That's a good reference guide. Nice find
Something to add-
Read the question, and break it down. Some can be stressful, but you just need to break it into edible chunks.
eg Q "The period of Amenhotep's reign has been dubbed "The Golden Age", is this a true assesment?"
Ancient essays have to be far more structured than, say maybe a Philosophy essay. Nothing creative about it.
Plan your essay on the question, takes about 30 seconds:
Intro: Here, a
term that we are applying to a Pharaoh is being used - the "Golden Age". Before you start, you need to tackle this. I'd open with a definition of what a Golden Age is. You could even bend this to suit your intended examples: "A Golden Age could be best defined as a time where the citizens of a country enjoy total safety, comfort, leisure, and religious piety never previously seen". (Don't attack my example essay, I'm making it up as I go
)
Next, a statement of dis/agreement- maybe say that "because of the fact that Egypt was enjoying a great economy and prosperity at Amenhotep's accension, and due to his reign itself being a success, this time was a Golden Age." Basically- there are TWO parts to a Golden Age (defining the term)- 1. A good country already established, 2. A good reign. The first one has to be mentioned, but it involves discussion of previous pharaohs, and is outside of the Question; it's up to you where you mention it, maybe in the first para briefly, maybe in the intro...
Next. Look at your plan- for this q, you'd need to mention: Building, Religion, Foreign Policy, Military, Women, Maintaining the "Warrior Pharaoh" image and Administration (in a specific sense). You mention these in your intro in the ORDER that you're going to talk about them in your essay.
Body: Here you talk about the above ideas in the order that they appear. You can spend more than one para per idea, if it merits it, but try to split them up a bit. Keep your paragraphs themselves structured- Opening sentence: say whether his buildings were good/bad. Discuss some buildings, use some evidence, quotations or otherwise. In this area of buildings, naming a building and talking about it is good evidence; but quoting's impressive. Try to be SPECIFIC (carrying on with the building idea), name SPECIFIC buildings and talk about them; if you're talking abotu military be SPECIFIC: then couple these specific ideas with evidence. Mention a few less bad things than good things about each idea; don't just say everything rocked. At the end of the paragraph, you conclude with a vague statement that links to the question.
If you're running out of time, do your best, but say you didn't mention Administration or women extensively. You'd have left this to the end as it's less important. You still need to mention it briefly, even 2 sentences is better than nothing- they're marking you on your overall understanding of the themes. If you can't remember what that damn statue of him and Tiye now in the Cairo Museum is called, just say "The colossal statue of Amenhotep and his wife shows that he accepted women as an important part of a reign. This is a clever move for him as he could hence capitalise on this valuable resouce." Then talk about Admin. Same short thing. It sucks if you run out of time, but 4 sentences could mean a few extra marks.
Conclusion: Sum up by taking all the pieces of the puzzle, and make a judgement on whether his reign was good- let's say his reign was awesome, but make sure you mention a few problems. Maybe he wasn't aggresive enough in his military (you would have discussed this, at length, above). You can then say that he inherited Egypt at a good time. Link these to the TWO things that made a "Golden Age", as we said: "these various factors enabled the Egyptian people to enjoy a safe and enjoyable life, where their country was prosperous". Therefore, his reign was a Golden Age.
