Amenhotep III (Nebmaatre)
1390 BCE–1352 BCE · New-Kingdom · Thebes
Amenhotep III (throne-name Nebmaatre) presided over the artistic and diplomatic zenith of the New Kingdom, reigning in Dynasty 18 around 1390-1352 BCE (Shaw's conventional dates). His long reign was one of unmatched prosperity and prolific building: the great temple at Luxor, his vast mortuary temple guarded by the two enormous statues the Greeks later called the Colossi of Memnon, and the sprawling Malkata palace complex at Thebes. His reign also saw the flourishing of international diplomacy preserved in the Amarna Letters, a cuneiform archive of correspondence with the great powers of the Near East. His official Amenhotep son of Hapu was so esteemed that he was later deified as a sage. He was the father of Akhenaten.
Did you know?
The statue that ‘sang’ at dawn for Roman tourists
The two Colossi of Memnon, erected for the pharaoh Amenhotep III around 1350 BCE, became one of antiquity's great tourist attractions: after an earthquake around 27 BCE cracked the northern statue, it was reported to give off a sound near sunrise. Greek and Roman visitors travelled to hear it and carved roughly a hundred inscriptions recording their visits — coming to gawk at a monument already about 1,300 years old. It still stands today, some 3,400 years after it was raised.
How we know
Amenhotep III r. ~1388/1386–1351/1349 BCE; Colossi erected ~1350 BCE; northern statue cracked in ~27 BCE earthquake; ~107 Greek/Latin visitor inscriptions AD 20–250 (Strabo, Pausanias attest the sound); age at 27 BCE = 1350−27 ≈ 1,300 yrs; age today = 1350+2026 ≈ 3,400 yrs.
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Thebes
What they did here
His royal capital and the centre of his great building programme.
In Thebes at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Amenhotep III (Nebmaatre)’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Amenhotep III (Nebmaatre)’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.