New Kingdom of Egypt

The New Kingdom (c. 1550–1077 BCE), encompassing the Eighteenth through Twentieth Dynasties, was ancient Egypt's most powerful and expansive era, often described as the Egyptian Empire.

It began when Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos rulers from the Nile Delta and reunified the country, ending the Second Intermediate Period. Egypt then transformed from an inward-looking riverine kingdom into an imperial power that projected military and political control deep into Nubia to the south and across the Levant to the north, at times reaching the Euphrates. Warrior-pharaohs such as Thutmose III, sometimes called the 'Napoleon of Egypt,' campaigned repeatedly in Canaan and Syria, while the female pharaoh Hatshepsut presided over a prosperous reign noted for trade expeditions to the land of Punt and grand building works. The period produced some of Egypt's most famous rulers and monuments: Akhenaten, who attempted a radical religious revolution centred on the sun-disk Aten; his son Tutankhamun, whose intact tomb became a modern sensation; and Ramesses II, whose long reign featured monumental temples at Abu Simbel and the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, followed by one of history's earliest known peace treaties. Vast wealth funded the temple complexes of Karnak and Luxor and the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings. The empire gradually declined under pressure from the Sea Peoples, economic strain, internal corruption, and the growing power of the Amun priesthood at Thebes. By around 1077 BCE central authority had fractured, beginning the Third Intermediate Period. The New Kingdom left an enduring legacy of imperial administration, monumental art, and religious tradition.

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