Ancient Egypt

Legacy

Egypt gave the world monumental stone architecture, one of the first writing systems and a 365-day calendar, and its pyramids and mummies still fascinate people everywhere.

Timeline of Ancient Egypt

1. 1549 BCE
   Ahmose I becomes king at Thebes and continues the war on the Hyksos

   For about a century the Hyksos, kings of Near Eastern origin, had ruled northern Egypt from Avaris in the Delta, while a native dynasty held Thebes in the south. Ahmose's father, Seqenenre Tao, probably died fighting them, and his brother Kamose raided the lands around Avaris before dying after a short reign. Ahmose came to the throne as a boy of about ten, so the war paused under a regency. His reign, conventionally dated c. 1549–1524 BCE, would finish the struggle and is counted as the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom.

2. 1531 BCE
   Ahmose takes Avaris, then Sharuhen after a 3-year siege: Egypt reunited

   Once grown, Ahmose moved down the eastern Delta and seized the border fortress of Tjaru, cutting Avaris off from help in Canaan. According to the tomb inscription of a soldier, Ahmose son of Ebana, the king attacked Avaris several times and took it on the fourth attempt, probably by his 18th or 19th regnal year. He then besieged the Hyksos stronghold of Sharuhen near Gaza for three years. With the Hyksos gone, Upper and Lower Egypt were one kingdom again, ruled from Thebes, and Egyptian armies stood on the edge of Canaan.

3. 1500 BCE
   Thutmose I conquers Lower Nubia and reaches the Euphrates at Carchemish

   Thutmose I, a military man who came to power through marriage into the royal family, set out to push Egypt's borders further than ever. In Nubia he built a fortress at Tombos near the Third Cataract, and an inscription of his has been found at Kurgus, beyond the Fourth Cataract. In the Levant he marched to the Euphrates, becoming the first pharaoh to cross it, and set up a victory stele there. The Syrian princes stopped paying tribute after he left, but his campaigns marked out the frontiers, from Nubia to the Euphrates, that later kings tried to hold.

4. 1479 BCE
   Child-king Thutmose III accedes; Hatshepsut rules, first as regent

   When Thutmose II died, his heir Thutmose III was a small child (estimates of his age range from two to 13). His stepmother and aunt Hatshepsut, Thutmose II's widow and a daughter of Thutmose I, acted as regent. By about the seventh year of the reign she had taken the full titles of a pharaoh and ruled as senior co-king, with Thutmose III as junior partner. Her roughly 20-year rule was mostly peaceful and prosperous, with major building at Karnak and trading expeditions. Thutmose III became sole ruler only at her death, c. 1458 BCE.

5. 1457 BCE
   Thutmose III defeats a Canaanite coalition at Megiddo

   Soon after Hatshepsut died, the king of Kadesh led a coalition of Canaanite and Syrian rulers that gathered at Megiddo, a fortress controlling the main route north. Thutmose III marched from Egypt and, against his generals' advice, took his army through the narrow Aruna pass, surprising the enemy and routing them. The survivors fled into Megiddo, which surrendered after a siege of about seven months. The battle is usually dated 1457 BCE, though some place it in 1482 or 1479. Taking Megiddo gave Egypt control of northern Canaan and forced the Syrian princes to send tribute and hostages.

6. 1447 BCE
   Thutmose III crosses the Euphrates to attack Mitanni

   Mitanni, a Hurrian kingdom in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, was Egypt's main rival for Syria. In his 33rd year (c. 1447 BCE), on his eighth campaign, Thutmose III had boats built at Byblos and carried them overland through Syria, past Aleppo and Carchemish. He crossed the Euphrates, catching the Mitannian king unprepared, pillaged towns on the far bank, and set up a stele beside the one left by his grandfather Thutmose I. The raid did not conquer Mitanni, but it showed Egypt's reach and brought gifts from distant kings, which Thutmose recorded as tribute.

7. 1430 BCE
   Thutmose III campaigns in Nubia as far as the Fourth Cataract

   Egypt's southern empire in Nubia (Kush) supplied gold, ivory, ebony, cattle and soldiers, and was run by a viceroy. In his 50th year, about 1430 BCE, the aging Thutmose III led his last campaign, a march into Nubia as far as the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. No Egyptian king had taken an army so far south before, although Egyptian influence already reached the area around Gebel Barkal. By the end of his reign Egypt directly controlled the Nile valley up to the Fourth Cataract, its greatest southern extent.

8. 1351 BCE
   Akhenaten promotes the Aten and moves the capital to Amarna

   Amenhotep IV came to the throne c. 1353 or 1351 BCE and in his fifth year renamed himself Akhenaten, 'beneficial to the Aten', the sun disc. He turned away from Amun and the traditional gods and founded a new capital, Akhetaten (modern Amarna), in Middle Egypt. The Amarna letters found there show his vassals in Syria and Canaan pleading for help as the Hittites under Suppiluliuma I replaced Mitanni as the great northern power. Egypt lost the province of Amurru when its ruler went over to the Hittites. After Akhenaten's death the old religion returned and Amarna was abandoned.

9. 1292 BCE
   Ramesses I founds the 19th Dynasty

   Horemheb, a general who became the last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, had no surviving children. He chose as heir his vizier Paramessu, an army officer from a military family in the Delta, who had a son, Seti, and a grandson to secure the succession. Paramessu took the throne as Ramesses I. His reign lasted only a year or two (often dated 1292–1290 BCE, though 1295–1294 is also cited), but he founded the Nineteenth Dynasty, whose kings Seti I and Ramesses II set out to win back Egypt's lost lands in Syria.

10. 1274 BCE
    Ramesses II fights the Hittites at Kadesh

    Seti I had briefly recaptured Kadesh and Amurru, but both seem to have slipped back under Hittite control. In his fifth year, generally dated May 1274 BCE, Ramesses II marched north to retake them and met the Hittite king Muwatalli II near Kadesh on the Orontes River. With perhaps 5,000 to 6,000 chariots in all, it may be the largest chariot battle ever fought. Ramesses was ambushed and surrounded, then rallied his troops and drove the Hittites back. The battle ended in stalemate, but Muwatalli kept Kadesh and pushed into Egyptian territory, leaving Egypt's Asian empire limited to Canaan.

11. 1259 BCE
    Peace treaty with the Hittites settles the Syrian frontier

    After Kadesh the fighting dragged on for years, while Egypt worried about the Sea Peoples and the Hittites about rising Assyria. Around 1259 BCE (some accounts give 1258, Ramesses II's 21st year), Ramesses and the Hittite king Hattusili III agreed what is the oldest surviving peace treaty. Both sides promised not to invade each other, to hand back political refugees, and to help each other against enemies. The treaty fixed the Syrian frontier where it stood, with Egypt keeping Canaan and the Hittites holding Kadesh and Amurru, and it kept the peace until the Hittite Empire collapsed decades later.

12. 1178 BCE
    Ramesses III defeats the Sea Peoples on land at Djahy and at sea in the Delta

    Around 1200 BCE the Late Bronze Age world was falling apart, and groups that scholars call the Sea Peoples, among them the Peleset (Philistines) and Shardana, attacked the eastern Mediterranean. In his eighth year Ramesses III met them twice: on land at Djahy, on Egypt's frontier in the Levant, and in the Nile Delta, where his fleet ambushed their ships while archers lined the banks. Egypt survived when the Hittite Empire and many other states did not. But the cost was high, and the Philistines settled in southern Canaan as Egypt's hold on Asia faded.

13. 1077 BCE
    Ramesses XI dies; Smendes (Tanis) and Amun's priests (Thebes) divide Egypt

    In the 20th Dynasty Egypt was hit by poor Nile floods, famine, unrest and corruption, and the loss of its empire in Asia. Under Ramesses XI, royal power weakened so far that the High Priests of Amun at Thebes became the real rulers of Upper Egypt, while Smendes controlled the north. When Ramesses XI died in 1077 BCE, Smendes buried him and founded the 21st Dynasty at Tanis in the Delta. The New Kingdom was over: Egypt entered the Third Intermediate Period, divided between Tanis and Thebes, with its foreign empire gone.

Periods and reigns

• Ahmose I 1549–1524 BCE
• Amenhotep I 1524–1503 BCE
• Thutmose I 1503–1493 BCE
• Thutmose II 1493–1479 BCE
• Hatshepsut (with Thutmose III) 1479–1458 BCE
• Thutmose III (sole rule) 1458–1425 BCE
• Amenhotep II 1427–1397 BCE
• Thutmose IV 1397–1388 BCE
• Amenhotep III 1388–1351 BCE
• Akhenaten 1351–1334 BCE
• Tutankhamun 1332–1323 BCE
• Ay and Horemheb 1323–1292 BCE
• Ramesses I and Seti I 1292–1279 BCE
• Ramesses II 1279–1213 BCE
• Ramesses III 1185–1154 BCE
• Ramesses IV–X 1154–1106 BCE
• Ramesses XI 1106–1077 BCE

Rulers

• Narmer c. 3100 BCE

  Traditionally credited with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt

• Khufu c. 2589 – 2566 BCE

  Built the Great Pyramid of Giza

• Hatshepsut c. 1479 – 1458 BCE

  Female pharaoh famed for trade expeditions and temple building

• Thutmose III c. 1479 – 1425 BCE

  Warrior pharaoh who carried the empire to its greatest extent

• Akhenaten c. 1353 – 1336 BCE

  Tried to replace the old gods with worship of the sun disc Aten

• Ramesses II c. 1279 – 1213 BCE

  Fought the Hittites at Kadesh and built Abu Simbel

• Cleopatra VII 51 – 30 BCE

  Last ruler of independent Egypt (Ptolemaic dynasty)

Realms on the map

• Early Dynastic Period of Egypt 3000–2501 BCE
• Old Kingdom of Egypt 2500–2201 BCE
• Lower Egypt 2200–2001 BCE
• Upper Egypt 2200–2001 BCE
• Middle Kingdom of Egypt 2000–1601 BCE
• Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt 1600–1501 BCE
• Sixteenth Dynasty of Egypt 1600–1501 BCE
• Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt 1600–1501 BCE
• New Kingdom of Egypt 1500–1077 BCE
• Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt 943–701 BCE
• Twenty-third Dynasty of Egypt 800–701 BCE
• Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt 650–525 BCE
• Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt 383–343 BCE
• Ankhwennefer 197–171 BCE

Chapters

• The world in 3000 BCE: The First Kings
• The world in 2000 BCE: Cities of Bronze
• The world in 1500 BCE: Chariots and Empires