Amenhotep III

• 1. Introduction

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  Amenhotep III ruled Egypt for nearly four decades, and in his lifetime he was worshipped as a god. He was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the son of Thutmose IV by a minor wife named Mutemwiya. Around 250 of his statues survive, more than any other Egyptian pharaoh. His epithets called him the Magnificent and the Great, and a Greek tradition rendered his name as Amenophis. Yet his reign ended with a son who would shake everything his father built. How did a boy who took the throne between the ages of 6 and 12 come to be honored as a living deity? Why did he marry the daughters of foreign kings while refusing to send his own daughters abroad? And what was the strange divine birth he ordered carved at Luxor Temple, a claim that the god Amun had fathered him?

• 2. The Divine Birth

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  At Luxor Temple, Amenhotep commissioned a scene depicting his own divine birth. He claimed his true father was the god Amun, who had taken the form of Thutmose IV to father a child with Mutemwiya. This was no idle boast. It planted his legitimacy in the realm of the gods themselves. Born probably around 1401 BC, Amenhotep would lean on this divine origin throughout a reign of exceptional prosperity. After his Sed festivals, the king transcended from being a near-god to one fully divine, a status few Egyptian kings ever achieved in their own lifetime.

• 3. Tiye And The Royal Wives

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  In Regnal Year 2, Amenhotep married Tiye, the daughter of Yuya and Thuya. She remained the Great Royal Wife throughout his reign. To mark the union, he commissioned commemorative marriage scarabs that affirmed his divine power and the legitimacy of his wife. With Tiye he fathered at least two sons, Crown Prince Thutmose and the boy who would become Akhenaten. Several daughters are credited to the couple, including Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Iset, Nebetah, and Beketaten. Nebetah is attested only once, on a colossal limestone group of statues from Medinet Habu. Beketaten appears only at Amarna. The king's marriages reached far beyond Egypt. In Regnal Year 10 he married Gilukhepa, daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni, who arrived with a retinue of 317 women. Around Regnal Year 36 he married Tadukhepa, daughter of Tushratta of Mitanni. Other wives included a daughter of Kurigalzu of Babylon, a daughter of Kadashman-Enlil of Babylon, a daughter of Tarhundaradu of Arzawa, and a daughter of the ruler of Ammia in modern Syria. In the last decade of his reign, he married at least two of his own daughters, Sitamun and Iset. Jar-label inscriptions from Regnal Year 30 show Sitamun had been elevated to Great Royal Wife. Though shunned by common Egyptians, incest was not uncommon among royalty.

• 4. Lion Hunts And A Lake

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  From commemorative scarabs, Amenhotep is known to have killed either 102 or 110 lions in the first ten years of his reign. The king advertised his vigor in stone, scattering scarabs across a geography that stretched from Syria at Ras Shamra to Soleb in Nubia. In Regnal Year 11, he commanded the construction of an artificial lake at Tiye's hometown of Djakaru. He celebrated a Festival of Opening the Lake in the third month of Inundation, on day sixteen. He then rowed the royal barge Aten-tjehen across the water, an event commemorated on at least eleven scarabs. His single military campaign came earlier still. In Regnal Year Five, he led a victorious campaign against a rebellion in Kush, when he was between 11 and 17 years old. The victory was carved into three rock stelae found near Aswan and Saï in Nubia, written with the martial hyperbole typical of the period.

• 5. The Court And The Sage

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  Through tombs in the Theban Necropolis, the officials who served Amenhotep are richly attested. Among them were the viziers Ramose, Amenhotep, Aperel, and Ptahmose, the treasurers Ptahmose and Merire, and the Viceroy of Kush, Merimose. One courtier stood apart. Amenhotep, son of Hapu held many offices, but he is best known for being granted the right to build his mortuary temple behind that of the king himself. He was deified after his death, one of the very few non-royals ever worshipped in such a manner. The king relied on him heavily. He appointed Amenhotep, son of Hapu to plan the Sed festival, possibly because he was one of the few courtiers still alive who had served at the last such festival, held for Amenhotep II. To prepare, the sage enlisted scribes to gather information from records and inscriptions, most found in ancient funerary temples, describing the appropriate rituals and costumes.

• 6. The City Of The Dazzling Aten

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  The palace of Malkata was built in the 14th century BC, and its ancient name was Per-Hay, meaning House of Rejoicing. Under Amenhotep III it became known as the Tjehen-Aten, the City of the dazzling Aten or Sun Disk. Built mostly of mud-brick, it was his residence through most of the later part of his reign. Construction began around Regnal Year 11 and continued until the king moved there permanently around Regnal Year 29. Once finished, it was the largest royal residence in Egypt. The Aten appeared again and again in the king's choices. In his 30th Regnal Year he adopted the royal epithet Aten-Tjehen, the Dazzling Sun Disk, elevating the Aten from a minor god to the solar disc through royal patronage. Yet he did not make it an exclusive god. His main devotion remained with Amun-Ra, a combination of the Theban deity Amun and the northern sun god Ra. He named his youngest daughter by Tiye Beketaten, meaning Handmaid of Aten. In 2021, excavations revealed a settlement near his mortuary temple called the Dazzling Aten, built to house craftsmen and labourers, with its own bakery and cemetery.

• 7. The Spectacle Of The Sed Festivals

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  Amenhotep celebrated three Sed festivals in Regnal Years 30, 34, and 37, each at Malkata palace in Western Thebes. A temple of Amun and a festival hall were built especially for the celebrations. The tradition dated to the Old Kingdom and consisted of tests demonstrating the pharaoh's fitness to continue ruling. Based on indications left by Queen Tiye's steward Khenruef, the festival may have lasted between two and eight months. The king wanted his celebrations to outshine all that came before. The scribe Nebmerutef coordinated every step of the event. He directed Amenhotep to use his mace to knock on the temple doors, while Amenhotep, son of Hapu mirrored his effort like a royal shadow. Queen Tiye and the royal daughters followed the king. When moving to another venue, the banner of the jackal god Wepwawet, Opener of Ways, went before him, and the king changed his costume at each major activity. One highlight was the king's dual coronation, enthroned separately for Upper and Lower Egypt. He wore the white crown for Upper Egypt, then changed to the red crown for Lower Egypt. A surviving Sed Festival Stela, white alabaster and only 10 by 9 cm, shows the god Heh raising the pharaoh's cartouche for a million years.

• 8. Brothers And Kings

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  From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egypt is given to anyone. So Amenhotep is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in Amarna Letter EA 4, firmly rejecting a request to marry one of the pharaoh's daughters. The Amarna Letters, found near the city of Amarna, preserve correspondence from the rulers of Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon, Hatti, and other states. They typically carried requests for gold and other gifts, and they cover the period from Year 30 of Amenhotep until at least the end of Akhenaten's reign. The refusal may have followed royal custom, since a claim upon the throne could pass through descent from a royal princess. It also enhanced Egypt's prestige, since Amenhotep married foreign daughters while refusing his own. Late in his reign, the Mitanni king Tushratta sent the statue of Ishtar of Nineveh, a healing goddess, to Egypt. Scholars once assumed it came to cure the pharaoh's ailments, including painful abscesses in his teeth. But William L. Moran's analysis of Amarna Letter EA 23 discounts that theory. The statue's arrival is dated to regnal year 36, the fourth month of winter, day 1, coinciding with the marriage to Tadukhepa. The likeliest explanation is that the goddess came to bless the wedding, as she had been sent earlier for the marriage to Gilukhepa. In the same century, the pharaoh sent an expedition to Cyprus, establishing Egyptian control and exporting copper and raw materials in exchange for luxury goods.

  Reliefs from the temple of Soleb in Nubia and scenes from the Theban tomb of Kheruef depict Amenhotep as a visibly weak and sick figure. Kheruef served as Steward of the King's Great Wife, Tiye. Scientists believe that in his final years the king suffered from arthritis and obesity. A forensic examination of his mummy revealed worn and cavity-pitted teeth that must have inflicted constant pain. His greatest attested regnal date is Year 38, appearing on wine jar-label dockets from Malkata. He may have lived briefly into an unrecorded Year 39 and died before the wine harvest of that year. The Australian anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith concluded the pharaoh had died between the age of 40 and 50. Foreign leaders mourned. Tushratta wrote: When I heard that my brother Nimmureya had gone to his fate, on that day I sat down and wept. On that day I took no food, I took no water. Tiye outlived her husband by at least twelve years, depicted at the royal dinner table in Akhenaten's years 9 and 12 in scenes from the tomb of Huya.

  Amenhotep was buried in tomb WV22 in the Western Valley of the Valley of the Kings, the largest tomb in that valley. It included two side chambers for his Great Royal Wives, Tiye and Sitamun, though neither woman appears to have been buried there. During the reign of Smendes in the Third Intermediate Period, his mummy was moved to the cache in KV35, alongside other pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. There it lay until Victor Loret discovered it in 1898. The mummy is unusual for the 18th dynasty, showing heavy use of subcutaneous stuffing to make it look more lifelike, and carries the inventory number CG 61074. In April 2021, it was moved from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, traveling with 17 other kings and 4 queens in an event called the Pharaohs' Golden Parade.

  Two massive statues 18 m high, the Colossi of Memnon, are nearly all that remained standing of Amenhotep's mortuary temple. The temple was once the largest religious complex in Thebes, but the king built too close to the floodplain, and less than two hundred years later it was reduced to ruins. Merneptah and later pharaohs purloined much of its masonry for their own projects. His building elsewhere was vast. He worked extensively at Karnak, dismantling the Fourth Pylon of the Temple of Amun to construct a new Third Pylon, and he erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the Temple of Mut. His first recorded act as king, in Years 1 and 2, was to open new limestone quarries at Tura, south of Cairo, and at Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt. In 2014, two giant statues toppled by an earthquake in 1200 BC were rebuilt from more than 200 fragments and re-erected at the king's funerary temple. In 1989, a cache of statues was found in the courtyard of his Luxor colonnade, including a nearly undamaged pink quartzite statue of the king wearing the Double Crown. Only the name of the god Amun had been hacked out wherever it appeared, part of Akhenaten's campaign against the god of his father. When Amenhotep died, he left an internationally respected country at the height of its power, yet wedded to old religious certainties under the Amun priesthood. His son Akhenaten moved the capital from Thebes and built Amarna, a city dedicated to the Aten, forcing the question of whether a pharaoh was more powerful than the worship of Amun.