Quick questions on Power, authority and historiography in New Kingdom Egypt, Amenhotep III to Ramesses II: HSC Ancient History

Ideology explained WHY the king should be obeyed; a set of practical institutions made obedience real, and the same institutions set the limits of royal power.

The Amarna period is the moment when the tension between the crown and the Amun establishment broke into the open. Akhenaten used the full authority of divine kingship to attempt something no earlier king had: to redirect the wealth and the sacred centrality of the state away from Amun and toward the Aten and himself. He closed or defunded the traditional temples, moved the court to Akhetaten, and in places had the name of Amun itself chiselled out.

By this period Egypt maintained a large professional army built around chariotry, the composite bow and bronze weapons, organised into divisions under the king as commander-in-chief. It held the Nubian and Levantine empire and fought its most famous engagement at Kadesh (1274 BC). Military success was also legitimacy: the king who defeated foreign enemies visibly maintained Ma'at against chaos.

Egypt and its empire were administered by a literate scribal class headed by two viziers (north and south), with the treasury and granary officials managing wealth and the Viceroy of Kush ("King's Son of Kush") governing Nubia and its gold. This machinery let a single sacred king actually rule a large territorial state, and it carried on running even through the upheaval of Amarna.

This is the instrument that was also a rival. Generations of kings had credited Amun of Thebes with their victories and endowed his temple at Karnak with a growing share of empire tribute, land and captives. By Amenhotep III's reign the Amun establishment was enormously wealthy, with its own estates, personnel and economic weight.