Amenhotep II

Dates and length of reign

Amenhotep's coronation can be dated without much difficulty because of a number of lunar dates in the reign of his father, Thutmose III. These sightings limit the date of Thutmose II's accession to either 1504 or 1479 BC. Thutmose died after 54 years of reign, at which time Amenhotep would have acceded to the throne. Amenhotep's short 2 year coregency with his father would then move his accession two years and four months earlier, dating his accession to either 1427 BC in the low chronology, or in 1452 BC in the high chronology. The minimum length of his reign is indicated by a wine jar inscribed with the king's prenomen found in Amenhotep II's funerary temple at Thebes; it is dated to this king's highest known date—his Year 26—and lists the name of the pharaoh's vintner, Panehsy. Mortuary temples were generally not stocked until the king died or was near death; therefore, Amenhotep may not have lived much later beyond his 26th year. There are alternate theories which attempt to assign him a reign of up to 35 years, which is the absolute maximum length he could have reigned. In this chronology, he reigned from 1454 to 1419. There are certain problems facing these theories which cannot be resolved. In particular, this would mean Amenhotep II died when he was 52, but an X-ray analysis of his mummy has shown him to have been around 40 when he died. Accordingly, Amenhotep II is usually given a reign of 26 years and said to have reigned from 1427 to 1401 BC.

However, it should be stressed that there are substantial gaps in clearly attested Year dates known for Amenhotep II's reign. The monumental evidence only "gives clear proof for Year 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 23 [of this ruler], hence it is not far-fetched to assume that the Year 26 [wine] amphora" does refer to this king's reign. This evidence alone shows that even a well known pharaoh who ruled Egypt for at least 25–26 years such as Amenhotep II had a long 14 year time gap in attested years between his 9th and 23rd regnal years. The only date that can indirectly be fitted into this large time gap to Amenhotep II is a Year 18 or possible Year 19 date based on Papyrus Leningrad (St. Petersburg) 1116A that lists grain allotments for a coming psdntyw feast and other occasion. While mentioning no king directly, the papyrus features early New Kingdom palaeography, mentions "Peru-Nefer (the "dockyard" and royal residence once thought to be near Memphis), and bears the prenomen of Akheperure" which was the royal name of Amenhotep II. These three facts combined, as Peter Der Manuelian writes,

"all speak for a secure dating. The papyrus may be chronologically pinpointed further to Amenhotep's eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth year. Line 19 of the text mentions an allotment on II smw 30 "from the grain of year 18," possibly indicating that the papyrus dates to year 19"

The Jewish historian Josephus, in his book Contra Apionem which translated Manetho's Aegyptiaca, assigns Amenhotep II, a certain Amenophis a reign of 30 years and 10 months. Therefore, it is eminently possible that Amenhotep II could have reigned for 5 years more after his Year 26 date given that Amenhotep II ruled unattested for more than a decade between his 9th and 23rd regnal years. Significantly, as the British Egyptologist David Aston writes "inscriptions at Karnak refer to both a Heb sed and a renewal of the Heb sed under Amenophis II, and since a king usually celebrated his first Heb sed festival in Year 30, and his second Year 34," these inscriptions may suggest a minimum reign of 30+ years for Amenhotep II.

Donald Redford, in contrast, in his 1986 book Pharaonic King Lists, Annals and Day Books, Mississauga, 1986, pp. 179–183, believes that Heb sed references recorded on the pillars of various Karnak monuments of Amenophis I, Tuthmosis III, Amenophis II and Tuthmosis IV are nothing but “pillar benedictions” being simply copies of those found on the pillars of the small bark temple of Sesostris I, and thus have no chronological worth. However, since Amenhotep II has a Year 26 inferred from a wine amphora, this pharaoh only had to rule for another 5 years or 8 years after his Year 26 to have a reign of 31 or 34 years which is quite possible since he ruled unattested in the historical records for 14 years between his 9th and 23rd regnal years.

Finally, modern X-ray evidence which suggests that Amenhotep II was around 40 at death may not account for a person's precise age at death more than 3,000 years ago. Amenhotep II's Great Sphinx Stela reveals that he was 18 years old when he became king. If one accepts that Amenhotep II had a short 2 year co-regency with his father Thutmose III at the beginning of his reign as Peter Der Manuelian notes, he would already be 42 years old at death (or 18 years plus a sole 24 year reign). But if Amenhotep II enjoyed a reign of 31 years as Josephus' copy of Manetho's Aegyptiaca assumes, then this king would have been about 47 years old at death (18 years plus a sole 29 year reign) and the X-ray evidence would be off by 7 years.

Foreign affairs

Amenhotep II's first campaign took place in his third regnal year. It is known that the pharaoh was attacked by the host of Qatna while crossing the Orontes River, but he emerged victorious and acquired rich booty, among which even the equipment of a Mitanni charioteer is mentioned. The pharaoh was well known for his physical prowess and is said to have singlehandedly killed seven rebel princes at Kadesh, which successfully terminated his first Syrian campaign on a victorious note. After the campaign, the king ordered the bodies of the seven princes to be hung upside down on the prow of his ship. Upon reaching Thebes, all but one of the princes were mounted on the city walls. The other was taken to the often rebellious territory of Nubia and hung on the city wall of Napata, as an example of the consequence of rising against the pharaoh and to demoralise any Nubian opponents of Egyptian authority there. Amenhotep II called this campaign his first in a Stele from Amada, however he also called his second campaign his first, causing some confusion. The most common solution for this, although not universally accepted, is that this was the first campaign he fought alone before the death of his father and thus before he was the sole king of Egypt, and he counted his second campaign as his first because it was the first that was his and his alone.

In April of his seventh year, Amenhotep II was faced with a major rebellion in Syria by the vassal states of Naharin and dispatched his army to the Levant to suppress it. This rebellion was likely instigated by Egypt's chief Near Eastern rival, Mitanni. His stele of victory carved after this campaign records no major battles, which has been read a number of ways. It may be that this campaign was more similar to one of the tours of Syria which his father had fought, and he only engaged minor garrisons in battle and forced cities to swear allegiance to him–oaths immediately broken after his departure. Alternatively, it appears that the two weeks when Amenhotep would have been closest to Mitanni are omitted from the stele, thus it is possible that his army was defeated on this campaign.

Amenhotep's last campaign took place in his ninth year, however it apparently did not proceed farther north than the Sea of Galilee. According to the list of plunder from this campaign, Amenhotep II claims to have taken 101,128 slaves. These numbers however are difficult to substantiate, leading some to question the accuracy of Amenhotep II's court scribes. Others have suggested that such exaggerated figures may instead be simply due to compounded accounting mistakes. Examples include a possible recount of the 15,070 prisoners taken in his year 7 campaign in Nukhash being combined with the figures from his year 9 campaign.

After the campaign in Amenhotep II's ninth year, Mitanni sought to make peace with Egypt, and from then on, their armies never fought again. Amenhotep II records that the kings of Babylon, the Hittites, and Mitanni came to make peace and pay tribute to him after his ninth year, although this may be outlandish boasting. However, a second passage appears on the walls of Karnak, saying that the princes of Mitanni came to seek peace with Amenhotep II, and this cannot be so easily explained away. The rising power of the Hittites eventually persuaded Mitanni to seek an ally, and there was definitely a treaty of some sort between Egypt and Mitanni by the time of Amenhotep II's successor, but it may be that it was enacted after Amenhotep II's campaigns, to try to prevent any more campaigns of mass deportations. Whenever formal peace was enacted, an informal peace was maintained between Amenhotep II and the king of Mitanni. The new peace ties between the two benefitted both nations. For Mitanni, relaxing military conflict with Egypt to its south allowed it to focus more on the rising powers of Hittite and Assyria. For Egypt, it was able to begin extracting significant amounts of resources from Syria and Canaan and it was also now able to access Mediterranean trade routes with the Aegean Sea. Thereafter, Amenhotep II concentrated on domestic matters, with one possible exception. A shrine of Amenhotep II's Nubian viceroy shows Amenhotep II receiving tribute after a Nubian campaign, but it is not possible to date when this happened.

Construction projects

Since Thutmose III had devoted so much energy to expanding Karnak, Amenhotep II's building projects were largely focused on enlarging smaller temples all over Egypt. In the Delta, his father's Overseer of Works, Minmose, is attested from an inscription at Tura as overseeing construction of more temples. In southern Egypt, small shrines are attested at Medamud, el-Tod, and Armant. Karnak, despite not receiving the attention given it by his father, also was not totally neglected. He commissioned a column to stand in the courtyard between the fourth and fifth pylons commemorating the reception of tribute from Mitanni. In Nubia, Amenhotep II built at Qasr Ibrim and Semna, and ordered the decoration of the Temple at Kalabsha. However, his most famous Nubian temple was at Amada. Thutmose III had begun constructing a temple which, technically, was dedicated to Horus there, although the presence of Re-Harakhti and Amun-Re is easily observed. Amenhotep II completed it and put in it the record of his year 3 campaign on a stele, which was until 1942 the source of most information about Amenhotep's wars.

He had a mortuary temple constructed at the edge of the cultivation in the Theban Necropolis, close to where the Ramesseum was later built, but it was destroyed in ancient times.

Personality and later life

A stela from this pharaoh's final years highlights his openly contemptuous attitude towards non-Egyptians. The document, which dates to "Year 23 IV Akhet [day] 1, the day of the festival" of Amenhotep II's accession to power, is a copy of a personal letter which the king composed himself to Usersatet, his viceroy of Kush (Nubia). In it, Amenhotep II reminded Usersatet of their military exploits together in Syria and proceeds to criticize the way this official conducted his office as Viceroy. Amenhotep II writes:

Copy of the order which His Majesty wrote himself, with his own hand, to the viceroy Usersatet. His Majesty was in the [royal] Residence...he spent a holiday sitting and drinking. Look, this order of the king is brought to you...who are in faraway Nubia, a hero who brought booty from all foreign countries, a charioteer...you (are) master of a wife from Babylon and a maidservant from Byblos, a young girl from Alalakh and an old woman from Arapkha. Now, these people from Tekshi (Syria) are worthless--what are they good for? Another message for the viceroy: Do not trust the Nubians, but beware of their people and their witchcraft. Take this servant of a commoner, for example, whom you made an official although he is not an official whom you should have suggested to His Majesty; or did you want to allude to the proverb: 'If you lack a gold battle-axe inlaid with bronze, a heavy club of acacia wood will do'? So, do not listen to their words and do not heed their messages!"

Usersatet was so impressed (or fearful) of Amenhotep II's message that he ordered a copy of it to be engraved on a stela "that was once [located] at the Second Cataract [in Nubia] and is now in Boston."

Amenhotep II did not openly record the names of his queens; some Egyptologists theorize that he felt that women had become too powerful under titles such as God's Wife of Amun. They point to the fact that he participated in his father's removal of Hatshepsut's name from her monuments and the destruction of her image.

The destruction of Hatshepsut's images began during the co-regency of Amenhotep II when his father was very old, but stopped during his reign. However, the king may have harbored his father's concern that another woman would sit on the throne. Despite his efforts however it is possible that a female co-regent of Akhenaten ruled as pharaoh before the end of his own 18th dynasty.

Amenhotep II adopted a large number of Canaanite gods into the Egyptian pantheon, including Resheph, Hauron, Baal, Astarte, Qetesh, and a few others.

Death and burial

Amenhotep II was interred in his KV35 tomb in the Valley of the Kings; his mummy was found there within his original sarcophagus when the tomb was discovered in March 1898 by Victor Loret. The tomb also housed a mummy cache containing several New Kingdom pharaohs including Thutmose IV, Seti II, Ramesses III, Ramesses IV, and Ramesses VI. They had been re-buried in Amenhotep II's tomb by the 21st Dynasty High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem II, during Siamun's reign, to protect them from tomb robbers.

Also found buried in his tomb was the mummy of his son Webensenu who died as a teenager.

Mummy

The mummy of the king was first examined, described, and photographed in January 1902 by Gaston Maspero in the company of Howard Carter, Friedrich Bissing, and Pierre Lacau. The Australian anatomist Grafton Smith examined Amenhotep II's mummy in 1907. During this examination the linen still adhering to the face was removed for an unobstructed view. He found the body to be 1.67 metres (5.5 ft) tall and noted a strong facial resemblance to his son, Thutmose IV. The wavy brown hair present on his head is "abundantly interspersed with white." The arms are crossed low over the chest, with the right hand tightly clenched and the left less so. Unusually, the skin all over the body is covered with small tubercles though Smith could not say if they were the result of the embalming process or disease (likely disease since no other king's mummies display them). Resin on the body preserved the impressions of jewellery; several rows of a beaded collar were present on the upper back, and a diamond-shaped geometric pattern seen on the back of the hips. Smith estimated he was 40 to 50 at death based on his worn teeth and greying hair. His cause of death is unknown. His mummy has the inventory number CG 61069.

In April 2021, his mummy was moved from the Egyptian Museum to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization along with those of 17 other kings and four queens in an event termed the Pharaohs' Golden Parade.

Ancestry