Egyptian history is traditionally divided up following the scheme of dynasties that a 3rd Century BCE historian called Manetho used, and over the top of that modern Egyptologists have grouped those dynasties into Kingdoms and intermediate periods. This is a pretty useful thing to do – it makes it easier to talk and think about the 3,000 and more years of history. But it’s also a little dangerous – it leads one to ignore other ways to divide up the history of Egypt. I’ve talked about Khasekhemwy before – we put him as the last king of the Second Dynasty and yet there are indications that he may’ve been a re-unifier of Egypt, which to my mind might make him better thought of as the beginning of the Old Kingdom rather than the end of the Early Dynastic Period. And today I thought I’d talk about another of these inflection points in Egyptian history that aren’t reflected in the traditional divisions: the reign of Senwosret III.

Senwosret III was the fifth ruler of the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom – essentially slap bang in the middle of this period, neither at the beginning nor the end his dynasty let alone his Kingdom. He ruled for around four decades in the 19th Century BCE and he was the successor to Senwosret II, and was succeeded in his turn by Amenemhat III. You might see his birth name spelt in several different ways in books: Senwosret (which I’m using as it’s the one I’m most familiar with), Senusret or Sesostris (this last is considered rather old-fashioned now). His throne name, which the Egyptians would’ve used to refer to him was Khakaura. The remaining names of his five-fold titulary are his Horus name nṯr-ḫprw “Horus, divine of form”, his nebty name nṯri-mswt, “The Two Ladies, divine of birth” and his Golden Horus name ḫpr, “The Golden Horus has been created”.

We know the names of several members of Senwosret III’s family, mostly the women and mostly from their burials. Well, I say “know” but of course this is really one of those logic puzzles – there’s a list of women who have particular titles relating them to “the King” and a list of burial places, and we use those to make educated guesses about which king they were daughter of etc. And the men are pretty much entirely missing – not necessarily because they didn’t exist, but more because in this period royal sons were not often represented in art or in texts unless they had some other reason (like being a priest of a relevant temple) to be mentioned.

Senwosret III’s parents can be reasonably confidently assigned as Senwosret II and his wife (Khnemetneferhedjet) Weret I (the I is used to distinguish her from her daughter-in-law of the same name). You’ll notice I put the first bit of her name in brackets – it’s an interesting name and a rather confusing one. Khnemetneferhedjet literally translates as “united with the white crown”, it was a personal name in the 12th Dynasty and was also a title that was held by queens from the 12th Dynasty to the early 18th Dynasty. It’s not clear how one can tell if it’s a name or a title – not just to me as a reader of the secondary literature, but also to Egyptologists reading the inscriptions and texts themselves. In fact the books I read disagreed as to whether this particular woman was called Khnemetneferhedjet Weret or just Weret, so I’ve put it in brackets!

There are several known wives of Senwosret III – again mostly known from their place of burial (his pyramid complex, with a couple of exceptions), and their titles. When I was writing about Amenemhat III I said Senwosret III had three wives – but actually there are 5 (one of whom we have no name for). Two were his sisters: daughters of Senwosret II who had both the title King’s Daughter and King’s Wife – these were Sithathoriunet and the unnamed woman. There is also (Khnemetneferhedjet) Weret II (not to be confused with her mother-in-law), whose titles are King’s Wife and Great of Sceptre (which is another queenly title of the period). Another had the United with the White Crown title that I discussed above (she was called Neferhenut). And last, and very very definitely not least, was Mertseger. She is the first recorded queen to hold the title King’s Great Wife, and the first to have her name written in a cartouche – whilst these honorifics would become commonplace in the New Kingdom their use here is a departure from the previous norm and an indication of her status.

We can also list the names (or partial names) of several daughters (or potential daughters) of Senwosret III (tho not, I think, assign mothers to them) all of whom were buried in his pyramid complex: Khnmet[…], Menet, Mereret B, Senebsenbetes, Sit[…] A, and Sithathor A. Sons are elusive – none are directly attested (as I discussed above this was not unusual). And as I mentioned when writing about his probable son Amenemhat III even this relationship is only assumed due to the succession and the long co-regency which carries with it an assumption of a completely normal (i.e. father to son) succession.

As I said at the outset of this article, change is my theme for this look at the reign of Senwosret III – I’ve already mentioned the new title and cartouche for one of his queens, which surely indicates some shift in the status or ideas about royal women during this period. This is only one of a wide range of changes – during his reign and those to either side of him the material culture of Egypt undergoes notable changes in many ways. There are no texts that explain these changes (the Egyptians didn’t generally write down such meta-information) but it seems reasonable to assume that the change of material culture reflects an underlying alteration in the beliefs and practices of the Egyptian people.

A striking example of these changes is in the art style. I had already talked about this a bit in the Amenemhat III post, where I put the fuzzy line of this change in Senwosret II’s reign, but I think on further reading it should be seen as part of Senwosret III’s reign. In statuary from earlier in the Middle Kingdom it’s a very idealised (and youthful) face that we’re shown, but Senwosret III’s statuary has more naturalistic and more mature facial features (whilst still having a very idealised and youthful body) and this style continues into his son’s reign and beyond. There have been a few suggestions for what this change means or represents. Some authors suggest that this is a new “realistic” style and that the statues represent the actual true-to-life features of the king. Other authors interpret it as bearing a message – that the features do not represent the real face of the king but are chosen to convey specific concepts e.g. the prominent eyes of Senwosret III signify vigilance. Overlapping with this is the idea that the faces are carved to represent the “inner man” – the king’s character not the king’s appearance. Yet other authors, like Dorothea Arnold, mix these ideas together – she sees the statues of this period as being recognisable images of the king in question which were also constructed to fit the ideology of the time. I’m inclined to follow this last idea. Just having it be straight realism feels too much like back-porting our own ideas about what art “should be” onto the Egyptians. And having it be solely conceptual messaging feels too abstract (but having said that, I also don’t believe Akhenaten looked like his statuary, so I’m clearly open to that idea in other cases!). But whatever the specific messaging or interpretation we see in these statues, it’s clear that ideas about how to represent a king change in middle of the Middle Kingdom and thus presumably their underlying idea of kingship itself.

This is not the only change that happens in the art and artifacts produced in the mid-12th Dynasty, tho it’s the only one I intend to go into in depth. I’ve previously discussed how tomb models fall out of use during Senwosret III’s reign, and along with this the jewellery buried with royal women changes in style and type. There also seems to be an interesting conceptual change in the way that the burial chambers under a pyramid were thought of – in the earlier Middle Kingdom they seem to’ve been thought of as pockets in solid bedrock (with the filling up of the passageways after burial returning them to solidity). But from Senwosret II onward there’s a change and the chambers are organised as spaces that one can move through and between. Also in the funerary context there’s an increase in the number of stelae and statues placed near sacred sites and processional ways such as those at Abydos and Elephantine.

Along with these changes in funerary goods and ideas the tombs of the provincial governors, the Nomarchs, start to disappear from the provinces and the elite are more often buried in close proximity to the king. This is one indication of a great change in the bureaucratic organisation of the Egyptian state during the reign of Senwosret III. Prior to Senwosret III the regions of Egypt were governed by powerful Nomarchs each of whom ruled over a Nome or district. During the late Old Kingdom more and more power had devolved to these regional governors, and this destabilised the central authority of the kings of Egypt. This wasn’t the entire reason that the Old Kingdom collapsed, but it was one of the factors – and you see it reflected in the tombs of First Intermediate Period rulers like Ankhtifi. But during the reign of Senwosret III this changes – the power of the provincial elite is reduced. Instead power was concentrated in a small handful of officials – headed by three viziers who reported directly to the king. These viziers each had a large region under their supervision – one administered Lower Egypt, one Upper Egypt and the last looked after Elephantine and Lower Nubia. Some authors see this as a conscious decision by Senwosret III to break the power of the Nomarchs, but most interpretations are that it was a side-effect of a process of centralisation that had been begun earlier in the 12th Dynasty during the reign of Senwosret I. Instead of a removal of power from any individual it’s more that by the reign of Senwosret III the titles are vanishing as Nomarchs died and their sons did not inherit.

Changes in bureaucracy inevitably lead to other changes in society as the centres of power shift. One such change may’ve lead to the flowering of craftsmanship that is seen in this period – the centralisation of power meant that the elite were then all in one place, and so the craftsmen who made elite items and the traders who brought them from outside Egypt also moved to this centre of power. And once all in one place the opportunities for collaboration and competition would be much greater. Also probably connected with the power shift from the provinces to the court was an organisational shift in the military of Egypt. In the First Intermediate Period and the early Middle Kingdom the army was primarily built up from the militia of each Nome, but as bureaucratic authority became centralised so did military authority. In the later Middle Kingdom from the reign of Senwosret III onward the army developed into a larger and national standing army.

And Senwosret III put this army to use serving his new expansionist policy – he undertook campaigns in Nubia in Year 8, Year 10 and Year 16 and reversed the northward movement of the southern border of Egypt that had taken place in the previous two reigns. He established his border at Semna (south of the Second Cataract), established and/or renovated a series of forts between Buhen and Semna in order to control this territory. He also enlarged a canal built by Pepi I which ran from Elephantine to the south, bypassing the first cataract) and improving communication and movement between core Egyptian territory and the newly conquered regions of Lower Nubia.

His boundary stela at Semna makes it clear that he regarded this land as completely under his authority. It states that no Nubians must cross this boundary by water or by land, whether in a ship or with their herds unless they are coming to one of his fortresses to trade. Of course the lands to the south of Egypt had been exploited by Egyptian rulers for a long time, but the Middle Kingdom was the first time they had been incorporated properly into the lands over which the king ruled. The fortresses that lined the river projected this power to the inhabitants, much like Norman castles in newly conquered Anglo-Saxon England. They did serve a practical purpose as well as this symbolic one – and not just the obvious military one of providing barracks for troops to control the river. They also provided storage space for trade goods, and places for the authorised trade between Nubians and Egypt to take place. So perhaps rather than an analogy to Norman castles we’d do better to think of Hadrian’s Wall – not a barrier but a place where trade and movement was controlled.

It wasn’t just Nubia that Senwosret III projected his power towards – he also flexed his muscles at the lands to the north east. Execration texts found in the fortress of Mirgissa in Nubia (and other places) dating to Senwosret III’s reign make it clear that Egyptian xenophobia was alive and well in this period – and directed at all outsiders. Among the cities and peoples named as abomination are several of the Nubian peoples, and also cities in the Levant such as Sekmem, Ashkelon, Byblos and Jerusalem. But there’s less evidence for campaigns into that part of the world, and no evidence of any long term control. Really we just have evidence of one campaign into Palestine in Senwosret III’s whole reign – personally led by the king himself it succeeded in capturing the town of Sekmem (identified with Shechem in the Mount Ephraim region).

Unsurprisingly, given the campaigns I’ve just discussed, one of the buildings we know that Senwosret III built was a temple to the Theban war god Montu at Medamud. This is also an example of continuity between Senwosret III and the earlier kings of the Middle Kingdom, which is a counterpoint to the picture we’ve been building up of his reign being a time of change.

After his death Senwosret III was one of those kings whose cult lasted for centuries, like Menkaure, Montuhotep II or Ahmose I. His pyramid complex at Dahshur shows signs of having been maintained through the Second Intermediate Period and we can tell from graffiti at the complex that some parts were still visited until at least the reign of Ramesses II. His funerary monument at Abydos also shows signs of his cult persisting for a couple of hundred years. He also gradually became regarded as the archetypal Egyptian king and was referred to as “High Sesostris”, with many stories about him by the time of Herodotus. But this was not entirely on his own merits – instead it was down to increasing conflation of his reign and deeds with those of other kings. Fairly early on he got confused with Senwosret I and Senwosret II, and by the Classical Period he was possibly also confused with Ramesses II to some degree.

Whilst his later reputation wasn’t entirely his own his reign was still a pivotal moment in the Middle Kingdom, and I’ve discussed some examples of the things that changed during his time on the throne. But change for change’s sake isn’t really an Egyptian thing to do – they were more apt to stress continuity and maintenance of the established order of the universe. And Senwosret III seems to’ve been a typical Egyptian monarch in this regard. There are several architectural and design choices in his pyramid complex at Dahshur that look back to older kings – not his immediate Middle Kingdom predecessors but the architecture of the Step Pyramid or other Old Kingdom pyramids. And his other funerary monument is at Abydos, near the Early Dynastic cemeteries there and the first royal monument since those days. So he seems to’ve been positioning himself as the heir to these illustrious ancestors. And some of the other aspects of his reign fit into that narrative too – he’s centralising administrative power in the king as it was in the old days, he’s projecting the power of Egypt out into the world and returning her neighbours to their proper subservient role. Perhaps this is an indication that the power of the king had been faltering, and Senwosret III was re-asserting his power and constructing an image of a resurgent & rejuvenated kingship. And under the cover of restoration, changes are made.

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Resources Used:

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