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B.A.
ANCIENT HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY Essay
Question: What
factors led to the decline of Egypt as an imperial power during the 20th
Dynasty? Essay
written by David Rohl (1st Year Ancient History/Egyptology). Submitted
to Amelie Kuhrt on 26th January 1988.
Almost
since the beginning of Egyptological studies, scholars have broken down the
history of ancient Egypt into historical epochs or periods. Although this was
originally a system of convenience, its frequent use has resulted in the rather
simplistic presentation of Egyptian civilisation as if taking a ride on a
cultural roller coaster. Wenke's summary agrees with the opinions of a group of
respected anthropologist including Steward, Lattimore, Eisenstadt and Adams
[1]: “Numerous
scholars have noted that typical of many preindustrial empires are development
cycles in which periods of population growth, rising economic productivity, and
increasing political integration alternate regularly with periods of
demographic, technological, economic, and political decline and collapse ...”
[2] The
standard view of Egyptian history goes something like this: the Egyptian race
first appears as a disunited and disparate group of tribes (the Pre-Dynastic
Period); then, unified under a charismatic leader (Menes), as a nation rising
dramatically to the cultural plateau of the pyramid era (the Old Kingdom); this
is followed by a sudden collapse marked throughout the Near East by the massive
destructions at the end of the Early Bronze Age (the First Intermediate
Period); the decline, however, comes to an end with what is often regarded as
the cultural zenith of Egyptian civilisation – the Middle Kingdom; once more
there is a slide into a period of decline (the Second Intermediate Period)
before the third great 'kingdom' rises from the trough of the Hyksos occupation
to form the powerful empire-building dynasties of the New Kingdom. It is at the
end of this era that the subject of this discussion is directed. According
to this system of dividing Egypt's history into manageable blocks, the New
Kingdom is followed by five dynasties which are grouped together within the era
known as the 'Third Intermediate Period'. Because the term 'intermediate' is
used here in the same way as the two earlier eras, and with the in-built
expectancy of Steward et. al. that the roller coaster must take a dip after
reaching a peak, this period is assumed to have been one of cultural decline.
In the words of a leading Third Intermediate Period scholar: “Thus,
under the last of the Ramesses a basic political pattern was established that
was to last for over three centuries, through the 21st Dynasty and down to
Prince Osorkon and the final collapse of the fractured unity of post-imperial
Egypt.” [3] Whereas
the First and Second Intermediate Periods seem genuine declines in Egyptian
civilisation, brought about by serious disruptions/invasions, can this also be
said in the case of the Third Intermediate Period? To answer this question we
must look closely at the last 100 years of the so-called New Kingdom to search
for evidence for 'cause' and to the first 100 years of the Third Intermediate
Period for evidence of 'effect'. The dynasties that fall within this
two-hundred-year span are the 20th and 21st. Before
we look at the evidence, it should be noted that this discussion specifically
concerns the apparent decline of Egypt as an imperial power; that is, the
'empire' built up by the 18th- and 19th-Dynasty pharaohs. Although loss of
empire usually reflects itself to some degree within the home economy and
political structure, it does not necessarily follow that Egypt must have
suffered a dramatic internal decline as a result of losing its foreign domains.
There was no massive invasion and occupation by a foreign power to bring the
New Kingdom to an end but, less dramatically, the annexation of its vassal
states by Assyria in the north and, with a less obvious explanation, the loss
of Nubia and the upper reaches of the Nile in the south. The
disintegration of the empire can be fairly readily established by comparing
19th- and early-20th-Dynasty finds outside Egypt with those so far unearthed
for the 21st Dynasty. Far more complex, however, is the analysis of cultural
remains from within Egypt itself where the changes are less apparent. The
loss of the northern empire The
scale of the decline in Egypt's control of the Levant is quite marked and
appears to take place in a period of no more than two or three generations. The
evidence by which scholars have determined Egyptian influence in the northern
domains has come from three principal sources: 1.
Monumental war annals which list the vassal city states over which the pharaoh
has sovereignty. 2.
Administrative documents, letters between officials and diplomatic archives. 3.
Egyptian artefacts found within the strata of Levantine tells, in particular,
those inscribed with royal names – which are then datable within a relative
chronology. In all
three cases the comparative results are dramatic: 1. The
last monarch of the 20th Dynasty to record a campaign into the north was
Ramesses III during his Sea Peoples War of Year 8 (1186 BC), that campaign
being very much a defensive operation. During the 21st Dynasty we have a highly
dubious inscription of king Siamun [4] which has no supportive evidence other
than the tenuous link to 1 Kings 9:16 relating to the capture of Gezer. The
first reliable evidence for an Egyptian venture into Palestine following
Ramesses III is the Year 20/21 expedition of Shoshenq I (925 BC) which is
inscribed on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak. The list of captured/vassal city
states recorded there has been shown to be quite original and not a copy of any
earlier version [5]. It should therefore be regarded as a reliable record of an
actual historical event. The
interval of time between Year 8 of Ramesses III and the 20th year of Shoshenq I
is 261 years [6] and spans the reigns of 15 pharaohs all of which appear to
have been inactive on the international front in terms of any attempt to
recover control of what was once Egyptian territory north of the Esdraelon. 2.
Administrative documents relating to international affairs entirely cease with
the reign of Ramesses IV (1163-1156) with one exception – the Report of Wenamun
(c. 1080). This document, found at el-Hiba, can be taken as either an official
– if a little colourful – report of the envoy's visit to Zakarbaal, king of
Byblos, or simply a literary work of the genre of the 'Story of the Shipwrecked
Sailor' or 'The Tale of Sinuhe'. This second viewpoint makes it almost
worthless as an historical document of the period due to the poetical licence
which would consequentially have to be attributed to the details of the
narrative. The context of its discovery, at the resident town of the High
Priest of Amun, does however suggest that Wenamun's adventure should perhaps be
treated with a certain degree of respect in terms of its historical contents. The
picture portrayed in the narrative [7] can be taken both as an argument in
favour of either a declining empire or proof that the framework of empirical
power still remained intact. Most scholars would, however, incline towards the
former and agree with the sentiments of Lichtheim when she summarises the story
as follows: “The
empire had been lost, and thus so simple an enterprise as the purchase of
Lebanese timber could be depicted as a perilous adventure.” [8] However,
the material basis on which these arguments rest is so tenuous that it would be
wise to declare any conclusions as non sequitur. Even if the story were
entirely accurate, it would be quite irresponsible to use it as evidence, given
the personalisation of the account, the extraordinary circumstances the envoy
finds himself in and the subjectivity of his description of the treatment he
receives in the Byblite court. It seems clear that, in any view, Wenamon cannot
be regarded as an impartial reporter of historical events nor indeed of the
political climate of the time. No
other documents survive which deal with Egypt's external affairs until the
arrival of the Demotic script in the late 25th/ early 26th Dynasty – a period
of over 500 years. 3. As
with 2, the latest New Kingdom archaeological finds dated to an Egyptian
monarch found in the Levant are from the reign of Ramesses VI. According to
Cerny: “After
the death of Ramesses III there is no clear proof that Egypt retained her
dependencies in Palestine or Syria. Scarabs of Ramesses IV and VI have been
found in three places, but the presence of these small objects, widely
negotiated all over the eastern Mediterranean, has no significance. The same
may be said of the base of a bronze statue of Ramesses VI discovered in
Megiddo.” [9] Absolutely
nothing has been found for the 21st Dynasty. Parts of two reinscribed statues,
originally carved for Shoshenq I and Osorkon I, were found at Byblos indicating
the partial return of Egyptian influence at least along the coast of the Levant
during the 22nd Dynasty. However, it is possible that Egypt and Phoenicia remained
allies and trading partners throughout the period, even though the inland
vassal states had either transferred allegiance to the rising power of Assyria
on their northern borders or attempted to gain independence from the super
powers following the collapse of the Hittite empire. Artefacts
with royal insignia do not begin to appear in any quantity again until the 26th
Dynasty (c. 664) and even then, for the remainder of dynastic history, Egypt's
influence was never more than a shadow of what it had been during the three
great 'kingdom' periods: “When
Ramesses III died ... no one could have imagined that the last great pharaoh
had gone and that Egypt would never again have a native ruler whose power would
at least approach that of the mighty kings of the Egyptian empire: that, in
fact, the days of the empire were over.” [10] The
above analysis of the evidence for the existence of an Egyptian northern empire
during the late 20th and 21st Dynasties appears therefore to be entirely
negative. In agreement with Cerny, it would not then be overstating the case to
regard the facts as indicating an almost complete collapse of Egyptian
authority and overlordship north of Megiddo and even perhaps a considerable
weakening of power within Egypt's natural zone of influence, amongst the city
states of Palestine and the coastal plain of Philistia. The loss of the
northern empire must inevitably have produced a shortage of luxury goods from
the region, including lapis lazuli via the trade routes, turquoise from the
Sinai and Lebanese cedar, but this was nothing in comparison to the disaster of
being cut-off from the rich gold mines of Upper Nubia. The
annexation of Kush From
the end of the 20th Dynasty to the rise of the native Nubian 25th Dynasty,
Egypt's southern border appears to have been no farther south than Buhen and
probably effectively only as far as Elephantine. Certainly the Egyptians seemed
to have no real control of the rich mineral areas of the Nubian desert which
included the gold fields of the Dongola, the Wadi Gabgaba and Butana regions.
These were the major sources of Egyptian gold and, as will be shown later, the
cutting off of supplies may have led to some drastic actions at the end of the
20th Dynasty and during the middle years of the 21st Dynasty. What
caused this sudden loss of the southern territories? The picture of events is
as yet hard to clarify, but it appears that during the reign of Ramesses XI
there took place what was to all intents and purposes a civil war. This
conflict has become known as the 'War of the High Priest' because it centred
around the High Priest of Amun Amenhotep. Although only fragments of the
episode have come down to us, it is possible to piece together a basic
scenario. According
to certain trial documents from Thebes [11] foreigners came from the south led
by the Viceroy of Ethiopia, the 'King's Son of Kush' Panhesi. He pursued the
High Priest northward at least as far as the fortress of Hardai (some 335 miles
downstream from Thebes) which he was able to take by force. He may even have
reached parts of the Delta before returning to Thebes. The outcome of this war
was that Amenhotep was replaced by a new High Priest whose titles were
distinctly military in character. It appears, therefore, that his appointment
may have been in order to secure Thebes from any future attack from the south.
Whatever the motive for Herihor's sudden rise to the now second highest
position in the land, Panhesi was successfully removed from Thebes by Year 19
of Ramesses XI. In spite of this, Egypt was never again able to regain control
of the upper reaches of the Nile on any sort of permanent basis. Libyan
incursions into Egypt A
third factor, beyond the annexation of Egypt's northern and southern empires,
was the infiltration of Libyan tribes from the western desert. The Libu and
Meshwesh had been a growing threat ever since the time of Ramesses II, but with
the conflict in Year 5 of Ramesses III the problem came to a head. From that
date onwards the Libyan tribes gradually began occupying the desert oases and
encroaching into the Faiyum so that by the time of the late Ramessides they
were in a position to make raiding attacks on the cities of the Nile valley. A
number of documents from Thebes attest to the havoc raised by these
'desert-dwellers': “...
the desert-dwellers descended into the town of Smen ... the gang of workmen was
idle for fear of the desert-dwellers ... the gang was idle through fear of the
Meshwesh ...” [12] In the
workmen's village at Deir el-Medina all was not well. Food rations were failing
to get through even when the raiders were not actually in the region; the
villagers were often sent scurrying into the protection of the high enclosure
wall of Medinet Habu when there was any sign of trouble; finally they had to
abandon the village altogether. Work also ceased on the royal tomb in the
Valley of the Kings and other royal sepulchres were being ransacked. This sort
of thing was happening all over the country and the thin artery of the river
Nile, which was the only supply line to Thebes and the south from the Delta,
must have been continually severed for indefinite periods. The
Egyptians attempted to counter the threat by fortifying a number of towns on
the east bank of the river, just south of the Faiyum, to try and ensure the
safe passage of food supplies. Indeed, the new line of High Priests, starting
with Herihor, moved their residence up to el-Hiba, the most important of these
new fortresses, so as to be at the centre of operations. Clearly these
fortified towns were not established in Middle Egypt to protect any
international frontiers so they must surely attest to internal strife within
Egypt itself. The
trouble with the Libyans seems to continue for a number of decades, or at least
the political climate remained highly volatile. Two generations later the high
Priest Menkheperre refers to a recent conflict in the High Priesthood [13],
whilst another papyrus from el-Hiba relates the sorry tale of a God's Father of
the temple of Heliopolis who has to flee from his city for fear of the Libu
[14]. Recent
excavations by the Spanish mission at Heracleopolis in the Faiyum, under Field
Director Dr Perez Die [15], have revealed an extensive burial complex of high
ranking Libyan chiefs. Inscriptions from the site indicate the existence of a
major Libyan fortress at Heracleopolis, the founding date of which is unknown.
The only clue we have as to a date is the title 'Royal son of Ramesses'
attached to the commander of the city, Osorkon. This association with the
Ramesside Dynasty is a common feature of the kings of the 21st Dynasty which
might suggest that the fortress was established at least within 50 years of the
close of the 20th Dynasty and therefore soon after the initial influx of
Libyans into the Faiyum region. Evidence
for cultural impoverishment following the New Kingdom So far
we have been looking at the causes of the alleged decline of Egypt as an
imperial power. Now perhaps we should view the period immediately following the
New Kingdom to see if the effects of such a decline are indeed visible and to
determine if there are good reasons to regard the Third Intermediate Period as
a period of relative poverty. If
gold supplies from Nubia had been cut off, as argued above, one would expect to
see this reflected in the use of that material in funerary furnishings – the
principal archaeological source for refined precious metals. Because of the
paucity of surviving comparative material from royal burials from any period of
Egyptian history, on its own this can really only be used to make a qualified
judgement, especially considering the unusually nature of the Tutankhamun
internment. In spite of this it is possible to glean some instructive facts,
especially if other burial-related aspects are also brought into the comparison. The
two intact royal burials which have so far been unearthed this century
fortunately date to either side of our 20th/21st Dynasty dividing line – they
are the internments of Tutankhamun of the 18th Dynasty and Psusennes I of the
21st. The
outer coffins of Tutankhamun were richly decorated in gold leaf and coloured
paste inlay; the inner coffin was of solid gold, as was the funerary mask. He
also had three great shrines covered in gold leaf – a practice which seems to
have been the norm for pharaonic burials of the period. By comparison Psusennes
had just a stone outer coffin and a silver inner coffin; only the funerary mask
was of solid gold and there were no shrines [16]. The same applied to the other
burials in Psusennes' tomb – those of Amenemope and Shoshenq II. Other smaller
artefacts were made of gold and contained semi-precious stone inlays but the
quantities were much less than in the 18th-Dynasty burial. The limited amount
of gold that was employed in Psusennes' burial must have come from somewhere
and it is not unreasonable to suggest that a ready source was perhaps already
available in the Valley of the Kings rather than in hostile Nubia. It
takes little imagination to see a secondary motive behind the reburial of the
royal mummies in the secret cache of Inhapi at Deir el-Bahari. The process of
'rewrapping' began in the time of Herihor and continued until the reign of
Siamun. Whatever the condition of the old royal burials in the Valley of the
Kings, the final resting place in the Royal Cache was almost entirely devoid of
precious metals [17]. The coffins had been neatly stripped of their gold leaf;
the gold and jewelled adornments of the mummies were removed; virtually all the
furniture, presumably decorated in gold, never made it to the Cache on reburial
and not a single solid gold funerary mask was replaced over a royal face. It is
surely reasonable to suppose that not all the royal mummies had been attacked
by tomb robbers, because if they had, the evidence of their vandalism would
have been far more apparent. It follows, therefore, that the kings of the 21st
Dynasty might have taken a few liberties when ordering the reburial of their
ancestors and, whilst the rewrapping went ahead, they had the old kings neatly
stripped of their treasures to replenish the depleted royal coffers of the then
much harder times. The
wholesale reuse of materials from the Valley of the Kings went even further
because practically all the granite sarcophagi from the 21st/22nd-Dynasty
burials were also usurped from earlier rulers, including the superb example
from the tomb of Merenptah, following his removal to the Royal Cache, which
Psusennes acquired for his own burial. The
quarries of Upper Egypt show no signs of workings from this period, indicating
the inability of the state to muster sufficient manpower and resources to
undertake stone quarrying and working at this time. Prior to the 21st Dynasty,
statues had of course been re-inscribed by prolific royal builders to embellish
their monuments, but not for at least 500 years had a king usurped the burial
goods or sarcophagi of an ancestor in order to furnish his own afterlife –
there was no need, as the apparatus of state was firmly in place to ensure the
continuing manufacture of goods for the royal burial. The abandonment
of the quarries also resulted in the total destruction of the old 20th-Dynasty
capital at Pi-Ramesses. It was used as a quarry for building materials needed
for the sacred precinct at Tanis. Of all the stone blocks found at this new
capital of the 21st Dynasty it is hard to discern a single one which was
originally cut from virgin rock under the orders of a 21st-Dynasty monarch. The
two 'great' builders of the dynasty, Psusennes I and Siamun, were unable to do
much more than ship the blocks from Pi-Ramesses 15 miles down the river to
Tanis and re-assemble
them there. All Psusennes' other building activities were in mud brick. In
spite of his supposed 48-year reign, that was as far as his ambitions went. The
decline manifested itself too in other respects. Bierbrier in his analysis of
the genealogical material of the 21st Dynasty notes: “With
the advent of Dynasty XXI the copious sources of information which were
available in the previous two dynasties vanish. Administrative papyri and
ostraca prove practically non-existent. Votive statuary would seem to disappear
almost totally. Graffiti and inscriptions decline to a few badly preserved
examples... Because of this dearth of material, it is not possible as in
Dynasty XIX and Dynasty XX to present a coherent outline of the descent of
various families and their interrelations.” [18] Another
example of decline following the 20th Dynasty can be found in the Serapeum at
Sakkara. At this site, where the sacred Apis bulls had been sequentially buried
for centuries, the internments suddenly stopped. According to current evidence,
not until the mid-22nd Dynasty did an Apis again receive proper burial in the
'Lesser Vaults' [19]. The lack of donation stelae for any 21st-Dynasty Apis
surprised Gardiner: “Strangely
enough not a single inscription of Dyn. XXI was found in the Serapeum, but the
material bearing upon Dyn. XXII and others later is all the richer.” [20] Conclusion The
above evidence seems to confirm the generally accepted view that Egypt suffered
a decline of some magnitude after the end of the 20th Dynasty. That the cause,
or causes, of the collapse of empire are not as apparent as they might be is
probably the result of the misfortunes of survival. Perhaps
if a full narrative of the events of the War of the High Priest had remained
extant, scholars might have given far more weight to this as a major factor in
the decline of Egypt in preference to the rather insubstantial arguments put
forward in favour of the Sea Peoples' movements to partly explain the loss of
empire. Equally,
the Libyan factor seems to have been underplayed and little understood in terms
of their successful exploitation of the weak period when Egypt was suffering
from severe military fatigue following the civil war that engulfed the reigns
of the last Ramessides. Evidence
of a change in material culture is also apparent with the shortage of materials
for both the making of artefacts and monumental buildings. Royal
burials cease at Thebes and the workmens' village is abandoned. Fortresses are
built to monitor the river and to try to prevent the marauding of local chiefs
from the Faiyum. Clearly
these were dangerous and unstable times, when the government of the country was
clinging to control by the thinnest of threads. Even the dating of
administrative documents and records were anonymous, with the king's name being
consciously omitted. It was not long before a new dynasty took power in Egypt –
a dynasty of Libyan stock – which, being a vigorous new line, was able to go
some way towards reviving the country's fortunes. Even so it was a further 280
years, and only following the occupation of Egypt by the Napatan kings, before
Egypt was once more to be ruled by native monarchs under the banner of the 26th
Dynasty. There
is no doubt therefore that at the end of the 20th Dynasty Egypt did suffer a
decline and, at the same time, managed to lose its empire beyond both borders.
The question that remains appears to hinge on what degree of decline we should
attribute to the Third Intermediate Period and the view one takes on such an
ill-defined matter can really only be subjective. Notes
and References 1. J.
Steward: 'Cultural casualty and law: A trial formulation of the development of
early civilization', American Anthropologist, Volume 51, (1949), pp. 1-27; O.
Lattimore: Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston 1951); S. Eisenstadt: The
Decline of Empires (Englewood Cliffs 1967); R. McC. Adams: Heartland of
Cities (Chicago 1981). 2. R.
J. Wenke: Archaeological Investigations at el-Hibeh 1980: Preliminary Report
(Malibu 1984), pp. 4-5. 3. K.
A. Kitchen: The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (Warminster 1973), p. 251. 4. J.
Cerny: 'Egypt: from the death of Ramesses III to the end of the twenty-first
Dynasty' in Cambridge Ancient History, Volume II Part 2, (Cambridge 1975), pp.
656-7, where he states that the fragmentary relief of the king smiting an enemy
'is the traditional scene in which the least warlike Egyptian king might be
represented'. 5.
Kitchen: TIPE, op. cit., p. 432. 6. All
the regnal dates in this essay are taken from J. Baines & J. Malek: Atlas
of Ancient Egypt (Oxford 1980), pp. 36-7. 7. M.
Lichtheim: Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II, (Berkley 1976), pp. 224-230. 8.
Lichtheim: Ancient Egyptian Literature, op. cit., p. 224. 9.
Cerny: 'Egypt: ...', op. cit., pp. 614-5. 10.
Cerny: 'Egypt: ...', op. cit., p. 606. 11.
Papyrus Mayer and British Museum Papyrus 10052. 12.
Turin Papyrus, Catalogue no. 2071/224. 13.
The so-called 'Banishment Stela' also known as the 'Maunier Stela' (Louvre
Museum – C. 256). 14.
Papyrus Pushkin I, B, 127.E, translated by R. Caminos in A Tale of Woe, (Oxford
1961). 15.
Personal communication, July 1986. 16. G.
Goyon: La decouverte des tresors de Tanis (Paris 1987), pp. 139-163. 17. G.
Maspero: Les Momies royales de Deir el-Bahari (Paris 1889). 18. M.
L. Bierbrier: The Late New Kingdom in Egypt (c. 1300-664 B.C.): A Genealogical
and Chronological Investigation (Warminster 1975), p. 45. 19. A.
Mariette: Le Serapeum de Memphis (Paris 1882), pp. 152- 20. A.
Gardiner: Egypt of the Pharaohs (London 1961), p. 326. |
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