Psusennes I

King 1063-1037 BC.

    The kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty chose to make Tanis, a Delta city, the place of their main Residence, although Memphis probably remained Egypt's administrative centre. Psusennes I was an early king of this dynasty and was apparently also its most important ruler. Upon the death of *Ramesses XI, Nesbenebded (who had gained great power in the north, while the High-priest of Amun ruled concurrently in the south) became Pharaoh of Egypt and, as Smendes, founded the Twenty-first Dynasty. Psusennes I was a successor of Smendes; his great achievements were centred at Tanis which probably replaced Pi-Ramesse as Egypt's major northern port, and here he built a great mudbrick enclosure wall to protect the temples that he constructed to the honour of Amun, Mut and Khonsu, and the royal tomb. Outside Tanis, very little evidence of his work has survived and in fact, his activities were probably limited to the northern part of Egypt.

    The history of this period is particularly obscure: the sequence of the reigns of the seven kings whom *Manetho assigns to this dynasty is uncertain, and the exact length of these reigns is also unclear. It is evident that while the kings ruled at Tanis in the north, a line of High-priests of Amun—the descendants of *Herihor—maintained great independence at Thebes in the south. Nevertheless the Tanites and Thebans remained on good terms, and they were joined by marriage when a daughter of Psusennes I, Esemkhebe, became the wife of one of the Theban High-priests; their descendants could thus claim descent from both the Tanite and Theban ruling families. Psusennes I took the unprecedented step of adopting the title of High-priest of Amun (in the way that the Theban priests had taken on royal attributes), and thus asserted the Tanite supremacy over the Theban priests. His wife, Mudnodjme (who was also his sister), adopted the titles of the female counterpart of the High-priest of Amun, and at Tanis Psusennes I built temples to the Theban deities, choosing to emphasis the cult of Amun and to provide an alternative centre for this god's worship.

    The French archaeologist, Montet, discovered the intact tomb of Psusennes I at Tanis in 1940; although the mummified body and organic material have not survived (being less well preserved in this Delta site than in the more favourable conditions of the south), the gold and silver vessels, the jewellery, the solid silver coffin and solid gold face mask provide a magnificent funerary group which can be compared with the goods found in the tomb of *Tutankhamun at Thebes. The tomb contained chambers not only for the burial of Psusennes I and his chief queen (whose mummy and equipment were later removed and replaced by the burial of the next king, Amenemope), but also an ante-room and side-rooms which were eventually filled with other royal and noble burials. The body of Psusennes I was placed in its silver coffin inside a black granite sarcophagus which was in turn enclosed in a red granite sarcophagus—because of the scarcity of stone in the Delta, both sarcophagi were usurped from earlier owners.

BIBL. Montet, P. La necropole de Tanis, Vol. 2: Les contributions et le tombeau de Psousennes a Tanis. Paris: 1951; Daressy, G. Les rois Psousennes. Rec. trav. 21 (1899) pp. 9-12.

Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt by Rosalie and Antony E. David