Akhenaten and the armed forces: the military and police within Egypt in the late eighteenth dynasty

The Egyptian military and police are attested as professional armed forces in a range of textual, decorative and material evidence from the Eighteenth Dynasty. Despite past controversy over whether the armed forces were maintained and utilised to the same professional standard during the reign of Akhenaten, many recent studies focusing on the textual evidence in the Amarna Letters have indicated the continuation of a professional military throughout the Amarna Period. Yet, there is a wealth of evidence for both the military and police from the unique decorative programme of Akhenaten’s reign and the remains of the ancient city of Amarna, which can shed further light on the nature of the armed forces at this time. Imagery of the military and police appeared more frequently in the reign of Akhenaten than previous reigns, in funerary contexts, on the temple talatat and in the decoration of royal buildings. In this thesis, these unique depictions will be examined, together with the material evidence on the ground at Amarna, including artefacts, the foundations of buildings, road networks and other infrastructure that may have been utilised by the armed forces. The evidence will be brought together in an inclusive and in-depth analysis that seeks to avoid controversies and supplement the well-studied textual material relating to the Amarna Period. Four major lines of inquiry will be followed; the first being to identify who from amongst the armed forces can be identified and what duties can be attributed to them. Second, is to determine whether the frequency with which the armed forces are depicted in the decorative programme reflects any increase in their influence within Egyptian society. Connected with this is the third aim to assess whether the status of military officials during the reign of Akhenaten influenced the accession of generals Aye, Horemheb and Ramesses to the throne. Whether Akhenaten made use of traditional Eighteenth Dynasty military ideology, such as motifs relating to the warrior king and the Nine Bows, will be the fourth focus of this thesis. By following these lines of inquiry and placing the evidence in context with comparable material from the Eighteenth Dynasty, it will be possible to assess whether Akhenaten’s use of the armed forces was conventional.