Some African History from 1500-1000BC

Bust of Nefertiti

This is a quick overview of African history from the year 1500BC to the year 1000BC. Due to the nature of the sources it will be rather focused on Egypt. This is unfortunate, but somewhat inevitable, as Egypt is the one of the best documented places in the world at this time.

Outside of Egypt there were sophisticated cultures in Nubia and Punt, although Nubia had been subjugated by the Egyptian state by the year 1500BC. The lower edge of the Sahara had seen the development of agriculture, although there is no record of extensive bronze metalworking from this period. This is to be expected as tin was very scarce in the ancient world and there were no easy trade routes past the Sahara at this time.

Further south of the equator humans still lived as hunter-gatherers, as their distant ancestors had done for millennia. This was more to do with the sophistication of their hunting techniques than anything else. Unlike other parts of the world they had not had the need to develop agriculture and their culture was perfectly adapted to its surroundings. However, if farming groups were to arrive in the area from outside, this would change the balance of the environment and tip the scales in favour of the agricultural groups. The Nok culture was beginning to thrive around this time, in what is now the country of Nigeria. Meanwhile the speakers of Bantu languages had already begun the process of expansion that would see their languages spread over most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Statue of Hatshepsut

In the century of the 1400’s BC the 18th Dynasty ruled Egypt. After overthrowing the foreign Hyksos and subduing the neighbouring regions, such as the region of Nubia and the oases of the western desert, the Pharaohs expanded their control into Palestine and made expeditions as far north as Syria. Egypt was now probably the wealthiest state on earth. It was secure against foreign invasions, was cohesively organised and had a tradition of literacy and administration stretching back for over a millennium and a half. This helped make Egypt one of the militarily strongest states on earth and also allowed them to create their most spectacular works of art, architecture and sculpture.

Hatshepsut became Pharaoh around the year 1478BC. It was not unheard of for there to be a woman ruling Egypt, but it was unusual. She ruled as regent for her nephew Thutmose III. She preserved the power of Egypt, commissioned impressive building projects, went on military campaigns and also sent expeditions to Punt, which was probably located in what is now northern Somalia. At one of her temples she left detailed descriptions of the expedition that she commissioned and these have been the most descriptive accounts of that fabled land that have come down to us. Her preserved body has since been discovered by modern archaeologists and it appears that she died of cancer caused by a skin lotion that the queen used. After Hatshepsut’s death, her monuments were defaced during the reign of her successor and her name was attempted to be removed from history. Fortunately this attempt did not succeed, but it is not clear why Thutmose III or others would want to remove Hatshepsut from the record.

Thutmose III, the strongest military leader of Egypt

When Thutmose III came to the throne he began the most ambitious series of campaigns ever undertaken by an Egyptian ruler. This involved crushing a rebellion in Nubia and a northern expedition that crossed the Euphrates River in Syria. The expedition across the Euphrates was an attempt to defeat the Mitanni, a Hurrian state ruled by an Indo-Iranian aristocracy famed for their prowess in chariotry. Thutmose III achieved great successes, but could not destroy the Mitanni. His most well-known achievement was in fighting the combined armies of the Canaanite princes at the Battle of Megiddo.  This probably took place around 1457BC and is the earliest battle for which there exists a near-contemporary description. It was a great victory for the Egyptians and the land of Canaan was incorporated into the Egyptian Empire. The reign of Thutmose III was the apex of Egyptian military power.

Then his majesty prevailed against them at the head of his army, and when they saw his majesty prevailing against them they fled headlong to Megiddo in fear, abandoning their horses and their chariots of gold and silver. The people hauled them up, pulling them by their clothing, into this city; the people of this city having closed it against them and lowered clothing to pull them up into this city.
Account of the Battle of Megiddo

The 18th Dynasty continued its rule into the century of the 1300’s BC. Egypt grew in power and strength but was never as militarily dominant as during the reign of Thutmose III. Other competitors arose who were able to contend with them. The Mitanni were beginning to decline, but the rising Hittite Empire proved a potent threat to the Egyptian domination of Syria. The Kassites ruled rich Babylonia and their Assyrian vassals in the north of Mesopotamia would later emerge as a great power. Each of these powerful states became engaged in a system of diplomacy that would come to characterise the late Bronze Age. The powers would correspond as equals, referring to each other as brothers and solving diplomatic disputes peacefully if they could. The subordinate rulers of minor cities would be referred to as sons and orders would be sent to them from the main rulers.

Akhenaten, the Heretic Pharaoh

Around the year 1351BC Amenhotep IV came to power. He was an anomalous character who changed his name to Akhenaten, moved the capital to the city now known as Amarna and tried to reform the Egyptian art and religion. He is known sometimes as the Heretic Pharaoh. His main reforms were the replacement of Amun, who was the patron god of Thebes, with Aten, who was portrayed as the sun-disk. This may have been because the priests of Amun were too powerful, but some have thought of Akhenaten as the first monotheist. This is possible, but probably projects too many of our modern concepts onto Akhenaten.

He also changed Egyptian art. With the exception of the much earlier Senusret III and his son, Egyptian art followed very rigid conventions. The art of Amarna showed the royal family in an almost realistic fashion. The king was shown with a prominent paunch and strange facial features. However, this unusual style also allowed great beauty and the most famous Egyptian bust, the famed bust of Nefertiti, was from around this time.

While the new revolution was ambitious, it was also a failure and its failure doomed the 18th Dynasty. When Akhenaten died there was no clear ruler and a number of short-lived rulers took power, possibly including Nefertiti herself. The capital of Amarna was abandoned and its abandonment was a boon for later archaeologists as the palace archives, with the correspondence of the Bronze Age rulers was left intact. This archive is known as the Amarna Letters.

Art from the Amarna Period

Rib-addi (King of Byblos) spoke to his lord, the King of Lands (Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt): May the Mistress of Gubla (Byblos) grant power to my lord. At the feet of my lord, my sun, I fall down seven times and seven times. Let the king, my lord, know that Gubla, your handmaid from ancient times, is well.
Letter from Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, to his overlord Akhenaten, imploring him for help against his foes: From the Amarna Letters:

One of the later rulers was the rather weak and pathetic boy-king Tutankhamun, who seems to have been persuaded to reverse all the changes of his father. Tutankhamun would not have been remembered by history but his sheer unimportance guaranteed the survival of his fame in modern times. His tomb was overlooked by grave robbers (who seem to have been disturbed in the robbery of it) and was neglected until it was excavated by Howard Carter in 1915. It was the most spectacular tomb ever discovered in Egypt, or possibly anywhere in the world. The riches found within are some of the greatest treasures known to man and give an idea of the power and riches of the 18th Dynasty. Even the most minor king of their dynasty was buried with unimaginable quantities of wealth.

Horemheb, a commoner who became
Pharaoh and erased the memory
of Akhenaten

Now when his majesty appeared as king, the temples of the gods and goddesses from Elephantine down to the marshes of the Delta [had... and] or fallen into neglect. Their shrines had become desolate, had become mounds overgrown with weeds. Their sanctuaries were as if they had never been. Their halls were a footpath. The land was topsy-turvy and the gods turned their backs upon this land.
Edict of Restoration (of the temples of Amun) by Tutankhamun, reversing the policies of Akhenaten

After Tutankhamun’s death, a highly-ranked noble called Ay took the throne before being deposed by a general named Horemheb. Under Horemheb’s rule the memories of the rule of Akhenaten were erased and the Heretic Pharaoh would only be dimly remembered by later Egyptian scribes. Horemheb died without heir, so another general took the throne, ruling Egypt as Ramesses I and founding the 19th Dynasty in 1292.

In 1279 the third Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty came to power. He was Ramesses II and was the greatest builder of all the Pharaohs. He had a tendency to appropriate the works of others to himself ,but even so he was a great builder. He built a new capital at Pi-Ramesses on one of the branches of the Nile Delta. He commissioned gigantic statues and temples. While the New Kingdom Pharaohs no longer built pyramids, the works of Ramesses were smaller but more ornate. One of the colossal statues of the king weighed 83 tonnes.

Colossal statue of Ramesses II

Ramesses II fought many wars to re-establish the Egyptian Empire, which was threatened by Hittite expansion in Syria. The two sides fought a number of battles, including a stalemate at Kadesh. The Hittites ambushed the Egyptian forces with a neat piece of trickery, but the arrival of Egyptian reinforcements forced the victorious Hittites to withdraw. After a number of years of fighting the Hittites and the Egyptians made peace with each other, which is recorded by what is the oldest peace treaty yet discovered. Eventually Ramesses II died around the year 1213BC, old and full of years, having lived until his nineties.

There shall be no hostilities between them, forever. The great chief of Kheta (King of the Hittites) shall not pass over into the land of Egypt, forever, to take anything therefrom. Ramses-Meriamon (Ramesses III), the great ruler of Egypt, shall not pass over into the land of Kheta (Hittite territory), to take anything therefrom, forever.
Part of the treaty (Egyptian version) between the Hittites and Egyptians after the Battle of Kadesh

Treaty of Kadesh (Hittite Version)

While the Egyptian medicine of the time was unable to save Ramesses II from his death, which was probably from an abscess in the jaw, it was nevertheless advanced. The Brugsch Papyrus dates from around this time and contains a synopsis of much of Egyptian medicine. A lot of what is written is wrong, but most medicine up until the 1800’s AD was based on bad guesswork. The interesting thing is that the Egyptians tried to have a systematic view of medicine and the Greeks would later be enthusiastic learners from the Egyptians.

Elsewhere in Africa, the site of Luxmanda, in what is now the country of Tanzania, was occupied. This was a settlement by the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture, which was probably a Cushitic-speaking culture that had used cattle and stone tools from the upper Nile regions to expand southwards.

Similarly the Elmenteitan culture flourished around this time in what is now the country of Kenya. This was another stone tool using agricultural group that had moved south to displace and absorb the hunter-gatherers who had been in the region before them.

Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel
This was later moved to protect it from the rising
waters of the Aswan Dam

After the long reign of Ramesses II a number of short lived monarchs ruled Egypt until finally Twosret took the throne around the year 1191BC. She was ruler for only a few years before a civil war occurred, either against her or after her death, and Setnakhte took the throne, founding the 20th Dynasty in Egypt. By this time there were serious problems in the Bronze Age world of the Near East. The Mycenaean kingdoms were facing threats, the Hittites in Anatolia were being wiped out by the famine and external attacks and the whole eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean had to deal with attacks by pirate groups known as the Sea Peoples.

This collapse was faced head on by Ramesses III who defeated the Sea Peoples in two battles, one in Canaan and another on the Nile, which is known as the Battle of the Delta. These battles are said to have saved Egypt from invasion, but it seems as if Egypt only barely held on. The empire in Syria and Palestine was lost. The kingdoms with whom Egypt traded, such as the Hittites and the Mycenaeans had been swept away by the turmoil of the age. Ramesses III continued campaigning, but in many ways he was the last of the great rulers of the New Kingdom.

Medinet Habu Temple of Ramesses III
showing him defeating the enemies of Egypt

I have the river-mouths prepared like a strong wall, with warships, galleys and coasters fully equipped, for they were manned completely from bow to stern with valiant warriors carrying their weapons. The troops consisted of every picked man of Egypt.
Ramesses III inscription at the temple of Medinet Habu, describing the Battle of the Delta

Ramesses III was assassinated by one of his sons, Pentawer, acting upon the advice of his mother Tiye, around the year 1155BC. There are court documents dealing with the assassins and archaeologists have found the mummy of Ramesses III, showing a deep throat wound that would have been fatal. The mummy does not seem to match the descriptions given in the court, but there may be a modern misunderstanding of what exactly happened.

The great criminal, Pebekkamen, formerly chief of the chamber. He was brought in because of his collusion with Tiy and the women of the harem. He made common cause with them, and began bringing out their words to their mothers and their brothers who were there, saying: "Stir up the people! Incite enemies to hostility against their lord." He was placed before the great nobles of the court of examination; they examined his crimes; they found that he had committed them. His crimes seized him; the nobles who examined him brought his judgment upon him.
Section of the Turin Papyrus describing the trials of the assassins of Ramesses III

Each of the Pharaohs of the 20th Dynasty who followed Ramesses III would also take the name Ramesses. There would be a Ramesses IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XI; none of whom managed to restore Egypt to greatness.

Relief showing Ramesses II slaying enemies at Kadesh

Around this time a piece of literature called the Story of Wenamun was written. It was set in the time of the later rulers of the 20th Dynasty, but is probably not a straightforward account of a real journey. It tells the tale of a priest named Wenamun who travels to Byblos in Lebanon to ask for cedar wood from the king of Byblos. Wenamun requests the wood for free, as had been the custom in earlier times, but the king of Byblos refuses and the Egyptian has to send back to Egypt for payment. The text is incomplete as it breaks off at the point of the text when Wenamun reaches Cyprus. It does serve as a literary reminder of the diminishing power of Egypt at this time, as Byblos had once been part of their empire, but was no longer. This is especially poignant considering that the king of Byblos had been one of the most subservient vassals recorded in the Amarna Letters correspondence two centuries earlier.

He said to me: "If the ruler of Egypt were the owner of my property, and I were also his servant, he would not send silver and gold, saying: 'Do the command of Amon.' It was not the payment of (tribute?) which they exacted of my father. As for me, I am myself neither thy servant nor am I the servant of him that sent thee.
Extract from the Tale of Wenamun where the king of Byblos refuses to give cedar logs for free to the Egyptians

Relief showing a house in Punt, from a temple inscription
commemorating the expedition Hatshepsut sent to Punt. 

Around the year 1077BC a new Pharaoh named Smendes came to the throne and founded the 21st Dynasty. This is referred to by modern scholars as the end of the New Kingdom and the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period. The rulers of the 21st Dynasty reigned from Tanis and some spectacular grave goods survive from this period. But this is not because they were wealthy. It was because the Pharaohs themselves were sponsoring the robbing of the graves of their predecessors.

Around the year 1000 the kingdom of Kush had once again broken free of Egypt. We know very little of their rulers or politics at this time but they seem to have been free once more as Egypt became weaker. In Libya, with the power of the Egyptians waning, the local tribes seem to have become independent and to have taken control of the oases, as well as having more and more influence in the Delta region of Lower Egypt.

Further south in Africa, it seems likely that speakers of the eastern Bantu languages had reached what is now Uganda by around this time. These dates should be treated as extremely approximate, as they are based on linguistic reconstructions.

And finally, the far to the west, the Canary Islands were probably settled by this time. Perhaps this settlement was by a group of people known as the Guanches, who were later known in classical antiquity. Perhaps the settlement was by an entirely different group of people who were wiped out by later groups arriving on the islands.

Funerary mask of Tutankhamun

Thus the period draws to a close. This time saw the expansion of agriculture in Africa, both from the Bantu speakers but also the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture in eastern Africa. Punt saw the last of the great Egyptian expeditions and the land of Punt fades from view after this time. Nubia had been subjugated at the beginning of the period but had broken free by the end of it. Egypt had seen some of its greatest rulers and most iconic individuals from this time, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Ramesses II and Ramesses III. After this great flourishing of their land, Egypt settled into a period of decline.

Related Blog Posts:
Some African History from 4000-3000BC
Some African History from 3000-2000BC
Some African History from 2000-1500BC
Some African History from 1500-1000BC
Some African History from 1000-750BC
Some African History from 750-500BC