A fresh look at Amenhotep lll.

[A-Four]

A fresh look at Amenhotep lll

In 1976 an oceanographer, Dr Nick Fleming discovered an under water ancient city called Paulopetri, off the south east coast of Greeece. It is the oldest 'lost' city yet found and dates back to practically the time of Amenotep lll.

For some time now, I tried to study why this great ruler of Egypt, with so much power and wealth, would want to produce more statues of the god Sekhmet than all of the statues of him self and all the other gods put together. Most were either placed in or around his mortuary temple on the WB, or at his fantastic artistic temple, which is part of the Karnack complex. Well over 700 of these statues either seated of standing are believed to have come from his mortuary temple alone. Sekhmet, has always been seen as a powerful god throughout Egyptian history, during the period of the 18th Dynasty she is seen as the warrior, but also as protector of the two lands, and ultimately protector of the god King, being Amenotep lll.

In previous written work on this site, I have described the present day Malkata, as a sort of hunting lodge, Stan at the time disputed this, as I think he rightly pointed out that it was too elaborate, for such a thing. Then my question would be, well why build a palace on the edge of the desert, where such things as good quality drinking water, is not available. I am sure even the ancient Egyptians quickly learnt, that one must not drink canal water.

One other important factor is that after the first 20 year of his reign, we learn that the Crown Prince Thothmos, the son of Amenophis and Queen Tiy has died of some strange illness. From this period onwards the Pharaoh produced statuary on a massive scale even into deepest Sudan. Today many Egyptologists have failed to notice that this was the first Pharaoh to actually call himself 'Ra of Kings', in other words king of the gods. Inscriptions that can be seen today state 'the good god', never before seen by his predecessors. Many of the inscription placed at the base of the Sekhmet statues seem to state names of now long lost towns and villages in Egypt.

Most of the Egyptologists of old all felt shy when it came to suggesting that black people from the south successfully forced there way north, and established themselves as kings, not until the 25th Dynasty do we see this with the Nubian Pharaoh Piye 730 B.C.. Now we are certain that Yuya and Tuya indeed were Nubian, and were able in the own right to obtain high office, without mentioning there children's success.

It is my belief that what ever caused the Pauopetri disaster, probably by an earthquake that most obviously was on the Arabic fault line, had a disastrous effect throughout the Nile Valley, and beyond, which passes through the Nile Valley. As a result this would have brought about much of the diseases we know that can have a devastating effect on its people, on a scale as that in the Middle Ages in Europe, where whole villages were wiped out. Cattle was always seen as a mans wealth and power, I suspect that many rich families from Nubia took their power, being their herds, North to find grazing land, which suddenly were no longer available in their lands, perhaps as a direct result of a such disaster. Obviously as result of so much death, again like what happened in England, where suddenly inheritance was all around, we find that under this ruler Egypt finds great national wealth and power.

It is my belief that Amenhotep lll built his 'palace' on the very edge of the desert at, where he returned towards the latter part of his life, is because he still feared the diseases that perhaps would have still been around and more than likely taken from him, his eldest son. Studies on the mummies of Tutankhamen and the parents Queen Tiy's parents found traces of Maleria Tropica, and was more than likely to have caused their death. We also see that by placing the protection the Sekhmet statues around his own mortuary temple, he was indeed trying to protect the important spirit of himself with in that area, that would be so important to him in his afterlife.

From here on wards we can see quite clearly why his son Amenhotep lV, had little or no faith in the old gods, as was seen in Europe in the faith of Jesus, after the great plagues, and also why he moved to 'virgin' land, and saw himself not as a god but as a god, where powers came directly to HIM through the king of the god Ra.

[Yildez]

Any news on when his tomb in the Western Valley might be open?

[A-Four]

Its not any easy tomb to open up to the public Yildez, but if they did, it is well worth it, but these days, the authorities still gear everything for mass tourism.

It was my dream to get into Yuya and Tuya tomb, I knew there was very little to see but I had carefully studied the history of this tomb, but it still took me three years for them to unlock it for me, and that was in the old days,.....and any way they thought I was crazy, which helped. .

[Yildez]

Its not any easy tomb to open up to the public Yildez, but if they did, it is well worth it, but these days, the authorities still gear everything for mass tourism.

It was my dream to get into Yuya and Tuya tomb, I knew there was very little to see but I had carefully studied the history of this tomb, but it still took me three years for them to unlock it for me, and that was in the old days,.....and any way they thought I was crazy, which helped. .

You seem to be suggesting that it might be possible to visit Amenhotep's tomb? More info please as to the how! Really, really want to see it!

[A-Four]

I an sorry Yildez if I gave that impression. Years ago if you could prove you had a great interest in any tomb that was safe to go in, you could get the keys and have it opened for you. Then a certain boss came about from Cairo and took all the keys away.

Even now there are even sites in places where I once walked quite freely, in places like Abydos, that now require a payment of $5000, daft it may sound, but true. However, whether this is a sign of the future or not, I don't know but, I on my last visit was able to get into a place on the WB for the first time in almost 30 years. As an interested person I would love to tell you more, but I am sure you would agree, such information I give would used by others to their own advantage, and certainly not for the love of the tombs.

Check my subject post about the WB, which I hope will help you enjoy it more.

[Aromagician]

Yes I have always wondered if it was a plague or something that caused the move to a new place.
It would also encourage the king to close places where people met in large numbers.

I am always intrigued by Ahmed Osmans assertions that AMenhotep III was in fact King Solomon. And how that story might co-relate?

What I dont understand is why for such prominent figures their method of death is not recorded somewhere either within their country or in the surrounding borders?

[LivinginLuxor]

As living gods they would not die - they would pass to another dimension, so need to record their deaths.

However, Sequenre Tao II, who was killed in the first attempt to dethrone the Hyksos, and Rameses III, who died during the trial of the conspirators to murder him, were recorded in some way or other.

[Aromagician]

As ra or the aten does his essence then continue in the next king or son/sun?

[A-Four]

As ra or the aten does his essence then continue in the next king or son/sun?

I think we can all agree here that the answer would be yes. The 'seed' of the future Pharaoh would be held within the harem, and not with the ruling Pharaoh. A difficult system for many to understand, though I suspect very similar to the not so distant Ottomans.

[Aromagician]

I am not sure what you mean about the seed is held within the harem?

I met something more like the "divine essence" or mana. Such as passed down from Guru to guru, Or from spiritual master to another. It is a divine energy that has accumulated in one and is passed on at death to another.

Mana is a spiritual quality considered to have supernatural origin – a sacred impersonal force existing in the universe. Therefore to have mana is to have influence and authority, and efficacy – the power to perform in a given situation. Mana, Marett states, is a concentrated form of animatistic force found within any of these objects that confer power, strength, and success. For example, the Polynesians, believe in mana as a force inherent in all objects. This essential quality of mana is not limited to persons – folks, governments, places and inanimate objects can possess mana.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_A ... d_Religion

[LivinginLuxor]

As I understand it, pharaonic legitimacy comes through the female line. So concepts like mana did not apply in Ancient Egypt.

[Yildez]

Yes, my understanding too Stan. Pharoahs power was confirmed by marriage to the female blood line - sister, mother, daughter, sometimes more than one at the same time, as with Akhenaten. Hence Pharoahs like Ay and Horemheb, both of whom had no inherited right except through marriage.

[A-Four]

......However, having said all that we have about how a king or Queen becomes so, at that time, it seems to me that what we see, or should I say what we don't see in a ceremony, during the crowning of a the head of state in the U.K., may throw some light on Aromagician's case here.

During that coronation of all Kings and Queens of England, from before Henry Vlll to even the present day Queen, she was crowned and witnessed by her people, at that point she becomes Queen Elizabeth. Then there is a secret ceremony towards the end of the coronation, where the Queen is escorted by four pall bearers, under a canopy known as 'the cloth of gold' to take part in a very private ceremony, that was certainly not shown on T.V.

Queen Elizabeth moved to an area hidden behind the throne in Westminster Abbey, she stood on a highly ornate ancient floor*, and there, is anointed with holy water, as the light beams down from the high vaulted ceiling in this area. It is at this very moment that is supposed that her head is touched by the hand of God, and it is therefore from that moment that Queen Elizabeth becomes Queen Elizabeth ll, and under oath to be so until she dies.

As for jubilees in the old days in Egypt to the present day Queen Elizabeth, these are to give the monarch new invigoration that such public celebrations would bring.

* This floor is always covered and hidden from view, though I know it has recently been carefully restored.

[Aromagician]

Yes that is what I am getting at, tying in the spiritual beliefs with the physical transitions. One does not have to be a blood relative to inherit spiritual powers.

If he is in fact becoming the new Osiris, then you would expect a ritual bestowing that power from the deceased to the new King or ruler.

Looking at Horemhab, what right did he have to the divine throne? He had no divine connections? Was Tutankhamen the last of that divine line?

Do then they become "pretenders" of a ritual that was once real?

[A-Four]

Looking at Horemhab, what right did he have to the divine throne?

For more than one reason, I brought into my subject a reason behind a great disaster that befell Amenhotep lll, being a great plague, that obviously decimated, not just the poor, but priests and nobles alike, and if the pharaoh is god on earth, therefore it is he who is to blame, but no, like in Medieval England, the people blamed the Church. It is from this very point that the Roman Catholic Church in England begun to loose its almost solid power, not just with the king but also everyone in the kingdom.

Plagues continued to effect life in England for the next 100 years, and people found little help through the Church to rid them of this pestilence, by the time of Henry Vll, he begun to reduce dramatically the power and revenue of the Church, and although he died a devoted catholic, he certainly not only set the seeds, but also the plans for the desolation of the Church of Rome in England.

It was to be his son Henry Vlll, who would see the full plan carried out. The Pope in Rome already feared this, and bestowed upon Henry the title,.......'Defender of the Faith', to seek his loyalty, but it was too late. Henry urgently required cash and would soon use a flimsy excuse to rid him of Rome.

Above, is what I suspect occurred in Egypt, we constantly see the Temple engaged in similar activity with taxation on the people,, even in death the Ka priest had to be paid by relatives of the deceased to perform regular functions for the very soul, very similar to the ways of the Medieval Church in England. However even in Egypt we see reform where the Ka priest suddenly saw their 'work' doomed.

[A-Four]

He had no divine connections?

Neither did Henry Tudor when Richard lll was king, remembering the power devolved by the Pope, that a king rules by divine right was in force even at this period, but it did not prevent this 'b****** son' from having the king killed, (the only one thus so, since Harold ll at Hastings 1066.) on a battle-field, being Bosworth Field.

By the time Henry Tudor arrived with his army before the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, the man lost no time at all anointing him King, as he looked over the shoulder of the now King Henry Vll. Many argue, though I believe that at the end of his reign, this saw the end of the Medieval period, while others say it was with the last of the Plantagents.

With regards the end of 18th Dynasty, we see a similar picture again, we have the death of Tutankhamoun, the Temple still unsure of its future, this can be detected by the almost sure thing that Ay usurped the throne, but also the tomb of his predecessor. When Ay died I believe the general, Horomheb had the old high priest's body removed and destroyed as punishment for having the audacity to believe that he was 'the living Horus'.

Of course, while Ay was alive I am sure that Horomheb had found his way into the harem by now, if not even before Ay had become king.

[LivinginLuxor]

"When Tutankhamun died while still a teenager, Horemheb had already been officially designated as the rpat or iry-pat (basically the "Hereditary or Crown Prince") and idnw ("Deputy of the King" in the entire land) by the child pharaoh; these titles are found inscribed in Horemheb's then private Memphite tomb at Saqqara which dates to the reign of Tutankhamun"

"The aged Vizier Ay sidelined Horemheb's claim to the throne and instead succeeded Tutankhamun, likely because Horemheb was in Asia with the army at the time of Tutankhamun's death. No objects belonging to Horemheb was found in Tutankhamun's tomb, whereas items donated by other high-ranking officials such as Maya and Nakhtmin were found in tomb KV62 by Egyptologists. Further, Tutankhamun's queen, Ankhesenamun, refused to marry Horemheb, a commoner, and so make him king of Egypt.[9] Having pushed Horemheb's claims aside, Ay proceeded to nominate the aforementioned Nakhtmin, who was possibly Ay's son or adopted son, to succeed him rather than Horemheb.[10][11]

After Ay's reign, which lasted for a little over four years, Horemheb managed to seize power presumably from his position as Commander of the Army, to assume what he must have perceived to be his just reward for having ably served Egypt under Tutankhamun and Ay. Horemheb quickly removed Naktmin's rival claim to the throne and arranged to have Ay's WV23 tomb desecrated by smashing the latter's sarcophagus, systematically chiselling out Ay's name and figure out of the tomb walls and probably destroying Ay's mummy.[12] However, he spared Tutankhamun's tomb from vandalism presumably because it was Tutankhamun who had promoted his rise to power and chosen him to be his heir. Horemheb also usurped and enlarged Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu for his own use and erased Ay's titulary on the back of a 17 foot colossal statue by carving his own titulary in its place"

Quotes from the lengthy wikipedia article on Horemheb. The first is telling, as he was designated successor by Tutankhamen. (although as chief advisor to the young pharaoh, he could have easily designated himself!) Once enthroned, he dated his accession to the death of Amenhotep III, thus removing the entire Amarna period from history, and confusing historians for many years.

An interesting character, to say the least.

[Aromagician]

If the latest claim that Tiye was first cousin to AMenhotep III is true, then Ay probably did have a stronger claim to the throne as he would have been descended from Mutemwiya.

As commander Horemhab could have easily used his power to muscle his way in.

But as such, would any actual divine power have been transmitted? By this I am talking about a palpable force. Not just a title of divinity, but an actual transmission of divine power.

[LivinginLuxor]

From Horemheb's time onwards until the breakdown of the pharaonic kingdoms during the invasions, the power certainly was not divine! As Horemheb died childless, he picked Parmesse, his vizier to be his heir - no divine power transfer through the female line. Parmesse was then approved by the Amun priesthood, and became Ramesses I, forming the new 19th dynasty, who had no relationship with the 'divine' pharaohs, although they may have used their attributes to legitimate their rulership.

[A-Four]

I just want to bring us back to the initial Amenhotep lll period, with regards to what l see as the most likely cause of the fall of Amoun and the other Gods, some disaster that would certainly brought on a plague.

The only place where we have found a mass grave in Luxor is in the foothills of Deir el-Bahari, this was in the early 1900's at the so called Mortuary Temple of Mentuhotep l, where over 35 warriors, including their spears, were discovered buried together. I believe this place to be a temple to the glorious dead of Egypt, and most likely the same being so for the so called Mortuary Temple of Tuthmosis lll, though no bodies have been discovered here, though again for obvious reasons. In addition to this, the Pharaoh already had a Mortuary Temple else where in the valley. I have never believed that any of the Temples in this area are mortuary. A simple straight forward look at Hatshepsuit Temple, no way was that a Mortuary Temple, a little common sense is required.

When we look for a grave for a plague victim, we should look for mass graves, so we are told. There is a lot of myth around about this, even here in London during the Great Plagues of the Medieval Period and that of 1665. Black Heath, five miles to East of the City of London, and on the opposite side of the Thames, is famous as being the main burial ground for either, or perhaps both such plagues historians are not sure, hence its name, and many tourists come from different parts of the world to see it, even the name Black Heath, says it all. ACTUALLY, the truth is, it is not and never has been a plague pit at any time,......its all a myth. The truth is, that its dense quality soil is rich and BLACK, unlike most of the clay soil in other parts of London.

When we look at common sense here, we simple know that a continuous cart load of bodies are not going to be carried off several miles, and over a river to be buried, while the fear of death is all around the people who carry out this work. Evidence has shown that these bodies were buried within the city, where today, we usually find hidden away small green areas. I recently learnt that where my own garden is now, just behind the old Royal Mint, near the Tower of London, was part of a plague pit from 1665.

We should look at it that as with Egypt, here in London The gods and Jesus had forsaken these wretched souls, and to be quickly be forgotten, perhaps so, but those that lived would see the faith that favoured only the powerful. So in Egypt after the return of the old religion under the authority of Ay, I believe this became a true State religion only, at the eb-and-flow of the Pharaohs, where on the tomb of these rulers, we see the art work move from the sublime to the ridiculous by the end of the 20th Dynasty. The 21st Dynasty Pharaohs of Upper Egypt were the High Priest of Karnack,................think about it, a joke in itself.


P.S. - I suppose what I am trying to say, is that don't believe all those things you read in those old books, use your own mind to study what in modern times, can be easily seen if you open your eyes, they say Wikapedia knows all,.......here there's another joke for you.