Thutmose III (Part 9): Supremacy and Insecurity.
1455 to 1450 BCE. In his last decade, Thutmose III demonstrated a cruel streak, born of insecurity and anxiety over power.
The King’s insecurities centered on issues of legitimacy (his own) and security (for his son). What stimulated these? What else: the lingering question of Queen Hatshepsut and her unorthodox rule.
In a special-length episode, we explore (1) the King’s family life and personality; (2) the strange shift in domestic policies concerning Hatshepsut; and (3) the reasons for Thutmose’s concerns and insecurities.
Bibliography
- Eric H. Cline and David O’Connor (eds.), Thutmose III: A New Biography, 2006.
- Sue D’Auria, “The Princess Batketamun,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 69 (1983) (JSTOR).
- Vanessa Davies, “Hatshepsut’s Use of Thutmosis III in Her Program of Legitimation,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 41 (2004) (JSTOR).
- Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, 2004.
- Aidan Dodson, “Crown Prince Djhutmose and the Royal Sons of the Eighteenth Dynasty,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 76 (199) (JSTOR).
- Aidan Dodson, “Thutmosis III: Family Man,” The Ostracon: The Journal of the Egyptian Study Society 15, 2004.
- Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 1992.
- Dimitri Laboury, “Portrait versus Ideal Image” – UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (Website).
- Dimitri Laboury, “Royal Portrait and Ideology: Evolution and Signification of the Statuary of Thutmose III,” Thutmose III: A New Biography, 2006 (Academia.edu).
- H. E. Winlock, “Notes on the Reburial of Thutmosis I,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 15 (1929) (JSTOR).
- Scott Woodward, “Geneaology of New Kingdom Pharaohs and Queens,” Archaeology 49 (1996) (JSTOR).
Fascinating! But I still don’t get why T3 felt he had to discredit Hatshepsut. Wasn’t Neferure her only child, and she married T3. Any child from Hatshepsut’s lineage would have been T3’s. something else had to be happening.
Where there any children from lesser queens of T1 or 2 that could have been an alternate line to compete with A2?
Hello Jo, thank you for your question 🙂 The idea that T3 married Neferure is a common misconception, and is based on little more than a single inscription which was modified after its initial carving. On that basis, there’s no scholarly consensus that Neferure and T3 actually *did* marry.
As for secondary branches of the family, those almost certainly *did* exist, but they do not appear in the record. So we don’t know much about them 🙁 I will make that more clear in the next edit of this episode. Thank you 🙂
I haven’t finished this episode yet so my comment will only be on the first part, but I have ultimately been left fairly unimpressed by Thutmose’s military record (as you may have gathered from my past few comments)
To my knowledge you have covered only two battles he fought on fairly equal footing, of which he won one, and drew the other. The rest of his military efforts were devoted against local militia’s or garrisons. Had he desired to, he could have confronted the Mitanni more fully, but he seems to have shied away from doing so after his first bruising draw with their forces.
He avoided dealing with the two problem cities that had instigated the canaanite troubles to begin with for 30 years, preferring instead to take the easy route of impermanence, raiding their countryside, raiding the Mitanni countryside, involving himself in unrealistic vassalisation efforts that were never going to last without strategic depth.
The main thing he had going for him militarily was his obsessive campaigning, it seems he was up in syria almost every couple of years, but none of that can be said to mean much, north of Megiddo, due to his failures with Kadesh and Tunip, it was always going to be fleeting.
Continuing on from my prior thoughts now that I’ve finished the episode, I question the sequestering of his attacks on the memory of Hatshepsut as his ‘undesirable traits’ in contrast to the ‘desirable trait’ of imperial conquest.
You demonstrated during the Nubian campaign of Thutmose I the commendable ability to ‘judge’ a historical figure for genocidal imperialism, I don’t see why we lack that capacity here, the people of Syria and Canaan who’s towns were being looted every year or so surely knew that the campaigns were cruel and brutal. Its hardly a product of our modern world that that realisation can be approached.
I find your point about the lack of negative details about the kings we’ve covered so far very prescient, one would truly think judging by the records we’ve been left that being an egyptian monarch genetically predisposed you to just and noble rule! It does make one wonder how much we’re not being told about the kings, alas no ones going to write a long denunciation of the reigning monarch in their aristocratic tomb!