The First Intermediate Period ended the way it began, through rivalry between regions. The princes of Thebes, a southern city, fought the northern kings of Herakleopolis for decades. Around 2055 BC the Theban king Mentuhotep II reunited Egypt, opening the Middle Kingdom. Later Egyptians honored him as a second founder of the state.
A new kind of kingship
The Twelfth Dynasty, founded by Amenemhat I, gave the Middle Kingdom its character. Amenemhat moved the capital north to a new city, Itjtawy, near the entrance to the Faiyum, and a later text in his name suggests he was murdered in a palace plot. Its advice to his son is bleak: trust no one, for those you raised up may turn on you. Kings of this dynasty presented themselves less as distant gods and more as hardworking shepherds of their people, and their statues often show tired, lined faces, especially those of Senusret III. Whether those faces show real aging, royal burdens or a deliberate message is still argued.
The Middle Kingdom kings also reclaimed farmland in the Faiyum oasis by managing the water that flowed into its lake, and they gradually reduced the power of the provincial governors who had grown so strong in the time of division.
Holding the southern frontier
South of Aswan lay Nubia, rich in gold and a corridor for trade in ivory, ebony and incense from further south. Egyptian kings pushed into Lower Nubia and Senusret III built a chain of massive mudbrick fortresses at the Second Cataract, such as Buhen and Semna. A boundary stone he set up at Semna says Nubians may not pass north except to trade, and it mocks them as cowards, revealing as much about Egyptian propaganda as about Nubians. Dispatches from the forts, copied on papyrus, report patrols tracking small groups in the desert. Egypt treated the frontier as both a wall and a market.
The classical age of writing
Later Egyptians looked back on the Middle Kingdom as a golden age of literature. Middle Egyptian, the language of this period, became the classical form that scribes copied and studied for centuries afterward, much as later Europeans studied Latin. Students practiced on teaching texts called instructions, full of advice on speech, patience and good conduct. Stories such as the Eloquent Peasant, which you met in the previous level, and the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor date from this time.
The best loved was the Tale of Sinuhe. Sinuhe, a court official, panics at news of the king's death and flees to the Levant, where he marries a chief's daughter, grows rich and defeats a local champion in single combat. Yet he longs for home, and in old age the new king invites him back to be buried as an Egyptian. Scribes copied the story for hundreds of years.
Foreign kings in the Delta
In the Thirteenth Dynasty, royal power weakened again, with many short reigns. Meanwhile people from the Levant, whom Egyptians called Asiatics, had been settling in the eastern Delta for generations as traders, soldiers and craftsmen. Around 1650 BC a line of rulers of Levantine origin took control of the north. Egyptians called them heqau khasut, "rulers of foreign lands," which Greek writers turned into the word Hyksos. They ruled from Avaris, a city in the eastern Delta, now the site of Tell el-Dab'a, as the Fifteenth Dynasty.
Manetho, as quoted by the Jewish historian Josephus, described a sudden and savage invasion. Excavations at Tell el-Dab'a by Manfred Bietak's team tell a different story: Levantine houses, burials and pottery appear gradually over many years. Archaeology suggests the Hyksos rose from long settlement in the Delta rather than a sudden invasion. They adopted Egyptian royal titles and honored Egyptian gods, while also keeping their own traditions.
The Hyksos period changed Egyptian warfare. The horse and the chariot spread into Egypt in this period, along with the composite bow and new bronze weapons. Egypt's next kings would use these tools to build an empire.
Expelling the Hyksos
The Theban kings in the south fought back. One, Seqenenre Tao, died violently; his mummy shows head wounds consistent with battle axes. His successor Kamose campaigned north, and Ahmose, probably Seqenenre's son, captured Avaris around 1550 BC, drove out the Hyksos and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, which began the New Kingdom.
Worked example: reading the Tale of Sinuhe
What does Sinuhe's story tell us? On the surface it is an adventure. Read more closely, it is about identity. Sinuhe lives well abroad, but his success means little to him because he will not be buried with Egyptian rites. The king's letter promises him a coffin, offerings and a proper tomb, and tells him not to die in a foreign land wrapped in a sheepskin. For Egyptians, belonging meant sharing in the rites that carried a person into eternity.
The story also complicates easy talk of Egyptian contempt for foreigners. The Levantine chief who welcomes Sinuhe is generous and wise, and Sinuhe's life among his people is full and honorable. Official monuments show foreigners as bound captives; literature could show them as hosts and friends. When we judge any society's attitude to outsiders, it helps to read both its propaganda and its stories.