The Third Intermediate Period represents a departure from traditional pharaonic rule of the Early Dynastic Period, and the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms - and control of the entire country by a ruling dynasty of Egyptian kings. Although the rulers in Thebes recognized the 21st-Dynasty kings at Tanis in the northeastern delta, there was divided rule between the north and south. A border was established at el-Hiba in Middle Egypt, where fortresses were built by the Theban rulers whose policies were sanctioned by oracles of the Theban gods. Egypt no longer controlled an empire in southwest Asia or in Nubia. The new political order is visible in the Tale of Wenamen, a fictional work in which an agent of the Temple of Amen at Karnak is dispatched to Byblos to obtain cedar for the god’s bark.
The petty states along the eastern Mediterranean were now independent of Egyptian control and Wenamen’s troubles exemplify Egypt’s greatly reduced power there. The tale also reflects the divided state of Egypt, between the theocratic power of Herihor in Thebes and King Smendes in Tanis. The diminished state of the royal ancestors can also be seen in the evidence at Thebes: from the end of the 20th Dynasty onward riches in the Theban tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs were removed and the stripped-down royal mummies were reburied in caches - all of which was possibly sanctioned by the rulers of Thebes. Many of the New Kingdom private tombs at Thebes which had been plundered in the late 20th Dynasty were reused for family burials - with a reduced number of grave goods compared to the New Kingdom ones. With the end of royal burials in the Valley of the Kings the Deir el-Medina workmen’s community was closed, and in Tanis kings were buried within a massive temple complex that was protected within the walled city.
The 22nd, 23rd, and 24th Dynasties, located in different cities in the Delta, overlap in time, and writing a history of this period is problematic given a scarcity of king lists. Names and regnal years of these kings have been pieced together from inscriptions, but many sites in the Delta from which such information has been obtained have not been well preserved. The origins of Smendes, the first king of the 21st Dynasty, are unknown, and the other Delta rulers of this period were of Libyan descent. Kings of the 25th Dynasty were Kushites from Napata in Upper Nubia, reversing a 2,000-year tradition of Egyptian control of Nubia - with Nubian control of Egypt.
The geographic importance of the Delta was already evident in the 19th Dynasty when Rameses II built a new capital there (Piramesse). From the Third Intermediate Period onward, with the exception of the Kushite Dynasty, power and control in Egypt increasingly focused on the Delta. The 21st-Dynasty kings built a new royal city at Tanis, and to facilitate this some earlier monuments were removed from Piramesse and elsewhere in the north and re-erected at Tanis. Although Rameses III had successfully fought Libyan forces twice, there is textual evidence that conquered Libyans were assigned to military settlements in Egypt. By the end of the New Kingdom there were many Libyans living in northern Egypt, especially former mercenaries in the western Delta. osorkon the Elder, son of the chief of the Meshwesh (a Libyan tribe), became king ca. 984 Bc and the 21st Dynasty ended with the rule of a Theban high priest, Psusennes II. The Libyan Sheshonq I, whose family was in Bubastis, became the first king of the 22nd Dynasty - legitimized by his marriage to Psusennes II’s daughter and descent from his uncle, Osorkon the Elder. Sheshonq, who
Map 9.1 Sites in Egypt, Sinai, and the Western Desert during the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period.
Continued the kingship at Tanis, named his son high priest of Amen and commander of the army, and from this point onward kings in the north sought to curtail Theban power. Reasserting the role of the Egyptian king, Sheshonq erected a number of monuments, including the so-called Bubastite Portal at the Temple of Karnak where the king’s successful campaign against the states of Israel and Judah is recorded - which is also mentioned in the old Testament (1 Kings 14:25-26). But Egyptian expansion into Palestine ended with Sheshonq’s death not long after this military campaign.
Increasing political fragmentation occurred throughout Upper and Lower Egypt during the 22nd Dynasty as many provincial offices became hereditary. By the reign of Sheshonq II the 23rd Dynasty was an independent polity in the Delta. Later other semi-autonomous petty kingdoms also emerged: at Bubastis and Leontopolis in the Delta, and at Herakleopolis and Hermopolis in Middle Egypt. There were also other independent groups, including four Great Chiefs of the Ma/Meshwesh and the “Prince of the West” at Sais. Not acknowledging any one king, Thebes remained the major power base in the south. One result of decentralization was more socio-political instability. Rameses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu had already become a fortified settlement during the civil war at the end of the New Kingdom, and evidence of mud-brick fortresses of this period has been found in Middle and upper Egypt.
Little is known about Nubia after the New Kingdom because Egyptian control there ceased, as did written inscriptions. Sometime between the 11th and 9th centuries Bc an indigenous polity arose in upper Nubia, centered at Napata/Gebel Barkal, downstream from the Fourth Cataract, where Thutmose III had built an Amen temple. This polity became the second kingdom of Kush, with all of Nubia eventually under its control. The 25th Dynasty began with Kushite expansion northward; the kings of this dynasty controlled both Nubia and most of Egypt during a century of much warfare - between the Kushites and Libyan rulers in northern Egypt, and later between the forces of the Kushites and Egyptians and the invading Assyrians.
The Kushite conquest of Egypt began under Kashta in the mid-8th century BC, and his son Piy conquered Memphis. In Thebes Piy’s sister Amenirdis I became the God’s Wife of Amen, one of the most powerful offices there. But Piy returned to Nubia and his successor Shabaqo had to reconquer Egypt when local rulers in the Delta began to expand their territorial control.
For the most part the Kushite kings were nominal rulers of Egypt, who controlled Egypt because of their military might but left many local rulers in place. The Kushites also took an interest in southwest Asia and in 701 BC an army of Egyptians and Nubians was sent to Palestine to support Hezekiah of Judah against the Assyrian army under Sennacherib. Although Sennacherib claims to have defeated the Egyptian and Nubian army, their intervention may have helped the Hebrew kingdom to survive and the Assyrians withdrew from their siege of Jerusalem. During the reign of Taharqo (690-664 Bc), Egypt was invaded three times by the Assyrians and the Kushite king retreated to Nubia, where he died. His successor Tanutamani invaded Egypt, but Assyrian retaliation was severe. Thebes was sacked at this time and Tanutamani withdrew to Nubia for good.
During the 25th Dynasty Memphis became the Kushite royal seat in Egypt and several kings built monuments there. Both in Egypt and Nubia Kushite kings built Egyptian-style
Temples, with their walls inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs. At Karnak Taharqo’s large kiosk is found in the temple’s first court, and next to the northwest corner of the sacred lake he built a chapel with inscribed subterranean chambers.
But the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty and their successors were buried in Upper Nubia. Before the Egyptian conquest Kushite kings were buried in a cemetery at el-Kurru, near Gebel Barkal, where the earliest high-status tombs were circular tumuli with contracted burials on beds - as in the centuries-earlier royal burials at Kerma. But Piy’s tomb at el-Kurru was a steep-sided pyramid. Most of the later Napatan kings, beginning with Taharqo, were buried in pyramids at Nuri, on the other side of the river. The kings’ bodies were mummified and placed in coffins, and royal mortuary compositions used by New Kingdom kings were painted in their burial chambers.
The Kushite pyramids, with chapels on the east side, are probably the most visible mortuary evidence of Egyptian acculturation by these kings, who worshipped Egyptian gods, especially Amen and Ptah, as well as non-Egyptian ones. But some Nubian beliefs were retained, such as the horse burials associated with Kushite royal burials. Kushite kings were often shown wearing a leather cap (not an Egyptian crown, see Figure 9.1), surmounted not by the heads of a vulture and cobra, which were symbols of Egyptian kingship (for example, on the gold funerary mask of Tutankhamen), but by two cobras (the double uraeus). Thus Egyptian royal symbols - and beliefs - were selectively adopted by the Kushite kings and transformed within their own distinctive culture.
Figure 9.1 Taharqo head with a cap crown. Source: Jurgen Liepe.
Although the Kushite monuments in Nubia are well preserved, the archaeological evidence in Egypt of this dynasty and earlier ones of the Third Intermediate Period is biased against many areas of settlement in the Delta and the Memphis region. This is also true for the Late Period, and the evidence discussed here does not represent the extent of urbanism that had developed in Egypt by the first millennium bc.
World History
