Senusret I | A Renowned of the Middle Kingdom
Sesostris I is the Greek name for Senusret I, the second Egyptian king (pharaoh) of the 12th Dynasty during the Middle Kingdom. Initially, he ruled alongside Amenemhet I from around 1975 to 1965 BCE. After his father’s death, he reigned alone for 43 years.
For the last two years of his reign, from 1932 to 1930 BCE, he ruled jointly with his son, Amenemhet II. The Turin King List records a total of 45 years for his reign.
Family and Royal Lineage of Senusret I
Senusret I was the son of Amenemhet I and Neferetjatenen. The name of his mother is preserved only as an inscription on a statue, and it has been transmitted only in a 19th-century copy. The name is unusual, and there are doubts about the authenticity of both this inscription and the name.
Senusret I’s mother’s name as read and written down by Champollion is “Nefri-ta-tjenen” (cited in Gauthier 1907, 263), which is an odd and possibly mistaken name or else one that might be transliterated differently by scholars nowadays.
His wife was Neferu, who was his sister. She is known from the fragmentary basin and Sinai inscription with her father, Amenemhat I. She is also named in the beginning of “The Story of Sinuhe,” giving her the titles of a king’s daughter and a king’s wife, so the story was correct in those facts.
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It is possible that another sister was also the wife of Senusret I. One of the limestone blocks from the pyramid complex of Amenemhat I has two short and broken vertical lines of inscription. The first still preserves “King’s Daughter of His Body,” and the second, part of a name: “kayet”.
At the complex of Senusret I, small subsidiary Pyramid 2 has two different inscriptions for a royal female named Itakayet. One, a fragment from the false door of the inner shrine, has the title “King’s Daughter,” followed by her name in one part of a vertical inscription and, in another, “His Daughter Whom He Loves,” followed by her name.
Then, on a restored column from the mortuary chapel, is the vertical inscription: “iry-pat, great of affection and great of praise, haty-a’a, one who sees Horus and Seth, king’s daughter whom he loves, Itakayet”.
Sibling Marriages in Egyptian Royalty
Such a situation might seem unusual, except that, in the Twelfth Dynasty, if a princess did not marry her brother and become a queen, she did not marry. Schmitz seems to have been the first to recognize this situation, and research by this author has reached a similar conclusion. The princesses that did not marry were buried near the pyramid of their fathers, and there are numerous burials of princesses at Twelfth Dynasty pyramids.
The earliest royal sibling marriage that there is some proof for is that of Netjerikhet and Hetephernebty in the Third Dynasty. In the Fourth Dynasty, there is clearer evidence of kings marrying their sisters. A brother–sister royal marriage with good evidence backing it is that of King Menkaura and his wife Queen Khamerernebty II. They were both the children of King Khafra and Queen Khamerernebty I, and their grandparents were related as well, although that evidence is not as clear.
There is some evidence from the Fourth Dynasty for princes marrying their sisters, such as Ankhaf and Kawab, both brothers of Khufu, who married one of their sisters.
There is not clear evidence for sibling marriage again until the later part of the Sixth Dynasty, when Queen Neith first marries her brother, Merenra, and, upon his death, marries her half-brother, Pepy II.
The next documented sibling marriage is Mentuhotep II and his sister Neferu in the later Eleventh Dynasty. Since Mentuhotep II set about to reunify Egypt in the traditions of the Old Kingdom, he must have been following Fourth Dynasty practice, which was based on the pattern of the sibling marriages of the gods and goddesses of the Heliopolitan creation.
Royal Marriages in the Twelfth Dynasty
The Twelfth Dynasty clearly follows this marriage pattern as well, evidenced first in the reign of Senusret I. The Twelfth Dynasty did not allow a princess to marry unless she married her brother, which seems to be a way of protecting access to the throne, so that no one can claim legitimacy through marriage.
Since the dynasty started out with an assassination, it would seem that protecting the royal line was of prime importance. Princess Khamaat, daughter of Userkaf of the Fifth Dynasty, was the first royal woman we know of who married outside the royal family.
By the time of King Nyuserra, these marriages were common, but they certainly do not appear again in the Middle Kingdom.
Co-Regency Practices in Ancient Egypt
Co-regency would also offer protection, because if anything happened to one king, there was still another ruling king in place. Since evidence points to the fact that Amenemhat I and Senusret I had a co-regency, did Amenemhat I begin this practice or did he follow an earlier practice started by Pepy I? Had there been earlier attempts on the life of Amenemhat I, like the conspiracies suggested in the reign of Pepy I?
Senusret I followed the practice of his father and had a co-regency with his son, Amenemhat II, which lasted no more than four years. As to what effect co-regency had on decision-making, palaces, status of royal family members, and other situations that might arise with dual kings and families, there is very little evidence.
Assumptions are made that the elder king “retired” and the younger king was the active partner but that might just be based on the fact that in “The Story of Sinuhe” the royal father stayed at home while the royal son was on a military expedition.
The Importance of Royal Mothers
There are more names of mothers preserved in the early Middle Kingdom than there are of wives. We know the mother of Mentuhotep II, Mentuhotep III, Mentuhotep IV, Amenemhat I, and Senusret I, but, while we know two queens of Mentuhotep II, not counting the women who were priestesses of Hathor, we do not have a queen’s name for Mentuhotep IV; and for Amenemhat I and Senusret I, there seems to have been only one queen each, or perhaps two for Senusret.
The king’s mother was vastly more important for the king’s legitimacy than his wife, and so the mother’s name may well have appeared in many more instances and therefore has been preserved more often.
In Otto’s study of the king’s legitimacy in ancient Egypt, he points out three necessary aspects of kingship: effectiveness, birthright, and mythological backing. The second aspect, that of birthright, is why the king’s mother is so important; the transference of royal power passes through her to her son.
The importance of the king’s mother can be seen as early as the First Dynasty, as at least the names of three kings’ mothers were included on the Palermo Stone, along with the name of their son, the king.
Starting in the Fourth Dynasty, royal mothers were often depicted with the vulture headdress, symbolizing their divine status. This headdress, linked to the word “mwt”.
Reign of Senusret I
Senusret I is considered one of the great kings (pharaohs) of the Middle Kingdom. When Senusret I took over sole rule of Egypt after the assassination of his father, he set about to cement the reunification of the Two Lands, which his father had set out to do once he moved north from Thebes.
To justify and legitimize his kingship, particularly after the murder of his father, Senusret I followed the royal practices of the Old Kingdom, which had already been reformed by Mentuhotep II as he reunified the land but with innovations that mark his reign as well as the later Twelfth Dynasty.
Amenemhat I’s assassination
The literary texts that discuss the subject of Amenemhat I’s assassination seem to describe it as a problem from within the palace, so it must have come from the harem.
In “The Story of Sinuhe,” Sinuhe says that he ran away to the south rather than go back to the royal residence, saying:
I believed there would be turmoil and did not expect to survive it.
In the “Instructions of Amenemhat I,” speaking from the dead, the king says:
He who ate my food raised opposition … Are rebels nurtured in the palace?.
From the literary evidence, it sounds as if, after thirty years of rule, the conspiracy against the king came from within his own court. That seemed to have been the problem before in the Old Kingdom, with the possible assassination of King Teti and the foiled plot or plots against King Pepy I.
With a minimum of seven queens, the harem of Pepy I must have had a number of young princes eager to take the throne, but with the early Middle Kingdom we have no evidence of large royal families or harems filled with queens.
Some scholars think that the vizier Amenemhat deposed Mentuhotep IV and seized power, and this has been a cause of contention. Gundlach suggests Amenemhat took over because the Eleventh Dynasty had “neglected the northern part of the country, the region of the former Tenth Dynasty”. Tidyman states that it is clear that “Nebtawyre was overthrown by his vizier, Amenemhet, and a civil war ensued in the vacuum that had been created”.
It is possible that there were still pockets of resistance, even after almost three decades of Amenemhat I’s rule. There is some evidence of ongoing strife, particularly in the area of Thebes.
In the 1920s, Winlock located a tomb in the cliffs north of Deir el-Bahari, Tomb 507, which contained the remains of about sixty male individuals, all of whom seem to have suffered trauma, such as blows to the head and being shot with arrows. Some of the individuals had obviously remained where they died for some time, as there was evidence of vultures having fed on them.
The remains were originally dated to the reign of Mentuhotep II, and it was assumed they died during his attack on Heracleopolis, but, based on a paleographic study of the marks on the linen the remains were wrapped in, a re-dating to the reign of Senusret I has been put forth.
The stela of Nesu-Montu (Louvre C 1), who has the title “Overseer of Troops” and was in charge of a Theban contingent, gives evidence for at least one battle on or by the river, probably in the Theban area, early in the reign of Senusret I.
Although the date is damaged, the stela seems to date to year 24 of Amenemhat I, which, with a co-regency, would be year 4 of Senusret I.
Nesu-Montu says that he led the battle and was victorious, overthrowing “the enemies of my lord”. There may have been resistance to the king, but it is probably unrealistic that anyone from outside the court could organize or carry out an attack on the king in his residence.
Military Campaigns and Administration
In his 18th year of reign, Senusret I led a campaign against Lower Nubia, during which the area up to the Second Cataract was conquered. To secure the new territories, various fortresses were built there. This is the first time in Egyptian history that a large area outside Egypt came under permanent control.
In his 25th year of reign, there was a famine, which is mentioned in several texts. As a result, there may have been unrest: an inscription from El-Tod suggests that the local temple was looted.
Commemorative Inscriptions and Legacy
Senusret I celebrated a heb sed in regnal year 31; it is attested in a number of inscriptions, for example on his obelisk at Heliopolis. His titulary is inscribed on each side of the obelisk, along with a statement that he set up the obelisk on the “first occasion of the heb sed”.
The Court
The vizier at the beginning of his reign was Antefiqer, who had a tomb near the Pyramid of Amenemhet I in El-Lisht, is known from a series of documents, and seems to have held the office for a relatively long time.
His successor was likely someone named Sesostris. The treasurers in the 22nd year of his reign were Sobekhotep and, after him, Mentuhotep. Mentuhotep appears to have been an extraordinary personality; he seems to have directed several of Senusret I’s building projects, including, most notably, the expansion of the Amun temple in Karnak.
Several stewards are known, among them Hor, who led an expedition for the king, and Nacht, who had a tomb in El-Lisht and was involved in the pyramid construction of Senusret I. The king appears to have appointed various officials in the provinces.
Another important text that sheds light on the loyalty expected of elite officials in the reign of Senusret I is the so-called Loyalist Instructions. The emphasis on loyalty became a common theme in texts in the later Eleventh Dynasty, and it continued with the Middle Kingdom.
Being loyal to the king “was the most important aspect of ruling-class life”. This text is attributed to Mentuhotep, Senusret I’s treasurer, who later in his reign became overseer of the king’s works and vizier, although the first known copy is that on a stela from Abydos belonging to Sehetepibra, the royal seal-bearer and chief deputy treasurer of King Senwosret III.
Sehetepibra copied parts of the autobiography of Mentuhotep from a stela at Abydos, and some scholars believe that the Loyalist Instructions were also copied from a text belonging to Mentuhotep.
Assmann describes the Loyalist Instructions as an “educational text” written to ensure that members of the elite stay loyal to the kings of the new Twelfth Dynasty “by appealing to their innermost selves”. The first few lines of the text demand: “Venerate the king in the inside of your bodies! Pledge allegiance to His Majesty in your hearts!”.
Assmann proposes that all the propagandistic literature, the Building Inscription, The Story of Sinuhe, and the Loyalist Instructions, were written for the same reason: “to impose pharaonic rule not just as a political system, but rather as a religion”.
Expeditions of Senusret I
A rock inscription near the harbor facility of Ain Suchna on the Gulf of Suez reports that in the 9th year of Senusret I’s reign, an official was sent to the mines on the Sinai Peninsula.
administrative structure of the early Twelfth Dynasty
In terms of administrative structure, the early Twelfth Dynasty is a combination of Old Kingdom practice along with the changes made under Mentuhotep II. The evidence is provided by private stelae and tomb inscriptions with titles, so not every part of Egypt will have equal evidence.
Mentuhotep II’s unification of Egypt “did not lead to a greater administrative homogeneity in the country”; quite the opposite. In Upper Egypt, the area that had been controlled by the Thebans, there was a governor, or nomarch.
In Elephantine, Sarenput I, who was followed by his son, Sarenput II, and the other provincial centers had mayors, who were much below the status of a nomarch. In the area of northern Upper Egypt that had been controlled by the Heracleopolitans, there were also nomarchs, and in Asyut, Deir el-Bersheh and Beni Hasan, “no break in the line of nomarchs seems to occur after the Unification of Egypt”.
At Itja-tawy was the king and the royal residence, with the high officials of the central administration, headed by the vizier, the steward, the overseer of the seal, and the overseer of the treasury. These high officials had mastabas at Lisht near the pyramid of the king.
Most of these men were Theban “but a few were clearly from other parts of the country”. In the early Middle Kingdom, there is some evidence that there could be more than one vizier, and it seems, as in the later Old Kingdom, that an official could be a vizier in one of the provincial areas if needed. Like the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom, and after, members of the royal family did not hold bureaucratic positions.
Construction Activities
Pyramid of Senusret I
The simply constructed pyramid of Sesostris I is located in El-Lisht and consists of star-shaped stone ribs arranged at right angles and intersecting diagonally, dividing the structure into 16 chambers.
These were filled with rubble and sand, and covered with limestone slabs. Over the millennia, the slabs slipped off, and the sand in the chambers poured out. The pyramid measured 105 meters in square dimensions and was originally 61 meters high.
The pyramid complex was surrounded by a double wall and included a subsidiary pyramid as well as nine smaller pyramids for the royal family. The burial pyramids of the queens Neferu and Itakayt have been identified, although the latter may also have been one of his daughters.
Based on foundation block marks, Senusret I had probably begun building his pyramid complex at South Lisht before year 10 of his co-regency with his father. His pyramid complex is a classic example of one from the Old Kingdom, monumental in size and with all the essential parts. The causeway, however, with its Osiride figures of the king lining the interior walls, is more like the causeway of Mentuhotep II, which was open and lined with heb sed figures of the king.
The mortuary temple is badly destroyed, as the limestone was being removed from the pyramid complex by Ramesside times, but it can be compared to those of the Old Kingdom: entry hall, peristyle court, transverse corridor, antechambre carree, sanctuary, and storage magazines.
The corridor to the burial chamber, which has never been explored since it is below the water level, goes down on the traditional north side of the pyramid. The descending corridor had been blocked by plugs that had been tunneled around in ancient times.
Material from the king’s burial, canopic jars and tops, alabaster food containers, and a piece of gold foil were found by Gaston Maspero’s workmen and are in the collection of the Cairo Museum.
There is an entrance chapel on the north side, above the descending corridor. Fragments of relief decoration from the chapel show offering bearers, and a block from the west wall depicts the king seated before an offering table.
the Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Two sets of walls go around the pyramid. The outermost brick wall goes around the entire complex, and another inner limestone wall goes just around the king’s pyramid. Every 5 meters on both the inner and the outer sides of this inner wall were vertical panels with the king’s Horus name with a serekhfaçade and at the bottom a scene of a Nile fertility figure.
In the space between the two walls is the king’s “south tomb,” a small pyramid on the southeast corner of his pyramid, just like that of Khufu at Giza, and then there are nine small subsidiary pyramids for family members. Only Pyramids 1 and 2 could be identified as belonging to specific family members, Queen Neferu and Princess Itakayet.
Temple Buildings
Osiris Pillars of the Ruler from Karnak
Senusret I constructed various temples throughout the country. He was the first king to systematically rebuild all the temples of the country and convert them into stone temples. A copy of an inscription from his third regnal year reports the construction at the temple in Heliopolis (Iunu).
The oldest surviving obelisk in Egypt also originates from Senusret I. Made of Aswan granite, it stands 20 meters high and is still located in Heliopolis today. Originally, it likely stood there with a second obelisk in front of the entrance pylon of the temple.
Senusret I undertook a massive building program enlarging the temples at important religious sites, as well as producing large numbers of statues. There are fifty-one statues securely dated to Senusret I and others that are possibly his.
Ten limestone seated statues of the king were found in a pit north of his mortuary temple in 1884 and are now in the Cairo Museum. The sides of the king’s thrones have beautifully rendered sema-tawy reliefs with Horus and Seth or Nile fertility gods tying together the papyrus and the lotus.
It is assumed that the statues were buried for safekeeping, but where they were placed originally in the complex, or meant to be placed, is unknown. Dohrmann has suggested that for a short period of time the statues were set in the columned court of the mortuary temple as part of the king’s heb sed.
The five statues with Horus and Seth on the sides of the thrones were set on the south side, and the ones with Nile gods were on the north.
Some of Senusret I’s statues were of huge proportions, making him the first king since the Old Kingdom to commission colossal statues.
large monuments reflected power and that was undoubtedly the point. One of Senusret’s standing colossal statues is on display in the Open-Air Museum at Mit Rahineh (Memphis). For years, it had been accepted as a statue of Ramses II, as he had his name carved on it, but Sourouzian has proved that it originally belonged to Senusret I.
Senusret I had an extensive building program, evidenced not only by archaeological remains but by lists of temples and statues from his reign, such as the inscription on the block found at the mosque of el-Azhar.
However, two sites in particular, Karnak and Heliopolis, will be discussed in some detail as they represent the two cult great centers of ancient Egypt and the sun god.
Thebes was Senusret’s family’s nome and Karnak the cult place of the deity Amen-Ra adopted by the Thebans of the early Eleventh Dynasty. The vizier Mentuhotep, who was also overseer of all the king’s works, was in charge of the building at Karnak, which began in regnal year 19. Mentuhotep also felt entitled enough to leave at least eleven statues of himself at the temple.
Senusret I left in place the sandstone flooring of his father’s temple of Amen and redid the temple with a limestone platform, fifteen times larger. The temple itself was also limestone. The façade of the temple “was preceded by a portico of twelve pillars, each one fronted by a colossus of the king in Osiride form” that led to a large peristyle court with square pillars. The sides of the pillars each depict the king with one of the four most important gods: Atum of Heliopolis, Ptah of Memphis, Horus of Edfu, and Amen of Karnak.
On the north and south sides of the peristyle court were small chapels, suggested to have been for statues of kings of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period that Senusret I wanted to honor and claim as “ancestral” to his own rule.
Similar ancestor chapels were placed just slightly west of these by Amenhotep I in the New Kingdom and replaced later by Thutmose III. Two statues that probably came from these Middle Kingdom chapels, Sahura (CG 42004) and Intef the Great (CG 42005), were found at Karnak, while a similar statue of Nyuserra in the British Museum (EA 870) was purchased but must have come from Karnak as well (Lorand 2013).
Beyond the peristyle court were further halls, led to by three large granite door sills that are still in situ today, but nothing else is left on the platform. After the last door sill, Gabolde suggests the axis of the room at the end, the sanctuary itself, was north–south rather than east–west like the rest of the temple, so that the pedestal with the naos for the god’s statue was in the north.
The large alabaster pedestal found in the court may well have come from the north sanctuary. The axis of this sanctuary may have been what influenced the axis of the later Akh-menu, which is also north–south.
A granodiorite naos of Senusret I found at Karnak, and now in the Cairo Museum (JE 47276), is not the one that was placed on the alabaster pedestal; it was probably set in a small limestone structure south of the temple and contained a ka-statue of the king.
One of the oldest structures in the Amun Temple of Karnak is the “White Chapel” of Senusret I. Pharaoh Amenhotep III (18th Dynasty) had the chapel dismantled and used its alabaster stones as filler material for the 3rd pylon of the Karnak Temple, where they were fully recovered and reconstructed.
Today, the White Chapel is considered the most beautiful and oldest surviving structure of the Middle Kingdom. On the base of the chapel, the names of the Egyptian nomes with their capitals are inscribed.
It has been suggested that Senusret I constructed the first large temple of the sun god at Heliopolis, changing a brick structure into stone and enlarging what earlier structure, or structures, had been there in the Old Kingdom.
Quirke wonders if the Berlin Leather Roll is “indirect evidence” that Senusret’s building at Heliopolis “made an impression on ancient posterity”, and that is why a later scribe was interested in copying the text.
It is not really known what was at Heliopolis in the Old Kingdom. Early excavators found blocks of a chapel of Netjerikhet at Heliopolis, but they could have been taken there sometime later.
When Userkaf built the first of the sun temples of the Fifth Dynasty, it is assumed that its plan followed the plan of a sun temple at Heliopolis, but there is no actual proof. Although Menkaura’s pyramid is off by a couple of meters, the southeast corners of the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra are on a line straight to Heliopolis. If they were purposely aligned this way, there must have been something tall or large enough at Heliopolis to be seen at a distance and make such an alignment possible.
The first monument actually known to have been at Heliopolis is the quartzite obelisk of Teti I, which was not terribly tall, possibly 3 meters. There was also a Heliopolis obelisk of Pepy I, later taken to Bubastis, but there are only fragments lef.
The Majestic Obelisk of Senusret I
The site of ancient Heliopolis is greatly damaged, suffering from a high water table and partially covered by modern buildings. Monuments preserved from the time of Senusret I are few. His obelisk is the biggest and most complete of what is left. It is pink granite and one of a pair; the other one fell down in 1158 CE.
A granite lintel with his titulary and that of his father, Amenemhat I, was found at Heliopolis in the late 1980s. Three quartzite blocks with the name of Senusret I were found reused in the Bab el-Tawfik in Cairo. One is a block, with divisions marking four years of temple offerings, although none of the year entries are completely preserved. Across the top, it reads:
Senusret has done this as his monument for the bau (souls) of Heliopolis, the lords of the great temple of Heliopolis.
The donations include objects of metal and stone, as well as various food stuffs and animals for sacrifice. Different sanctuaries are named as recipients of these donations, including the temple of Hathor Nebethepet, “The Lady of Offerings,” a cult perhaps founded by Senusret I.
The second block is a door jamb with part of the king’s name preserved. The third piece is the curved top of a stela. The names of the king are on each side, and in the middle is written “Atum, lord of Heliopolis,” facing one way, and the “bau of Heliopolis, the lords of the great temple,” written the other way.
Because the Middle Kingdom temple was limestone it suffered terribly from later quarrying. The White Chapel erected for Senusret I’s heb sed was also limestone, but since it was taken apart and used in the foundations of Amenhotep III’s Third Pylon, it was saved and has been reconstructed.
The chapel is square and up on a base approached from front and back by a ramp with stairs. In the center now is a barque-stand, but originally this place might have been for a statue base. Seidel proposes that a statue of King Senusret I and Amun-Ra-Kamutef (meaning ka of his mother) was there originally.
A base was found with spaces for two standing statues, with the cartouches of Senusret I, at the later Kamutef temple south of Karnak. The chapel has four rows of four square pillars, carved in sunk relief on the sides of the pillars facing out, and raised relief on all the sides inside the chapel.
The base of the chapel is decorated on the outside with a list of the nomes of Lower Egypt on the north side and Upper Egypt on the south side. The measurements of the areas of the nomes are given, as are the measurements of the heights of the Nile floods.
On the interior pillars, the king and the god Amen-Ra, or Amen-Ra Kamutef, are depicted, while on the exterior pillar sides Atum, Horus, Montu, and Ra-Harakhte appear with them. All of these gods have solar connections or ties to Heliopolis.
In fact, there may have been a cult chapel of Ra-Harakhte at Karnak, since the White Chapel mentions “Ra-Harakhte, Foremost of Karnak,” which implies there was some type of sanctuary there.
In the different scenes of embracing his father or being offered eternal life, Senusret I is referred to as “Amen’s Son,” “His Son Whom He Loves,” and the “Son of His Body Whom He Loves,” all titles that parallel those of royal sons.
The scenes are repetitive and stress the crowning of the king. He is shown in the White Crown, the Red Crown, or the double crown when he is being presented to Amen or given eternal life, that is, the ankh symbol. When the king embraces his father Amun-Ra Kamutef, or kneels offering to him, he eithers wears a cap or a cap-crown with uraeus.
There was a solar altar at Karnak in the time of Senusret I. It was probably located on the north side of the Middle Kingdom court, since that would parallel the placement of the later solar altar of Thutmose III’s Akh-menu. Fragments of the altar were discovered near the Seventh Pylon in 1905, and Senusret’s cartouche is still readable on what would have been the north side; some other smaller pieces with broken inscription are known from the Pushkin Museum.
The precedent for this altar may well have been a sun altar on the flat top of Mentuhotep’s funerary complex at Deir elBahari.
Along with Ra, one would expect depictions of the king with Hathor. One granodiorite group statue was found in the Middle Kingdom court in 1897, with the king standing next to a seated Hathor. It is particularly reminiscent of the triad from the valley temple of King Menkaura, with Hathor seated and a nome personification on one side and the king on the other (MFA 09.200).
The figure of the king in the Karnak dyad is broken away at the waist and Hathor’s figure is broken away at the shoulders.
Another important temple was constructed in Abydos, which is still referred to by inscriptions from the 13th Dynasty as a temple of this ruler. The presumed construction activity of Sesostris I at the Month Temple of Tod, south of Luxor, is not supported by inscriptions.
One last detail should be mentioned in terms of Senusret I’s following of the religious program of the Eleventh Dynasty, which is that Senusret had a navigation scene, very similar to the one in the sanctuary of the Deir elBahari temple of Mentuhotep II. It was located on the south wall of the portico leading into the Amun Temple at Karnak and shows the king rowing the same type of boat in the presence of Amun Kamutef:
This leads to the conclusion that the very same ritual journey is depicted in both cases.
The Building Inscription of Senusret I, also known as the Berlin Leather Roll (Berlin Museum 3029), is a hieratic text written on leather and dates to the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty king Amenhotep II.
It is accepted by many Egyptologists as a copy made from a Twelfth Dynasty stela or wall inscription at the temple of Atum of Heliopolis. The text itself gives a date of year 3, third month of inundation, day 8 of the reign of Senusret I.
The text starts out by describing King Senusret I meeting with his courtiers. They were commanded to listen to the king and learn. At this point the king’s speech becomes poetic, and some of the more interesting lines are quoted here:
He appointed me shepherd of this land, knowing who would herd it for him … I am a king by nature … I lorded in the egg. I ruled as a youth. He advanced me to the Lord of the Two Parts, a child yet wearing swaddling clothes … He fashioned me as palace–dweller, an offspring not yet issued from the thighs.
Senusret I makes clear that he was destined to be king of Egypt, so his legitimacy is beyond question. Atum decided on his kingship before he was born, and the god’s plans must be carried out. Senusret announces that:
I will construct a great house for my father Atum.
His courtiers praise his plans. They point out that he possesses Hu (h˙w), which is the ability to speak with authority, as well as Sia (siꜢ), the ability to recognize what needs to be done. These are two qualities that a legitimate king possesses.
Then the king speaks to his royal seal bearer and overseer of the treasuries, who may have been the high official Mentuhotep, and tells him to take over and make the plans. In the next part, the king appears in front of the people and priests to carry out the “stretching of the cord,” the ritual that started the building of a temple. At that point, the New Kingdom scribe stopped his copy.
Literary and royal texts from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty have often been called propaganda, particularly those from the reign of Senusret I. They were “intended to promote adherence to the pharaoh”, and above all to back his legitimacy as king.
This need for legitimation is expressed in the Building Inscription through the use of predestination; the king was meant to be king before he was ever born; it is god’s plan. Perhaps the idea of predestination is a way to state that assassination of the king is not possible, as a divine decision cannot be acted against.
The theme of the king’s predestination to rule appears again in The Story of Sinuhe, the official who ran away and ended up living in Syro Palestine for much of his life. When describing the king to one of the foreign rulers, Sinuhe breaks into poetic style and begins:
He is a god without peer, No other comes before him; He is lord of knowledge, wise planner, skilled leader, One goes and comes by his will.
And then after bragging about the king’s military skills, states:
The “Victor while yet in the egg, Set to be ruler since his birth … He is unique, god-given.
Reconstruction of the Fortress of Buhen
At Buhen, located between the 1st and 2nd cataracts, Senusret I had a border fortress constructed. An inscription states that:
No southerner should set foot on Egyptian soil uncontrolled.
The structure is now submerged under Lake Nasser.
