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Obras de John Coleman Darnell

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Interesting but not very well organized; it reads more like a collection of articles than a book. Authors John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa have the problem that there are only a few recognizable names in Egyptian history, so if you want to write a book with any hope of a general audience, you have to pick one; thus it’s Tutankhamun’s Armies rather than Thutmoses III’s armies (that’s the authors spelling; I’ve used Tutankhamen because that’s what’s in my spell checker). Nevertheless they have an intriguing premise; popular Egyptological opinion has always been that the Amarna period was marked by pacifism and a decline in Egyptian military strength as Akhenaton withdrew to his holy city of Aketaten and spent his time singing hymns to the Aten while the rest of the country went to Amduat in a hand basket. Darnell and Manassa contend that Egypt continued military activity during the Amarna period and that Akhenaton and his successors practiced a successful mix of diplomacy and “Realpolitik” in defense of the empire.

Anybody writing about the Amarna period has the problem that there’s next to nothing in the way of actual physical evidence. In order to fill up space on the way to their main argument, Darnell and Manassa do the more-or-less obligatory history of Pharaonic Egypt, discuss the makeup of Egyptian armies, military weaponry, and chariot tactics. They also weigh in on a number of the controversial topics:

* Who was Tutankhamen’s father? Tutankhamen’s own inscriptions claim he was a son of Amenhotep III; most Egyptologists find this very unlikely given his age at death and argue that he was a son of Akhenaton by a secondary wife. Darnell and Manassa agree.

* What happened to Nefertiti in Year 12 of Akhenaton? Her name disappears from the records. There are a bunch of theories on this; the simplest is that she died. A more complicated one is that she changed her name. I reviewed a book by Joanne Fletcher that claims she was the ephemeral pharaoh Smenkhare; Darnell and Manassa suggest she was the even more ephemeral pharaoh Ankhetkheperure. The train of argument goes as follows:

 Nefertiti, unlike most previous Egyptian queens, has her name written in cartouches and has both a praenomen and a nomen; starting in the sixth regnal year of Akhenaton her titulary is Nefertiti Neferneferuaten.

 In year 12 of Akhenaton, Nefertiti Neferneferuaten disappears, and a person named Ankhkheperure shows up.

 However, Ankhkheperure appears in both a masculine (Ankhkheperure) and a feminine (Ankhetkheperure) form, and in the feminine form it appears a couple of times coupled with the nomen Neferneferuaten, and once, in a damaged inscription, it looks like Ankhetkheperure Neferneferuaten is the wife of Neferkheperure, which is the praenomen of Akhenaton.

 Then, in a tomb at Amarna, an Ankhkheperure Smenkhare is shown accompanied by “his” Great Royal Wife, Merytaten, who is a daughter of Akhenaton.

 Finally, there’s an attestation of the name Ankkheperure Meryaten.

So Darnell and Manassa’s interpretation of this whole thing is:

 In Year 12 of Akhenaton, Nefertiti becomes a coregent with her husband, adopting the praenomen Ankhkheperure but keeping Neferneferuaten as her nomen. Coregency is a well-know phenomenon in Egyptian history, although this would be the first time it ever occurred with a woman. Nefertiti sometimes uses the masculine form, Ankhkheperure, and sometimes the feminine form, Ankhetkheperure. This is also attested historically by Hatshepsut, who used both masculine and feminine forms of names and titles.

 After Akhenaton’s death, Nefertiti/Ankhkheperure/Ankhetkheperure continues to rule alone, taking her own eldest daughter Merytaten as “Great Royal Wife”. The authors contend this does not imply incestuous Lesbian relationship, arguing that the position of “Great Royal Wife” was necessary for various religious purposes.

 When Nefertiti/Ankhkheperure/Ankhetkheperure dies, her daughter Merytaten continues to rule alone, taking the titulary Ankhkheperure Meryaten (both masculine forms).

 Finally, Ankhkheperure Meryaten abdicates (either voluntarily or by force) and becomes the Great Royal Wife of Ankhkheperure Smenkhare, under her feminine name of Merytaten.

 Oh, and just to further confuse matters, one of Akhenaton/Nefertiti’s daughters is also named Neferneferuaten.

Well, I suppose it could be. It doesn’t have that much to do with the nominal topic of the book, although it’s interesting speculation. The best interpretation of the mess at the end of the Amarna period is that there just isn’t enough evidence to tell.

* For a final speculation, who’s buried in KV55? This tomb was discovered by the American amateur Egyptologist Theodore Davis in 1908; it contained badly water-damaged (but once spectacular) funerary equipment belonging to Tiye, Amenhotep III’s wife/Akhenaton’s mother, and an equally badly-damaged mummy. The mummy is in a rishi coffin (with the appearance of feathered wings wrapping around the body) characteristic of the Amarna period. The face and all the cartouches on the coffin were chiseled off in antiquity. The skeleton appeared to be male, but otherwise it was so beat up that not much could be determined. The general Egyptological consensus is that this is Smenkhare; Darnell and Manassa think it’s Akhenaton.

So after all this – interesting if not completely germane – we get to the actual topic of Amarna military history. As usual, the evidence is not abundant (except for the “Amarna letters”; see below). There appears to be a campaign against the Nubians by Djehutymose, the Viceroy of Kush under Akhenaton, and another by Horemheb as a general under Tutankhamen. There’s a recently discovered stela from the Kurkur oasis in Nubia documenting desert patrol activities under Tutankhamen, and some Tutankhamen temple block fragments showing Nubian prisoners. What the authors don’t mention is that the pharaohs were rather fond of usurping the monuments and the accomplishments of their predecessors, including exact duplications of battle scenes; thus inscriptions showing battles and prisoners don’t actually prove that they existed.

For the northern Egyptian empire, in Syria/Palestine, things are more interesting. In the 1880s, a peasant woman discovered a large batch of cuneiform tablets amid the ruins of Aketaten. These were the Amarna letters, Akhenaton’s diplomatic correspondence with Babylon, Mitanni, Hatti, and various city-states in Syria/Palestine. Egypt conquered Syria/Palestine early in the 18th Dynasty, but rather than overt occupation or colonization set up a patchwork of client states, with local rulers (they called themselves “kings” but the Egyptians called them “mayors”) and an Egyptian “advisor”. These acted as buffer states between Egypt and Mitanni, the strongest other power in the area, and were also valuable trade centers. The balance of power shifted when the Hittites under Suppiluiuma I crushed Mitanni, annexing most of it and setting up the remainder as their own client state, Khanigalbat, between them and Assyria.

The Amarna letters document various pleas and requests for military assistance by the Syria/Palestine states as they were picked off one by one by Amurru (the Biblical Amorites), corresponding roughly to the modern Syrian littoral. The most pathetic come from Ribaddi, king of Byblos, who remains fully loyal to Egypt as the Amurru absorb his neighbors. Eventually Ribaddi abandons his city, flees to Beirut, and the Amurru control the whole area.

The conventional interpretation of these events is that Akhenaton didn’t care about foreign policy, being only interested in his sun god. Under this theory, Amurru is seen as acting on behalf of the Hittites (who otherwise maintained scrupulous neutrality under a treaty, never attacking Egyptian client states directly). Darnell and Manassa put a different slant on things, suggesting that Ribaddi may have been sacrificed as part of a very conscious political strategy. Egypt may have felt more comfortable with one large (but still small compared to Hatti and Egypt) buffer state rather than a lot of tiny ones. The small city states would have been helpless against the military power of either Egypt or Hatti, and would presumably become aligned with one or the other, bringing the powers into direct confrontation; the Amurru, having gone to all that trouble to conquer their neighbors, were unlikely to turn around and give themselves to the Hittites (or to Egypt). Amurru was also powerful enough that neither state was could walk over it; it would have fallen to a concerted attack but not before the other power could send assistance. Egypt still retained the Palestinian area south of Beirut and therefore the major trading centers; the authors note that prevailing wind and current in the Mediterranean make it much easier to transport goods by ship south to the Delta than north to Anatolia. Unlike Nubia, Amurru was not important to Egypt as an intrinsic source of wealth and could therefore be let go without any loss.

Once again, it could be; it’s reasonable but it’s only the authors’ speculation – no evidence. It does make Akhenaton look less like a religious daydreamer and more like Henry Kissinger, if true.

I found this in the remainder bin for half price; it’s well worth it. It will be interesting to see if more archeological evidence turns up to support some of the claims.
… (más)
½
 
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setnahkt | Dec 31, 2017 |

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