The Middle Kingdom
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt existed between ~1990 and 1800 BCE. It came after four chaotic centuries of a “dark age” that ended when Amenemhat I arose and inaugurated the twelfth dynasty (although some scholars attribute a few members of the eleventh dynasty to this period). Throughout the Middle Kingdom, all the arts (excepting perhaps architecture) reached a height of excellence never equaled in known Egypt before or again. Amenemhat talks to us about his successes through an old inscription:
“I was one who cultivated grain and loved the harvest god; The Nile greeted me and every valley; None was hungry in my years, none thirsted then; Men dwelt in peace through that which I wrought, and conversed of me.”
Another memorable Middle Kingdom ruler is Senusret I, who built a great canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, repelled Nubian invaders, and erected great temples at Heliopolis, Abydos, and Karnak. Then, near the end, we have Amenemhet III, a great administrator, builder of canals and irrigation, who put an end (perhaps too effectively) to the power of the barons—and replaced them with appointees of the king. Thirteen years after his death Egypt was plunged into disorder by a dispute among rival claimants to the throne, and the Middle Kingdom ended in two centuries of turmoil and disruption. Finally, the Hyksos, nomads from Asia, invaded disunited Egypt, set fire to the cities, razed the temples, squandered the accumulated wealth, destroyed much of the accumulated art, and for two hundred years subjected the Nile valley to the rule of the “Shepherd Kings.”
Source: Durant, Will, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 1: Our Oriental Heritage, A history of civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China, and Japan from the beginning. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.
Image by Karl Schultz under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license
Left image by Elias Rovielo and right image by kairoinfo4u, both under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!