[1650 BCE – 1070 BCE] Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom

The year is 1650 BCE, and Egypt, the eternal kingdom of the Nile, is fractured. For a century, the power of the pharaoh has been a shadow of its former glory. The northern lands, the fertile delta of Lower Egypt, are ruled by foreigners known as the Hyksos, a name that translates grimly to “rulers of foreign lands.” From their capital at Avaris, these newcomers have introduced revolutionary, terrifying technologies to the Nile Valley: the horse-drawn chariot, a fast-moving platform for archers, and the powerful composite bow, which could pierce traditional Egyptian armor. They have adopted Egyptian titles and worshipped Egyptian gods, but they are not of the land, and their presence is a wound in the heart of the nation. In the south, at Thebes, a line of native Egyptian rulers boils with resentment. The humiliation is unbearable. It is from this crucible of occupation and resistance that Egypt will be reborn, forged in fire and war into its most glorious and powerful incarnation: the New Kingdom.

The spark of rebellion is lit by the Theban king Seqenenre Tao. His own mummy, discovered centuries later, tells a brutal story—his skull is cleaved by multiple, horrific wounds from a battle-axe, a dagger, and a spear, clear evidence of a violent death on the battlefield. His son, Kamose, takes up the cause, pushing the Hyksos back. But it falls to Kamose’s brother, Ahmose I, to complete the sacred task. After a series of brilliant and relentless campaigns, Ahmose captures Avaris and drives the last of the Hyksos from Egyptian soil. Around 1550 BCE, Egypt is unified once more. Ahmose I is hailed as a savior, the founder of the 18th Dynasty, and the first pharaoh of the New Kingdom. A new era has dawned.

Learning the bitter lesson of invasion, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom abandoned their previous isolationism. They became conquerors. This was the age of the warrior pharaoh, an Egypt that projected its power far beyond its traditional borders. The wealth of conquered lands—gold from Nubia to the south, cedar from Lebanon, tribute from the Near East—poured into the royal coffers. This immense wealth funded an explosion in art and architecture. The grand, public pyramids of the Old Kingdom were gone, replaced by hidden, rock-cut tombs in a secluded valley across the Nile from Thebes—the Valley of the Kings—designed to protect the pharaoh’s eternal rest from robbers. But in the land of the living, the pharaohs built on a scale never before seen. The temple complex of Amun-Ra at Karnak grew into the largest religious building ever constructed, a sprawling city of gods with forests of colossal columns and towering obelisks.

In this hyper-masculine age of empire, an extraordinary figure ascended the throne. Hatshepsut, daughter of one pharaoh and widow of another, was meant to rule only as regent for her young stepson, Thutmose III. But she was too ambitious, too capable, to remain in the shadows. Within a few years, she declared herself pharaoh. To legitimize her reign, she was often depicted with all the trappings of a male king, including the traditional kilt and false beard. While not a warrior, she was a master builder and diplomat. Her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri remains one of the most beautiful and harmonious structures of ancient Egypt. She also launched a famed trading expedition to the distant land of Punt (likely modern-day Eritrea or Somalia), bringing back incense, myrrh, ebony, and live animals, a triumph of commerce over conquest.

Upon her death after a rule of over 20 years, her stepson Thutmose III finally claimed his throne. He spent the next decades seemingly trying to erase her memory, chiseling her name from monuments, but more importantly, carving his own legacy as Egypt’s greatest military leader. He conducted at least 17 military campaigns, marching his armies into Syria and Palestine, creating an empire that stretched from Nubia to the banks of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. His detailed accounts of battles, like the strategic victory at Megiddo, were carved into the walls at Karnak, a permanent record of his imperial might.

Then came the revolution. Around 1353 BCE, a pharaoh named Amenhotep IV inherited the throne. For centuries, the god Amun-Ra, king of the gods, had grown immensely powerful, his priesthood controlling vast estates and wielding significant political influence. Amenhotep IV staged a religious coup of unprecedented scale. He declared that there was only one true god: the Aten, represented as the physical disk of the sun. He changed his own name to Akhenaten, meaning “Effective for the Aten,” and outlawed the worship of Amun-Ra and all the other traditional deities. He abandoned Thebes, the heart of Amun’s cult, and built a new capital city from scratch in the desert, Akhetaten, “the Horizon of the Aten.” The art of this period was equally revolutionary, breaking from millennia of stiff, idealized portrayals. Akhenaten, his beautiful wife Nefertiti, and their daughters were depicted with elongated skulls, slender limbs, and protruding bellies—a strange, almost alien naturalism. For nearly two decades, Egypt was turned upside down.

But the revolution would not outlive its creator. The old priests, the military, and the common people, who felt abandoned by their familiar gods, seethed with discontent. When Akhenaten died, his world died with him. His young son, Tutankhaten, was placed on the throne, and the old guard quickly asserted control. The boy-king’s name was changed to Tutankhamun, signaling the restoration of Amun-Ra. The court abandoned Akhetaten, leaving it to crumble back into the desert, and returned to Thebes. The names of Akhenaten and the Aten were erased, his temples dismantled. Tutankhamun’s reign was short, and he would have been a minor footnote in history if not for the staggering discovery of his small, intact tomb by Howard Carter in 1922—a perfect time capsule of royal splendor.

The final blaze of New Kingdom glory came with the 19th Dynasty and its greatest figure, Ramesses II, often called Ramesses the Great. He ruled for an astonishing 67 years and was the ultimate master of propaganda and monumental construction. He built on a colossal scale across Egypt, leaving his name on more temples and statues than any pharaoh before or since. The twin temples of Abu Simbel, carved into a mountain in Nubia with four 20-meter-high statues of himself, were built to awe and intimidate Egypt's southern subjects. His most famous military encounter was the Battle of Kadesh against the rival Hittite Empire. On the walls of his temples, Ramesses depicted it as a heroic triumph where he single-handedly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. In reality, the battle was more of a bloody stalemate, which led, years later, to the world’s first recorded international peace treaty, a document of sophisticated diplomacy that brought stability to the region for decades.

But even the mightiest empires eventually fade. After Ramesses the Great, a slow decline began. His successors faced new and persistent threats, most notably from a mysterious confederation of maritime raiders known only as the “Sea Peoples,” who were wreaking havoc across the Mediterranean and Near East. Pharaoh Ramesses III successfully repelled their invasions, but the wars drained the treasury. At the same time, internal problems mounted. The power of the Amun priesthood in Thebes grew once more, eventually rivaling that of the pharaoh himself. By 1070 BCE, the New Kingdom was over. Egypt, weakened and divided, entered its Third Intermediate Period. The age of empire had passed, but its legacy—of towering temples, legendary rulers, and a vision of global power—would echo through eternity.