Dr. Campbell Price

Yeah, I think that's fair.

In kind of rough terms, if we're thinking about success as artistic quality, and that's very subjective of course,

criterion and how much actual gold there is in the treasury so Thutmose III is an important character he's sometimes called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt expansionist he is working in concert with his aunt his stepmother Hatshepsut the female pharaoh who rules for 20 odd years by his side much is made of the potential rivalry the kind of the cookie cutter impression of the wicked stepmother forget it

The relationship is much more complicated than that.

But setting the precedent for Ramses II...

Thutmose III leaves things in pretty good condition.

His son Amenhotep II, yeah, pretty good.

By the reign of Amenhotep III, you do get the impression that he's just sat down, just enjoying being luxurious because his forefathers have done it for him.

He is not really going out doing battle.

And then maybe the decadence sets in.

And so his son...

is Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten.

And he is an unapologetic weirdo for an ancient Egyptian king.

He kind of rips up the rulebook to an extent.

And then much is made, although I'm not sure how plausible I find this, much is made of the fact that we have an archive from the reign of Akhenaten and the end of the reign of Amenhotep III that talks about

foreign diplomatic exchange so you have a sense of again we're using modern terms which I probably don't apply a foreign office which basically has cuneiform the so-called Amarna letters that talk about you know please my brother because they're all calling the kings of the this brotherhood of kings yes of the Levant of the Bronze Age that part of the world they are asking you know for the Egyptian king to send gold because gold is as plentiful as sand and

Send me a real gold statue, a solid gold statue, not just a plated gold statue.

Send me chariots, send me all the nice stuff.

But there is a sense in which, and it may be typical, we don't have the other side of the dialogue, but there is a sense that the Egyptian king Akhenaten is maybe not doing as much as he could to maintain Egyptian imperial possessions.

And that is important because there does seem to be a lull