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of Akhenaten, the army installed íts own leaders around the throne with the firm support
of the priesthood. These two parties of society gained strong positions in the leadership of
the country and filled the civil administration with their own. The king might have needed
his own men as a counterbalance to these state officials who were technically loyal to him,
however, they could have represented a potential threat to his authority. Thus it seemed to
be an obvious solution to choose these trusted persons from the closest circle of his entou¬
rage, especially from the newly arrived foreigners who did not yet have solid roots in society
and who primarily depended on the benevolence of the ruler himself. Nevertheless, Schul¬
man also notes that this explanation cannot be completely correct considering that in the
trial of the harem conspiracy against Ramesses III there were three officials of foreign
origin (Warna, Paluka and Inini) among the accused individuals. Looking at the presence
of the officials of foreign ethnicity under the rulers, it is conspicuous that several of them
were attested under Ramesses II and Ramesses III, while from the reign of Ramesses IV on
their number decreased. However, Schulman’s theory may have been correct: the system
might have worked as it should have for a while but the harem conspiracy was a breaking
point in the confidence of the ruler towards his ‘royal wb3s’ of foreign origin as one might
see a correlation between the affair and the lower number of these officials after the reign
of Ramesses IV. At the same time, it should be kept in mind that the distribution of the
officials through the period was gained from the information derived from the available
sources and not from an analysis of a complete corpus.
Date Name Relative Cognomen/Epithet
Sety I : ;
Ramessesashahebused ety basilophoric
— Ramesses II
father
Neferrenpet (II) Ramesses II .
Penlevi
Ramessesmen Ramesses II basilophoric
2
Atumemtaneb Ramesses II royal wb3 of (the land
of) Ari
Ramessesuserpehti Ramesses II — Merneptah basilophoric
Benazan of Ziri-Bashan,
Ramessesemperre Ramesses II — Ramesses III | basilophoric | father Yupa he of Ramesses
Meriamun
mother
Pentawer Merneptah Aurati, sister
Ragasha
Ramessesheru Merneptah basilophoric Penhazuri
Merneptahemperptah Merneptah basilophoric
Ramessessamiiunu Ramesses III basilophoric
Ramessesankherneheh Ramesses III basilophoric