Peter

Gelling

Library

Email: petergellinglibrary@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Twitter: @PGL_CAHA

Catalogue: PGL Page on Pandora

The Middle Kingdom and

Second Intermediate Period

Early CivilisationsEleanor Simmance exs976@bham.ac.uk

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Wooden tomb models (here, ploughing and beer-brewing), common in Middle Kingdom.British Museum EA 52947 and EA 40915© Trustees of the British Museum

General overview: Middle Kingdom

• c.2000-1650 BC.

• Second half 11th – 13th Dynasties

• Reunified Egypt after FIP

• New capital: IT-tAwy (Itj-tawy), near Lisht

• More royal pyramids (at Lisht, Dahshur, Lahun, Hawara)

• Border expansion and control in Lower Nubia

• Osiris cult increasingly important – Abydos

• Writing and literature– ‘Classical’ hieroglyphs

– Range of literary genres

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Mentuhotep II (11th Dynasty)

• From Thebes; defeated 10th Dynasty from Herakleopolis

• Ruled c.51 years (according to Turin King List)

• Changed royal names twice:

– Third name c. Year 39 – ‘Uniter of the Two Lands’

• Prolific builder, inc. mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahari:

Mentuhotep II’s temple

Hatshepsut’s (18th Dynasty) temple –copying the earlier model

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12th Dynasty (c.200 years)

• Founder: Amenemhat I– Probably vizier (highest non-royal post) of previous ruler

– Perhaps some political instability/civil war (at least one name change; quarry graffiti at Hatnub by Nehri; Instruction of Amenemhat I [more on slide about Literature later])

• Moved royal court from Thebes to Itj-tawy (likely near modern Lisht)

• Royal line: Amenemhat I; Senwosret I; A II; S II; S III; A III; A IV.

• N.B. Amenemhat = Amenemes; Senwosret = Usertesen/Senusret/Sesostris

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New capital: Itj-tawy (‘he who takes possession of the Two Lands’)

Exact location unknown; near Lisht

Also referred to as ‘The Residence’

Fayum region (lakes) partly developed for agriculture during 12th Dyn.Sobek (crocodile god) worshipped

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Amenemhat I’s pyramid

• Built at Lisht, therefore close to new capital.

• First large pyramid since Pepi II (end of Old Kingdom)

• Pyramids of Middle Kingdom looked to OK styles and architecture

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12th Dynasty (cont’d)

• Co-regencies?

– Stela in Cairo Museum (CG 20516) – mentions Year 30 of Amenemhat I and Year 10 of Senwosret I. BUT debated

– Definite for Amenemhat II and Senwosret II

• Sobekneferu: final pharaoh of dynasty

and…

– A woman!

– Daughter of Amenemhat III; succeeded A IV

– Reigned between 3 and 5 years

– Was the last of the family line of Amenemhat I Statue of SobekneferuLouvre E 27135© Musée de Louvre

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Planned towns• Several known, but most famous is Lahun

– Also known El-Lahun, Illahun, or Kahun

– Pyramid-town – builders of Senwosret II’s pyramid

– Large archive of papyri preserved – varied contents

Town plan of Lahun, showing the smaller houses in streets to the left and larger ‘villas’ at the top (up the hill)

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Mining and military expeditions

• Mining – activity known from letters, documents, autobiographies and graffiti:– Eastern desert (stone and metals)– Sinai peninsula (especially turquoise)– Nubia (especially gold)

• Military activity:– Senwosret I and Amenemhat II – detailed annals – Senwosret III campaigned in Nubia in 8th, 10th, 16th and 18th years– 11 forts constructed around 2nd cataract under S III– Defensive architecture; planned interiors; Egyptian inhabitants

(little acculturation); monitoring activity and collecting resources.

• Emergence of professional soldiery

Mirgissa (Nubian fort)From Vercoutter 1970 Mirgissa I.

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Egyptians react to…

Execration figurine (female),FIP-MK

© Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, E.189.1939

Semna stela of Senwosret III (Year 16)

Berlin Museum Inv. 1157

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foreigners

Trade important

• Kush (Upper Nubia/Ethiopia) – elephant ivory, ebony, other luxury products

• Syro-Palestine – pottery; cedar for coffins/building; resin for mummification

– Some Egyptian objects found there

• Cyprus (Minoan culture) – Egyptian stone vessels popular.

• Punt – unknown location, somewhere on Red Sea coast. Various luxury products and raw materials

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Powerful provincial elite: the case of the Beni Hasan tombs

Detail from Newberry 1893: pl.2

Nomarchs/high elite (rock cut tombs)

Lesser elite(shaft tombs)

Asiatic peoples (note non-Egyptian clothing, beards, hair and objects) bring tribute to the nomarch Khnumhotep II.Beni Hasan Tomb 3.

Detail from Newberry 1893: pl.XXXI

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Developments in art

Senwosret III, Deir el-Bahari

British Museum EA 686© Trustees of the British Museum

Amenemhat III

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen AEIN 924

Block (or cube) statue of Senwosret-senebefny (non-royal)Late 12th Dynasty

Brooklyn Museum Acc. No. 39.602© www.brooklynmuseum.org

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Developments in religion

• Senwosret I built first proper stone temple for Amun-Re at Karnak (Thebes)

– Digital Karnak: http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/

• Funerary beliefs

– Coffin Texts (funerary beliefs): developed from Pyramid Texts; exist in FIP but most common in MK.

– Under Senwosret III: alongside

decline of nomarchs, funerary

equipment simplified – elite less

wealthy or different ideas?

Hedgehog figurine in faience,12th/early 13th DynastyBrooklyn Museum Acc. No. 65.2.1© www.brooklynmuseum.org

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Itj-tawy/Lisht

Abydos

Beni Hasan

Just a reminder of the geography!

Thebes

(Elephantine and Nubia further south)

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Cult of Osiris at Abydos

Tomb of Sennedjem(New Kingdom)

Coffin Texts give more prominence to him

Assimilated to Khentamentiu (“foremost of the Westerners”), local god at Abydos

Tomb of Djer (1st Dynasty Pharaoh) = tomb of Osiris?

Becomes place of pilgrimage

Cenotaphs – royal and non-royal chapels for mortuary offerings

Hundreds of stelae dedicated and offerings given (Umm el-Ga’ab –‘mother of pots’)

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Literature• Large variety of genres• Authors and composition dates unknown

– Sometimes pseudonymous – Most survive from later copies

• Sometimes ‘historical’ or instructional– Instructions of Amenemhat– The Prophecy of Neferti– Admonitions of Ipuwer– Satire on the Trades

• Sometimes personal:– Dispute of a Man with his Ba

• Sometimes narrative, and occasionally fantastical (though usually with historical elements and/or political message):– The Story of Sinuhe (also written ‘Sanehat’)– The Eloquent Peasant– The Shipwrecked Sailor

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Ramesside (19th-20th Dyns) copy of Instruction of Amenemhat I

© www.metmuseum.org: accession no. 31.1.119

The Shipwrecked Sailor

Illustration by Tristram Ellis, from Petrie 1899 (Egyptian tales, translated from the papyri, first series, IVth-XIIth Dynasties)

Painted shabti-box showing ba-bird on tomb-chapel

British Museum EA 35648© Trustees of the British Museum

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13th Dynasty

• Manetho: 60 rulers for 453 years (meant 153?)

• Rapid changes of rule

• Few remains, fewer resources– Merneferre Ay(a): c.24 years; two fragments of masonry survive

• Excavations still revealing more– E.g. tomb of Sobekhotep I – founder of the dynasty – discovered

in 2013 at Abydos.

• Some pharaohs claiming non-royal descent (unusual)

• Not necessarily a very chaotic time– viziers inherited office through family ties

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Second Intermediate Period

• C.1700-1550• Late 13th-17th Dynasties (much overlap).• Royal court moved to Thebes and total rule over Egypt lost

– Also lost control of Lower Nubia– Forts destroyed (archaeological destruction layers), causes

uncertain; some soldiers stayed

• 14th and 16th Dynasties – short-lived kings, small territories• 15th Dynasty known as the ‘Hyksos’ (an Asiatic people)• 17th Dynasty – Theban line• Kush (Upper Nubia/Ethiopia) growing in power • Fractious relationships between the ruling powers –

growing importance of the army

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Thebes = 17th Dynasty

Modern Aswan, ancient Elephantine (border regions)

Avaris = 15th Dynasty (Hyksos)

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The Hyksos - foreign rule in Egypt• Heqau-khasut (‘rulers of foreign lands’) – Hyksos

even used it themselves

– Egyptians and later writers view them badly

– Josephus claims Manetho calls them ‘shepherd kings’ –confusion of the terms

• Few remains from Hyksos – mainly scarab seals

– Beliefs unknown – Seth apparently assimilated to Ba’al(Semitic storm god)

BM 105142, from Gezer (left)EA 39395, Nile Delta (right)© Trustees of the British Museum

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Avaris (Tell el-Dab‘a), the Hyksos capital

• Founded by Amenemhat I (12th Dyn), modern village ‘EzbetRushdi.

• From late 12th Dyn onwards: hybridity of culture– Asiatic architecture styles but also Egyptian houses– Egyptian writing used; some Asiatic names retained– Hyksos used Egyptian royal titulary, restored temples, reused statuary– Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Year 33 of Apophis (copy of earlier text)

• New technology for Egypt – pottery manufacture (fast-wheel); weaponry; perhaps horses and chariots; wool-sheep

• Later contexts – fortress with thick walls

Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, EA 10058 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Located on the Eastern branch of the Nile (Pelusiac branch)

Good trade links: inland but close to Mediterranean

Hyksos had very different burial customs to the Egyptians

Burials in or near houses. Some included donkey burials

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Kush and Kerma Culture

Rival dynasty to Egyptians, ‘Classical Kerma’ period: c.1750-1500 B.C.

Typical Kerma beaker, from Abydos! © www.metmuseum.org. Inv. 20.2.45

Kerma cemetery, dominated by tumuli

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Recent discoveries (Jan 2014):Senebkay and an Abydos dynasty?

• http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/91651.aspx

• http://theconversation.com/what-the-new-pharaoh-tells-us-about-ancient-egypt-22490

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17th Dynasty – the true ‘Egyptian’ dynasty

• Ruled from Thebes

• Uncertain chronology

• Tombs at Dra Abu el-Naga (entrance to the Valley of the Kings)

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Seqenenre Taa (or Tao)• Violent death c.30-40 years old

• Poor quality mummification

• P. Sallier I in British Museum

– ‘hippopotamuses’ in Thebes not letting Apophis sleep

– N.B. much later text

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Kamose, Ahmose and Ahmose Son of Abana

Kamose’s stela recording defeat of the Hyksos, now in Luxor Museum

Ahmose son of Abana depicted in his tomb, El Kab

Kamose: last king of 17th DynRuled c.5 years

Stela:- Year 3- Records attacks on Hyksos- Also campaigns to the south- Typical victor’srecord

Ahmose son of Abana:professional soldier

Autobiography:- Military career

Credits Hyksos defeat to Ahmose, founder of 18th

Dynasty

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Summary

• Middle Kingdom – a new ‘Golden Age’ of Egypt (esp. 12th

Dynasty)– Innovations in sculpture, kingship, religious and funerary beliefs

and literature– Osiris cult and Abydos increasingly important– Growth of empire

• Mining and military expeditions• Nubian fortresses for trade and control

• Second Intermediate Period – political disunity once again– Rival dynasties ruling concurrently– Foreign ‘Hyksos’ kings in north, based at Avaris; Kerma culture

prominent in Nubia and around southern Egyptian border– Military conflicts culminating in the Theban 17th Dynasty

reunifying Egypt: beginning of the 18th Dynasty and the New Kingdom.

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Bibliography (a few additions to list on Canvas)

• Bietak, M., Czerny, E. and Forstner-Müller, I. (eds.) 2010. Cities and urbanism in ancient Egypt, Vienna.

• Graves, C. 2010. ‘Egyptian Imperialism in Nubia c. 2009 –1191 BC’, MPhil dissertation -http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1389/1/Graves_11_MPhil.pdf

• Newberry, P.E. 1893. Beni Hasan (2 parts), London.• Quirke, S. 2005. Lahun: a town in Egypt 1800 BC., and the

history of its landscape, London.• Reisner, G.A. 1923. Excavations at Kerma (6 vols),

Cambridge, MA.• Ryholt, K. 1997. The political situation in Egypt during the

Second Intermediate Period, c.1800-1550 BC, Copenhagen.• Wegner, J. 2007. The mortuary temple of Senwosret III at

Abydos, New Haven.

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Image credits

• Deir el-Bahari temples: © Novic/Wikimedia Commons• Map of Lower Egypt: http://www.desheret.org/photogallery/loweregyptmap.htm• Pyramid of Amenemhat I: © John Bodsworth/EgyptArchive/Wikimedia Commons• Lahun plan: http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/lahun/town/index.html• Bust of Amenemhat III: © Gunner Bach Pedersen/Wikimedia Commons• Map of Egypt: © Jeff Dahl/Wikimedia Commons• Image of Osiris: © Thierry Benderitter/Aude Gros de Beler/Christian

Mariais/Osirisnet.net• Kerma cemetery: Detail from an image © Mission archéologique suisse au Soudan,

http://www.kerma.ch• Avaris burial plan: © Austrian Archaeological Institute, http://www.auaris.at• Dra Abu el-Naga: © Roland Unger/Wikimedia Commons• Seqenenre Taa II: © G. Elliot Smith/Wikimedia Commons• Kamose Stela: © Kurohito/Wkimedia Commons• Ahmose son of Abana: © Christiane Duquesne/osirisnet.net

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