Feature: The Rise of Thebes, The Rise of Amun

Em Hotep (Keith Payne)

The story of Amun’s rise to supremacy over the Egyptian pantheon is inseparable from the story of how Thebes rose from an insignificant speck on the map to the spiritual center of the Egyptian universe.

This account of the ascent of Thebes and the god Amun sets the background for a series that will investigate an order of female pontiffs called the God’s Wives of Amun and how these tributaries converge into the ethos, or pathos, of the Heretic King, Akhenaten.

To understand how the office of the God’s Wife of Amun was transformed from an order of temple functionaries into a female pontiff with her own domain and retinue we must first understand the interconnectedness between the rise of both the Theban nobility and the god Amun to national significance. Like the God’s Wife herself, it is a tale of the rise from obscurity to supremacy.