Reassertion of political power reflected in Late Period Egyptian art

 A scene of two girls in a wheat field quarreling and pulling each other's hair, found in Luxor in a Late Period tomb of a man named Mentuemhet closely resembles a scene used in the tomb of man named Menna who lived 1200 years before.  It dates from Dynasty 26 circa 664 BCE.  The Late Period is considered by scholars to be the last flowering of native Egyptian culture before the Persian conquests, followed by the victories of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

Its first pharaoh, Psamtik I, threw off ties to the Assyrians about 665 BCE by forming alliances with King Gyges of Lydia and mercenaries from Caria and Greece.  In the ninth year of his 54-year reign, Psamtik reunified Egypt by destroying the last vestiges of the Nubian 25th Dynasty's control over Upper Egypt. But Psamtik, in his effort to reassert Egyptian authority in the Near East, was driven back by the Neo-Babylonian forces under Nebuchadnezzar II.  However, he succeeded in restoring Egypt's prosperity and established close relations with Greece, encouraging many Greek settlers to establish colonies in Egypt and serve in the Egyptian army.

This reassertion of native Egyptian culture after a period of foreign control was proclaimed by the emulation of earlier Egyptian art to harken back to the historical period when Egypt was a dominant power in the region.  In 2017, a colossal quartzite statue of Psamtik I was discovered at Heliopolis. It, too, was sculpted in the ancient classical style of 2000 BCE, symbolizing a resurgence to the greatness and prosperity of the classical period.  At some point, however, the colossus was deliberately destroyed.  Fragments of the sculpture are cracked and discolored, evidence of having been heated to high temperatures then shattered with cold water, a historical method used to destroy ancient colossi.

Tomb engraving of two girls quarreling in a wheat field dating to the Egyptian 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite period, that I photographed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois in 2009.

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