It is not known whether any members of Hatshepsut’s branch of the family (descended from Queen Ahmose) were still alive at the end of Thutmose Ill’s reign. The ageing king, however, did take his son Amenhotep as co-regent in the fifty-first year of his reign, and then shared the monarchy with him for a little more than two years. The so-called dishonouring of Hatshepsut, which had begun around year 46 or 47, may have paved the way for the joint rule, for Amenhotep II himself completed the desecration of the female king’s monuments. In order to eliminate the claims of Hatshepsut, and her family line, her monuments were systematically adjusted: some were obscured by new work; some were mutilated to remove any evidence of her name; and many were altered such that the names of Thutmose III or Thutmose II replaced those of Hatshepsut. Since Thutmose sought to destroy the memory of the queen twenty-five years after her disappearance, it is unlikely that this was carried out as pure vengeance against his stepmother, particularly since the king had retained a number of Hatshepsut’s officials, who completed their career and built tombs with the name of Thutmose III prominently inscribed in them. Perhaps the death of men who served both rulers, such as Puyemra, second priest of Amun, and Intef, the mayor of Thinis (the region of Abydos) and governor of the oases, also vitiated objections to the execration of Hatshepsut.
Amenhotep IPs reign was a pivotal one in the early New Kingdom, although today it is often dwarfed by the shadow of his two predecessors and his successors in the late i8th Dynasty. During a reign of nearly thirty years (with a highest known regnal year of twenty-six) the king had military successes in the Levant, brought peace to Egypt together with its economic rewards, and faithfully expanded the monuments to the gods. In his own time Amenhotep II commanded recognition most particularly for his athleticism, and his monuments often allude to this capability. As a yoimg man, the king lived in the Memphite region and trained horses in his father’s stables (if we are to believe the inscription he left on a stele at the Sphinx temple at Giza). His greatest athletic achievement was accomplished when he shot arrows through copper targets while driving a chariot with the reins tied around his waist. The fame of this deed was monumentalized not only in the stele inscription from Giza but in carved relief scenes in Thebes. It was also miniaturized on scarabs that have been found in the Levant. Sara Morris, a classical art historian, suggests that Amenhotep II’s target shooting success formed the basis hundreds of years later for the episode in the Iliad when Achilles is said to have shot arrows through a series of targets set up in a trench.
The majority of Amenhotep ITs reign was peaceful, providing a lengthy period of stability. Several administrative papyri from his reign document flourishing agricultural and industrial organizations in several areas of Egypt. A well-developed bureaucracy was at work, and Amenhotep II appears to have made good use of the services of administrators. He encouraged men who had served his father to stay on, and he installed close friends of his own in key roles. Several Middle Kingdom literary compositions were recopied at this time, suggesting a growing interest in cultural refinement rather than military valour. Although royal art remained as idealized and highly formal as it had been in the reign of Thutmose III, painting style in non-royal contexts began to betray an artistic individualism that was later to be accentuated.
World History
