The Middle and New Kingdoms in Egypt, 2061–1081 B.C.E.

The Old Kingdom began to disintegrate in the late third millennium B.C.E. Climate change perhaps caused the annual Nile flood to shrink, making people believe the kings had betrayed Maat. Rivalry for power erupted among leading families, and civil war between a northern and a southern dynasty ripped the country apart. This disunity allowed regional governors to increase their power, and some now seized independence for their regions. Famine and civil unrest during the so-called First Intermediate Period (2190–2061 B.C.E.) prevented the reestablishment of political unity.

The kings of the Middle Kingdom (2061–1665 B.C.E.) restored the strong central authority their Old Kingdom predecessors had lost. They waged war to extend Egypt’s southern boundaries, and they expanded diplomatic and trade contacts in the eastern Mediterranean region and with the island of Crete. Middle Kingdom literature reveals that restored unity contributed to a deeply felt pride in the homeland. The Egyptian narrator of The Story of Sinuhe, for example, reports that he lived luxuriously during a forced stay in Syria but still longed to return: “Whichever god you are who ordered my exile, have mercy and bring me home! Please allow me to see the land where my heart dwells! Nothing is more important than that my body be buried in the country where I was born!” For this lonely man, love for Egypt outranked personal riches and comfort in a foreign land.

The Middle Kingdom lost its unity during the Second Intermediate Period (1664–1570 B.C.E.), when the kings proved too weak to control foreign migrants who had established independent communities in Egypt. By 1664 B.C.E., diverse bands of a Semitic people originally from the eastern Mediterranean coast seized power. The Egyptians called these foreigners Hyksos (“rulers of the foreign countries”). Hyksos settlers transplanted foreign cultural elements to Egypt: their capital, Avaris, boasted wall paintings done in the Minoan style of the island of Crete. The Hyksos promoted frequent contact between Egypt and other Near Eastern states and possibly introduced bronze-making technology, new musical instruments, humpbacked cattle, and olive trees. Hyksos rulers strengthened Egypt’s military capacity by increasing the use of war chariots and more powerful bows.

The leaders of Thebes, in southern Egypt, reunited the kingdom after long struggles with the Hyksos. The series of dynasties they founded is called the New Kingdom (1569–1081 B.C.E.). Thebes may have drawn strength from its connections with prosperous settlements that emerged far out in the western desert, such as at Kharga Oasis. Oases featured abundant water from underground aquifers in the middle of a scorching environment. Oasis settlements flourished by providing stopping points for the caravans of merchants who endured dangerously harsh desert conditions to profit from commerce. Thebes’s expansion of contact with the western desert settlements reveals that Egyptian society did not remain unchanged by completely shutting itself off behind its natural boundaries along the Nile. Similarly, contacts with peoples to the east across the Red Sea and along the Indian Ocean expanded in the New Kingdom.

The kings of the New Kingdom, known as pharaohs, rebuilt central authority by restricting the power of regional governors and promoting national identity. To prevent invasions, the pharaohs created a standing army, another significant change in Egyptian society. These kings still employed mercenaries, but they formed an Egyptian military elite as commanders. Recognizing that knowledge of the rest of the world was necessary for safety, the pharaohs promoted diplomacy with neighboring monarchs to increase their international contacts. The pharaohs exchanged official letters with their “brother kings,” as they called them, in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the eastern Mediterranean region.

The New Kingdom pharaohs sent their army into foreign wars to gain territory and show their superiority. Their imperialism has earned them the title “warrior pharaohs.” They waged many campaigns abroad and presented themselves in official propaganda and art as the incarnations of warrior gods. They invaded lands to the south to win access to gold and other precious materials, and they fought up and down the eastern Mediterranean coast to control that crucial land route into Egypt.

Massive riches supported the power of these aggressive pharaohs. Egyptian traders exchanged local fine goods, such as ivory, for foreign luxury goods, such as wine and olive oil transported in painted pottery from Greece. Egyptian rulers displayed their wealth most conspicuously in the enormous sums spent to build stone temples. Queen Hatshepsut (r. 1502–1482 B.C.E.), for example, built her massive mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes, including a temple dedicated to the god Amun (or Amen), to express her claim to divine birth and the right to rule. After her husband (who was also her half brother) died, Hatshepsut proclaimed herself “female king” as co-ruler with her young stepson. In this way, she sidestepped the restrictions of Egyptian political tradition, which did not recognize the right of a queen to reign by herself. Hatshepsut also had herself represented in official art as a king, with a royal beard and male clothing. Hatshepsut succeeded in her unusual rule because she demonstrated that a woman could ensure safety and prosperity by maintaining the goodwill of the gods toward the country and its people.

Egyptians believed that the gods oversaw all aspects of life and death and built large temples and festivals to honor them. A calendar based on the moon governed the dates of religious ceremonies. (The Egyptians also developed a calendar for administrative and fiscal purposes that had 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30 days each, with the extra 5 days added before the start of the next year. Our modern calendar comes from this source.) The early New Kingdom pharaohs promoted their state god Amun-Re (a combination of Thebes’s patron god and the sun god) so energetically that he became far more important than the other gods. This Theban cult subordinated the other gods, without denying their existence or the continued importance of their priests. The pharaoh Akhenaten (r. 1372–1355 B.C.E.) went a step further, however: he proclaimed that official religion would concentrate on worshipping Aten, who represented the pure power of the sun. Akhenaten made the king and the queen the only people with direct access to the cult of Aten; ordinary people had no part in it. Some scholars identify Akhenaten’s religious reform as a step toward monotheism, with Aten meant to be the state’s sole god.

To showcase the royal family and the concentration of power that he desired, Akhenaten moved 40,000 Egyptians to construct a new capital for Aten at Tell el-Amarna (Map 1.2, page 17). Archaeology shows that the workers had very hard lives, suffering from poor nutrition and dangerous labor conditions. The pharaoh tried to force his revised religion on the priests of the old cults, who resisted fiercely. Historians have blamed Akhenaten’s religious zeal for leading him to neglect his kingdom’s defense, but international correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna has shown that the pharaoh tried to use diplomacy to turn foreign enemies against one another so that they would not become strong enough to threaten Egypt. His policy failed, however, when the Hittites from Anatolia defeated the Mitanni, Egypt’s allies in eastern Syria. Akhenaten’s religious reform also died with him. During the reign of his successor, Tutankhamun (r. 1355–1346 B.C.E.)—famous today through the discovery in 1922 of his rich, unlooted tomb—the cult of Amun-Re reclaimed its leading role. The crisis created by Akhenaten’s attempted reform emphasizes the overwhelming importance of religious conservatism in Egyptian life and the control of religion by the ruling power.

Most New Kingdom Egyptians’ lives revolved around their labor and the annual flood of the Nile. During the months when the river stayed between its banks, they worked their fields, rising early in the morning to avoid the searing heat. When the flooding halted agricultural work, the king required laborers to work on his building projects. They lived in workers’ quarters erected next to the construction sites. Although slaves became more common as household workers in the New Kingdom than they had been before, free workers—who were obliged to perform a certain amount of labor for the king—did most of the work on this period’s mammoth royal construction projects. Workers lightened their burden by singing songs, telling adventure stories, and drinking a lot of beer. They accomplished a great deal: the majority of the ancient temples remaining in Egypt today were built during the New Kingdom.

Ordinary people worshipped many different gods, especially those believed to protect them in their daily existence. They venerated Bes, for instance, a dwarf with the features of a lion, as a protector of the household. They carved his image on amulets, beds, headrests, and mirror handles. By this time, ordinary people believed that they could have a blessed afterlife and put great effort into preparing for it. Those who could afford it arranged to have their tombs outfitted with all the goods needed for the journey in the underworld. Most important, they paid burial experts to turn their corpses into mummies so that they could have a complete body for eternity. Making a mummy required removing the brain (through the nose with a long-handled spoon), cutting out the internal organs to store separately in stone jars, drying the body with mineral salts to the consistency of old leather, and wrapping the shrunken flesh in linen soaked with ointments.

Every mummy had to travel to the afterlife with a copy of the Book of the Dead, which included magic spells for avoiding dangers along the way, as well as instructions on how to prepare for the judgment-day trial before the gods. To prove that they deserved a good fate, the dead had to convincingly recite claims such as the following: “I have not committed crimes against people; I have not mistreated cattle; I have not robbed the poor; I have not caused pain; I have not caused tears.” (See “Document 1.2: Declaring Innocence on Judgment Day in Ancient Egypt” and “Seeing History: Remembering the Dead in Ancient Egypt.”)

Magic played a large role in the lives of Egyptians. Professional magicians sold spells and charms, both written and oral, which the buyers used to promote eternal salvation, protect against demons, smooth the rocky course of love, exact revenge on enemies, and find relief from disease and injury. Egyptian doctors knew many medicinal herbs (knowledge they passed on to later civilizations) and could perform major surgeries, including opening the skull. Still, no doctor could cure severe infections; as in the past, sick people continued to rely on the help of supernatural forces through prayers and spells.