Ancient Kemet
After the Old Kingdom of Ancient Kemet fell, Kemet split into two different governments, one based in Herakleopolis (Ehnasiya el-Medina) and the other in Thebes (Luxor). The kings of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Dynasties fought with each other from time to time.
This went on until around 2040 BCE, when King Montjuhotpe II of Thebes took over the whole country and started the Middle Kingdom. The king then started to spread his power beyond the city’s borders. He sent police officers to keep order in the fields nearby and went south into Nubia.
The area around Abu Simbel seems to have been the heart of a quasi-Egyptian government in the past, since the names of a number of kings and the people who followed them were found there. Montjuhotpe’s army attacked this southern state. By taking back control of the area below the Second Cataract, Montjuhotpe laid the groundwork for the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty’s battles.
Montjuhotpe II did a lot of building, especially in the area where the old Theban kingdom was. Several places still have pieces of his work, but his most amazing work is the mortuary temple he built at Deir el-Bahari in Western Thebes, where he also built the tombs of his family and officials. After being king for more than 50 years, his son and namesake, Montjuhotpe III, took over.
He carried on the work of his father until a fourth king, Montjuhotpe, took over. Aside from bringing the country back together, this time is important because Thebes went from being a small provincial city to a royal residence. It also marked the beginning of Amun’s rise from a local god to the all-powerful King of the Gods, a process that would take another 400 years to finish.
Amenemhat, a high-ranking official, took over as Montjuhotpe IV’s vizier around 1994 BCE. It is not known if this was planned or if it was the result of a coup d’état. The second choice might be better if a number of books that talk about famine and other problems have been correctly placed in this time period. In this context, it’s also important to note that government propaganda quickly made Amenemhat look like the real person who brought Ancient Kemet back together, fulfilling a number of prophecies that were said to have been made hundreds of years before.
One of the most important things the new king did was move the royal seat from Thebes to the city of Itjtawy in the north. For the next 400 years, this was where the king lived most of the time. Amenemhat I also built a group of forts to keep Palestine from attacking the area north of the Suez River. In the 20th year of the king’s rule, he made his son Senwosret I a co-regent.
Senwosret was finally put in charge of leading military expeditions, especially into Nubia, which Egypt wanted to retake control of.
The Sinai and the Western Desert were also the sites of other warlike actions. Ten years after he became co-regent, Senwosret was coming back from a war against the Libyans when Amenemhat I was killed in his bed while he was asleep.
Senwosret I buried his father in the mound he had built at Lisht, near Itjtawy, where he was later buried himself. During the long rule of Senwosret I, Nubia was held as far south as the Second Cataract and as far north as the Nile. There was a lot of building, including the main part of the temple of Amun at Karnak in Thebes and other work at Heliopolis in the north.
Senwosret I’s co-ruler and successor, Amenemhat II, led an expedition to Nubia when he was still a prince.
More of his voyages are written about in the great annalistic inscription, which was made during his long reign. Amenemhat II was laid to rest at Dahshur, which was the main cemetery for the kingdom. Less is known about the next king, Senwosret II, but he seems to have been responsible for the large-scale development of the oasis area of Fayoum, which is about 43 miles south of modern Cairo.
His tower was also built there. Senwosret III, one of his sons, became one of the most important kings of the time and was worshiped as a god for many years after he died. Several places have things from his time in power, especially in the southern part of Egypt. The images of the king are known for how realistically they show people’s faces.
During the time of Senwosret III, the government became more centralized. This led to the decline of the large courts of the local rulers, which had been a big part of life for the previous 400 years, as their leaders went to work for the king in the national capital. During the Middle Kingdom, there isn’t a lot of proof that the Egyptian military did anything in the direction of Palestine. Senwosret III’s trips into Nubia, on the other hand, were much bigger and marked the end of Nubia’s independence from Egypt.
The goal was to give Ancient Kemet a clear southern border and set rules for how it dealt with the people who lived below it. At Semna, where this border was set, a group of forts were built to house Egyptian officials and soldiers. They had large bastions and other forms of defense, as well as a lot of military and civilian buildings. These included very large grain storage containers, which were probably meant to provide food for soldiers on a temporary mission who were camping in the area and not for the regular staff.
No Nubians could go north of the forts. One of the forts was a market post, and all trade with the south had to go through it. Even though the Egyptians set the border at the Second Cataract, they often went into the land further south. Amenemhat III was Senwosret III’s oldest son. He seems to have been co-ruler for a long time before the death of the older king. Unlike his father, Amenemhat III did not leave many reminders of his war work. Reforms in the national government kept going. At that time, there were three administrative regions in the nation, each of which had a department in the national capital.
Senwosret I and II paid attention to the Fayoum area, but it seems that it wasn’t until Amenemhat III that more extensive work was done there. In particular, a dam was built to control the flow of water into the lake. This restored access to a sizable fertile area, which an earthen wall then encircled. Amenemhat III was in charge of working the Sinai turquoise mines. Egypt also sent out missions to the Wadi Hammamat and the diorite quarries in the Nubian desert to get raw materials.
Amenemhat III may have thought about putting his daughter Neferuptah in charge after him. But she died too soon, and he chose Amenemhat IV, a man who didn’t seem to be royal, as his co-regent and heir. Sobkneferu, the daughter of Amenemhat III, became king after him. She is the first woman in Egyptian history for whom there is strong proof that she was in charge. At the end of Sobkneferu’s four-year rule, Amenemhat IV’s son, Sobkhotpe I, took the throne. Around 1780 BCE, the 13th Dynasty began with him.
The change from one dynasty to the next seems to have been smooth, but unlike the long, well-documented reigns of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Thirteenth Dynasty had kings who were only in power for a short time and for whom few records were kept.
Pieces of houses and temples built by dynastic kings have been found in many places, including Thebes and Medamud, just to the north. Only a few royal tombs are known, and most of them are in the Dahshur area. The Thirteenth Dynasty didn’t have a single family line, and a few of the kings were probably born to ordinary people.
This, along with the fact that many of them only held office for a brief period of time, gave rise to the notion that a distinct line of viziers typically held the real power. But more recent research (Ryholt 1997, pp. 282-283) has cast doubt on this explanation. The last fifty years of the Thirteenth Dynasty seem to have shown a slow collapse. Even though they had some of the longest reigns in the dynasty, they also pulled out of Levantine and Nubian agreements and set up independent or almost-independent states in the northeast Delta and a new state in Upper Nubia.
In the end, the Hyksos, an aggressive new line of Palestinian rulers, took over all of northern Ancient Kemet. This ended the Middle Kingdom around 1650 BCE and started the Second Intermediate Period, a time of fighting that didn’t end until Egyptian forces won a military victory over a hundred years later.
Also Read: Ancient Kemet: Old Kingdom and Its Unknown Contacts to the Southern Part Of Africa
