Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF Page B

Instead they adopted a mobile court, perhaps inspired by their experiences of military campaigns, and toured the country with a small entourage, travelling by river to inspect and impose control on the various regions and staying in short-term palaces known as the ‘Mooring Places of Pharaoh’, which were often little more than elaborate rest-houses situated at strategic points along the Nile. The journey from Memphis to Thebes would have been a slow one of perhaps two to three weeks and it made sense that the less mobile members of the royal household, including the majority of the women, their children and their retinues, were maintained in permanent harem-palaces away from the main royalresidences. By the 19th Dynasty the country had become even more de-centralized. The official capital was by then Pa-Ramesses in the Delta but the largest centre of population was still Memphis, while Thebes remained both the main cult centre and the burial place of kings.
    The Mooring Places should be considered as palaces in the sense that they provided a home for the king and his retinue, but they should not be imagined as the ancient equivalent of Buckingham Palace or Versailles. The idea of the settled palace, or indeed the settled upper-class household, is a relatively modern one. In fourteenth-century England, for example, even a gentleman of relatively modest means might be the lord of several manors, all of which he needed to oversee in person, while a great lord would own many estates throughout the land. When such a landowner moved from one estate to another he was accompanied by his household (family, dependants and servants), his furniture, plate and clothing, all travelling through the countryside in a style intended to impress his wealth and dignity on the less fortunate locals. A move every two to three weeks would not have been seen as excessive, and it was not until the end of the fourteenth century that the great households became relatively static, moving perhaps two or three times a year. 18
    The palaces scattered along the Nile were never intended to act as impressive stone testimonies to the glories of a particular king's reign; instead they were constructed quickly and relatively cheaply from mud-brick wherever and whenever required. The use of mud-brick meant that the palaces could be designed on the spot to fit the exact requirements of their occupants, unlike the more or less standard plans used for the stone-built temples and tombs. However, the use of mud-brick also meant that the palaces were vulnerable to decay, and we now have few surviving palace buildings. The royal progression from palace to palace ensured that the authority of the king became a reality to those in even the most distant provinces and, at a more practical level, may well have been an efficient cost-cutting exercise. Although each Mooring Place was provided with its own farm and granary this did not necessarily provide enough food for a visit, and it was often necessary to make the local mayor responsible for provisioning the royal household. Local officials presumably came to dread the news of an impending royal visit. 19 A 19th Dynasty scribal exercise gives someindication of the preparations considered necessary to welcome a pharaoh:
    Get on with having everything ready for pharaoh's [arrival]… have made ready 100 ring stands for bouquets of flowers… 1,000 loaves of fine flour… Cakes, 100 baskets… Dried meat, 100 baskets… Milk, 60 measures… Grapes, 50 sacks… 20
    By the end of Ahmose's reign the Egyptian economy was booming. Egypt was naturally a very wealthy country and once unity and central control had been re-established it was possible to co-ordinate the management of her ample natural resources, taxing the primary producers – the peasants and their landlords – to support the bureaucratic and priestly superstructure and storing up surpluses to provide against harsher times. The Greek historian Herodotus commented