Pharaoh power-sharing unearthed in Egypt

Conclusive evidence that revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten shared power with his father.

A handout picture provided by the Egyptian Ministry of state for Antiquities on February 6, 2014 shows inscriptions discovered in a tomb in the ancient city of Luxor (Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities/AFP)

AFP –  Egypt’s antiquities ministry on Thursday revealed what it called conclusive evidence that revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten shared power with his father.

Scholars had long debated whether Akhenaten, who tried to revolutionise ancient Egyptian religion, had shared power with his ailing father Amenhotep III.

The evidence came from the tomb of a pharaonic minister in the southern city of Luxor, inscribed with the cartouches of both pharaohs.

It was traditional for a minister’s tomb to be adorned with the cartouche of the ruler.
The inscriptions found in the minister’s tomb by an Egyptian-Spanish team dated back to a religious celebration marking Amenhotep III’s 30th year in power, roughly eight years before his death and Akhenaten’s ascension around 1,300 BC.

It is “definitive evidence of the co-regency between Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV,” said antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim in a statement, referring to Akhenaten by his early title.

Akhenaten, who tried to impose monotheism with the worship of Aten, the sun disc, later fathered the famed boy king Tutankhamun.

Elsewhere, Egyptian archeologists discovered the mummified body of a woman buried with 180 funerary statues in Daqahleya province, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Cairo, the antiquities ministry said on Wednesday.

The number of statues indicates the high social rank of the woman when she died. Her mummy was well preserved.

Source: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/02/06/pharaoh-power-sharing-unearthed-egypt/

Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?

He fathered Tutankhamun, married Nefertiti, and was one of the most original thinkers of his era. Then why is the pharoah Akhenaten often dismissed as a madman?

By Alastair Sooke 09 Jan 2014

Almost 200 miles south of Cairo, in the heart of Middle Egypt, the archaeological site of Amarna occupies a great bay of desert beside the River Nile. To the uninformed eye, this semicircle of barren land, bound by the east bank of the river and enormous limestone cliffs, looks like nothing much: a vast, stricken dust bowl, approximately seven miles long and three miles wide, scattered with sandy hillocks. But 33 centuries ago, this spot was home to tens of thousands of ancient Egyptians, brought there by the will of a single man: the pharaoh Akhenaten.

Rebel, tyrant, and prophet of arguably the world’s earliest monotheistic religion, Akhenaten has been called history’s first individual. His impact upon ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs stretching back for centuries was so alarming that, in the generations following his death in 1336 BC, he was branded a heretic. Official king lists omitted his name.

For my money, this makes him the most fascinating and controversial figure in Egyptian history. And that’s before you consider his marriage to Nefertiti, known as the Mona Lisa of antiquity thanks to her austerely beautiful painted limestone bust discovered in a sculptor’s workshop at Amarna and now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, or the likelihood that he fathered Tutankhamun, the most famous pharaoh of them all. If I were in charge of the British Museum, I would commission an exhibition about Akhenaten in a trice.

Akhenaten was not supposed to become pharaoh. The son of Amenhotep III, who dominated the first half of the 14th century BC, ruling over a court of unprecedented luxury and magnificence that placed great emphasis on solar theology, Prince Amenhotep, as he was then called, was younger brother to the crown Prince Thutmose. Following Thutmose’s unexpected death, though, he became the heir apparent – and when his father died in 1353 BC, he took the throne as Amenhotep IV.

Nefertiti as sensual goddess

Lecturer details research suggesting more complex role for Egyptian queen

By Valerie Vande Panne, Harvard Correspondent

In history, the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti is depicted as a powerful, independent woman. Her bust, on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, is one of the most reproduced works of ancient Egypt.

But Jacquelyn Williamson, visiting lecturer on women’s studies and Near Eastern studies and women’s studies in religion program research associate at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), suggests that Nefertiti wasn’t quite who people imagine she was, and eventually was revered as something of a sex goddess.

Nefertiti is “often represented as a powerful and independent figure,” said Williamson, and has a “reputation as being a uniquely strong queen.”

“I expected images of her smiting the heads of the enemies of Egypt, an act usually reserved for the king,” said Williamson, who has identified a temple that she believes was the queen’s. “She is shown in the tombs of the elite at Amarna at a natural height to the king.”

Amenhotep IV became king when Egypt was wealthy and its empire was strong, covering territory from as far north as Syria to as far south as Sudan. He worshipped the sun god Re, whose visible manifestation in the daytime sky was known as the Aten. He gave this god prominence. When Amenhotep took the throne, he became Akhenaten, or “one who is effective for the Aten.”

Akhenaten: Egyptian Pharaoh, Nefertiti's Husband, Tut's Father

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   August 30, 2013

Akhenaten was a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned over the country for about 17 years between roughly 1353 B.C. and 1335 B.C.

A religious reformer he made the Aten, the sun disc, the center of Egypt’s religious life and carried out an iconoclasm that saw the names of Amun, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, be erased from monuments and documents throughout Egypt’s empire. 

When he ascended the throne his name was Amenhotep IV, but in his sixth year of rule he changed it to “Akhenaten” a name that the late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat translated roughly as the “Benevolent one of (or for) the Aten.”

In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally ‘read’ as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ — the name of the new city,” wrote Montserrat in his book "Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt" (Routledge, 2000).

He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. After his death, the pharaoh’s religious reforms quickly collapsed, his new capital became abandoned and his successors denounced him.

Akhenaten, either before or shortly after he became pharaoh, would marry Nefertiti, who in some works of art is shown standing equal next to her husband. Some have even speculated that she may have become a co-, or even sole, ruler of Egypt. 

The Egyptian Fortress in Jaffa

By Aaron A. Burke and Martin Peilstöcker   Sun, Mar 03, 2013

Archaeologists are rediscovering a Late Bronze Age Egyptian stronghold in the land of ancient Canaan.


In a very real sense, the ancient port city of Jaffa may offer a valuable historical and archaeological example of the age-old issues and dynamics that have beset occupying powers the world over for thousands of years. Archaeologists have been exploring and studying the ancient Egyptian fortress at this coastal city to obtain insights on what it was like for both conqueror and conquered when there are "strangers in the land"..........

Situated on the central coast of Israel, on the south side of Tel Aviv, and 60 km to the northwest of Jerusalem, Jaffa’s antiquity and importance as a Mediterranean port was well established before the resumption of excavations in 2008 by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. While the biblical texts have served as a primary historical referent, Jaffa’s importance in other periods is much more clearly understood in classical sources including Josephus, but also even from Egyptian New Kingdom literature and administrative documents. Following excavations during the 1950s of the archaeological remains of an Egyptian fortress in Jaffa, a fortress that existed for most of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1460 to 1130 BC), seeking to understand Jaffa’s role in the Egyptian New Kingdom imperial control of Canaan became of paramount importance.

In 2007 the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project was established by Aaron A. Burke of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles and Martin Peilstöcker of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The project’s overarching goal is to facilitate long-term research of Jaffa’s cultural heritage through the integration of research and salvage excavations, cultural and historical studies, and multidisciplinary scientific approaches to Jaffa’s history and archaeology. Central to this objective was the renewal of excavations on the mound of ancient Jaffa (Tel Yafo). As part of the initial phase of the project, the Kaplan Excavations Publication Initiative was conceived to provide an in-depth analysis of the unpublished excavations by the site’s most prolific excavator, Jacob Kaplan, who conducted excavations on behalf of the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums from 1955 to 1974. We present here the preliminary results of our synthesis of the results of the old excavations since the resumption of excavations in the same area in 2011 by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project.

Egypt's Golden Empire - Pharaohs of the Sun (video)

Credits: Lion Television

It's an oldie, just for fun!

Akhenaten and the Amarna Period

By Dr Kate Spence

The appeal of the Amarna period

Some people are drawn by interest in Akhenaten himself or his religion, others by a fascination with the unusual art which appeals strongly to the tastes of modern viewers and provides a sense of immediacy rarely felt with traditional Egyptian representation. The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history' and this in turn has led to endless speculation about his background and motivation; he is cast as hero or villain according to the viewpoint of the commentator.

Akhenaten came to the throne of Egypt around 1353 BC. The reign of his father, Amenhotep III, had been long and prosperous with international diplomacy largely replacing the relentless military campaigning of his predecessors. The reign culminated in a series of magnificent jubilee pageants celebrated in Thebes (modern Luxor), the religious capital of Egypt at the time and home to the state god Amun-Re. The new king was crowned as Amenhotep IV (meaning 'Amun is content') and temple construction and decoration projects began immediately in the name of the new king. The earliest work of his reign is stylistically similar to the art of his predecessors, but within a year or two he was building temples to the Aten or divinised sun-disk at Karnak in a very different artistic style and had changed his name to Akhenaten in honour of this god.

Akhenaten's 'great king's wife' was Nefertiti and they had six daughters. There were also other wives, including the enigmatic Kiya who may have been the mother of Tutankhamun. Royal women play an unusually prominent role in the art of the period and this is particularly true of Nefertiti who is frequently depicted alongside her husband. Nefertiti disappears from the archaeological record around year 12 and some have argued that she reappears as the enigmatic co-regent Smenkhkare towards the end of Akhenaten's reign.

Heb Sed, The Ritual Jubilee

Introduction

Off all the many ancient Egyptian festivals, local as well as nationwide, there was one which differed quite a bit from the rest. While they all were aimed at the relationship between the gods, the king and the people, the Heb Sed was more directly focussed around the kingship as such and its complete renewal.

The name Heb Sed, also known as The Sed festival or Feast of the Tail, derives from the name of an Egyptian wolf god, one of whose names was Wepwawet or Sed. The less formal feast name, the Feast of the Tail, is derived from the name of the animal's tail that typically was attached to the back of the pharaoh's garment in the early periods of Egyptian history. This suggests that the tail was the vestige of a previous ceremonial robe made out of a complete animal skin.

A Heb Sed was first held during the 30th regnal year of a pharaoh, and from then on, every three years, but several pharaohs however, held their first Heb Sed at a much earlier date: Hatshepsut held her first jubilee during her 16th regnal year, while Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten chose to dedicate his festival to his solar-god Aten at the early beginnings of his reign. Ramesses II often left two instead of three years between his Heb Seds, he was able to celebrate 14 such jubilees during his 67 years of reign.