Ancient Egypt Part 2: The Middle Kingdom (2000 – 1500 BCE)

With the Old Kingdom of Egypt covered, it's time to move on to the Middle Kingdom. This term was invented by Egyptologists to describe the 300 or so years that followed the end of the First Intermediate Period around 2040 BCE. The rivalry between the dynasties of that period, one in Thebes and the other in Heracleopolis, was brought to an end by the Theban king Mentuhotep II, the first king of the 11th Dynasty, who spent most of the 51 years of his reign reuniting the country under his authority. He also sent out troops to reconquer Nubia, which the Egyptians called Kush, that lay to the south, and the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, both of which had been lost after the Old Kingdom collapsed. He associated himself in his imagery with the god Amun, who was the patron deity of Thebes. During the 11th Dynasty, trade was resumed with Punt and the Red Sea region, and new defenses were built, while during the 12th, a standing army was formed for the first time, though it was mainly defensive and was not sent out to acquire territory, as the armies of the New Kingdom later were. The Middle Kingdom also developed a new system of administration which was led by the vizier, a later Arabic term that is often used to describe a king's chief official. There were sometimes two viziers at the same time, one in charge of the north and the other the south, and there was a period of nearly a century when the office was held by members of the same family. There was also an overseer of sealed goods, who was in charge of the treasury, and a scribe of the royal document, and as with many governments centered around monarchies, the king's personal servants came to take on much broader administrative responsibilities. There are also references to a head of the military and to a number of other officials whose titles first appear in this period. We know about them because the individuals who served the king were, like him, buried in impressive, though not nearly as impressive, tombs with stone markers that illustrated what they looked like and described their family and their career. The transition from the 11th to the 12th dynasty around 1990 BCE may have been the result of a battle between King Mentuhotep IV and his vizier Amenemhat, since the latter, who was not a member of the royal family, became king in his place, and possibly while he was still alive. Amenemhat added more defenses to the Nile Delta to protect it from the incursions of Canaanites, and built a new capital in that area named Amenemhat-i-Tawi, or Amenemhat Seizes the Two Lands, referring to Lower and Upper Egypt. He also built himself a pyramid tomb like the ones that were typical of the Old Kingdom, which is not surprising given that his Horus name, which meant rebirth, referred to its restoration. The ideological basis of his kingship was expressed in a poem from around that time called The Prophecy of Neferti, which claims to have been a prediction made during the Old Kingdom that foresaw how Amenemhat would arrive to save the kingdom. He also commissioned an inscription describing the miraculous events that took place while he was still serving Mentuhotep, which were meant to be taken as signs of his future greatness. He did not, in the end, have as much personal authority as the kings of the Old Kingdom did, but he tried to rein in the power that the heads of the gnomes had acquired since then by appointing his own people to fill open positions, rather than letting the last governor's relatives choose his successor. He also gave more administrative duties to the mayors of cities, particularly the larger ones, and instead of relying on the governors to send him contingents of soldiers from their provinces, he created a standing army that was loyal to him alone. He reigned for about 30 years and was assassinated by his own guards around 1962 BCE, according to the instructions of Amenemhat. This was a literary account of a vision in which he appeared after his death to Senusret, his son and successor, and as one might expect, he advised his son to exercise more caution than he had himself. Senusret also had a long reign until the late 20th century BCE, during which he expanded the country's borders to the south and the west, and expanded its trade contacts with the cities of Canaan. He also began a generations-long project of draining the area called the Fayyum, a low-lying area to the south of Cairo, and connecting it to the Nile with irrigation channels so that it could be used as farmland. His son, Amenemhat II, launched military campaigns against some of the Canaanite cities. He may also have further limited the power of the gnomes by bringing the sons of governors into the royal court so that they would not succeed their fathers at home, which helped to do away with the local dynasties that had kept the king from appointing his own provincial officials. The Middle Kingdom also seems, in some cases at least, to have responded to the long reigns of its rulers by having sons govern alongside their fathers, which gave them an opportunity to learn their responsibilities before they had to take them on entirely. This was a time of exceptional economic prosperity for the kingdom, judging by its many building projects, its art, and the expensive furnishings of the tombs of not only the royal family but its officials as well. The literature of the period also suggests that it was a prosperous one. This prosperity has been attributed first to the power of the central government, which allowed it to expand its trade relations with the Phoenicians to the north, but also to the new farmlands made available in the Fayyum, and to a generally wetter climate that led to better agricultural production than had been possible during the first intermediate period. In the middle of the 19th century, Senusret III took a more aggressive approach to foreign policy. His priority was to keep outside tribes from entering the country from the south, and to that end he conquered part of Nubia, used stone markers to establish a clear boundary with the rest, and built forts to patrol the new border. At home, he divided the entire country into three districts that were administered by officials appointed by the court. This seems to have placed a permanent limit on the power wielded by the governors of the 42 gnomes. During the Middle Kingdom, more emphasis was placed on using writing to create literature, rather than the sort of financial and administrative records that had been common in the Old Kingdom, and many of its works were considered classics by later generations of Egyptians. The dialect of Egyptian used at that time, now known as Middle Egyptian, also came to be considered a literary language during the New Kingdom, when the spoken language had changed a good deal. The Middle Kingdom's large literary output is believed to have been a byproduct of the larger number of scribes needed to staff the bureaucracy created by Senusret III. In addition to their administrative duties, they would copy existing pieces of literature and produce their own original works. In fact, one of the more popular pieces of the time, called The Satire of the Trades, maintains that being a scribe is superior to any other kind of profession. Egyptologists have identified a number of literary genres from this era, including religious hymns, tales, teaching texts, like the instructions of Amenemhat that were supposed to instill proper values in the reader, and laments, like the admonitions of Aipur that contrasted the current state of things with how much better they were in the past. Except for the tales, all of these genres were written as poetry, which, like biblical poetry, was in the form of couplets. There were also the annals recorded by kings to describe their military successes, and the accounts of the lives and careers of government officials that were inscribed on the markers placed on their tombs. These texts are the closest Egyptian equivalent to the sort of history writing we find in biblical texts like the Book of Kings, though they are first-person accounts of great deeds rather than critical reflections on the past written by someone else. Of the tales, one of the most popular, judging by the number of manuscripts that have been found, was the story of Sinuhe from around 1850 BCE. This is a piece of historical fiction about an official of Senusret, one of the princes of the 12th dynasty, who runs away to Canaan and marries into the family of a chief for whom he fights many battles. But Sinuhe misses home, and as an old man he is allowed to return to Egypt by Senusret, who is now king, where he dies and is buried with honors. This tale may have inspired the biblical story of Joseph, who leaves home as a young man, becomes an important official in a foreign country, and then renews his ties with his original family. The last ruler of the 12th dynasty was a woman named Sobekneferu, who is the first known queen of Egypt. Her father, who died around 1800 BCE, had no other heirs, and when she died a few years after that, the line of succession came to an end. There was then a period of about 150 years during which a series of mostly unrelated kings held power over some parts of the country but not others, as the Nubians in the south recovered some of their lands, and the people whom Egyptians called the Hyksos took control of the northeast. The latter were apparently from the coastal region of what is now Lebanon. Although they were traditionally thought to have been invaders, because they are described that way in Our Oldest History of Egypt, a book written in the 3rd century BCE by a Greek-speaking Egyptian named Manetho, they are now considered part of a larger, more gradual movement of Canaanites into the Nile Delta that began during the 12th dynasty. The Hyksos, who are numbered as the 15th dynasty, ruled for about 100 years until the mid-16th century BCE. They do not seem to have made any effort to change or uproot the country's society and culture as they found them, and they introduced some important innovations in military technology, like the use of chariots, improvements in making bronze, and animals and plants from their homeland. But the feeling that the country's accomplishments had declined from their heights during the 12th dynasty might have led later Egyptians to conclude that they had been ruined by the arrival of these foreign elements. The Hyksos were eventually driven out of the northeast by two of the kings of the native Egyptian dynasty that had taken control of Thebes in Upper Egypt. Around 1550 BCE, a relative of the second of these kings became the first king of the 18th dynasty, which is considered the first of the New Kingdom under the name Amos I. Let's move forward and learn about this kingdom next. Thanks for watching!