As pharaoh, the horse-crazy marksman Amenhotep II expanded his domain eastwards towards Iraq, while in the Mediterranean Egypt traded with the Mycenaean peoples of Arzawa (Greece) and Alashiya (Cyprus). In 1424, after crushing local kings at Kadesh (Syria), he killed seven of them personally and hung their corpses upside down. Troops were rewarded by the tally of penises and hands heaped at the feet of pharaohs or skewered on spears like kebabs. Amenhotep II returned after one Syrian expedition with three-quarters of a ton of gold, fifty-four tons of silver, 210 horses, 300 chariots and 90,000 prisoners. Only the best was ever good enough for the sardonic, exacting Amenhotep II,* pharaoh for twenty-six years, who said: ‘If you lack a gold battleaxe inlaid with bronze, why make do with a wooden club?’
Not everyone could be so ferociously macho: his grandson Amenhotep III was more fixated on a religious vision that changed Egypt, a vision he shared with one remarkable woman. To call it a love match would be an understatement.
MISTRESS OF EGYPT: GOLD, WIVES AND DIPLOMACY
When he was a teenager, Amenhotep III married Tiye, aged thirteen, who became the most prominent wife in Egyptian history. She was not his sister but the daughter of a cavalry officer. Great Royal Wife Tiye was tiny, four foot nine, with long hair, still lustrous on her mummy, and her portraits show her beauty. Married for thirty-five years, the couple had nine children together.
Amenhotep promoted the state religion in processions of barques and statues, and ever more gigantist temples where his inscriptions described how Amun-Ra himself had crept into the bedchamber of the Great Wife: ‘She awoke because of the god’s scent and cried out with pleasure.’ And the god announced, ‘Amenhotep is the name of the child I have placed in your womb.’ Amenhotep III was himself a god and Tiye was his divine partner, enthroned beside him on colossal statues, known to the ancients as the Colossi of Memnon. Presented as the equal of her husband, Tiye corresponded with foreign monarchs from the Greeks of Arzawa to Babylon. ‘Tiye knows all the words I spoke with your father Amenhotep,’ wrote King Tushrata of Mitanni to their son, suggesting, ‘Enquire carefully of Tiye.’ He even wrote directly to the ‘Mistress of Egypt’.*
Tiye was a female potentate, but the next queen, Nefertiti, would be even more powerful and her husband, Amenhotep IV, was not like anyone else: if the portraits of the couple are accurate they were an extraordinary pair and their eccentricities would almost destroy the empire.
* Archaeologists have not: they identify the start of history as the point when writing was invented.
* In the Andes, in 7000 BC, a female teenaged warrior was found buried with her spear; out of twenty-seven buried hunters discovered in south America from this period, eleven were female. Women may have led and fought as well as nurtured and nursed, or the burials could be merely ritualistic.
* Competition was brutaclass="underline" in Europe around 5500 BC, the villages of early farmers were annihilated by invasions or wars, with unknown enemies leaving mass graves of tortured, scalped, cannibalized bodies.
* Around 3000 BC, at Waun Mawn, in Wales, the inhabitants created a circle henge of bluestones, some of which were later dragged a long way to build a new and larger circle at Stonehenge.
* One of the rulers of Uruk named in its king list was Gilgamesh, whose mythical story – The Epic of Gilgamesh, written down around 2000 BC and known by most Sumerians – recounts the rise of a single family and the development of cities. Gilgamesh is part god, part man, who travels with his wild friend Enkidu in search of eternal life. Such travels reflect early trading that allowed flint and obsidian to reach Sumer from Anatolia. Enkidu, creature of nature, is seduced by a divine harlot, Shamhat, but their sexual passion depletes his savage power and he settles in the dazzling city of Uruk. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, a flood threatens all mankind, revealing a theme of world history: the ever-present fear of the world’s end felt as strongly then as today. Only the family of Utnapishtim/Ziusudra, a Noah-like figure, survives – the definition of an elite family. The story, which inspired many sacred books, ends with the gods teaching Gilgamesh the limits of human supremacy, a lesson that Sapiens still struggles to learn: ‘You were given the kingship, such was your destiny; everlasting life was not your destiny.’
* Different versions of the Osiris myth were favoured during different periods. Osiris ruled the earth, but his brother Seth seized power and murdered him. Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, found his body and resurrected him – perhaps the origin of mummification. His death and revival were linked to the annual flooding of the life-giving Nile. He impregnated Isis but, barely alive, fell to Duat, the underworld, which he then ruled. The world was inherited by their son, Horus, god of the sun, moon and stars, the personification of life and power. There were thousands of gods in the Egyptian pantheon, but the kings were protected by Horus; in some ways they were themselves Horus. Like Osiris they could marry their sisters.
* Khufu’s favourite dwarf and jester Perniankhu, with his short twisted legs, lived in the Great Palace with him, nicknamed ‘One who delights his lord every day, the king’s dwarf’. His royal favour was underlined by his tomb close to the Great Pyramid itself and he may have achieved great wealth – and have been a member of a dwarf dynasty. Another court dwarf, Seneb, who served Khufu’s son King Djedefre, was buried at Giza very near Perniankhu: it is possible Seneb was Perniankhu’s son. Seneb was a high court official with many titles, owned thousands of cattle and was married to a well-born priestess, who was not a dwarf, with whom he had children. A beautiful statue shows them together. Next to the Great Pyramid, Khufu buried a barque, 140 feet long and made of Lebanese cedar, for his voyage into the underworld. When he died in 2525 BC, Khufu was succeeded in turn by two sons Djedefre and Khafra. Neither attempted to outdo their father, but Khafra built a funeral pyramid that was smaller but on a higher site. It contained twenty-five statues of himself sitting on his throne with the falcon Horus behind his head in white stone. But his masterpiece was the sculpture of a recumbent lion with Khafra’s own face: the Sphinx.
* This was mistranslated by the Jewish authors of the Bible as ‘Sargon’ – though they were referring to the much later king Sargon II, Neo-Assyrian king circa 720–705 BC.
* Some scholars argue that this is a description of Akkad; others insist it depicts Babylon, the greatest city when later versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh were written down.
* Their rulers lived in plastered palaces with large basalt columns and their ordinary people in wattle houses on massive terraces. They pierced their bodies with thorns; they may have practised ritual bleeding and sacrifices; and they used rubber to make the balls used in their ritualistic games. We do not know the name of the city – we call it San Lorenzo – nor of the people. Much later the Mexica called them Olmecs – the Rubber People.
* The rise of Aryan culture occurs between 1500 and 500 BC, though there may be more continuity between the Aryan and Indus Valley cultures than was previously supposed. Three millennia later, in Europe, Nazi ideologues commandeered the word Aryan for their racist ideology. At the same time, Reza Shah, whom we will meet later, changed the name of Persia to Iran (Aryan). In today’s India, Hindu nationalists reject the idea that Indian, especially Hindu, faith or race can possibly have European origins. But in central Asia, long known as the Aryavarta – Abode of the Aryans – this concerns not race but language and culture: Old Persian (Avestan) and Sanskrit are still closely linked; the stories and rituals of the Persian Avesta are similar to those of the Indian Rigveda and other Vedic stories, and to the Ramayana with its tales of ideal kings and families. The latest DNA research in India reveals that most Indians are descended from a mixture of the original southern Indians, the Harappans, and steppe peoples related to Iranians.