Chapter 2: Egypt

Hymn to the Nile

Verse 1
Hymn to the flood Hail flood!
emerging from the earth, arriving to bring Egypt to life,
hidden of form, the darkness in the day,
the one whose followers sing to him, as he waters the plants,
created by Ra to make every herd live,
who satisfies the desert hills removed from the water,
for it is his due that descends from the sky
– he, the beloved of Geb, controller of Nepri,
the one who makes the crafts of Ptah verdant.

Verse 13
When the Flood strikes,
they offer to you
they butcher cattle for you,
offering piles are made for you,
birds are slaughtered for you,
lions are snared for you in the desert,
goodness is returned to you.
They offer to every god
according to what the Flood has created,
in first quality incense, cattle large and small, birds for the flame.
The Flood in his cavern is the mighty one.
His name is not known in the underworld,
and the gods do not emerge with it.

Verse 14
All people raising the praise of the Ennead
Have fear for the awe made by his son the Lord of All to make the Two Riverbanks verdant
Verdant the spirit at your coming,
Verdant the spirit at your coming, O Flood
Verdant the spirit at your coming,
Come to Egypt,
make its happiness,
Make the Two Riverbanks verdant,
Verdant the spirit at your coming,
Verdant the spirit at your coming, O Flood
Verdant the spirit at your coming,
Men and herds are brought to life by your deliveries of the fields,
Verdant the spirit at your coming,
Verdant the spirit at your coming, O Flood
Verdant the spirit at your coming.

( https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static...oodtransl.html )

The Ancient Egyptians were completely dependent upon the Nile, making it the very center of their culture and religion. The Nile’s annual floods provided the Egyptians with fertile soil, irrigated their farmlands, and was pivotal for transportation of goods and people across the Kingdom. The river was so significant to the Egyptians it was often referred to as a God, as can be seen in the Hymn to the Nile.

As noted in the last chapter, the Mesopotamians regarded the gods as cruel and arbitrary and thought that human existence was not a very pleasant experience. This attitude was not only shaped by all of the things that ancient people did not understand, like disease, weather, and death itself, but by the simple fact that it was often difficult to live next to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flooded unpredictably and necessitated constant work in order to be useful for irrigation. Likewise, the threat of invasion from both rival cities and from foreigners (both “barbarians” and more organized groups) threatened to disrupt whatever stability existed. Life for most Mesopotamians, especially the vast majority who were common farmers, was not easy.

Things were a bit different in the other great ancient civilization of the eastern Mediterranean: Egypt, whose civilization developed along the banks of the Nile river. The Nile is the world’s longest river, stretching over 4,000 miles from its mouth in the Mediterranean to its origin in Lake Victoria in Central Africa. Because of consistent weather patterns, the Nile floods every year at just about the same time (late summer), depositing enormous amounts of mud and silt along its banks and making it one of the most fertile regions in the world. The essential source of energy for the Egyptians was thus something that could be predicted and planned for in a way that was impossible in Mesopotamia. There is a direct connection between this predictability and the incredible stability of Egyptian civilization, which (despite new kings and new dynasties and the occasional foreign invasion) remained remarkably stable and consistent for thousands of years.

The Egyptians themselves called the Nile valley “Kemet,” the Black Land, because of the annually-renewed black soil that arrived with the flood. For the most part, this was ancient Egypt: a swath of land between 10 and 20 miles wide (and in some places merely 1 or 2 miles wide) made up of incredibly fertile soil that relied on the floods of the Nile. This land was so agriculturally productive that Egyptian peasants could bring in harvests three times as bountiful of those in other regions like Mesopotamia. In turn, this created an enormous surplus of wealth for the royal government, which had the right to tax and redistribute it (as did the Mesopotamian states to the east). Beyond that strip of land were deserts populated by people the Egyptians simply dismissed as “bandits” – meaning nomads and tribal groups, not just robbers.

Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom came into being with the unification of Lower Egypt, where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean, and Upper Egypt, where the Nile leads into Nubia (present-day Sudan). Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ypt_map-en.svg

There were three major periods in ancient Egyptian history, the time during which Egypt was not subject to foreign powers and during which it developed its distinctive culture and built its spectacular examples of monumental architecture: the Old Kingdom (2680 – 2200 BCE), the Middle Kingdom (2040 – 1720 BCE), and the New Kingdom (1550 – 1150 BCE). There were also two “intermediate periods” between the Old and Middle Kingdoms (The First Intermediate Period, 2200 – 2040 BCE) and Middle and New Kingdoms (The Second Intermediate Period, 1720 – 1550 BCE). These were periods during which the political control of the ruling dynasty broke down and rival groups fought for control. The very large overarching story of ancient Egyptian history is that each of the different major kingdoms was quite stable and relatively peaceful, while the intermediary periods were troubled, violent, and chaotic. The remarkable thing about the history overall is the simple fact of its longevity; even compared to other ancient cultures (Mesopotamia, for instance), Egyptian politics were incredibly consistent.

The concept of these different periods was created by Manetho, an Egyptian priest who, in about 300 BCE, recorded the “definitive” history of the ancient kings and created the very notion of the old, middle, and new kingdoms. While that periodization overlooks some of the specifics of Egyptian history, it is still the preferred method for dating ancient Egypt to this day because of its simplicity and clarity.

Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, 5000-2680 BCE

From about 5000 BCE onward smaller states/cities (similar to those in Mesopotamia) began to spring up around the Nile River. As the settlements grew, warfare and competition ensued, leading to the eventual formation of 2 larger states/kingdoms: Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt was a long and narrow valley never more than about 14 miles wide ending near present day Cairo. Lower Egypt then was north of Cairo where the Nile branches out into a wide, low-lying delta before exiting into the Mediterranean Sea. Because of Egypt’s location, it was influenced by a larger variety of cultures than Sumer. Through archaeology and analysis of Egyptian religion and myths, we can see the influence of Africa, particularly Nubia or the area/peoples of modern Sudan.

Nubia was rich in gold, ivory, and slaves, seized from neighboring lands, making it a wealthy and powerful place in its own right. Egypt traded with Nubia, but also suffered from raids by warlike Nubian kingdoms. One of the key political posts in Egypt was the Keeper of the Gateway of the South, a military governor who tried to protect trade from these attacks. Some even argue that the idea of monarchy came from Nubia originally. In addition to borrowing from African populations to their south, Egyptians also felt the impact of Western Asia/the Near East. They imported ceramics, metallurgy, and new styles in art and architecture from Asia. As far as physical appearances, the residents of Upper Egypt were probably of darker complexion, more resembling the residents of sub-Saharan Africa, while those of Lower Egypt were lighter skinned, but still darker than Northern Europeans.

Upper and Lower Egypt were politically distinct for centuries, but (according to both archaeology and the dating system created by Manetho) in roughly 3100 BCE Narmer, a king of Upper Egypt, conquered Lower Egypt and united the country for the first time. Narmer referred to himself as the King of the Two Lands. He therefore was the first Pharaoh (which means “Great House”) of a unified Egypt. Sadly, we actually know very little about Narmer beyond the fact that he was a warrior King. Numerous palettes and images show him slaying enemies with his own hands, with many depicting him fighting at the head of the army himself. Specifically he seems to have annexed Lower Egypt and expelled Libyans from Egyptian territory. Soon after began the Old Kingdom or the first Kingdom of a united Egypt. The Old Kingdom represented a long, unbroken line of kings that presided over the first full flowering of Egyptian culture, architecture, and prosperity.

Narmer Palette https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ing_Narmer.jpg

The Old Kingdom, 2680-2200 BCE

The Old Kingdom united Egypt under a single ruling house, developed systems of record-keeping, and formed an all-important caste of scribes, the royal bureaucrats who mastered hieroglyphic writing. Likewise, the essential characteristics of Egyptian religion emerged during the Old Kingdom, especially the idea that the king was actually a god and that his rule ensured that the world itself would continue – the Egyptians thought that if there was no king or the proper prayers were not recited by the priests, terrible chaos and destruction would reign on earth.

The most important figure in Egyptian spiritual life was the king; he (or sometimes she) was believed to form a direct connection between the gods and the Egyptian people. The central theme among the great epic stories of Egyptian religion was that there was a certain order and harmony in the universe that the gods had created, but that it was threatened by forces of destruction and chaos. It was the job of humans, especially Egyptians and especially the king, to maintain harmony (ma’at) through proper rituals and making sure that Egyptian society was stable.

One peculiar aspect of the obsessive focus on the person of the king was the fact that the kings often married their sisters and daughters; the idea was that if one was a god, one did not want to pollute the sacred bloodline by having children with mere humans. An unfortunate side effect was, not surprisingly, that there were a lot of fairly deranged and unhealthy Egyptian royalty over the years, since the royal lines were, by definition, inbred. Fortunately for the Egyptian state, however, the backbone of day-to-day politics was the enormous bureaucracy staffed by the scribal class, a class that survived the entire period covered in this chapter.

Like their neighbors in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians lived in a redistributive economy, an economy in which crops were taken directly from farmers (i.e. peasants) by the agents of the king and then redistributed. Appropriately enough, many of the surviving documents from ancient Egypt are tax records. Peasants in Egypt were tied to the land they lived on and were thus serfs rather than free peasants. A serf is a farmer who is legally tied to the land he or she works on – they cannot leave the land to look for a better job elsewhere, living in a state very near to slavery. The peasants lived in “closed” villages in which people were not allowed to move in, nor were existing families supposed to move out.

Interestingly, unlike many other ancient societies, women in Egypt were nearly the legal equals of men. They had the legal right to own property, sue, and essentially exist as independent legal entities. This is all the more striking in that many of the legal rights that Egyptian women possessed were not available to women in Europe (or the United States) until the late 1800s CE, over three thousand years later. Likewise, Egyptian women enjoyed much more legal autonomy than did women in many other ancient societies, particularly that of the Greeks.

The Old Kingdom was stable and powerful, although its kings did not use that power to expand their borders beyond Egypt itself. Instead, all of Old Kingdom society revolved around the production of agricultural surpluses from the Nile, efficiently cataloged and taxed by the royal bureaucracy and “spent” on building enormous temples and, in time, tombs. The pyramids of Egypt were all built during the Old Kingdom, and their purpose was to house the bodies of the kings so that their spirits could travel to the land of the dead and join their fellow gods in the afterlife (thereby maintaining ma’at – harmony, sacred order, and balance).

A major factor in the stability of Old Kingdom Egypt was that it was very isolated. Despite its geographical proximity to Mesopotamia and Anatolia, Egypt at the time was largely separated from the civilizations of those regions. The Sinai Peninsula, which divides Egypt from present-day Palestine and Israel, is about 120 miles of desert. With a few violent exceptions, no major incursions were able to cross over Sinai, and contact with the cultures of Mesopotamia and the Near East was limited as a result. Likewise, even though Egypt is on the Mediterranean, sailing technology was so primitive that there was little contact with other cultures via the sea.

Hieroglyphics

Scholars once thought that writing began in Mesopotamia and spread to Egypt. However, recent excavations have found examples of Egyptian writing dating from 3300 to 3200 BCE. So Egyptian writing likely developed completely independently from cuneiform. Here, similar to Sumer, writing was developed to meet economic needs. The earliest writing in Egypt includes records of the delivery of linen and oil as taxes to King/Pharaoh Scorpion I. The writing is a series of early hieroglyphs (meaning “sacred carvings” in Greek because the script was mainly used for religious inscriptions on buildings and sacred objects), a system of pictures and abstract signs that represent sounds or ideas, that eventually became standardized. There are about 700 different pictures in Egyptian hieroglyphics that generally fit into 3 categories: ideograms (signs indicating things or ideas), phonograms (signs indicating sounds), and determinatives (signs clarifying the meaning of the other signs). Hieroglyphics continued to be the dominant form of writing in Egypt until about 400 CE or AD.

As early as 3000 BCE at least one aspect of Egyptian writing surpassed that of Sumerian cuneiform, the material on which records were recorded. While cuneiform had to be inscribed or stamped on clay, a fairly clumsy process, Egyptians invented something similar to present day paper for their less sacred/economic records (sacred records were still inscribed largely on the walls of temples or pyramids). While today paper does come from wood (a technology developed in China around 100 BCE), Ancient Egyptians made it using the plant papyrus. Papyrus is a tall, reed like plant that grows along the Nile. When harvested it can be used to construct shelters and lightweight boats, burned for fuel, or as a writing surface. The word paper actually comes from papyrus. Papyrus was transformed into writing material by cutting the stalks into thin strips and laying them in a crosshatched fashion to form sheets, which were then glued together into rolls, in which form it was sold. It was durable and easy to write on, which facilitated the spread of written communication from paying taxes and legal contracts to philosophical works.

More writing survives from ancient Egypt than any other ancient civilization of the Mediterranean region. There are two major reasons for that survival. First, Egypt’s dry climate ensured that records kept on papyrus had a decent chance of surviving since they were unlikely to rot away. Thousands of papyri documents have been discovered that were simply dumped into holes in the desert and left there; the sand and the climate conspiring to preserve them. Second, Egypt developed an important social class of scribes whose whole vocation was mastering the complex Egyptian writing systems, hieroglyphics, and keeping extensive records of almost every aspect of life, from religious ritual to mundane record-keeping. In all three of the great dynasties and during the Intermediate Periods, it was the scribes who provided continuity.

The Pyramids

Pyramid of Khufu https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...d_of_Khufu.jpg

As iconic as hieroglyphic writing, which remains famous because of the sheer amount of it that survived carved in stone in tombs and palaces, was the creation of monumental architecture by the Egyptian state, first exemplified by the pyramids. Sometime around 2660 BCE the first pyramid was built for the king Djoser. Djoser was renowned in the Egyptian sources for his wisdom, and centuries after his death he became a legendary figure to later Egyptians. The architect who designed the pyramid, Imhotep, was later deified as a son of Ptah, the god who created the universe.

The pyramids were constructed over a period of about 250 years, from 2660 to 2400 BCE. For a long time, historians thought that they were built by slaves, but it now seems very likely that they were built by free laborers employed by the king and paid by royal agents. Each building block weighed about 2.5 tons and had to be hauled up ramps with ropes and pulleys. As noted above, only Egypt’s unique access to the bounty of the Nile provided enough energy for this to be viable. Egypt was the envy of the ancient world because of its incredible wealth, wealth that was the direct result of its huge surplus of grain, all fed by the Nile’s floods. The pyramids were built year-round, but work was most intense in September, when the floods of the Nile were at their height and farmers were not able to work the fields. In short, nowhere else on earth could the pyramids have been built. There had to be a gigantic surplus of energy in the form of calories available to get it done.

Pyramid building itself was the impetus behind the massive expansion of bureaucracy in the Old Kingdom, since the state became synonymous with the diversion and redistribution of resources needed to keep an enormous labor force mobilized. The king could, in theory, requisition anything, mobilize anyone, and generally exercise total control, although practical limits were respected by the administration. Since there was no currency, “payment” to scribes usually took the form of fiefs (i.e. grants of land) that returned to the royal holdings after the official’s death, a practice that atrophied after the fall of the Old Kingdom.

The most dramatic symbol of the Pharaoh’s divinity were the pyramids. The Egyptians built 35 major pyramids and countless smaller ones. The first type of pyramids to be built were Step pyramids, symbolizing the Pharaoh’s ascent to his father, the sun God. These were more than likely quite similar to Sumerian Ziggurats. Initially the pyramids were likely built as a statement of the Pharaoh’s indisputable power and to show his strength, remember this was fairly recently united Kingdom. The pyramids are justly famous as the ultimate example of Egyptian prosperity and ingenuity. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, the single largest pyramid of the period, contained over 2.5 million stone blocks, each weighing approximately 2.5 tons. The sheer amount of energy expended on the construction of the pyramids is thus staggering; it was only the incredible bounty of the Nile and its harvests that enabled the construction of the pyramids by providing the calories consumed by the workers and draught animals, the wealth used to employ the supporting bureaucracy, and the size of the population that sustained the entire enterprise. Likewise, while the details are now lost, the Old Kingdom’s government must have been highly effective at tax collection and the distribution of food, supplies, and work teams. Pyramids on the scale of the Old Kingdom would have been all but impossible anywhere else in the world at the time.

But, the pyramids were not simply symbols of grandeur or monuments to appease the egos of the Pharaohs. They were temples where the king would continue to be worshipped and served in the afterlife. The Pharaoh had to be protected, preserved, and honored in death just as he had been in life. The Pharaohs spent huge amounts of money and resources on the pyramids to proclaim their divine status and to protect their mummified bodies in death. Both reinforcing the hierarchal structure of the Egyptian Kingdom, and ensuring that the Pharaoh would not be alone in the afterlife only princes, select officials, and of course the royal wives would have the privilege of being buried in the Pyramids.

The best known pyramids are those of Giza, three gigantic, perfectly symmetrical limestone tombs constructed during the 4th dynasty (2589-2532). To this day the pyramid of King Khufu (or Cheops, his Greek name) is still the largest all-stone building in human history. It stands taller than a 40 story skyscraper. It required more than 2 million blocks of limestone to construct, some of which weighed 15 tons a piece. According to the records free workers dragged the stones up ramps into position using rollers and sleds. Near the Great Pyramids stands the great Sphinx, a human-headed lion carved out of a huge rock outcropping, perhaps representing Khufu’s son, King Khafre for whom the Second great pyramid was built. The Sphinx is the oldest monumental sculpture in the world, it is nearly 250 feet long and almost 70 feet high.

Egyptian Sphinx https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...d_of_Khufu.jpg

The Pharaohs also prepared the inside of the pyramids elaborately, showing their strong belief in and preparation for the afterlife. As with the Sumerians, the Egyptians were polytheistic. They had a huge array of greater and lesser deities, including human, animal, and composite gods. Some of the most important gods included Ptah (creator-god), Osiris (the inventor of agriculture and lord of dead, also who the Pharaoh became in death), Horus (the son of Osiris and a sky-god, and the Pharaoh in life), and Isis (the wife of Osiris, mother of Horus, and the mother-goddess). Temples dedicated to the Gods were numerous.

For the Egyptians the afterlife could be a very pleasant continuation of life on earth, kind of like immortality. Commoners had the small assurance that there was no forced labor in death. Meanwhile, the wealthy (pinnacle being the Pharaohs), were more than well prepared for the afterlife as they placed a huge emphasis on the building and filling of tombs, decorating them with paintings and inscriptions, and stocking them with cherished possessions. Tombs of the royal family were filled with jewelry, gilded furniture, and even in one case at least two full sized cedar ships. These were meant to carry King Khufu on his journey into eternity. The body also had to be prepared for the afterlife, hence the practices of embalming and mummification. To make a mummy the brain was removed through the nose, next the internal organs were cut out and stored in separate stone jars. Once empty, the body was dried with mineral salts to the consistency of old leather. Finally the body was wrapped in linens soaked with various ointments.

Book of the Dead

During the Old Kingdom it was believed that only the Pharaoh and his retinue could attain immortality, even that it hinged upon burial in the pyramids. However this changed in successive kingdoms with even commoners having hope of eternity. We can see this in the evolution of the famous Book of the Dead written during the New Kingdom or around 1550 BCE. Scholars have found more than 25,000 copies, the oldest papyrus copy dating from around 1500 BCE. This is the first religious writing/text meant as a literal guide to the afterlife.

While the book became more wide spread in the New Kingdom, the manuscript has its origins in the Old Kingdom among the funerary manuscripts written on the walls of burial chambers within the pyramids. Many Books of the Dead have been discovered among the belongings buried in the tombs of royalty and wealthier commoners. This is because by the New Kingdom, one could commission a Book of the Dead from the House of Life, an institution built alongside Temple Complexes, where the Books of the Dead were penned.

The book is a collection of coffin or temple inscriptions from across Egypt. The book contains magic spells intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the Duat or the underworld and into the afterlife. Egyptians invented the idea that the suffering of the present life might be overcome in a more perfect world to come. After death, the soul would be brought before a judge of the gods, Anubis, who would weigh the heart on scales against the ideals of harmony and order. At this point, the heart might betray the soul, telling the god all of the sins its owner had committed in life. The lucky and virtuous person, though, would see their heart balance against the ideal of order (that of Ma’at or justice and truth) and the soul would be rewarded with eternal life. Otherwise, their heart would be tossed to a crocodile-headed demon, Ammit, and devoured, the soul perishing in the process.

The following images are of the Book of the Dead for Chantress Nauny, a chantress for the god Amun Re, who was given the title of “king’s daughter,” likely because she was the daughter of a high priest.

The Singer of Amun Nany’s Funerary Papyrus, ca. 1050 B.C., the Weighing of the Heart. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collec.../search/548344

Nany offering prayers to the Gods in Book of the Dead, 1050 BCE https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collec.../search/548344

Perhaps most intriguing about the book is that it includes images and stories similar to those of Christianity. For example, the Goddess Isis and her son Horus (the pharaoh) are artistically portrayed very similarly to future portraits of Mary and baby Jesus. Additionally, Osiris, the God of the Underworld, was originally human and lived on the earth, but he suffered death when his evil brother Set murdered him. But, he was resurrected and became the god of the underworld. As we will see, perhaps the resemblances come from the time that the Israelites spent in Egypt.

First Intermediate Period to the Middle Kingdom, 2040-1720 BCE

Around 2200 BCE, two hundred years after the last pyramids were built, the Old Kingdom collapsed, leading to the First Intermediate Period. The reason for the collapse is not clear, but it probably had to do with the very infrequent occurrence of drought. There are written records from this period of instability that make it clear that Egyptians knew very well that things had been fundamentally upset and imbalanced, and they did not know what to do about it. The kings were supposed to oversee the harmony of life and yet the royal dynasty had collapsed without a replacement. This disrupted the entire Egyptian worldview. Rival dynasties emerged to challenge the Old Kingdom and their Pharaohs by 2190. The unrest resulted in a collapse of unity and the Old Kingdom, with governors declaring their independence.

In turn, this disruption prompted a development in Egyptian religion. The Egyptian religion of the Old Kingdom had emphasized life on earth; even though the pyramids were tombs built to house the kings and the things they would need on their journey to the afterlife, there were no records with clear details about how most people would fare after they died. This changed during the First Intermediate Period. Hence, the advent of the Book of the Dead, at least its foundations.

Monumental building ceased during the Intermediate Period – there were no more pyramids, palaces, or temples built. A major social change that occurred was that royal officials away from the capital started to inherit titles, and thus it was the first time there was a real noble class with its own inherited power and land. Some historians have argued that a major cause of the collapse of royal authority was the growth in power of the nobility: in other words, royal authority did not fall apart first and lead to elites seizing more power, elites seized power and thereby weakened royal authority. The irony of the period is that the economy of Egypt actually diversified and expanded. It seems to have been a time in which a new elite commissioned royal-inspired goods and hence supported emerging craftspeople.

The Middle Kingdom was the next great Egyptian kingdom of the ancient world. The governor of the city of Thebes reunified the kingdom and established himself as the new king (Mentuhotep II, r. 2060 – 2010 BCE). One major change in Egyptian belief is that the Middle Kingdom rulers still claimed to be at least partly divine, but they also emphasized their humanity. They wrote about themselves as shepherds trying to maintain the balance of harmony in Egypt and to protect their people, rather than just as lords over an immortal kingdom. Their nobles had more power than had the nobility of the Old Kingdom as well, playing important political roles in their lands.

Starting during the Middle Kingdom, the kings made a major effort to extend Egyptian power and influence beyond the traditional “core” of the kingdom in Egypt itself. Egypt exerted military power and extracted wealth from the northern part of the kingdom of Nubia (in present-day Sudan) to the south, and also established at least limited ongoing contact with Mesopotamia as well. The kings actively encouraged immigration from outside of Egypt, but insisted that immigrants settle among Egyptians. They had the same policy with war captives, often settling them as farmers in the midst of Egyptians. This ensured speedy acculturation and helped bring foreign talent into Egypt.

While no more pyramids were built – it appears that the nearly obsessive focus on the spirit of the king after death was confined to the Old Kingdom – the Middle Kingdom was definitely a period of stability and prosperity for Egypt as a whole. A fairly diverse body of literature survived in the form of writings on papyrus that suggests that commerce was extensive, Egyptian religion celebrated the spiritual importance of ordinary people, and fairness and justice were regarded as major ethical imperatives.

The Hyksos & the End of the Middle Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom came to violent and abrupt end around 1700 BCE when Semitic speaking immigrants from Canaan (present-day Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and parts of Syria) began moving into Egypt in large numbers. The Egyptians labelled these newcomers as Hyksos, meaning foreigners. Initially, they settled and assimilated slowly into Egyptian society, however, by approximately 1650 BCE, a larger group of Hyksos invaded and conquered all of Lower Egypt. The question remains to this day who the Hyksos were. Many historians agree that they were likely the early Israelites due to remarkable coincidences or similarities in the Egyptian, Israelite, and archaeological records. For example Exodus 1:1-14 and the Egyptian Carnarvon Tablet seem to correlate in time with the rise of the Pharoah Kamose and the defeat of the Hyksos. Then Amos 5:26 makes a reference to an ancient Hyksos leader, Khyan, as a possible cross reference of Hyksos culture being recognized by Israelites.

Whether or not they were the Israelites, the Hyksos possessed two significant advantages over the Egyptians; the use of the horse drawn chariot in battle and more powerful bronze bows. The most significant innovation introduced by the Hyksos was the use of bronze. There was very limited use of bronze in Egypt until the Second Intermediate Period, with both weapons and tools being crafted from copper or stone. Bronze, an alloy of copper and zinc or nickel, required technical skill and access to its component minerals to craft. The finished product was far harder and more durable than was copper alone, however, and with the advent of large-scale bronze use in Egypt thanks to the Hyksos, the possibilities for the growth of Egyptian power increased greatly. Bronze had already been in use for over a thousand years by the time it became common in Egypt, but when it finally arrived with Canaanite craftsmen it radically altered the balance of power. Up to that point, Egyptian technology, especially in terms of metallurgy, was quite primitive. Egyptian soldiers were often nothing more than peasants armed with copper knives, spears with copper heads, or even just clubs. Egypt’s relative isolation meant that it had never needed to develop more advanced weapons, a fact that the Hyksos were able to take advantage of, belatedly bringing the large-scale use of bronze with them.

Nonetheless, the Hyksos did not seek to drastically alter Egyptian society and culture. While they started as “foreigners,” the Hyksos quickly adopted the practices of the Egyptian kings they had overthrown, using Egyptian scribes to keep records in hieroglyphics, worshiping the local gods, and generally behaving like Egyptians. In addition to trying to join Egyptian society, the Hyksos also opened up Egypt to much greater contact with other Near East states, especially those in the Mediterranean like the Hittites and Minoans. Yet, as in many cases of colonization, most Egyptians did not admire their Hyksos overlords and sought independence.

The New Kingdom, 1550-1150 BCE

In 1550 BCE, the Second Intermediate Period ended when another Egyptian king, Ahmose I, expelled the Hyksos from Egypt. Thus began the New Kingdom, the most powerful to date. This was also when the Egyptian kings started calling themselves pharaohs, which means “great house,” lord over all things. Using the new bronze military technology, the New Kingdom was (at times) able to expand Egyptian control all the way into Mesopotamia. Bronze was the key factor, but also important was the adoption of composite bows: bows that are made from strips of animal bone and sinew, glued together. A composite bow was much more powerful than a wooden one, and they greatly enhanced the power of the Egyptian military. Likewise, again thanks to the Hyksos, the New Kingdom was able to employ chariots in war for the first time. One in ten men was impressed into military service, supplemented with auxiliaries from conquered lands as well as mercenary forces.

During this period the Pharaohs rebuilt central authority by restricting the power of local governors and promoting a new sense of Egyptian identity. To prevent invasions, the pharaohs followed up the Hyksos innovation in military technology by creating a standing army and formalizing diplomatic relationships with the kings of the Near East. Additionally, it was during the New Kingdom that they actively campaigned to take over foreign lands, engaging in imperial campaigns of conquest both to the North and South, hugely expanding the boundaries of Egypt to include present day Syria and Palestine by 1457 BCE. The idea was that divine harmony existed only in Egypt and had to be brought to the rest of the world, by force if necessary. These expeditions earned the pharaohs of the New Kingdom the moniker of warrior pharaohs.

The New Kingdom pharaohs enlisted the leaders of the lands they had conquered as puppet kings, surrounded by Egyptian advisors. The pharaohs adopted the practice of bringing many foreign princes of the lands they had conquered back to Egypt. There, a prince would be raised as an Egyptian and educated to think of Egyptian civilization as both superior to others and their own. Thus, when they returned to rule after their fathers died, these princes would often be thoroughly assimilated into Egyptian culture and would naturally be more loyal to the pharaoh; using this technique, the New Kingdom was able to create several “puppet states,” places with their own rulers who were loyal to Egypt, in the Near and Middle East. Regional administrators did the important work of drafting laborers, extracting taxation, and making sure that agriculture was on track.

In addition to the New Kingdom’s expansionism, the governments pursued new forms of monumental architecture. While the construction of pyramids never occurred after the Old Kingdom, Egyptian kings remained focused on the creation of great buildings. They continued to build opulent tombs, but those were usually built into hillsides or in more conventional structures, rather than pyramids. The monumental architecture of the New Kingdom consisted of huge temples and statues, most notably the Great Temple at Abu Simbel in northern Nubia, built under the direction of the pharaoh Ramses II at some point around 1250 BCE. There, gigantic statues of the gods sit, and twice a year, the rising sun shines through the entrance and directly illuminates three of them, while the god of the underworld remains in shadow.

Abu Simbel temple, four statues of divinities inside the inner sanctuary https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._26-28_HDR.jpg

Detailed records of noteworthy pharaohs survive from the New Kingdom. The New Kingdom saw the only known female pharaoh, a woman who ruled from 1479 to 1458 BCE. Her name was Hatshepsut; she originally ruled as a regent (someone who is supposed to rule until a young king comes of age) for her stepson, but then claimed the title of pharaoh and ruled outright. Other Egyptian queens had exercised royal power before Hatshepsut, but she was the first to call herself King. Some statues show her wearing a false beard, and some of her inscriptions refer to Hatshepsut as “he” not “she”. She ruled for 20 years, waged war, and oversaw a period of ongoing prosperity. There were enormous building projects under her supervision, and it was also under her reign that large quantities of sub-Saharan African goods started to be imported from Nubia: gold, incense, live elephants, panther skins, and other forms of wealth. Although Hatshepsut dispatched Egyptian armies to fight, perhaps to try to keep up the warrior pharaoh tradition, she is best known for activities like temple rebuilding and exploration abroad including commercial expeditions into the Red Sea journeying as far south as Somalia in Eastern Africa. When she died, however, her stepson Thutmose III took the throne. Decades after he became pharaoh, for reasons that are unclear, he tried to erase the memory of his mother’s reign, perhaps driven by simple resentment over how long she had held power.

Another pharaoh of note was Amenhotep IV (r. 1353 – 1336 BCE). Amenhotep was infamous in his own lifetime for attempting an ill-considered full-scale religious revolution. He tried to focus all worship of the Egyptian people on an aspect of the sun god, Ra, called Aten. Aten was represented as a sun disc. He went so far as to claim that Aten was the only god, something that seemed absurd to the resolutely polytheistic Egyptians. He renamed himself Akhenaten, which means “the one useful to Aten,” moved the capital to a new city he had built, Tell Al Amarna, sacked the temples of other gods, and even had agents chisel off references to other gods from buildings and walls. All the while, he insisted that he and his queen, Nefertiti, be worshiped as gods themselves as the direct representatives of Aten as they alone could communicate with Aten. Historians do not know why he tried to bring about this religious revolution, but one reasonable theory is that he was trying to reduce the power of the priests, who had steadily become richer and more powerful over the centuries at the expense of the pharaohs themselves. Others have seen this as the first experiment in monotheism.

Akhenaton & Nefertiti under the rays of Aten https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...cropped%29.jpg

Akhenaten’s attempted revolution was a disaster. In the eyes of common people and of later pharaohs, he had fundamentally undermined the very stability of Egypt. In the eyes of his subjects, the royal person was no longer seen as a reliable spiritual anchor – the pharaoh was supposed to be the great protector of the religious and social order, but instead one had tried to completely destroy it. This was the beginning of the end of the central position the pharaoh had enjoyed in the life of all Egyptians up until that point.

Akhenaten’s son restored all of the old religious traditions and abandoned Al Amarna. This was the young king Tutankhamun (“King Tut”) (r. 1336 – 1326), who is important for restoring the religion and, arguably, for the simple fact that his tomb was never looted by grave robbers before it was discovered by a British archaeologist in 1922 CE. It provided the single most significant trove of artifacts from the New Kingdom yet found when it was discovered, sparking an interest in ancient Egyptian history all over the world.

Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...th_dynasty.jpg

A new dynasty of pharaohs ruled the New Kingdom in the aftermath of Akhenaten’s disastrous experiment, the most powerful of which was Ramses II (r. 1279 – 1213). Ramses campaigned against the growing power of an empire in the north called the Hittites, one of the major empires of the Bronze Age period (considered in more detail in the next chapter). He ruled for an astonishingly long time and reputedly sired some 160 children with wives and concubines. He also supervised the construction of the Great Temple of Abu Simbel noted above. Ramses was, however, the last of the great pharaohs, with all of those who followed working to stave off disaster more so than expand Egyptian power.

The New Kingdom collapsed in about 1150 BCE. This collapse was part of a much larger pattern across the ancient Middle East and North Africa: the collapse of the Bronze Age itself. In the case of Egypt, this began with a series of foreign invasions, that of the “Sea People,” whose origins have never been determined despite concentrated scholarship on the question. Later, invaders referred to as “gangs of bandits” from what is today Libya, to the west of Egypt, further undermined the kingdom, and it finally fell into a long period of political fragmentation. Civil war and conflict engulfed Egypt, and from that point on Egypt proved vulnerable to foreign conquest. In the course of the centuries that followed Assyria, Persia, the Greeks, and the Romans, one after the other, added Egypt to their respective empires.