AMENEHOTEP II AMENOFI AKHEPRURA
XVIII Dynasty 1427-1401 BC

Son of Tuthmosi III and the queen Meritre-Hatshepsut, he governed for 28 years, the first three as a co-governor with his father. From the beginning of his reign as the only pharaoh, he was forced to defend the Egyptian hegemony in the east, brilliantly consolidated by Tuthmosi III. In the VII year, he guided an expedition against a coalition of the commanders in the Tikhsi region (between Oronte and Eufrate): seven of them were killed by Amenhitep II himself and their bodies were hung on the walls of Tebe and Napata. It’s not certain, anyway, that his victory was complete: it’s suspected that Egypt abandoned some territories to the Mitanni allies, Babylon and the ittita empire sent requests for peace. Amenenothep II finished the works started by his father, in the temple in Amada, continuing the embellishment in the sanctuaries in Tebe and its region, without neglecting the rest of the Country. He built his funeral temple at the south of Tuthmosi’s III one. His mummy was found in the tomb in the Kings’ Valley, soberly decorated. With Amenothep’s II reign there is a great change: while Hatshepsut and Tuthmosi II had made an effort to establish in art and culture neoclassicism strongly influenced by the Middle Reign, here ideology is opened up to the time, considering the novelties. As the Egyptian imperialism causes the opening of the civilization in Asia, the royal phraseology has metaphors with Asiatic divinities. A new proclaim describes the pharaoh’s physical qualities: he had a passion for horses, that he personally trained and he was able to make them do with skill any kind of evolutions; he governed a ship with great ability thanks to an expert use of oars; his arrows went through thick copper. Behind the evident rhetoric of these proclaims there is a particular mentality: the best part of the high dignitaries of his reign were chosen not among the descendants of the powerful, but among friends of the pharaoh’s youth or of this battles.