Publisher's Synopsis
In the long history of pharaonic Egypt, the most vivid and richly documented flowering of her brilliant higher culture is that of the New Kingdom (18th to 20th Dynasties), c.1550–1085 BC, when Egypt was one of the leading powers in the then civilized world. After the first climax of achievement that ended with the failure of the politico–religious innovations of Akhenaten, it was the Ramesside kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties who sought to restore and to maintain Egypt′s power and integrity in the radically–changing world of the 13th and 12th centuries BC.
Kenneth A. Kitchen has produced the standard edition of the hieroglyphic texts from temples, stelae and other monuments of this age, which constitute an absolutely fundamental source for the history and civilization of this vital epoch.
This volume is the first of Professor Kitchen′s notes and comments on the inscriptions themselves, and accompanies the volume of translations, published in January 1993. Almost all the inscriptions and documents translated date from the reigns of Ramesses I, founder of the 19th Dynasty, and his dynamic son and successor Sethos, at the beginning of the 13th century BC.
