Everything about The New Kingdom totally explained
The
New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the
Egyptian Empire, is the period in
ancient Egyptian
history between the
16th century BC and the
11th century BC, covering the
Eighteenth,
Nineteenth, and
Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. The New Kingdom (
1570–
1070 BC) followed the
Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the
Third Intermediate Period. It was
Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its
power.
Background
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.
The Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypt's most famous
Pharaohs including
Ahmose I,
Hatshepsut,
Thutmose III,
Amenhotep III,
Akhenaten and
Tutankhamun.
Queen Hatshepsut concentrated on expanding Egypt's
external trade, sending a commercial expedition to the
land of Punt. Thutmose III ("the
Napoleon of Egypt") expanded Egypt's army and wielded it with great success, creating the
largest empire Egypt had ever seen.
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). Akhenaten's religious fervor is cited as the reason why he was subsequently written out of Egyptian history. Under his reign, in the
14th century BC,
Egyptian art flourished and attained an unprecedented level of realism.
Towards the end of the 18th Dynasty, the situation had changed radically. Helped by Akhenaten's apparent lack of interest in international affairs, the Hittites had gradually extended their influence into Syria and
Palestine to become a major power in international politics. A power that both
Seti I and his son
Ramesses II would need to deal with.
Arguably Ancient Egypt's power as a
nation-state peaked during the reign of Ramesses II ("the Great") of the 19th Dynasty. He sought to recover territories in the Levant that had been held by the 18th Dynasty. 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, but thanks to the arrival of the Ne'arin, Ramesses was able to rally his troops and turn the tide of battle against the Hittites. Ramesses II was also 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—which at one point put a usurper (
Amenmesse) on the throne—made it increasingly difficult for a pharaoh to effectively retain control without incident. The last "great" pharaoh from the New Kingdom is widely regarded to be
Ramesses III, a
Twentieth Dynasty pharaoh who reigned several decades after
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's 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.
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 couldn't be provisioned. 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. 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 eventually found the
Twenty-First dynasty at
Tanis.
Timeline
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Period = from:-1560 till:-1050
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align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:25 shift:(0,-5)
bar:eon color:eon
from: -1550 till: -1292 color: 18 text:Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt
from: -1292 till: -1190 color: 19 text:Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt
from: -1190 till: -1077 color: 20 text:Twentieth dynasty of Egypt
width:5 align:left fontsize:S shift:(5,-4) anchor:till
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from: -1550 till: -1525 color:18 text:"Ahmose I"
from: -1525 till: -1504 color:18 text:"Amenhotep I"
from: -1504 till: -1492 color:18 text:"Thutmose I"
from: -1492 till: -1479 color:18 text:"Thutmose II"
from: -1479 till: -1457 color:18 text:"Hatshepsut"
from: -1479 till: -1425 color:18 text:"Thutmose III"
from: -1425 till: -1399 color:18 text:"Amenhotep II"
from: -1399 till: -1389 color:18 text:"Thutmose IV"
from: -1389 till: -1351 color:18 text:"Amenhotep III"
from: -1351 till: -1344 color:18 text:"Akhenaten"
from: -1336 till: -1334 color:18 text:"Smenkhkare"
from: -1334 till: -1325 color:18 text:"Tutankhamun"
from: -1325 till: -1321 color:18 text:"Ay"
from: -1321 till: -1292 color:18 text:"Horemheb"
from: -1292 till: -1290 color:19 text:"Ramesses I (1292 BC to 1290 BC)"
from: -1290 till: -1279 color:19 text:"Seti I (1290 BC to 1279 BC)"
from: -1279 till: -1213 color:19 text:"Ramesses the Great (1279 BC to 1213 BC)"
from: -1213 till: -1203 color:19 text:"Merneptah (1213 BC to 1203 BC)"
from: -1203 till: -1199 color:19 text:"Amenmesse (1203 BC to 1199 BC)"
from: -1203 till: -1197 color:19 text:"Seti II (1203 BC to 1197 BC)"
from: -1197 till: -1191 color:19 text:"Siptah (1197 BC to 1191 BC)"
from: -1191 till: -1190 color:19 text:"Twosret (1191 BC to 1190 BC)"
from: -1190 till: -1186 color:20 text:"Setnakhte"
from: -1186 till: -1155 color:20 text:"Ramesses III"
from: -1155 till: -1149 color:20 text:"Ramesses IV"
from: -1149 till: -1145 color:20 text:"Ramesses V"
from: -1145 till: -1137 color:20 text:"Ramesses VI"
from: -1137 till: -1130 color:20 text:"Ramesses VII"
from: -1130 till: -1129 color:20 text:"Ramesses VIII"
from: -1129 till: -1111 color:20 text:"Ramesses IX"
from: -1111 till: -1107 color:20 text:"Ramesses X"
from: -1107 till: -1077 color:20 text:"Ramesses XI"
barset:skip
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