Nadares — Tudaris — Badaris: Amenhotep III at the final stage of Egyptian historical-legendary tradition
EDN: BEQMVB
Abstract
The author tries to show that the Arabic tradition about ancient Egypt, reporting on King Nadares (Tudaris, Badaris), the father of King Malius (the latter renounced paganism and tried to introduce monotheism, thus his obvious prototype is Akhenaten), reflects the reign of Akhenaten’s actual father, Amenhotep III. Its three main plots about Nadares: the construction of a temple of Venus with an idol made of lapis lazuli and with a source of healing water; the campaign against a prince from Syria-Palestine; a victorious campaign in response to an attack by blacks from the south and an unprecedented advance to the south — find direct parallels with the events of the reign of Amenhotep III: receiving from Mitanni (the supplier of lapis lazuli for Egypt) a magical statue of Ishtar (later identified with Venus) for the purpose of healing Amenhotep; military actions in Syria to pacify local princes (EA 85, EA 108, EA 117, EA 152); the campaign to the south in the 5th year of Amenhotep’s rule in response to hostile actions of a local chieftain of the blacks, with an advance, according to inscriptions, much further south than ever before. The Islamic-Egyptian tradition about Nadares must be viewed as the result of continuous transmission of reminiscences of Amenhotep III since his own reign, which is a particular case of the general relation of the Islamic-Egyptian tradition to the ancient Egyptian one.
Keywords
Ancient Egypt,
Islamic-Egyptian tradition,
Amenhotep III,
Amarna Letters,
Kush,
Pseudo-Masudi,
Maqrizi
Supporting agencies: The research is sponsored by the grant 24-18-00378 of the Russian Science Foundation, “The Origin and the Contents of the Late Antique and Medieval Picture of the Near Eastern and Aegean Past in the Earliest (preAchaemenid) Period”, https://rscf.ru/project/24-18-00378/.
About the Author
A. A. Nemirovsky
Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Alexander Arkadievich Nemirovsky, Cand. Sci. (History) Senior Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Studies of Ancient Civilizations
119334, Moscow, Leninsky Prospekt, 32a
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Review
For citations:
Nemirovsky A.A. Nadares — Tudaris — Badaris: Amenhotep III at the final stage of Egyptian historical-legendary tradition. Shagi / Steps. 2026;12(1):32-54. (In Russ.) EDN: BEQMVB
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