Egypt - New Kingdom Ramesside Period

  General Description   The Ramesside era of the New Kingdom (1293-1070 BCE) is known as the last of the great native Egyptian states, when Egypt lost its foreign territories and the system of centralized government broke down once again. In contrast to the Thutmosid Period, which was dominated by an administration located in Upper Egypt, the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (known as the Rammeside period) were based in the Nile Delta region of Lower Egypt - first at Memphis, then at a new grand capital at Per-Ramesses.
Population and political organization
The New Kingdom had a centralized administration that split the country under two viziers, who oversaw the Northern Tchety and Southern Tchety. Within these large units were nomarchs of nomes, village chiefs and local constables. ^[1] The important local officials were directly responsible to the bureau of the vizier, and they had to travel back and forth between the vizier’s seat and their local posts in the course of their duties. ^[2] The draw of the centre both indicates the degree of power of the centralized administration and shows that the regions had the necessary administrative complexity to run themselves without the presence of their local ruler. ^[2]
Governmental administration during the later New Kingdom Dynasties was ’characterized by the growing strength of hereditary office’, and the position of provincial nobles grew more secure. ^[3] During this period, the god Amun, the central deity of the priests at Thebes, became merged with the sun-god Ra and as Amun-Ra was worshipped throughout Egypt, including at Memphis. Rites connected with this ’king of gods’ served to legitimize the rule of the Egyptian king on earth, who was believed to be the ’bodily son of Amun’. ^{[4] [5]} Government grants were bestowed on temples in return for ’formal blessings’ for state activities. ^[6] However, the pharaoh’s power to appoint the high priest was ’nominal’, especially from the time of Ramesses III onwards, ^[7] and the priests of Karnak in Upper Egypt became powerful hereditary rulers who acted independently of the administration at Per-Ramesses in the delta. ^[8]
The city of Per-Ramesses, established around 1270 CE, had an immense population of about 250,000, ^[9] while the kingdom supported a peak total population of more than three million. ^[10]

[1]: (Brier and Hobbs 2008, 72) Bob Brier and A. Hoyt Hobbs. 2008. Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

[2]: (van den Boorn 1988, 115-16) G. P. F. van den Boorn. 1988. The Duties of the Vizier: Civil Administration in the Early New Kingdom. London: Kegan Paul International.

[3]: (O’Connor 1983, 192, 229) David O’Connor. 1983. ’New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 1552-664 BC’, in Ancient Egypt: A Social History, edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Barry J. Kemp, David O’Connor and Alan B Lloyd, 183-278. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4]: (Van Dijk 2000, 298-99) Jacobus Van Dijk. 2003. ’The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 265-307. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[5]: (Doxey 2001, 69-70) D. M. Doxey. 2001. ’Priesthood’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3, edited by D. B. Redford, 69-70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[6]: (Abu Bakr 1981, 102) A. Abu Bakr. 1981. ’Pharaonic Egypt’, in General History of Africa, Vol II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa, edited by G. Mokhtar, 84-111. Paris: UNESCO.

[7]: (Van Dijk 2000, 298-300) Jacobus Van Dijk. 2003. ’The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 265-307. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[8]: (Hassan 1993, 568) Fekri Hassan. 1993. ’Town and Village in Ancient Egypt: Ecology, Society and Urbanization’, in The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, edited by Thurstan Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah and Alex Okpoko, 551-69. London: Routledge.

[9]: (Moreno García 2014, 11) Juan Carlos Moreno García. 2014. ’Invaders or Just Herders? Libyans in Egypt in the Third and Second Millennia BCE’. World Archaeology 46: 610-23.

[10]: (Eyre 2010, 303) Christopher Eyre. 2010. ’The Economy: Pharaonic’, in A Companion to Ancient Egypt, Volume 1, edited by Alan B. Lloyd, 291-308. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.