Amenhotep II

Shaushtatar is the son of Parshatatar.

By the time he ascends the throne at some time in the fifteenth century BCE, his father has installed Hurrian client kings in a number of cities, making it easier for Shaushtatar to make Mittani a Mesopotamian power.

Now freed from the constant threat undergone by Mitanni of the Egyptians, Shaushtatar turns his attention toward Assyria.

In a treaty made more than a century later, Shaushtatar is told to have sacked Assur, the Assyrian capital.

He is reputed to have brought the golden doors of the palace to his own capital of Washshukanni, making vassal states of Assyria and Arrapha.

After his invasion of Assyria, Shaushtatar turns his army westward across the Euphrates, along the way gathering beneath his sway all the northern Syrian states as he brings his army to the Mediterranean coast.

He is looking to extend Mitanni's power further south, perhaps into Palestine.

However, much of southern Syria still lies within the Egyptian sphere of influence, which has long been a threat to Mitanni.

The Mitanni nation has grown stronger during the reign of Shaushtatar but the Hurrians are keen to keep the Hittites inside the Anatolian highland.

Kizzuwatna in the west and Ishuwa in the north are important allies against the hostile Hittites.

There is a consequence into Shaushtatar's expansion into Palestine: war with Egypt.

Despite Mitanni's advantage that Palestine has a significant Hurrian population at this time, the war will be difficult to win.

During the planning stages, however, Shaushtatar dies, and his son Artatama I negotiates with the pharaoh Amenhotep II over an alliance.

Thutmose III has expanded and consolidated Egyptian control over an empire of unprecedented size in Africa and western Asia.

He has established an efficient administration in the conquered territories, in which vassal kings and chiefs are required to pay heavy tribute to the pharaoh’s viceroys and send their successors to be raised in Egypt.

Thutmose’s son succeeds him in about 1425, after a twenty-eight month co-regency, as Amenhotep II.

Thutmose III had devoted so much energy to expanding Karnak that Amenhotep's building projects are largely focused on enlarging smaller temples all over Egypt.

He begins construction at Luxor in 1417 BCE on the second great Theban temple complex, built, like the temple at Karnak, on the east side of the Nile.

Contemporary Egyptians know Luxor as Waset, or No, meaning "the city."

The Amarna letters refer to Artatama, a Mittanian king, as an ancestor who established an alliance with Thutmose IV of Egypt.

According to modern interpretation of scarce available sources, Artatama had come to power when the Mitanni kingdom was severely weakened by the Hittite invasion.

Facing the perils of fighting a war on two fronts, the Hittites in the north and Egypt in the south, Artatama had approached Amenhotep II with an offer of peaceful division of contested lands in Syria.

A peaceful resolution of an old conflict could grow into a political and military alliance, but the Egyptians suspected foul play and would deny a definite answer for years.

Little is known of Artatama, who left no inscriptions.

At one point during the reign of Thutmose IV, the Egyptians propose a marriage between Thutmose and Artatama's daughter, but for unknown reasons Artatama rejects the offer.

The Egyptians have to make seven consecutive marriage proposals before Artatama finally agree.

Thus, Artatama may be the father of Queen Mutemwiya and the maternal grandfather of Amenhotep III.

Artatama is succeeded by his son Shuttarna II.

Amenhotep II, the seventh ruler of Egypt’s Eighteenth dynasty, continues his father’s military exploits in Syria, where he crushes a rebellion and demands oaths of fealty from local rulers.

He has fought much less than his father, and his reign has seen the effective cessation of hostilities between Egypt and Mitanni, the major kingdoms vying for power in Syria.

Thebes, capital of Egypt, has become the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Memphis.

Amenhotep II's reign is usually dated from 1427 to 1400 BCE; he is buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Amenhotep's most important son, Thutmose IV, a possible usurper who in any case who succeeds his father, and whose most celebrated accomplishment is the restoration of the Sphinx at Giza and subsequent commission of the Dream Stele.

According to Thutmose's account on the Dream Stele, while the young prince was out on a hunting trip, he stopped to rest under the head of the Sphinx, which was buried up to the neck in sand.

He soon fell asleep and had a dream in which the Sphinx told him that if he cleared away the sand and restored it he would become the next Pharaoh.

After completing the restoration of the Sphinx, he placed a carved stone tablet, now known as the Dream Stele, between the two paws of the Sphinx.

The restoration of the Sphinx and the text of the Dream Stele would then be a piece of propaganda on Thutmose's part, meant to bestow legitimacy upon his unexpected kingship.

Little is known about his brief ten-year rule.

He suppressed an uprising in Nubia in his Eighth Year around 1393 and was referred to in a stela as the Conqueror of Syria, but little else has been pieced together about his military exploits.

His rule is significant because he was the New Kingdom pharaoh who established peaceful relations with Mitanni and married a Mitannian princess to seal this new alliance.

Pharaoh Amenhotep III of Egypt marries Tiy, his Chief Queen.

Amenhotep attempts to connect the Nile and the Red Sea with a canal, this however will not be done successfully until almost a thousand years later with the opening of the Canal of the Pharaohs.

The Egyptians under Amenhotep III, until now allied with the Hittites, change sides and become Mitannian allies with the marriage of the pharaoh to Gilukhepa (the first of a series of diplomatic brides), daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni in the tenth year of his reign, around 1378.