Brief History of Egyptian Civilization: Part 7
New kingdom (1570–1069 BC)
This period is the most powerful and well recorded period of ancient Egypt and includes the 18th, 19th and the 20th dynasties. Now, In this period Egypt was going to be from a kingdom to an international power whose influence would reach beyond the Euphrates river, now in Iraq.
18th Dynasty: 18th dynasty and New kingdom started with the reunification of Egypt under the Ahmose I who defeated Hyksos, foreign rulers, so thoroughly from the Egyptian land and send them back to Syria and Palestine.
He then retook the Nubian territory from the Kush rulers in the south and completed the unification of Egypt. He led military campaigns against Syria and Palestine and secured Egypt from the invading powers by expanding the territories and creating buffer zones.
Amenhotep I succeeded him and kept it secured. Then Thutmose I became the king and expanded the territories. He was followed by Thutmose II whose wife Hetshepshut would become a powerful ruler after his death. Hatshepsut co-ruled with Thutmose III who was then a child of a few years, perhaps 2-year-old.
Under her rule, many monuments and other projects were built. Her rule concluded with the reign of Thutmose III, who perhaps tried to banish her names from the records because perhaps he did not want to be overshadowed by her image or perhaps he did not want other female rulers in the future to compete for the throne.
Thutmose III became the powerful ruler of the New Kingdom and expanded his territories by military campaigns as many as 17 in his reign and conquered Libya, Syria.
Amenhotep II followed him and ruled peacefully and maintained his power intact, internally and externally.
Thutmose IV succeeded him and ruled like his ancestors, He restored the great Sphinx of Giza and followed by Amenhotep III who like his ancestors led the military campaigns and expanded Egyptian empire.
But during his reign priest of Amun acquired so much power and grew in numbers that they would have created a challenge to the king if they were not checked. So, the Pharoah to reduce the power of priest of Amun started following the God Aten.
Amenhotep IV came to the power and followed his father by becoming a devotee to the God Aten. He changed his name to Akhenaten to disregard to Amun and to follow Aten and banned Amun worship and its temple. Thus he forced God Aten upon the common people.
He moved the capital from Thebes to Amarna and did not pay attention to the external affairs of Egypt. That led to the weakening of Egyptian power to the point that some of the regions which Egypt had conquered began to falling apart. He married to famous Nefertiti.
After his death, Tutankaten became the king but changed his name to Tutankhamen by replacing the suffix Aten to Amun. A change from his father’s policy. Perhaps it was because the reforms of Akhenaten, however well thought to reduce the priest’s power, did not suit well to the Egyptian priest in the Thebes.
And the Pharoah now could not avoid their power but to acknowledge it. Tutankhamen removed all the ban which his father had put on the cult of Amun and open temples. He changed the capital to Memphis.
After his death Ay his vizir became the ruler for a short period and Horemheb, general of Tutankhamen followed him. Horemheb tried to revive the glory of Egypt and consolidated his power. He died without a son and followed by his Vizier, Paramesse who ruled with the name of Ramesses I.
19th dynasty: Ramesses I started this dynasty and was followed by Seti I who tried to retake the territories which Egypt had lost in the reign of Akhenaten. He was followed by the most famous Pharoah, Ramesses II, the great and was the most powerful king of this period whose reign was well preserved in the written form.
He led the military campaign against Hittites kingdom and boasted in many of his inscriptions that he defeated them. But the conclusion of this battle of Kadesh was a peace deal, indicating that no power won it. Egypt grew to prosper under his long reign.
Ramesses II stopped the invasion of the sea people and saved Egypt. He transferred his capital to Avaris from Thebes perhaps to secure northern Egypt from the invading power from the north.
But that did not go well for the kings, because it made the priest at Thebes freer and powerful. They were free from the scrutiny of the king. Ramesses II died at very old, 96 and his death led to the chaos in Egypt because he had been the king for so many years that people did not know what to make of it.
There were not many who saw a period without Ramesses II at the throne. He outlived most of this sons and was succeeded by his 13th son, Merenptah, who was already aged when he ascended to the throne.
Merenptah was famous because the name of Israel as a tribe was first mentioned in the records of his reign. Merenptah chose Seti II as his heir but Amenmesse, his another son, declared himself ruler from Thebes and expanded his rule to the further south in Nubia.
The rule was short-lived and then Seti II became the king who died leaving his minor son on the throne. His son co-ruled with the wife of Seti II, Twosret and died at the age of 16. Twosret ruled and died without an heir.
20th Dynasty: Setnakhte seized the throne after the death of Twosret and founded the 20th dynasty but some historian believe him to the son of Seti II though there is no evidence of it.
Then Ramesses III followed him and became the last strong king of Egypt. He saved Egypt from the invasion of sea people and succumbed to the injury by the assassination attempt upon him. He was followed by the Ramesses IV.
The power of the Priest grew at the cost of Pharoah made the next rulers weaker and weaker as the time went by. Ramesses IV tried to restored Egypt to its past glory but his empire started diminishing. Under his short reign, Egypt lost territories in Asia.
Then other kings with the name of Ramesses followed one by one. Ramesses V, Ramesses VI, Ramesses VII, Ramesses VIII, Ramesses IX, Ramesses X, Ramesses XI. They had a common name and faced the common problems.
The empire went shorter and shorter at its border as other kingdoms grew in power. The power of the priests was now complete to challenge the ruler at the centre who was Ramesses XI.
A priest of Amun, Amenhotep declared himself the king of upper Egypt and divided Egypt where Ramesses kings ruled in the north and priest in the south.
Thus Egypt entered in the Third Intermediate Period. This divide was so thorough and the power of Egyptian rulers diminished to that extent that it would never again able to consolidate itself and reunify as it happened after the first and the Second Intermediate Period.
As for what happened after it, the Third Intermediate period concluded with the invasion of the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great in 525 BC and Egypt would remain the part of this empire until 332 BC when Alexander the Great defeated the Persian emperor Darius III.
After the death of Alexander, Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and in 30 BC it was conquered by the Roman Empire. Egypt remained a province until 641 CE when Rashidun Caliphate conquered it under Muslim invasion.
