Thutmose I and the Wars of Expansion
Thebes, 1519 BCE. Amunhotep I is dead; Queen Mother Ahhotep is dead. Power has shifted from one branch of the family to another, and a newcomer is on the throne.
Thutmose I secures his legitimacy by marrying a cousin and a sister of Amunhotep, then launches two campaigns of war. In Nubia and in Syria he subjugates, defeats and conquers, before encountering some unexpected new foes.
Bibliography
- Anthony Spalinger, War in Ancient Egypt, 2005.
- Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 1994.
- Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, 2004 and 2010.
- James Breasted, A History of Egypt, 1905, 1909 and 1964.
- James Breasted, Records of Ancient Egypt, Volume II, 1906.
Despite his obvious presence at the battle I find myself deeply sceptical of Ahmose-Ebana’s accounting of the kings actions on the field. While I don’t doubt the king was indeed on the field, it stretches my credulity that
a) the king personally took on the Kushite chieftan
b) the kings vanquishing of the chieftan made the whole enemy army lose its nerve and run
I think Ebana may be stroking his masters ego a little bit here.
The tone of this coverage of the imperial campaign to crush Kushite rebels is interesting to compare with your second intermediate period coverage, there we lingered on the death of the rebel seqenenrae tao’s death as this great injustice at the hands of the “foreign occupier” Here the death of a Kushite chieftan and his ritual humiliation on the front of a ship by an actual foreign occupier feels more like set dressing for Thutmose’s glorious campaign.
Anyhow I’m glad to be in the new kingdom of your coverage your content’s been really good so far aside from my normal grouchy grindstone material about the 2nd intermediate.