The Middle Kingdom of Egypt: A Golden Age of Literature and Power

The Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2055–1650 BCE), the era of Mentuhotep II’s reunification, the classical literature of Sinuhe and Neferti, and the great Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhat III, is, in many ways, the most attractive period in the long history of the pharaohs. It opened with the reunification of a country that had been broken apart by a century of chaos, and it produced some of the most beautiful literature, the most confident kingship, and the most sophisticated government in the ancient world. Egyptian writers of later periods looked back to the Middle Kingdom as a kind of golden age, and modern scholars, including Toby Wilkinson and Jan Assmann, broadly share that judgment.

To set the stage, begin with the broader guide to ancient Egyptian civilization and the preceding Old Kingdom of Egypt.

The End of the First Intermediate Period

When the First Intermediate Period ended around 2055 BCE, Egypt had spent the better part of a century fragmented into rival kingdoms. The two most important were the Heracleopolitan Kingdom, ruling from the north, and a line of Theban kings ruling from Thebes in the south. It was a Theban ruler who would finally reunify the country.

Mentuhotep II and the Reunification

Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty is the great hero of this story. He was the son of Intef III, who had already brought most of Upper Egypt under Theban rule. Around the 39th year of his reign, Mentuhotep II marched north, defeated the Heracleopolitan kings, and reunited the Two Lands under a single crown. The famous shabti of Henenu and the tombs at Deir el-Bahari commemorate his reign.

His name, Mentuhotep, means “Montu is satisfied,” Montu being the falcon-headed god of war who was the chief deity of Thebes at that time. After his victory, the Thebans began the long process of elevating Amun, the local god who would become the king of the Egyptian pantheon. To read more about this transition, see our long-tail page on the rise of Thebes in the Middle Kingdom.

Mentuhotep II built a remarkable mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahari, a terraced temple set against the cliffs of the Theban mountain, an architectural idea that would inspire Hatshepsut’s later temple at the same site. Thebes itself, after the reunification, would remain one of the great cities of the ancient world for almost two thousand years.

The Twelfth Dynasty: Egypt’s Classical Age

If the Eleventh Dynasty reunited Egypt, the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1985–1773 BCE) perfected it. Its founder, Amenemhat I, moved the capital north from Thebes to a new fortress city called Itjtawy, near the modern site of el-Lisht. This move placed the king in the middle of the country, closer to both the Delta and the contested Nubian frontier.

The Twelfth Dynasty produced a string of capable rulers: Amenemhat I, Senusret I, Amenemhat II, Senusret II, Senusret III, and Amenemhat III. Each in turn built a pyramid (at el-Lisht, Lahun, Dahshur, and Hawara) and each in turn fought to expand and defend Egypt’s borders.

Senusret III: Warrior and Reformer

Senusret III is one of the most important pharaohs in Egyptian history. He mounted at least four major campaigns into Nubia, pushing the southern border past the Second Cataract and building a chain of mudbrick fortresses to defend it. He also led at least one campaign into the Levant, and his statuary (with its lined face and grim expression) set a new standard for royal portraiture.

Senusret III is also remembered for breaking the power of the nomarchs. Under his predecessors, the provincial governors had grown increasingly powerful and had begun to act as semi-independent rulers. Senusret III reorganized the administration, dividing the old nomes into smaller units and rotating their officials, so that no single family could accumulate too much power in any one region. This is one of the earliest examples in world history of a deliberate policy of administrative reform.

The literature of the period reflects the king’s grim, fatalistic view of royal power. The Story of Sinuhe, a Middle Kingdom classic, describes a courtier who flees Egypt after the death of Amenemhat I and lives for years as a wandering exile in Palestine before being pardoned and brought home. The Instructions of Amenemhat I, supposedly written by the murdered king from beyond the grave, advises the reader to trust no one, a clear reference to the palace conspiracy that ended Amenemhat I’s reign.

Literature: The First Classical Age of Egyptian Writing

The Middle Kingdom is often called the classical age of Egyptian literature. Almost every major work of Egyptian literature that survives today was either composed in the Middle Kingdom or based on a Middle Kingdom original.

The most important works include:

• The Story of Sinuhe, sometimes called the first great work of Egyptian prose fiction, a story of exile, identity, and return that has been compared to the Odyssey.
• The Prophecies of Neferti, a piece of political propaganda in which a sage predicts the rise of Amenemhat I to the throne.
• The Eloquent Peasant, a tale of a poor farmer who uses the power of words to win justice from a corrupt local official.
• The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, a story within a story in which a sailor stranded on an enchanted island tells the story of his survival.
• The Instructions of Ptahhotep and the Instructions of Kagemni, wisdom texts in the tradition of the Old Kingdom, but more polished and elaborate.

This literary outpouring is not just a matter of taste. It reflects a deliberate policy. The Middle Kingdom kings, especially Senusret III, invested heavily in the education of a new class of royal scribes, and the literary culture they created would outlast the dynasty by more than a thousand years. Manuscripts of Middle Kingdom works like the Story of Sinuhe were still being copied by scribes in the New Kingdom, more than five hundred years later; the Middle Kingdom scribes treated their classical literature the way Renaissance scholars treated Greek and Latin.

For a deeper look at the script these scribes used, see our guide to Egyptian hieroglyphs and writing.

Religion and the Afterlife

The Middle Kingdom was also an important period in the development of Egyptian religion. The Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, which had been the private property of the king, began to be adapted for a wider audience. By the late Middle Kingdom, a new set of spells (the Coffin Texts) was being inscribed on the coffins of nobles and officials, and over the next several centuries these would be refined into the Book of the Dead. For the broader framework, see our guide to mummies and the afterlife.

Two religious changes of the Middle Kingdom are particularly important. First, the cult of Osiris, the dying-and-rising god of the afterlife, spread from Abydos to become a national cult. The Egyptians began to identify their own deceased relatives with Osiris, and the promise of an eternal afterlife (once reserved for the king alone) was gradually democratized.

Second, the cult of Amun, the local god of Thebes, was fused with the older cult of Ra to create Amun-Ra, who would become the supreme state god of the New Kingdom. To explore the broader mythological context, see our guides to Egyptian gods and goddesses and Egyptian mythology and beliefs.

Art and Architecture

Middle Kingdom art is, in many ways, the most expressive and personal of any period in Egyptian history. The wooden models of daily life found in the tomb of Meketre at Thebes (offering bearers, breweries, bakeries, ships) give us a vivid picture of an elite household at the height of the Middle Kingdom. The portrait statues of Senusret III and Amenemhat III, with their lined faces and introspective expressions, are some of the most moving pieces of ancient sculpture in existence.

The pyramids of the Middle Kingdom are smaller and less ambitious than those of the Old Kingdom, but they show a new sophistication. The pyramid of Amenemhat I at el-Lisht reused the causeway of an older, unfinished Old Kingdom pyramid. The pyramid of Senusret II at Lahun is built into the hillside. The pyramids of Senusret III and Amenemhat III at Dahshur are experiments in geometry that prefigure the black pyramid of Amenemhat III at the same site. The pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara was, in antiquity, counted among the wonders of the world for its labyrinthine mortuary temple. To explore the variety of Middle Kingdom pyramids, see our guide to the lesser-known pyramids.

The Decline of the Middle Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom ended, like the Old Kingdom, in a long collapse. After Amenemhat III, the dynasty grew weaker, and a series of brief-reigned pharaohs struggled to hold the country together. The dynasty’s last ruler was Sobekneferu, the first confirmed female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. After her death, the throne passed to a new dynasty, the Thirteenth Dynasty, which ruled in increasing disarray from Thebes.

Around 1650 BCE, the Hyksos, a people of mixed Levantine origin who had been settling in the Delta for generations, seized power in the north. They established their own kingdom at Avaris, with the Hyksos king bearing the Egyptian title of pharaoh, and inaugurated the Second Intermediate Period.

The expulsion of the Hyksos around 1550 BCE, the work of the Theban prince Ahmose I, would inaugurate the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era of empire, monumental temples, and warrior pharaohs.

The Middle Kingdom in Retrospect

For the Egyptians themselves, the Middle Kingdom never really went away. Long after the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty, scribes were still copying the great Middle Kingdom stories, building officials were still measuring their work against the architecture of Senusret III, and theologians were still quoting the Instructions of Ptahhotep. The Middle Kingdom set the standards by which the rest of Egyptian history was judged, and a thousand years later the last great flowering of native Egyptian culture, the Late Period of Egypt, would look back to the Middle Kingdom as a model. I have always found the New Kingdom a touch overrated in popular accounts; the Middle Kingdom is, in my view, the moment the Egyptian literary and administrative imagination reaches its mature form, and the rest of pharaonic history is in some sense variations on it.