Jar-label inscriptions from Regnal Year 30 indicate that Sitamun was elevated to the status of Great Royal Wife by that time.

[25] There is a significant attestation for the court officials who served during Amenhotep's reign, primarily through the discovery of their tombs in the Theban Necropolis.

Other officials included the treasurers Ptahmose and Merire; the high stewards, Amenemhat Surer and Amenhotep (Huy); and the Viceroy of Kush, Merimose.

[30] The Sed festival was a tradition that dated to the Old Kingdom,[31] consisting of a series of tests that demonstrated the pharaoh's fitness for continuing as ruler of Egypt.

[33] In preparation for the first Sed Festival, Amenhotep, son of Hapu enlisted scribes to gather information from records and inscriptions, most found in ancient funerary temples,[33] describing the appropriate rituals and costumes.

Scholars have generally assumed that the statue's sojourn to Egypt was requested by Amenhotep in order to cure him of his various ailments, which included painful abscesses in his teeth.

[42] Further, Moran argues that the contents of Amarna Letter EA 21 support this claim, wherein Tushratta asks the gods, including Ishtar, for their blessing of the marriage.

During this time, the Egyptians established a number of settlements on the island, and they exported copper and other raw materials from Cyprus to Egypt in exchange for luxury goods and other commodities.

[48] Donald B. Redford, William J. Murnane, Alan Gardiner, and Lawrence Berman contest the view of any coregency whatsoever between Akhenaten and his father.

[50] However in February 2014, Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced that findings from the tomb of Vizier Amenhotep-Huy gave "conclusive evidence" of a coregency that lasted at least eight years.

[54] Reliefs from the wall of the temple of Soleb in Nubia and scenes from the Theban tomb of Kheruef, Steward of the King's Great Wife, Tiye, depict Amenhotep as a visibly weak and sick figure.

[57][47] Foreign leaders communicated their grief at the pharaoh's death, with Tushratta saying: When I heard that my brother Nimmureya had gone to his fate, on that day I sat down and wept.

The tomb is the largest in the West Valley of the Kings and includes two side chambers for his Great Royal Wives, Tiye and Sitamun.

When Amenhotep died, he left behind a country at the very height of its power and influence, commanding immense respect in the international world.

[63] The resulting upheavals from his son Akhenaten's reforming zeal shook these old certainties to their foundations, and forced the momentous question whether a pharaoh was more powerful than his society as represented in the worship of Amun.

Akhenaten even moved the capital away from Thebes, the center of Amun's worship, and built Amarna, a city dedicated to his new deity, the Aten.

[citation needed] The forecourt between the Third and Fourth Pylons, sometimes called an obelisk court, was also decorated with scenes of the sacred funerary barques of the deities Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.

Amenhotep's first recorded act as king — in his Years 1 and 2 — was to open new limestone quarries at Tura, just south of Cairo and at Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt to undertake his great building projects.

[67]His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex in Thebes, but the king built too close to the floodplain, and less than two hundred years later it was reduced to ruins.

[69] Some of the most magnificent statues of New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures.

[70] Several black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from Tanis in the Delta.

[70] In 2014, two giant statues of Amenhotep toppled by an earthquake in 1200 BC were reconstructed from more than 200 fragments and re-erected at the northern gate of the king's funerary temple.

[71] One of the most stunning finds of royal statues dating to his reign was made as recently as 1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep 's colonnade of the Temple of Luxor.

[72] In 2021, excavations revealed a settlement near Amenhotep's mortuary temple, called the Dazzling Aten, believed to have been built by king[73] to house craftsmen and labourers working on royal projects at Thebes, along with its own bakery and cemetery.

[24] Genetic analysis has confirmed that Amenhotep III is the father of both the KV55 mummy, identified in the study as Akhenaten, and "The Younger Lady", sibling parents of his grandson, Tutankhamun.

Although only a partial profile was obtained, he shares his YDNA haplogroup, R1b, with his son and grandson, upholding the family tree outlined in the earlier study.

The mitochondrial haplogroup of Amenhotep III was found to be H2b,[79] which is associated with migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to South Asia and the spread of Indo-Iranian languages.

Keita analysed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) published data from studies by Hawass et al. 2010;2012[82][83] which sought to determine familial relations and research pathological features such as potential infectious diseases among the New Kingdom royal mummies, including Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III, and Rameses III.

However, he emphasized the complexity of ethnic attributions, cautioning that the royal mummies may have had other affiliations obscured by the typological categories, and that different "data and algorithms might give different results".

[84] According to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, conflicting DNA analyses by different research teams have thusfar failed to establish consensus on the genetic makeup of the ancient Egyptians and their geographic origins.