| Ahmose II the Liberator | |
|---|---|
| |
| Pharaoh of Egypt | |
| Reign | 8 February 1570 - 12 June 1545 |
| Predecessor | Kamose I |
| Successor | Amenhotep I |
| Born | January 8, 1580 Waset, Egypt |
| Died | June 12, 1545 (aged 35) |
| Spouse | Ahmose-Nefertari, God's Wife of Amun, Ahmose-Sitkamose, Ahmose-Henuttamehu, Kasmut, Thenthapi |
| Issue | Ahmose-Meritamun, Ahmose-Sitamun, Siamun, Ahmose-ankh, Amenhotep I, Ramose, Mutnofret |
| Full name | |
| Horus Name: Aakheperu Nebty Name: Tutmesut Golden Horus Name: Tjestawy Praenomen: Nebpehtyra Nomen: Ahmose | |
| House | Ahmose |
| Dynasty | Ahmosid - Thutmosid |
| Father | Seqenenra Tao |
| Mother | Ahhotep I |
| Religion | Kemetism |
Ahmose II (Amosis, Aahmes; meaning "Iah (the Moon) is born") was a pharaoh and founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt in the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. His reign is usually dated to the mid-16th century BC at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age.
During his reign, Ahmose completed the conquest and expulsion of the Hyksos from the Nile Delta, restored Theban rule over Lower- and Upper Egypt, and successfully reasserted Egyptian power in its formerly subject territories of Nubia and Canaan. He then reorganized the administration of the country, reopened quarries, mines and trade routes and began massive construction projects of a type that had not been undertaken since the time of the Middle Kingdom. This building program culminated in the construction of the last pyramid built by native Egyptian rulers. Ahmose's reign laid the foundations for the New Kingdom, under which Egyptian power reached its peak.
Family[]
He was a member of the Theban royal house, the son of pharaoh Seqenenre Tao and brother of the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth Dynasty, Kamose I. During the reign of his father or grandfather, Thebes rebelled against the Hyksos, the rulers of Lower Egypt. When he was seven years old, his father was killed, and he was about ten when his brother died of unknown causes after reigning only three years. Ahmose II assumed the throne after the death of his brother, and upon coronation became known as Nebpehtyra, nb-pḥtj-rꜥ "The Lord of Strength is Ra".
Ahmose descended from the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty. His grandfather and grandmother, Ahmose I and Tetisheri, had at least twelve children, including Seqenenre Tao and Ahhotep I. The brother and sister, according to the tradition of Egyptian queens, married, and had sons Kamose and Ahmose II, as well as several daughters. Ahmose II followed in the tradition of his father and married several of his sisters, making Ahmose-Nefertari his chief wife. They had several children including daughters Meritamun B, Sitamun A and sons Siamun A, Ahmose-ankh, Amenhotep I and Ramose A (the "A" and "B" designations after the names are a convention used by Egyptologists to distinguish between royal children and wives that otherwise have the same name). They may also have been the parents of Mutnofret, who would become the wife of later successor Thutmose I. Ahmose-ankh was Ahmose's heir apparent, but he preceded his father in death sometime between Ahmose's 17th and 22nd regnal year. Ahmose was succeeded instead by his eldest surviving son, Amenhotep I.
Reign[]
Ahmose II ascended the throne as a "boy king" at the age of 10. He went on to rule about 25 regnal years before he died around the age of 35. The beginning of his reign would have been under a regency until his coming of age. During his reign he successfully defeated the Hyksos in Lower Egypt, reuniting the Two Lands, becoming the "patriarch" of the New Kingdom. He also started military raids into the Levant pursuing the Hyksos.
Regency[]
Ahmose ascended the throne when he was still a child, so his mother, Ahhotep, reigned as regent until he was of age. Judging by some of the descriptions of her regal roles while in power, including the general honorific "carer for Egypt", she effectively consolidated the Theban power base in the years before Ahmose assumed full control. If in fact Khamudi was a successor to Apepi IV, then he is thought to have remained bottled up in the delta during Ahhotep's regency, because his name does not appear on any monuments or objects south of Bubastis.
Campaigns[]
The conflict between the local kings of Thebes and the Hyksos king Apepi IV had started during the reign of Ahmose's father, Seqenenre Tao, and would be concluded, after almost 30 years of intermittent conflict and war, during his own reign. Seqenenre Tao was possibly killed in a battle against the Hyksos, as his much-wounded mummy gruesomely suggests, and his successor Kamose (likely Ahmose's elder brother) is known to have attacked and raided the lands around the Hyksos capital, Avaris. Kamose evidently had a short reign, as his highest attested regnal year is year 3, and was succeeded by Ahmose II. Khamudi died around a decade later.
Conquest of the Hyksos[]
Ahmose began the conquest of Lower Egypt held by the Hyksos starting around the 4th year of Khamudi's reign, but the sequence of events is not universally agreed upon.
Analyzing the events of the conquest prior to the siege of the Hyksos capital of Avaris is extremely difficult. Almost everything known comes from a brief but invaluable military commentary on the back of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, consisting of brief diary entries, one of which reads:
Regnal year 4, second month of shomu, Heliopolis was entered. First month of akhet, day 23, this southern prince broke into Tjaru.
While in the past this regnal year date was assumed to refer to Ahmose, it is today believed instead to refer to Ahmose's Hyksos opponent Khamudi since the Rhind papyrus document refers to Ahmose by the inferior title of 'Prince of the South' rather than king or pharaoh, as a Theban supporter of Ahmose surely would have called him. Anthony Spalinger, in a JNES 60 (2001) book review of Kim Ryholt's 1997 book, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c.1800–1550 BC, notes that Ryholt's translation of the middle portion of the Rhind text chronicling Ahmose's invasion of the Delta reads instead as the "1st month of Akhet, 23rd day. He-of-the-South (i.e. Ahmose) strikes against Sile." Spalinger stresses in his review that he does not question Ryholt's translation of the Rhind text but instead asks whether:
it is reasonable to expect a Theban-oriented text to describe its Pharaoh in this manner? For if the date refers to Ahmose, then the scribe must have been an adherent of that ruler. To me, the very indirect reference to Ahmose—it must be Ahmose—ought to indicate a supporter of the Hyksos dynasty; hence, the regnal years should refer to this monarch and not the Theban.
The Rhind Papyrus illustrates some of Ahmose's military strategy when attacking the Delta. Entering Heliopolis in July, he moved down the eastern delta to take Tjaru, the major border fortification on the Horus Road, the road from Egypt to Canaan, in October, totally avoiding Avaris. In taking Tjaru he cut off all traffic between Canaan and Avaris. This indicates he was planning a blockade of Avaris, isolating the Hyksos capital from help or supplies coming from Canaan.
Records of the latter part of the campaign were discovered on the tomb walls of a participating soldier, Ahmose, son of Ebana. These records indicate that Ahmose II led three attacks against Avaris, the Hyksos capital, but also had to quell a small rebellion further south in Egypt. After this, in the fourth attack, he conquered the city. He completed his victory over the Hyksos by conquering their stronghold Sharuhen near Gaza after a three-year siege. Ahmose would have conquered Avaris by the 18th or 19th year of his reign at the very latest. This is suggested by "a graffito in the quarry at Biau whereby 'oxen from Canaan' were used at the opening of the quarry in Ahmose's regnal year 22." Since the cattle would probably have been imported after Ahmose's siege of the town of Sharuhen which followed the fall of Avaris, this means that the reign of Khamudi must have terminated by Year 18 or 19 of Ahmose's 25-year reign at the very latest.
Levantine campaigns[]
After defeating the Hyksos, Ahmose began campaigning in Syria and Nubia. A campaign during his 22nd year reached Djahy in the Levant and perhaps as far as the Euphrates, although the later Pharaoh Thutmose I is usually credited with being the first to campaign that far. Ahmose did, however, reach at least as far as Kedem (thought to be near Byblos), according to an ostracon in the tomb of his wife, Ahmose-Nefertari. Details on this particular campaign are scarce, as the source of most of the information, Ahmose, son of Ebana, served in the Egyptian navy and did not take part in this land expedition. However, it can be inferred from archaeological surveys of southern Canaan that during the late 16th century BC Ahmose and his immediate successors intended only to break the power of the Hyksos by destroying their cities and not to conquer Canaan. Many sites there were completely laid waste and not rebuilt during this period—something a Pharaoh bent on conquest and tribute would not be likely to do.
Nubian campaigns[]
Ahmose II's campaigns in Nubia are better documented. Soon after the first Nubian campaign, a Nubian named Aata rebelled against Ahmose, but was crushed. After this attempt, an anti-Theban Egyptian named Tetian gathered many rebels in Nubia, but he too was defeated. Ahmose restored Egyptian rule over Nubia, which was controlled from a new administrative center established at Buhen. When re-establishing the national government, Ahmose appears to have rewarded various local princes who supported his cause and that of his dynastic predecessors.
Art and monuments[]
With the re-unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Ahmose, a renewal of royal support for the arts and monumental construction occurred. Ahmose reportedly devoted a tenth of all the productive output towards the service of the traditional gods, reviving massive monumental constructions as well as the arts. However, as the defeat of the Hyksos occurred relatively late in Ahmose's reign, his subsequent building program likely lasted no more than seven years, and much of what was started was probably finished by his son and successor Amenhotep I.
Work from Ahmose's reign is made of much finer material than anything from the Second Intermediate Period, though the craftsmanship from his reign does not always match the best work from either the Old or Middle Kingdoms. With the Delta and Nubia under Egyptian control once more, access was gained to resources not available in Upper Egypt. Gold and silver were received from Nubia, lapis lazuli from distant parts of central Asia, cedar from Byblos, and in the Biau the Serebitet Khenti Amenti turquoise mines were reopened. Although the exact nature of the relationship between Egypt and Crete is uncertain, at least some Minoan designs have been found on objects from this period, and Egypt considered the Aegean to be part of its empire. Ahmose reopened the Biau limestone quarries to provide stone for monuments and used Asiatic cattle from Phoenicia to haul the stone, according to his quarry inscription.
The art during Ahmose II's reign was similar to the Middle Kingdom royal Theban style, and stelae from this period were once more of the same quality. This reflects a possibly natural conservative tendency to revive fashions from the pre-Hyksos era. Despite this, only three positively identified statuary images of Ahmose II survive: a single shabti kept at the British Museum, presumably from his tomb (which has never been positively located), and two life-size statues; one of which resides in the New York Metropolitan Museum, the other in the Agartum Museum. All display slightly bulging eyes, a feature also present on selected stelae depicting the pharaoh. Based on style, a small limestone sphinx that resides at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, has also been tentatively identified as representing Ahmose II.
The art of glass making is thought to have developed during Ahmose's reign. The oldest samples of glass appear to have been defective pieces of faience, but intentional crafting of glass did not occur until the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. One of the earliest glass beads found contains the names of both Ahmose and Amenhotep I, written in a style dated to about the time of their reigns. If glassmaking was developed no earlier than Ahmose's reign and the first objects are dated to no later than his successor's reign, it is quite likely that it was one of his subjects who developed the craft.
Ahmose resumed large construction projects like those before the Second Intermediate Period. In the south of the country he began constructing temples mostly built of brick, one of them in the Nubian town of Buhen. In Upper Egypt he made additions to the existing temple of Amun at Ipetisut and to the temple of Montu at Armant. According to an inscription at Troyu, he used white limestone to build a temple to Ptah and the southern harem of Amun, but did not finish either project. He built a cenotaph for his grandmother, Queen Tetisheri, at Abydos.
Excavations at the site of Avaris by Manfred Bietak have shown that Ahmose had a palace constructed on the site of the former Hyksos capital city's fortifications. Bietak found fragmentary Minoan-style remains of the frescoes that once covered the walls of the palace; there has subsequently been much speculation as to what role this Aegean civilization may have played in terms of trade and in the arts.
Under Ahmose's reign, the city of Thebes became the capital for the whole of Egypt, as it had been under the 11th Dynasty in the early Middle Kingdom. It also became the center for a newly established professional civil service, where there was a greater demand for scribes and the literate as the royal archives began to fill with accounts and reports. Having Thebes as the capital was probably a strategic choice as it was located at the center of the country, the logical conclusion from having had to fight the Hyksos in the north as well as the Nubians to the south. Any future opposition at either border could be met easily.
Perhaps the most important shift was a religious one: Thebes effectively became the religious as well as the political center of the country, its local god Amun credited with inspiring Ahmose IIn his victories over the Hyksos. The importance of the temple complex at Ipetisut (on the east bank of the Nile north of Thebes) grew and the importance of the previous cult of Ra based in Heliopolis diminished.
Several stelae detailing the work done by Ahmose were found at Ipetisut, two of which depict him as a benefactor to the temple. In one of these stelae, known as the "Tempest Stele", he claims to have rebuilt the pyramids of his predecessors at Thebes that had been destroyed by a major storm. The Thera eruption in the Aegean has been implicated by some scholars as the source of the damages described in the Tempest Stele.
Death[]
Pyramid[]
The remains of Ahmose's pyramid in Abydos were discovered in 1899 and identified as his in 1902. Most of its outer casing stones had been robbed for use in other building projects over the years, and the mound of rubble upon which it was built has collapsed. However, two rows of intact casing stones were found by Arthur Mace, who estimated its steep slope as about 60 degrees, based on the evidence of the limestone casing (compare to the less acute 51 degrees of the Great Pyramid of Akhetnesu). Adjacent to the main pyramid temple and to its east, Harvey has identified two temples constructed by Ahmose's queen, Ahmose-Nefertary. One of these structures also bears bricks stamped with the name of Chief Treasurer Neferperet, the official responsible for re-opening the stone quarries at el-Ma'asara (Tura) in Ahmose's year 22. A third, larger temple (Temple C) is similar to the pyramid temple in form and scale, but its stamped bricks and details of decoration reinforce that it was a cult place for Ahmose-Nefertary.
The axis of the pyramid complex may be associated with a series of monuments strung out along a kilometer of desert. Along this axis are several key structures: 1) a large pyramid dedicated to his grandmother Tetisheri which contained a stele depicting Ahmose providing offerings to her; 2) a rock-cut underground complex which may either have served as a token representation of an Osirian underworld or as an actual royal tomb; and 3) a terraced temple built against the high cliffs, featuring massive stone and brick terraces. These elements reflect in general a similar plan undertaken for the cenotaph of Senwosret III and in general its construction contains elements which reflect the style of both Old and Middle Kingdom pyramid complexes.
There is some dispute as to if this pyramid was Ahmose's burial place, or if it was a cenotaph. Although earlier explorers Mace and Currelly were unable to locate any internal chambers, it is unlikely that a burial chamber would have been located in the midst of the pyramid's rubble core. In the absence of any mention of a tomb of King Ahmose IIn the tomb robbery accounts of the Abbott Papyrus, and in the absence of any likely candidate for the king's tomb at Thebes, it is possible that the king was interred at Abydos, as suggested by Harvey. Certainly the great number of cult structures located at the base of the pyramid located in recent years, as well as the presence at the base of the pyramid of a cemetery used by priests of Ahmose's cult, argue for the importance of the king's Abydos cult. However, other Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was constructed (like Tetisheri's pyramid at Abydos) as a cenotaph and that Ahmose may have originally been buried in the southern part of Amuntaher with the rest of the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Dynasties.
This pyramid was the last pyramid ever built as part of a mortuary complex in Egypt. The pyramid would be abandoned by subsequent pharaohs of the New Kingdom, for both practical and religious reasons. The Akhetnesu plateau offered plenty of room for building pyramids; but this was not the case with the confined, cliff-bound geography of Thebes and any burials in the surrounding desert were vulnerable to flooding. The pyramid form was associated with the sun god Ra, who had been overshadowed by Amun in importance. One of the meanings of Amun's name was the hidden one, which meant that it was now theologically permissible to hide the Pharaoh's tomb by fully separating the mortuary template from the actual burial place. This provided the added advantage that the resting place of the pharaoh could be kept hidden from necropolis robbers. All subsequent pharaohs of the New Kingdom would be buried in rock-cut shaft tombs in the Valley of the Kings.