History of Ancient Egypt – New Kingdom Part I

According to Healthinclude, the XVIII dynasty (about 1570-1318) inaugurated the ‘imperial’ phase of Egyptian history. After the domination of the hyksos, it was necessary to restore efficiency to the entire state machinery as regards agriculture, taxation, navigation and foreign trade, to re-establish the safety of trade, to rebuild and perfect the bureaucratic apparatus, civil and religious. For many decades Egypt was a military country. The policy of widening the conquests to the South and expanding into Asia, initiated by Thutmose I, was carried out by Thutmose III, who with a series of expeditions reached the Euphrates, breaking up the anti-Egyptian coalitions and carrying out the largest and most methodical work of conquest of the history of Egypt. Military talent was joined by political intelligence: the conquered countries (Phenicia, on-site Egyptian inspectors and to impose an annual tax and liens for the maintenance of the troops. Thanks to the practice of leading the children of local notables to carry out their education in Egypt and to the intense development of trade, Egyptian culture also spread by other means than that of arms. Amon, ‘the invisible god of the air’, as a result of the expansion, became a universal deity.

Thus began a cosmopolitan age of restless and dynamic transition. While with the shifting of borders – the southern frontier reached the fourth cataract of the Nile and the northern one ran along the Euphrates – traditional doctrines extended to other territories, political, social and economic internationalism and religious universalism produced effects of innovation and hybridization also in Egypt. The number of foreigners increased, the Semitic influence led to changes in writing with the use no longer of an unlimited number of ideograms but of a simpler system of phonetic symbols, Asian divinities such as Astarte and Baal penetrated. As a consequence of the dissolutive pressures provoked on the whole system by the advent of the empire, the new cosmopolitan society linked to urban centers showed itself to be more heterogeneous and secularized, giving up the classical and social elements that had always regulated the life of the Egyptians. The new trends also had significant repercussions on artistic production: already with Thutmose III the artists abandoned the stylized representation based on right-angled, rigid and geometrically balanced elements, adopting fluid and naturalistic forms and starting the modernist revolution that would be fully implemented in the period of Amenhotep IV and Tell el-Amarna. The new anti-hieratic stylistic direction, favored by foreign influence, broke a tradition that had remained unchanged for 12 centuries. giving up the classical and social elements that had always regulated the life of the Egyptians. The new trends also had significant repercussions on artistic production: already with Thutmose III the artists abandoned the stylized representation based on right-angled, rigid and geometrically balanced elements, adopting fluid and naturalistic forms and starting the modernist revolution that would be fully implemented in the period of Amenhotep IV and Tell el-Amarna. The new anti-hieratic stylistic direction, favored by foreign influence, broke a tradition that had remained unchanged for 12 centuries. giving up the classical and social elements that had always regulated the life of the Egyptians. The new trends also had significant repercussions on artistic production: already with Thutmose III the artists abandoned the stylized representation based on right-angled, rigid and geometrically balanced elements, adopting fluid and naturalistic forms and starting the modernist revolution that would be fully implemented in the period of Amenhotep IV and Tell el-Amarna. The new anti-hieratic stylistic direction, favored by foreign influence, broke a tradition that had remained unchanged for 12 centuries. rigid and geometrically balanced, adopting fluid and naturalistic forms and initiating that modernist revolution that would be fully implemented in the period of Amenofi IV and Tell el-Amarna. The new anti-hieratic stylistic direction, favored by foreign influence, broke a tradition that had remained unchanged for 12 centuries. rigid and geometrically balanced, adopting fluid and naturalistic forms and initiating that modernist revolution that would be fully implemented in the period of Amenofi IV and Tell el-Amarna. The new anti-hieratic stylistic direction, favored by foreign influence, broke a tradition that had remained unchanged for 12 centuries.

Amenhotep IV (1377-1358), who abandoned Thebes by transferring the capital to a new city, Akhetaton (Tell el-Amarna), and changed his name to that of Ekhnaton, is above all known for his religious reform, aimed at the exclusive worship of Aten (the solar disk), which was placed before Amon, protector of the dynasty and Egypt until then. In addition to being religious, atonism also had a political significance, aiming on the one hand at the economic and political downsizing of the priests of Amun, who had already assumed a dangerous function of control over the royal succession in the period of the Thutmosis and who absorbed a large part of the conspicuous tributes from Asia and Nubia, and on the other to the foundation of a cult of the providential creator Sun, in whose system the sovereign was given a demiurgic function, and therefore a more absolute authority.

History of Ancient Egypt - New Kingdom