The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when Ancient Egypt once again fell into disarray between the end of the Middle Kingdom, and the start of the New Kingdom. This period is best known as the time the Hyksos made their appearance in Egypt, the reigns of its kings comprising the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties.

The Thirteenth Dynasty proved unable to hold onto the long land of Egypt, and a provincial ruling family located in the marshes of the western Delta at Xois broke away from the central authority to form the Fourteenth Dynasty. The splintering of the land accelerated after the reign of the Thirteenth Dynasty king Neferhotep I.

The Hyksos first appear during the reign the Thirteenth Dynasty pharaoh Sobekhotep IV, and by 1720 BC took control of the town of Avaris. The outlines of the traditional account of the "invasion" of the land by the Hyksos is preserved in the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, who records that during this time the Hyksos overran Egypt, led by Salitis, the founder of the Fifteenth Dynasty. In the last decades, however, the idea of a simple migration, with little or no violence involved, has gained some support.[13] Under this theory, the Egyptian rulers of 13th Dynasty were unable to stop these new migrants from travelling to Egypt from Asia because they were weak kings who were struggling to cope with various domestic problems including possibly famine.

The Hyksos princes and chieftains ruled in the eastern Delta with their local Egyptian vassals. The Hyksos Fifteenth Dynasty rulers established their capital and seat of government at Memphis and their summer residence at Avaris.

The Hyksos kingdom was centered in the eastern Nile Delta and Middle Egypt and was limited in size, never extending south into Upper Egypt, which was under control by Theban-based rulers. Hyksos relations with the south seem to have been mainly of a commercial nature, although Theban princes appear to have recognized the Hyksos rulers and may possibly have provided them with tribute for a period.

Around the time Memphis fell to the Hyksos, the native Egyptian ruling house in Thebes declared its independence from the vassal dynasty in Itj-tawy and set itself up as the Seventeenth Dynasty. This dynasty was to prove the salvation of Egypt and would eventually lead the war of liberation that drove the Hyksos back into Asia. The two last kings of this dynasty were Tao II the Brave and Kamose. Ahmose I completed the conquest and expulsion of the Hyksos from the delta region, restored Theban rule over the whole of Egypt and successfully reasserted Egyptian power in its formerly subject territories of Nubia and Canaan.[14] His reign marks this beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom period.

[edit] New Kingdom

Main article: New Kingdom of Egypt

Possibly as a result of the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom saw Egypt attempt to create a buffer between the Levant and Egypt, and attain its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

[edit] Eighteenth Dynasty
Golden mask from the mummy of Tutankhamun
Golden mask from the mummy of Tutankhamun

This was a time of great wealth and power for Egypt. Some of the most important and best-known Pharaohs ruled at this time. Hatshepsut was a pharaoh at this time. Hatshepsut is unusual as she was a female pharaoh, a rare occurrence in Egyptian history. She was an ambitious and competent leader, extending Egyptian trade south into present-day Somalia and north into the Mediterranean. She ruled for twenty years through a combination of widespread propaganda and deft political skill. Her co-regent and successor Thutmose III ("the Napoleon of Egypt") expanded Egypt's army and wielded it with great success. Late in his reign he ordered her name hacked out from her monuments. He fought against Asiatic peoples and was the most successful of Egyptian pharaohs. Amenhotep III built extensively at the temple of Karnak including the Luxor temple which consisted of two pylons, a colonnade behind the new temple entrance, and a new temple to the goddess Ma'at.

[edit] Akhenaten and the Amarna period

Main article: Amarna Period

One of the best-known 18th Dynasty pharaohs is Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of the Aten and whose exclusive worship of the Aten is often interpreted as history's first instance of monotheism (and was argued in Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism to have been the ultimate origin of Jewish monotheism). He moved the capital to a new city he built and called it Akhetaten. (The site of Akhetaten is often referred to as Armana from a nearby modern village.) Akhenaten's religious fervor is cited as the reason why he was subsequently written out of Egyptian history. A political and religious revolutionary, Akhenaten introduced Atenism by the fourth year of his reign, raising the previously obscure god Aten (sometimes spelled Aton) to the position of supreme deity, and attacking the power of the entrenched Amen-Ra priestly establishment. The early stage of Atenism appears to be a kind of henotheism (the exaltation of one god above all others) familiar in Egyptian religion, but the later form suggests a monotheism (belief in the existence of only one deity or god). Aten was the name for the sun-disk itself; hence the fact that it is often referred to in English in the impersonal form "the Aten". The Aten was by this point in Egyptian history considered to be an aspect of the composite deity Ra-Amun-Horus. These previously separate deities had been merged with each other.
A house altar depicting the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his receiving life from the rays of the Aten sun disk, on display at the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin.
A house altar depicting the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his receiving life from the rays of the Aten sun disk, on display at the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin.

A new culture of art was introduced during this time that was more naturalistic and a complete turnabout from the stereotypical style that had ruled Egyptian art for the last 1700 years. Concerning art and Akhenaten, an area of interest to many Egyptologists is the peculiarity of Akhenaten's physical features. Styles of art that flourished during this short period are markedly different from other Egyptian art, bearing a variety of affectations, from elongated heads to protruding stomachs, exaggerated ugliness and the beauty of Nefertiti. Significantly, and for the only time in the history of Egyptian royal art, Akhenaten's family was depicted in a decidedly naturalistic manner, and they are clearly shown displaying affection for each other. Nefertiti also appears beside the king in actions usually reserved for a Pharaoh, suggesting that she attained unusual power for a queen. Early in his reign the typical artistic representations of the royal family were strikingly bizarre, typically featuring elongated heads and over-slender limbs. By the middle of his reign under a new royal sculptor the depictions had become much more realistic, as the famously iconic representation of Nefertiti discovered near the beginning of the 20th century attests.
The sculptor Thutmose's bust of Nefertiti, on display at the Altes Museum, Berlin
The sculptor Thutmose's bust of Nefertiti, on display at the Altes Museum, Berlin

Towards the end of his 17-year reign, Akhenaten took a co-regent, Smenkhkare, who family relationship is obscure: he was either a brother of Akhentaten, or son, or perhaps Nefertiti taking on a pharonic name. Their co-regency lasted only 2 years at most. When Akhenaten died, worship of the old gods was revived. In truth, their worship had never ended, but had instead gone underground. Smenkhkare died after a few months of sole reign, and in his place was crowned a young boy: Tutankhamun. He was a young child when he ascended to the throne, and undoubtedly it was his advisers that made the decisions for him. His given name was Tutankhaton, but with the resurgence of Amun, he was re-named Tutankhamun.

Following Akhenaten's death, a comprehensive political, religious and artistic reformation returned Egyptian life to the norms it had followed previously during his father's reign. Much of the art and building infrastructure that was created during Akhenaten's reign was defaced or destroyed in the period immediately following his death, first instituted during the reign of Tutankhamun, and continued into the reigns of his successors Ay and Horemheb. Stone building blocks from his construction projects were later used as foundation stones for subsequent rulers temples and tombs, which were consequently well-preserved when they were later uncovered by archeologists.

One of the most influential advisors was General Horemheb. Tutankhamun died while he was still a teenager and was succeeded by Ay, who probably married Tutankhamun's widow to strengthen his claim to the throne. When Ay died a few years after, Tutankhamun's former General Horemheb became ruler, and a new period of positive rule began. He set about securing internal stability and re-establishing the prestige that the country had before the reign of Akhenaten. When Horemheb died without an heir, he named his General Paramessu as his successor. Paramessu took the throne name Ramesses, and is considered the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty.

[edit] Ramesses II and the decline of the New Kingdom
Colossal depictions of Ramesses II at a temple dedicated to him at Abu Simbel.
Colossal depictions of Ramesses II at a temple dedicated to him at Abu Simbel.

Ramesses I reigned for a couple of years and was succeeded by his son Seti I. Seti I carried on the work of Horemheb in restoring power, control, and respect to Egypt. He also was responsible for creating the temple complex at Abydos.

Arguably Ancient Egypt's power as a nation-state peaked during the reign of Ramesses II ("the Great") of the 19th Dynasty. He reigned for 67 years from the age of 18 and carried on his immediate predecessor's work and created many more splendid temples, such as that of Abu Simbel on the Nubian border. He sought to recover territories in the Levant that had been held by 18th Dynasty Egypt. His campaigns of reconquest culminated in the Battle of Kadesh, where he led Egyptian armies against those of the Hittite king Muwatalli II and was caught in history's first recorded military ambush. Ramesses II was famed for the huge number of children he sired by his various wives and concubines; the tomb he built for his sons, many of whom he outlived, in the Valley of the Kings has proven to be the largest funerary complex in Egypt.

His immediate successors continued the military campaigns, though an increasingly troubled court complicated matters. Ramesses II was succeeded by his son Merneptah and then by Merenptah's son Seti II. Seti II's throne seems to have been disputed by his half-brother Amenmesse, who may have temporarily ruled from Thebes. Upon his death, Seti II son Siptah, who may have been afflicted with polio during his life, was appointed to the throne by Chancellor Bay, an Asiatic commoner who served as vizier behind the scenes. At Siptah's early death, the throne was assumed by Twosret, the dowager queen of Seti II (and possibly Amenmesses's sister). A period of anarchy at the end of Twosret's short reign saw a native reaction to foreign control leading to the execution of the chancellor, and placing Setnakhte on the throne, establishing the Twentieth Dynasty.

The last "great" pharaoh from the New Kingdom is widely regarded to be Ramesses III, the son of Setnakhte who reigned three decades after the time of Ramesses II. In Year 8 of his reign, the Sea Peoples, invaded Egypt by land and sea. Ramesses III defeated them in two great land and sea battles. He claimed that he incorporated them as subject peoples and settled them in Southern Canaan, although there is evidence that they forced their way into Canaan. Their presence in Canaan may have contributed to the formation of new states in this region such as Philistia after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire. He was also compelled to fight invading Libyan tribesmen in two major campaigns in Egypt's Western Delta in his Year 6 and Year 11 respectively.[15]

The heavy cost of these battles slowly exhausted Egypt's treasury and contributed to the gradual decline of the Egyptian Empire in Asia. The severity of these difficulties is stressed by the fact that the first known labor strike in recorded history occurred during Year 29 of Ramesses III's reign, when the food rations for the Egypt's favoured and elite royal tomb-builders and artisans in the village of Deir el Medina could not be provisioned.[16] The main reason for this deficiency was presumably caused by the massive and extended 1159 BC to 1140 BC eruption of the Hekla III volcano in Iceland, which expelled large amounts of plume and rock into the atmosphere thereby causing large-scale failures of Egypt's crop harvest.[17] The presence of significant quantities of volcanic soot in the air prevented much sunlight from reaching the ground and also arrested global tree growth for almost two full decades until 1140 BC.

Following Ramesses III's death there was endless bickering between his heirs. Three of his sons would go on to assume power as Ramesses IV, Ramesses VI and Ramesses VIII respectively. However, at this time Egypt was also increasingly beset by a series of droughts, below-normal flooding levels of the Nile, famine, civil unrest and official corruption. The power of the last pharaoh, Ramesses XI, grew so weak that in the south the High Priests of Amun at Thebes became the effective defacto rulers of Upper Egypt, while Smendes controlled Lower Egypt even before Ramesses XI's death. Smendes would eventually found the Twenty-First dynasty at Tanis.

[edit] Third Intermediate Period

Main article: Third Intermediate Period