DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0165
THE NEW KINGDOM
a highly political and, as inevitably happens, a disastrous role.
At the height of the New Kingdom they formed merely a
second flexible army in the autocrat’s hand. An official
hierarchy developed along strongly militaristic lines. The
historians still persist in emphasizing the completely unwar-
like original disposition of the ancient Egyptians and it is
easy to trace it in their art. In the New Kingdom a change
occurs. The lord shares with the people his greed for glory.
The Egyptians give up dreaming and reckon with iron facts.
The lust for expansion drags them from their comfortable
home. They batten on the respect of their vanquished
enemies, whom they continue to regard as barbarians, and
revel in glory. Whether they sought to indulge this passion
with native forces or mercenaries is of no concern to us.
Urbane decorum turns into the swollen pride of Imperialism.
The Middle Kingdom was a refinement of the Old.
The New is, on the whole, the opposite. Even this coarsening
process has its lucky moments; in the fourth room at the
museum there are plenty of crude but expressive works, such
as the scribe Amenothes, son of Hapu, the much reproduced
figure with the three parallel folds on his chest. This crude-
ness affects the architect too at times, but as in sculpture, so
also in architecture: there are notable exceptions. The
difference in quality between the New and the Old Kingdom
is not under discussion; the eighteenth dynasty wavers
between coarseness and an excessive refinement which at
times far surpasses the tendencies of the Middle Kingdom,
especially at the end of the eighteenth dynasty. About this
moment an interesting episode occurs. We are in the first
half of the fourteenth century b.c., when their warlike lusts
had been satisfied, even sated, and a sensitive man came to
the throne who longed for something more than martial
glory and was sick of the vulgar display of publicity.
Amenophis iv set himself up as an apostle of truth.
‘Akhenaton, who lives by truth’ was one of his titles. His
H7
a highly political and, as inevitably happens, a disastrous role.
At the height of the New Kingdom they formed merely a
second flexible army in the autocrat’s hand. An official
hierarchy developed along strongly militaristic lines. The
historians still persist in emphasizing the completely unwar-
like original disposition of the ancient Egyptians and it is
easy to trace it in their art. In the New Kingdom a change
occurs. The lord shares with the people his greed for glory.
The Egyptians give up dreaming and reckon with iron facts.
The lust for expansion drags them from their comfortable
home. They batten on the respect of their vanquished
enemies, whom they continue to regard as barbarians, and
revel in glory. Whether they sought to indulge this passion
with native forces or mercenaries is of no concern to us.
Urbane decorum turns into the swollen pride of Imperialism.
The Middle Kingdom was a refinement of the Old.
The New is, on the whole, the opposite. Even this coarsening
process has its lucky moments; in the fourth room at the
museum there are plenty of crude but expressive works, such
as the scribe Amenothes, son of Hapu, the much reproduced
figure with the three parallel folds on his chest. This crude-
ness affects the architect too at times, but as in sculpture, so
also in architecture: there are notable exceptions. The
difference in quality between the New and the Old Kingdom
is not under discussion; the eighteenth dynasty wavers
between coarseness and an excessive refinement which at
times far surpasses the tendencies of the Middle Kingdom,
especially at the end of the eighteenth dynasty. About this
moment an interesting episode occurs. We are in the first
half of the fourteenth century b.c., when their warlike lusts
had been satisfied, even sated, and a sensitive man came to
the throne who longed for something more than martial
glory and was sick of the vulgar display of publicity.
Amenophis iv set himself up as an apostle of truth.
‘Akhenaton, who lives by truth’ was one of his titles. His
H7