Quick questions on Society, religion and administration in New Kingdom Egypt, Amenhotep III to Ramesses II (HSC Ancient History Section IV)

By the mid-18th Dynasty, generations of imperial tribute had made Amun-Re of Thebes the pre-eminent state god, and his temple at Karnak an enormous economic institution with vast estates, herds, land and a large priesthood. Amenhotep III built magnificently within this tradition (the Luxor Temple, his vast mortuary temple guarded by the Colossi of Memnon), while also giving new emphasis to the sun god and to his own divinity - at Soleb in Nubia he built a temple in which his own deified image was worshipped. This solar emphasis is sometimes read as a precursor to what followed.

Amenhotep III's son, who took the name Akhenaten, pushed solar religion to a radical extreme. He promoted the Aten (the visible sun-disc) as the supreme and then effectively the sole god, built a brand-new capital, Akhetaten (modern Amarna), around Year 5 of his reign, and closed and defunded the temples of the other gods. Agents were sent to erase the name of Amun, and even the plural word "gods," from monuments across Egypt.

The Amarna experiment did not outlive its founder. Under the boy-king Tutankhamun (who changed his name from Tutankhaten), the court returned to the traditional centres and the Restoration Stela reinstated the cult of Amun and the other gods. Horemheb and the early Ramessides carried the restoration much further, rebuilding and re-endowing the temples on a vast scale (Seti I and Ramesses II at Abydos and in the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak) and striking the Amarna kings from the official king-lists.

The purpose-built village on the Theban West Bank housed the skilled crews who cut and decorated the royal tombs. It was active across this period and, because the dry conditions preserved thousands of ostraca and papyri, it is the best-documented community in the ancient world; its richest records are Ramesside. It gives historians an unmatched window onto the lives of literate artisans - their work, pay in grain rations, disputes, and their personal religion.

Great Royal Wives could be exceptionally prominent in this period. Tiye, the non-royal-born Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III, appears at her husband's own scale on monuments, held her own estates, and even features in the Amarna diplomatic correspondence, a queen of real visibility. Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, was central to the art and cult of the Aten and is shown performing roles usually reserved for the king; some scholars argue she may have gone on to rule in her own right, though this is debated and best flagged as uncertain.

The literate official class ran the state and left much of its evidence. Amenhotep son of Hapu, overseer of works under Amenhotep III, was so revered that he was later venerated as a deified sage and healer - a mark of how high a commoner official could rise. The vizier Ramose, as noted, straddled the religious transition.

The clearest social-geographical change came with Ramesses II, who built a vast new royal capital, Pi-Ramesse, in the eastern Delta near old Avaris. Its northern position placed the crown close to the Levantine frontier, the army and the family's Delta roots. The result was a lasting split between a northern political and residential capital (Pi-Ramesse) and a southern religious capital (Thebes, with Amun's Karnak and the royal tombs), a division that reshaped the geography of power for the rest of the New Kingdom.