The Instruments of the Empire

There were three main instruments that made it possible to rule the empire: the army, the diplomatic service, and the integration of dependent elites.

The organization of the army is difficult to ascertain before the New Kingdom.

as in late third millennium Gebelein.^[107] However, Egyptians could also fight for Nubian rulers in exchange for gold.

Diplomacy is probably the least well-known aspect of Egyptian foreign policy, and only the Amarna Letters, the treaties, and the Hittite correspondence of the Ramessides, together with sporadic references in Ugaritic and Levantine archives, help to counterbalance the rhetorical image drawn in Egyptian iconography and textual sources.^[109] Exchanges of gifts, even of specialists (artisans, doctors, etc.), cemented good relationships between states and were part of a highly developed diplomatic and court culture, the corollary of which were state marriages and the exchange of princesses, including Egyptian ones. Ambassadors and envoys—the supply of which was an explicit concern in the papyrological record—circulated be­tween the political centers of the Near East. Protection offered to foreign dissidents and royal pretenders in rival monarchies was also part of the political game, as was the obligation to send princes from subject regions as hostages to Egypt.

As for local elites, their collaboration was essential in order to preserve Egyptian rule. Broader autonomy was accorded to some regions subject to pharaonic control, leading to different degrees of acculturation. Lower Nubia appears to have been the most integrated of the empire's regions. Here temples and towns were built in Egyptian style and Nubian rulers were buried and depicted in pharaonic fashion. In some cases, Nubian nobility even succeeded to important positions in the Egyptian administration. It seems then that the strategic importance of this area, as well as the convergence of interests between Nubian and Egyptian elites, led to significant local investment of imperial resources. As for Asiatics, they too occasionally ascended to high positions within the Egyptian administration. However, the control of the southern Levant did not require a similar level of elite integration as did Nubia. In fact, the main importance of the southern Levant was not as a producer, but as an intermediary where land and maritime routes converged, some ofwhose origins lay in Egypt (especially those from the Red Sea and Northeast Africa). It is hardly sur­prising, then, that Egypt's main concern in the Levant was to ensure the fluidity of trade, to the point that the unrestrained mobility of caravans and traders was an im­portant concern in diplomatic and state archives. Local elites were thus granted sig­nificant autonomy provided that they deliver the tribute and services requested by the pharaonic administration. In the case of rebels, their sons were sent into Egypt as hostages in order to ensure this. Occasional gifts of precious goods distinguished strategic allies (as in the case of Byblos). In private life, local elites tried to emulate the dominant Egyptian culture.^[112] But in some cases, the Egyptian administration had to cope with local particularities. This is the reason that Akkadian remained the administrative language in Northern Canaan, while hieratic is mostly found in the South. In other cases, common interests between Egyptians and local elites, based on purely private activities, might explain the presence of Egyptian traders, messengers, etc., in the Levant, as a sort of “trading diaspora” doing business with foreign partners.^[113]