The 12th dynasty, which he founded (1991 BC), worked hard to restore royal prestige, seriously damaged by civil war and periodic famine. Its kings, living near Memphis, reduced provincial power and developed a loyal central elite, using subtly propagandistic literature to encourage recruitment and transform the royal image from insecure war leader to confident, semidivine ruler. The external situation remained dangerous. The northern Nubian and Sinai buffer zones were reoccupied and, for the first time, heavily fortified. Foreign trade and diplomatic contact expanded, but Egyptian activity was more restricted than in the Old Kingdom.
Social change was considerable. People had become more conscious of their individual rights, and royal policy had to both satisfy and temper this. Religion was affected; funerary beliefs and rituals once largely restricted to kings now spread throughout all classes. First Intermediate period Egyptians had felt less dependent on the state, stressing their economic self-sufficiency, and even under the 12th dynasty royal policies encouraged the growth of a middle class, buried in well-furnished tombs and active at cult centers such as Abydos. Osiris, formerly a royal funerary god, became accessible to all.
Architectural remains are now more varied. At Kahun, a large town was divided up into zones of better and poorer houses, reflecting socioeconomic differences; superbly designed fortresses were built in Nubia; and the ground plans of several temples have survived. Some kings built cenotaphs (dummy tombs) at Abydos, where many private memorial chapels of unique type have also recently been discovered.
Funerary remains continue to be the best source of artforms. At Thebes a new type of royal tomb developed, culminating in the unique terraced monument of Nebhepetre topped, not by a pyramid, but by a cubical version of the primeval mound. The pharaohs of the 12th dynasty, anxious to be identified with the autocratic Old Kingdom, revived the classic pyramid complex but included unusual subterranean elements evoking the mythical tomb of Osiris. Royal statues were often idealized, but some depicted a care-worn and more realistic figure. The elite continued to be buried in mastabas and rock-cut tombs, decorated first in awkward but striking styles reflecting the breakdown in centralized norms, but later returning to more sophisticated, traditional modes.
Second Intermediate Period
Decline and invasion marked the Second Intermediate period (1786-1567 BC). High officials became so powerful in the 13th dynasty that they manipulated and fought over the royal succession. Much shorter reigns imply depositions, assassinations, and possible short-term “elections” of kings. As a result, Egypt’s military presence in the vital buffer zones weakened and invasions occurred.
The Cu*censored*es of Upper Nubia occupied Lower Nubia, while Syro-Palestinians conquered Egypt itself and established the 15th dynasty. These Hyksos (from the Egyptian for “ruler of a foreign land”) exploited Egyptian ideology but remained Syro-Palestinian in culture. Eventually, Theban vassals (17th dynasty) began a war of independence, resisted by an alliance of Hyksos and Cu*censored*es.
New Kingdom
Expelling the Hyksos, the Theban insurgents founded the 18th dynasty, inaugurating ancient Egypt’s most brilliant period, the New Kingdom (1570-1085 BC). Its rulers included Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten, Seti I, and Ramses II. Under their leadership Egypt became more expansionist than ever before. The early rulers of the 18th dynasty reconquered southern Nubia and Palestine. Thutmose III (c.1504-1450) tried to wrest domination of Syria from Mitanni, a north Mesopotamian power, but failed. Thutmose did set up efficient imperial governance, with viceroys controlling foreign vassals who paid rich tribute and sent their successors to be raised in Egypt. International relations were widespread. Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Mycenaeans had strong diplomatic and commercial links with Egypt, as did Punt, an incense-producing region on the Red Sea depicted in vivid detail in Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri.
Internally, the pattern of royal succession was deviant for a while. Hatshepsut, regent for her young nephew Thutmose III, declared herself pharaoh and ruled for 22 years. Female pharaohs were very rare, and Thutmose resentfully destroyed her monuments after her death. More significant in general was the transformation of the earlier system of Hyksos vassals into a centralized autocracy. The kings’ large armies, generated by foreign wars, cowed internal rivals, and they set up a streamlined bureaucracy, with a chief minister over each half of the country. There was neither council nor parliament, all appointments being made and revoked directly by the kings, who made frequent tours of inspection.
A special feature of this period was the increasingly wealthy priesthoods, on which the king lavished estates, personnel, and gifts; they eventually owned one-third of Egypt’s arable land. Nevertheless, they could not easily rival the king, for they were appointed directly by him. Moreover, pharaoh had always had a dual nature, human and divine, and the latter was now heavily emphasized. Royal dogma taught that each king was possessed by the divine ka, or soul of kingship; he was Horus, son of Osiris, mythically the last god to rule Earth in primeval times, and was identified with Amun-Ra (Amon-Re). This god, combining the Theban deity with the sun god, was tutelary deity of the empire.
The religious reformer Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1379-1362 BC) carried royal absolutism to an extreme. During his reign, all endowments were transferred to a single god, a cosmic pharaoh who manifested himself as the Aten or sun-disk. At Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten) in Middle Egypt, Akhenaten built Aten’s cult center and a new royal capital. There he, his queen Nefertiti, and their children were a holy family, with the king appearing as virtually the Aten on Earth.
Possibly mentally unstable, Akhenaten was nevertheless a strong and skillful ruler. Government was staffed by loyalists, and Akhenaten was aggressive abroad. Armies campaigned in the Sudan, and Egypt’s allies and vassals were supported against the Hittites, who now dominated Syria instead of Mitanni, and were attacking Egyptian-held territory. As the archives of Amarna show, Akhenaten maintained contact with great powers and closely followed rivalries and rebellions among his vassals.
Akhenaten’s innovations were ended by his successors, who restored polytheism and returned to Thebes; one, Tutankhamen, had the richest royal tomb ever to survive. Later, a new royal line, the 19th dynasty (1320-1200 BC), destroyed Akhenaten’s monuments, but this dynasty maintained the same efficiently centralized government and regained territory lost in Palestine. Seti I and Ramses II fought several campaigns against the Hittites, but ultimately a peace treaty was signed. Palestine and Nubia were secure, but new threats appeared. Ramses’s son Merenptah had to fight off a major invasion by hitherto minor enemies, the seminomads of Libya, who were aided by the Sea Peoples, warriors of western Anatolia and the Aegean. Internally, the 19th dynasty continued to stress the king’s divinity and skillfully divided preeminence and economic benefits between Amun-Ra and the gods Ptah of Memphis and Ra of Heliopolis. It was thus less likely that any priesthood would be unduly powerful.
Social history is now richly documented. The careers of many high officials or royal sons are known; for example, Ramses’s son Prince Khaemwase was an early archaeologist, restoring many ancient monuments. Social strata were clearly defined. The highest priests, soldiers, and officials received lavish rewards but were liable to disgrace or removal. Middle-class people, who included many craftsmen, were well off, as can be seen from the prosperous village of Deir el Medinah, housing for 400 years the artisans who cut and decorated the royal tombs. Law, always a major responsibility of pharaonic government, was well developed. It was probably codified, many magistrates were available, and sometimes a god’s image, carried in public procession, was called on for legal judgments. Women’s legal status was high; they owned and bequeathed property, initiated divorce, and sometimes served as deputies representing a husband who was an official. Land remained the basis of wealth; foreign and internal trade was dominated by the pharaoh and state institutions, but private sales were common and often recorded in writing.
New Kingdom art and architecture were varied and revealing. Gods’ temples include the earliest in Egypt to have survived relatively intact; stone-built, they could be colossal in scale. Amun-Ra’s Theban temple (Karnak) came to occupy over 3.2 ha (8 acres). Every temple was designed to integrate Egypt ritually with the cosmos. Exterior scenes of royal victories magically protected the god’s image within, while the interior walls of the courtyards and chambers were covered with scenes depicting public festivals and the hidden, inner rituals. These derived cosmological significance from the temple’s form; the sanctuary was the primeval mound of creation, the ceilings were painted as skies and supported by columns representing giant vegetation, and the two-towered pylon, or entryway, was identified as the notched horizon where the sun god rose and renewed the universe. Royal palaces, although built in brick, deliberately copied temple architecture so as to stress the pharaoh’s divine nature; floor frescoes depicted resurgent nature, wall paintings showed royal victories and ceremonies, and ceilings were celestial vaults.
Domestic architecture is best known from Amarna and Deir el Medinah. At the former, many upper-class houses, with numerous rooms, service areas, and gardens, have been excavated; at both sites the other end of the scale is represented by small, five-roomed houses, with extensive use made also of the flat roof. Generally, houses were not lavishly decorated with wall paintings or carpets, but the minor arts were very well developed. Tutankhamen’s thrones and chairs were well crafted in exotic woods and exquisite jewelry, and containers in stone, metal, and other materials were frequent. Even here, art had a purpose; for example, furniture often incorporated figures of Bes, a demigod warding off evil spirits. Specifically, funerary items, such as coffins and Books of the Dead (collections of magical texts and pictures on papyrus), could also be works of art.
Royal tombs show a radical change. The pyramid was abandoned, to be taken over in a smaller scale by private tombs. Nearly all New Kingdom royal tombs are tunnels cut in the walls of the remote Valley of the Kings, their walls covered with a brightly painted underworld full of gods and demons. Royal funerary cult rites were performed in temples separate from the tombs and at the foot of the cliffs fronting the valley.
Amarna art and architecture are unusual in several respects. Akhenaten modified the traditional temple type, stripping it of roofs and lintels so that its interior was completely filled with sunlight and removing the sanctuary as unnecessary. The royal tomb, now badly damaged, was at Amarna, as were the nobility’s tombs. The latter minimize offering-cult and traditional daily-life scenes, but they emphasize royal ceremonies and depict the city with a fullness and detail unique in Egyptian art. The Amarna style is more fluid and realistic in depicting humans and animals, yet it adheres to many old traditions, such as making important people larger in scale than others and ignoring perspective.
Historically, the 20th dynasty represents deterioration. An early king, Ramses III (c.1198-1166 ), did repulse major invasions by Libyans and Sea Peoples and build a magnificent funerary temple, but thereafter the empire shrank and ambitious royal building programs failed. Government was impeded by officials’ independence, as offices became hereditary and corruption and inefficiency increased. The New Kingdom ended in a civil war under Ramses XI.
Late Dynastic, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods
After 1085 BC, Egypt split between a northern 21st dynasty claiming national recognition and a line of Theban generals and high priests of Amun who actually controlled the south. The 22d dynasty rose from long-settled Libyan mercenaries and used a decentralized system, with kings based in the north and their sons ruling key centers elsewhere. Rivalries and sporadic civil wars resulted, and by the 8th century BC Egypt had divided into 11 autonomous states, their subjects dependent on congested, walled towns for security and exhibiting increased anxiety by adherence to local rather than national gods.
Thus weakened, the country fell to Cu*censored*es, whose 25th dynasty brought limited unity and resisted Assyrian expansion into Syria-Palestine. Assyria, provoked, occupied Egypt (671, 667-664 BC), but a 26th dynasty regained independence, only to fall before Persia. The Persians ruled Egypt from 525 to 404 BC, and again from 341 to 333 BC.
Despite these vicissitudes, the country was often prosperous in the Late Dynastic period. Great temples were built but survived poorly, and artisans produced a steady stream of statues, often in bronze. Several much earlier styles and even specific scenes were copied in temple and tomb reliefs, partly to link Egypt ritually with its “perfect” past. There was also a quasi-realistic style, especially in statuary; but in this and reliefs softer, rounded contours later became popular.
In the 4th century BC Egypt was wrested from Persia by Alexander the Great; Alexander’s general Ptolemy (Ptolemy I) established a Macedonian dynasty that ruled the country for over 300 years. Strong centralization and expansion abroad brought prosperity first, but later internal dynastic conflicts encouraged rebellions. Although the Ptolemies supported traditional religion, native Egyptians resented the Greek officials and soldiers’ place over them. A Roman takeover followed the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler, in 30 BC. For about two centuries, conditions were favorable under the Romans; Egypt was protected from invasion, private land ownership grew, and irritating distinctions between Hellenized and traditional Egyptians were broken down.
The details of Hellenistic and Roman social, legal, and economic life are better known in Egypt than anywhere else, because many papyri (written in Greek and demotic, a script developed from hieroglyphs) survived in the dry climate. Traditional life continued everywhere, Greek civilization being confined to Alexandria and a few other towns. Temples continued to be built in traditional form, but art had a hybrid quality. Wall scenes in tombs show a sometimes skillful but often clumsy mix of Egyptian and Hellenistic Greek styles and subjects. Later, emperors’ faces in realistic Roman style were grafted incongruously onto traditional statues of the pharaoh, and realistic portraits, painted on wood, were integrated with Egyptian-style mummies and coffins. Sacred bird and animal cults were now especially popular, and many, sometimes striking, images were produced, often to be dedicated in temples of worshipers.
Eventually, Roman policies created great problems for Egypt. Government had been by officials salaried by the state via general revenues, but a new “liturgical” system required the middle class to pay administrative costs directly. Peasants, forced to cultivate poorer lands to increase yield and onerously taxed, began to flee the countryside. In the late 3d century AD, Diocletian’s reforms met the resulting economic crisis, but administrative disintegration had begun. Egypt, like the rest of the empire, became Christian, but was rebellious and heretical, and eventually was divided up among four ruling families. Distressed and divided, it fell easily before the Arab conquest of 639-42.
David O’Connor
Bibliography: Aldred, C., Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom (1982) and Tutankhamon’s Egypt (1980); Bell, Sir H., Egypt: From Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (1948; repr. 1977); Bourrian, J., Pharaohs and Mortals: Egyptian Art in the Middle Kingdom (1988); Gardiner, A. H., Egypt of the Pharaohs (1961; repr. 1966) and The Glory of Ancient Egypt (1988; repr. 1990); Grimal, Nicholas, A History of Ancient Egypt, trans. by I. Shaw (1992); Hoffman, M. A., Egypt Before the Pharaohs, rev. ed. (1991); James, T. G. H., Ancient Egypt (1988; repr. 1990); Malek, J., and Forman, W., In the Shadow of the Pyramids: Egypt during the Old Kingdom (1986; repr. 1992); Milne, J. G., A History of Egypt under Roman Rule (1992); Strouhal, E., Life of the Ancient Egyptians (1992); .
(c) 1997 Grolier, Inc.
Bibliography
Egypt is significant in several ways.