fortune under Tutankhamun. He then became king, largely because there was no one else left to take the throne. However, Horemheb could not manufacture a myth of being fathered by Amun in the guise of a predecessor. Instead, he claimed to have been chosen and reared by Amun, and embarked on undoing what he called the “storm” of Akhenaten’s regime.
Horemheb understood the responsibilities of power and the transaction between a king and his people. He overturned abuses (or claimed to), and it’s thanks to his reform programme that we know about some of the ingrained corruption of preceding regimes.
Soldiers had become accustomed to brutalising poor people, ripping them off on the pretext of collecting legitimate dues for the royal harem. Royal officials helped themselves to ordinary people’s slaves, putting them to work on their own projects. They took the best of the vegetables from poor people, too, claiming they were “for the impost [tax] of pharaoh”. Such abuses, detailed in a text known as the Great Edict of Horemheb inscribed on a stela at Karnak, dated back at least as far as Thutmose III’s time.
Horemheb ordered grievous punishments for those who abused their power. If a soldier was found guilty of extortion, “his nose shall be cut off”. Those caught stealing hides were to be subjected to “a hundred blows, opening five wounds”. Horemheb also warned members of local judiciary panels not to accept bribes. In the middle of Egypt’s Bronze Age, he was the first enlightened despot.
quote:Egyptians were controlled through the opiate of cult and ritual that dominated their society, with no political representation
Horemheb also played the part of a traditional pharaoh. He built monuments at Karnak, usurped those of his predecessors – especially Tutankhamun and Ay – and completed the demolition of Akhenaten’s first Aten temple at Karnak. But he left no heir. Horemheb was the last ruler of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty.
The despots and dreamers of that dynasty had run an international imperialist state protection racket. They brought Egypt security, stability and a sense of superiority. But those benefits came at an enormous price.
The Egyptian people were controlled through the opiate of cult and ritual that dominated society. There was no political representation, and no mechanism of protest or reform. This was arguably the first great historical era of conspicuous inequality. Egypt’s glory days were built on a hierarchy with gold-bedecked kings at the top and the broken bodies of labourers, including children and prisoners of war, at the bottom.
Excavations of one of ancient Egypt’s great cities reveal how the underclass paid for a pharaoh’s indulgences
Standing on the east bank of the Nile, the city of Akhet-aten (today known as Tell el-Amarna) was one of the jewels of Egypt’s late 18th Dynasty. Built in the 14th century BC by the pharaoh Akhenaten as his great capital, where he could give full expression to his devotion to the solar disc, Aten, it was abandoned just a few years after his death in c1336 BC.
We now know there was a darker side to this city of temples and palaces. That’s because excavations of Akhet-aten’s cemeteries in recent years have provided some of the most graphic evidence for the price Egypt’s underclass paid for pharaonic indulgences. Malnutrition was rife, as was scurvy. Stunted growth was common, along with bone and muscle conditions including injury and degenerative joint disease – the latter evident in more than three-quarters of adult bodies. Two-thirds had fractured bones, consequences of accidents and carrying heavy loads during the construction of Akhenaten’s vanity project.
A medical papyrus from the Old Kingdom (c2575–c2130 BC), with its itemised guidance for the examination, diagnosis and treatment of injuries, shows that Egyptian doctors had long been familiar with the physical consequences of such work. And the tomb of Ipuy at Deir el-Medina in western Thebes illustrates the industrial accidents that even befell those making tomb furniture, including eye injuries and damaged limbs.
Many found at Amarna died young. In one study, more than half of the bodies examined were aged 7–14; more than a quarter of these had suffered fractures of some sort. Few of the adults were older than their mid-twenties at death. None were mummified – they lacked the means even for the most basic process.
Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and author. His latest book, Pharaohs of the Sun: How Egypt’s Despots and Dreamers Drove the Rise and Fall of Tutankhamun’s Dynasty (Little, Brown) is out now
This article first featured in the December 2022 edition of BBC History Magazine
Authors Elinor Evans Digital editor
Elinor Evans is digital editor of HistoryExtra.com. She commissions and writes history articles for the website, and regularly interviews historians for the award-winning HistoryExtra podcast
posted
^ Interesting, though not surprising. With any large government bureaucracy there's going to be corruption. There is only so much one can do even a god-king to stop it. It's actually ironic. When the central government was weak, there was more political division in the nation and thus no unified kingdom. Yet, when the centralized royal administration was strong and unified the nation, this means a bloated bureaucracy.
Even during times of political and economic upheaval the sacred tombs of the royals was not safe from being looted.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26285 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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