According to van den Boorn (1988: 315), the vizier was the head of the ‘‘civil administration,’’ a term normally understood as excluding religious or military activity, which implies that the vizier had no authority in these spheres. Yet in the Duties of the Vizier he is said to select the military units that accompany the king on his travels (col. 23), and that he is responsible for temple estates (col. 27). As he was the king’s representative, there is every reason to expect that royal decisions about temple property and functionaries as well as about military matters were in fact implemented by him. The vizier was obviously active in a military sphere in the account of Ramesses II’s battle at Kadesh. There he is given the order to collect a section of the Egyptian army still on its way to Kadesh when the vanguard under the king’s personal command was suffering a major attack from the Hittites. Religious authority was conferred on several New Kingdom viziers who held the title ‘‘Overseer of Priests of Upper and Lower Egypt,’’ a title otherwise associated with the high priests of major urban temples, such as Heliopolis, Memphis, and especially Thebes.
Egyptologists usually treat military and temple administration as separate entities because the different titles of functionaries make it easy to distinguish their duties. This is especially true for the temples, which in the course of Pharaonic history grew into highly autonomous administrative units and even major economic powers (see e. g. O’Connor 1995). At the same time, however, temple estates were subject to inspections by officials of the royal treasury (Spalinger 1991; Haring 1997: 17-20) and in various other ways were integrated into government administration.
The army had developed as a permanent and specialized institution by the time of the New Kingdom (at the latest; in earlier periods it can hardly be distinguished from a workforce for mining, quarrying, and trade expeditions). The highest functionaries bore the title ‘‘Overseer of the Army’’ (also translated as ‘‘General’’). The army became a separate institution as a result of the expansion of the empire in the early Eighteenth Dynasty. The administration of foreign territories in Nubia, and especially in the Levant, directly involved the military. In the Middle Kingdom Egypt had controlled its conquests in Nubia by building huge fortresses along the Nile, and in the early New Kingdom, when it came to control territory as far as the Fourth Cataract, it did so again. This time, however, governors were appointed over Nubia who were direct subordinates of the king, bypassing the authority of the vizier. Such a governor was entitled the ‘‘King’s Son of Kush’’ (although they were not actual sons of the Pharaohs) and the ‘‘Overseer of the Southern Deserts.’’
Egyptian administration of the northern territories was different. Here, native rulers of city states remained in their position and swore oaths of allegiance to the Egyptian king. By installing garrisons and permanent administrators in some locations, and by regularly sending messengers and military functionaries to the local rulers, Egypt exerted control over city states as far as Kadesh on the Orontes. Although a messenger may have been given the title of‘‘Overseer of the Northern Deserts,’’ his position was nowhere near as exalted as that of an ‘‘Overseer of the Southern Deserts,’’ and here no supreme governor such as the ‘‘King’s Son of Kush’’ was to be found (Murnane 1997).
Because the religious and military branches of the state administration had particular titles and offices distinct from other administrative sectors, they could be examined as separate units, but to see them as entirely separate would be incorrect, especially because different functionaries in different sectors often belonged to the same family. One single family might provide civil, religious, and military functionaries, and, since it was common for an official position to be inherited, that family would keep their positions and, where possible, accumulate others (for the role of families, see Cruz Uribe 1994). It was possible for a single individual to bear different titles corresponding to different administrative sectors. Such details are important factors to note when discussing the role of bureaucracy in Ancient Egypt.
World History
