Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh Read Free Page B

corpses among them. I brought away plunder from there, two living men and three hands. I was rewarded with gold again and I was given two female slaves. His majesty travelled north, his heart swelling with bravery and victory. He had conquered southerners and northerners.
    When Ahmose writes of capturing a hand he is referring to the practice of amputating the hand, or on some occasions the penis, of a dead enemy so that the true scale of the victory could be assessed. This effective, but to modern eyes rather gruesome, means of counting is attested by several large-scale scenes of victorious New Kingdom pharaohs standing by piles of discarded human body parts.
    Following the death of Ahmose the king, Ahmose the soldier continued his military career serving in Nubia under both Amenhotep I and Tuthmosis I, and receiving both promotion and gifts of land as a reward for his loyalty. In his final campaign he accompanied Tuthmosis I to Syria before returning to enjoy a well-earned retirement and a natural death at el-Kab where he was eventually interred ‘in the tomb that I myself made’.
    A second soldier, also a native of el-Kab and possibly a young relation of Ahmose, son of Ibana, somewhat confusingly named Ahmose-Pennekheb, tells us that King Ahmose undertook a second Asian campaign in his regnal Year 22, fighting in ‘Djahy’, the general name used for Syria and Palestine, and perhaps reaching as far east as the River Euphrates. Presumably this second campaign was intended to provide conclusive proof that Egypt was once again united under a strong king and well able to participate in international affairs. This region, now under the influence, if not the direct control of Egypt, formed the basis of the Egyptian Empire which was later to be developed by the Tuthmoside kings. By the end of his regnal Year 16 Egypt was the chief power in the Near East and Ahmose was free to consolidate his southern border. Here, as Ahmose son of Ibana has already related, a series of efficient campaigns ensured that control was re-imposed on Nubia and Egypt's boundary was re-established below the Second Cataract.
    King Ahmose died after a 25-year rule leaving his son, Amenhotep I, to inherit a country united and secure within her boundaries for the first time in over two hundred years. The Hyksos had been expelled from the north, the Nubians had been crushed to the south and Egypt had expanded into the Levant in order to protect herself from furtherattack. Although Ahmose was clearly continuing the foreign policies started by his immediate predecessors, to him has gone the credit of militarizing the country and ridding Egypt of the hated foreigners. In honour of this magnificent achievement, history traditionally places Ahmose at the head of the 18th Dynasty, even though his grandfather, father and brother are still regarded as 17th Dynasty kings. Ahmose later became the object of a funerary cult based around his cenotaph at Abydos.
    Ahmose had been revered throughout the land for his prowess as a mighty warrior-king. Personal bravery and a good military record now became desirable attributes indicative of a successful monarch, and succeeding 18th Dynasty rulers found it prudent to place great emphasis on their military strength and personal bravery. It was now almost expected that a new king would mark his accession by leading his troops to crush the traditional enemies to the south (Nubians) and to the north (Asiatics). This had not always been the case, although the first king of Egypt, Narmer, is best known in his role of a military leader. Generally, as the Old and Middle Kingdoms progressed and as Egypt continued her policy of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the Mediterranean world, the armed forces had become more and more insignificant, although a royal bodyguard was always maintained. Fighting was not viewed as a particularly noble occupation, being generally associated with periods of civil war when Egyptian fought against