Malkata Palace Complex

Located in the ancient Egyptian capital Thebes, now modern Luxor, the Malkata palace complex was built by the 18th dynasty king Amenhotep III at the onset of the 30th year of his reign in preparation for his first sed-festival and later served as the setting for his second and third sed-festivals in the 34th and 37th years of his reign, respectively (O’Connor & Cline). The Malkata palace complex and Birket Habu, its’ associated artificial lake built to be used for ceremonial purposes during the king’s three sed-festivals, stood to the west of the Nile River on the Theban west bank near the Theban necropolis which included the mortuary temples of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II and those located at Medinet Habu and Deir el-Bahari; on the opposite
This redistributive power represented the state control of resources, and its’ embodiment in a permanent structure served as a constant symbol of this power. The fact that Amenhotep III moved his court, and effectively the state, to Malkata, if Malkata was indeed an administrative centre as well as the locus for the cult activities and ceremonies associated Amenhotep III’s three sed-festivals, suggests a possible intentional separation from the cult centres at Karnak and Luxor (Fletcher). This separation and subsequent re-configuration of the Egyptian cult, including the the growing prominence of the sun disk Aten in state religion and architecture, could be seen as the precursor to the heretic Akhenaten’s experimental monotheistic cult. In addition, this disconnect reflected an attempt by Amenhotep III, and his heretic successor Akhenaten, to diminish the role and power of the Amen cult that in turn seemed to have been increasingly diminishing the role and power of the king in an ideological and therefore state sense while placing more emphasis on the cult god as the principal determinant and maintainer of cosmological and therefore state balance and order (Schneider slides). Overall, the king was
“The sed-festival of renewal and regeneration was designed to reinvigorate the king - by infusing him anew with divine power - and so reconfirm his right to reign after 30 years of rule” (Fletcher). In addition to performing activities and ceremonies that served to legitimize his rule in the eyes of the gods and the people of Egypt and beyond, through the sed-festival ceremonies such as the towing of a barge, the king elevated himself from the role of ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, who had an intimate reciprocal relationship with the gods, to the role of of godly king (Fletcher). In this it is evident that not only did the king re-establish the court at the Malkata palace complex to curb the power of the Amen cult on the kingship and to legitimize his rule through ideology once more but he redefined the traditional role and depiction of the king in Egyptian religion and cosmology; the king, instead of being a channel through which the gods interacted with the earthly world in a reciprocal fashion, became a god in his own