The later Egyptian writers characterized the time of the Hyksos as chaotic and claimed they invaded and destroyed the country. Actually, the Hyksos admired Egyptian culture and adopted it as their own. Although they did conduct raids on Egyptian cities such as Memphis, carrying statuary and monuments back to Avaris, they dressed as Egyptians, worshiped Egyptian gods, and incorporated elements of Egyptian government in their own.
The Egyptian government at Itj-tawi near Lisht could no longer control the region and abandoned Lower Egypt to the Hyksos, moving the capital back to Thebes. As the Hyksos gained power in the north, the Kushites advanced in the south and took back lands Egypt had conquered under Senusret III. The Egyptians at Thebes tolerated this situation until c. 1580 BCE when the Egyptian king Seqenenra Taa (also known as Ta’O) felt he had been insulted and challenged by the Hyksos king Apepi and attacked. This initiative was picked up and furthered by his son Kamose (c. 1575 BCE) and finally by his brother Ahmose I (c. 1570-c. 1544 BCE), who defeated the Hyksos and drove them out of Egypt.
The victory of Ahmose I begins the period known as the New Kingdom of Egypt, the best-known and most well-documented era in Egyptian history. At this time, the Egyptian government was reorganized and reformed slightly so that now the hierarchy ran from the pharaoh at the top, to the vizier, the royal treasurer, the general of the military, overseers (supervisors of government locations like work sites) and scribes who kept the records and relayed correspondence.
The New Kingdom also saw the institutionalization of the police force which was begun under Amenemhet I. His early police units were members of the Bedouin tribes who guarded the borders but had little to do with keeping domestic peace. The New Kingdom police were Medjay, Nubian warriors who had fought the Hyksos with Ahmose I and were rewarded with the new position. The police were organized by the vizier under the direction of the pharaoh. The vizier would then delegate authority to lower officials who managed the various patrols of State Police. Police guarded temples and mortuary complexes, secured the borders and monitored immigration, stood watch outside royal tombs and cemeteries, and oversaw the workers and slaves at the mines and rock quarries. Under the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) the Medjay were his personal bodyguards. For most of their tenure, though, they kept the peace along the borders and intervened in citizen’s affairs at the direction of a higher official. In time, some of these positions came to be held by priests as Bunson explains:
The temple police units were normally composed of priests who were charged with maintaining the sanctity of the temple complexes. The regulations concerning sex, behavior, and attitude during and before all ritual ceremonies demanded a certain vigilance and the temples kept their own people available to ensure a harmonious spirit.
The temple police would have been kept especially busy during religious festivals, many of which (such as that of Bastet or Hathor) encouraged drinking to excess and letting go of one’s inhibitions.
The New Kingdom also saw the reformation and expansion of the military. Egypt’s experience with the Hyksos had shown them how easily a foreign power could dominate their country, and they were not interested in experiencing that a second time. Ahmose I had first conceived the idea of buffer zones around Egypt’s borders to keep the country secure, but this idea was taken further by his son and successor Amenhotep I (c. 1541-1520 BCE).
The army Ahmose I led against the Hyksos was made up of Egyptian regulars, conscripts, and foreign mercenaries like the Medjay. Amenhotep I trained an Egyptian army of professionals and led them into Nubia to complete his father’s campaigns and regain the lands lost during the 13th Dynasty. His successors continued the expansion of Egypt’s borders but none more than Tuthmosis III (1458-1425 BCE), who established the Egyptian Empire conquering lands from Syria to Libya and down through Nubia.
By the time of Amenhotep III (1386-1353 BCE) Egypt was a vast empire with diplomatic and trade agreements with other great nations such as the Hittites, the Mitanni, the Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Babylon. Amenhotep III ruled over so vast and secure a country that he was able to occupy himself primarily with building monuments. He built so many in fact that early Egyptologists credited him with an exceptionally long reign.
His son would largely undo all the great accomplishments of the New Kingdom through religious reform which undercut the authority of the pharaoh, destroyed the economy, and soured relationships with other nations. Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE), perhaps in an attempt to neutralize the political power of the priests of Amun, banned all religious cults in the country except that of his personal god Aten. He closed the temples and moved the capital from Thebes to a new city he built in the Amarna region called Akhetaten where he sequestered himself with his wife Nefertiti and his family and neglected affairs of state.
The position of the pharaoh was legitimized by his adherence to the will of the gods. The temples throughout Egypt were not just places of worship but factories, dispensaries, workshops, counseling centers, houses of healing, educational and cultural centers. In closing them down, Akhenaten brought the forward momentum of the New Kingdom to a halt while he commissioned new temples and shrines built according to his monotheistic belief in the one god Aten. His successor, Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BCE) reversed his policies, returned the capital to Thebes, and reopened the temples but did not live long enough to complete the process. This was accomplished by the pharaoh Horemheb (1320-1295 BCE) who tried to erase any evidence that Akhenaten had ever existed. Horemheb brought Egypt back some social standing with other nations, improved the economy, and rebuilt the temples that had been destroyed, but the country never reached the heights it had known under Amenhotep III.
The government of the New Kingdom began at Thebes, but Ramesses II moved it north to a new city he built on the site of ancient Avaris, Per Ramesses. Thebes continued as an important religious center primarily because of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak to which every pharaoh of the New Kingdom contributed. The reasons for Ramesses II’s move are unclear but one of the results was that, with the capital of the government far away in Per Ramesses, the priests of Amun at Thebes were free to do as they pleased. These priests increased their power to the point where they rivaled the pharaoh and the New Kingdom ended when the high priests of Thebes ruled from that city while the last of the New Kingdom pharaohs struggled to maintain control from Per Ramesses.
