Amenhotep III: Egypt at the Height of Its Wealth and Power

Amenhotep III was king of Egypt for about 38 years, usually dated c. 1391–1353 BC, during the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. His reign was largely peaceful and exceptionally prosperous: Egypt controlled Nubia’s gold and much of the Levant, and the king spent that wealth on colossal temples and statues and on gifts to foreign kings. He was the father of Akhenaten and the grandfather of Tutankhamun, and his reign marks the high point of Egyptian power and luxury before the upheavals of the Amarna period.

Background and accession

Amenhotep III was the son of Thutmose IV and a secondary wife, Mutemwiya. He inherited an empire built by his great-grandfather Thutmose III, whose campaigns had made Egypt the dominant power from Nubia to Syria. Thutmose IV had made peace with Egypt’s old rival Mitanni in northern Syria, sealing it with a royal marriage.

Amenhotep came to the throne young, probably around the age of 10 to 12. Within his first two years he had married Tiye, a woman of non-royal birth from Akhmim, and made her his Great Royal Wife. She remained prominent throughout his reign.

Commemorative scarabs

Early in his reign the king issued large stone scarabs inscribed with news of royal events, which were distributed across Egypt and beyond. Five series are known. The marriage scarab names Tiye and her parents Yuya and Tjuyu. A lion-hunt scarab claims that the king killed 102 lions in his first ten years, and a wild-bull scarab describes a hunt of a herd of cattle.

A scarab of year 10 announces the arrival of Gilukhepa, daughter of the Mitannian king Shuttarna II, with 317 women of her household. Another of year 11 records the digging of a large lake for Queen Tiye. These scarabs are an unusual form of royal publicity and a valuable source for the early reign.

Diplomacy and foreign brides

Amenhotep III led no major war in Asia, although a campaign in Nubia is recorded in his fifth year. Instead he dealt with the other great powers through letters, gifts and marriages. The Amarna Letters, the clay-tablet archive found at his son’s capital, include his correspondence with the kings of Babylon, Mitanni, Arzawa in Anatolia and Alashiya (Cyprus).

The letters show a system in which the “Great Kings” called each other brother and traded gold, horses, chariots, lapis lazuli and craftsmen. Amenhotep married Gilukhepa and later Tadukhepa, daughter of the Mitannian king Tushratta, as well as a sister and a daughter of the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I. He refused, however, to send an Egyptian princess abroad, a point the Babylonian king complained about in one letter.

Building programme

Amenhotep III built on a scale few pharaohs matched. At Thebes he added a great colonnade and courts at Luxor Temple, built the Third Pylon and other works at Karnak, and laid out a large temple to the goddess Mut, filled with hundreds of seated and standing statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

On the west bank he built the largest royal mortuary temple ever constructed in Egypt, at Kom el-Hettan. It was later quarried for stone and damaged by floods and earthquakes; its best-known remains are the two colossal seated statues of the king called the Colossi of Memnon, each about 18 metres high. Nearby he built the palace city of Malkata, with royal apartments, a festival hall and a vast artificial harbour.

In Nubia he built temples at Soleb, for himself as a living god, and at Sedeinga for Queen Tiye. More statues survive of Amenhotep III than of any other Egyptian king, with estimates of over 250 royal statues. Much of the work was overseen by the official Amenhotep son of Hapu, who was later revered as a sage and even worshipped as a healing god.

Jubilees, family and death

The king celebrated sed festivals, ancient royal jubilees meant to renew his power, in his 30th, 34th and 37th years. These were lavish events, recorded in the tombs of officials such as Kheruef. In art of his later years the king was increasingly shown as a god, linked with the sun.

He had at least two sons by Tiye. The eldest, Prince Thutmose, held high religious office at Memphis but died before his father. The younger became king as Amenhotep IV and later took the name Akhenaten. There were also several daughters, including Sitamun, who was elevated to the rank of Great Royal Wife late in the reign.

Amenhotep III died in or after his 38th regnal year, probably in his late 40s or around 50. Scholars still debate whether he shared a long co-regency with his son; most now think any overlap was short or did not occur. He was buried in tomb WV22 in the Western Valley of the Kings, and his mummy was found in 1898 in a cache of royal mummies in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35).

The sources of Egypt’s wealth

The prosperity of the reign rested on several foundations. Egypt controlled Nubia as far as the Fourth Cataract, and its gold mines in the Eastern Desert and Nubia supplied more gold than any other state in the Near East. The Amarna Letters show foreign kings repeatedly asking for gold, which they believed to be almost unlimited in Egypt.

The Levantine city-states paid tribute and supplied timber, metals and other goods, while trade reached the Aegean: objects with Amenhotep III’s name have been found at Mycenae and other Greek sites, and a statue base at Kom el-Hettan lists Aegean place names. A series of good Nile floods and a long period without major wars allowed the state to direct huge amounts of labour into building.

The king’s mummy and health

The mummy identified as Amenhotep III shows a heavy-set man with poor teeth and dental abscesses, conditions that may have caused him pain in later life. A letter from Tushratta of Mitanni reports that a statue of the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh was sent to Egypt late in the reign, and some historians suggest it was meant to help the ailing king, although the letter itself does not say so explicitly. The identification of the mummy, which was rewrapped by priests centuries after his death, was confirmed to the satisfaction of most researchers by the 2010 DNA study of the royal family.

Legacy

Under his son, the traditional cults Amenhotep III had lavishly supported were sidelined in favour of the Aten, the sun disc (Akhenaten and the Amarna Revolution). Yet many trends of the Amarna age, including the emphasis on the sun god and the prominence of the queen, began under Amenhotep III. Later generations remembered his reign as a golden age, and Greek visitors to Thebes identified one of his colossi with the hero Memnon.

Timeline

• c. 1391 BC: Amenhotep III becomes king as a boy.
• Year 2: Marriage to Tiye is announced on the marriage scarabs.
• Year 5: A campaign in Nubia is recorded.
• Year 10: The Mitannian princess Gilukhepa arrives in Egypt.
• Year 11: A lake is dug for Queen Tiye.
• Year 30: The king celebrates his first sed festival at Malkata.
• Years 34 and 37: Second and third jubilees.
• c. 1353 BC: Amenhotep III dies; Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) succeeds him.
• 1898: His mummy is found in the KV35 cache by Victor Loret.

Why it matters

Amenhotep III’s reign shows Egypt at its richest and most confident, an empire that preferred diplomacy and display to war. His monuments still dominate Luxor, his letters open a window on the first international system of great powers, and his family set the stage for the most dramatic religious experiment in Egyptian history.