Figure 10.4 The most elaborate depictions of Rameses III’s battles against the Sea People are carved on the outer wall of the Medinet Habu temple. They show the king and his troops subduing foreign attackers who are depicted in a chaotic mass. The images provide much detail on the weapons and headdresses of the enemies, which has inspired much speculation about their identities. This is a small part of a massive relief on the temple’s north wall that depicts battle in the Nile Delta. Source: Erich Lessing / Art Resource
Figure 10.5 The “Israel” stele of King Merenptah. Found in his funerary temple at Thebes was a granite stele, 10 ft (3 m) high, that he set up to celebrate his military victories over the Libyans. He reused a stele of Amenhotep III, and the inscription and image are carved on a rough surface. The mirror images show Amun giving a sword to Merenptah; on the left his wife Mut stands behind the god, on the right his son Khonsu. Traces of red, yellow, and blue paint are still visible. Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 31408. © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource
Figure 10.6 The images Rameses III commissioned to celebrate his victories over the Sea People are very detailed in their portrayal of the enemies. The weapons and other items are often very distinctive, and have inspired much research on who is represented. The headdress shown here has led to the identification of the man as a Peleset. Temple of Medinet Habu, 2nd pylon. Source: Erich Lessing / Art Resource
Figure 11.1 While the power of the kings of the 21st dynasty was much less than of those of the New Kingdom, the mortuary goods given them could rival those of earlier centuries. This is the top of the innermost sarcophagus in which King Psusennes I was buried at Tanis, made of solid silver and 185 cm long. The death mask inside it was made of gold. Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 85912. Source: DeA Picture Library / Art Resource
Figure 11.2 Found in his previously undisturbed tomb at Tanis, the gold mummy mask of King Psusennes I was inside three sarcophagi and shows the same amount of attention given to this king as to his more famous predecessor Tutankhamun. It is 45 cm high, 38 cm wide, and has silver and quartzite inlays. Because he was buried in the humid soil of the Delta, Psusennes’s mummy, unlike Tutankhamun’s, has disintegrated. Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 85913. Source: Werner Forman / Art Resource
Figure 11.3 When tomb robberies in the late New Kingdom and later threatened the remains of pharaohs and queens, priests from Thebes removed their mummies, hid them in caches, and identified the bodies with labels. This is the mummy of Rameses II, which was found in a cave in the cliff above Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el‐Bahri (DB 320) together with some 45 others, including those of Thutmose III and Sety I. His name and titles were written on the bandages in hieratic script. Egyptian Museum Cairo, JE 26214. Source: Scala / Art Resource
Figure 11.4 Although Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period had lost its impact abroad, some military activity is recorded. On the Bubastite portal of the Karnak temple King Sheshonq I celebrated his campaigns in Palestine and provided a detailed list of the cities he conquered. He used the standard means of representation for the defeated people, an oval with the name written out in it and on top the upper body of an enemy, arms tied behind the back. Thebes, Karnak Temple, first courtyard. Source: Erich Lessing / Art Resource
Figure 11.5 The God’s Wife of Amun at Thebes became a very important religious authority in the Third Intermediate Period and kings and rulers of the various political powers vied to get their sister or daughter the position. The leading status of the women in the Theban hierarchy is clear from the many representations created for them. This is an alabaster statue, 170 cm high, of Amenirdis I, who was incumbent to the position already in the mid‐8th century and held the office from about 714 to 700. She was the daughter of the Nubian king Kashta, whose influence in Egypt was so great that he could force her appointment onto the Theban priesthood. Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 3420. Source: Scala / Art Resource
Figure 11.6 In the 15th century the Egyptian king Thutmose III had founded a temple to Amun in Napata at the foot of a rock outcrop, the Gebel Barkal. Many centuries later the rulers of Napata maintained that cult and expanded the temple, still following the traditional Egyptian temple layout of courts with a row of sphinxes at the entrance. Source: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo
Figure 11.7 King Piy’s victory stele in every respect is a work of great artistic and literary skills. The text is carved on all the sides of the granite stele (180 cm high, 138 cm wide, and 43 cm thick), which must have stood in the center of a space at Gebel Barkal where it was discovered. The image at the top is traditional Egyptian in that it shows the Nubian as an Egyptian king with the gods Amun and Mut behind him. All the enemies who submit themselves are identified by name, those on the right with royal cartouches, all but one of those on the left as chiefs of Ma. Egyptian Museum Cairo JE 48862
Figure 12.1 King Esarhaddon of Assyria commemorated his invasion of Egypt with an inscribed diorite stele, 3.46 m high, which he set up in northern Syria. The relief depicts the Assyrian king holding two men with ropes, a Nubian who is generally thought to be Taharqo’s son or the king himself, and a Phoenician king (of Tyre or of Sidon). The defeated men are in a posture of supplication. The Assyrian inscription describes how Esarhaddon captured Memphis and took members of the Napatan royal family, including the crown prince, prisoner. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, VA2708. Source: Erich Lessing / Art Resource
Figure 12.2 In the Late Period, priests, bureaucrats, and others were still able to commission monumental tombs. At Asasif in western Thebes close to Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el‐Bahri are the remains of a group of them with massive entryways and intricate underground structures. The grandest tomb is of Mentuemhat, mayor of Thebes, who administered the southern region almost independently while Napata and Assyria fought over Egypt. Source: Magica / Alamy Stock Photo
Figure 12.3 The Nubian kings of Napata, both those who controlled Egypt and later ones, had themselves represented with exquisite artwork that followed Egyptian principles. In many respects these seven statues, excavated in a pit at Dukki Gel, continued the motifs of earlier rulers of Egypt, such as the pose, the crowns, and the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Like many Egyptian royal statues they are carved in granite and can be more than life‐sized (they are between 270 and 123 cm high). But there are details that make them recognizable as Nubian, such as the facial features, the double uraeus, and the ram’s head that appears as a pendant or decorative element of the clothing. Kerma Museum. Source: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo
Figure 12.4 Relief sculpture of the Late Period could be of very high quality and often imitated scenes from earlier periods. Many pieces in museums today were cut out of the tomb walls to be displayed as if they are small tableaux. The fragment shown here, 23.9 by 28.7 cm and carved in limestone, contains the unusual images of a woman pulling a thorn from another woman’s foot (much damaged in the top register) and a nursing mother picking up a fig (bottom register). It derives from an unknown tomb in Thebes (possibly Mentuemhat’s) and most likely copied paintings found in the 14th‐century tomb of a man called Menena in the same area. Its refinement shows how elites from the region could commission very skilled artisans to decorate their tombs. Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.74. Source: Brooklyn Museum
Figure 12.5 An example of the interest in the past is this inscription on stone commissioned by the Nubian king Shabaqo. The text purports to be the copy of an Old Kingdom papyrus with a creation story centered on the god Ptah. It was at the earliest composed in the 19th dynasty, however, and shows how the antiquity of a text was thought to give it authority. The damage on the stone is the result of its use as a millstone, which erased 33 of the 62 columns of text. It is made of basalt and measures 66 by 137 cm. British Museum, London EA498. Source: The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource
Figure 12.6 The period of independence from Persia in the 4th century was not one of organized national resistance against foreign rulers, but involved multiple families and individuals who claimed kinship, sometimes only over part of the country. One such claimant was Psammuthis, who in 392 for some two years controlled Thebes, where he presented himself as pharaoh. This sandstone