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Volume 7 issue 5 April 2007

ANCIENT EGYPT explores the WORLD WIDE WEB ...

This month’s NETFISHING continues its look at the history of Egypt by seeing what the World Wide Web has to say about the early Tuthmosid kings, the warrior pharaohs who laid the foundations for Egypt’s Empire in the New Kingdom.

Amenhotep [or Amenophis] I had succeeded his father, Ahmose I, as ruler of the Two Lands and his twenty-five year rule was a relatively peaceful one, welcomed after all the turmoil of the previous reigns. Egypt was under firm control once more and only two military campaigns appear to have been conducted, one in Nubia and another, possibly, in Libya. Refer:

www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep1.htm

Amenhotep I, and his mother, Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, were regarded as the patrons of the workmen’s village of Deir el Medina

(refer: http://touregypt.net/featurestories/medina.htm)

and so it is possible that Amenhotep I was the king responsible for founding the New Kingdom burial place of the pharaohs – what we now call the Valley of the Kings. Amenhotep I’s burial has not been discovered with certainty but it may well be the tomb KV39, constructed at the head of the Royal Valley. Refer:

www.thebanmappingproject.com/atlas/index_kv.asp?tombID=undefined

Amenhotep I appears not to have had any heirs, however, and so the throne next passed to a military man, whom we know as Thutmose [Tuthmosis] I, who was married to Princess Ahmose, the sister of Amenhotep I and daughter of King Ahmose I. Tuthmose I appears to have been determined to ensure that Egypt would never again suffer the indignity of foreign invasion; he conducted a series of military campaigns to neutralise any threat before it occurred, by conquering and establishing a whole series of buffer states around Egypt’s southern and northern borders. Refer:

www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/history/people/tuthmosi_1.html

and http://touregypt.net/featurestories/tuthmosis1.htm

In Nubia he advanced as far south as the Third Cataract, gaining access to the rich gold mines of Kush, whilst in the north he marched through the kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean, reduced them to vassal status and carved his victory stela on the hills above the Euphrates river at Carchemish. Once the Egyptian Empire had been established, he turned his thoughts to domestic matters and conducted building work at Karnak temple. One of his most impressive monuments was the pair of seventy-one-feet-tall granite obelisks, brought all the way from Aswan, that he erected at Karnak. One of these still stands today; refer:

http://members.aol.com/Sokamoto31/tuthmosis.htm

Tuthmose I had a daughter called Hatshepsut (whom he appears to have named as his heir). Still wishing for a son, he then married the lady Mutnofret who later bore him a son, the future king Tuthmose II. Tuthmose I seems to have continued the work of establishing the Valley of the Kings as the royal burial place. He extended the village of Deir el Medina, building a wall around the fledgling settlement, and was himself buried in a deep “secret” rock-cut tomb, KV20, in the Valley. Refer:

www.touregypt.net/featurestories/kv20.htm

His daughter Hatshepsut was later to be buried alongside him in KV20; but this was not to be the king’s last resting place, as in the reign of his grandson, Tuthmose III, the revered “founder of the Egyptian Empire” was reburied in a splendid “modern” tomb especially cut for him, KV38. Refer:

www.touregypt.net/featurestories/kv38.htm

After the death of Tuthmose I, his son by Mutnofret became king, ruling as Tuthmose II. Refer:

www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tuthmosis2.htm

and www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/history/people/tuthmosi_2.html

Tuthmose II duly married his half-sister Hatshepsut, but the marriage again produced only a daughter, and so Tuthmose took a secondary wife, called Isis. This marriage resulted in a male child, who was later to become King Tuthmose III.

Tuthmose II appears to have suffered from poor health and reigned for only about fourteen years; he conducted campaigns in Syria and Nubia. Upon his death, Tuthmose III was still too young to rule in his own right and so his stepmother Queen Hatshepsut was appointed as regent to act for this young “Horus in the Nest” – a situation that would bring about a dispute over the succession when Hatshepsut assumed royal status as “King” Hatshepsut.

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