The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  Pious and pugnacious in equal measure, his response was immediate and decisive. Kushite troops stationed inside Egypt were given the order to advance, engage the enemy, and encircle and capture them. Special ferocity was to be reserved for the traitor Nimlot. His home district was to be besieged and attacked daily. Then Piankhi mobilized the main army, based in Nubia, and sent them forth with a crusading zeal: “You know that Amun, the god, commands us!”16 Theirs was a divine mission, and Piankhi gave them strict instructions on what do to on their march north. “When you reach the heart of Thebes, in front of Ipetsut, enter the water, purify yourselves in the river, and put on clean linen.”17 Only then they were to make offerings to Amun and kiss the ground in front of his temple, asking for his guidance: “Show us the way, that we may fight in the aura of your strength!”18

  The Nubian troops did exactly as their sovereign had commanded, before continuing on their way north to engage the enemy. In a fierce naval battle south of Khmun, and on land near Herakleopolis, the Kushites carried the day. Word then reached Piankhi that Nimlot had eluded capture. Enraged, the Kushite ruler decided to go himself to Egypt, to take personal command of the operation, but only after he had celebrated the New Year festival, which he dedicated to his patron deity Amun. In the meantime, his forces threw a security cordon around the entire province of Khmun. Nimlot would not be allowed to escape a second time.

  After stopping at Thebes to burnish his fundamentalist credentials, Piankhi arrived on the outskirts of Khmun early in 728. Like Ramesses II on the eve of Kadesh, he appeared in his royal chariot to encourage his troops before giving the order to attack. At his command, missiles rained down on the city, day after day, as the noose was drawn ever tighter. Eventually, “Khmun began to exude a foul odor.”19 It was the stench of death. A short while later, the city capitulated and its treasuries were emptied for Piankhi—even Nimlot’s royal crown was offered up as a trophy. In a pathetic gesture of submission, the defeated leader’s female relatives came to beg mercy from Piankhi’s wives, daughters, and sisters—a plea for clemency, woman to woman. Nimlot’s own act of obeisance was to appear before his nemesis with two well-chosen gifts: a sistrum made of gold and lapis lazuli, used in temple rituals to appease a deity, and a horse. Like every other Kushite ruler, Piankhi was a lover of all things equine. (He was so pleased with the gifts, and the gesture, that he had them immortalized in stone at the top of his victory monument, erected on his return home in the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal.)

  Piankhi’s fondness for horses showed itself again in an extraordinary episode some hours later, when he went to inspect Nimlot’s palace. Two rooms in particular caught his eye, the treasury and the stables. What followed speaks volumes about Piankhi’s priorities:

  The king’s [Nimlot’s] wives and daughters came to him and paid honor to him as women do. But His Majesty did not pay them any attention. [Instead] he went off to the stables, where he saw that the horses were hungry. He said … “It is more painful to me that my horses should be hungry than every [other] ill deed you have done!”20

  The Nubian pharaoh would not be the last monarch in history to prefer horses to people.

  The next ruler to submit was the Kushites’ erstwhile ally, King Peftjauawybast of Herakleopolis, confirming the total surrender of Upper Egypt. The conquest of Lower Egypt, by contrast, would be an altogether more difficult proposition. The first target in this next phase of the campaign was a group of rebels, including one of Tefnakht’s own sons, who had holed themselves up in a fortress at the mouth of the Fayum. On reaching the town walls, Piankhi railed against them, calling them “the living dead”21 and threatening them with annihilation if they did not surrender within one hour. His bellicose language evidently had the desired effect, and the rebels gave themselves up. Anxious to demonstrate his magnanimity, Piankhi ordered his forces not to kill any of the fort’s inhabitants. All the same, its granaries, like those of Khmun, were added to the wealth of the temple of Amun at Ipetsut. It was payback time for Piankhi’s divine patron.

  Further capitulations followed, as the Kushite forces swept all before them. Next to lay down its arms was the Middle Kingdom capital of Itj-tawy, still an important town in the northernmost Nile Valley. And then, after weeks of campaigning, Piankhi reached the ultimate objective of his holy war, the capital city of Memphis itself. Once again, he urged its citizens not to bar their gates or fight, promising that, if they surrendered, he intended only to honor the local god Ptah and then “continue northward in peace.”22 He pointed to his exemplary record of clemency: “Look at the southern districts. Not a single person was killed there, except for enemies who blasphemed against god.”23 Memphis ignored his blandishments and closed its gates anyway. That night, under cover of darkness, the rebel leader Tefnakht paid a secret visit to the city, to steel its resolve. He knew only too well that without Memphis his cause was doomed. Leaving again before dawn, he slipped past the Kushite army before it realized what had happened. When news of the clandestine visit reached Piankhi, he flew into a rage. Ignoring his commanders’ suggestions, he led the charge himself, throwing everything into the capture of the capital. Having won the day, he was as good as his word, taking the earliest opportunity to honor the city’s chief god, Ptah. In Memphis, as in every other location he visited, Piankhi was at pains to portray himself as a righteous leader. His was no mere campaign of conquest, but a crusade to purify Egypt and restore its true religion.

  Once the capital had fallen and all the citadels in the surrounding province had surrendered, a host of delta rulers came rushing to submit themselves. King Iuput II of Taremu, chief of the Ma Akanosh of Tjebnetjer (modern Samannud), and Prince Padiese of Hutheryib all made formal obeisance to Piankhi. When he visited Iunu to make sacrifices in the temple of Ra, King Osorkon IV of Bast (the lineal descendant of the great Shoshenq I) came “to gaze at His Majesty’s splendor.”24 The last, enfeebled representative of the once mighty Libyan Dynasty needed to see for himself the phenomenon that had so forcefully reestablished the majesty of monarchy. Following his lead, the assembled rulers of Lower Egypt pledged their allegiance and a large portion of their wealth to their new suzerain: “Send us back to our towns to open our treasuries to choose according to your heart’s desire, and to bring you the choice of our studs and the best of our horses.”25 They had clearly heard about the Nubian’s penchant for thoroughbreds, and were desperate to curry favor. Piankhi did not demur.

  When a final halfhearted revolt against Kushite rule was swiftly put down, Tefnakht, the leader and the last of the rebels, knew the game was up. He sent an embassy to Piankhi to negotiate terms, not for a surrender but for a cease-fire. Despite his protestations of subservience—“I cannot look at your face in these days of anger, nor stand before your flames!”26—Tefnakht knew that he was negotiating from a position of strength. The whole of the western delta was still in his hands, and his troops could keep the Kushites bogged down for months if he so desired. To underline his confidence, he refused to submit in person to Piankhi but cheekily asked for a Kushite delegation to visit him in his capital at Sais. It was hardly the outcome Piankhi had been planning for, but if a long, drawn-out war of attrition was to be avoided, it would have to serve. Thus, in the temple of Neith at Sais, and no doubt through gritted teeth, Tefnakht finally swore an oath of loyalty to Egypt’s new, undoubted master. The following day, Piankhi witnessed a final, symbolic act of obeisance. The four reigning kings—Nimlot and Peftjauawybast from Upper Egypt and Osorkon IV and Iuput II from Lower Egypt—each wearing the royal uraeus, was ushered into his presence and, prostrating themselves, kissed the ground before him. While Egypt might have had five monarchs, only one was sovereign. The irony of the occasion was not lost on the assembled spectators. It had taken a Nubian to restore the dignity, if not the unity, of kingship.

  Before setting sail for Thebes and home, his ships laden with the spoils of victory, Piankhi made one final gesture to underline his zealotry. Of the four kings assemb
led to pay him homage, all but Nimlot were barred from entering the royal enclosure, not because of their weakness or active opposition, but because they were uncircumcised and had eaten fish—serious affronts to Piankhi’s strict interpretation of religious purity laws.

  Under Kushite rule, military strength would go hand in hand with moral absolutism. Might and right would prove a dangerous combination.

  CHAPTER 21

  FORTUNE’S FICKLE WHEEL

  UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  HAVING COMPREHENSIVELY DEFEATED EVERY OPPONENT AND IMPOSED Kushite hegemony throughout Egypt, Piankhi could have gloried in his newfound status and enjoyed the considerable privileges of pharaonic kingship. However, as his love of horses had already demonstrated, he was a Nubian through and through, and there was no place like home. So, following his tour of conquest and victory in 728, he promptly headed south, stopping only at Thebes to install his daughter as eventual successor to the god’s wife of Amun and thereby ensure the continuity of Kushite influence in the god’s holy city. Having honored the cult of Amun, the Kushite king and his retinue continued on their way. Four days’ sailing brought them to the Nubian border at Abu, and a month later they were back in the familiar surroundings of Napata, their capital city nestled beneath the looming bulk of Gebel Barkal. Safe and sound in his sprawling royal palace, Piankhi reigned another twelve years, years of plenty and prosperity for Kush. But he never set foot on Egyptian soil again.

  His attitude toward Egypt reflected his primary concern in going to war in the first place. If the campaign had been politically motivated, he would surely have taken steps to consolidate Kushite power, appointing loyal local governors to carry out orders on his behalf. However, his overriding objective had been religious, to safeguard the holy places of Amun from alien (that is to say, Libyan) interference. In that, he had succeeded. What happened subsequently in terms of Egypt’s internal politics was of little or no concern to him. It did not take the Libyan dynasts long to realize this.

  As soon as Piankhi’s back was turned, his wily Lower Egyptian rivals returned to their old ways. Osorkon IV of Bast carried on playing the rightful monarch, sending a lavish diplomatic gift to the ruler of Assyria when he unexpectedly turned up on Egypt’s northeast frontier with a large army in tow. Elsewhere in the delta, Akanosh of Tjebnetjer recovered his injured pride by continuing to rule as before, while Piankhi’s archfoe, Tefnakht, now called himself king. It was as if the Kushite conquest had never happened. Indeed, Tefnakht’s refusal to submit to Piankhi in person had been a harbinger of things to come: the Kingdom of the West remained the principal player in the shifting politics of the delta, as Tefnakht sought to extend his influence over the whole of Lower Egypt. The Kushites should have learned the lesson the first time around.

  Tefnakht died in 720 but his ambitions did not perish with him. His son and successor, Bakenrenef (720–715), was just as determined, just as hungry for power—and just as antagonistic toward Kushite claims on Egypt. To sum up his feelings, he commissioned an extraordinary goblet carved from pale blue faïence. An upper band of decoration showed Bakenrenef being presented with the sign of life by his patron goddess, Neith of Sais, and holding hands with the gods of kingship and wisdom, Horus and Thoth, under the protection of heavenly vultures grasping signs for “eternity.” (Wishful thinking, perhaps, but a characteristic display of Saite self-confidence.) In a lower band, captive Kushites—their arms bound behind their backs or above their heads—alternated with monkeys stealing dates from palm trees. It was a cheap racial slur, and a piece of propaganda in the best pharaonic tradition.

  The new king of Kush, Shabaqo (716–702), who had only just succeeded Piankhi on the throne, could hardly take such an insult lying down. Unlike his predecessor, Shabaqo resolved to finish the job and bring his adversary to book, once and for all. After launching a second Kushite invasion of Egypt, he did not stop until he had captured Bakenrenef and neutralized him as a focus of insurrection. According to later accounts, the victorious Shabaqo had his opponent burned alive as a sacrificial victim. Certainly, the Nubian showed no hesitation in imposing his rule forcibly throughout the country. At Memphis, he intervened in the burial of a sacred Apis bull, amending the date on the tomb entrance from “year six of Bakenrenef” to “year two of Shabaqo.” Within a few months, the Kushite pharaoh was recognized across the eastern as well as the western delta, and he issued a commemorative scarab to celebrate his conquest. In characteristically bloodcurdling tones, it described how “he slew those who rebelled against him in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, and in every foreign land.”1

  With the north brought to heel, Shabaqo could turn his attention to the south of the country. Thebes and its hinterland had always been more pro-Kushite—or anti-Libyan. The two amounted to the same thing. But Shabaqo was in no mind to leave things to chance. Although the office of god’s wife of Amun was safely in Kushite hands, with one royal relative already in the post (Kashta’s daughter, Amenirdis I) and another (Piankhi’s daughter, Shepenwepet II) lined up to succeed her, there were other influential positions in the Amun priesthood. Shabaqo decided he needed to control them, too, to be sure of Theban loyalty. As a first step, he installed his own son as high priest of Amun, having shorn the post of all political and military power. Then, favored retainers were appointed to other key posts. In subsequent years, a royal prince was made second prophet of Amun and a royal princess was married off to the mayor of Thebes to secure his allegiance. The Kushites had Thebes all wrapped up, or so it seemed.

  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The Theban desire for self-determination was deep-seated, and the line of mayors of Thebes, while expressing undying devotion to their Nubian monarchs, in fact ran the city and its surrounding region as their personal fiefdom. They maneuvered their relatives into positions of influence in both the civil and religious administrations, and they grew fat on their wealth and status. A case in point was Harwa. Born into a family of priests during the reign of Piankhi, he rose to become head of Amenirdis I’s household. After her death, he continued to serve her successor, Shepenwepet II. Rather fancying himself as a man of letters, he described himself on one of his statues as “a refuge for the wretched, a float for the drowning, a ladder for him who is in the abyss.”2 His tomb was equally immodest and was one of the largest nonroyal funerary monuments ever built in Egypt. Moreover, in the privacy of his final resting place, Harwa could give free rein to sentiments that might have cost him his life if expressed in public: one of his shabtis held the crook and flail, the most ancient regalia of kingship. Harwa evidently fancied himself as a latter-day king of Thebes, and few among his contemporaries would have disagreed.

  The existence of a de facto dynasty ruling Upper Egypt under Shabaqo’s overlordship simply reflected the uncomfortable reality of Kushite rule. In practice, it was virtually impossible for a single monarch and a single administration to control a realm stretching more than thirteen hundred miles by river, from the far reaches of Nubia beyond the fifth cataract to the shores of the Mediterranean. Although it must have stuck in Shabaqo’s throat, he had little option but to leave the old political structures in place, even as he was loudly claiming to have overthrown them. In the delta, the local rulers bounced back from their latest humiliating surrender. Men openly styling themselves kings continued to reign in Bast and Djanet, the twin centers of Libyan power. Hereditary princes still held sway in Hutheryib, and other local dynasties resumed their rule over the prosperous towns of Djedu, Djedet, Tjebnetjer, and Per-Sopdu. Even in Sais, hotbed and heartland of anti-Kushite resistance, Bakenrenef’s grisly end did not extinguish local ambition. A new strongman named Nekau emerged to fill the power vacuum and was soon adopting quasi-royal titles, too.

  Behind the façade of a united monarchy, the political map of Egypt encountered by Piankhi in 728 persisted. History was not just repeating itself; time seemed to have stood still.

  BACK TO THE FUTURE

  IN ANOTHER IMPORTANT RESPECT, TOO
, THE KUSHITE MONARCHY represented a return to the past. With piety to Amun a central tenet of their claim to legitimacy, Piankhi and his successors set out to champion other indigenous Egyptian traditions that had been neglected or overturned by the country’s recent Libyan rulers. The Kushites saw it as their holy mission to restore Egypt’s cultural purity, just as they had saved the cult of Amun from foreign contamination. With active royal encouragement, therefore, priests and artists looked to earlier periods for inspiration, reviving and reinventing models from the classic periods of pharaonic history. An obsession with the past soon influenced every sphere of cultural endeavor.

  Shabaqo gave a lead by adopting the throne name of Pepi II, to recall the glories of the Pyramid Age. His successor went one better, dusting off the titulary last used by the Fifth Dynasty king Isesi more than sixteen centuries earlier. High-ranking officials followed suit, adopting long-obsolete and often meaningless titles, just for the sake of their antiquity. The written language was deliberately “purified,” taking it back to the archaic form of the Old Kingdom, and scribes were trained to compose new texts in an antiquated idiom. A fine example was the Memphite Theology, a theological treatise on the role of the Memphite god Ptah. Commissioned by Shabaqo himself, the treatise was said to have been copied from an ancient worm-eaten papyrus, preserved in the temple archives for millennia. The authentically archaic language certainly fooled most scholars when the piece was first discovered. But, like much of the Kushite renaissance, the Memphite Theology was a product of the seventh century, cunningly designed to look like a relic of the past—an imagined past of cultural purity that existed only in the minds of the Kushite zealots.