With the accession of Amenhotep III the Eighteenth Dynasty reached a new period of prosperity. The conquests of his predecessors had brought peace (by way of the Kurustama-Treaty, Groddek 2008), and left Egypt the leading power of this period. The Amarna letters provide interesting insights into the diplomatic relations of this period (Moran 1992), though one must be forewarned not to consider Amenhotep as a diplomatic anomaly (on Amenhotep as a master diplomat see Bermann 1992, 59), since the sources may simply be lost for other periods. Unusually, even at the beginning of this reign, solar symbolism was employed. The connection of royal announcements to the suns god’s manifestation as Khepri in the form of commemorative scarabs is no coincidence. Amenhotep appears as ‘‘beloved of Khepri,’’ on the unique monumental scarab from Karnak, which must have stood originally in Western Thebes, probably in his temple at Kom el-Heitan (Barguet 1962b: 17). Towards the end of his reign solar symbolism took on a more powerful dimension. Alongside his sponsoring of a relatively new deity, the sun disc Aten, we see evidence for his own deification which follows no past model. In a temple at Soleb King Amenhotep is depicted sacrificing to the god Amenhotep (Schiff-Giorgini 1998: pl. 193). A statue now on display in the museum at Luxor identifies him with the sun god Atum, and the timeless young features of his face on his later statues put him in the realm of the self-regenerating sun god (Johnson, 1990: 43, Mysliwiec 2005). The reality behind this ideology was quite different. Towards the end ofhis life Amenhotep was seriously ill, and the creation of hundreds of statues of Sekhmet, the lady of sickness demons,
Was meant to obtain alleviation of his suffering, as were two Ishtar statues which he allowed to be sent from the King of Mitanni (cf. Gnirs 2004: 42).
World History
