Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (8 page)

Just as the 18th Dynasty rulers refused to commit themselves to a single capital city, they did not restrict themselves to one principal palace. Instead they adopted a mobile court, perhaps inspired by their experiences of military campaigns, and toured the country with a small entourage, travelling by river to inspect and impose control on the various regions and staying in short-term palaces known as the ‘Mooring Places of Pharaoh’, which were often little more than elaborate rest-houses situated at strategic points along the Nile. The journey from Memphis to Thebes would have been a slow one of perhaps two to three weeks and it made sense that the less mobile members of the royal household, including the majority of the women, their children and their retinues, were maintained in permanent harem-palaces away from the main royal
residences. By the 19th Dynasty the country had become even more de-centralized. The official capital was by then Pa-Ramesses in the Delta but the largest centre of population was still Memphis, while Thebes remained both the main cult centre and the burial place of kings.

The Mooring Places should be considered as palaces in the sense that they provided a home for the king and his retinue, but they should not be imagined as the ancient equivalent of Buckingham Palace or Versailles. The idea of the settled palace, or indeed the settled upper-class household, is a relatively modern one. In fourteenth-century England, for example, even a gentleman of relatively modest means might be the lord of several manors, all of which he needed to oversee in person, while a great lord would own many estates throughout the land. When such a landowner moved from one estate to another he was accompanied by his household (family, dependants and servants), his furniture, plate and clothing, all travelling through the countryside in a style intended to impress his wealth and dignity on the less fortunate locals. A move every two to three weeks would not have been seen as excessive, and it was not until the end of the fourteenth century that the great households became relatively static, moving perhaps two or three times a year.
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The palaces scattered along the Nile were never intended to act as impressive stone testimonies to the glories of a particular king's reign; instead they were constructed quickly and relatively cheaply from mud-brick wherever and whenever required. The use of mud-brick meant that the palaces could be designed on the spot to fit the exact requirements of their occupants, unlike the more or less standard plans used for the stone-built temples and tombs. However, the use of mud-brick also meant that the palaces were vulnerable to decay, and we now have few surviving palace buildings. The royal progression from palace to palace ensured that the authority of the king became a reality to those in even the most distant provinces and, at a more practical level, may well have been an efficient cost-cutting exercise. Although each Mooring Place was provided with its own farm and granary this did not necessarily provide enough food for a visit, and it was often necessary to make the local mayor responsible for provisioning the royal household. Local officials presumably came to dread the news of an impending royal visit.
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A 19th Dynasty scribal exercise gives some
indication of the preparations considered necessary to welcome a pharaoh:

Get on with having everything ready for pharaoh's [arrival]… have made ready 100 ring stands for bouquets of flowers… 1,000 loaves of fine flour… Cakes, 100 baskets… Dried meat, 100 baskets… Milk, 60 measures… Grapes, 50 sacks…
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By the end of Ahmose's reign the Egyptian economy was booming. Egypt was naturally a very wealthy country and once unity and central control had been re-established it was possible to co-ordinate the management of her ample natural resources, taxing the primary producers – the peasants and their landlords – to support the bureaucratic and priestly superstructure and storing up surpluses to provide against harsher times. The Greek historian Herodotus commented admiringly:

In no other country do they gather their seed with so little labour. They have no need to break up the ground with the plough, nor to use the hoe, nor indeed to do any of the hard work which the rest of mankind finds necessary if they are to get a crop. Instead the farmer simply waits until the river has, of its own volition, spread itself over the fields and withdrawn again to its bed, and then he sows his plot of land…
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While the farmer's life was almost certainly somewhat harder than the idyllic existence outlined by Herodotus, it is clear that the peasant labour force, without undue exertion, was well able to support Egypt's population of approximately 3,000,000 during the early New Kingdom. During the period of inundation when the land was flooded and all routine agricultural work ceased, they provided an unemployed workforce available to work on major state projects such as the building of royal monuments. The knowledge that the state and temple warehouses were brimming with grain must have been intensely reassuring to the 18th Dynasty monarchs who knew that repeated famine, just like freak floods, could bring about a quick change of dynasty.

Away from the immediate Nile Valley, Egypt was rich in building stone, both the softer limestone and sandstone and harder, more exotic, stones such as granite, which was quarried at the First Cataract, quartzite, which came from the Gebel Ahmar near modern Cairo,
basalt from the Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern Desert and alabaster from Hatnub, Middle Egypt. Although there were no precious gems, the semi-precious amethyst, carnelian and jasper could all be found within Egypt's borders, there was gold in the Eastern Desert and Sinai was mined for both copper and turquoise. The only valuable commodities which were missing were silver and wood; these could be imported from the Aegean and from the Near East as and when needed.

Egypt's newly re-imposed control over Nubia led to increased supplies of gold and highly desirable exotica such as ivory, baboons, pygmies, ostrich eggs and feathers. This in turn provided surplus items for barter with Egypt's Mediterranean neighbours; diplomatic and trading links had been established with Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, the Hittite Empire and the Greek islands, and Egypt was able to supply gold, grain and linen, receiving silver, wood, copper, oil and wine in return. As the Egyptian sphere of influence slowly expanded throughout the Near East, the treasury coffers opened wide to receive a steadily increasing stream of tribute from client states which, together with the trade surplus, internal taxation and the plunder seized from those unwise enough to resist Egypt's advances, made Egypt the most wealthy and influential country in the Mediterranean world. By the time of Amenhotep III, almost one century after Hatchepsut's reign, an envious King Tushrata of Mitanni was appealing to his fellow monarch: ‘So let my brother send me gold in very great quantity without measure. For in my brother's land gold is as plentiful as dust.’
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The flourishing economy led directly to a rapid expansion of the civil service as more and more bureaucrats were required to collect, supervise and re-distribute the nation's newfound surpluses. Less than five per cent of the New Kingdom population was literate, and the sudden demand for efficient administrators or scribes combined with the availability of land for private rental from the temples to allow the middle classes a greater political influence, and far greater personal wealth and freedom, than had ever been known in Egypt. The increased demand for scribes led in turn to an expansion in the education system, and we now find many texts written specifically for use in schools. One of these texts,
Papyrus Lansing
, was very specific about the joys – and potential economic rewards – which could be attained through devotion to study: ‘Befriend the scroll, the palette. It pleases more than wine.
Writing for him who knows it is better than all other professions.
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With the exception of these school texts, the literature of the early 18th Dynasty remained firmly rooted in the traditions of the Middle Kingdom, and there was no startling advance in either style or genre at this time.

Most of Egypt's new wealth went directly to the palace, making it possible for the pharaoh to finance ambitious building works, thereby enhancing his own status in the eyes of his people and ensuring that his name, permanently linked to his monuments, would live for ever. Artists and sculptors, benefiting from the improved financial climate, again sought their inspiration in Egypt's past, and the artistic conventions of the 12th Dynasty provided a solid basis for the new-style art. Painting in particular flourished as, with the new custom of burial in rock-cut tombs whose crumbling walls were often unsuitable for carving, it was now necessary to paint funerary scenes. To the modern observer looking backwards, it seems that there was at this time a new confidence throughout the country and a new awareness of the exciting foreign influences which were beginning to filter southwards towards Thebes, so that the art of the early 18th Dynasty may be regarded as falling halfway between the restrained and formal styles of the 12th Dynasty and the intricate informality of the Empire. The artists now appear far more assured in their work and their ‘subjects are depicted with a restrained professionalism. Gone are the intimate, soul-revealing pharaohs of the 12th Dynasty; instead we are presented with the rounded cheeks and faint smile of a king secure in his personal power. Contemporary private painting, again heavily influenced by the Middle Kingdom tradition, slowly started to relax and abandon the slightly stiff poses popular during the Middle Kingdom until ‘a new breadth is given to already established forms, but with a restraint and simplicity which seems happily suited to the Egyptian spirit’.
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This growing trend towards less formal artforms was reflected in the more stylish garments being worn at this time. The standard Old and Middle Kingdom upper-class clothing (simple kilt or ‘bag tunic’ for men, long sheath dress and shawl for women) gradually became less formal and more ornate, until by the late 18th Dynasty the rather understated Old and Middle Kingdom elegance had been lost and wealthy Egyptians were dressing in a far more frivolous style involving yards of closely pleated linen and rows of elaborate fringes.

By the time of Hatchepsut's succession, some fifty years after the reunification of the country, a well-defined social pyramid had evolved. As in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the divine pharaoh owned the land and everyone in it; in theory, at least, he remained king, chief priest of every cult, head of the civil service, lord chief justice and supreme commander of the army. He was supported in his onerous tasks by an élite band of nobles, all of whom were male and many of whom were his immediate relations and, one step further down the social scale, by the prominent local families who gave their allegiance to the king and who administered local government. This upper tier of society and their families numbered no more than two or three thousand people, while the total population of Egypt during the New Kingdom has been estimated at between three and four million. The literate middle classes were now enjoying unprecedented prosperity, working as administrators, soldiers, minor priests and artisans while the semi-educated lower-middle classes were apprenticed into trades. The lowest and largest layer of society included foot soldiers, labourers, servants and the peasants who worked the land owned either by the king, the temples or private estates. Herodotus, omitting to mention the farmers who were the mainstay of the Egyptian economy, informs us that there were seven principal trades: ‘These are, the priests, the warriors, the cowherds, the swineherds, the tradesmen, the interpreters and the boatmen’;
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it would appear that these were the Egyptians whom he himself most frequently encountered on his travels.

At first sight this was a social structure identical to that found in earlier periods of Egyptian history, and indeed the Egyptians themselves rejoiced that their land had returned to the correct social pattern established at the time of creation. However, subtle changes in emphasis may be detected. The pharaoh remained the ultimate ruler, but he was now all too aware that his authority was not absolute and could, under certain circumstances, be challenged and even lost. Eighteenth Dynasty kings therefore found it prudent to stress the importance of their role by public displays of heroism, wealth and piety, and by the incessant use of self-justifying propaganda texts, myths and ritual. The pharaoh now ruled over a more economically developed country where the army, the civil service and the priesthood had become important state institutions; the priesthood in particular was now both semi-independent and economically very powerful. Egypt's increasing wealth had had a
beneficial effect on the internal economy, and the literate and skilled middle classes found themselves in great demand. Only the lower classes, in particular the peasants, would have found little change from life in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. These workers continued with the daily routines established by their fathers and grandfathers before them. To the Egyptians, who prized continuity above almost everything, this was a very reassuring state of affairs.