King Amenhotep III's Legacy, Eygpt by Asiatravel.com
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Amenhotep III (sometimes read as
Amenophis III; meaning Amun is
Satisfied) was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled
Egypt from June 1386 to
1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC[4] after his father
Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep III was the son of
Thutmose by
Mutemwia, a minor wife of
Amenhotep's father.[5]
His lengthy reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. A 2008 list compiled by
Forbes magazine found Amenhotep III to be the twelfth richest person in human history.[6] When he died (probably in the
39th year of his reign), his son reigned as
Amenhotep IV, later changing his royal name to Akhenaten.
He built extensively at the temple of
Karnak including the
Luxor temple which consisted of two pylons, a colonnade behind the new temple entrance, and a new temple to the goddess Ma'at. Amenhotep III dismantled the fourth pylon of the
Temple of Amun at Karnak to construct a new pylon—the third pylon—and created a new entrance to this structure where he erected "two rows of columns with open papyrus capital[s]" down the centre of this newly formed forecourt.[47] The forecourt between the third and fourth pylons of Egypt, sometimes called an obelisk court, was also decorated with scenes of the sacred barque of the deities Amun, Mut, and Khonsu being carried in funerary boats.[48] The king also started work on the
Tenth pylon at the Temple of Amun there. Amenhotep III's first recorded act as king—in his
Years 1 and 2—was to open new limestone quarries at
Tura, just south of
Cairo and at
Dayr al-Barsha in
Middle Egypt in order to herald his great building projects.[49] He oversaw construction of another temple to Ma'at at
Luxor and virtually covered
Nubia with numerous monuments
.
"...including a small temple with a colonnade (dedicated to
Thutmose III) at
Elephantine, a rock temple dedicated to Amun '
Lord of the
Ways' at
Wadi es-Sebuam, and the temple of
Horus of Miam at
Aniba...[as well as founding] additional temples at
Kawa and Sesebi
."[50]
His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the
Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex in
Thebes, but unfortunately, the king chose to build it too close to the floodplain and less than two hundred years later, it stood in ruins. Much of the masonry was purloined by Merneptah and later pharaohs for their own construction projects.[51] The
Colossi of Memnon—two massive stone statues, eighteen meters high, of Amenhotep that stood at the gateway
of his mortuary temple—are the only elements of the complex that remained standing. Amenhotep III also built the
Third Pylon at Karnak and erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the
Temple of Mut, south of Karnak.[52] Some of the most magnificent statues of
New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at
Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures.[53] Several beautiful black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from
Tanis in the
Delta.[53] One of the most stunning finds of royal statuaries dating to his reign was made as recently as
1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep III's colonnade of the
Temple of Luxor where a cache of statues including "a superb 6 feet (1.8 m)-high (1.83 m) pink quartzite statue of the king standing on a sled-(god Tem, Atum) and wearing the
Double Crown" was uncovered.[53]
Info Taken from
Wikipedia.com
Credits to wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III
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