Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy by Aidan Dodson

Author:Aidan Dodson [Dodson, Aidan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9789774166334
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2014-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

Fig. 107. Akhenaten leads his mother Tiye to the temple. Amarna, tomb of Huya (TA1).

Rib-Addi was the author of the largest single group of letters to the Egyptian king. He was constantly demanding military aid against rivals whom he also denounced as traitors to the pharaoh. That this was never granted has been used at one extreme to argue for a pacifist policy on the part of Akhenaten, and at the other to interpret this result as deriving from an Egyptian assessment that the danger to their interests was marginal and that Rib-Addi was simply trying to make use of the Egyptians for his personal vendettas.

Rather, Egyptian policy seems to have been to refrain from intervening in disputes between their vassals, and acquiescing to forced changes of rule, provided that the territory in question continued to owe allegiance to Egypt. Thus, when much of Rib-Addi’s territory was seized by Aziru of Amurru (son and successor of Abdi-Ashirta, who had been murdered), and Rib-Addi deposed by his own brother, Aziru is rebuked not so much for his conquests but for handing over the fugitive Rib-Addi to his enemies.111 Nevertheless, Aziru was summoned to Egypt to report personally on his actions, and after some delays came and did so.112

On the other hand, Hittite expansion was clearly a genuine problem in the northern Syrian sphere but, as previously noted (see p. 81), the correlation of the activities of the Hittite king Shuppiluliuma I with other material presents significant issues. However, substantive problems between Egypt and Hatti seem not to have crystallized until the time of Akhenaten’s successors, when a direct conflict erupted that was not finally extinguished until the reign of Rameses II.113

The dowager queen Tiye seems to have lived into the second decade of her son’s reign, being depicted a number of times with her son and his family, plus Baketaten,114 in the tomb-chapel of her steward, Huya (TA1—fig. 107), a sepulcher that also contains a scene bearing an explicit date in Year 12 (see just below). It is presumably from this stage in her career that a well-known wooden head derives (fig. 108),115 one of a number of pieces that seem to mark a transition from the revolutionary Amarna style to a ‘mature’ variant, which replaces the distortions of the former with a more naturalistic approach, while still retaining the wider physiognomological elements. Major sources of provenanced material of this style are Amarna houses P47.2 (the sculptor Thutmose—fig. 109),116 O47.16a, and O47.20,117 from which derive some of the most famous items of sculpture of the reign (fig. 110). Other items stylistically from the same group are also known (e.g., fig. 111).

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