Robin George Collingwood, a British philosopher and historian who formulated the main approaches to the study of the past, believed that historical knowledge is the reproduction and replaying in the historian's mind of all the aggregate thought, the history of which he is studying. The historian's job is to decipher these thoughts.
The history of Ancient Egypt is largely composed of reconstructed, sometimes fictional events of the past. The basis of the modern periodization of ancient Egyptian history, Egyptologists put the scheme of the priest Maneto, which he drew up in the III century BC, dividing the chronology of the rulers into 30 dynasties, but at the same time they threw out the entire pre-dynastic era from the history of Maneto.
Manetho began his periodization from the era of the First Time, when, according to legend, the Gods ruled Egypt, the last of which was Horus. According to Manetho, before the unification of Egypt by Menes, the country's history was already 24,925 years old.
In the history of Egypt, there are a lot of blank spots and inexplicable moments, in respect of which the official Egyptology is silent.
What does the story say about one of the most powerful pharaohs of the New Kingdom era - Pharaoh Amenhotep III?
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Pharaoh - Sun is the father (?) Of Pharaoh - reformer Akhenaten, Amenhotep III is a mysterious and controversial figure. On the one hand, he worshiped the traditional Egyptian Gods and built luxurious temples for them, on the other hand, it was in his era that the crisis of Egyptian traditional culture began.
For many years, the reign of Amenhotep III is "silent" due to the lack of written sources. Only eleven dated documents are known: nine belong to the period from 1 to 11 years of the reign of the pharaoh, and two others to the 35th. The gap in two decades has yet to be revealed to historians.
Under Amenhotep III, a confrontation begins between the pharaoh and the Theban priesthood of Amun, which was the second power in the state. During his reign, Aton, the disk of the Sun, first began to be referred to as God. According to tradition, Amenhotep III called himself the son of Amun, but sought to restore the ancient custom of identifying the king with the Sun God. Pharaoh took the title Aton-Chechen - "Blinding disc of the sun" and built a temple in Heliopolis dedicated to Aton. Pharaoh's struggle with the Theban priests received its further development in the reform - Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten.
Amenhotep III inherited from his father - Thutmose IV, a huge prosperous empire. The innumerable riches coming to Egypt from the conquered and dependent countries were the source of Amenhotep's extensive construction activities.
The wealth of Egypt was so great that Amenhotep sent gold as gifts to his allies - the kings of Mitanni and Babylon, who were convinced that gold in Egypt was "as abundant as the sand in the desert."
Under Amenhotep III, Egypt reached the peak of its political influence and economic prosperity, trade with Greece and Crete was expanded, and friendly relations were maintained with the rulers of Mitanni, Assyria, the Hittite kingdom, Cyprus and Babylon.
Pharaoh married princesses from neighboring powers, but refused to grant requests to marry his own daughters to foreigners.
The main wife of Amenhotepe III was Tia (Teye) - the daughter of the priest of the God of fertility Mina, the head of the charioteers named Yuya and his wife Tui.
Researchers believe that Tyya did not directly belong to the royal family, although her mother Tuyu is called a descendant of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari - the wife and at the same time sister of the king-liberator of Egypt from the Hyksos dominion - Ahmose I., was close to the Pharaoh, some Egyptologists attribute the Semitic origin.
Tia had a great influence at the court of Amenhotep III, took part in all official ceremonies and holidays, accompanied the pharaoh on trips, was engaged in the construction of her own temple on the territory of modern Sudan. Tiye's brother Anen held high positions in the hierarchy of the priesthood of Amun, being the second prophet of Amun in Karnak.
Amenhotep III carried out an ambitious temple building program. In Thebes, on the right bank of the Nile, he expanded the temple of Amun in Karnak, erected new temples to Mut, Khonsu and Montu, his merit was the alley of the Sphinxes, which connects the Karnak complex with the temple in Luxor.
An extensive palace complex was built on the left bank of the Nile in Malcate, in the Western Valley, which adjoins the Valley of the Kings - the royal tomb, and in Kom el-Hettan - a huge memorial temple, which became the largest ever built in Thebes, surpassing its size is the temple of Amun at Karnak.
For the construction of the memorial temple in Kom el-Hettan on the western bank of the Nile in Thebes, a site was chosen in the floodplain of the Nile, as a result of which the temple was partially flooded during the annual floods.
When the water subsided, the temple, symbolically reborn, protruded from it, like a primordial hill from the abyss of chaos in the Egyptian myth of the creation of the world.
Continuation: "On the Colossi of Memnon".
Author: Valentina Zhitanskaya
