The structure of the New Kingdom administration is well known. The king presided over three departments of government. The first was his own family. This could be large: Rameses II (1279-1213 Bc), for instance, was said to have fathered 160 children. While the royal family had immense status, not many of its members seem to have been given political power. The king was presumably careful not to encourage those with royal blood to build up positions of influence. There were exceptions, however. The heir might be given command of the army, and there was a traditional role for the queen, or eldest daughter of the king, as Chief Priestess of Amun. (As it was believed that the eldest son of the queen had been conceived in her by Amun, who, by this time, had replaced Ra in this role, this was no more than her due and made her position unassailable.) Through her the king had direct access to the wealth of the temples.
The second department of government oversaw the empire in Nubia and Asia. Apart from Nubia, where the ecology was very similar to what they were used to, the Egyptians were not successful colonizers. Their world was so dependent on the ordered environment of the Nile valley that they found it very difficult to adapt to life outside. When Egyptian armies reached the Euphrates they were completely bewildered by it, never having encountered water flowing southwards. The best they could manage was ‘water that goes downstream in going upstream’!
Ultimately the Egyptians depended on military force to sustain their rule, and for the first time in Egyptian history the kings raised a large army, of perhaps between
15,000 and 20,000 men. It was divided into battalions of infantry and charioteers, each battalion fighting under the name of a god. A large proportion of the troops consisted of levies raised within the empire itself. However, the army was expensive and difficult to maintain and soldiering was never popular. In practice most kings contented themselves with punitive raids into Asia or Nubia early in their reigns, as much for propaganda purposes as for suppression of rebels, and then returned to a more settled life in their courts. The normal pattern of administration was indirect, with Egyptian governors, supported by envoys and garrisons, ruling through vassal princes. The governors were responsible for maintaining order and collecting taxes, tribute, and raw materials. Thutmose III, the most successful conqueror of Asia, initiated a policy of bringing back Palestinian princes to Egypt as hostages for the good behaviour of their home cities.
The empire was an important source of raw materials. This had always been the case with Nubia, but Asia also provided booty from the wars and openings for trade. The grain harvests of the plain of Megiddo were appropriated by Thutmose III, tin came from Syria, copper from Cyprus, and silver, valued in Egypt more highly than gold, from Cilicia in southern Anatolia. If the temple inscriptions are to be believed, prisoners were brought back to Egypt in their thousands, and foreigners are to be found as artisans, winemakers, servants, and mercenaries. With them came Asiatic gods and goddesses, among them Astarte, the goddess of horse-riders, who were adopted within the Egyptian pantheon.
The third department of government was concerned with internal administration. This was subdivided into four offices, one each for the administration of the royal estates, the army, the overseeing of religious affairs, and internal civil administration. Each was headed by a small group of advisers, perhaps twenty to thirty at any one time, who were often intimates of the king. The country was divided into two administrative areas, one, Upper Egypt, based on Thebes and the other on Memphis. The success of civil administration was dependent on the personality of the ruler. It was he and only he who could infuse the necessary energy into maintaining the links with the provincial governments stretched out along hundreds of kilometres of valley. Smaller centres had mayors, who were responsible for collecting taxes, probably a tenth of total produce, and carrying out orders from above. Criminal cases and the countless property disputes that arose over land that disappeared under water for four months of the year were dealt with by councils of soldiers, priests, and bureaucrats.
The more opulent of the officials’ tombs, such as Sennefer, mayor of Thebes in the reign of Amenhotep II, show the deceased boasting of his achievements and closeness to the king. ‘One who satisfies the heart of the king’ is how Sennefer describes himself. His wonderfully decorated tomb has remained intact but Amenhotep’s chief steward, one Qenamum, was not so lucky. The paintings in his tomb were all defaced after his death, suggesting that tensions and jealousies lingered behind the serene fa9ade of good government. The tradition dating back to the Old Kingdom that administration was just, that rights of succession were respected, famine and poor relief distributed, and the voices of the poor listened to was reiterated but it
Cannot have been the reality. There are records of the harshness of officials collecting taxes and certainly no evidence at all that the life of the tillers of the fields improved in any way. While the kings clearly desired to sustain an ordered and functioning society, this was a ‘welfare state’ only in fantasy.
World History
