Middle reign
Middle reign
| Although it’s generally thought that the Middle Reign included the whole XI dynasty, it actually began with the reuniting of the country by Mentuhotep II, who reigned from 2061 to 2010 BC. In spite of some rebellions, the sovereign was able to keep solidly the control over the reign, even after the substitution of many governors and the moving of the capital to Tebe; the pharaoh ordered to build his funeral monument in Deir el_Bahari. Amenemhet’s I reign, who was the first sovereign of the XII dynasty, was a period of peace; he moved again the capital near to Memphis, reorganizing the political center in Tebe to favor the union of the reign. In return, superiority was given to the Teban god’s cult, Ammone. Amenemhet demanded an oath of personal loyalty from all the governors, whose behavior was since then under a strict control, and he restored the bureaucracy, forming a new class made by scribes and administrators. The literature developed mainly as a way to promote the pharaoh’s image as a guide for the people, who had human kindness, generosity, instead as an inaccessible god. Moreover the pharaoh was no longer considered the only person who was able to survive after his death, and so the mummification was progressively diffused to the social lower classes. During the last ten years of his reign, Amenemhet, to avoid battles for the succession or usurpations, associated to the throne his son, Sesostri, beginning a custom that will be almost always followed. Sinuhe’s Story, a literary masterpiece about that epoch, suggests that the king was killed. The successors continued Amenemhet’s programs: his son, Sesostri I (1962-1928 BC), continued his politic of expansion in Nubian where he built forts, after reaching the second cataract of the Nile, and he established commercial relations with the surrounding reigns; he sent governors in Palestine and in Syria and he fought against the Libyan. Sesostri II (who reigned from 1895 to 1878 BC) began the reclamation work in the Al-Fayyum region and gave stability to the conquer of Nubia, while his successor Sesostri III (1878-1843 BC) ordered to dig a canal near the first cataract of the Nile, he established a permanent army and built new forts along the southern border; moreover, he divided his reign in three geographical units, each one controlled by an officer who was directly under the prime Minister’s (visir) supervision, recognizing no longer any authority to the provincial nobles. Amenemhet III, finally, continued his predecessors’ politic and expanded the areas fit for cultivation, completing the reclamation work in the Fayyum region and beginning an agricultural reform, and increasing the trade with the regions in the Near Orient. Under the sovereigns of Tebe, Egypt knew a remarkable cultural rebirth: the architecture and the art of the period reveal a great delicacy of the features, and in this phase even what is considered the golden age of Egyptian literary was developed. Among the most important architectonic works of the Middle Reign, Sesostri’s II and Amenemhet’s III pyramids are remembered; regarding the statues, a new tendency was established: the pharaohs’ statues were no longer solemn and impassive, but they showed in the facial features a more human and less divine conception of the sovereign, who cared for his peoples’ well-being. |
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