Osiris
Osiris is the god of the afterlife, the underworld, rebirth in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, holding a symbolic crook and flail. Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of the god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son, he was associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning "Foremost of the Westerners", a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was sometimes called "king of the living": ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead "the living ones". Through syncretism with Iah, he is the god of the Moon. Osiris was considered the brother of Isis, Set and Horus the Elder, father of Horus the Younger; the first evidence of the worship of Osiris was found in the middle of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt, although it is that he was worshiped much earlier.
Most information available on the myths of Osiris is derived from allusions contained in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Fifth Dynasty New Kingdom source documents such as the Shabaka Stone and the Contending of Horus and Seth, much in narrative style from the writings of Greek authors including Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus. Osiris was the judge of the dead and the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River, he was described as "He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful" and the "Lord of Silence". The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead so would they in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with the heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year.
Osiris was worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Osiris is a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄσιρις IPA:, which in turn is the Greek adaptation of the original name in the Egyptian language. In Egyptian hieroglyphs the name appears as wsjr, which some Egyptologists instead choose to transliterate ꜣsjr or jsjrj. Since hieroglyphic writing lacks vowels, Egyptologists have vocalized the name in various ways, such as Asar, Ausir, Usir, or Usire. Several proposals have been made for the meaning of the original name. Most take wsjr as the accepted transliteration, following Adolf Erman: John Gwyn Griffiths, "bearing in mind Erman's emphasis on the fact that the name must begin with an w", proposes a derivation from wsr with an original meaning of "The Mighty One". Moreover, one of the oldest attestations of the god Osiris appears in the mastaba of the deceased Netjer-wser. Kurt Sethe proposes a compound st-jrt, meaning "seat of the eye", in a hypothetical earlier form *wst-jrt.
David Lorton takes up this same compound but explains st-jrt as signifying "product, something made", Osiris representing the product of the ritual mummification process. Wolfhart Westendorf proposes an etymology from wꜣst-jrt "she who bears the eye". Mark J. Smith makes no definitive proposals but asserts that the second element must be a form of jrj; however alternative transliterations have been proposed: Yoshi Muchiki reexamines Erman's evidence that the throne hieroglyph in the word is to be read ws and finds it unconvincing, suggesting instead that the name should be read ꜣsjr on the basis of Aramaic and Old South Arabian transcriptions, readings of the throne sign in other words, comparison with ꜣst. James P. Allen reads the word as jsjrt but revises the reading to jsjrj and derives it from js-jrj, meaning "engendering principle". Osiris is represented in his most developed form of iconography wearing the Atef crown, similar to the White crown of Upper Egypt, but with the addition of two curling ostrich feathers at each side.
He carries the crook and flail. The crook is thought to represent Osiris as a shepherd god; the symbolism of the flail is more uncertain with shepherds whip, fly-whisk, or association with the god Andjety of the ninth nome of Lower Egypt proposed. He was depicted as a pharaoh with a complexion of either green or black in mummiform; the Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars. Amongst these mortuary texts, at the beginning of the 4th dynasty, is found: "An offering the king gives and Anubis". By the end of the 5th dynasty, the formula in all tombs becomes "An offering the king gives and Osiris". Osiris is the mythological father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth; the myth describes Osiris as having been killed by his brother, Set
Chapel
The term chapel refers to a Christian place of prayer and worship, attached to a larger nonreligious institution or, considered an extension of a primary religious institution. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a college, palace, funeral home, synagogue or mosque, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an free-standing building, sometimes with its own grounds. Chapel has referred to independent or nonconformist places of worship in Great Britain—outside the established church; until the Protestant Reformation, a chapel denoted a place of worship, either at a secondary location, not the main responsibility of the local parish priest, or that belonged to a person or institution. The earliest Christian places of worship are now referred to as chapels, as they were not dedicated buildings but rather a dedicated chamber within a building. Most larger churches had one or more secondary altars, which if they occupied a distinct space, would be called a chapel.
In Russian Orthodox tradition, the chapels were built underneath city gates, where most people could visit them. The most famous example is the Iberian Chapel. Although chapels refer to Christian places of worship, they are commonly found in Jewish synagogues and do not denote a specific denomination. In England—where the Church of England is established by law—non-denominational or inter-faith chapels in such institutions may nonetheless be consecrated by the local Anglican bishop. Non-denominational chapels are encountered as part of a non-religious institution such as a hospital, university or prison. Many military installations have chapels for the use of military personnel under the leadership of a military chaplain; the earliest Christian places of worship were not dedicated buildings but rather a dedicated chamber within a building, such as a room in an individual's home. Here one or two people could pray without being part of a communion/congregation. People who like to use chapels may find it peaceful and relaxing to be away from the stress of life, without other people moving around them.
The word, like the associated word, chaplain, is derived from Latin. More the word "chapel" is derived from a relic of Saint Martin of Tours: traditional stories about Martin relate that while he was still a soldier, he cut his military cloak in half to give part to a beggar in need; the other half he wore over his shoulders as a "small cape". The beggar, the stories claim, was Christ in disguise, Martin experienced a conversion of heart, becoming first a monk abbot bishop; this cape came into the possession of the Frankish kings, they kept the relic with them as they did battle. The tent which kept the cape was called the capella and the priests who said daily Mass in the tent were known as the capellani. From these words, via Old French, we get the names "chapel" and "chaplain"; the word appears in the Irish language in the Middle Ages, as Welsh people came with the Norman and Old English invaders to the island of Ireland. While the traditional Irish word for church was eaglais, a new word, séipéal, came into usage.
In British history, "chapel" or "meeting house", was the standard designation for church buildings belonging to independent or Nonconformist religious societies and their members. It was a word associated with the pre-eminence of independent religious practice in rural regions of England and Wales, the northern industrial towns of the late 18th and 19th centuries, centres of population close to but outside the City of London; as a result, "chapel" is sometimes used as an adjective in the UK to describe the members of such churches. A proprietary chapel is one that belonged to a private person. In the 19th century they were common being built to cope with urbanisation, they were set up by evangelical philanthropists with a vision of spreading Christianity in cities whose needs could no longer be met by the parishes. Some functioned more with a wealthy person building a chapel so they could invite their favorite preachers, they are anomalies in the English ecclesiastical law, having no parish area, but being able to have an Anglican clergyman licensed there.
Many Anglican Churches were Proprietary Chapels. Over the years they have been converted into normal Parishes. While the usage of the word "chapel" is not limited to Christian terminology, it is most found in that context. Nonetheless, the word's meaning can vary by denomination, non-denominational chapels can be found in many hospitals and the United Nations headquarters. Chapels can be found for worship in Judaism; the word "chapel" is in common usage in the United Kingdom, in Wales, for Nonconformist places of worship. In the UK, due to the rise in Nonconformist chapels during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by the time of the 1851 census, more people attended the independent chapels than attended the state religion's Anglican churches. In Roman Catholic Church canon law, a chapel, technically called an "oratory", is a building or part thereof dedicated to the celebration of services the Mass, not a parish church; this may be a private chapel, for the use of one person or a select group.
Archive.today
Archive.today is an archive site which stores snapshots of web pages. It retrieves one page at a time similar to WebCite, smaller than 50MB each, but with support for modern sites such as Google Maps and Twitter. Archive.is uses headless browsing to record what embedded resources need to be captured to provide a high-quality memento, creates a PNG image to provide a static and non-interactive visualization of the representation. Archive.today can capture individual pages in response to explicit user requests. Since July 2013, archive.is supports the Memento Project application programming interface. Archive.today was founded in 2012. The site branded itself as archive.today, but in May 2015 changed the primary mirror to archive.is. In January 2019, it began to deprecate the archive.is domain in favor of the archive.today mirror. In March 2019 the site was blocked by several Australian internet providers in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in an attempt to limit distribution of the footage of the attack.
According to GreatFire.org, archive.is has been blocked in China since March 2016, archive.li since September 2017, archive.fo since July 2018. On July 21, 2015, the operators blocked access to the service from all Finnish IP addresses, stating on Twitter that they did this in order to avoid escalating a dispute they had with the Finnish government. In Russia, only HTTP access is possible. CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 does not resolve archive.is domains. Archive.is records only text and images, excluding video, xml and other non-static content. It keeps track of the history of snapshots saved, returning to the user a request for confirmation before adding a new snapshot of an saved Internet address; the research toolbar enables advanced keywords operators. A couple of quotation marks address the search to an exact sequence of keywords present in the title or in the body of the webpage, whereas the insite operator restricts it to a specific Internet domain. Once a web page is archived, it cannot be deleted directly by any Internet user.
Nevertherless, archive.is controls or deletes web pages saved some days before, without any policy or right of discussion and appeal. While saving a dynamic list, archive.is searchbox shows only a result that links the previous and the following section of the list. The other web pages saved are filtered, sometimes may be found by one of their occurrences. Digital preservation Internet Archive Link rot Perma.cc Wayback Machine Web archiving WebCite WP:Link rot Official website "Offline blog"
Senenmut
Senenmut was an 18th dynasty ancient Egyptian architect and government official. His name translates as "mother's brother." Senenmut was of low commoner birth, born to literate provincial parents and Hatnofer from Iuny. Senenmut is known to have had 3 brothers—Amenemhet and Pairy—and 2 sisters—Ahhotep and Nofrethor respectively. However, only Minhotep is named outside chapel TT71 and tomb TT353 in an inventory on the lid of a chest found in the burial chamber of Ramose and Hatnofer. More information is known about Senenmut than many other non-royal Egyptians because the joint tomb of his parents was discovered intact by the Metropolitan Museum in the mid-1930s and preserved. Christine Meyer has offered compelling evidence to show that Senenmut was a bachelor for his entire life: for instance, Senenmut is portrayed alone with his parents in the funerary stelae of his tombs. Senenmut first enters the historical record on a national level as the "Steward of the God's Wife" and "Steward of the King's Daughter".
Some Egyptologists place Senenmut's entry into royal service during the reign of Thutmose I, but it is far more that it occurred during either the reign of Thutmose II or while Hatshepsut was still regent and not pharaoh. After Hatshepsut was crowned pharaoh, Senenmut was given more prestigious titles and became high steward of the king. Senenmut supervised the quarrying and erection of twin obelisks, at the time the tallest in the world, at the entrance to the Temple of Karnak. Neither stands today. Karnak's Red Chapel, or Chapelle Rouge, was intended as a barque shrine and may have stood between the two obelisks. Senenmut claims to be the chief architect of Hatshepsut's works at Deir el-Bahri. Senenmut's masterpiece building project was the Mortuary Temple complex of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, it was designed and implemented by Senenmut on a site on the West Bank of the Nile close to the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. The focal point was the Djeser-Djeseru or "the Sublime of the Sublimes" mortuary temple-, a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony built nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon.
Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of terraces. It is built into a cliff face that rises above it. Djeser-Djeseru and the other buildings of the Deir el-Bahri complex are considered to be among the great buildings of the ancient world; the building complex design is thought to be derived from the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II built nearly 500 years earlier at Deir-el-Bahri near Thebes. Senenmut's importance at the royal court under Hatshepsut is unquestionable: "he was able to lay immediate claim to prime construction sites at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna and Deir el Bahri itself for the excavation of his tomb chapel and burial chamber."Senenmut's Theban Tomb 71 was started late in Year 7, "shortly after Hatshepsut's accession, the death of Hatnofer, Hatnofer's internment with the exhumed remains of several family members", while the "excavation on the chapel seems to have continued until after Year 7" of the female pharaoh's reign. Senenmut's tomb appears to have enjoyed Hatshepsut's favour and "his portrayal in the Punt reliefs postdates Year 9" of Hatshepsut.
The earliest known star map in Egypt is found as a main part of a decor in the Tomb of Senemut. The astronomical ceiling in Senenmut’s tomb is divided into two sections representing the northern and the southern skies; this indicates other dimension of his career. Some Egyptologists have theorized. Facts that are cited to support the theory are that Hatshepsut allowed Senenmut to place his name and an image of himself behind one of the main doors in Djeser-Djeseru, the presence of graffiti in an unfinished tomb used as a rest house by the workers of Djeser-Djeseru depicting a male and a hermaphrodite in pharaonic regalia engaging in an explicit sexual act. Although it is not known where he is buried, Senenmut had a chapel and a tomb constructed for him at in the Tombs of the Nobles, the tomb at which contains a famous star ceiling, near the temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, they were both vandalized during the reign of Thutmose III during the latter's campaign to eradicate all trace of Hatshepsut's memory.
Neither tomb by itself was complete as would be expected Egyptian tomb for a person of high standing. TT71 does not have burial chambers. TT353 is underground without any overground chapel, they are only together a full burial monument. UNESCO "ICOMOS-IAU case study: The Tomb of Senenmut at Western Thebes, Egypt includes map and case study The Sen-en-Mut project, current archaeological work on TT 353 Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharaoh, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Senenmut The Tombs of Senenmut: The Architecture and Decoration of Tombs 71 and 353 digitized t
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, is the longest river in Africa and in the world, though some sources cite the Amazon River as the longest. The Nile, about 6,650 km long, is an "international" river as its drainage basin covers eleven countries, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan and Egypt. In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Sudan; the river Nile has the White Nile and Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself; the Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi, it flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria and South Sudan. The Blue Nile flows into Sudan from the southeast; the two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The northern section of the river flows north entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt ends in a large delta and flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along river banks. In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥ'pī or Iteru, meaning "river". In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲱ, pronounced piaro or phiaro, means "the river", comes from the same ancient name. In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called en-Nīl while in Standard Arabic. In Biblical Hebrew: הַיְאוֹר, Ha-Ye'or or הַשִׁיחוֹר, Ha-Shiḥor; the English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος. Beyond that, the etymology is disputed. Hesiod at his Theogony refers that Nilus was one of son of Oceanus and Tethys. Another derivation of Nile might be related to the term Nil, which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original sources of indigo dye. Another possible etymology derives it from a Semitic Nahal, meaning "river".
The standard English names "White Nile" and "Blue Nile", to refer to the river's source, derive from Arabic names applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum. With a total length of about 6,650 km between the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is the longest river on the African continent; the drainage basin of the Nile covers about 10 % of the area of Africa. Compared to other major rivers, the Nile carries little water; the Nile basin is complex, because of this, the discharge at any given point along the mainstem depends on many factors including weather, diversions and evapotranspiration, groundwater flow. Above Khartoum, the Nile is known as the White Nile, a term used in a limited sense to describe the section between Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile; the White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia. Both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift; the source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size.
The Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian town of Bukoba, is the longest feeder, although sources do not agree on, the longest tributary of the Kagera and hence the most distant source of the Nile itself. It is either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi, or the Nyabarongo, which flows from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda; the two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border. In 2010, an exploration party went to a place described as the source of the Rukarara tributary, by hacking a path up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes in the Nyungwe forest found an appreciable incoming surface flow for many kilometres upstream, found a new source, giving the Nile a length of 6,758 km. Gish Abay is the place where the "holy water" of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop; the Nile leaves Lake Nyanza at Ripon Falls near Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. It flows north for some 130 kilometers, to Lake Kyoga; the last part of the 200 kilometers river section starts from the western shores of the lake and flows at first to the west until just south of Masindi Port, where the river turns north makes a great half circle to the east and north until Karuma Falls.
For the remaining part it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta. The lake itself is on the border of DR Congo. After leaving Lake Albert, the river is known as the Albert Nile; the Nile river flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule. Just south of the town it has the confluence with the Achwa River; the Bahr al Ghazal, itself 716 kilometers (44
Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III known as Amenhotep the Magnificent, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC, or from June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC, after his father Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep III was Thutmose's son by Mutemwiya, his reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of its artistic and international power. When he died in the 38th or 39th year of his reign, his son ruled as Amenhotep IV, but changed his own royal name to Akhenaten; the son of the future Thutmose IV and a minor wife Mutemwiya, Amenhotep III was born around 1401 BC. He was a member of the Thutmosid family that had ruled Egypt for 150 years since the reign of Thutmose I. Amenhotep III was the father of two sons with his Great Royal Wife Tiye, their first son, Crown Prince Thutmose, predeceased his father and their second son, Amenhotep IV known as Akhenaten succeeded Amenhotep III to the throne.
Amenhotep III may have been the father of a third child—called Smenkhkare, who would succeed Akhenaten and ruled Egypt as pharaoh. Amenhotep III and Tiye may have had four daughters: Sitamun, Isis or Iset, Nebetah, they appear on statues and reliefs during the reign of their father and are represented by smaller objects—with the exception of Nebetah. Nebetah is attested only once in the known historical records on a colossal limestone group of statues from Medinet Habu; this huge sculpture, seven meters high, shows Amenhotep III and Tiye seated side by side, "with three of their daughters standing in front of the throne—Henuttaneb, the largest and best preserved, in the centre. Evidence that Sitamun was promoted to this office by Year 30 of his reign, is known from jar-label inscriptions uncovered from the royal palace at Malkata. Egypt's theological paradigm encouraged a male pharaoh to accept royal women from several different generations as wives to strengthen the chances of his offspring succeeding him.
The goddess Hathor herself was related to Ra as first the mother and wife and daughter of the god when he rose to prominence in the pantheon of the Ancient Egyptian religion. Amenhotep III is known to have married several foreign women: Gilukhepa, the daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni, in the tenth year of his reign. Tadukhepa, the daughter of his ally Tushratta of Mitanni, Around Year 36 of his reign. A daughter of Kurigalzu, king of Babylon. A daughter of Kadashman-Enlil, king of Babylon. A daughter of Tarhundaradu, ruler of Arzawa. A daughter of the ruler of Ammia. Amenhotep III has the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, with over 250 of his statues having been discovered and identified. Since these statues span his entire life, they provide a series of portraits covering the entire length of his reign. Another striking characteristic of Amenhotep III's reign is the series of over 200 large commemorative stone scarabs that have been discovered over a large geographic area ranging from Syria through to Soleb in Nubia.
Their lengthy inscribed texts extol the accomplishments of the pharaoh. For instance, 123 of these commemorative scarabs record the large number of lions that Amenhotep III killed "with his own arrows" from his first regnal year up to his tenth year. Five other scarabs state that the foreign princess who would become a wife to him, arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women, she was the first of many such princesses. Another eleven scarabs record the excavation of an artificial lake he had built for his Great Royal Wife, Queen Tiye, in his eleventh regnal year, Regnal Year 11 under the Majesty of... Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes, given life, the Great Royal Wife Tiye, his Majesty commanded the making of a lake for the great royal wife Tiye—may she live—in her town of Djakaru.. Its length is 3,700 and its width is 700. Celebrated the Festival of Opening the Lake in the third month of Inundation, day sixteen, his Majesty was rowed in the royal barge Aten-tjehen in it. Amenhotep appears to have been crowned while still a child between the ages of 6 and 12.
It is that a regent acted for him if he was made pharaoh at that early age. He married Tiye two years and she lived twelve years after his death, his lengthy reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. Proof of this is shown by the diplomatic correspondence from the rulers of Assyria, Mitanni and Hatti, preserved in the archive of Amarna Letters; the letters cover the period from Year 30 of Amenhotep III until at least the end of Akhenaten's reign. In one famous correspondence—Amarna letter EA 4—Amenhotep III is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in rejecting the latter's entreaty to marry one of this pharaoh's daughters: From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egy is given to anyone. Amenhotep III's refusal to allow one of his daughters to be married to the Babylonian monarch may indeed be connect
Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt
The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty spanned the period from 1549/1550 to 1292 BC; this dynasty is known as the Thutmosid Dynasty for the four pharaohs named Thutmose. Several of Egypt's most famous pharaohs were from the Eighteenth Dynasty, including Tutankhamun, whose tomb was found by Howard Carter in 1922. Other famous pharaohs of the dynasty include Hatshepsut, the longest-reigning woman pharaoh of an indigenous dynasty, Akhenaten, the "heretic pharaoh", with his Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti; the Eighteenth Dynasty is unique among Egyptian dynasties in that it had two women who ruled as sole pharaoh: Hatshepsut, regarded as one of the most innovative rulers of ancient Egypt, Neferneferuaten identified as the iconic Nefertiti. Dynasty XVIII was founded by Ahmose I, the brother or son of Kamose, the last ruler of the 17th Dynasty. Ahmose finished the campaign to expel the Hyksos rulers.
His reign is seen as the start of the New Kingdom. Ahmose was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep I, whose reign was uneventful. Amenhotep I left no male heir and the next pharaoh, Thutmose I, seems to have been related to the royal family through marriage. During his reign the borders of Egypt's empire reached their greatest expanse, extending in the north to Carchemish on the Euphrates and in the south up to Kurgus beyond the fourth cataract of the Nile. Thutmose I was succeeded by Thutmose II and his queen, the daughter of Thutmose I. After her husband's death and a period of regency for her minor stepson Hatshepsut became pharaoh in her own right and ruled for over twenty years. Thutmose III, who became known as the greatest military pharaoh also had a lengthy reign after becoming pharaoh, he had a second co-regency in his old age with his son Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II was succeeded by Thutmose IV, who in his turn was followed by his son Amenhotep III, whose reign is seen as a high point in this dynasty.
Amenhotep III undertook large scale building programmes, the extent of which can only be compared with those of the much longer reign of Ramesses II during Dynasty XIX. Amenhotep III may have shared the throne for up to twelve years with his son Amenhotep IV. There is much debate about this proposed co-regency, with different experts considering that there was a lengthy co-regency, a short one, or none at all. In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and moved his capital to Amarna, which he named Akhetaten. During the reign of Akhenaten, the Aten became, the most prominent deity, came to be considered the only god. Whether this amounted to true monotheism continues to be the subject of debate within the academic community; some state that Akhenaten created a monotheism, while others point out that he suppressed a dominant solar cult by the assertion of another, while he never abandoned several other traditional deities. Egyptians considered this "Amarna Period" an unfortunate aberration.
The events following Akhenaten's death are unclear. Individuals named Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten are known but their relative placement and role in history is still much debated. Tutankhamun took the throne but died young; the last two members of the Eighteenth Dynasty—Ay and Horemheb—became rulers from the ranks of officials in the royal court, although Ay might have been the maternal uncle of Akhenaten as a fellow descendant of Yuya and Tjuyu. Ay may have married the widowed Great Royal Wife and young half-sister of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun, in order to obtain power. Ay married Tey, Nefertiti's wet-nurse. Ay's reign was short, his successor was Horemheb, a general during Tutankhamun's reign whom the childless pharaoh may have intended as his successor. Horemheb may have taken the throne away from Ay in a coup. Horemheb died childless, having appointed his successor, Ramesses I, who ascended the throne in 1292 BC and was the first pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty; this example to the right depicts a man named Ay who achieved the exalted religious positions of Second Prophet of Amun and High Priest of Mut at Thebes.
His career flourished during the reign of Tutankhamun. The cartouches of King Ay, Tutankhamun's successor appearing on the statue, were an attempt by an artisan to "update" the sculpture. Radiocarbon dating suggests that Dynasty XVIII may have started a few years earlier than the conventional date of 1550 BC; the radiocarbon date range for its beginning is 1570–1544 BC, the mean point of, 1557 BC. The pharaohs of Dynasty XVIII ruled for two hundred and fifty years; the dates and names in the table are taken from Hilton. Many of the pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes. More information can be found on the Theban Mapping Project website. Several diplomatic marriages are known for the New Kingdom; these daughters of foreign kings are only mentioned in cuneiform texts and are not known from other sources. The marriages were to have been a way to confirm good relations between these states. Egyptian chronology Kuhrt, Amélie; the Ancient Near East: c. 3000–330 BC. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415013536.
Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharaoh, an exhibition catalog from The