The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  Egypt’s foreign relations were not only confined to trade. Confident at home, Egypt showed a new willingness to engage in military activity abroad to defend its economic interests and secure access to important sources of raw materials. Both facets of foreign policy are illustrated in spectacular fashion during the reign of Senusret I’s successor, a second Amenemhat. In the temple of Djerty, near Thebes, which had been ransacked by rebels and restored during the reign of Senusret I, four copper chests were uncovered, hidden in the foundations. Each was engraved with the name of Amenemhat II, and together they contained a fabulous treasure: beads, seals, and uncut pieces of lapis lazuli; ingots, chains, a model lion, and cups, all of silver; ingots and vessels of pure gold. The hoard remains one of the richest discoveries ever made in the Nile Valley. But it was not just the wealth of the horde that excited attention. The trade networks it represented were equally impressive. The lapis lazuli came from Mesopotamia and the distant mines of Badakhshan, while the silver cups were of Minoan design and must have come from Crete or a Minoan mercantile community in Syria.

  A more recent discovery has confirmed this internationalism in Egypt’s outlook during the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty. A block of stone from Memphis contains extracts from the annals of Amenemhat II (1876–1842), a detailed journal of the activities of the royal court during the early years of the king’s reign. Besides the expected religious festivals and dedications of new cult statues, the most surprising entries record expeditions of a military nature against distant lands. One reads, “Dispatching an expedition together with the overseer of infantry troops to hack up Asia,” a raid that yielded a rich booty of silver, gold, cattle, livestock, and Asiatic slaves. A further campaign against Lebanon added similar plunder to the royal treasury, together with valuable coniferous woods and aromatic oils. Perhaps most intriguing, however, is the entry that records the return of the infantry troops “after hacking up Iwa and Iasy,” lands that supplied tribute of bronze and malachite as well as wood and slaves. The otherwise unknown land of Iwa may be Ura, a site on the coast of southeastern Turkey. If so, this Twelfth Dynasty expedition would be the only known occasion on which an Egyptian army raided Asia Minor. Iasy is even more tantalizing. The fact that it supplied two copper-based materials (bronze and malachite), and the writing of the place-name itself, leads to the conclusion that Iasy is probably Cyprus. Under Amenemhat II, Egypt was evidently a major player in the power politics of the eastern Mediterranean, a full 350 years before the establishment of a formal Egyptian empire in the Near East.

  According to the annals, the human cargo brought back from these foreign adventures numbered thousands of slaves. Their forcible resettlement in the Nile Valley, to work on crown lands and take part in state building projects, changed profoundly the ethnic balance of Egypt’s population, with long-term, unforeseen consequences. A significant concentration of Asiatic transportees ended up building and servicing the town of Kahun, founded by Amenemhat II’s successor, Senusret II, to house the personnel attached to his nearby pyramid. In its strict grid layout, functional zoning, and demarcation of residential quarters by social class, Kahun represents the zenith of centralized planning and the epitome of the structured view of society so favored by the Twelfth Dynasty. Within the massive rectangular enclosure wall (designed as much, we may suspect, to keep people in as to protect them from unwanted intruders), the town was divided into two unequal sections. In the more spacious area lived the senior bureaucrats in their impressive villas, conveniently located for easy access to the town’s administrative headquarters. On the other side of the divide, in much more cramped conditions, row upon row of small barracklike dwellings, separated by narrow alleyways, housed the town’s workforce . It was a bald architectural reflection of the “them and us” attitude so typical of ancient Egyptian officialdom. And in Kahun, as in occupied Wawat, a compound where people could be held under restraint was an essential element in the infrastructure of state control.

  Indeed, the fact that the Twelfth Dynasty kings followed very much the same policy in Egypt as in conquered Nubia speaks volumes about their worldview: resources—human as well as material, native as well as foreign—were there to be exploited for the benefit of the crown. People were merely another commodity, to be shipped from place to place according to need. Just as the industrial processes of baking, brewing, and craft manufacture could best be accommodated in regimented barrack-like workshops, so the workforce could be housed in similar fashion. Wherever Twelfth Dynasty settlements are encountered, whether in the Nile delta or in Upper Egypt, they display the same rigid design. They often seem to have been founded on virgin sites, and so must have involved the forcible relocation of entire populations—all at the whim of the state.

  HIGH SESOSTRIS

  THIS DESPOTIC MODEL OF MONARCHY, OF ORDER WITH AN IRON FIST, culminated in the reign of Senusret III (1836–1818), the most widely attested member of his dynasty. Under his authoritarian rule, all the elements of Twelfth Dynasty control were brought together in one concerted program—propagandist literature, rigid state planning, centralization of power in Egypt, and conquest and military occupation in Nubia—along with a new vehicle for projecting royal power, portrait sculpture.

  Beginning with the written and spoken word, Senusret’s poets and scriptwriters outdid themselves in the composition of laudatory texts, extolling the king’s virtues. The most extreme example is the Cycle of Hymns, intended, it seems, for recitation on the occasion of a royal visit, or perhaps in front of a statue of the king:

  How Egypt rejoices in your strong arm:

  you have safeguarded its traditions.

  How the common people rejoice in your counsel:

  your power has won increase for them.

  How the Two Banks rejoice in your intimidation:

  you have enlarged their possessions.

  How your young conscripts rejoice:

  you have made them flourish.

  How your revered elders rejoice:

  you have made them young again.12

  And so on, and so on, for stanza after stanza. A slightly subtler approach was taken in two monumental works of “pessimistic literature,” The Complaints of Khakheperraseneb and The Admonitions of Ipuwer. Following in the footsteps of the earlier Prophecies of Neferti, an elaborate and vivid picture of utter chaos and social turmoil provided the literary background against which the firm rule of the king could be justified as necessary and even beneficent. These highly refined compositions played on the Egyptian mind-set, which—molded by the precarious balance of existence and the sharp dichotomies of nature in the Nile Valley (flood and drought, day and night, fertile land and arid desert)—saw the world as a constant battle between order and chaos. These works were squarely aimed at the literate elite surrounding the king, who seem to have wilted under such a sustained barrage of propaganda.

  Having browbeaten his inner circle into submission, Senusret III turned his attention to the powerful governors, who since the days of the civil war had exercised considerable authority in the provinces of Middle Egypt. In theory, of course, every individual held office at the king’s discretion, and it would have been perfectly possible for Senusret simply to dismiss the nomarchs and refuse to appoint successors. But he was too wily an operator for such a blatant display of force against an influential political class. There was no point in risking a reawakening of the dissent that had marred the early years of the Twelfth Dynasty, not when an alternative course of action presented itself. His chosen policy was ruthless, calculated, and brilliant: he neutered the nomarchs, and their potential heirs, under the guise of promoting them. Lured away from their regional power bases by the offer of prestigious (and lucrative) positions at court, men such as Khnumhotep III of Beni Hasan moved to the royal residence to enjoy the trappings of high office, leaving their provinces to be ruled from the center. Within a generation, nomarchs had disappeared from the Egyptian political scene. And once at court, officials were brought to heel,
interred in tombs provided for them by the king, arranged in a neat row in the court cemetery.

  This dynastic obsession with rigid planning found outlets in the two most ambitious building projects of Senusret III’s reign. The first was his pyramid town, a settlement for those who worked on his pyramid at the holy site of Abdju. Here, as at Kahun, everything was laid out mathematically, the houses made of uniformly sized mud bricks and organized in blocks one hundred cubits wide, separated by streets five cubits wide. Again, elite residences occupied the prime spot (highest up, farthest from the cultivation, with its humidity and mosquitoes), while the rest of the population had to make do with cramped conditions on the other side of town. The whole settlement was modestly named Wah-sut-Khakaura-maa-kheru-em-Abdju, “enduring are the places of Khakaura [Senusret III’s throne name], the justified, in Abdju.” This proved rather too much for the locals, who shortened its name for everyday purposes to Wah-sut.

  The king’s most impressive application of zeal and energy, however, was reserved for Nubia. His motivation was threefold: to consolidate Egyptian hegemony in Wawat and establish a new, permanent border; to control trade between upper Nubia and Egypt, for the benefit of the royal treasury; and to ward off the threat from the powerful kingdom of Kush, with its capital at Kerma, beyond the third cataract. His chosen policy was equally impressive in scope—the construction of a line of substantial fortresses throughout the second cataract region. Although the forts were designed to operate as an integrated system, each individual fort had its own particular role to play. Kor, on an island in the Nile, served as a campaign palace, a headquarters for the king during military maneuvers. Iken (modern Mirgissa) was the main trading post, sited well within Egyptian-controlled territory. Askut, given the bloodcurdling name “destroying the Nubians,” was the most secure of the forts. It was primarily a fortified granary but also served as a center for forced labor throughout the gold-mining region of the second cataract. As befitted an arm of state control in conquered territory, the fort was centrally staffed and supplied from distant Egypt, despite the proximity of thriving native settlements. Shalfak, called “subduing the foreign lands,” was a base for paramilitary patrols, sent into the surrounding desert to monitor the movement of people and goods. Uronarti, or “repelling the tribesmen,” served as a command center for the regional garrisons and provided a further campaign palace for the king’s use. A common feature of all the forts was their inspired use of the local topography to enhance their defensive capability. Curtain walls ran along the line of rocky ridges, steep cliffs were topped with towering battlements, and covered stairs led to the river to ensure access to a water supply in the case of siege.

  Beyond Uronarti, the most impressive group of forts—and the focus of the entire policy—guarded the narrow Semna Gorge, a natural border that was easy to defend. On the east bank, overlooking the main river channel and preventing infiltration from the Eastern Desert, stood Kumma, “opposing the bowmen.” Facing it, on the west side of the gorge, was the principal fortress of Semna, “powerful is Khakaura, the justified.” Dominated by large barracks, Semna stood ready to seal the gorge and defend Egyptian interests from attack by Kush. In addition to having a permanent garrison of four hundred to five hundred men, the commander could also quickly summon reinforcements from Uronarti, Iken, and Buhen, farther downstream, via a system of beacons sited at relay stations within sight of each other. In times of peace, the main role of the Semna garrison was to control traffic along this stretch of the Nile. Vessels would moor in the fort’s lower pool while cargoes were off-loaded onto Egyptian ships or overland donkey caravans for the onward journey to Iken. A forward base at Semna South, given the belligerent name “suppressing the Nubians,” provided a holding area for native caravans awaiting permission to continue their journeys, as well as a lookout to monitor people and ships approaching the gorge.

  Together, the second cataract forts presented an awesome display of Egyptian military and administrative might: an architectural expression of the king’s power as well as a logistical support for Egyptian interests in the region. No wonder that Senusret III would later be venerated as a god in Wawat, or that Greek historians would dub him “High Sesostris” (“Sesostris” was the Greek rendering of “Senusret”). Just as important as the forts themselves, however, was the system of surveillance they supported. In a remarkable series of documents known as the Semna Dispatches, the patrols that were sent out on a regular basis from Semna South, Semna, Kumma, Uronarti, and Shalfak reported their findings to the local commander. In an atmosphere of nervousness approaching paranoia, the patrols adopted an uncompromising stop-and-search policy. Even small groups of Nubians were intercepted, by force if necessary, and questioned. Those without legitimate business in Egyptian-controlled territory were sent back over the border. A typical dispatch reads: “The patrol who went forth to patrol the desert-edge … have come to report to me, saying, ‘We have found the track of 32 men and 3 asses.…’ ”13 Every patrol leader signed off his dispatch with the same words: “All the affairs of the King’s Domain (life, prosperity, health!) are safe and sound.” One can detect a desperate eagerness to prove that nothing untoward had happened.

  Senusret III WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE

  The determination of the Egyptian authorities to maintain absolute control was certainly in keeping with the Twelfth Dynasty’s obsession with security, borne of bitter experience. Rather than their actions being an unnecessarily macho response to a relatively low threat level, it now appears that fear of attack by the kingdom of Kush was well placed. Egypt’s rival on the upper Nile was wealthy, powerful, and jealous of its northern neighbor, a dangerous combination. So, as an added incentive to his garrisons to fight the good fight, Senusret III had a monumental stela set up inside the fortress at Semna. Its inscription urged the soldiers to defend the king’s conquests with the words “Valorous it is to attack, vile to retreat.”14 Senusret boasted of his own ruthlessness against the Nubians: “I have carried off their women and brought away their dependants, burst forth to [poison] their wells, driven off their bulls, ripped up their barley, and set fire to it.”15 Total warfare was the Egyptian ideal. Finally, the king had a statue of himself installed in a special shrine at Semna, to inspire his men to loyalty and bravery. The inscription read, “My Majesty has had an image of My Majesty made upon this frontier … so that you will be steadfast for it, so that you will fight for it.”16 It was impossible to resist such a powerful mix of propaganda and coercion, of encouragement and intimidation.

  Indeed, one look at a typical statue of Senusret III would have been enough to convince any soldier to do his duty. Never before in the history of ancient Egypt had a king used sculpture so effectively to project so terrifying an image of royal power. Senusret III’s statues—and there are many of them—have a deeply unsettling effect. The torso is always taut, muscular, and virile, presenting the ideal of youthful vigor beloved of Egyptian kings. But it is the face that haunts the viewer: bulging eyes under hooded lids, sunken cheeks, a brooding down-turned mouth. This radical departure from the conventions of royal portraiture is at once mesmerizing and terrifying; his is the true face of tyranny. Adding to the effect are the outsize ears, their message being that Senusret was the all-hearing monarch. Those who spoke out of turn were likely to regret their indiscretion.

  The Twelfth Dynasty police state continued under the king’s iron grip for another half century after Senusret III. His successor, Amenemhat III (1818–1770), favored a meaner style of portraiture alongside archaic forms of sculpture, designed to underline the antiquity of kingship. The achievements of his reign were spectacular: massive reclamation and building works in the Fayum; not one but two pyramids (the first having developed cracks just as it neared completion); and an upsurge in mining and quarrying expeditions to bring back precious stones for the royal workshops (four expeditions to the Wadi Hammamat for graywacke, three to the Wadi el-Hudi for amethyst, and no fewer than twenty-three to the
Sinai for turquoise). In cultural terms, his reign marks the high point of the Twelfth Dynasty. Fueled by Nubian gold, trade with the Near East prospered, too. The king rewarded his loyal allies, the princes of Kebny, by showering them with gifts. They, in turn, became increasingly Egyptianized in an attempt to emulate their powerful sponsors.

  Close ties between the Egyptians and their Asiatic neighbors were also maintained in the Sinai peninsula, where the local Palestinian rulers provided logistical support to the Egyptian mining expeditions. With friendly relations established, the peaceful immigration of Asiatics into Egypt, especially into the northeastern delta, replaced the forcible resettlement of Asiatic slaves that had taken place earlier in the dynasty. Semitic-speaking Asiatics from the Sinai, with their experience in desert travel, made ideal recruits for Egypt’s paramilitary police force patrolling the Western Desert. Interacting with Egyptian military scribes, they developed a hybrid script for writing their own language—the earliest alphabetic script in history. But the steady buildup of an Asiatic population in the Nile Valley and delta would soon make itself felt in other ways as well, with disastrous consequences for Egypt.

  At the end of Amenemhat III’s long reign of nearly five decades, the unthinkable happened: the dynasty found itself without a youthful male heir to carry the torch for another generation. As an emergency measure, the old king had an aged relative crowned co-regent. But, whether through lack of personal charisma, faltering political support, or merely old age, Amenemhat IV failed to make an impression during his decade on the throne. He was succeeded in turn by a daughter of Amenemhat III, Sobekneferu (1760–1755). The accession of Egypt’s first female king—there was no word for “queen,” the very notion being anathema to ancient Egyptian ideology—was a sure sign that the Twelfth Dynasty had run out of steam. Desperate to bolster her legitimacy, she emphasized her relationship with her father (virtually ignoring her ineffective predecessor), and concentrated her building activities at Hawara, where Amenemhat III had constructed his second pyramid complex. But after a brief reign of just four years, Sobekneferu, too, was gone.