Third Intermediate Period
Amenemope
21st Dynasty (Tanite) · 1069-945 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Amenemope's brief reign is known almost entirely through his undisturbed Tanis burial, discovered just weeks before the Second World War reached France, and even his own grave goods hint that his family relied on hand-me-downs from the far wealthier reign of his likely father, Psusennes I. Further detail: UCL Digital Egypt.
Dating: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
The modest successor
Amenemope was the successor and, though the exact parentage is debated among Egyptologists, likely the son of Psusennes I. He ruled for about nine years. He was laid to rest in his mother's tomb, directly adjacent to his father's chamber in the Tanis necropolis. When French archaeologists discovered his undisturbed tomb in 1940, they found a relatively modest burial compared to his predecessor, containing a thin gold-leaf death mask, several pieces of jewelry, and about 400 ushabti figurines.
A burial finished just in time
Pierre Montet and Georges Goyon uncovered Amenemope's intact tomb, chamber NRT IV at Tanis, in April 1940, only a month before the German invasion of France forced Montet to halt his excavation; he would not resume and publish his findings until years after the war ended. A few years after Amenemope's death, during the reign of Siamun, his burial was moved into a different chamber, NRT III, alongside that of Psusennes I. Several of the jewelry pieces found on his mummy, including items among his gilt funerary masks and pectorals, were inscribed with the name of Psusennes I rather than his own, suggesting his own burial equipment was supplemented with objects reused or borrowed from his predecessor's far richer stock.
Sources for this profile
- Shaw, I. (Ed.). (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.
- Dodson, A., & Hilton, D. (2004). The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.
- Leprohon, R. J. (2013). The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary. Society of Biblical Literature.
- UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Chronology. UCLA.
- University College London. Digital Egypt for Universities.
The complete, APA-formatted reference list is on the Academic Sources & Bibliography page.