by
Damien F. Mackey
“[Toby Wilkinson] devotes only a few paragraphs to the short reign of the hapless Tutankhamen but spends many pages on the rise to power of the general Horemheb,
who set the stage for the Ramesside Dynasty, the one that established Egypt
as a great imperial power”.
Kathryn Lang
I am enjoying reading select bits and pieces of Toby Wilkinson’s large (nearly 650 pages) book, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra (Bloomsbury, 2010) – {even though it is based on the standard conventional dates} - because it is much easier reading than its forbidding size might at first suggest.
Something like, ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’.
But what Kathryn Lang has written about Wilkinson’s meagre treatment of Tutankhamen, “only a few paragraphs”, is generous compared with his treatment of King Nebuchednezzar who actually conquered Egypt. As we shall see below, Wilkinson allows him only one mention.
Cambridge professor and eminent Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson, author of six earlier major works on ancient Egypt, has put four millennia of Egyptian lore into a lively, accessible one-volume history.
Beginning with the prehistoric peoples of the eastern Sahara who created Egypt’s “Stonehenge” at Nabta Playa, Wilkinson proceeds chronologically through the tumults and triumphs of the Pharaohs up to the final days of Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic ruler, who spent her final intrigue-filled days in the decadent and cosmopolitan capital of Alexandria.
Written in informal, often colloquial language, Wilkinson’s history bristles with detail. Nearly 500 pages long, it’s a page-turner for anyone even modestly interested in his subject. For the more scholarly reader, he’s included a lengthy bibliographic essay and extensive bibliography, and at the front of the volume he’s provided a helpful nine-page timeline listing all of Egypt’s rulers through the Ptolemies.
In his introduction, Wilkinson says he’s become “increasingly uneasy” about ancient Egypt’s “darker side.” He intends this book to counterbalance the view that Egyptian rulers were benevolent despots and that life was good in the land of the Pharaohs. He shows in vivid and sometimes gruesome detail the brutality and ruthlessness of the kings, who came to see themselves not just as the gods’ representatives on Earth, but as living gods themselves.
His thesis is that the Pharaoh and the ruling class prospered on the backs of a peasant population that was illiterate, overtaxed and underpaid. The masses accepted this state of affairs because they believed their godlike kings would assure their safe passage from this brutish earthly existence into the heavenly one of the next.
At a fast clip, Wilkinson spins fascinating tales: of the first Pharaoh Narmer’s unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into a magnificent nation-state headquartered in the capital city of Memphis; of the astounding engineering feats and prodigious 20-year labors of 10,000 workers to build Khufu’s Great Pyramid of Giza; of the Middle Kingdom’s golden age of literature and the arts. He lingers on the 18th Dynasty, the “high-water mark of pharaonic civilization.” He tells of the accession through murder of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and the rise and fall of the heretic king Akhenaten and his beauteous wife Nefertiti, who dared to banish all the gods but one, the solar god Aten.
He devotes only a few paragraphs to the short reign of the hapless Tutankhamen but spends many pages on the rise to power of the general Horemheb, who set the stage for the Ramesside Dynasty, the one that established Egypt as a great imperial power.
On through the centuries Wilkinson gallops, through bitter bloodshed and uncertain peacetimes, through ruler-sanctioned robbery of the earlier Pharaohs’ tombs, through the political fragmentation of a once-mighty empire, from the invasions of the Libyans in 1209 B.C. to the Roman conquest of 30 B.C.
Wilkinson’s is a full and rich, if hurried, march through the centuries of ancient Egypt’s glory days and ultimate domination by newer superpowers. It is also, Wilkinson warns, a cautionary tale for us as we witness the power politics of contemporary despots in the region today. ….
[End of quote]
The author Toby Wilkinson, I feel, really manages to bring to life various of the great pharaohs.
I am finding especially interesting his thorough treatment of the Twelfth Dynasty despot, Amenemes (Wilkinson’s “Amenemhat”) I, who is my choice for the “new king” (Exodus 1:8), oppressor of Israel when Moses was a baby. See e.g. my article:
Twelfth Dynasty oppressed Israel
And I was rather keen to read about this Amenemes I in conjunction with Wilkinson’s treatment of Teti, founder of the so-called Sixth Dynasty, since I believe Teti to be an alter ego of the Twelfth Dynasty founder.
From a comparison in Wilkinson’s book we find, common to Teti, Amenemes I (over and above likenesses to which I have referred elsewhere): newness; lowly origins; surrounded by uncertainty; reliance upon trusty “lieutenants”.
· Teti
P. 105
The throne passed instead to a commoner, a man called Teti, who swiftly married his predecessor’s daughter to secure his legitimacy. So began the Sixth Dynasty … in an atmosphere of uncertainty, court intrigue and barely managed crisis that was to haunt it until its very end.
With his rather tenuous claim to the kingship, Teti needed to surround himself with trusted lieutenants.
· Amenemes I
P. 155 Amenmehat I, founder of a new dynasty and self-proclaimed renaissance king, was actually conscious of his non-royal origins and of the lingering resentment felt towards his rule in part of Egypt.
P. 161
There are strong indications that the new dynasty came to power in lawless times, by means of a coup d’état, rather than by peaceful succession ….
P. 162
Renaissance ruler
… Amenemhat I lost no time in appointing his royal lieutenants to key posts in the administration. …. Egypt’s new master was tightening his grip on the lever of government.
Also on p. 161, we read this startling comment: “[Nehri] … ‘I rescued my town on the day of fighting from the sickening terror of the royal house’. There is no more chilling reference to tyrannical monarchy in all of Egyptian history”.
Poor old Nebuchednezzar (Wilkinson’s “Nebuchadnezzar”), though, is named only once in the entire book, on p. 442 {N. Grimal has only about 4 pages on “Nebuchedrezzar”}: “Wahibra escaped with his life and fled abroad … to the court of Babylon. The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, could scarcely believe his luck. Here was an unmissable opportunity to meddle in Egypt’s internal affairs and put a Babylonian puppet on the Throne of Horus”.
No mention whatsoever of any invasion of Egypt.
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