At the end of the Twentieth Dynasty a series of factors combined to bring about significant changes in Egypt, signalling the end of the New Kingdom and the beginning of a new era. These factors included corruption within the ruling administration and rivalry between various members of the royal family (Grimal 1992: 276, 288), economic downturn brought about by unfavorable environmental conditions (Redford 2004b: 101), but most importantly the migration of various groups of people from the areas to the west of Egypt.
During the last years of the Twentieth Dynasty the power of the priests of Karnak had increased, while the influence of the distant Pharaohs in the Delta city of Pi-Ramesse had dwindled. Ramesses X was the last king of the New Kingdom to be attested in Nubia, at Aniba (Kitchen 1984: 125), which by this time was the last territory outside Egypt over which Pharaoh had any influence. After some years of fighting amongst various factions in Thebes, perhaps exacerbated by famine, there emerged, in the nineteenth year of Ramesses X’s successor, Ramesses XI, a new High Priest of Amun named Herihor. At this point a new era called wehem mesut (‘‘Repeating of Births’’) was inaugurated. This formula was commonly used to signify the beginning of a new dynasty (Niwinski 1996: 5) and would be used to date events in Thebes. The influence of the High Priest had grown in the years leading up to this point, and Herihor’s predecessor, the High Priest Amenhotep, had had himself depicted in a relief at Karnak on the same scale as the king, showing his disregard for Pharaoh and suggesting a degree of equality between the two (Grimal 1992: 291). Herihor went a step further by enclosing his name in a cartouche and by year six of wehem mesut he held the most important religious and secular offices, represented by a formidable set of titles including ‘‘commander of the armies,’’ ‘‘vizier,’’ and ‘‘viceroy of Kush,’’ in addition to that of High Priest of Amun (Kitchen 1986: 248). During this time, another key figure was to emerge, i. e. a Delta official named Smendes (Egyptian ‘‘Nesbanebdjed’’) (Dodson 2001: 389). The Tale ofWenamun relates to events of this period and tells us that the protagonist was dispatched to Byblos in Phoenicia in the fifth year of wehem mesut. Smendes and his wife Tentamun are referred to in this text as ‘‘the founders to whom Amun has given the north of his lands’’ (Jansen-Winkeln 2001: 156), and indeed it seems that Smendes had been handed executive control of the north, equivalent to that of Herihor in the south (Kitchen 1986: 250). The influence of the Twentieth Dynasty kings disappeared completely with the death of Ramesses XI in his twenty-ninth year (1069 Bc), at which point Smendes inaugurated a new line of kings based at Tanis, which was now expanding rapidly. Thus, Egypt was now divided between the Pharaoh - of the new Twenty-first Dynasty line - in the north, and the High Priest of Amun in the south.
World History
